Separate from the World

by P. L. Gaus

  Leaving Niell in charge of Eddie Hunt-Myers, Branden came up behind the sheriff, who was saying, “Look, Missy, I need to know if this was really a suicide. I think he killed her, but you tell me.”

  Taggert gave no reply that Branden could hear, and Robertson backed out of the doorway as the door was pushed closed from the other side.

  Holmes County Coroner and Medical Examiner Melissa Taggert was a striking woman several years younger than her husband and Branden. Her soft brown hair was usually done up in a bun so she could wear an autopsy cap over it. Though considerably more slender than her husband, Missy was strongly and solidly built, and when she didn’t like his intrusions on her work, she just pushed him back through the door, saying, “Bruce, you’re gonna have to let me work.” Thus Sheriff Robertson found himself in the hallway.

  Robertson got himself turned around and spotted Branden. “I’m not real happy about getting run off your college up there, Mike.”

  Branden nodded. He appreciated the reasons for the sheriff’s ire, but he squared up to his friend. “You had to leave, Bruce. Aidan Newhouse was going to provoke you. That’s what he does. He craves attention, especially from the law. Since Vietnam, he’s been looking for excuses to march again. I know he’s made a pest of himself at the courthouse, leading his students against the Iraq war. If you’d stayed there, you would have had a hundred people shouting at ‘the pigs’ in no time at all.”

  Robertson acknowledged the point and seemed to deflate in front of the professor. In a calmer tone, he said to Branden, “I’ve sent Dan Wilsher and Pat Lance back up there in plainclothes. That bell tower needs a look.”

  Branden nodded approval. He noted with relief that he was starting to think clearly again. “What has Eddie told you?”

  Robertson scowled. “Says they were on the tower all night. Then he broke up with her this morning, and she threw herself off the tower, on account of it.”

  “You don’t believe him?” Branden asked.

  “I’ll wait to hear from Dan and Pat. If there was a quarrel, the top of that bell tower might have some evidence of it.”

  “I know these two, Bruce,” Branden said. “They’re my students. They were in my classes. They were in love. Eddie could no more have hurt Cathy Billett than he could have stopped his own heart.”

  Saying this, Branden found himself sorting through his thoughts, even as he confronted his sorrow. He realized that Eddie’s confession had given him a better reason to move forward than anything else could have. These were his students. He knew them. “Eddie thinks he’s responsible, but he did not kill her, Bruce,” he added. “He hasn’t got the capacity.”

  Robertson stared back at the professor for a long couple of seconds and said, “Like I said, Mike. Dan and Pat are up there now. I’ll wait to hear what they have to say.”

  Branden smiled. This was high diplomacy for the gruff sheriff. Whatever he told Robertson now would fall on deaf ears. Robertson was walled off and tunnel sighted. The professor decided to change the subject.

  “I don’t know Pat Lance,” Branden said.

  “I hired her in November, after Kessler officially retired. Dan Wilsher is chief deputy now.”

  “What’s her background?”

  “Pat Lance? She’s an investigator/criminalist. Out of the Air National Guard, over in Mansfield. Came back from Iraq last summer.”

  “And you’re using her as a simple deputy? Not as a detective?”

  “She can move onto a desk when she’s earned a stripe or two.”

  “She any good?”

  Robertson nodded. “She’s military, Mike. You know I like that.”

  “What I meant was, is she too good to use in a cruiser?”

  “She can start like everyone else. If she wants better, she knows she has to show me something.”

  “Did you explain it to her in those terms, Sheriff?”

  “Like anyone else, Professor,” Robertson said. He glanced down the hall. “Your rich boy, there, looks like a playboy to me, all tanned to bronze like that.”

  At the end of the hall, Eddie sat down on the bench again, cradling his head in his hands. Ricky Niell started forward with his spiral notepad.

  Branden said, “He’s not my boy, Bruce. He’s my student. And it doesn’t matter that his parents are wealthy.”

  Niell advanced with his eyes focused on a page, and said, “He says that he killed her. Not that he did it, but that he’s to blame, because he broke up with her.”

  “He told me the same thing,” said Branden. “He feels responsible for her death. He’s not only grieving, he’s in shock.”

  Robertson turned to Branden and said, “He’s a playboy, Mike.”

  “He’s just a college kid, Bruce,” Branden argued. “He’s supposed to march in commencement Monday morning and take his diploma home to Florida. He’ll work in his family’s boatyard. Cathy Billett was from a cattle ranch in Montana. She was going home to her family. Couples like that break up a lot this time of year. They think they’ll never be able to make it in a long-distance relationship, and they just give up.”

  The sheriff’s cell phone chirped. He checked his display, took the call, and said, “Yeah, Dan. What have you got? I’m putting you on speaker phone.”

  Robertson held the phone out, and the three men heard Chief Deputy Wilsher say, “The roof of this bell tower looks like an all-night frat-house party, Sheriff. It’s pretty much a mess, but there are girl’s shoes and a large man’s button-down shirt. A wine bottle, beer cans, and some snacks.”

  Branden said, “The tower’s supposed to be locked, Dan.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Wilsher said. “There’s an old sleeping bag laid out here, and a shredded wine cork that looks like it was carved out with a knife. There’s a little penknife lying here, too.”

  Ricky said, “That’s all consistent with what Hunt-Myers has told me.”

  “You going to arrest him?” Dan asked over the phone.

  Branden groaned and said, “No, Bruce. That’d be wrong.”

  Robertson thought, shook his head, and said, “Naw. No arrest, Dan. Not for now.”

  Over the phone, Wilsher said, “Wait,” and a moment later, “Maybe you’d better get back up on campus, Bruce. Ben Capper has some hippie professor locked in handcuffs. I’m looking down at them now.”

  Ricky spoke toward the phone, “College security guards aren’t supposed to carry handcuffs.”

  Wilsher came back, “Well, yeah. But neither is the chief of college security supposed to be holding an ice pack to his eye.”

  Branden said, “Bruce, if you go back up there, you’ll be poking a stick into a hornet’s nest.”

  Robertson said, “Hang on, Dan,” and muted his phone. Growling, he said, “Mike, I don’t have any choice here.”

  “You do, Bruce,” Branden said. “Just tell Dan and Pat Lance to pack Newhouse and Capper up and bring them both down here.”

  Robertson unmuted his phone and asked, “Dan, can you just put Ben Capper and that professor in your car and bring them both down to the jail?”

  Wilsher said, “Lance already has Capper in the backseat.”

  Urgently, Branden said, “Dan, listen. Get Newhouse out of those cuffs.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Wilsher said.

  “No, Dan, listen,” Branden said. “He wants to be in those cuffs. You’re gonna make a martyr out of a mouse.”

  There was a pause, and next Deputy Lance came on the phone. “Sheriff, Pat Lance here. Chief Wilsher is taking the cuffs off, now.”

  Robertson bit down on his more assertive instincts, and said, “You and Dan bring Capper in alone, Lance.”

  Then Lance said, “This professor is nuts, Sheriff. Won’t let us take the cuff off his other wrist.”

  Branden muttered, “I’ve been doing this too long.” He flashed the mental image of a dwarf Amish man balanced on the flat seat of a black buggy, asking about college kids and sex, and he groaned. He looked down to Eddie, st
ill on the hallway bench, and asked Niell, “Ricky, can you take Eddie back to campus?”

  Niell nodded, “Sure,” and Branden started walking down the hall.

  The professor’s phone rang, and he answered it in the hallway, feeling spent. Caroline was right. He had been morose. He was feeling the years.

  Arne Laughton, president of Millersburg College, asked, “Mike, where are you?”

  “Medical examiner’s labs, with Bruce Robertson.”

  “Has he taken Eddie Hunt-Myers into custody?”

  “What?”

  “Eddie Hunt-Myers. Is he in custody? I got a call from his father.”

  “Arne, Cathy Billett is dead. You need to be down here.”

  “Can’t come now, Mike. Edwin Hunt-Myers is an alumnus. He just wants to know where his boy is.”

  Branden moved outside to the parking lot and said, “Arne, I’m only going to tell you this once. Cathy Billett’s family deserves your consideration more, right now, than anyone else. You let me take care of Eddie. You need to help the Billetts.”

  “They’re saying it was suicide, Mike. I can’t call her parents until I know about that.”

  Incredulous, Branden demanded, “You haven’t called them?”

  “It’s only been an hour, Mike. Do you think this was a suicide?”

  “Yes,” Branden said, feeling dirty. “Missy Taggert has her body in the morgue.”

  Laughton urged, “Ask her, Mike. Find out for me. Then I’ll make that call.”

  “Look, Arne,” the professor said, “you’re gonna blow this. Think. Cathy is dead because they got into the bell tower last night.”

  There was silence on the line. Then Laughton said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Come now,” Branden said. “You can stand outside the morgue and provide some comfort for Eddie. I’m going to leave.”

  Laughton held the connection, but did not reply. Feeling the weight of his years, Branden said, “Arne, this is not your finest hour.”

  6

  Friday, May 11 10:45 A.M.

  BRUCE ROBERTSON found Branden standing on the hospital’s blacktop, next to his white truck. The professor still had his phone out, but it was closed.

  “Who was that?” Robertson asked.

  “Arne Laughton.”

  “Is he coming down?”

  “Says he is. Look, Bruce, I’m gonna go find Caroline. And I’ve got to talk to Cal about an Amish fellow. You going to be OK with this for a while?”

  The sheriff said, “You know I don’t like Laughton.”

  “Right now, I don’t either,” Branden said.

  “I’m gonna wait to hear what Missy says,” Robertson said. “I’m sending your boy home with Ricky, but he’s not off the hook. Not with me. I want to know if he pushed her off that tower.”

  “You’re wrong about him, Bruce. As wrong as you can be.”

  “You let me worry about Eddie Hunt-Myers, Mike. You’ve got a reserve deputy sheriff’s badge, and I want you to use it now. I need you to stay here and handle Arne Laughton for me.”

  Branden rubbed at tension in the back of his neck and pictured Arne Laughton back on the phone with Eddie’s father. The cord that tethered Branden emotionally to the college seemed to him more frayed than ever. “Try not to be morose,” he remembered from Caroline’s note. He saw Cathy Billett lying on the ground and Eddie swaying on the parapet above her. He remembered Enos Erb’s “Oh, my!” while standing on his tiptoes to see out the office window. And he pictured Aidan Newhouse with handcuffs on one wrist, standing in proud protest at commencement.

  “You really do need to stay off campus, Bruce,” Branden said. “At least for a while.”

  Robertson shrugged, saying, “Whatever. Look, Mike. What can you tell me about Ben Capper? Dan’s probably going to bring him down to the jail.”

  Branden said, “He’s simple enough—straightforward, I mean. He does a good job as chief of security.”

  “Does he have a ‘thing’ for Newhouse?” Robertson asked.

  “Like a grudge?”

  “Right.”

  “Not that I know about,” Branden said, unhappy to be talking about it.

  “He must know how to handle students,” Robertson said.

  “I guess.”

  “But professors, Mike—how does he handle them?”

  “Newhouse would be a problem for any chief of security, no matter how well he did his job.”

  “So, why did he put cuffs on the guy?”

  “That’s a surprise to me,” Branden said. “You can’t handle an activist like Newhouse with cuffs. He’ll just turn it back on you.”

  “Did they ever have any kind of a run-in, before?” Robertson asked.

  Branden checked his watch, tapped his foot. “Not that I know of. If I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

  “In a rush to get somewhere, Mike?”

  “Just trying to catch up with Caroline. And I need to ask Cal about that Amish matter.”

  “Go ahead,” Robertson said and ran a flat palm over his gray bristle haircut, blowing out a lungful of consternation. He shook his head and looked back to the ground-level doors into Missy’s labs.

  “What’s the problem?” Branden asked, impatient to leave.

  Robertson mumbled, “Don’t know, Mike. It’s that blond kid’s story. I don’t buy it.”

  “Eddie’s story? Why not?”

  “OK,” Robertson said, and lifted his palms in the air to mark a question. “If you’re going to graduate on Monday, and you want to be with your girlfriend a couple of nights before that, why tell her the next morning that you want to break up? Why not wait until next week, when you’ll be a thousand miles away? That’d be less troublesome.”

  “Maybe he wanted to be forthright with her,” Branden said. “Maybe he was showing her respect.”

  “No,” said Robertson confidently. “If it was that, he’d have told her the night before. Before the bell tower. He’d have broken up with her last night, if he wanted to show her respect.”

  Branden considered that, and said, “He’s just a college kid.”

  “Doesn’t fit, Mike,” Robertson said. “If he’s mean, he’d have waited until Monday, and let commencement separate them. You said it yourself. After commencement, he’ll go to Florida, and she’d have gone to Montana. He could have just walked away from her. He wouldn’t have had to write to her or return her calls for a while, and he wouldn’t have had to break up with her at all. Not face to face, at least.”

  Surprised by his own indifference, and annoyed at both Robertson and Laughton, Branden checked his watch again. “I’m going to see Caroline. She’s over at the church.”

  “I’m right about your little rich boy, Mike,” Robertson said. “The top of that bell tower is not where you’d break up with a girl. Not unless you had a heart the size of a chickpea.”

  Branden took his keys out and said, “Missy will tell you this was a suicide.” He got in behind the wheel of his truck, rolled down his window, backed out beside Robertson, and added, “Maybe Eddie Hunt-Myers is just not very smart with women. Maybe he’s stupid about romance.”

  Robertson laughed. “Right, Mike,” he said sarcastically. “Hunt-Myers is stupid about women, and he’s the one with the girl he plans to dump. That’s not stupid, if you ask me. Heartless, but not stupid.”

  Branden held his foot on the brake. Thought. Put his truck into park, and shut off the engine. “You don’t like Eddie’s story because, on the one hand, he’s too nice, and on the other, he’s too mean?”

  Robertson said, “A nice guy would have broken up with her the night before. Before the bell tower.”

  “And the mean guy wouldn’t have broken up with her until later? That doesn’t wash.”

  There was silence between the two men for several long seconds, and then Robertson said, “I’m going to interview Eddie myself. See what he knows about women.”

  Branden smiled and said, “You’ll end
up talking to his family lawyers.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he is Edwin Thomas Hunt-Myers III. He’s that ‘rich boy’ you’ve been complaining about for most of your life. He’s from one of the finest coastal families in south Florida.”

  “I knew it!” Robertson said, with satisfaction.

  “And I knew you’d react this way,” the professor said. “You’d have brought him in just for being rich.”

  “Yeah, well,” Robertson said, “now I’m going to bring him in just for being stupid.”

  7

  Friday, May 11 11:30 A.M.

  CAL TROYER’S white board church building was on a hillside in a residential part of Millersburg, south of Jackson Street and east of Clay. Branden passed the tan sandstone courthouse on his way there, and saw Dan Wilsher and Deputy Lance walking into the back of the jail with Ben Capper, who was flushed in the face and animated in speech, though Branden couldn’t hear his words.

  Branden was weary, spent. Cathy Billett’s death weighed on him like the years, and by comparison, the troubles of Enos Erb seemed at first insignificant. But no, Branden thought. That’s not right. For an Amishman to have come to him like that . . . He shook his head to free his thoughts and drove on to the church. There he parked beside Caroline’s Miata.

  The church building was long and narrow, with the sanctuary fronting the parking lot, and the Sunday school classrooms and church offices located at the back. Branden took the walkway down the sunny side of the building and came in through the pastor’s office door.

  Cal was standing in front of his office window, looking out at the old homes of the neighborhood. His white hair was long, tied in a short tail at the back. The short white bristles of his beard were trimmed to a sharp angle along his chin. He was cleanshaven above his lips, and in this he resembled the Amish. He was dressed in jeans, work boots, and an old blue T-shirt that fit snugly against his stocky torso. His arms were short and powerful, hands big and calloused from his labor as a carpenter. He was not a tall man—a legacy of the genetic heritage of his grandfather’s Amish ancestry.