“Tell me more.”
Suddenly a light went on in my brain that said: stop volunteering stuff to the police.
“I would, Officer, but I think I should let my attorney do that. But, bottom line, this so-called accident was an attempt to kill me. Please write that down.”
“Okay. I will. Do you have anything else to add about what just happened? If not, I need to interview some other people and take some photos.”
“No, I don’t really have anything else to add, except that I wish the police department would start worrying about who’s after me.”
Just then someone else showed up, a middle-aged Asian man with a totally shaved head. “Hi, I’m John Chen from engineering,” he said, addressing Perez. “I just took a quick look around downstairs, right below this area, and it doesn’t appear that there are any obvious structural problems with the building, so this is probably a local event. But I’m going to suggest that we clear the building while I check it out a little further.” He looked at me. “Are you the professor who got hit with the books?”
“Yes.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Just bruised arms, I think.”
He looked around at all the books on the floor and at the tilted shelf. “You’re lucky you weren’t more badly hurt.”
“So I’ve been told, multiple times.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to be sympathetic.”
“I know. I apologize.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
As he asked he was visually inspecting the shelving, including the ends of the metal vertical shelf supports that normally connect into the ceiling but were now floating free and twisted at the ends. He reached up and felt the tips.
I repeated the story, noticing Officer Perez taking more notes. Maybe he was trying to find inconsistencies in my story. Did he think I pulled the shelf over on myself?
“Do you have any idea, Professor,” Chen asked, “what caused this? I know it’s my job to determine that, but sometimes people who witness an event have their own useful ideas about causation.”
Officer Perez spoke up. “She thinks someone was trying to kill her.”
Chen stopped inspecting the shelving and looked directly at me. He was probably thinking, Uh-oh, a nutty professor.
Instead, he said, “She might be right. It looks to me as if someone has removed the bolts from the ceiling end of the metal uprights that support the shelves. Although I don’t know if that would actually enable someone to shove over the whole stack.”
“Well,” Perez said, “maybe so, but how would they know when the professor was going to be here, and whether she’d be in this particular aisle?”
“Because,” I said, “the carrel at which I work is right at the end of this aisle.” I pointed to my carrel. “Everyone knows that carrel is mine and that I’m there a lot.”
“Still seems unlikely,” Perez said.
“Either way,” Chen said, “I think we all ought to get out of here. I need to bring in an engineering crew to test the stability of the other shelves on this floor—there are dozens of them—and, in the meantime, have it closed off.”
Chen looked at me. “You look a bit shaken up, not surprisingly. Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Chen, but I think I’m okay. I’m just going to go back to my office and try to resume my day.”
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s my card. Please call me if you think of anything further.”
Chen and I left, but I noticed that Perez stayed around and was busy cordoning off the area with yellow crime scene tape. It occurred to me that perhaps I should start carrying around my own roll of it.
When I got back to my office, I first tried the door, to be sure it was still locked. It was. I unlocked it, went in, locked the door behind me, sat down in my desk chair and sobbed. For quite a while. It was some combination of the physical pain and the fear. Someone was truly trying to kill me. Why on earth couldn’t I persuade anyone to take the threat seriously? Surely this event would change everyone’s minds.
When I finished crying, I took some Kleenex from a box I keep in my desk drawer, dried my eyes and face and looked around my office. It was crazy, but I was still trying to see if the map was there, and I had somehow just missed seeing it. Even though I was beginning to doubt whether there really had been a map in that tube.
I called Robert but only reached his voice mail. Then I called Oscar, who picked up.
“Hi, Jenna. What’s going on?”
I told him. In detail.
“Listen, the idea that someone pushed the shelves over on you is too baroque. It’s much more likely an engineering screwup or something. You need to put it out of your head—I know that’s hard—and move on.”
“Hard? It’s impossible. My arms are even more bruised than they were from the bike accident, and I’m flat-out terrified. I’ve been sitting in my office sobbing, and my hands have started to shake again.” I held my hands out in front of me. “If you were here, you’d see that this time they’re actually twitching.”
“That happens to me, too, after a lot of stress.”
“Oscar, for God’s sake, we’re not talking about ordinary stress here. Don’t you finally believe someone is trying to kill me? I mean, what has to happen before you believe that? Do you have to stumble on my cooling body?”
I was practically yelling at him.
His tone softened. “Hey, I don’t mean to be insensitive, kid, but I need to be honest with you. I don’t think there’s any real evidence anyone is trying to kill you. It just makes no sense.”
“You don’t think a set of heavy bookshelves being pushed onto me is proof?” I realized I was now actually yelling, and that I had gotten up from my desk and was pacing around my office.
“No,” Oscar said. “I don’t think that’s proof. I’ve been in that part of the library, and to make this work as a murder, you’d have to be an evil genius and a great engineer to boot, and you’d need perfect timing, too. I’m sorry, Jenna, but there are simply no facts to support your theory that the shelves were pushed.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, although I was just saying that because clearly I wasn’t going to persuade him. “But look, let’s at least put off tomorrow’s interview, okay?”
“Jenna, I don’t want to ask to postpone the interview. It will make us look weak. Although we’ll certainly mention the library incident and ask the police to look into it.”
“The UCLA police are already doing that.” Not, I thought to myself, that it would do the least bit of good.
“Great. Unfortunately, I’m busy with something else right now or I’d come over there. Among other things, I’m reviewing the report on the diary from my forensics guy. Plus I need to get ready for your interview with the cops tomorrow. Speaking of which, here’s what I propose: let’s meet early, say 7:00 A.M. tomorrow to prep for a Drady interview at 8:00. After that you can go teach your class at 9:00.”
“I don’t know if I’m even up to teaching that class.”
“With a good night’s sleep you’ll be able to do the interview and the class. By the way, with your class scheduled for nine we’ll have an excuse to cut the Drady interview short. You can always say you have more prep to do.”
“All right, see you at seven.”
“Good. And always remember what the Bard said.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Screw your courage to the sticking-place.’”
After we ended the call, I thought about what he had said. He was right. My whole life was at UCLA. I wasn’t going to let this insanity drive me out. Out loud, I said, “I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. I need to screw my courage to the sticking-place and move forward.”
I had first heard that phrase when I was nine years old, playing on my neighborhood girls’ Little League team and striking out in every at bat in every game. I told my father I wanted to quit. He told me to screw my courage to the sti
cking-place and figure out how to make myself into a better player. Of course, he had to tell me that over the phone because he was off at some political event in some other city at the time. Back then I didn’t know what the phrase meant, and I certainly didn’t know that Shakespeare penned it as a line for Macbeth’s wife to utter as she tells him not to get cold feet about murdering Duncan.
As a child I instead pictured it as a large wad of chewing gum stuck to my bedpost. In any case, I stuck a wad of gum on my bedpost right after my dad hung up the phone that night and then started going to the batting cages until I emerged as the star slugger on my fifth-grade team. The gum is still there.
I didn’t know what the law-school equivalent of the batting cages might be, but I was damned if I was going to let them drive me out. Whoever they were. Eff them. No, fuck them.
CHAPTER 58
When I got home at about 6:00 P.M., Tommy was in his usual spot on the couch, feet up, chemistry book in hand. For the first time ever, he was wearing black penny loafers. No pennies in them, though.
“Hi,” he said. “I bought that dead bolt you asked me to pick up. It’s on the kitchen table.”
“Thanks. How much was it?”
“Twenty-six dollars plus tax. The bill’s in the kitchen, too. You can pay me back whenever.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, that real-estate agent was by again. He wanted your cell number. Said he had an offer for you you’d be crazy to turn down.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I couldn’t give him your cell number and that your answer is still no.”
“Good. Was that the entire conversation?”
“No. I was curious, so I asked him what the offer was, but he said he could only talk to you about that.”
“I don’t care about the offer amount. Although I’m curious about who the mystery buyer is.”
Tommy shrugged. “Do you want me to press him on that the next time?”
“You can if you want. But don’t let him think that means I’m interested in selling, because I’m not.”
“Got it.”
“Tommy, I have a question to ask you. Several, actually.”
“Shoot.”
“Where were you the day they searched the apartment?”
“I went surfing.”
“In November?”
“Wet suit.”
“You grew up in Hawaii.”
“Yeah, but I’ve lived here for quite a long time now, and the water’s not warm very many months of the year. So I learned to use a wet suit. Want to see it?”
“No.”
“Why do you ask, Jenna?”
“It just seemed odd. Usually you’re here on weekends.”
“Jenna, are you getting paranoid or something?”
“No. But I have a couple more questions. First I want some coffee. Do you want some?”
“No thanks.”
Tommy went back to reading his book. I went into the kitchen and made myself some coffee, extracting the ground coffee from the Peet’s bag in my purse. While I worked at it, I tried to think how to approach the subject I wanted to ask Tommy about. Without pissing him off, if that was possible. Maybe it wasn’t possible.
I went back to the living room with my cup of coffee and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. I put my feet up on the table. Maybe that would make it seem more casual. “Tommy, my lawyer told me today that the police had found a receipt in one of my jackets for a chemical called sodium azide, bought for cash and made out to me.”
“That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s a reagent used in labs, especially medical and biology labs. Why would you need it?”
“Exactly. So I’m wondering if maybe you bought it instead.”
“Whoa. Are you accusing me of having stuff shipped here in your name?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to figure out how this happened, since I certainly didn’t buy it or ask anyone to buy it for me.”
Tommy put down his book, got up from the couch and went to lean against the windowsill. He put his hands in front of him and cracked his knuckles. “What is this all about, Jenna? I’m really confused.”
“What it’s all about is that the coroner’s report says the student who died, Primo Giordano, was poisoned by someone putting sodium azide in his coffee. The coffee I made.”
“So someone’s framing you.”
“Maybe.”
“And you think it’s me.”
“Like I said, I don’t think anything.” Then I thought to myself that I was about to make a baby lawyer’s mistake and not actually ask the question, taking his incredulity as a denial. “Well, Tommy, let me just ask you directly. Did you buy that stuff?”
“No.”
“Did you put that receipt in my pocket?”
“No.”
“All right.”
“Do you want me to move out, Jenna? I mean, this is crazy.”
“No, no. But please understand, I need to get to the bottom of this. So I need to ask uncomfortable questions. Of all kinds of people.”
“I’m your cousin. We’ve known each other since we were kids. I mean, why would I want to do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think I should go.”
“No, don’t do that. I’ll just be more afraid if you’re gone. And I’m sorry. I just had to ask.” As I said that, I wasn’t quite sure why I had now suddenly assumed he hadn’t done it. Maybe it was because he sounded so offended. Maybe I just needed a friend, and he was offering to be one.
“Jenna,” he was saying, “do you want some help figuring out who bought the chemical and where it came from?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have a copy of that receipt?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, when you get it, let me see it.”
“I will.”
He unlimbered himself from the windowsill. “I’m going out for a while, Jenna. I might be late getting back. I’ll try to be quiet when I come in.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just out. I need to start thinking about another place to live.”
“Don’t do that.”
“We’ll see.”
So much for having a friend.
Tommy picked up a hoodie that had been lying on one arm of the couch, headed for the door and opened it. Without turning around, he said, “Don’t forget to lock your bedroom door.”
I felt really awful. Like I had been unfair to someone against whom I had very little evidence at all, if I really thought about it.
But what if it had been Tommy who poisoned the coffee? He had just told me he was going to come back late. I’d be asleep. If he was the killer, he’d have a new and perfect opportunity to off me. Of course, he had had that opportunity every night.
I considered what to do. One option was to go to Aldous’s house. I still had the keys. But that didn’t seem like a good option. It was lonely up there, with no neighbors within two hundred feet. If it was Aldous who did it—unlikely as that now seemed to me—his house on a dark and lonely night would be the perfect place to have someone else do me in. Not only that, but as soon as I punched the code numbers into the security system, it would notify his cell phone, even in Buffalo, that I was in his house. He had explained to me once how that all worked.
In the end I chose to stay where I was. But before I went to sleep I barricaded my bedroom door with a heavy dresser and put a pot on top of it, right by the front edge, so that it would fall off if the dresser was moved even a little. I also removed the carving knife from the kitchen, and right before I climbed into bed, I put it under my pillow.
CHAPTER 59
Week 2—Friday
No one came to kill me during the night. I got up, made coffee, ate breakfast and drove to the law school.
When Oscar arrived in my office at 7:00 A.M., I had already made a full pot of coffee
. He arrived bundled in a winter coat, wearing a black fedora and carrying a battered brown leather briefcase. He tossed his coat and hat on one of the guest chairs, sat down in the other and put the briefcase on the floor next to him.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“Yeah. For some reason. I know it’s not really very cold out, but I woke up freezing.”
“It is kind of damp, though, Oscar. Do you want some coffee to warm you up?”
“No thanks.”
“You know, every time someone turns down an offer of my coffee now, I think it’s because they’re worried I’m trying to poison them.”
“That’s not it at all. It’s just that I’m trying to back away from caffeine. Pandy says…”
I finished for him. “That it’s bad for you.”
“Right.”
“Maybe so,” I said, taking the carafe out of its holder and refilling my own cup. “After yesterday’s event I seem to need even more caffeine.”
“Can I see your bruises, Jenna?”
I rolled up my sleeves—I had put on a long-sleeved shirt when I got up—and showed him my arms, which had spots of black-and-blue from my wrists to well above my elbows. “There they are, Oscar.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, ouch. And there are some on my shoulders, my back and my upper chest, too.”
“Are you taking anything for it?”
“Mostly just Tylenol. I called a doctor I know, though, and got a prescription for something stronger, but I haven’t filled it. I don’t think I’ll need it.”
“Good.”
“Enough about my bumps and bruises. I’m anxious to hear what the forensics expert had to say. Is his report in the briefcase?” I pointed to it.
“No, it’s in my head. We criminal defense lawyers sometimes ask experts not to write reports now because if they do, and there’s a prosecution, under California law we sometimes have to hand the reports over to the DA.”
“You just talked to the expert then. I’ve already forgotten his name.”
“Mr. Smith.”
“Right.”
“Tell me what he said, please.”
“Well, aside from validating Primo’s handwriting, which we talked about before, he said there’s no way to tell if the dates on the diary pages are accurate. There’s no test that can distinguish between ink that was laid down a few days ago versus a few weeks ago.”
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