The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  29–27. It was a loss, but it had not been a defeat. The Irish, holding their golden helmets high, took the cheers of the student body and then left the field. Phil and Stewart remained for the postgame appearance of the Irish band.

  The seats around them emptied, fans going at a snail’s pace down the steps to the exits. When the two men stood, Jimmy, looking out at the field, spoke.

  “We’ve had a bit of luck. Anyway, I guess it’s luck.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The tire track at the scene where Plant’s body was found? We’ve identified it.”

  “A university vehicle?”

  Jimmy turned to him. “Sort of. Phil, the imprint matches the tire on your brother’s golf cart.”

  34

  THE ASTONISHING IDENTIfication of the tire imprint near the dead body of Orion Plant required that Roger establish his whereabouts at the time Orion was killed, something easily done though it brought with it the unease of such a need. What if he had been unable to prove that he had been elsewhere with unimpeachable witnesses?

  “Of course,” Jimmy said, “it wasn’t that we really suspected you. But examination of the cart indicates that it was used to transport the body.”

  The cart had been taken away for this examination and was still in the custody of the police.

  “You don’t chain it up or anything?”

  “Without the key, how could anyone start it?”

  But the key was in the ignition when the technicians who had been examining all likely vehicles and were about to give up the search as fruitless noticed Roger’s cart parked in a space before the building that housed the Knight apartment. The examination had begun as a final pro forma fillip but had turned into the long-sought golden slipper. With Jimmy, Phil and Roger, about to set off for Orion Plant’s funeral in Sacred Heart, began to discuss the puzzling problem of who could have gotten hold of Roger’s key, who would have made use of the golf cart for such a gruesome purpose. They had made no progress when it was time to leave for the basilica.

  The president said the Mass, assisted by the chancellor and a vice-president. The sanctuary was packed with members of the Congregation. Marcia Plant would have been alone in the pew reserved for mourners had not Carlotta Bacon joined her there. In the front pew on the opposite side of the aisle were the trustees who had been flown in by Schippers on Friday and had remained with him after a series of unsatisfying conferences with the administration. The upshot of their meetings was the strong suggestion that the university not rely on the forgetfulness that time might bring but to prepare and issue a detailed White Paper that would spell out the events that had preceded Father Sorin in this place and the way in which he had gotten title to the land. The university’s own treatment of Native Americans was to be highlighted, among them the inclusion of Indians as students from the first. The idea was not simply to answer questions and accusations but to swamp them with a full picture of the university’s record on matters that had recently come to the fore.

  Orion Plant lay in his casket in the middle aisle where it had been wheeled by the six students acting as pall bearers. The casket was covered with a white silk cloth. Thus, honored and blessed and being sent on his way into eternity lay the man who had been at the origin of recent troubles on the campus. Stewart’s cohorts had discovered incontrovertible evidence that Orion had been involved in the kidnapping and were trying to find out who his fellow felons had been. Roger wondered if perhaps some of them were among the pall bearers. He had identified Bacon and Byers and Wilson, another student of Otto Ranke’s. All of them were resident in graduate student housing and would have known of Roger’s golf cart.

  The Mass proceeded with great solemnity, not a requiem Mass as it would once have been, with the vestments black and a black cover over the catafalque and the dirgelike refrains of the Dies Irae reminding the living of the dire day that lay ahead when they must answer for their deeds before one who could neither deceive nor be deceived. The new liturgy had a way of suggesting that any and all of the departed were transported swiftly to heavenly bliss. The doctrine of purgatory was not so much denied as ignored, and as for hell, well, this did not seem the time to introduce so sobering a topic.

  The homily was preached by Gumble, a young priest who served as chaplain in married student housing and was a marvel of generic praise of graduate students that seemed only tangentially related to the life of Orion Plant. When the Mass was done, two speakers mounted the pulpit and reminisced about the deceased. Russell Bacon was first and was followed by Professor Otto Ranke. Bacon directed his remarks to Marcia and soon had both her and Carlotta weeping uncontrollably. Otto Ranke extolled the life of scholarship, the lure of research, and spoke of the deceased Orion’s passion in the pursuit of the past. That he had been cut off so young in his endeavors was a loss to them all, to the university and to the profession. Of course nothing was said of the fact that Orion had been dismissed from the graduate program.

  Orion was buried in Cedar Grove, the cemetery where he had desecrated the graves, or had been responsible for their desecration. It had proved easier to link him with the kidnapping than with that outrage. When the body was lowered into the earth on what had once been the sixteenth fairway of the old golf course, Marcia once more broke into tears, her weeping rivaled by that of Carlotta Bacon. The two women clung together as the party dispersed.

  A luncheon in the University Club was hosted by the faculty senate but not attended by the administration or trustees. They had gone their extra mile and were not disposed to add to it. Roger and Phil, accompanied by Stewart, whose professional interest in all this was constant but indiscernible, went on to the University Club where they were greeted by Quinlan.

  “I didn’t think they would dare show their faces here,” he said, feeling no need to identify the administration as the object of his scorn.

  “He received the full treatment,” Roger replied as Phil and Stewart escaped from this male Cassandra. The bar was open and promised surer solace.

  “What else could they do? It was an exercise in hypocrisy.”

  “The tribute that virtue pays to vice.”

  “You can say that again,” Quinlan growled, apparently not catching the inversion of the adage. “I wonder if the police will conduct a genuine investigation and find out who killed the poor devil.”

  A very genuine investigation was conducted in subsequent days, with the surprising result that Russell Bacon was taken in for questioning and eventually charged with the murder of Orion Plant.

  35

  LIEUTENANT STUART’S crew had successfully pursued the one firm clue they had, the tire imprint at the place where the body had been discovered by Father James while feeding the ducks and communing with them in what he presumed was their language, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi. Matching or trying to match the imprint with university vehicles that had tires of the required dimensions had led nowhere until someone noticed Roger Knight’s golf cart and the identification was made. But if Roger’s cart was the vehicle in which the body of Orion Plant had been carried to the spot where it was found, new lines of investigation were opened.

  Since the cart had been parked by Roger in a space in front of the building where he and Phil lived, and since Roger had not used it on the fatal night and had indeed been provably elsewhere, the question arose as to who had used it. Whoever had used it needed the ignition key to start the motor. Although Roger had at first thought he had taken the key from the ignition after his last use of the cart, further reflection introduced the worm of doubt. It was possible that he had not removed the key. Often in the past he had forgotten to do so. That meant that the cart had been there for the taking. But this led on to several presuppositions.

  It was likely that the one who had employed it for the grisly purpose of moving Orion Plant’s body had prior knowledge of the cart. While this did not limit the person to graduate student housing, those who lived there certainly had noticed the gargantuan
Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies coming and going in what he had made look like a miniature car.

  While Orion Plant and his wife, Marcia, had not lived in the graduate student village, their home was not fifty yards to the east on Bulla Road.

  After the disappearance of Orion, there was frequent traffic back and forth between the village and the Plant residence. This had taken on a new significance after Stewart talked with Professor Ranke.

  Ranke had preferred being interviewed in his home rather than his campus office, and Stewart was happy to oblige. He refused an offer of schnapps but gladly accepted a cup of coffee.

  “Would you prefer tea?” Mrs. Ranke asked. The professor’s wife was transformed from the distraught hausfrau Stewart had met earlier.

  “Coffee, please.”

  “Despite her Bavarian origins, Freda has become a devotee of tea.” It sounded like a line from Gilbert and Sullivan.

  When the coffee had been served and he was left alone with Ranke, Stewart said, “You realize, Professor, that I am investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

  “The murder of Orion Plant.”

  “Precisely. I would appreciate hearing anything you think might be helpful.”

  “Of course.”

  “Who would have had reason to kill the young man?”

  “Am I a suspect?” Ranke asked with a puckish smile.

  “Not at present,” Stewart said with a chuckle. “Did he have enemies?”

  The response was extended, beginning with a sketch of Orion’s career since he was admitted to the graduate program in history at Notre Dame. Ranke described him as a young man with intelligence, not of the highest, but more than sufficient to complete the program successfully. However, things had conspired to prevent this.

  “He married, but that is sometimes a spur to swifter completion. That was not so with Orion. He dithered. Not because he was lazy but because his interests diverged from the topic of his dissertation.”

  “Native Americans.”

  “Yes. I warned him, scolded him, cajoled him. As his dissertation director, I defended him when his case came up for review before the graduate committee, an annual event. But the time came when I too gave up on him.”

  “Plagiarism?”

  “How odd that you should mention that.”

  Stewart had mentioned it because of something Roger Knight had said, and then the story came of Bacon’s presenting as his own a paper that Orion had read to Ranke’s seminar some years before.

  “Was he formally accused?”

  Ranke nodded. “I am a member of the college ethics committee that heard the case.”

  “And?”

  “He was exonerated.”

  “So he was falsely accused?”

  “No. He was guilty as charged. But the incriminating evidence had been destroyed.”

  “How did you notice that his paper was really Plant’s?”

  “Orion noticed it. It was on top of a pile of papers on my desk. We were talking, the phone rang, and while I was occupied his eye dropped to the paper. Soon he was reading it avidly. When I finished with the phone, he told me the paper was identical with his own. I quickly dispelled the notion that I had kept his original paper there. In any case, this one bore Bacon’s name as author. Orion subsequently proved to me beyond a doubt that the papers were not only identical but that his text had been downloaded from his computer.”

  “That was the evidence that was destroyed?”

  “The file was erased from Orion’s hard drive. The case evaporated.”

  “Did Bacon know that Orion was his accuser?”

  “Yes.”

  It was not an accusation that one would take lightly, particularly if he were guilty. Ranke might have had to rely on what Orion put before him, but Plant had first-hand certainty that Bacon had stolen his seminar paper and submitted it as his own. Had Bacon seen Orion Plant as an albatross around his neck, the perpetual possibility that in years to come his plagiarism would accompany his career if only as a rumor?

  The interview went on, but nothing else was relevant to Stewart’s inquiry.

  “Has your daughter come home?”

  “Yes, thank God.”

  As he left, Stewart had a fleeting glimpse of a young woman peering at him from another room and quickly withdrawing when their eyes met.

  Before talking with young Bacon, Stewart brought the lab boys—two of them women—back to campus where they inspected the area around the parking space of Roger’s vehicle. There were footprints galore, of course, but several particularly deep ones caught their attention. They made impressions. A match was made with a pair of Bacon’s shoes. A crucial moment had arrived: That Bacon could be shown to have been near Roger’s vehicle, that the imprint of his shoes was deep even though snow had been falling—perhaps the snow served to preserve them—suggesting he had been carrying something heavy, this was the most circumstantial of evidence. That a resident of the village should leave footprints all about the place was hardly incriminating. Bacon had visited Roger Knight within the week of the murder. But when Stewart explained to Bacon what they had found, his wife Carlotta let out a shriek. Unnerved, Bacon blurted out his story. Yes, he had used Roger Knight’s golf cart to remove the body of Orion Plant.

  “But it’s not what you think! I didn’t kill him.”

  He was taken downtown and booked. Bartholomew Leone offered his services pro bono and appeared with his new client at the arraignment. But not even the mellifluous Leone could get Bacon free on bail. The young man languished in the county jail, awaiting trial, insisting that he had not killed Orion Plant. He had found the body and carted it away. Perhaps Leone believed this, but Stewart had long experience with accused killers. Bacon could scarcely deny the evidence that had been amassed. But despite his admission he clung to the notion that the obvious implication could not be drawn.

  Stewart would have been more content with this outcome had not Chief Kocinksi been so unctuous in his praise. Moreover, he received a call of congratulation from Ballast, the university counsel. If only Bacon would admit to killing Orion Plant.

  36

  ANITA TRAFFICANT WAS AS relieved as anyone in the Main Building when Bacon was arrested. Maybe more so. That the culprit proved to be a graduate student in good standing—although the story of his being accused of plagiarism became known; it was, after all, the presumed motive for what he had done—displeased the chancellor. He would have preferred some total stranger descending on the campus in the midst of a snowstorm and wreaking havoc.

  “They wouldn’t have caught a total stranger,” Anita observed.

  “I suppose you’re right. To think that fellow was my kidnapper. What had I ever done to him?”

  “It wasn’t you he kidnapped,” Anita said. “He kidnapped the chancellor of Notre Dame.”

  Like any occupant of office, the chancellor had difficulty distinguishing between his private person and the official position he held. He had come to fuse the two in his mind and looked forward to reappointments into the indefinite future. That desire had been shaken by his ordeal and only recently reasserted itself. The president had a committee at work producing the White Paper the trustees had suggested. Suggested? It had been a condition of their not making a devastating proposal to the full board of trustees. Their determination had been weakened by the exciting game they had seen on Saturday and now the arrest of Bacon altered the picture completely. Like another high official, and with infinitely less cause, he had faced impeachment and removal from office. But now the cloud had gone.

  A cloud had lifted in Anita Trafficant’s mind as well. The inescapable fact that Harold had altered his personnel file, removing the middle name that suggested a connection with that long-ago slayer of Indians, set off dark suspicions. Had Harold decided to stop the renewed condemnation of his ancestor? Anita had become uncomfortable with Harold and, she felt, he was equally uncomfortable with her. Had she failed to disguise the thoughts she had? But now the kil
ler had been found and once more sun shone on South Bend, on the campus of Notre Dame, and on Anita Trafficant.

  “What is your middle name?” she asked Harold.

  They were dining in the Lasalle Grill where he had been commenting on the minuscule portion of his entrée. Identifying it as nouvelle cuisine had not altered his disappointment. He was sipping his wine when she asked her question. He set his glass on the table.

  “You know what it is.”

  “Cruelle.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you deleted it from your personnel file.”

  “The name has associations and I didn’t want you to be influenced by them.” He put his hand on hers. She turned hers over and felt his warm palm on hers. To think that she had imagined Harold’s could be the hand of a killer.

  “Did you think I would be? Something that happened a century ago?”

  “His blood runs in mine.”

  “And Cain’s runs in all of us.”

  He squeezed her hand and let it go. Later, after the wine and the lifting of misunderstanding between them, she half dreaded, half hoped that he would want to come in when he brought her to her door. But he kissed her chastely on the forehead and that was it.

  Inside, disappointment gave way to admiration at his tact and the respect it represented. Now if only he would ask the big question.

  She was more than ready to stop working and settle down as a housewife and eventual mother. The supposed equality of women had come down to endless dissatisfying jobs where women could enjoy their terminal inequality with men. There was nowhere to go from where she was. What post higher than that of secretary to the chancellor was open to her? And the chancellor, hitherto so olympian in his eminence, had become unglued by the ordeal of kidnapping. This was understandable enough, but the lingering effects of what he had been through seemed permanent. He had been putty in the hands of the Schippers delegation. Anita, of course, acted as liaison with the committee put together to compose the White Paper. To her surprise, Sandra Trepani, the toothy sociologist who was a prominent figure in the faculty senate, was a member. She clearly saw herself as a surrogate for Quinlan.