Though Durbin tried to stand taller, the reverend towered over him, and the president’s voice was high and reedy. “You have come,” he said, “to challenge our consciences. I welcome that, and make two promises. First, we will ensure that this is a safe place for students of all origins, offering those opportunities that our society all too often forecloses. As of next fall, the Angela Hall Memorial Scholarship program will offer four years at Caldwell College—free tuition and room and board—to worthy minority students.”
At the tepid applause, Durbin raised a hand. “I recognize that we gave such an opportunity to Angela. I recognize that we failed her.” His voice grew firmer. “It will never happen again. And we will do everything we can to help the authorities find the perpetrator of this loathsome crime—whoever and wherever they may be.”
The applause, deeper now, mingled with an outcry of a crowd in search of justice. As a black-and-white placard of Angela’s high school graduation picture thrust from their midst, a pleasant-looking man took the microphone from Durbin.
Dressed in a suit and tie, he had a ruddy complexion and russet hair and projected an air of calm. “I’m Dave Farragher,” he said, “the prosecutor for Wayne County. I’ve come to assure you that we are working night and day to solve this terrible murder.” He paused, his gaze sweeping the crowd, focused on the video cameras. “We expect to have an announcement soon—”
For four days, the authorities had said nothing. Now Mark felt an invisible web enveloping Steve Tillman. Unable to repress the thought, he murmured to Joe, “I think Steve’s in trouble.”
“I know he is.” When Joe turned toward him, his eyes held a pleading look Mark had never seen before. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”
JOE SUGGESTED THE Carriage House, a wood-paneled restaurant-bar long favored by students and locals that provided booths where patrons could talk in relative privacy. He sat across from Mark with slumped shoulders and a look of troubled abstraction, as though burdened by the weight of his own thoughts. When Mark ordered a beer, Joe asked the waitress for a Diet Coke on ice.
“No beer?” Mark asked.
He meant it as a casual remark. But Joe stared at the table. “I don’t feel like it. I may never feel like it again.” He looked up at Mark. “I’m an asshole when I drink.”
Joe’s expression, more often cynical or superior, was so vulnerable that his practiced veneer of prep school toughness vanished. He seemed to expect a response. “Sometimes,” Mark agreed.
Joe nodded slowly. Cautiously, he asked. “How was I at that party?”
Mark eyed him with puzzled skepticism. “You don’t remember?”
Joe winced. Removing his glasses, he wiped the lenses with a paper napkin, as though to improve his vision. “Kind of.” He met Mark’s eyes again. “I shouldn’t drink at all, should I?”
Weighing his response, Mark reflected on the mercurial relationship among Joe’s personae: the supercilious but amusing child of privilege; the wounded son of an angry father; the abrasive, abusive drunk. Why, Mark wondered, were he and Joe so different when both their childhoods had been train wrecks? Maybe it was innate; maybe it was that Mark had Lionel Farr. Or maybe it was that his own parents, unlike Joe’s, were equals in their irrationality and rage. “When you don’t drink,” Mark responded evenly, “you’re a good guy. When you do, you’re more than an asshole—you’re dangerous. I don’t know you anymore.” Mark paused, then decided to take a chance. “Maybe I’m meeting your father, Joe. The guy who kicked the shit out of Mom.”
Eyes closing, Joe became very still. Mark felt his friend withdrawing to another place—some bad memory or deep within his most hidden thoughts. Then he opened his eyes again. Softly, he said, “I don’t want to know that person anymore.”
The statement sounded literal, the expression of a strong desire—even a need—to exorcise something within himself that Joe despised and feared. Mark felt a troubling shadow pass between them, his own unease about what lay beneath his friend’s confession. Then Joe said with quiet fervor, “I need to make someone a promise, Mark. I’ve chosen you.”
Mark cocked his head. “Not Laurie?”
A flicker of emotion—perhaps fear, perhaps shame—crossed Joe’s face. “Too late.” He put his hand on Mark’s wrist, as though establishing a bond. “My old man’s dead now. From now until I die, I’m never taking another drink.”
“I believe you.”
In truth, Mark was not sure. But Joe gave him a look of deep relief, as though Mark had absolved him. “Thanks, man. I mean it. I know the last few days have been hard for you.”
Now it was Mark who stared at the table. At length he said, “I keep remembering her face.” He paused, then finished in a monotone: “I’d never seen anyone dead before. All I can think is that no one should die that way.”
Joe grimaced. “She looked bad, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
Through his own discomfort, Mark wondered what lay behind the question—compassion, morbid curiosity, or something deeper. Then Joe asked, “The night she died, when was the last time you saw Tillman?”
Mark met his eyes again. “When he left with her.”
“What did I do?”
“You ran after them. After they got in Steve’s car, you just disappeared.”
Joe contemplated the remnants of his Coke. “I guess I went back to the dorm. I was asleep when the cops started pounding on the door.”
“That’s what Steve says, too.”
Joe touched his eyes. “There’s something else about that night,” he said at last.
Once more, Mark felt pinpricks on his skin. “About Steve?”
“Yeah. I saw him.”
“With Angela?”
Joe shook his head. “In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling like I was about to puke. So I went to the window and cracked it open, trying to suck in air.”
Mark tried to envision this. Joe’s room was on the second floor, a level above Mark’s and Steve’s. Save for lights at the entry to the dorm section, the stadium at night was dark. “And?” Mark prodded.
“Steve was outside.” Joe’s eyes narrowed, as though refocusing his memory. “It was only a second or two. But I could see it was him, passing through the light as he came toward the stadium. No one else limps like that.” His face became grim. “I heard his key, the downstairs door opening, then closing.”
Mark tried to gauge the importance of this. “Could you tell where he was coming from?”
“He was outside, that’s all. Like I said, it was only a few seconds.”
“Do you know what time it was?”
“Yeah, ’cause I remember looking at the clock. It was a little after three.”
From the reluctance in his voice, Mark knew that Joe understood the danger inherent in his story—were Steve outside the stadium, he could have left with Angela, potentially placing him near the Spire. Then what neither Joe nor the police knew hit Mark with a jolt. At 3:04, Mark had called Steve’s room, then called again; for whatever reason, his friend had not answered.
A flush was spreading across Joe’s face. “Thing is, I told the cops about it.”
Mark stared at him. In a pleading tone, Joe said, “Don’t tell anyone at the house, okay? They’ll feel like I ratted Steve out. But you just don’t lie to those guys.”
Unless you had good reason to lie, Mark thought. But now he had an uneasy conscience of his own: uncertain of its meaning, certain only of the damage it might do, he could not bring himself to tell anyone about his phone call.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Mark promised.
Joe seemed both somber and relieved. “Let’s go up to the house,” he said abruptly. “We’re almost late for dinner.”
WITH THE HELP of their fraternity brothers, Joe had liberated his Miata from the library. Silent, they drove from downtown Wayne to the DBE house, parking close to the rear steps, where, in what Mark thought of as a more innocent time, he and three inebriated friends had l
ifted Joe’s convertible.
Sliding out of the passenger seat, Mark saw the back doors of their fraternity house open.
Framed in the doorway, Steve Tillman was flanked by two policemen, one at each elbow. Steve’s hands were cuffed behind him. Stunned, Mark saw that one of the cops was their former teammate George Garrison, Angela’s high school friend.
At the head of the steps, Steve stumbled, his damaged knee buckling. When he saw Mark, his mouth twisted in an odd, chagrined smile, as though he had been busted with a nickel bag of pot. On the other side of the car, Joe softly murmured, “Jesus . . .”
Mark wanted to say something. Instead, he froze, paralyzed by confusion and what he had learned from Joe. With the force of a blow, Mark understood that their lives had changed in a profound and frightening way.
The police trundled Steve into a squad car. Without speaking to Joe, Mark hurried off to the only place he could go for help.
HE ARRIVED AT Lionel Farr’s out of breath, pursued by his memory of running there only days before. To his surprise, Taylor answered the door.
Unlike most adolescents, she seemed to be skipping the gawky stage: at eleven, Taylor was part child, part the dark-haired beauty prefigured by her mother. But already she had the preternatural seriousness, sometimes disconcerting to Mark, of an adult guarding her private thoughts. Anne had dryly remarked that Taylor reserved her brightest smiles for Mark, practicing for when boys her age became halfway human, and sometimes it seemed so. But tonight the girl simply stared at him, her eyes so filled with sorrow that he guessed she must know why he had come.
“Is your dad home?” he asked.
Reluctantly, Taylor opened the door, inching aside.
Farr sat beside his wife in the living room. Though Anne greeted him pleasantly, her voice was soft, her face ashen. Farr looked tired; all the energy and resolve Mark had seen since Angela’s death seemed to have drained from him. In a voice more weary than welcoming, he asked, “What is it, Mark?”
“They’ve arrested Steve.”
Anne looked down. Standing, Farr touched her shoulder, an overt gesture of tenderness Mark had seldom seen from him. “Let’s talk in the den,” Farr said.
WHEN FARR SAT across from him, Mark thought briefly of his first dinner here, the night that had changed his life. But now Farr’s manner was far less expansive. Bluntly, he said, “You must have felt as if you were walking into a séance. The trouble is that Anne’s not well.”
Despite his own anxiety, Mark was startled. “Is she okay?”
“In a manner of speaking. At least for now.” Farr’s voice softened. “Anne has a heart condition. It’s something all three of us live with, though Taylor is simply afraid of her mother dying. Sometimes Anne’s blood pressure drops so precipitously that she passes out. In truth, that’s one of her lesser problems. But today Taylor found Anne on the kitchen floor and thought that she was dead.”
This explained Taylor’s greeting, Mark thought—in fact, it might explain much more about her. “So,” Farr said in a flat voice, “they’ve decided Steve’s the one. I know how that must upset you.”
Mark felt deflated. “I think he needs a lawyer.”
“I’m quite sure he does.” Watching Mark’s face, Farr inquired, “Are you so sure he didn’t kill her? I learned long ago how little we know about others, even those we’re certain we know well. You also know nothing about what may have happened between those two. People can do strange things when liquor unleashes their darker natures.”
Mark felt himself resist this. “That’s not Steve.”
“Then who did this?” Farr parried. “Murder by strangulation is not an impulsive act. It took someone a long time to suffocate her like that.”
Farr’s voice betrayed an undertone of anger. Chastened, Mark realized that Farr had felt closer to Angela than to Steve, and had admired her far more. It was even possible, Mark thought, that his own presence reminded Farr of why Steve had been given a scholarship, and that, with Angela dead, Farr bitterly regretted his role. “Steve’s my friend,” Mark said. “His parents took me in. I’ve got to help him somehow.”
Farr regarded him closely. “Discussing this is difficult,” he said at length, “given my relationship to the school and my feelings about Angela. But if Steve’s a murderer, it’s quite certain he was impaired. That’s the basis for some sort of defense. I suppose it’s even possible that he’s innocent.”
Mark felt the whipsaw of his own doubt, the secret lodged within him. He waited for Farr to speak again. “I know a decent lawyer in town,” Farr continued. “Griffin Nordlinger. I expect he might do better than some overworked state public defender from who knows where. At least Griff might be good for some advice. I’ll see if he’ll agree to visit your friend.”
The new reality hit Mark: Steve was in jail now, his expulsion from Caldwell certain. It felt like another death.
CROSSING THE DARKENED campus, Mark reached the stadium filled with apprehension and despair.
He found Joe in the recreation room, watching a local TV station. Dave Farragher spoke from behind a podium. “With this arrest,” the prosecutor said firmly, “our community and the college can start to feel safe again.”
Standing to one side, Mark regarded Joe’s face in profile. Neither acknowledged the other’s presence.
8
“K
EEP MOVING FORWARD,” FARR URGED MARK MORE THAN once. “All you control is whether you do your damnedest to get into Yale Law School. Don’t let Angela’s murder kill your dreams as well.”
Days became weeks, then months. Mark studied relentlessly. He rarely dated, and avoided parties altogether. He told no one about Joe’s story, or the phone calls Steve had failed to answer. He learned nothing more about the case against his friend.
The trial was set for September, four months after the graduation ceremonies that would no longer include Steve Tillman or Angela Hall. Mark never discussed the impending trial with Joe Betts; they seldom spoke at all. For Mark, except for his studies, college was done. His main activity beyond class was visiting Steve at the county jail.
Separated by Plexiglas, they met every Sunday, speaking through miniature microphones. Mark offered encouragement; sometimes they reminisced. But Steve’s lawyer, Griffin Nordlinger, had forbidden him to discuss the charges in any detail. Perhaps he could not have, Mark thought; unless Steve was lying, he seemed to live in a fugue state, unable to recall or reconstruct the events that now controlled his fate. He seemed crushed by the fear of never being free. “Just think,” Steve murmured. “That may be the last time I ever touch a woman, and I can barely remember it.”
Mark did not know how to respond. Once again, he thought of his three o’clock phone calls.
Winter passed; spring came. And then, in April, Mark’s senior year became cemented in his mind as the year of death.
IT WAS A week before Mark expected to hear from Yale. He walked into Lionel Farr’s nine o’clock Philosophy of Mind class, a choice driven less by its subject matter than by a desire to experience, for one final time, the stimulation that had first drawn him to Caldwell. But another professor, Michael Dunn, appeared—Farr had been called home abruptly, interrupting his eight o’clock class. Anne was dead; Farr’s classes were canceled until further notice.
Mark waited until late afternoon, thinking of Farr and Taylor, struggling to accept that Anne had died. Then he went to their home unannounced, hoping that Farr would not take it amiss.
Farr himself answered. His gaze was spectral, although he managed to summon a wispy smile. His voice was unusually gentle. “Hello, Mark. It’s good of you to come.”
Awkwardly standing on the porch, Mark shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m just worried about you, that’s all. And Taylor.”
“Her mother would thank you for that.” Pain surfaced in his eyes. “Taylor found her, Mark. Her deepest fear became real.”
The image of Taylor discovering Anne sent a frisson
through Mark. He tried to imagine how she must feel, a twelve-year-old girl facing life without her mother. “Is there anything I can do?” he finally asked. “Maybe in a couple of days, I can take Taylor somewhere.”
Farr placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Mark. Right now she’s sedated, or I’d let you see her—she’s very fond of you. But her grandparents are coming to help care for her.”
Slowly, Mark nodded. “I only wish there was some way I could help. All three of you mean a lot to me.”
“And you to us.” Farr’s grip on Mark’s shoulder tightened, then relaxed. “There’ll be a memorial service, I’m sure. We’ll hope to see you then.”
THEY HELD THE service in the shadow of the Spire.
Perhaps this was Farr’s true memorial to Anne, Mark reflected, allowing her death to rededicate this site through a commemoration that, however premature, had occurred in the natural order of things. The day was breezy and pleasant; the lawn chairs were filled with family and faculty and students, a scattering of friends from Wayne and elsewhere. Sitting with Joe Betts and Rusty Clark, Mark was glad of this. But the Episcopal service performed by the school chaplain, while consistent with Anne’s eastern heritage, came to Mark as a meaningless drone, divorced from life on earth or the woman who no longer lived here.
“I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . .”
Farr sat with Anne’s parents, two dignified and stoic New Englanders. Anne’s mother held her granddaughter’s hand. Taylor looked blank, as though she, like her mother, had gone elsewhere. The chaplain’s litany continued.
“I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God . . .”
The Spire Page 8
