The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  It was next to the Greyhound bus station, a one-story building with the same red neon sign. As he entered he saw, sitting at the counter, a man in a windbreaker and another in the jacket of a bowling team drinking fruit drinks, a new offering since Darrow had last come here after his high school prom. But the place still smelled like the glazed doughnuts he no longer allowed himself to eat.

  A waitress in her fifties, peroxide-blond hair tightly curled, greeted him with a smile that lit her gaunt face. “You’re Mark Darrow,” she said.

  Darrow smiled. “Guilty. And you are . . .”

  “Pat Flynn. What can I get you?”

  “Black coffee. Wish I had room for a doughnut—after twenty years, I can still taste them.”

  Flynn laughed. “I’ve been here so long I smell like one. But they’re still good. Sure I can’t tempt you?”

  Darrow grinned. “ ‘You’re a long time dead,’ somebody once told me. So, sure.”

  She returned with coffee and a doughnut. “You’ve still got that same smile,” she informed him. “Guess you’re back to clean up this latest mess.”

  “That’s the idea. Really, this mess isn’t that bad.”

  At once Flynn became somber. “You mean no one died this time.”

  “Yeah.” Darrow took a sip of coffee. “That can’t have been easy for you, Pat.”

  She looked unsettled for a moment, and then the expression passed—Wayne was a small town, her role in Steve’s trial common knowledge. “All I said is what I saw. It wasn’t my place to say what it meant.” More sadly, she added, “Still, I remember Steve Tillman coming in here a few times. Always polite. Always friendly, the last person you’d imagine doing what he did. But that’s probably what all those dead girls thought about Ted Bundy, right up until his mask slipped.”

  Darrow eyed his doughnut. “You just don’t know, I guess. Anyhow, you never told them it was Steve.”

  “God, no. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d seen. It was all, like they say, circumstantial.” Her mouth formed a wispy smile. “Guess I watch too much Court TV. But his frat buddy’s the one who nailed him. I couldn’t have picked the guy I saw out of a two-man lineup.”

  “How’d you even happen to be there?”

  “It was late, past three o’clock, and I was so tired I could hardly see straight. My car was in the shop, so I decided to take a shortcut home.” She poured Darrow a refill of coffee. “I’d done that a couple of times before—to me it was better than walking through deserted streets. Anyone you’d meet might be out for no good reason, whereas—or so I thought—the campus would be empty. Dumb, huh?”

  “Not that anyone would have thought.” Darrow sipped his coffee. “Where were you when you saw him?”

  “Near College Hall, a fair distance from the Spire. There weren’t any lights there. But the moon was full, as I recall, and there weren’t any trees nearby to block the light. When I saw him, I just froze—half scared, half just surprised. At first I couldn’t see her at all.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He had his back to me. So I couldn’t tell what he was doing.”

  Darrow put the cup down. “I’m trying to envision this. If you were by Caldwell Chapel, and he had his back to you, then he must have been more or less facing in the direction of Steve Tillman’s dorm.”

  Flynn squinted, searching her memory. “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Which was closer to you, the Spire or the man you saw?”

  “The Spire.”

  “So he had his back to the Spire and was facing toward the dorm.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her eyes became wary. “He wasn’t coming from the dorm, if that’s what you mean.”

  Darrow gave her an easy smile. “I’m not sure what I mean. You watch too much Court TV; I’ve spent too much time in courtrooms.”

  Flynn’s face relaxed. “No, this is interesting. Thinking back, I don’t believe Steve Tillman’s lawyer asked me about all this.”

  Nordlinger had not, Darrow knew. “Could you make out what this guy was wearing?”

  “Some sort of overcoat, I thought. Seemed like I could only see his legs below the knee.”

  “When did you first realize that he was carrying a body?”

  Flynn glanced at her two other customers, assuring herself that they were content. “He turned sideways, sort of looking around. That was when I saw that he was cradling something—maybe a sack, is what I thought. Then he started to lay it down, and her arm sort of dangled.” Her voice turned thin. “That was spooky. I thought maybe the person was drunk. But when he laid her down, she didn’t move at all. The guy just hurried off, like he was afraid of being seen.”

  “Could you tell in which direction?”

  “No. Like I said, except for the moon it was dark. He disappeared in seconds.” She shook her head. “I still didn’t know what I’d seen. But it really creeped me out.”

  Darrow nodded in sympathy. “Other than thinking he wore a coat, what do you remember about him?”

  “That he was tall, and pretty slim, it seemed. Nothing else to remember. I couldn’t have told you his age, or whether he was black or white or Asian or had landed in Roswell, New Mexico.”

  “Or if he was wearing glasses?”

  “Nope. The police asked me that. If I couldn’t see his face, I sure couldn’t make out glasses.”

  “Guess not.” Darrow feigned thought, as though something had just occurred to him. “Was there anything funny about how he walked?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A limp, maybe.”

  Flynn considered this. “Not that I remember. Of course, his legs were mostly covered. Mainly, though, I just wanted to get out of there. So I did.”

  “Yeah. I would have, too.”

  Slowly, Flynn nodded, and then eyed his plate. “You going to eat your doughnut? Or you want a bag for that?”

  Darrow smiled. “How about a bag?” he said. “I’ll enjoy having it for breakfast.”

  16

  I

  T WAS CLOSE TO ELEVEN WHEN DARROW LEFT THE DONUT King—time, he supposed, for the normal thirty-eight-year-old college president to go home to his empty bed. Instead, still arranging and rearranging facts—the compulsion of an ex-lawyer and Steve Tillman’s onetime friend—he found himself heading for the Alibi Club.

  The neighborhood had not changed much: as with the rest of Wayne, on the southeast side the global economy was, at most, a rumor. As he approached the club, a clump of young men on a corner eyed his Porsche with envy and suspicion. Parking on the half-empty street, Darrow approached the door of the Alibi Club, feeling that he was about to turn back time.

  Hugo sat on his stool by the door, more massive than ever, his close-cropped hair turned white. His eyes widened at the sight of the newcomer, his mouth forming a grim smile of displeasure before he curtly nodded Darrow inside.

  In the darkness, the first thing that hit Darrow was the pulse of rap music. He half-expected to spot some white kids at the bar, where he once had perched, chatting with Angela, while Steve scored pot from her brother. Instead, the patrons appeared older—men and a few women drinking whiskey or beer and listening to a rapper who, if Darrow’s ear was good, might be Kanye West. The smell of cigarettes and beer evoked the DBE party on the night of Angela’s death; like prosperity, the anti-smoking movement had bypassed the neighborhood. But Farr’s campus control measures had clearly worked—the club was no longer a haven for underage would-be alcoholics from Caldwell College. Darrow was the only white man in the place.

  An older woman tended bar. Though Darrow had never seen Angela’s mother, he could not have mistaken her—slender, she had a faded version of Angela’s prettiness and grace. As with many black women in middle age, her eyes were older than her face, staring at Darrow with hostile weariness from a lineless mask. She held his gaze until he felt impelled to take a seat at the bar.

  As he did, two men at the other end shot him a glance. The woman approached him, look
ing hard into Darrow’s face. “So,” she said curtly. “Do ghosts drink liquor?”

  Darrow did not respond to this. “Hello, Mrs. Hall.”

  She laid her hands flat on the bar. “You’re the last person I’d expect to see here.”

  Darrow nodded slightly. “If that dredges up hard feelings, I apologize.”

  “Hard memories,” she said coldly. “You were one of the last to see my daughter alive, the first to see her dead. Except for your friend. I don’t need you to remind me of how she looked when he got through.”

  Darrow weighed his response. “I can’t claim to know how you feel, Mrs. Hall. But Angela and I were becoming friends. How she died still makes no sense to me.”

  She stared at him, repelling sympathy. “Do you want a drink, or not?”

  “Cutty Sark, neat.” Darrow was glad he had not eaten the doughnut.

  After a time, she brought him his scotch, then watched him take a sip. “What made no sense?” she demanded.

  “Something feels like it’s missing.” Darrow hesitated. “The night I saw her, she was drinking to get drunk. I didn’t know her that well, but it bothered me enough to offer to drive her home.”

  Her voice softened slightly. “Lord knows I wish you had.”

  “She didn’t want to go. It was like she was on a mission that night, but wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Maybe you’re seeing a mystery where there was no mystery.” Maggie Hall looked around herself, then back at Darrow, a sudden film appearing in her eyes. “Maybe, for once, my daughter wanted to escape. That’s nothing to die over.”

  Darrow cocked his head. “Escape from what, Mrs. Hall?”

  “From being so good all the time. If you knew her at all, you must know that much—working to meet expenses, studying late at night to keep from losing her scholarship, always scared to death of failure.”

  “Or just driven to succeed. I know she was set on going to a good law school.”

  Maggie Hall’s eyes grew distant. “That was always her dream. Angela was the child with dreams.”

  The last was spoken with deep sadness, perhaps a hint of disdain for the child who had survived. Softly, Darrow said, “Still, working like that had been her life for all four years. Did something happen to make that harder?”

  She gave him a probing look. “Maybe my girl just wore out. Why does any of this matter to you now?”

  “Because I became part of it, and it’s still with me.” He took another swallow of scotch. “I guess you know they made me president of Caldwell.”

  “Who doesn’t? It’s like the pope showed up, except you’re not wearing a dress.”

  Darrow knew better than to smile. “Fred Bender’s our chief of security. The other day, I asked him about Angela. Fred gave me the sense that her life had changed in her last few months.”

  The woman’s face closed. Relinquishing secrets about a child was hard, Darrow surmised—even a dead child. Maggie Hall had spoken to Bender in anguish and then, perhaps, with Angela buried and Steve convicted, reinterred her daughter in memory as the near-perfect striver. Now Darrow was digging her up.

  “What good is this?” Maggie Hall said flatly. “She’s dead.”

  “The reason still matters,” Darrow answered. “After law school, I spent time prosecuting homicide cases. I can’t help thinking about Angela. How she died and where I found her aren’t quite adding up for me.”

  In a guarded tone, Hall said, “I don’t follow.”

  “Steve Tillman still says Angela told him she needed to go somewhere—”

  “What would he say?” Hall snapped. “It was two o’clock in the morning. Think my girl was going to the movies?”

  “I understand your feelings about Steve. But suppose, just for a moment, that he was telling the truth. You told Fred Bender that Angela had started disappearing at night—that you didn’t know where, and it wasn’t like her.”

  Staring at the lacquered bar, Hall briefly closed her eyes. “I thought maybe it was to sleep with someone. A new guy called for her a couple of times—sounded like a white college boy, but he wouldn’t leave his name or number.”

  Surprised, Darrow asked, “Do you think it was Steve?”

  “I didn’t know. But I asked her about it, the whole business of sneaking out,” she said in a muted tone. “Angela got real angry. Her late father hadn’t left us anything, she said, and I wasn’t paying for anything. So I had no right to ask about her life, or how she made her way in the world.”

  “Did she often get that angry?”

  “This was more like being defensive,” Hall answered in a parched voice, “like I’d said out loud she was selling herself. So I asked her if she was.

  “The girl just stared at me. ‘You don’t understand me at all,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand my life at all.’ ” Hall’s tone became harsher. “I wanted to bury the hurt of what she said, and the trial helped me do that. Or I think I’d have died from the hole in my heart.”

  Darrow wondered what right he had to strip-mine this woman’s pain. But in the brutal logic of the law, someone should have done it long ago—certainly Steve Tillman’s lawyer. “Fred Bender said you thought she was keeping a diary. I guess you don’t know what happened to it, or what was in it.”

  Hall shook her head, either in affirmation or refusal to speak. After a moment, she said, “Finish your drink, Mr. Darrow. And please don’t come back here again.”

  Darrow nodded. Maggie Hall’s decision not to spy on her daughter, he supposed, had become her deepest wound: she was afraid that by shrinking from the truth she had caused Angela’s death. Only Steve Tillman’s guilt could salve her own.

  Darrow paid for the drink and left.

  17

  L

  OOKING AHEAD TO FRIDAY NIGHT, TAYLOR PROPOSED TO provide their dinner. She enjoyed cooking, she explained, and they had largely exhausted Wayne’s cuisine. All she needed was to borrow Darrow’s kitchen. “With all respect,” she told him, “I don’t want your provost hovering around.”

  Laughing, Darrow said that was fine. He found himself looking forward to the evening.

  The day was crystalline—electric-blue sky, a light pleasant breeze, little dampness in the air. Taylor called him in midafternoon, suggesting a change of plans. “Would you mind going to the riverbank?” she asked. “I haven’t been there for a very long time.”

  Something in her tone suggested that this was more than a whim spurred by lovely weather. “Sure,” Darrow said. “Do you want me to pick up something?”

  “Maybe some wine,” she answered. “I’ll pull together a gourmet picnic from the heartland.”

  For whatever reason, she sounded preoccupied. “I’ll bring a nice bottle,” he said.

  DARROW PICKED HER up in his convertible. As they drove up Scioto Street with the top down, he was suddenly aware of the impression—or misimpression—they might make: the president of Caldwell and his provost’s daughter cruising through town, wind blowing her raven hair. “I think maybe I should garage the car,” Darrow remarked. “It’s beginning to feel a little ostentatious.”

  Smiling, Taylor did not answer. After a time she said, “I should give you directions.”

  “I know the way. I used to go out there all the time.”

  “Up to no good, I suppose.”

  Darrow grinned. “Depends on your point of view.”

  “I can imagine. But if you don’t mind not reliving your off-the-field highlights, there’s a place I’d like us to go.”

  As they sped through the sloping countryside, nearing the river, Taylor became quieter. “You okay?” he asked.

  She turned to him. “This is going to sound kind of weird. We’re going where my parents used to take me when I was young, to swim and picnic. But the last time I went there was with my father, to scatter my mother’s ashes. I’ve never been able to go back.”

  Darrow thought of visiting his mother’s grave. “Memories have their undertow,” he said. “Some
times it’s best to face them.”

  Taylor gave him a pensive look. Perhaps, Darrow realized, she thought he was remembering his wife. But, this time, he had not been.

  FLANKED BY TREES and grassy banks, the Miami River resembled a wide creek, perhaps a hundred feet across, its waters so serene and still that they barely created a ripple. At once Darrow thought of riverbank parties, fraternity raft races, dope and beer and sex at night in the grass. But Taylor’s images, it seemed, began with the dawn of her memory.

  They sat on a blanket in the light of summer’s longest evening, drinking red Tuscan wine from plastic glasses. “At first,” Taylor told him, “my dad would carry me in on his shoulders. When I was five, he gave me swimming lessons—sometimes a bit impatiently, like I was in boot camp for kindergartners. But I learned to swim, and not to be afraid. Fear, he always insisted, should be mastered.”

  Darrow tried to imagine Lionel Farr as the father of a little girl. “Did your mother swim as well?”

  “She watched us, mainly. Often she’d write poetry or something in a journal she kept; other times she painted. Sometimes I’d see her smiling at me.” Taylor’s face clouded. “Most of these memories are from when I was six or seven. I don’t remember her coming here much after that. Maybe it was her heart.”

  “Was that always a problem?”

  Taylor spread pesto on two crackers and put them on Darrow’s paper plate. “I don’t really know. What I recall so vividly is finding her on the kitchen floor, unconscious, blood coming from her nose. My dad stayed calm—by the time the doctor arrived, she’d recovered.” Taylor gazed out at the water. “Both my parents tried to reassure me. But every day until she died I worried that I’d lose her.”

  Darrow watched her face, filling with remembrance of a child’s fears. “I came over that night, remember?”

  “Did you?” Turning, Taylor smiled a little. “I don’t recall that, so I must have been devastated. When I was young, you showing up was a real highlight.”