The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  THEY STOPPED BY Garrison’s squad car. “So,” the chief said, “life’s been good for you. At least mostly.”

  “Mostly. And for you. You’re pretty young to be chief.”

  Garrison gave him the same measured smile. “And you’re pretty young to be president of anything. As for me, the mayor seems to think I’ve got more to offer than just police work. I’m a big believer in community relations, and our black and white communities still need some relating.”

  It was strange, Darrow thought: in the social pattern of Wayne, he and Garrison had lived parallel lives, been classmates and teammates without knowing each other well. The last time Darrow had seen him—as a young cop, standing over the body of a murdered girl he had known far better than Darrow had—underscored their separateness. Now both had new and demanding jobs, entrusted to them, at least in part, because of what they symbolized. Curious, Darrow asked, “What’s it like to be a cop in the town where you grew up?”

  Garrison shrugged. “You know this place. The black folks live on the southeast side, the middle-class whites in the northwest, blue-collar whites in between. Only the Hispanics are new, and they keep to themselves, too. A lot of them are illegals and don’t want anything to do with the police.” Garrison’s tone was dispassionate. “In certain ways the separation helps—you don’t get a lot of overt conflict. The problem is that blacks and whites and Hispanics don’t talk to one another much, even when they need to. That makes my life as chief a little harder.”

  “Was it hard for you to get the job?”

  Garrison considered his answer. “What was hard, at first, was being the only black guy on the force. Bust a drunken white guy and he’d call me ‘nigger,’ trying to get a rise. Older white folks forgot my name and left messages for ‘the colored officer.’ As for blacks, a fair number treated my questions like accusations; kids didn’t wave when I drove through the old ’hood; when I arrested some badass, no matter for what, it was like he couldn’t believe a brother was doing this to him. But my colleagues were always pretty good—we’re mostly college graduates, even if some of us went at night, and all of us went through psychological testing before they hired us. We’ve even got a woman now. All in all, the people on the force seem to accept me fine. But among my own, I still tread a little lighter.”

  In sixteen years, Darrow reflected, George Garrison seemed to have become a solid man—philosophical, pragmatic, measured, and observant. Perhaps those qualities had always been there and the young Mark Darrow had seen them less clearly. Casually, Darrow asked, “Ever go by the Alibi Club?”

  Garrison looked at him harder; to Darrow, the quiet stare suggested that they were edging toward more difficult subjects. In the same even tone, the chief said, “Now and then. Mrs. Hall’s attitude is still that the club takes care of its own problems until there’s something they can’t handle. Not much of that. You remember Hugo.”

  Darrow smiled. “The doorman. He was big enough to block the sun.”

  “Yeah. Second year on the job they sent me out there to bust him for a stack of parking tickets he’d never paid.” Garrison shook his head. “No way I wanted to do that at the club. So I just told Hugo he ought to come on down in the next week or so, pay those suckers off. For a while he just looks at me, sitting in that chair like a potentate receiving an ambassador from China. Then he nods and tells me he appreciates my attitude.

  “A couple of days later, he paid off the tickets. Ever since, if I have to go to the club, Hugo says, ‘I got your back, boy.’ No more ‘I smell bacon’ from the guys drinking at the bar—on account of Hugo, everyone’s real polite.” His tone became pointed. “It helps that anyone who knows Mrs. Hall also knows that after Angela died, I was there for her. Carl wasn’t much use.”

  Darrow nodded. “So,” Garrison said, “you just wondering about life in Wayne, or is there something more particular?”

  Darrow considered his answer. “I ran into Carl the other day, which piqued my curiosity. What’s with Carl’s Mercedes?”

  Garrison’s smile was no smile at all. “Carl,” he answered, “is chief executive officer of a small but successful business.”

  “The same business?”

  “More or less. Also the same clientele, including kids from Caldwell with just enough brains to know that the college still protects its own.” Once more Garrison spoke with a slight edge. “Kind of like the kids at the last party Angela ever went to. Only change is her brother’s product line. Back then it was weed and powder cocaine; now Carl’s branched off into heroin. The irony here, in terms of Caldwell, is that we think Carl was the one selling smack to Clark Durbin’s boy.”

  “A sad case,” Darrow remarked. “Not to mention expensive—Clark’s rehab bills for his son ran over a hundred thousand.”

  Garrison nodded. “I heard. Guess that was part of why his fingers got so light.”

  “So people think. You ever try to shut Carl down?”

  “If we could, we would. But Carl’s still smart. He communicates by prepaid cell phones, uses different stash houses to conceal his drugs. Living in a small town, he’s got a nose for narcs or anyone wearing a wire. Plus he gets his heroin through illegals, who can’t drop the dime on him without getting deported.” Garrison eyed the asphalt at their feet. “Truth is, Carl’s not exactly a law enforcement priority.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “We don’t have unlimited manpower. So we care less about the drugs than the trouble they cause for law-abiding citizens.” Garrison looked up again. “That’s why we focus on crystal meth and crack cocaine, drugs that make users crazy and violent—we don’t want them raping, mugging, and killing innocent folks at random. So we keep after the scum that sells that shit. That’s another way Carl’s smart: the product he peddles doesn’t cause his clients to kill anyone. Except maybe themselves.”

  Darrow considered this. “I’d think running a cash business would create a problem for him. That’s how the feds got Al Capone—not murder but tax evasion. I guess Carl must launder his profits through the Alibi Club.”

  “That’s what we assume. You can also bet he’s put that Mercedes in someone else’s name.” Garrison scowled. “In recent years, it seems like Carl’s expanded his operation a whole lot: buying more, selling more—heroin, especially. The guy who runs the county’s drug task force thinks Carl got financing from somewhere. But no one has the time or resources to try and nail that down.”

  “A shame.”

  “I suppose. But so many things are.” Garrison’s expression seemed to harden. “I’m standing here, looking at you. Do you know what I see? Not the quarterback for the Wayne Generals or even the president of Caldwell College. I see you standing over her body. Then I look at you again, and all I see is Tillman.”

  Darrow met his gaze. “That was a bad morning, after a bad night. Lives changed.”

  “Especially hers.” Garrison’s tone was quiet. “Except for my wife, she was the sweetest and smartest girl I ever knew. Leaving out lethal injection, your friend got what he deserved.”

  Darrow shoved his hands into his pockets. “I went to see him last Sunday. I’m not so sure he’s glad to be alive.”

  “Then I guess I’m glad he is.”

  “Are you that sure he killed her?”

  Garrison’s eyes widened in a pantomime of astonishment. “Guess no one told you about the trial.”

  “Not in detail, no.”

  “That’s where they present evidence,” Garrison said caustically. “Sort of like they taught you about in law school. According to the evidence, Steve Tillman was a murderer with a mile-wide streak of racism.”

  “Steve was thoughtless,” Darrow retorted. “He said cruel or stupid things by rote, like a lot of people in Wayne. None of whom are murderers.”

  “Most of whom,” Garrison shot back, “probably don’t have weird pathologies about sex between blacks and whites.” He paused, then spoke more calmly. “After you found Angela, the force kept me out of i
t—didn’t want me involved in a case where I’d gone out with the victim, even if it was only high school. But there was plenty of evidence on how Tillman felt toward us without me telling the jury about the date I didn’t have. The one with your buddy’s kid sister.”

  “Mary?”

  “You never heard about that? That surprises me some, seeing how you lived with him. But then maybe Tillman’s racist talk was all white noise to you.” Garrison paused, then spoke with the same weary patience. “Senior year, I asked Mary out. She said yes—we liked each other, so why not? Then Steve pulled me aside after practice and said, ‘Keep your black hands off my sister.’ He looked and sounded like whatever he imagined us doing made him sick.

  “Mary never went out with me—after that, she couldn’t. But that didn’t keep Tillman from wanting Angela.” Garrison’s voice was softer yet. “Maybe after sex, he felt so sick that he had to kill her. All I know is that he did. Funny he can’t remember.”

  “What Steve says he can’t remember,” Darrow answered, “is whatever happened in that room. Do you know for sure? I don’t. But I did know Steve, and I did see him with Angela. And I’m pretty damned sure that sexual revulsion was not Steve’s motive.”

  “No one knows,” Garrison said flatly. “And who cares now? You don’t need a motive to prove murder.”

  “It’s just more satisfying that way,” Darrow answered. “I wasn’t looking to pick a quarrel, George. But my feelings about this are more complicated than yours. If I knew for sure Steve killed her, then I could accept where he is.”

  Garrison put his hands on his hips. “Then let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago, at the high school, a white teacher started sleeping with a seventeen-year-old black girl. When the school found out, the girl claimed that he’d coerced her into sex in exchange for grades.

  “Maybe it happened that way, maybe it didn’t. But both blacks and whites got mighty riled. The man ended up losing his job, his wife, and his kid.” Garrison’s gaze was steady. “Suppose Tillman raped Angela. What would have happened to him if she’d lived to tell someone? Like with that teacher, nothing good.”

  “Did he rape her?”

  Garrison scowled. “There’s rape, and there’s rape. No one but Angela could say exactly what this was. But she couldn’t, could she?”

  Darrow had no answer. “Look,” Garrison said. “I wish you luck with being president. I’m sure you wish me luck being chief. I never thought you were a bad guy, and now we’ve both got our jobs to do, problems in the here and now. Why don’t we leave the past where it was.”

  Darrow nodded. Wayne’s chief of police extended his hand, shaking Darrow’s, and then they went their separate ways.

  7

  O

  N SUNDAY MORNING, DARROW DECIDED TO WALK through the residential part of campus, toward fraternity row.

  It was ten o’clock, and the slanting sunlight, warm and moist on his skin, presaged a hot, cloudless day. Taking a brick pathway past a colonial-style dormitory dating from the 1870s, Darrow had a sharp, sudden memory: a bright spring day, its warmth lingering into early evening, the light sound of women’s voices through a window as he passed this very dorm. Even then he had marked the moment, combining the irretrievable preciousness of a time soon to be lost with the promise of a future still ahead—in which a woman yet unknown to him might be taking a path that would someday merge with his. So much had happened since, for good or ill. But it was no use, at thirty-eight, to mourn his youth: he was still young, and he could hope that the best moments of his life waited for him yet.

  He tried to date the memory. Surely it had been late May, or perhaps even early June. Since that time, the school year had been shortened, cutting off the weeks to which the moment belonged. No doubt it made sense, from Caldwell’s perspective, to charge more tuition for less schooling. But the young Mark Darrow had savored the arrival of spring on campus: the greening of trees and the bright flowering of dogwoods; the careless interplay of young men and women outdoors as their clothing became lighter; a sense of awakening on campus that felt almost sensual. A long time ago, Darrow thought.

  FRATERNITY ROW WAS also much as Darrow recalled it; the trees around the grassy oval were somewhat fuller, the large brick houses sixteen years deeper into their aura of solidity and permanence. But while the SAE house across the street was, like most others, reasonably well maintained, the DBE house evoked the House of Usher: the white paint on the wooden trim was peeling; the scabrous lawn was pocked with crabgrass; and the screen of an upstairs window was askew, like an idiot’s glasses. Even had Darrow not suspected the cause, the portrait of decline was plain enough.

  In summer, the house would be manned by a skeleton crew of students. Chary of what he might find, Darrow walked inside.

  The living room was empty, the furniture worn. Darrow could have sworn that he had sat on that same couch when Steve and Joe had fought over Angela. For a moment Angela’s tipsy, poignant glance at him seemed as fresh as yesterday. As he gazed at the library, another flashback struck him: awakening in Joe’s Miata, blinking at the dial of its clock, and then, on the car phone, vainly trying to call Steve. His thoughts from that time, a sort of stupefied irritation, struck him as innocent compared to the guilt and uncertainty their memory surfaced now.

  Darrow went downstairs to the basement.

  There should have been ten tables, accommodating sixty or so college boys for dinner on any given night. But now there were only four. The tiles, worn and scuffed with dirt, were certainly the same tiles he had stood on when he and Angela had exchanged their final words.

  If you need someone to get you home, he’d said, I’m here.

  She had shaken her head, moving close to him. Gonna be a long night for me, I think. Then she had given him a brief kiss on the lips. You’re kind of sweet, Mark Darrow.

  Standing there alone, Darrow shook his head.

  Crossing the room, he peered into the kitchen. Laurie Shilts appeared in his mind, barely twenty-one. You don’t really know him, Mark. Deep down, Joe hates women.

  Briefly, Darrow closed his eyes. He tried to imagine Angela Hall, perhaps with the sheets pulled up around her, telling Steve that she had to leave. But he could not summon the image; it was not his memory. Nor, perhaps, was it Steve’s.

  Darrow went back upstairs.

  He stopped in the stairwell where he and Steve had drunk beer on the night of the party. It had still hurt Steve to walk; the knee injury had banished him from football one year before. And yet if he had strangled Angela in his room, Steve must have carried the dead weight of her body at least two lengths of a football field.

  Surely Steve’s lawyer had focused on this incongruity. And yet a jury had found him guilty.

  To George Garrison, and perhaps to the jury, Steve had been a racist. Maybe this was so. But his attitudes had always struck Darrow as rote village bigotry, more reflexive than embedded in Steve’s psyche. Garrison saw him differently. No doubt George had the right; most people changed with the eyes of the beholder. But few changed so completely or so tragically.

  Entering the second floor, Darrow glanced into the room where Joe had watched the video of Tonya Harding. To his surprise, it was occupied by a bulky kid watching ESPN. With a one-day growth of beard and what looked like barbecue sauce smeared on his T-shirt, he seemed in roughly the same state of disrepair as the house itself. He eyed the trim stranger in sport coat and blue jeans with a look of torpid wariness.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Darrow said. “But I used to live here. I guess that makes us fraternity brothers.”

  It took the kid a few seconds to compute this. “You’re President Darrow.”

  Darrow smiled. “So they tell me.”

  The boy got to his feet and shook Darrow’s hand. “I’m Skip Penton,” he said, summoning a sheepish grin. “I’m president of the DBEs.”

  “How’s it going?”

  The grin became a skeptical smile. “You can’t tell?”
/>   “I can guess. The house looks kind of sad.”

  “No help for it. When you guys were here, how many brothers in the chapter?”

  “Sixty-plus.”

  Skip grimaced. “We’re down to twenty-one. After that black girl was killed, everything changed. And when that guy Tillman was found guilty of murder, it sunk our reputation.”

  “Not to mention Steve’s,” Darrow answered mildly. “What happened was bad all the way around. Angela Hall was a good person, and Steve was my closest friend.”

  Skip seemed to consider his response. His tone mingled apology with grievance. “Whoever’s fault it was, we suffered for it. The school watches us like hawks. Except for hard-core loyalists like my dad, the alumni punted us too, like we were a pack of drunken, drug-crazed, racist murderers. Even on the weekend of the Lutheran game, they never come here anymore.”

  So this, too, had become part of house lore, repeated by its oral historians like the epic achievements of its athletes, or the famous “Nude Olympics” party of ’67, after which, it was said, three female guests turned up pregnant. But Darrow knew other stories, far more common but less often told, of loyalty and kindness and friendships made for life, like those he had once imagined having with Steve Tillman or Joe Betts—the good qualities encouraged, the frailties tolerated unless they needed to be addressed. And one of Darrow’s more recent memories involved the numerous and desperate appeals for help from chapter presidents, the latest being Skip’s letter, which Darrow had chosen to ignore. “How’s your maintenance budget?” Darrow asked.

  “A lot like the school’s. Only worse.”

  Ruefully, Darrow laughed. Then he took his checkbook from his coat pocket and, leaning on the desk, scrawled out a check for twenty thousand dollars before handing it to Skip. “This should cover painting, landscaping, and new furniture on the first floor. When I come back here this fall, I want to see them all.”