The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  “White Paper,” she had said before the first meeting of the committee, in a sibilant whisper. “White Wash would be more like it.”

  Anita looked at her. If she was disenchanted with the administration, she was filled with distaste at such faculty contrariness. A pox on both of them.

  “Pox tibi,” she said to Sandra.

  “Et cum spiritu tuo.” Followed by a conspiratorial giggle. Good Lord.

  37

  PHIL HAD NOTICED THE presence of Byers when he and Stewart talked with Marcia Plant before the body of her husband was found. For some reason he did not seem then, or later when Marcia had become a bereaved widow, like just another friend paying his respects. Others came and went and he remained and only eventually left. This stayed in his mind, and Bacon’s adamant refusal to admit that he had done anything more than transport the body to where it was found increased his curiosity. He visited Bacon.

  After only a few days in captivity, Bacon looked like the man in the iron mask. Was it possible that he was equally innocent? He had aged, his unwashed hair fell from his head as if it would uproot itself and leave Bacon bald.

  “Care to talk?”

  “You’re Roger Knight’s brother?”

  “Yes. Philip Knight.”

  “A private investigator?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I hire you? How much do you charge?”

  “What’s the assignment?”

  “Find the bastard who killed Orion.”

  “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  Bacon looked wildly about, then shook his head in despair.

  “I wish I did. But it’s not easy wishing someone else in my place, unless I really knew. I don’t.”

  “Let’s just talk it through. You are at the great disadvantage of having a motive.”

  “That paper? I was exonerated.”

  “Because you destroyed the evidence.”

  “Who could prove that?”

  “Now that Orion’s dead? Probably nobody. Of course, Professor Ranke can give second-hand testimony.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Bacon said, apparently not knowing that Ranke already had. “Anyway, would I kill someone for that?”

  The guilty almost never admit their guilt. Phil knew this. But something about Bacon gave him pause.

  “I want to go over every detail with you. Of course you needn’t talk to me.”

  “Can I be your client? How much do you charge?”

  “Look, I am still more or less retained by the university. They are satisfied that no mystery remains. In any case, I shall go on investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

  “You think I’m innocent?” Bacon’s expression was one of surprised, almost servile gratitude.

  “Until you’re proved guilty.”

  The elation drained from Bacon’s eyes. “Everyone is.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning.”

  Phil had Bacon go over the sequence of that fateful night. He had found the body, he had remembered Roger’s golf cart and to his surprise found the key in the ignition. The vehicle made no noise, running on a rechargeable battery.

  “My big fear was that the battery was low, that I would run out of power before I got the body out of there. I considered recharging it at my place, running an extension out from the apartment.”

  “That would have taken time.”

  “And made Carlotta wonder what I was doing. I had to be careful not to attract her attention. I was so horrified by what I had found I didn’t want her to know.”

  “Did you go back to your apartment?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “To pick up the body. That’s why I made off with your brother’s golf cart?”

  “But didn’t you find the body by the cart?”

  “No. It had been put on our front steps.”

  “Your front steps?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never mentioned that before.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Phil had long wondered why the body of Orion Plant had been lying next to Roger’s golf cart, as had been his assumption and Stewart’s all along.

  “Probably none,” he said, not wanting to raise Bacon’s hope. But this was a potentially critical detail. If what Bacon said was true, and the fact that he had revealed the original location of the body so casually suggested it was, someone had placed the dead body of Orion Plant on the Bacon doorstep. The clear reason for that was to draw suspicion away from the perpetrator and to Bacon. Bacon had indeed come under suspicion, but because he had decided to remove the ghoulish evidence from his doorstep.

  That night Phil went for a walk up Bulla Road. The lights were on in Plant’s house—or his mother-in-law’s, as it happened. Phil continued on to Ironwood and then started back. As he was approaching the house again he saw a figure hurry from a car that had not been parked there when Phil first went by. It was a male and at the door he stood for a moment and then let himself in, obviously with a key. Phil had stopped to observe this, and when he continued it was stealthily. At the house he left the road and went across the risible lawn and along the side of the house to the back. Drapes had been pulled over the front windows, but the kitchen windows were ablaze and unshuttered. Inside, Marcia Plant was being embraced by a man who snuggled his face in her hair. And then he drew back. Scott Byers.

  Phil went on home, where Roger was engrossed in his global e-mail correspondence. The impulse to tell his brother what he had learned faded. What after all had he learned? The accused continued to deny that he had killed Orion Plant; he had revealed an element in his alleged discovery of the body that seemed critical but might have been a shrewdly planted point to engage the interest of a private investigator he hoped to hire. Byers? However tasteless it was of him to rush to comfort the widow and step into her slain husband’s shoes—and of course reciprocally of Marcia Plant to allow him to do so—it would not be the first time a bereaved widow had posted with such dexterity to incestuous sheets, as Roger might have said. He would harbor what he might have learned awhile.

  The following day, Phil stopped by the Huddle where Marcia had worked but from which she was now on indefinite compassionate leave. He took a cup of coffee to a table and noticed that at a nearby table several employees were enjoying their break. After a time all but one, an adenoidal youth, got up and returned to their posts. Phil took his coffee to the table and sat. The adenoidal youth looked up. His name tag said Dave.

  “Dave, I’m one of the investigators into of the death of Orion Plant.” He held out his hand and Dave took it, looking alarmed.

  “Geez, what a thing to happen, and on campus.”

  “Are you a student?”

  “Not here. At IVY Tech.”

  “Worked here long?”

  “Since I got out of high school.”

  Unless Dave was a wholly ungifted scholar that had to be some years ago.

  “So you know Marcia Plant.”

  “I still think of her as Marcia Younger. That was her name when I met her.”

  “You liked her?”

  “Everybody likes Marcia. I tried to take her out, but no go. She was determined to land a Notre Dame student.”

  “Well, she succeeded.”

  “Yeah. Twice.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was going pretty hot and heavy with one, and then suddenly she married the guy she married.”

  “Threw the first one over?”

  “And he didn’t like it a bit. Used to get in line to get to Marcia and then hold everybody up while he talked to her. Embarrassing.”

  “You wouldn’t know his name?”

  Dave shook his head, not even trying to remember. “He was a grad student in math.”

  Was he referring to Byers?

  Dave looked at his watch and let out a theatrical yelp. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “No problem.”
/>   He did discuss it with Roger then. As he expected, Roger seized on Bacon’s claim that he had found Orion’s body on his doorstep, not by Roger’s cart.

  “I suppose if he had, he would simply have sounded the alarm. A body by my cart wouldn’t incriminate him. Have you told this to Stewart?”

  “I wanted to run it by you first.”

  “Why don’t we give him a call?”

  38

  STEWART WAS NOT ENthralled with the idea that he had the wrong man under indictment for the murder of Orion Plant, but he consoled himself with the thought that, even if this should prove to be the case, Bacon was at the least guilty of disturbing the scene of a crime, transporting a corpse, and doubtless other crimes and misdemeanors that an agile prosecutor might come up with. Not that he thought that prosecution likely if what Phil Knight was suggesting was true. He went out to the Knight apartment with the thought that the hospitality sure to be shown there made the trip eminently worthwhile. And so it proved. Phil brought out a bottle of Bushmills never yet opened.

  “What are we drinking to?” he asked, lifting his glass.

  “Justice,” Roger suggested. He had a glass filled with some noxious diet soda in his hand.

  “Can’t go wrong with that.”

  Cheerio, bottoms up, and then the velvety liquid slid over his tongue, awoke his taste buds, and descended his throat to begin its synaptic discombobulation. He warned himself to keep a keen mind, remembering Phil’s cryptic message when he called.

  “I think I may have found the killer of Orion Plant.”

  “Has Bacon escaped?”

  “Come and talk.”

  Well here he was, initially lubricated and receptive.

  “I think you should have a talk with Scott Byers, Jimmy.”

  “What about?”

  Throughout the ensuing narrative, Stewart tried to retain his skepticism, but this became increasingly hard to do. He confessed, if only to himself, that there were aspects of the technical description of the place where Roger’s golf cart had been parked that did not satisfy him. Moreover, the fact that Bacon had freely confessed—after his wife’s shriek—to having moved the body contrasted dramatically with his continued insistence that he had not killed Orion Plant. What Phil was suggesting removed some of the anomalies—why had Bacon felt compelled to move a body that was lying several doors away and taken the risk of being seen transporting his grim cargo despite the falling snow that night? It galled Stewart that he had not ascertained where Bacon had found the body. Bacon’s confession had not asserted but only implied that he had found the body beside the golf cart, hoisted it aboard, and set off for Saint Mary’s Lake. A direct question could have turned up what Bacon had casually revealed to Philip Knight. If indeed it had been casual.

  “Of course I thought of that. Later. By the way, I gave him no indication that he had added such a significant detail. I was convinced that he did not realize the importance of it. It was his anxiety to remove the body from his wife’s possible discovery of it that motivated him, and that eclipsed all other considerations as he told me.”

  “Have you talked with Byers again?”

  “No, no. That is your task.”

  Jimmy had been aware of the presence of Byers when they visited Marcia Plant, before and after the discovery of the body of her husband. Phil’s description of Byers letting himself into the house with a key, and then the embrace in the kitchen, was consonant with what he had seen. But now to hear that Byers was the repudiated swain when Marcia had abruptly married Orion Plant supplied a motive indeed, and one more intelligible to a jury than an apparently exploded accusation of plagiarism.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Stewart said.

  And that was that. Neither of the Knight brothers pressed the matter further. More Bushmill’s was poured, and as much drunk, and Roger exceeded his limit and had a second diet soda. Talk turned to the following Saturday’s game, to be played far away in historically hostile territory in California.

  “Stanford is overrated.”

  Roger nodded vigorously and began to speak of the fate of the humanities in that hitherto great institution of higher learning. Stewart and Phil listened uncomprehendingly, but Roger’s evident passion for the subject kept them silent until he was done.

  “That is a pushover league,” Phil said.

  “I like Washington State.”

  “Because they lead the league? A big fish in a small pond.”

  The discussion of sports became impassioned and progressively less coherent, and eventually Roger excused himself and went off to his study. Stewart might have taken that as a signal to go, but Phil insisted he stay, drawing attention to the amount of Bushmill’s left. Only a boor would have deserted his host with such a problem.

  Later, at home, in the wee hours, Stewart made a chart of the facts or purported facts they knew now.

  Tuesday. Early evening. A meeting at the Plant home with his band of malcontents.

  Present: Orion, Marcia, Bacon and his wife Carlotta, Byers, Laverne Ranke, and several nonstudent members. The general meeting ended and Orion remained with his inner council, Marcia, Byers, and Bacon. Then was hatched the plan to be executed by Orion Plant solo. Dressed in the garb of an Indian, he was to have descended on the grotto and dispersed the group gathered there to say the rosary. The idea was that he was taking possession of ancestral lands. The dispersal of those gathered to pray was considered of great newsworthy potential.

  Byers and Bacon and the others left. Orion, in warrior attire, bade his wife a tender good-bye—Marcia had insisted on this, thus implying that such demonstrations of affection were the exception to the rule. Then he had left her, never more to be seen alive by her. He did not return that night and Byers vouched for the fact that Marcia had told him so before the discovery of the body. He had agreed with her decision not to report her husband’s absence. Marcia’s manner turned icy when she was pressed as to where she thought he might have been that night.

  Orion Plant had gotten as far as graduate student housing. Hitherto it had been assumed that he had been attacked near Roger Knight’s golf cart. Had it been his intention to use it to get to the grotto? If Bacon was to be believed, he had been attacked and killed on the Bacon doorstep. Why would he have gone there? Bacon’s eagerness to get rid of the body when he allegedly discovered it could be explained by his fear of being implicated in the events that Orion had been engineering. Or, of course, for whatever reason, Orion had come to his door, Bacon had gone outside, wrested the tomahawk from the ersatz Indian, and dispatched him to the happy hunting grounds. In either case, he had gone for Roger’s cart, got the body aboard, and set off for Saint Mary’s Lake, where he unloaded it in the snow below Fatima Retreat House,

  Wednesday. Father James, retreat director at Fatima though not the superior of the house, had come upon the body while feeding the ducks on a snowy morning. When he discovered the body, he turned in the alarm. The rest was a matter of police record. The tire print at the scene, after laborious investigation, proved to have been made by a tire on Roger Knight’s golf cart, his means of transportation about the campus.

  Friday. Bacon, when questioned along with others in the neighborhood of the cart, suddenly blurted out his story. Despite the partial nature of his confession, he was indicted and arraigned for trial on a charge of first-degree murder.

  Saturday. Indiana beat Notre Dame in a hotly contested struggle by the score of 29 to 27.

  These notes were made in Stewart’s head, which admittedly was befogged by substantial amounts of Irish whisky. But, drunk or sober, he was resolved to confront Scott Byers with what had come to light about him and Marcia Plant, née Younger.

  39

  IN UNGUARDED MOMENTS, the mind of Otto Ranke was assailed by quotations from Hegel and Goethe, indelibly imprinted on it in his youth. There had been a dangerous period when he had thought alternately of devoting himself to philosophy or to poetry. But his gift lay elsewhere, in the careful recons
truction of the past, allowing no bias or predisposition to color the facts, making his reader an eyewitness of what had happened before either of them had been born. European history had been his focus when he was hired by Notre Dame, but a few years on campus had brought about a fascination with the place where he was living out his professional career. He bought a home close to campus in an area where, at the time, faculty predominated. Now he was the lone survivor. But he, like his late colleagues, had craved proximity to Notre Dame. This was not just another university, a way station on a career that might soon take one elsewhere to a supposedly more prestigious post. By the time he received tenure, Otto Ranke was as confirmed in his love for Notre Dame as the most fanatic alumnus.

  His research began to focus on the past of the place. His book on famous authors who had visited Notre Dame had been a work of love and, surprisingly, had enjoyed both critical and popular esteem. He had never equaled it, but the tenor of his research and writing and teaching had been set. An all-male institution when he arrived, Notre Dame had become coeducational in the seventies and Otto Ranke had rejoiced, intending that his only child, Laverne, should attend his university. She balked. It was the first show of the antic opposition that would characterize her future dealings with both her parents. He had lavished affection and cultural advantages on his daughter and she retaliated by espousing the most egalitarian of likes. The immortal strains of Bach and Brahms and Mozart had filled the Ranke house since Laverne was a child. She persisted in listening to orgiastic nonsense, played so loud that the deaf in Mishawaka could have heard it. When she was a child, he had read Stevenson to her, and The Wind in the Willows. When she grew older, they read together The Country of the Pointed Firs and My Antonia. Ostensibly she loved both the music and the literature to which she had been introduced. Ranke could remember with moist eyes discussing the intricacies of Jane Austen’s little world with his beloved daughter. Dickens had never taken with her, but she reveled in Trollope. He personally taught her German and was overjoyed to hear her conversing fluently with her mother in the tongue he and Freda had learned as children.