The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  Even in her despair she was at Orion’s beck and call. She had willingly accepted the assignment to hire a fellow to demonstrate on the field at halftime. Orion had insisted on secrecy and she had tried to comply. But how can a complete stranger hire a complete stranger for such a thing? She had hired Bernie, the brother of a girl she worked with in the library.

  “Someone from the opposing team asked me to arrange it.”

  “A player?” Bernie asked.

  “No, a fan.”

  She was having second thoughts. Bernie was employed in the most menial of tasks in the library. He was not exactly retarded, but he would never qualify for Mensa. Once he understood what he must do, he became excited. She cautioned him that this must be a secret. The fan who was hiring him insisted on that.

  “I don’t want anything happening to you.”

  “Like what?”

  “I think he’s a gangster.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She told Orion she had hired someone in Niles, a boy she had never seen before and would never see again. He might have acted more grateful. That softened her regret that she had not followed his instructions exactly.

  Everyone knew that the demonstrator would be dragged from the field by security. Maybe they would put him in a room for a while, then usher him out of the stadium. No one expected an arrest.

  “How much did you tell him?” Orion asked when he telephoned. He seemed to be speaking through a handkerchief.

  “Where can we meet?”

  “We can’t.”

  “There are things you ought to know.”

  “About what?”

  “I am not gong to tell you on the telephone.”

  She put down the phone and went back to her library tasks. She had checked and learned that Bernie was not at work. His sister Shirley drew a chair up to Laverne’s desk.

  “Have you heard about Bernie?”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you see the picture in the paper?”

  Laverne just looked puzzled, waiting. Shirley leaned forward and whispered, “It was Bernie. They’ve arrested him. He says someone hired him to do it. Someone had to put him up to it. You know Bernie.”

  “I think I met him once.”

  Bernie was no threat, Laverne was sure of that. But when Orion called again, minus the handkerchief, they arranged to meet in the computer cluster on the second floor. Orion was worried about Bernie, not that he knew his name. Laverne fed his worry. She might tell him some details, then again she might not.

  He didn’t show up. She had left work early because she wanted to sit at this window and look out at Cedar Grove and imagine she was in Haworth, star-crossed in love like all the Brontë girls.

  19

  ORION HAD NEVER QUITE trusted Bartholomew Leone and now he distrusted him. It was clear that the lawyer was involved in some campaign of his own and that the dossier Orion had compiled merely represented munitions for this private battle. After he left the lawyer, Orion betook himself to a saloon some streets away from the building that housed Leone’s office. It was the moment for a thorough examination of the status quo.

  With a scotch and water, mixed, he repaired to a booth out of the traffic and notice of the bar. He placed his glass carefully on the surface before him and then fished from his pocket a handful of slips he had pocketed when he was last in the library. They were set out for the note-taking of those consulting the computerized holdings of Hesburgh Library and thus were there for the taking, so he took, perhaps presciently anticipating this moment. He uncapped his ballpoint, sipped his drink, and did not write, but thought.

  First, women. He was like Buridan’s ass midway between two not very appetizing bales of hay. Starving would not have been a disaster, but he had lived a double life too long for assured continued safety. Laverne had come first, she had that unarguable claim; Marcia had thrust herself upon him and, far from resisting, he had taken her to his bosom. He still marveled at the shrewdness that had prompted him to urge a fast and judicial wedding upon her. He had told her of the long lines of aspirants for both Sacred Heart and the log chapel. Of course, every residence hall had a chapel and priests were thick on the ground, but fortunately that did not occur to Marcia. Besides, she was not a Catholic. He was not much of one himself, but he had the presence of mind to realize that a time might come when the nonexistence of his marriage in the eyes of the Church might be a powerful Pharisaic card to play. He had not married Marcia with any till-death-do-us-part intention, so that the marriage would have been a candidate for annulment even if it had been a Church wedding.

  But what precisely was his present complaint against Marcia? She retained her job, they lived in a house that belonged to her family—to her mother, actually, who had decamped to San Diego to be with her son. Orion had been almost shocked by this dispersal of the last vestiges of a family whose roots were deep in northern Indiana. But he was happy to have his mother-in-law out of her house. Marcia was, if not a quiz kid, loyal. Nor was she as unobservant as he had supposed. Somehow she had learned of the re-established lines of communication with Laverne. Her pathetic effort to play the jealousy card by insisting on the inclusion of Byers almost endeared her to him.

  Laverne. How think of her apart from her paternal parent? For years he had been grateful to Ranke for his protection, even while despising him for so violating the clear rules for the completion of the dissertation. And how think of Ranke’s protection apart from Laverne? The professor was securing a husband for his daughter, that was his clear motivation. It puzzled Orion that he had jeopardized all that for Marcia.

  But the yo-yo movements between the two women were nothing compared to the fundamental aim of his life, one that had taken gradual shape over the years until now it was more compelling than anything else—his future as a graduate student, his risible marriage, the plangent Laverne. Count that as Marcia’s most precious endowment, the records of the Younger enterprise. He held back from Leone, excluding from the dossier that which now, in this dark moment when his present was as parlous as his future, seemed his trump. It was a story he had pieced together patiently from the initial hints until all the pieces had suddenly come together like steel filings under the influence of a magnet. The time had come to release this bombshell, if only to blast himself free of the suffocating advocacy of Leone.

  He left his half-finished drink and sought a phone. The instrument had known hard service in this locale. Who knew how many drunken conversations it had transmitted—pleas, threats, cajoling, amorous cooing? The directory was similarly abused. He found the number in the Yellow Pages and dialed with the precision of a terrorist setting the timer of a bomb.

  “Maudit, please.”

  “What department?”

  “He’s a reporter.”

  “Is he now? Does he have a first name?”

  Orion could not remember Maudit’s Christian name, insofar as he was a Christian. He had been the terror of the Observer during his senior year, a chuckling nihilist who had leveled one irresponsible charge after another at the administration, the publication for which he wrote, his fellow students, and, of course, the faculty. Orion had wheedled a savage attack from Maudit as a hedge against mistreatment.

  “What is your name, please?” he demanded.

  “You want my name? Who is this?”

  “I am calling with the story of the half-century. If you delay me further I shall want to know your name.”

  “One moment.”

  But it was five minutes before the flutey voice of Maudit was heard. “Who is this?”

  “Orion Plant.”

  “A voice from the grave. My own, I mean.” Maudit had not survived to graduation. “What’s up?”

  “I intend to make your name as a journalist.”

  “That’s good of you,” came the sarcastic reply.

  “I am at the Amber. In a corner booth. I shall expect you.”

  He hung up. He knew Maudit. The advertised worshiper of
fact and objectivity was a prey to romantic unlikelihood. He would come.

  He came. Twenty minutes later. The past three years had been kind to Maudit, sartorially speaking, but his face looked ravaged with lack of sleep and surplus of misbehavior. His weak eyes got used to the dim light and the thunder clouds of smoke that rolled through the Amber Saloon. He slid into the seat across from Orion.

  “What are we drinking?”

  “Whatever you like.” He hailed an unshaven waiter and Maudit ordered.

  “Now then.”

  “Wait until he has come and gone.”

  “Is it true that you have been ejected from the history department?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Have you?”

  “A misunderstanding. As I suggested on the phone, I have a story for you.”

  It might have been a lecture, it fell so neatly into place. In a few quick strokes, he recreated the primitive community that had been here prior to the arrival of Father Sorin. He spoke with real feeling of the Indians.

  “Weren’t they all driven away?”

  “The principal tribe. A few were left, half breeds, those who wandered in afterward and stayed.”

  “So?”

  “Approximately nineteen Indians were slain in a period of five years.”

  Maudit had the gift of paying attention. Orion told him of the evidence he had gathered. He knew who the killer was.

  “I think the statute of limitations must have run out. To say nothing of the killer.”

  “This is a moral matter!” Orion regained his composure. “The story has never been told. It must be told now.”

  “You say you have evidence.”

  “When I produce it, will you write the story?”

  “If it holds water.”

  The bargain thus struck, Orion had another scotch and water. The consternation this revelation would cause Leone was only one of its charms. The main target remained the main target. This story of the serial killer, along with the doubts that could be raised about the legitimacy of the university’s title to its land, would have a cumulative impact. With Leone he had spoken of compensation. Of course the lawyer took him to mean money. Well, if there was money to be had, he would take it, but there were deeper, more satisfying compensations. Even in his elation, Orion did not think of what he was doing as revenge.

  20

  “I’VE SEEN THEM TOGETHER. In the library. It’s all like it was before . . .”

  “He has to use the library.”

  “Marcia.” Scott Byers looked at her with tragic sympathy. Scott said he loved her; he pestered her to death, threatening to carry her off where Orion could never find them, but he left her cold. Scott was right about Orion. He walked all over her and she kept coming back for more. Of course she blamed it on Laverne.

  The only reason she had told Orion about Scott Byers was that he insisted on telling her all about Laverne, the daughter of his professor, as if he were trying to say what he had put aside for her. He said all this with undisguised regret, as if she were to blame for thwarting his life. How could she keep quiet about Scott in such circumstances? Orion had feigned disinterest.

  “He’s a graduate student too. In mathematics.”

  Orion began to refer to him as X, the Unknown Quantity, as if he didn’t believe her. But the time he came into the Huddle and found her having a coffee with Scott during her break, he saw that X was real. Seeing them together, Orion came and stood beside the table with an odd expression on his face as he looked down at the seated Scott. Scott looking up at him as if he were a waiter interrupting a conversation. Marcia could see that, objectively speaking, Scott was by far the better looking. When he got up to shake Orion’s hand he was a head taller. He left them, husband and wife, but Orion took a different chair from the one Scott had sat in.

  “Who’s he?”

  “I’ve told you about him.”

  “The loser?”

  “If you’re the winner.”

  He laid his hand on hers, and emotion swept over her. Orion was not a demonstrative man, and she really didn’t ask much. The feel of his claiming hand on hers wiped away any remote feelings of regret she might have had talking again with Scott.

  “I don’t want him bothering you.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Worry? No, I won’t worry.”

  How swiftly he changed, one moment almost tender, the next threatening. Even so, the point she had wanted to make had been made, and by accident. He had Laverne in his past, she had Scott. She said to him then, “And I don’t want Laverne bothering you.”

  “Who’s Laverne?” His hand returned to hers.

  He had been curious about Scott. He looked him up and got to know him a bit. Marcia heard this from Scott himself. Scott thought Orion was nuts about the Indian stuff and maybe he was, but it had become an obsession with him. When he included Laverne in his big campaign, she asked Scott to come along. Orion seemed to think he had asked Scott to come. He had certainly filled his ear with his theories. During their infrequent conversations, she and Scott went into the student lounge, out of the Huddle. It would look worse if Orion came upon them there, but he never did. It was there that Scott gave her the shock of her life.

  “What else does he have?” Scott asked. They had been talking of the series of incidents that had been put in motion by Orion. Scott had not been involved in meeting the chancellor’s plane and at the time he had felt awful about it, but his candidacy orals of course took precedence. Marcia had the feeling now he was glad he hadn’t taken part.

  “What do you mean?”

  Scott looked at her, then looked away. “Sometimes I’ve wondered what I would have done with my life if I’d been cut out of the doctoral program.”

  “But you passed your orals.”

  He was looking directly at her now. “What is Orion going to do?”

  “Do? What he’s always done.”

  “Good God, hasn’t he told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  He had not imagined that it would fall to him to give her the news that her husband had been dropped from the graduate program in history. Orion was out. His academic career was finished. Marcia stared at Scott. Would he have made up such a thing? But she knew it was true. Little things Orion had done lately, things he’d said, now made sense as they had not before. She rose from her chair. Scott tried to take her hand, make her stay, but she wrenched free and ran back into the Huddle. She locked herself in the Ladies and stared at the featureless panel before her. It was blank as her mind, blank as her soul. Worse than Orion’s expulsion was the fact that he had kept it from her for a week.

  She told the manager she was ill and had to go home. It was all she could do not to quit then and there, walk away from the Huddle as Orion had to walk away from history. She put on her coat, pulled its hood over her head, and went outside, walking toward the library. The concourse of the library offered protection from the weather and did not divert her from her destination. She had been walking swiftly as if she were trying to escape from the shattering news that Scott had given her. Now suddenly she felt near collapse. She managed to get to one of the benches in the concourse, sliding across its smooth surface because of the way she had almost fallen on it. She sat there like an alien from another world while students went in and out of the automatic doors to the library.

  She did not really belong here. She only worked here. She had been raised in the shadow of the university, it had haunted her life, but it was strange to her, she had little sense of its inner workings. Orion had talked endlessly about his graduate work, joined by fellow students, and Marcia had listened. What was clear was that Orion was engaged in an apprenticeship which would qualify him to spend his life as a college teacher. That was what drove him, and the others. His ambition defined their married life. Marcia had had no intimation that Orion was in trouble. He grumbled about everything, the professors, the chair, the director of graduate studies—but they all
did that. It was the way she and the others complained about the management in the Huddle. Orion had been fired. But what exactly did it mean?

  As if in a dream, she watched the automatic doors open and Orion come through them. He did not see her at first and nothing in his manner would have told her that Scott’s story was true. Then he saw her. He stopped as if he meant to disappear inside again, but then he came toward her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t feel well. I’m going home.”

  He considered this, frowning. He looked at his watch. She waited.

  “Can you get home alone all right?”

  “I just saw Scott Byers.”

  His frown deepened. He looked around and seemed to decide this wasn’t the place to repeat his warning. He still had not commented on Scott’s presence on Saturday when they had watched the halftime interruption on television.

  “He told me that you’ve been thrown out of the history program.”

  Orion grabbed her elbow, pulled her to her feet, and began to propel her at a great rate toward the eastern exit. Students turned to look as they hurried past. His grip had slipped to her upper arm and he squeezed it painfully. At the door, he used her as a runner uses a blocker, slamming her body against the bar and through the door. Outside, he steered her to the marble ledge that surrounded the library and sat her on it.

  “What the hell has Scott been telling you?”