My hands being at the wheel, Cagey pulled out her notecom and took down M. Ko-Ko’s name and partial address. “You wouldn’t remember her phone number, M. Greenhill?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Who remembers much of anything these days, with computer memories everywhere to databank it for us.” Cagey thought for a moment, then went on. “Right! I think we’ll still tackle Fairchild first and then come back for Ko-Ko.”
“I…er ...” said M. Greenhill.
As her hesitation drew out, Cagey and I both prompted her with a “What?” at almost the same moment.
“Oh, nothing,” she replied. “Nothing.” And began navigating me through the streets of Hodag Crossing to “Old Town,” the district where Dr. Fairchild lived.
I could tell that she remained nervous. Of course she is, I remember telling myself rather sternly: she’s lost two boyfriends, maybe by murder. I know how it feels to lose even one romantic interest that way. She’s brought us here to trace their deaths, maybe to the door of a third boyfriend. Well, maybe potential boyfriend. And she’s just been rudenecked a bit by some of the boyfriends’ fraternity brothers. Who wouldn’t be nervous?
We pulled up in front of Dr. Fairchild’s home, an attractive old bungalow in what must once have been the “rich” section of the original village of Hodag Crossing. “Nice,” Cagey pronounced, nodding at it. “Good view of the lake, too, I see. Clear Lake?”
“That’s right,” our client replied. She spoke nervously. “Clear Lake. It’s a pretty long, winding lake. There! That pale green building—you can just make it out from here—that’s the Whispering Pines Rest Home, where Grandpa Baxter is. You can’t see it in summertime, for the leaves. I think the sorority retreat house is somewhere in the woods between here and Clear Lake—I mean Clear Lake, the town. It’s a little, unincorporated settlement on the far point, not much more than the nursing home, an interdenominational church, and a couple of restaurants and resorts. And homes, mainly summer homes. I think there was once a squabble about naming the lake Clear Lake or Hodag Lake. ‘Hodag Lake’ might’ve won, if Hodag Crossing hadn’t been even smaller than Clear Lake—the town—back then. Wisconsin—the whole Upper Midwest, in fact—is full of ‘Clear Lakes.’ ...” Her voice stopped as if she’d run out of things to say without wanting to.
“Hmmm,” said Cagey, gazing out over the lake and nodding again. “Well,” she went on, opening her car door, “let’s not sit here looking like cops on a stakeout.”
She got out of the car without mishap. I followed suit.
M. Greenhill sat without moving and said, “Um ...”
“Something wrong, M.?” Cagey asked gently.
“Er ... If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather wait out here. I don’t think Dr. Fairchild likes me. In fact, you’ll probably have a better interview if I’m not there.”
Cagey hung over the car door, in imminent danger, I feared, of another topple. “Why don’t you think he likes you? Mmm, let’s rephrase that. Why do you think he doesn’t like you?”
M. Greenhill gave a helpless shrug, more like a jerking of her arms and shoulders. “Oh, just ... just the vibes I’ve sensed the times I’ve been in his presence. And then ... I don’t know if I should tell you ...”
“You should,” said Cagey.
“Well ... All right. I’m sure Dr. Fairchild makes up the Pi Rho induction rites…they use different scenarios, you see—they tailor them to the inductee, and they can get ... They say, they can get very fierce sometimes, the worst hazing at New Millennium, almost as bad as some of the things that used to go on at universities last century. I’m sure…that is, I think that Dr. Fairchild has a big hand in making them up, and ... sometimes they use my name in them.”
Cagey gave a low whistle. “Yes, you very definitely should tell us. In fact, you should have told us a lot earlier. How do they use your name, and how do you know about it?”
“I know because Solly told me. After we…got serious about each other. They’ll ask the pledges what my ‘real’ family name is. As if it weren’t Baxter! Not all the pledges, just some of them. Tony Tallpines was one. Clement was another.”
“Did M. Czarny ever tell you about this himself?” Cagey pressed her.
She shook her head. “No. I guess—I hope—he wanted to spare my feelings.”
I said, “And M. Tallpines ...”
“Couldn’t,” Cagey finished. “Not if he was killed just a few hours after his induction.”
“There were rumors,” M. Greenhill confessed unhappily. “Some people said maybe the Purple Rose had finally gone a little too far with Tony, that maybe the accident was really to…cover it up.”
Cagey said, “But the local pollies didn’t take any account of the rumors?”
M. Greenhill shook her head and gave us a shaky smile. “There are always crazy rumors about everything. Aren’t there?”
Frowning, Cagey swayed back and forth several times on the car door, slipped and half fell, caught herself, stood up straight, and said, “Well, M. Greenhill, I’m certainly glad you told us now. If you remember any more details about any of this—even the rumors—I hope you’ll share them. Along with anything else that might be even remotely relevant. Meanwhile ... Dr. Fairchild have any domestics on his personal payroll?”
Our client shook her head. “I don’t…think so. That is, I think he has someone in to clean one or two days a week, but no live-ins or fulltimes.”
Cagey decided, “Then I think you’d better come on in with us.”
“But—”
“He’ll see you’re with us anyway, when he comes to the door,” Cagey pointed out. “And you’ll look like a sore thumb if you sit out here waiting in the car.”
“Especially as we’ve already stood here talking so long,” I added, anxious to get Cagey away from any further accidents waiting to happen to her around the parked car.
M. Greenhill sighed softly, got out of the car, and followed us up the flagstone walk to the front door.
We had been in front of the house long enough that I half expected Dr. Fairchild to have seen us through the window, and to open the door without waiting for us to chime. In fact, as it turned out, he took a good three minutes to let us in, which is quite a long time when you’re outside waiting for someone to come to the door.
He greeted us so pleasantly, however, that I knew the delay must have been unavoidable. “Greetings, greetings!” said he. “Ah, M. ... Greenhill! To what do I owe this pleasure?” The hesitation before her name was the one false note in his greeting; but it was so slight that I could never be sure whether it was intentional, or a momentary lapse of memory, or only my own imagination at work, nudged by what M. Greenhill herself had just told us. Turning his attention to Cagey and me, he went on, “Come in, come in! I’ll wave us some coffee and turn on the fire.”
He was a straight old gentleman on the tall side of medium height. Not too old—I guessed that he had taken an early retirement—but old enough that his silver hair didn’t look premature. His face was wonderfully kind, and had just enough wrinkles to look distinguished. His eyes were blue. I can always be reasonably sure of perceiving the colors of men’s eyes accurately, because I like all their colors.
We followed him into the living room, a graciously utilitarian front parlor done in antique Danish Modern, dusted to within a centimeter of its life, and looking like a showpiece. “Would you rather visit here, or in my study?” he asked. “I’ll warn you, the study’s a mess, but it’s got a great view of the lake.”
I knew Cagey well enough to guess her thoughtline: The only thing the living room tells us about this floater is that he never uses it and that his cleaning service dusted it last thing yesterday. “The study,” she said. “We see more living rooms than lakes.”
He led us into the room he called his study. With its remarkable view of Clear Lake, I g
uessed it might have been a family room or even the original main living room. Cagey looked around, asked, “You call this messy, Professor? You oughta see my study sometime!” and sprawled on the couch.
Dr. Fairchild grinned. “Thanks for the flattery,” he said, turned on the holographic fire, and left for the kitchen.
Cagey had been perfectly truthful. Her home “workrooms” were awash in a permanent clutter and confusion kept partially at bay at irregular intervals only by stuffing the mounds and stacks of papers into any available shelf or file drawer. She had plenty of experience in eying heaps of hardcopy and, as soon as the professor emeritus had left us, her gaze around his workspace turned into a serious appraisal.
This was her habit whether an interviewee was suspect, witness, or anything else to a case. In fact, she had even come to do it automatically with simple social acquaintances. When, as now, she did not leave her seat to examine anything on the hurried sly, I knew her attention was purely reflexive and casual.
My years with Cagey Thursday hadn’t toned me to quite this pitch, but I knew enough to stroll around snapping minicam photos of everything while acting as though I was merely giving it a friendly lookover. Cagey always especially called for clear file photos of the titles on interviewees’ bookshelves, even though we almost never got around to transcribing and analyzing them. Dr. Fairchild’s were almost exclusively mathematical, with a scattering of books about the Last Great War, most of them apparently published when it was still being called World Wars I and II; with a shock, I remembered that wasn’t so long ago, after all—we had only taken to calling it ‘The Last Great War’ after Nathan Jasinsky’s bestseller in 2036—just six years ago. Dr. Fairchild had a new two-shelf collection called The Bookchip Library of Classical and Contemporary Math Studies, and I assumed that the holographic shelf panels showed the book spines arranged in some kind of logical classification order that a mathematician would recognize at a glance; but for the physical bound volumes, if they were in any particular order, I couldn’t find it.
As for April Greenhill, she had gone at once to the window and stood there the whole time, staring out at the lake. It was a lovely view, but I had the impression that she wasn’t really seeing it, that she was more a tangle of nerves than anything else. I sympathized with her very deeply but, from my brief glimpses of him, I hadn’t yet seen whose fault the antagonism might be, or if it even existed outside our client’s own imagination. Hadn’t Dr. Fairchild even broken one of his own rules in order to call her politely by her final instead of her family name?
Cagey and I might as well have turned off our pocket recorders until our host came back, because we were a very silent threesome while he was gone, each busy with her own thoughts. Cagey mentioned to her recorder that the holographic fire in the fireplace looked pleasant but slightly incongruous with such a fine sunny fall day pouring in through the glass doors, but those were the only words uttered in a good ten minutes.
When Dr. Fairchild reappeared, he brought a tray with sandwiches and mini-apples as well as coffee. Mini-apples had just been developed and were a big food fad about then: real apples the size of jumbo cherries, that were usually served cored and stuffed, like olives, only fresh and with the skins left on. Dr. Fairchild’s were stuffed with one raisin apiece.
“It’s after eleven hundred,” the professor observed mildly. “So I thought you ladies might like to join me in a little light lunch.”
“Looks good and healthy,” Cagey agreed, watching the food while she poured herself a mug of coffee from the pitcherstyle server. The sandwiches were wholegrain cocktail slices with a variety of spreads, and I’m afraid the professor and I ate most of them, as well as most of the mini-apples. Cagey eventually ate two sandwiches and a couple of apples. M. Greenhill took one sandwich, but finally returned it to the side of the tray with no more than a few nibbles bitten off its corners.
“So! so, so, so, so ...” the professor announced as we helped ourselves to food and coffee. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“To your vampire,” Cagey replied, speaking out directly but pleasantly.
“Batory-Czarny?” said Dr. Fairchild, pronouncing it like a hyphenated name. “What has he done now?”
Cagey looked at the professor and reached for a sandwich. “We don’t know. That’s why we’re here.”
“May I take it, then, that he hasn’t bitten you, personally? Good, good! Well, let me have your story.” Sandwich in hand, he sat at his desk and looked attentive.
April said, “Clement doesn’t bit people.”
“Dear, sweet M. Greenhill,” the professor replied, “let me hazard a guess that you’ve seen only his best side. His company manners.”
“And you’ve seen his worst side?” said Cagey.
“His worst side? I doubt it. I’m merely his fraternity father—his secular advisor, so to speak. No, if anyone at all has glimpsed his worst side, it will have been his religious confessor. Let me see…here at NMU, that’d be Mother Elizabeth Pedersen.”
“I’d as soon have the name of his ‘headshrink,’” Cagey remarked, using the antiquated slang for mental hygienist.
Dr. Fairchild shook his head. “To my knowledge, he doesn’t use one. Just me and Mother Pedersen. You might try the student health clinic, of course. I understand they’re almost as impersonal as if we were a much larger school, but they should remember Batory.”
Cagey cocked one eyebrow. “A dracula with normal health problems, then.”
“I should guess not,” our host explained. “No, all in all, he gives every appearance of perfect, nineteen-year-old health. But it’s my understanding that someone on the clinic staff smuggles him a bottle or two from the bloodbank now and then.”
“It isn’t smuggling,” said April. “It’s perfectly honest.”
“Well, young lady, that would depend on your definition of ‘honesty,’ wouldn’t it? Isn’t it true that disposing of medical bloodbank supplies through any channels other than the approved and regular ones is illegal?”
“But it’s old blood—if it’s even blood at all; a lot of us think they’re actually kidding him along—and he pays for it. They don’t make any secret about it, and you can’t very well get special laws rushed through the Legislature for one or two individual cases.”
“Can’t you?” said the professor. “You should never, young lady, underestimate the influence a single case can have on legal precedent, public opinion, and, ultimately, the whole moral order. Take this business of the Beast of Buchenwald’s son, for instance.”
“How?” Cagey inquired. “Walter Volsung was just arrested this morning, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was. How do you feel about that, Lieutenant?” asked our host. “Would you have liked to be in on the kill?”
“I have no idea,” she answered indifferently. “As a rule, I’m more interested in current crimes.”
I suddenly put my finger on what was curious about this whole interview. “Dr. Fairchild,” I asked, “how do you know who we are, the pair of us you welcomed in with M. Greenhill? We haven’t actually introduced ourselves yet.”
He looked at me, at Cagey, and back at me. “I wasn’t trying to play sherlock on you. No, no, never that.” He smiled—a very discerning smile—and winked at us. “Lieutenant Thursday’s face has appeared on national newscasts once or twice, you know. I’ll have to confess, however, that I’m not entirely sure of your name, M. ...?”
“Tomlinson,” Cagey put in. “My sergeant. Now, if we can get back to Batory—
“Your first case involved a medical mind that had been twisted to evil by false admiration of the last of the first-generation war criminals,” said Dr. Fairchild, turning back to Cagey.
“I doubt it,” she replied. “I think that floater would have gone exactly the same way whether or not the last of the first-generation war criminals had ever been brough
t to trial. Anyway, it wasn’t my first case, just my first famous case. But getting back to Batory, a few minutes ago you implied that you had seen—let’s call it a worse side of him than M. Greenhill has probably seen. We’d like to hear a little more about that.”
April put in, “I thought you wanted to ask Dr. Fairchild where Clement’s moved to.”
Dr. Fairchild looked at her, then back at Cagey. “Might I ask…are you working for M. Greenhill?”
“We’re cops,” said Cagey. Seeing that almost nobody has called real police “cops” for years—”pollies” is this century’s nickname for them—I suppose it hardly counted as an untruth on any level, though she still had to be careful not to identify herself that way when on the witness stand. “We don’t work ‘for’ private clients,” she went on. “M. Greenhill brought a set of circumstances to our attention, and we’re trying to determine whether or not to make a case out of them, that’s all. Just a routine preliminary investigation.”
He nodded, looked thoughtful, and picked up another sandwich. I remember musing that, if he could recognize her from the stray newscast pictures, he was presumably aware that her home “precinct” was in Kentucky; and I waited for him to ask how far she considered it reasonable to travel on a “preliminary investigation,” but he never did. Transport has become so convenient since the needletrain tunnels were put in that I suppose it’s mainly the guiderules of tradition that keep real modern police detectives in their home jurisdictions as a general rule. Besides, he’d also have been aware that “Lieutenant Thursday” was really a fancy-class hobbyist with plenty of time and money, who, for all he knew, might have arrived at the nearest airport via private plane.
When he finally finished his latest sandwich and spoke up, he said, “I can’t tell you everything. A lot of what I know falls into the classification of privileged communication, both by fraternity rules and because as a personal lay advisor I stand in loco of his ‘shrink,’ so to speak.”
“Just start with what you feel free to tell us,” Cagey replied. “We’ll decide later whether we have to invoke the Privcom Act of 1999, that gives us cops the right to know for our own privileged information.”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 127
