The Book of Mirrors

by E. O. Chirovici

  “Do you think Richard could have been capable of murdering Wieder? He was a suspect for a while.”

  “I chose for myself a field in which one learns, among other things, how deceptive appearances can be, Mr. Keller. Richard harassed me continually after I moved out of that house. He waited for me after my classes, wrote me dozens of letters, phoned me dozens of times a day. After the professor’s death, Timothy spoke to him a couple of times, asking him to mind his own business and to leave us alone, but to no effect. I didn’t file a complaint about him with the police, because he had troubles enough as it was, and in the end I pitied him more than I feared him. In time, things got worse . . . But anyway, one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. No, I don’t think he’d have been capable of murder.”

  “You just said that in time things got worse. What did you mean by that? I know from the manuscript that he was jealous. Jealousy is a common motive in such cases, isn’t it?”

  “Mr. Keller, he didn’t have any reason to be jealous. All we did was share a house together, as I said. But he was quite simply obsessed with me. The following year, I came to Columbia University, but he found out my address and went on writing to me and phoning me. Once he even turned up here in the city. Then I went to Europe for a while and was able to get away from him that way.”

  I was very surprised at what I was hearing.

  “In the manuscript, Richard Flynn said something entirely different. He claimed that it was Timothy Sanders who was obsessed with you and kept harassing you.”

  “I’m going to read the manuscript—that’s why I asked you for it. Mr. Keller, for a person like Richard Flynn, the boundaries between fiction and reality don’t exist, or else they’re very slender. In that period, there were times when I genuinely suffered because of him.”

  “On the evening when the professor was murdered, did you go to his house?”

  “I visited the professor at home for a total of just three or four times in the course of that whole year. Princeton is a small town, and we’d both have had problems if gossip about us had had an opportunity to arise. So no, I wasn’t there that evening.”

  “Were you interviewed by the police after the murder? I didn’t see your name in the newspapers, but Flynn’s was all over the place.”

  “Yes, I was questioned only once, I think, and I told them that I’d been with a friend of mine the whole evening.”

  She looked at the watch on her left wrist.

  “Unfortunately, I have to go now. It was nice talking to you. Perhaps we can talk again after I read the manuscript and I refresh my memory.”

  “Why did you change your surname? Did you marry?” I asked her as we stood up from the table.

  “No, I’ve never had time for anything like that. To be honest, I changed my name so that I could get away from Richard Flynn and all those recollections. I cared a lot about Professor Wieder and was devastated by what happened to him. Flynn had never been violent, just a pest, but I was sick and tired of being harassed by him, and it seemed as if he’d never stop. In 1992 before I went to Europe, I became Laura Westlake. It’s my mother’s maiden name, actually.”

  I thanked her, and then she picked up the copy of the manuscript and we left the cafeteria, just as it was starting to get busy.

  We reached the elevator, got inside, and headed toward the ninth floor. I said, “Flynn’s partner, Danna Olsen, told me that one evening she caught him speaking to you on the phone. She contacted you about it, and you met with her. Can I ask you what it was you talked about on the phone with him? Had he managed to find you again?”

  “I hadn’t heard from Richard for over twenty years when, last fall, he suddenly turned up at the door of my apartment. I’m not one to lose control very easily, but I was really shocked, especially when he began babbling a lot of nonsense, and I could see that he was very agitated, which made me wonder whether he might be mentally ill. He threatened me with some revelations, the nature of which wasn’t very clear, but they seemed to have something to do with Professor Wieder. To be honest, I’d managed to almost forget that I’d once known a young man by the name of Richard Flynn. In the end, I asked him to leave. He phoned me two or three times after that, but I refused to meet him, and then I stopped answering the phone. I didn’t know he was seriously ill; he didn’t mention anything about it to me. Then I found out that he’d died. I realized that when he’d come to my apartment, he must have been disturbed because of his illness and that perhaps he was incapable of reasoning. Lung cancer often has complications, with metastases in the brain. I don’t know whether this is what happened in Richard’s case, but it’s highly likely.”

  We exited the elevator, and I asked her, “Richard also claimed in his manuscript that Professor Wieder was conducting secret research. Do you have any idea what it was about?”

  “If it was secret, that means we weren’t supposed to know anything about it, doesn’t it? The more you tell me about this manuscript, the more I’m convinced that it’s a work of pure fiction. Many departments of every major university do conduct research projects, some of them for federal agencies, some of them for private companies. Most such projects are confidential, because, of course, the people paying for them want to reap the results of their investment. Professor Wieder was working on something of the kind, I guess. I merely helped him with the book he was writing at the time, and I was never privy to whatever else he might have been doing. Good-bye, Mr. Keller, I really have to go now. Have a pleasant day.”

  I thanked her once again for meeting me, and I took the elevator to the ground floor.

  As I was walking to the parking structure, I wondered how much of what Laura Baines had said was the truth and how much was lies, and whether it was true that Flynn had been fantasizing about their supposed relationship. Behind her apparent calm, she’d given me the impression that she was afraid of what Flynn might have revealed about her past. It was a feeling rather than anything I’d picked up from her body language or facial expressions: like a distinct smell that she couldn’t conceal beneath her perfume.

  Her answers had been precise—perhaps too precise—even if she’d repeated a couple of times that she couldn’t remember all the details. And how could she have almost forgotten, even after so many years, a guy she’d shared an apartment with, one who’d harassed her for months and had been accused of killing her mentor and friend?

  FIVE

  Harry Miller called me a couple of hours later, just after I’d met with one of my old sources, a retired homicide detective who’d promised me he’d try to get in touch with somebody from the West Windsor Township Police Department, in Jersey. I’d invited him to lunch at Orso, on West Forty-Sixth Street, and I was walking back to my car, parked two blocks away. It was raining, and the sky had the color of cabbage soup. I answered the phone and Harry told me he had some news. I took shelter under the awning of a bodega and asked him if it was good.

  “Bingo,” he told me. “Sarah Harper graduated in ’89, and she hasn’t been very lucky. After college she got a job at a school for kids with special needs in Queens and led an ordinary life for about ten years. Then she had the bad idea to marry a jazz singer named Gerry Lowndes, who made her life a living hell. She got into drugs and ended up doing a year in jail. In 2008, she got divorced, and now she lives in the Bronx, in Castle Hill. She seems ready to talk about the old days.”

  “Awesome. Can you text me her address and phone number? What did you find out about Simmons?”

  “Derek Simmons still lives in Jersey, with a lady named Leonora Phillis. I talked to her, in fact, as the guy wasn’t at home. She’s looking after him, in a way, and they live mostly on benefits. I explained that you’re a reporter who wants to talk to her man about the Professor Wieder case. She doesn’t know what it’s about, but she’s expecting a call from you. Make sure you have some cash when you go there. Anything else?”

  “Have you got any sources at Princeton?”

  “I’ve got sources all ov
er the place—I’m a true maven, son,” he boasted. “How do you think I tracked down Sarah Harper, by calling 911?”

  “In that case, try to get hold of the names of some people from the eighties for me, people who worked at the Department of Psychology and were close to Professor Joseph Wieder, and not just colleagues. I’m interested in people he hung around with, anyone who knew him well.”

  Harry told me he’d try to find out what I’d asked for, and then we talked about baseball for a few minutes. I picked up my car from the underground garage and went home. I called Sam, and when she answered, her voice sounded like she was at the bottom of a well. She told me she had a stinking cold and that after she’d dragged herself to the office that morning, her boss had sent her straight back home. I promised I’d drop by that evening, but she said she’d rather go to bed early and, in any case, she didn’t want me to see her like that. After we hung up, I called a florist and ordered a bunch of tulips to be delivered to her. I was trying not to get carried away, as we’d agreed, but as time went by I discovered that I missed her more and more when we didn’t see each other for a day or two.

  I called Sarah Harper at the number Harry had sent me, but she didn’t pick up, so I left her a voice mail. I had more luck with Derek Simmons. His partner, Leonora Phillis, answered the phone. She had a strong Cajun accent, like a character out of Swamp People. I reminded her that she’d spoken with a guy named Harry Miller, about my wanting to have a talk with Derek Simmons.

  “From what your buddy said, I take it the newspaper will be payin’, right?”

  “Right, there may be some money in it.”

  “Okay, Mr. . . .”

  “Keller. John Keller.”

  “Well, I’d say ya should pay us a visit, and I make sure to tell Der-eh what it’s all about. He doesn’t much like talkin’. When ya comin’ over?”

  “Right now, if it’s not too late.”

  “What time’s it now, sweetie?”

  I told her it was 3:12 p.m.

  “How about five?”

  I said that would be fine, and made sure once again that she would persuade “Der-eh” to speak to me.

  A half hour later, as I was entering the tunnel, thinking about my talk with Laura Baines, I suddenly remembered the detail that had eluded me on that first evening after I’d begun to research the Wieder case: the book the professor was working on at the time, which was going to be published a few months later. As Richard said in his manuscript, Laura Baines believed that it’d rock the world of science. A “bombshell,” as Sam would have said.

  But when I’d tried to look it up on Amazon and on other sites that listed the professor’s works, there was no mention of it. The last book Wieder had published was a 110-page study on artificial intelligence released by Princeton University Press in 1986, over a year before he was murdered. Wieder told Richard that he’d already signed a publishing contract for the book he was working on, stirring rumors among his colleagues. So Wieder had already sent the manuscript or a proposal to the publisher before his death, and might have received at least part of an advance. Why, then, was the book never published?

  There were two possible explanations, I figured.

  The first would be that his editor changed his mind and decided not to publish the manuscript. That was unlikely, given that there was a contract, and the mystery surrounding the professor’s violent death would probably have boosted sales, cynically speaking. Only some kind of forceful intervention would have made a publisher abandon a project like that. An intervention made by whom? And what did that manuscript contain? Was it linked in any way to the secret research Wieder had been working on? Was he intending to reveal details about it in his new book?

  Another possibility was that the executor of Wieder’s will—from the newspapers, I’d gathered that there had been a will and that he’d left everything to his sister, Inge—had opposed publication of the book and had been able to muster the necessary legal arguments. I knew that I ought to try to speak to Inge, although she’d settled in Italy many years previously and probably didn’t know very much about what had happened at the time of the murder.

  I turned onto Valley Road, made a left down Witherspoon Street, and soon arrived at Rockdale Lane, where Derek Simmons and his partner lived, not far from the Princeton police station. I arrived earlier than I’d expected, so I parked next to a school and went into a nearby café, where, over a cup of coffee, I tried to put the new leads that had cropped up in my investigation in order. The more I thought about the professor’s book, the more intrigued I was by the fact that it had never been published.

  Derek Simmons and Leonora Phillis lived in a small bungalow at the very end of the street, next to a ball field overrun with weeds. There was a small yard in front of the house, with rosebushes that were just beginning to bud. A grimy garden gnome showed me his plaster grin to the left of the front door.

  I pressed the bell and heard it ringing somewhere at the back of the house.

  A short, brown-haired woman with a wrinkled face opened the door, a ladle in her right hand, mistrust in her eyes. When I told her I was John Keller, her expression brightened a little and she invited me inside.

  I entered a dark, narrow hallway, then a living room crammed with old furniture. I sat down on the couch, and the stuffing raised a visible cloud of dust under the weight of my body. A baby could be heard crying in another room.

  She asked me to excuse her for a moment and vanished, making soothing sounds somewhere in the back of the house.

  I looked at the objects around me. They were all old and mismatched, as if they’d been bought at random from garage sales or found lying on the street. The floorboards were warped here and there, and corners of the wallpaper were peeling. An old grandfather clock was ticking asthmatically on a wall. It seemed that the small sum of cash mentioned in the professor’s will was long gone.

  She came back, holding in her arms a kid who looked to be around one and a half and was sucking his left thumb. The child spotted me immediately and looked fixedly at me, with thoughtful, serious eyes. He had surprisingly mature features, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started speaking to me in the voice of a grown-up, belligerently asking me what the heck I was doing there.

  Leonora Phillis sat down opposite me, on a wretched bamboo chair. She rocked the kid gently in her arms and told me he was her grandson, Tom. The boy’s mom, Ms. Phillis’s daughter, Tricia, had gone off to Rhode Island to meet some guy she’d met online asking her to look after the boy until she got back. That had been two months ago.

  Leonora informed me that she’d persuaded Derek to speak to me, but it’d be preferable if we talked about the money before that. She lamented that she and Derek were having a hard time making ends meet. Three years ago, they’d managed to obtain a small benefit and that was the bulk of their income, apart from the odd jobs Derek did from time to time. Plus, they had to take care of her grandson. The woman wept softly as she told me this, and all the while Tom kept casting me those strange grown-up glances.

  We agreed on an amount and I handed over the bills, which she counted carefully before putting in her pocket. She stood up, sat the child on the chair, and asked me to follow her.

  We went down a passage and came to a kind of enclosed patio whose grimy panes filtered the light of the sunset like stained glass windows. The patio’s surface was almost entirely taken up by a huge workbench, on which were lined up all kinds of tools. In front of the workbench was a stool, where a tall, well-built man was sitting, dressed in greasy jeans and a sweatshirt. He stood up when he saw me, shook my hand, and introduced himself as Derek. His eyes were green, almost glittering in the wan light, and his hands were large and callused. Although he must have been in his sixties, he stood very straight and seemed to be healthy. His face was furrowed with wrinkles so deep that they looked like scars, and his hair was almost white.

  His partner went back inside the house, leaving us alone. He sat down on t
he stool and I leaned against the workbench. In the backyard, which was just as small as the front one and enclosed by a weed-infested fence, there was a small swing, its rusty metal frame looming like a ghost from the bald earth covered with scraps of grass and puddles.

  “She told me you wanna talk about Joseph Wieder,” he said, without looking at me. He took a pack of Camels from his pocket and lit one with a yellow plastic lighter. “You’re the first person to ask me about him in over twenty years.”

  He seemed resigned to playing a role, like an old clown, weary and drained of all good tricks and jokes, forced to caper over the sawdust of a poor circus ring to entertain a bunch of indifferent kids chewing gum and vamping on their cell phones.

  I told him briefly about what I’d uncovered about him and Professor Wieder, about Laura Baines and Richard Flynn. While I spoke, he smoked his cigarette and stared into empty space, making me wonder whether he was even listening to me. He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, and said, “And why are you interested in all that stuff that happened so long ago?”

  “Somebody asked me to look into it, and he’s paying me to do what I’m doing. I’m working on a book about mysterious murder cases, those where the perpetrators have never been caught.”

  “I know who killed the professor,” he said in a toneless voice, as if we were talking about the weather. “I knew it and I told ’em back then. But my statement wasn’t worth a damn. Any attorney would have had it thrown out of court, because a few years before, I’d been accused of murder and locked up in the nuthouse, so I was a 730, na’mean? I was taking all kinds of pills. They’d have said I was just making it up or that I’d been hallucinating. But I know what I saw, and I wasn’t crazy.”

  He seemed deeply convinced of what he said.