Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  She paused. “Yes.”

  “Was it a recent thing or had it been going on for a long time?”

  “For as long as I’ve known him. Or almost.”

  “Which is how long?”

  “Eight years.”

  When I hesitated, Ms. Howson stood up and began to pace the room, circumambulating my chair as though I was a wagon train and she was a Comanche. “Do I sense disapproval, Mr. Tanner?” she asked archly. “Am I in the presence of a moralist? Or perhaps you’re born again.”

  I shook my head. “I have no desire to pass judgment on Usser’s conduct or anyone else’s. Not yet, anyway. And my judgments never affect my work, they just affect my conscience.”

  “A conscience? How quaint. Do you find it of use to you in the modern world, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Occasionally. You don’t?”

  She circled me once more, talking as she went. I suppressed an urge to trip her. “A conscience is excess baggage,” she declared while she was somewhere at my back. “Ethics are of interest only to those who perceive themselves as definitively ethical and others as definitely not. So let’s get back to Larry. There are men in the world who cannot be entirely satisfied with just one woman, Mr. Tanner.”

  “And vice versa?”

  “Of course.”

  “Was Larry that kind of man?’

  “I believe so. Definitely.”

  “And are you that kind of woman?”

  She paused. “I seem to be claiming that distinction, don’t I?”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “You and Usser.”

  Her smile confirmed that she was getting a rather nonacademic kick out of the subject matter. “What purpose would it serve?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I see none at all.”

  “You’re taking a risk, aren’t you?”

  “How?”

  “You might have information that would help clear him.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I might be a better judge.”

  “You might; you might not. At this stage of the game I choose to keep my own counsel.”

  “Just answer this,” I insisted. “Are there any men who would be incensed by your liaison with Lawrence Usser? A husband, current or ex? A lover, current or former?”

  She was shaking her head before I finished. “When I terminate a relationship, I do it in a way that leaves the man without the slightest desire to see me again. Believe me. In that sense I am a truly monogamous being.”

  “Is your relationship with Usser current and continuing?”

  She frowned. “It was until the murder. We have met only formally since then. But I have no reason to believe it will not resume once he is freed from this travesty the police have inflicted upon him.”

  She had closed one line so I tried another. “Had Usser been acting strangely of late? Anything to indicate he was losing his grip?”

  “He was under a lot of tension, if that’s what you mean. He seemed to be drinking more. Losing his temper quite often. But what does that have to do with anything? He didn’t do it. A fact which is proved by the marked increase in those tendencies after his wife’s death. He was devastated by it, Mr. Tanner. Not at all relieved. I was quite surprised by his reaction, to tell you the truth, given certain, ah, amatory outbursts he had made in my presence over the past year or so.”

  “If he didn’t do it, who did?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I met Dianne only a few times. She didn’t like me, she didn’t like the school. I suppose she resented the time Larry spent here. She rarely attended faculty functions, not that I can blame her for that. Faculty parties have the approximate ambience of a poorly attended wake.”

  I decided to go for a bigger bite. “Who else around here was sleeping with Usser?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I’ve heard rumors.”

  She shrugged casually. “Larry was an attractive man. He enjoyed the company of women. Naturally there were rumors.”

  I smiled. “Which ones of them were true?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. I mean, I’d be the last to know, wouldn’t I? Or next to last, at least.”

  “How about his research assistant?”

  “Krista? They are very close. He relies on her a great deal. There are those who say she wrote every word of his books, every line of his briefs, every phrase of his speeches.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know. She is very intelligent. And very lovely.” And very young, Elmira Howson thought but didn’t have to say.

  “Any other women around here Usser is close to?”

  “I certainly hope not.” For the first time a note of regret slipped into Elmira Howson’s tone. “So many intellectuals have been satyrs as well. Odd, don’t you think?” She had abstracted the subject, making it useless to me.

  “How about the faculty?” I asked. “Is there a groundswell of support for Usser’s release?”

  “I’m afraid not. Larry was not … popular. The faculty is bitterly divided these days. Larry and I, plus a few others, are trying to break pedagogic patterns that have existed for fifty years. There is jealousy and there is a stark terror at what we are seeking in the way of change. I’m sure a majority of the faculty greeted news of Larry’s incarceration with the first orgasm they’ve had in years.”

  “How about Grunig?”

  “What about Grunig?”

  “Why were he and Usser feuding?”

  She shook her head wearily, as though the subject had already exhausted her. “Larry was Gus Grunig’s protégé. Grunig teaches criminal law and procedure too. He and Larry soon split over matters of social and political philosophy, but I’ll give Gus credit. That didn’t turn him against Larry, not in the personal sense. It was only when academic issues raised their ugly heads that the split came. And when it came, it was a real thunderstorm. Larry and Gus haven’t spoken in a year without an intermediary.”

  “What were the specific issues?”

  “Why don’t you talk to Gus? He’s mounting a rather aggressive campaign to be appointed dean of the law school when the incumbent steps down next year. He’ll therefore be in a position to give you a totally biased account of the entire history of our faculty contretemps. As biased as my own account would be.”

  “But why did their quarrel become so heated? Surely more than pedagogic matters were involved.”

  Elmira Howson shrugged. “You know what they say. Academic wrangles are always so vicious because the stakes are always so small.” Her smile was devoid of humor. “There was something personal between them on top of the more esoteric issues, but neither of them have ever talked about it and I don’t think I should tell you what it was. I’m the only one other than Gus and Larry who knows, by the way, so don’t waste your breath asking questions in the hallways and the restrooms.”

  “Tell me a little more about the pressures Usser’s been under lately.”

  She looked at me for a long minute, then returned to her desk. “Look, Mr. Tanner. I’m telling you this because you seem to be an intelligent man and because someone involved in all this ought to know what Larry’s had to deal with lately. Let’s start with his teaching. It’s fashionable in today’s anti-intellectual environment to make fun of academics—absentminded professors, naive innocents, impractical idealists, pointy-headed intellectuals and all that. Plus we’ve all read the more or less accurate reports of the current generation of students and their fixation on wealth and materialistic success. But in the better professional schools—and Berkeley Law, like Stanford and Boalt Hall, is definitely one of those—there still exists, thank the Lord, a hard core of students who truly want to change our hapless world. To make it better not only for the calamari and tax shelter set, but for the underclass as well. These students are very demanding, Mr. Tanner, and it’s a real challenge to teach them. Not because they
’re not bright; on the contrary, some of them are brilliant. But because if you don’t present the legal system to them in a way that admits to a degree of hope, a dash of optimism, a place to go with their ethical instincts and their professional lives, then we lose those kids entirely. They drop out and become poets or social workers or whatever, to the detriment of all of us who believe the law is at the cutting edge of social change. So that’s pressure point number one, especially since Larry tried to turn all his students into selfless altruists. A Promethean task if there ever was one.”

  She looked to see that I was with her. After I nodded my understanding she continued.

  “Pressure point number two was the faculty wrangle that Gus will describe for you ad nauseam. And pressure point number three—and in Larry’s case the most painful one—was his trial practice. Larry began having doubts about his role in the larger scheme of things, he was becoming consumed by the tensions between madness and sanity, violence and police power, guilt and innocence, advocacy and truth, the whole spectrum of issues that the criminal system demands be addressed but so few practitioners really engage. Larry was haunted, from time to time, by the thought that instead of advancing the course of civilization he was in fact setting it back, that in defending and freeing his clients he was contributing to the crippling bestiality that rages in the streets and makes cowards of us all, the barbarism that he was so determined to eradicate by uplifting the condition of man, particularly the mentally unbalanced. He had these horrible nightmares, of madmen doing vicious, violent things and going unpunished for them.”

  “Things like the things that were done to his wife,” I interjected.

  She looked at me as though the connection had never occurred to her. “Yes. I suppose.”

  “And he was drinking a lot as a result of all this?”

  “Some. Not a lot. Just more than before.”

  “What else?”

  “Forgetfulness, perhaps. Increasing egotism and insensitivity. He tried to be solicitous of other people’s needs. After his wife died he seemed to be less so, more caught up in his own requirements, more focused on himself.”

  “Did he ever threaten you? Hit you? Frighten you, Ms. Howson?”

  Her back arched against the chair. Her glare was chilling and dismissive. “Larry? Me? Don’t be ridiculous. You ask awfully strange questions, Mr. Tanner, for a man who’s out to clear Larry Usser’s name.”

  THIRTEEN

  The law library was my next stop. It was guarded by a security system worthy of a prison. Somehow, I pushed through an aluminum bar, crossed an invisible eye and passed inspection by a skeptical librarian, all without setting off alarms.

  On the glass door to the main reading room a sign had been taped at eye level:

  CAUTION—THERE HAS BEEN A

  RECENT RASH OF THEFTS

  IN THIS LIBRARY. PLEASE BE ALERT.

  KEEP PERSONAL BELONGINGS WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.

  I went in anyway, spotted a young woman shelving books and asked her how to get to carrel 209. She pointed to a blue metal staircase rising out of the middle of several rows of law reviews arrayed on metal shelves. I took the stairs, making noise, smelling mold, climbing into the stacks where only the serious students and the committed faculty ever dared.

  The carrels were white metal booths attached to the back wall of the building, with built-in tables and shelves and straight-backed metal chairs. I found number 209 without any trouble. The person sitting in its egglike shell looked young enough to be below the age of legal consent. Her cheeks were appled and round, her nose pert, her eyes the color of the sky at morning. But despite her wholesome aspect she looked up at me beneath a frown designed to shove me on my way. I held my ground and asked if she was Krista Hellgren. She nodded impatiently and asked me what I wanted.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Professor Usser.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not authorized to discuss his work. I can tell you that his article on the bifurcated trial will appear as scheduled in the next issue of The Hastings Law Review. If that’s what you’re interested in.”

  “It’s not.”

  Our eyes met, then dodged. She was lovely in a bucolic way, flawless and unaffected, a way that had the impact of a nocturne, not a march. She wore Levi’s and a sweatshirt that matched her eyes. She had ink smudges on her fingers and a gold band around her wrist. Her white-blond hair was disciplined by a coiled cloth headband. Her breasts roamed easily beneath her shirt as she twisted to look at me, and she caught me admiring them. My face must have reddened because she smiled a hardened smile that told me I was just what she expected me to be and I should be ashamed of it. “Are you from the police?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into the circumstances of Professor Usser’s arrest. Can you give me a few minutes?”

  She glanced quickly up and down the aisle, then looked at the books piled all around her. “No. Not now. Not here.”

  “Where and when?”

  She ignored my question. “Are you telling me the truth? Are you really a private investigator?”

  “That’s not the kind of thing people usually brag about.”

  This time her smile meant what it said, which once would have been close to everything I ever wanted to hear. “But I don’t know anything. Not about Mrs. Usser. I mean Ms. Renzel.”

  “That’s all right. I just need some information about your boss.”

  “But why do you think … who have you been talking to?”

  “Various people. Students. Faculty.”

  Her eyes widened into sapphires set in pearl. “What did they say about Professor Usser and me?”

  “Just that the two of you worked very closely together.”

  Her look was pained. “They said more than that, didn’t they?”

  “Maybe a hint or two.”

  “They don’t know how it is. None of them. They think they do but they don’t.” Her lips vibrated bitterly, and she wiped away a tear. Her emotions were complex enough to fill a book the size of the ones that lined her shelf. She sniffed, then wiped her nose. “If I talk to you, will it help him be found innocent?”

  “It might.” I decided it wasn’t quite a lie.

  “He is, you know. Innocent. He couldn’t possibly be convicted. He’s not … that way.”

  “What way is he?”

  “Brilliant. Kind. Oh, I can’t talk now or I’ll start to cry. Come to my place tonight. I’ll be home any time after nine. It’s not safe to walk home from campus after nine, unless you use the escort service.”

  She added the last as though to explain her departure from her studies at such an early hour, then gave me her address and instructions how to find it. I told her I’d see her then, and went back to the staircase and made my way back to the faculty directory and looked up Gus Grunig, wondering all the while if Krista Hellgren’s beauty was a trophy a man would kill to make his own.

  Grunig’s office was near Usser’s. I retraced my steps, pausing at Usser’s office to see if Laura Nifton was still there. The door was locked and no sounds came from inside, so I continued down the hall till I found the door marked GRUNIG.

  The clippings on his bulletin board made obvious the differences between the men. Grunig’s were from William Buckley and Thomas Sowell, and they railed against a host of fashionable liberal thought, from affirmative action to sex education to the current requirements for a legal search and seizure. I knocked on the door and was told it was open. When I went inside I found myself looking down upon a small, balding man who sat like a befuddled bear cub in the aftermath of a cyclone.

  Gus Grunig was almost a dwarf, his limbs and hands no bigger than a boy’s. In comparison, his office seemed oversized and overstocked, as though built to house an entire law firm and Grunig was the lone survivor.

  When I approached his desk, Grunig was reading a case reported in the Federal Supplement and pecking some information into the Apple II on the c
orner of his desk. He heard me coming, put down the book, and scowled over the top of the monitor. “Is this about the faculty search committee?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he growled. “That means whatever you’re here about will be an improvement upon what I was expecting.”

  “I’m here about Lawrence Usser.”

  “I retract my statement.” Grunig closed his eyes and bowed his head. The overhead light made his pate seem a peeled potato. After hibernating for another minute he raised his head and spoke. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Marsh Tanner. I’m a detective.”

  “Police?”

  “Private.”

  “Hired by whom?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Then you have no power to compel me to respond to your questions.”

  “Only the power of the search for truth.”

  His smile was as dubious as mine. “Yes, well, that concept is an elusive one, isn’t it. These days truth has become in the nature of a chattel, an object to be owned. He who owns the medium owns the message, or thereabouts. I may do an article on it one day, take up the mantle of Mr. McLuhan, so to speak. But I digress. What can I tell you about Lawrence, except that I wish him well?”

  I was about to answer when a young man stuck his head in the door. His hair was of Prince Valiant, his beard of Vandyke. “Can I talk to you about my grade in Crimes sometime, Mr. Grunig?” he asked, clearly expecting a refusal.

  “Of course.”

  His eyes widened. “When?”

  Grunig looked at me. “Five minutes?”

  “Ten,” I said.

  Grunig repeated the figure. The kid said “Great” and disappeared.

  “He believes I disapprove of his hair and dress,” Grunig said when the door had closed. “And he’s right. He also believes that my feelings affect the way I mark his examinations. In that he is wrong. Actually, he’s somewhat refreshing, in an odd sort of way. A throwback to the days when they all looked like him, the brighter the student, the more disheveled the aspect. Now they all look like IBM trainees and the bright ones are all divorced women over thirty who slave like hard-rock miners and want to work for banks. But I digress again.” Grunig lowered a pair of spectacles from the top of his head to the bridge of his nose. “What can I tell you about Larry?”