The Book of Mirrors

by E. O. Chirovici

  “Positive. It was just the two of them. Like I said, I got there at around nine. The young guy didn’t leave until around eleven, and the professor was alone in the house after that. I waited another ten minutes or so, to make sure the young guy was gone. I thought of ringing the bell and punching Wieder as he opened the door, but he made my job even easier—he opened the windows that looked out onto the backyard, and then he went upstairs. So I sneaked inside the house and hid in the corridor.”

  Wieder came back down into the living room, closed the windows, and sat on the couch, looking through some papers. Spoel crept up behind him and hit him over the head with the baseball bat. The blow wasn’t very hard, probably, because the professor managed to get up and turn toward him. Spoel went around the couch and started hitting the professor wildly, ten or twelve times, before he fell to the floor. Spoel was wearing a mask, so he wasn’t afraid that Wieder might recognize him. He was about to search the place for cash when he heard somebody opening the front door. He opened the glass door, ran around the house, and fled into the snowstorm.

  He tossed the bat into a half-frozen stream and again hid in the woodshed near Assunpink Creek; he stayed there overnight. The next morning, he met Slade at Princeton Junction, and they set off for Missouri. He later found out that the professor had died.

  “I probably hit him harder than I thought,” he concluded. “So that’s how I ended up being a killer. Know what? After that, whenever I did anything bad, it was like I was waking up from a dream and I couldn’t believe that I was the one who’d done it. I was always convinced I’d lost my mind because of the pills they gave me in that shithole. I’m not saying it just to make out I’m not to blame; in any case, there wouldn’t be any point now.”

  “You were still on parole,” I said. “Didn’t anybody raise the alarm when you left New Jersey? Didn’t they come looking for you?”

  “I have no idea, man. I just left. Nobody asked me any questions after that, and I didn’t get into trouble with the law again until 2005, when they pulled me off the highway for speeding. I told my attorney that I’d been a patient in Trenton years ago, so he asked for a psychiatric test. The expert appointed by the court ruled that I was sane enough to stand trial, so I was tried and convicted. And do you know what the irony is? When I was sane—and I’m telling you I was sane—I ended up in the nuthouse. But when even I was convinced that I wasn’t sound in the head, they refused to send me to the nuthouse, and decided to give me the injection instead.”

  “It’s been a good few years since then,” I pointed out, “and maybe you don’t remember everything too well, so let me ask you once again: Are you sure that the professor spent that evening with a white guy about twenty, and with nobody else? Maybe you couldn’t see very well: it was snowing outside, you were hiding in the backyard, and maybe you didn’t have a good line of sight—”

  “I’m positive, man. You said you were assigned to the case—”

  “Right.”

  “Then maybe you remember what the place looked like. The living room had two large windows and a glass door, opening up onto the backyard and the lake. When the lights were on and the curtains were open, you could see everything in the room perfectly. The professor and that guy were both eating at the table. They talked, the young guy left, and Wieder was left alone.”

  “Did they have an argument?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

  “You say it was eleven p.m. when the young guy left?”

  “About eleven—I’m not very sure. It might have been eleven-thirty, but no later than that.”

  “And ten minutes later, you attacked Wieder.”

  “Like I said, first I got inside the house and hid, then he came back down into the room, and that was when I whacked him. Maybe it wasn’t ten minutes, maybe it was twenty, but no longer than that. My hands were still frozen when I hit him the first time—that’s why I botched the blow—so I can’t have been hiding indoors long.”

  I looked at Spoel and wondered how it was that his name had completely eluded me when I’d been investigating the possibility that the murder had been an act of revenge carried out by one of the professor’s former patients.

  True, the list of cases in which Wieder had testified as an expert had been very long. And the prosecutor had been dumb and disorganized. One day he’d send us every which way, and then the next day he’d change his mind about what leads we were supposed to be following up, so maybe I didn’t get the chance to check everything down to the last detail. The reporters were harassing us, writing all kinds of crazy stuff in the newspapers. And I was driving around with a bottle of booze hidden in my car, wondering whether I was drunk enough to get kicked off the force. When I thought back on that period, I had to wonder how interested I’d really been in who killed Joseph Wieder—all I was concerned about at the time was taking pity on myself and looking for excuses for my behavior.

  “So, you don’t have the faintest idea who it was you heard entering the professor’s house after you hit him?”

  “No, I split immediately. I wasn’t expecting anybody to turn up at that hour, so I got out of there as fast as I could and didn’t look back. I thought that all I’d done was to give him a good beating. There were plenty of junkies in the area, so I figured the cops would believe it was an attempted burglary. I didn’t think it would be a big deal that some guy had gotten beaten up, and anyway, I’d be far away by then. But he died, and that changed everything, right?”

  “You don’t know whether there was more than one person at the door?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sorry, I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Wieder didn’t die right away, but two or three hours later,” I said. “If somebody did arrive at around midnight, that person ought to have called an ambulance, but they didn’t. Maybe you just thought you heard the door. There was a strong wind that night, and maybe it just rattled on its hinges.”

  “No,” Spoel said decisively. “It was like I said. Somebody unlocked the door and walked into the house.”

  “And that somebody left him there to die on the floor?”

  He stared at me for a long time, wrinkling his forehead, which made him look like a confused monkey.

  “I didn’t know that . . . So, he didn’t die instantly?”

  “No. This unknown person could have saved him by calling for an ambulance. It wasn’t until the next morning, by which time it was too late, that the handyman called 911. Wieder had been dead for a few hours by then.”

  “That’s why you’re interested in who showed up?”

  “Yes. During the attack, did Wieder say anything? Did he call for help or ask who you were or anything like that? Did he utter any names?”

  “No, he didn’t call for help. Maybe he croaked something, but I can’t remember. At first he tried to defend himself, and then he fell and just tried to shield his head. But he didn’t cry out, I’m sure of that. Anyway, there was nobody around to hear him.”

  The two armed officers came back in, and one of them signaled to me that our time was up. I was about to say, “See you later” to Spoel, but then I realized that it would have been a bad joke. In eight weeks, the guy would be dead. I thanked him once again for agreeing to talk to me. We stood up, and he made a move as if he wanted to shake hands, but then he turned on his heel and, flanked by the officers, walked away with that stumbling gait caused by the shackles.

  I remained alone in the room. I pulled the cigarettes out of my bag and held on to them, so that I wouldn’t forget to give them to the officers on the way out.

  Who had turned up at the professor’s house at midnight and found him slumped on the floor but hadn’t called an ambulance? That person hadn’t rung the bell or knocked on the door; if Spoel was telling the truth, they had used a key to get in. After so many years, one’s memory can play tricks. Anyway, one thing was for sure: what Spoel had told me certainly didn’t match up with wh
at Derek Simmons had said at the time, and had then repeated to that reporter a few months ago.

  At the end of the investigation he’d carried out, John Keller had written a kind of summary of all the information he’d gathered; there was a copy of it in the papers he’d brought over to my house. He suspected that Laura Baines had been in the house at the time of the murder, and that she’d stolen the professor’s manuscript, which he’d just finished and had been about to send to his publisher. Keller supposed that Laura and Richard could have been accomplices, because Laura wouldn’t have been physically capable of killing Wieder by herself. He believed that Flynn had most likely wielded the bat but Laura Baines had been the moral author of the murder, the mastermind and the only one who stood to gain from it.

  But if Spoel was telling the truth, then Laura Baines hadn’t needed Flynn as an accomplice to the murder. Arriving there by chance after the attack, she’d have found the professor lying on the floor and could have taken advantage of the situation to steal the manuscript, closing the glass door through which Spoel had jumped and locking the entrance door behind her. Derek Simmons stated that in the morning, when he’d arrived at the professor’s house, he’d found the windows and doors closed.

  And then I remembered another important detail, mentioned in the medical examiner’s report. The coroner had been puzzled by one thing: of all the blows that Wieder had suffered during the struggle, only one had been fatal. It was probably the last blow, to the left temple, when the victim was already lying on the floor and possibly unconscious. Spoel said he’d wrapped his baseball bat in a towel. A bat wrapped in a towel wouldn’t have been so devastating a weapon. But what if the last blow, the one that killed Wieder, had been delivered by a different weapon, and also by a different person?

  Matt arrived a few minutes later, and we headed back out the way we’d come. I left the cigarettes for Frank Spoel at the gate, and we went to the parking lot. The sky had cleared and now stretched over the prairie without one shred of cloud cover. A hawk hung high in the air, now and then letting out a shrill cry.

  “You okay, buddy?” Matt asked me. “You’re as pale as death.”

  “I’m fine. The air in there probably doesn’t agree with me. Know any good restaurants nearby?”

  “There’s Bill’s Diner, about three miles from here, on I-55. Wanna go there?”

  “Told you I was going to buy you lunch, didn’t I? I’ve still got four hours till my flight.”

  He drove in silence to the place he’d mentioned, while I mulled over Spoel’s story.

  It was strange to me that his confession didn’t fit Derek Simmons’s story. Simmons had also claimed to be hiding in the backyard. If that’s really what happened, then it would have been impossible for him and Spoel not to have seen each other. The backyard was big, but the only place where you could have hidden without being seen from inside, while at the same time having a view through the living room window, was somewhere on the left, on the side opposite the lake, where, back then, there had been some dwarf ornamental pine trees, about ten feet high, and a clump of magnolias.

  “You’re thinking about what the guy said, right?” asked Matt as we pulled into the parking lot opposite the diner.

  I nodded.

  “You can’t even be sure he wasn’t just making it all up. Trash like that would lie their heads off just to get some cigarettes out of it. Maybe he invented it all just to get some attention, or in hopes that the execution will be delayed if they reopen the Wieder case. The killing was in a different state, so maybe he hopes he’ll be sent to New Jersey to be tried for the murder, which means years in court and more tax dollars gone down the Swanee. His lawyer tried something like that already, but nothing came of it. A good thing too, if you ask me.”

  “But what if he isn’t lying?”

  We got out of the car. Matt took his baseball cap off and ran his hand through his silver hair before putting it back on again.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that guy from California, the one writing that book about murderers. I’ve lived among criminals all my life. At first, I tried to put them in jail, and then I tried to keep them there for as long as the jury and the judge decided. I know them well, and there’s not much to say about them: some are born that way, just like one’s born with a talent for drawing or basketball. Sure, they all have a sad story to tell, but I don’t give a damn.”

  We went inside the diner and ordered our lunch. During the meal, we talked about this and that, without mentioning Spoel. After we finished, he asked, “What’s gotten into you with all this stuff, anyway? Ain’t you got anything better to do?”

  I decided to tell him the truth. Matt wasn’t a man who deserved to be lied to, and I was sure that he wouldn’t look at me with that pitying expression I couldn’t abide.

  “About six months ago, I went to see the doctor,” I said. “I’d started to forget things, especially street names, even though I’d always had a good memory. I tried to do exercises: which actor was in which movie, who sang a particular tune, what the score was in some ball game, stuff like that. I noticed I was also having problems with the names of people I knew, so that’s when I made the appointment. The doctor ran some tests, asked me all kinds of questions, and two weeks later he gave me the big news.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s—”

  “All right, I won’t tell you.”

  He gave me a look, and so I carried on.

  “It’s Alzheimer’s, yes, in the early stages. I haven’t started forgetting to go to the toilet yet, or what I ate last night. The doctor told me to keep my mind active, to do exercises, and he gave me a book and some videos to help me. But I remembered that reporter who was interested in the Wieder case. I’d been to the department and had gotten hold of some papers for him from the archives. He brought me what he’d found out, so I said to myself that it seemed like a good idea to keep my mind busy with something like that, something actually interesting and important, rather than trying to remember ancient ball games. I realized that I’d always thought I’d blown the case, because at the time I was just a lousy drunk. So after that, I called you and came here.”

  “I’m not sure I did a good thing, digging up the dead like that. I only told you for the sake of conversation, by the way; I wasn’t expecting you to come out here because of it. I’m really sorry to hear about—”

  “It’s important for me to know what happened back then and how I let the murderer get away. In a year or two, but not more than three, I won’t know who Wieder was anymore or even remember that I used to be a cop. I’m trying to clear up the mess I made, all the shit that happened because of me, most of which I’m still paying for.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” Matt said, flagging down the waitress and asking her to bring more coffee. “We all had good and bad periods. I can’t remember you ever not doing your duty. We all respected you, Roy, and thought you were a good man. Okay, we all knew you liked a drink, but we had to shield ourselves the best we could from the things that went on around us, didn’t we? Let the past lie and start looking after yourself.”

  He paused before asking, “Did he give you a course of treatment? The doctor, I mean—pills and stuff?”

  “I’m taking some pills. I do everything the doctor tells me to, but I’m not holding out much hope. I’ve been reading up about Alzheimer’s online, so I know there’s no cure. It’s just a matter of time. When I’m no longer able to look after myself, I’ll go to an old folks’ home.”

  “Sure you don’t want to stay overnight? We could talk some more.”

  “I’d lose money if I changed the ticket now. But maybe I’ll come back out here at some point. I’ve haven’t got much else to do.”

  “You’re welcome anytime, you know that. But no more visits to the jail.”

  “I promise.”

  He drove me to the airport. I got the weird feeling that it would be the last time I’d ever see him, despite our talk about
further visits, and when he started walking back to the entrance I watched him navigate his way through the crowd, like a cruiser among rowboats, until he vanished outside.

  Three hours later, I landed in Newark and took a cab home. On the way, the driver put on a CD of old Creedence Clearwater Revival, and as I listened I tried to remember my first days with Diana: how we met at a picnic, how I lost her number and then bumped into her by chance as I was coming out of a movie theater with some buddies, how we made love for the first time in a motel on the Jersey Shore. Strangely, those memories seemed more vivid than the visit I’d just made to Potosi.

  I’d long ago noticed that when you’re intensely caught up in something, one part of your brain keeps chewing it over, even when you’re thinking about something else. I paid the cab fare, and as I was opening my front door, I decided that Spoel’s story about how he’d killed Wieder was true—it had to be; he had nothing to lose. Which meant that for one reason or another, Derek Simmons had been lying to me when I questioned him twenty-eight years ago. Now I had to find out why.

  THREE

  I paid Simmons a visit two days later, after having first called him. I’d found his address among the papers I’d received from John Keller. Simmons lived near the Princeton Police Department, and I got there around three p.m., just as some rainclouds were shedding their load on the shingled rooftops.

  Before the meeting, I’d tried to remember his face, but I couldn’t. He was in his early forties when I’d investigated the case, so I expected to find a wrecked man. I was wrong—if you ignored the deep wrinkles on his face and the white hair, he had a much younger appearance.

  I introduced myself, and he told me that he vaguely remembered me—the guy who looked like a priest, not like a cop. I asked him where the woman I’d read about in Keller’s notes, Leonora Phillis, was, and he said that she’d gone to Louisiana to look after her mom, who’d had surgery.