“So you know who killed Wieder?”
“Told ’em everything, sir. And after that, I didn’t have any idea that anybody would be interested in that story. Nobody asked me anything else, so I minded my own business.”
“Who killed him, Mr. Simmons?”
“Call me Derek. It was that boy, Richard. And that bad kitty, Laura, was an eyewitness, if not an accomplice. Now let me tell you what happened . . .”
Over the next hour, chain-smoking cigarettes while darkness fell slowly outside, he told me what he’d seen and heard on the evening of December 21, 1987, providing me with all kinds of details that I was surprised he could remember so well.
He’d gone to the professor’s house that morning to repair the toilet in the downstairs bathroom. Wieder was at home, packing his luggage for a trip to the Midwest, where he planned to spend the holidays with some friends. He invited Derek to stay for lunch and ordered in some Chinese food. He looked tired and worried, confessing to Derek that he’d discovered some suspect footprints in the backyard—it had snowed during the night, and in the morning the prints had been clearly visible. He promised that he’d continue to take care of Derek, even if he intended to leave the country for a while, and told him that it was important for him to keep taking his medication. At around two p.m., Derek left the professor’s house and headed to a neighborhood near the campus, where he was going to paint an apartment.
That evening, after nightfall, Derek went back home and had dinner. Worried about the state in which he’d left Wieder, he decided to check on him. Upon arriving at the professor’s house, he saw Laura Baines’s car, which was parked nearby. He was about to ring the doorbell when he heard the voices of people having an argument inside.
He went around the back of the house, by the lake. It was about nine p.m. The lights in the living room were lit and the curtains were open, so he could see what was going on. Joseph Wieder, Laura Baines, and Richard Flynn were there. The professor and Laura sat at the table, while Richard stood over them, gesticulating as he spoke. He was shouting the loudest, reproaching the other two.
A few minutes later, Laura stood up and left. Neither of the men tried to stop her. Richard and Wieder continued to argue after her departure. Eventually, Richard seemed to calm down and sat in an armchair. They both smoked, drank coffee, and had a couple of glasses of booze, and the atmosphere seemed more relaxed. Derek was frozen outside, and he was just about to leave when the argument erupted once more. It was just after ten p.m., as far as he could remember.
At one point, Wieder, who up until then had kept his calm, became very angry and raised his voice.
Then Richard left, and Derek quickly went back around the house to catch him and ask him what was up. Although it took him no longer than twenty or thirty seconds to reach the front of the house, Richard was nowhere to be seen. Derek looked for him on the street for a couple of minutes, but it was as if the earth had swallowed him up.
In the end, he gave up, telling himself that Richard had probably broken into a run after he came out. He returned to the back of the house to check if the professor was all right. He was still in the living room, and when he got up to open the window and let some air in, Derek left, afraid that he might be seen there. But as he was leaving, he noticed that Laura had returned, because her car was parked in more or less the same spot. Derek thought that she’d come back so that she and the professor could spend the night together, so it’d be better if he got out of there.
The next morning, he woke up very early and decided to go back to the professor’s to double-check that he was all right. He rang the doorbell, but nobody answered, so he used his set of keys and found the professor’s body in the living room.
“I’m certain the kid didn’t leave that night, but hid somewhere nearby; then he went back and killed him,” Derek said. “But Laura would also have been in the house at the time. The professor was a strong guy, and she wouldn’t have been able to put him down by herself. I’ve always thought that Richard was the one who killed him, and she was either an accomplice or a witness. But I didn’t say anything to the police about her—I was afraid that the papers would take advantage and tarnish the professor’s name. I had to say something, though, so I told them that the kid was there and that he had an argument with the professor.”
“Do you think Laura and the professor were lovers?”
Derek shrugged.
“Don’t know for sure, hadn’t seen them screwing, but she sometimes stayed overnight, na’mean? The kid was mad about her, I’m sure of that, because he told me. I talked to him quite a lot at the time, when he was working in the library. Told me lots of things about himself.”
“And the cops didn’t believe you?”
“Maybe they believed me, maybe they didn’t. As I said, my words wouldn’t have been worth a damn in front of a jury. The prosecutor didn’t buy it, so the cops dropped the lead. If you check it out, you’ll see that the statement I gave at the time was exactly the same as what I’ve just told you. I’m sure they kept those papers.”
“But you remember a lot of details,” I said. “I thought that you lost your memory.”
“My condition has affected the past. It’s called retrograde amnesia. After that shitty experience in the hospital, I couldn’t remember anything that had happened up until then, but my memory has always been fine when it comes to what happened after my head injury. I had to relearn my own past, the way you learn things about a different person—when and where he was born, who his parents are, what school he went to, and all that stuff. It was really weird, but I got used to it. In the end, you have no choice.”
He got up and turned on the light. Sitting there on the patio, I got the feeling that we were like two flies trapped in a jar. I wondered if I should believe him or not. “There’s something else I’d like to ask you.”
“Please go ahead.”
“The professor had a gym in his basement. Did he keep a baseball bat there or anywhere else in the house? Did you ever see anything like that lying around?”
“No. I know he had a couple of weights and a punching bag, though.”
“The cops said that he was probably killed with a baseball bat, but the murder weapon was never found. If the professor didn’t have a bat in the house, it means that the killer must have brought it with him. But it’s not easy to hide something like that under your coat. Do you remember what Flynn was wearing that night, when you saw him through the window?”
Derek pondered this for a few moments and then shook his head.
“Not sure . . . I know he almost always wore a parka, and maybe that was what he had on that night, but I wouldn’t go out on a limb.”
“One last question. I know that you were a suspect in the beginning, but then they eliminated you from the inquiry because you had an alibi for the time of the murder. But you’re saying that around eleven p.m. you were still in Wieder’s backyard, and then you went home. From what I know, you were living alone at the time. Can you tell me what your alibi was?”
“Sure. I stopped at a bar near home, one that stayed open late. I was worried and didn’t want to be alone. I probably got there at a few minutes after eleven. The owner was a pal of mine; I used to help him out with small repairs. So the guy told the cops I’d been there, which was true. The police bugged me for a while after that, but then they left me alone, all the more so as I was the last person who’d have wanted anything to happen to the professor. What motive could I have had for killing him?”
“You say you were in that bar. Were you allowed to drink booze at the time, if you were taking all those pills?”
“I didn’t drink booze. I still never touch the stuff. When I go to a bar, I have a Coke or a cup of coffee. I went there so I wouldn’t have to spend my time alone.”
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“Are you left-handed, Derek? You smoke using your left hand.”
“Yes.”
I talked to hi
m for another few minutes. He told me that his life had taken its course, and finally he’d moved in with Leonora. He hadn’t had any more problems with the law, and for the last twelve years he’d no longer been required to present himself to the psychiatric evaluation commission annually.
We said good-bye to each other, and he remained in his makeshift workshop. I found my own way back to the living room, where Leonora was on the couch, watching TV with the child asleep in her arms. I thanked her once again, bid her good night, and left.
SIX
Laura Baines called two days later, while I was waiting in line at the office on West Fifty-Sixth Street to renew my driver’s license—I needed to update my photo, too—and leafing through a magazine that somebody had left on the chair beside me.
“Mr. Keller,” she said, “I’ve read the manuscript you gave me, and it bears out my suspicion. Richard Flynn made it all up, or almost all of it. Perhaps he was trying to write a novel. Back in the day, writers used to claim that the story they were telling wasn’t a figment of their imagination, but that they had unearthed an anonymous manuscript or that the narrator was a real person who’d since passed away, or something of that sort; it helped generate publicity. Or maybe after all these years he’d come to believe that those things really happened. Did you get the rest of the manuscript?”
“Not yet.”
“Flynn never managed to finish it, did he? He probably realized how pathetic it was, and that it might also have unpleasant legal repercussions, so he abandoned it.”
Her voice was calm and kind of triumphant, which pissed me off. If what Derek told me was true, she’d lied to my face without blinking.
“With all due respect, Dr. Westlake, the fact that Professor Wieder was beaten to death with a baseball bat wasn’t a figment of Mr. Flynn’s imagination, nor is the fact that you decided to change your name after that. Okay, I don’t have the full manuscript yet, but I have a lot of other sources, so let me ask you something: You did meet Wieder the night he was murdered, didn’t you? Then Flynn turned up. You’d lied to him, saying that you’d be spending the night with a friend, and he kicked up a fuss. I know all that for sure, so please don’t bother to lie me again. What happened after that?”
She said nothing for a few moments, and I pictured her as a fighter sprawled on the ring’s floor, the referee giving her the count. Probably she’d never expected that I’d be able to discover such details about that evening. The professor had died, so had Flynn, and I was almost certain that she’d never known that Derek Simmons had been there during those few hours. I wondered whether she’d deny my account or pull another rabbit out of her magician’s hat.
“You’re a very mean person, aren’t you?” she finally said. “Do you really know where you want to go with this whole story, or are you just playing detective? How do you expect me to remember such details after all these years? Do you intend to blackmail me?”
“Would I have anything on you to blackmail you with?”
“I know a lot of people in this city, Keller.”
“You make that sound like some threat from an old detective movie. Now I’m supposed to say, ‘Just doin’ my job, ma’am,’ give you a sad smile, pull my fedora down over my eyes, and lift up the collar of my trench coat.”
“What? You’re talking nonsense. Have you been drinking?”
“Are you denying that you were there on the evening of the crime, and that Richard Flynn covered for you by lying to the cops?”
Another long pause, and then she asked me, “Are you recording our conversation, Keller?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Maybe you’ve lost your mind, just like Flynn did. Your health insurance, if you have any, should cover a couple of therapy sessions, so maybe now is the time for you to take advantage of that. I didn’t kill the man, so who cares where I was on that one evening, after more than twenty years?”
“I do, Dr. Westlake.”
“All right then, go ahead and do whatever you like. But don’t try to contact me ever again—I mean it. I’ve tried to be polite and have told you everything I have to say, but I don’t have any more time for you. If you call me or approach me again, I’ll file a complaint for harassment. Good-bye.”
She hung up, and I put the cell phone back into my pocket. I felt angry with myself because I’d lost an extremely important source of information for my story—I was sure she’d hold to her threat and would never talk to me again after that conversation. Why had I overreacted like that, and why had I thought it necessary to put all my cards on the table during a stupid discussion over the phone? Derek Simmons had given me a pair of aces, and I’d wasted both of them.
They called me for the photo a couple of minutes later, and the guy behind the camera said, “Try to relax a bit, man. Don’t get me wrong, but you look like you’re carrying the burdens of the whole world on your shoulders.”
“Well, just a couple of them,” I told him. “And I haven’t even been paid for this yet.”
Over the next three weeks, while spring was slowly landing over the city, I talked to a number of people who’d been close to Joseph Wieder and whose contact details Harry Miller had uncovered one by one.
Sam’s flu had developed into pneumonia, so she languished in bed most of the time. Her younger sister, Louise, who was studying fine arts, had come from California to take care of her. I tried to insist on visiting her, but she told me each time to have patience, because she didn’t want to be seen like that, with watering eyes and a big red nose.
Peter was out of town most of the time or caught up in business, so I only talked to him over the phone, to keep him up to date about the investigation. He told me that Danna Olsen hadn’t yet found any trace of the other chapters of Flynn’s manuscript.
I called Laura Baines’s ex-schoolmate Sarah Harper a few times, but she didn’t pick up the phone or return my voice messages. Nor did I manage to contact the professor’s sister, Inge Rossi. I found out her address and phone number, and I called and talked with a housekeeper who could barely string two words of English together. I eventually understood that Mr. and Mrs. Rossi were away for two months, on a long trip to South America.
Harry tracked down Timothy Sanders, but it wasn’t good news—Laura Baines’s ex-boyfriend had passed away in December 1998, in Washington, D.C. He’d been gunned down in front of his house and had died on the spot. The police never managed to find the perpetrator, but they concluded that it had been an armed robbery turned into a killing. He’d taught humanities at the School Without Walls and had never married.
My phone conversation with Eddie Flynn was short and unpleasant. He was very angry about his late brother’s decision to bequeath his apartment to Danna Olsen and told me that he knew nothing about a college professor named Joseph Wieder. Then he asked me to never contact him again and hung up.
I talked to a couple of Wieder’s former colleagues, after making up a story about my being a researcher for a publisher that was doing a biography on Wieder; I said that I was trying to find out as many details as I could from people who had known him well.
I met a retired professor from the same department at Princeton, a seventy-three-year-old man by the name of Dan T. Lindbeck. He lived in Essex County, New Jersey, in an imposing mansion in the middle of a small forest. He told me that the house was haunted by the ghost of a woman named Mary who’d died in 1863, during the Civil War. I remembered the days when I wrote for Ampersand and told him about a haunted house I’d visited, and he carefully recorded the details in an old-fashioned spiral notebook.
Lindbeck described Joseph Wieder as an atypical person, a man highly aware of his own importance and totally devoted to his work, a dazzling intellectual but difficult and distant when it came to personal relationships.
He vaguely remembered that Wieder had been about to publish a book, but he couldn’t remember which publisher had bought the manuscript. He pointed out that it was hard to believe that there could have been a
conflict between Wieder and the board of trustees on the subject of the publisher, given that the professors were free to publish their works wherever they wished and that any bestselling book by one of them would benefit the institution. He didn’t recall any special research program that the department might have been working on during Wieder’s time.
Another two people provided me with interesting, albeit conflicting information.
The first was a professor named Monroe, who’d been one of Wieder’s assistants. In the late 1980s, he’d been preparing his doctoral thesis. The other was a woman in her sixties, Susanne Johnson, who’d also been one of Wieder’s assistants and had been very close to the professor. Monroe still taught at Princeton. Johnson had retired in 2006 and was living in Astoria, Queens, with her husband and daughter.
John L. Monroe was a squat, gloomy man with skin as gray as the suit he was wearing when he received me in his office, after a long and thorough questioning over the phone. He didn’t offer me coffee or tea, and throughout our conversation he kept casting suspicious glances my way, turning up his nose at the ripped knees of my Levi’s whenever they entered his field of vision. He had a faint voice, as if he had problems with his vocal cords.
Unlike the others, he described Wieder as a shameless maverick who didn’t hesitate to pilfer other people’s work so that he could always be in the limelight. His theories, claimed Monroe, were dishwater, mere voodoo science for the ignorant public, the kind of seemingly shocking revelations that get you on radio and TV talk shows but that the scientific community viewed with circumspection even back then. The achievements of neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology in the years since Wieder’s death had served to highlight just how shaky his theories had been, but nobody would waste their time demonstrating that obvious fact now.
Monroe’s words were so venomous that they made me think that if he ever bit his tongue, he’d die. It was clear that he had no affection for Wieder and that he was probably grateful that somebody was prepared to listen to him sullying the professor’s memory.
The Book of Mirrors Page 13
