No Stone Unturned

by James W. Ziskin

  We pored over Ginny’s habits for two hours, from the most insignificant everyday routines to where she had vacationed in the past two years: Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and Bermuda, all with her parents. Ginny used Johnson & Johnson swabs and cotton balls, Gleem toothpaste, and Listerine mouthwash. She washed with Lux soap, shampooed with Breck, powdered with a variety of talcs, and wore Emeraude spray mist. She liked books, music, and horses, and she owned her own car: a red-and-white Buick Century, which she kept in the lot behind her Back Bay apartment. Ginny was studying English literature at Tufts.

  I asked if the police had contacted Ginny’s parents in Florida, and Bernie said they were returning home on the first flight in the morning with Ginny’s eleven-year-old sister, Nora. Ginny hadn’t accompanied them this time because of a busy schedule at school, studying for upcoming finals, and working long hours in the library stacks.

  I thought about Virginia White and Jordan Shaw. Two young women of privilege, coming of age in an atmosphere free of parental supervision, answering to no one but themselves: atypical of girls of their age and generation. Were they wrong to live the way they did? To invite grown men in until all hours for “intimate gatherings”? Who was I to judge them? I could give lessons.

  Other questions consumed me. Why had they been murdered, both of them, a state apart? According to Doc Peruso, Jordan was killed late Friday night. I figured Ginny died sometime Saturday afternoon or evening upon her return from the Thanksgiving holiday. It seemed her killer had been waiting for her. Or maybe she had surprised him rummaging through Jordan’s belongings? Had her assailant stolen anything? If so, what? Was Ginny killed as an afterthought, by accident, or for the same obscure reasons as Jordan? Had they both known their killer? I was certain that, at the very least, Jordan had known hers. Ginny may have been the unlucky friend, a remainder in the equation, but my gut feeling told me it was her close relationship with Jordan that had marked her for death. She knew her murderer all right.

  I asked Bernie if I could have a look at Ginny’s room. She agreed on the condition that I not disturb anything.

  The room was neat, cleaned by Bernie herself after the police had pawed through every corner that afternoon. It was a bedroom typical of a teenage girl, I supposed, though I was sure Ginny had outgrown the stuffed tiger on the bed and the teen-magazine cutouts plastered on the walls. This was the world of a thirteen-year-old Virginia White, before she’d shipped out to Dana Hall, then Tufts. I paused to admire the lovingly prepared collages of Tab Hunter and Montgomery Clift memorabilia under glass on her desk. Nearly all the artifacts were datable to the early- to mid-1950s, with few exceptions. One caught my eye from across the room. Above her desk, pinned to a barren bulletin board, a colorful postcard and an airmail envelope stood out. I crossed the room and plucked them from the board.

  The letter was addressed to Ginny, written in a neat hand, with colorful Indian stamps on it. I put that aside and examined the postcard.

  “What is that?” asked Bernie, joining me at the desk.

  “That’s the Taj Mahal,” I said, showing her the card. Then I turned it over:

  Agra, August 17th, 1959

  Dear G. W.,

  Having loads of fun! I had a touch of Delhi-belly from the water, but D. J. took me to a clinic run by a friend of his. He knows India like the back of his hand! He’s so wonderful! And I got it! I feel as bright as a new penny! (wink) I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.

  Yesterday we went to a beautiful Hindu wedding. Friends of D. J.’s. I got mehndi painted on my hands and feet. So beautiful! I took snaps of it to show you.

  Got to run. Taj Mahal tomorrow then Jaipur and Nepal after that!

  Love, J. S.

  What was mehndi? Sounded like some Indian wedding ritual. I wondered if Jordan had ever shown Ginny the photos. I snapped a picture of the postcard and took up the letter. I didn’t ask Bernie for permission to open it, figuring she might say no. In fact, she twitched a bit as I fished the letter out, but she said nothing.

  Fatehpur Sikri, August 19th, 1959

  Dear G. W.,

  Yesterday D. J. and I spent the most wonderful night together! We had a free afternoon and evening from the tour and managed to slip away from the group unnoticed. We drove over bumpy roads to Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned palace city near Agra. Beautiful Mughal architecture, all red sandstone, quiet—almost like a ghost town—and very romantic! We took a lovely bungalow for the night in a nearby guesthouse, completely private and anonymous. We were invisible and safe, hidden from the world and its prying eyes, if only for one night. It was even better than Istanbul, because this time there wasn’t a soul we knew or who knew us. There was no sneaking around. It felt like we were married, and I didn’t want it to end!

  We drove back to join the group in Agra early the next morning and arrived just before they left for Jaipur. Close call!

  Love, J. S.

  It was late—after midnight—and Bernadette was not happy to see me leave. I reassured her she’d be all right, that the Whites would be back the next day. I said goodnight and stepped out into the cold air. Bernadette closed the door behind me and bolted it shut. As I drove away, I could see she’d left all the lights on.

  Back at the Revere, I threw myself onto the bed around one thirty. Not much of a sleeper to begin with, I couldn’t nod off at all and ended up staring at the ceiling in a very empty bed.

  To pass the hours and to distract myself, I parsed the postcard from India, word by word. Were Phyllis and Nichols the liars after all? I had found the proof, it seemed, in Jordan’s own handwriting. “D. J.” was wonderful. “D. J.” took her to the hospital when she was sick. No, not hospital, clinic. Did the difference matter? How would a white-bread bookworm subject to hyperventilation manage to know India like the back of his hand? What was the significance of highlighting the word penny? Obviously a private joke between the two girls, but what did it mean? D. J., J. S., G. W. . . . Why initials? Just a personal quirk, or more subtle signaling across oceans? I, too, wrote notes for articles in the same manner, using initials as shorthand whenever possible. Then I remembered a note I had scribbled in my book earlier that afternoon. “Does D. J. have a child?” David Jerrold: D. J.? Ginny White: G. W.; Jordan Shaw: J. S.; D. J. Nichols: D. J. N. . . .

  I climbed out of bed and retrieved a pencil and paper from my purse. I plotted out the initials of everyone I’d met who’d known Jordan. Tom Quint: T. Q.; Julio Hernandez: J. H.; Pukey Boyle: P. B.; Ginny White: G. W.; Glenda Whalen: G. W.; Greg Hewert: G. H.; Franny Bartolo: F. B. None matched, none made any sense. And now I had two G. W.s, though there was no confusion on that score in the postcard. D. J. had to be Jerrold or Nichols, but what was the penny?

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1960

  Thursday morning, I was awakened by a banging on my door. I had hung the Do Not Disturb sign the night before and cursed the idiot who couldn’t read plain English. I pulled on a robe and shuffled to open the door. Detective Morrissey was leaning against the jam. Why did he always show up when I was looking my worst?

  I invited him in and took a seat on my bed. He pulled up a chair and sat down before me.

  “You were supposed to call me when you found a room,” he said. “Where were you last night?”

  Face-to-face with the handsome detective, I tried to arrange my unruly hair, which was always a battle in the morning.

  “I was at Virginia White’s house,” I said.

  “But there’s no one there but the housekeeper.”

  “Do you have something against domestics?” I asked.

  “My mother was a domestic,” he said, shutting me up. “When did you get back here?”

  “About a quarter past one. But you didn’t come here to ask me that.”

  “Smart girl. So why do you have a sudden interest in the School of Engineering?” he asked. “Your girl studied languages, didn’t she?”

  “That’s right. How did you know about the Engineering Department?”
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  “We got around to it eventually,” he said. “No thanks to you. Jordan Shaw’s dean told us she was interested in studying engineering after graduation. Said she was spending a lot of time over there.”

  “Good work, Morrissey.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need a girl reporter to keep my score. My question for you is how did you beat me to the punch by more than twelve hours?”

  “Her father mentioned she wanted to study engineering, but I never would have followed up on it if I hadn’t seen this fellow walk right past me on College Avenue yesterday.”

  I handed the well-traveled snapshot to the detective and pointed out D. J. Nichols.

  Morrissey grunted. “Funny, I was just going to ask you about this guy, Nichols.”

  “You know him?”

  “I saw his picture just before I came over here. He’s gone missing.”

  “What happened?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “One of my men went to talk to him last night, only someone broke into his digs. Trashed the place like they were looking for something.”

  “What about his wife and kid?”

  “In New York visiting her folks,” he said. “We can’t find Nichols anywhere. Either someone was looking for him and found him, or he’s in hiding.”

  I described the unexpected visit the evening before, Nichols’s fears, and my own frustrations at dealing with the Tufts Engineering Department. Someone had tried to set up Nichols the day before, making him out to be a Don Juan to the ladies and a galley overseer to his fellow graduate students. Now he was missing—apparently—and I began to reconsider the indifferent advice I’d given him the night before.

  Morrissey filled me in on the results of Ginny White’s autopsy—killed by at least three sharp blows to the back of the head—and the five sets of fingerprints collected in her apartment: Ginny’s, Jordan’s, and three unknowns. No other wounds on her body, and nothing missing from her effects. He said the coroner had fixed the time of death somewhere between late Saturday night and Sunday noon.

  “We’ll check the unknown prints against Nichols’s,” he said. “Any idea who the others might belong to?”

  “How about David Jerrold?”

  “Him? He hasn’t moved from his apartment since just after Thanksgiving.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “He’s been under police protection for almost a week,” said the cop. “Filed a complaint about harassing phone calls and threats last Saturday night.”

  This was news to me. “Who threatened him?”

  Morrissey pursed his lips in a mocking grimace. “If we knew that, we’d arrest the guy, wouldn’t we, and Jerrold could go feed the ducks in the Common.”

  I told him of my suspicions that Jerrold and Jordan had been having an affair, possibly until the very night of her death: Friday. I told him about the letter and postcard I’d read at Ginny’s house but made no mention of the one I’d stolen from Jordan’s room.

  “I need to know more about Jerrold,” I said. “He wouldn’t talk to me yesterday.”

  “Why don’t you get yourself prettied up and come with me to Medford?” asked Morrissey. “I got a warrant to look through some records at Tufts. I don’t mind if you tag along.”

  “I’d love to. Would you be kind enough to wait outside while I dress?”

  He looked me up and down, smiled a bit hungrily, which I liked, and said he didn’t mind waiting here. I pushed him to the door, and he complied.

  I would have preferred to dig through Jordan’s file, but Morrissey didn’t have a warrant for that. He was more interested in the engineers. I found D. J. Nichols’s file first and perused it for ten minutes. He was born in Los Angeles, matriculated into Stanford at fifteen, had perfect scores on all boards, and was admitted as a PhD candidate at Tufts in 1954. His transcript was blanketed with top scores and special mentions. I came across academic evaluation forms, nearly all of which sang Nichols’s praises as the most highly motivated and competent graduate in recent memory. His mathematical skills qualified as genius, according to Professor Benjamin. The only sour note in the file was sounded by David Jerrold, who wrote that Nichols, although talented and superbly trained, lacked the vision to become a great chemical engineer.

  I moved on to Jerrold’s file, which overflowed with vouchers and reimbursement forms. The receipts left a trail of dinners with visiting professors, honoraria for lectures, and lab supplies. My antipathy for him aside, I still figured he was taking the university for an extra ten bucks at every turn. But what caught my eye was one receipt on thin, brownish paper, stamped three times in different colors, detailing an expenditure of 232 Indian rupees ($48.52, quite a large sum) for treatment at the P. R. Varma Medical Clinic in Delhi, India. The date was August 14, 1959.

  There was no information about a wife or a son in the file, but why should there have been? Among the papers, I found a copy of a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, confirming his status as a permanent resident alien. It was dated April 1959. I jotted down the permit number and made a note to make some inquiries.

  I spotted the name Prakash Singh on a folder near the back. The file was thin, though he’d been in the country more than two years. There was a mention of an unofficial reprimand for leveling an accusation against another student. There were no details. His academic evaluations were as dismal as Nichols’s were brilliant. I gathered that Professor Benjamin had decided to terminate him when David Jerrold intervened on his behalf. In fact, the lone dissenting opinion on Roy was provided by Jerrold, who acknowledged Singh was a poor student, but one who showed flashes of brilliance. From what I gathered, only Jerrold’s review—dated September 5, 1960—had saved Roy from being sent home.

  The police raid on the department’s files caused a great stir. When Morrissey and I surfaced from the records room, a crowd of students and faculty was waiting for us. Most were curious, but others were downright offended we had nosed through their files. I noticed the absence of David Jerrold, Roy, and the other foreign students I had seen the day before.

  While Morrissey interviewed Benjamin, I asked anyone who would stand still about Jordan Shaw. One young man said he knew her, but the hostile eyes trained on us convinced him to shut up. No one would talk about D. J. Nichols either, except one chubby student who implied that I’d had something to do with his disappearance. When I asked where Roy was, all I got were icy glares. This was a spooky place.

  Morrissey and I chatted on the steps outside the Engineering Department, and I asked him if he wanted to come with me to New Holland to pursue the case; I was planning on leaving later that afternoon.

  “I’ll take a rain check,” he said, and I felt a twinge of disappointment. “It looks like our killer is here in Boston.”

  “Could be,” I said. “If there’s only one.”

  “You think there’s two?”

  “Could be. Different MO on each murder.”

  “Different circumstances might explain that, but I’ll keep an open mind. I’ll let you know if there’s news. You do the same.”

  He offered me his rough hand, and I took it in mine. He held on for a moment when I tried to let go and looked at me from the corner of an eye.

  “You were in that apartment quite a while before we got there,” he said. “What’d you do to keep busy?”

  “I threw up,” I offered meekly, not sure he’d swallow it.

  Morrissey stared into my eyes a little longer, and I didn’t know where to look or what to say. Then, finally, he released my hand, turned slowly, and trudged across the green. I drew a breath and watched him go.

  “Miss Stone.” A familiar voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Hello, Roy,” I said.

  “I’ve just heard about Mr. Nichols. What happened?”

  He walked with me toward my car as I filled him in on the latest. I found his surprise and grief ironic. He had, after all, tried to lead me in all the wrong directions the day before.
I wanted to see where he might take me this day. He asked if the police had any theories on why someone would want to ransack Nichols’s flat. I shrugged my shoulders, and we walked on.

  “I’ve got a question for you, Roy,” I said as we reached my car. “Your friend Jerrold: Do you have any idea why he would want police protection?”

  “He must be afraid for his family after these murders.”

  “But the police have been protecting him since last Saturday, when he didn’t even know about the first murder.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” he said, wagging his head again in that strange way. I opened the car door and climbed in. “Unless . . .”

  I waited. I didn’t trust him, but he obviously wanted me to ask.

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, there is a student you may wish to talk to. His name is Hakim Mohammed.”

  “What will he tell me?”

  “That I can’t say. Just talk to him, but don’t mention my name. Hakim is Pakistani, you see, and we are not friendly.”

  He smiled at me, wagged his head, then sauntered away, leaving me to ponder this new information.

  Before searching out Hakim, I phoned the local INS office. Two referrals and one transfer later, I was connected to Gloria, a functionary in the records bureau in Boston. It’s remarkable how much information is available over the phone, if you just ask nicely. After a brief search through some files, Gloria told me she had Mr. Jerrold’s dossier in front of her.

  “British subject,” she began. “First came to the United States in 1946, immigrated in 1952, permanent alien status . . .”

  “Yes, I know he’s English,” I said.

  “Yes and no, Miss Stone. Mr. Jerrold is a British subject, but he’s never lived in England.”

  “Where did he come from, then?”

  “According to my records, he was born January 12, 1918, in Calcutta, India, and lived there until the war, when he served in the Corps of Royal Engineers in Burma. Then in 1946 he obtained a visa to study at the University of Chicago.”