The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  Darrow thought for a moment. “Why don’t we go together. My former partners want me to consult on a couple of cases I turned over, and I owe my town house an inspection. If you like, I can try to fit my dates with yours.”

  Taylor gave him an inquiring look. “Is that something you really want to do?”

  “Sure,” Darrow said, even as he realized that they might be crossing another bridge. “I can show you around a little. It might be fun for us to get away from Wayne.”

  Taylor kissed him. “As long as you can find us a place to stay.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, as was now his custom, Darrow visited Steve Tillman at the penitentiary. Speaking through the slits in the Plexiglas, Steve asked sardonically, “So how was your week?”

  Darrow did not blink. “Fine, Steve. And yours?”

  Steve gave him a crooked smile. “They’re great believers in structure here. We’re a ‘special needs’ community—surprises might unsettle the student body. As usual, I’ve been using my leisure time to read.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “My current area of concentration,” Steve said with mock gravity, “is twentieth-century Europe. Specifically, the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany. The topics include the role of World War I, the Versailles Treaty, inflation, economic collapse, and, of course, anti-Semitism. Hanging over all this, naturally, is the specter of the Holocaust—the central question being ‘Why Germany?’ A lot for me to think about, wouldn’t you say?”

  However ironic, this disquisition was so unlike anything that might have issued from his college friend that, again, Darrow was overcome by a sense of waste. “Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Hall case.”

  Steve stared at him. “I always do, Mark. For you, it’s optional.” He paused, then spoke more evenly. “Don’t think I held a grudge about what you told the police. That part you couldn’t help. What sticks in my craw is that you just disappeared—fewer visits, then letters, then fewer letters, then nothing. You did a very thorough job of moving on. Maybe that’s what you’re best at.”

  Stung, Darrow tried to distance himself from his own emotions. “Sometimes I wish I were better at it. But about drifting away from you, no excuses. Except maybe for the last couple of years, when it felt like I was seeing the world through a very thick pane of glass.”

  “Like Plexiglas?” Steve gibed. “From where I sit, you seem pretty okay to me. Better than you did when you first showed up.”

  Darrow waited a moment. “Let me ask you something, Steve. Do you know anything about Angela keeping a diary?”

  “No. What was in it?”

  “I don’t know. But her mother says she kept one. If so, it’s disappeared. Which is also what Angela herself began doing, late at night, in the weeks before she died. Was any of that time spent with you?”

  Steve inhaled, eyes fixed on Darrow. “Mark,” he said slowly, “I don’t have a fucking clue about any of this. If Angela and I had been screwing in the dorm, you’d have known about it.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Guess?” Steve’s laugh, though brief, held a hint of humor. “How many times were both of us in and out of each other’s rooms? Remember when I walked in on you and Connie Coolman?”

  Darrow smiled. “That was a bad night—for Connie, and for me. She was so embarrassed she completely lost interest.”

  “Connie was always old-fashioned. Guess she didn’t count on two guys seeing her naked.” Steve’s expression darkened. “Wish you’d barged in the night I was with Angela. By now all three of us might have been able to laugh about it.”

  The sad image silenced Darrow for a moment. “Before that night,” he asked, “had you ever called Angela at home?”

  “No. I don’t think I even had her number.”

  “Then how did you ask her to the party?”

  “I was at the club when she was tending bar. I had a couple of drinks, and it began to seem like a good idea.” Steve looked down. “This may sound pathetic, but I still didn’t know her all that well. I don’t even know what I had in mind. We just seemed to like each other.”

  Darrow nodded. “That fall, I don’t remember you going out with anyone. Were you?”

  “No,” Steve answered curtly. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, what with all you’ve had to think about in life. But I spent a whole damn year brooding over Laurie Shilts dumping me for that asshole Betts. If anyone held a grudge, it should have been me.”

  At once Darrow remembered this: the hurt of losing Laurie had compounded the wound inflicted by the sudden end of Steve’s football career, accelerating his downward spiral. “Have any idea why Joe was so pissed off that night?”

  “About me and Angela? Betts didn’t need a reason. It only took a drink or two to release his inner jerk.”

  “Did they have some sort of relationship?”

  “Not that I know about. Betts was still with Laurie, remember? I couldn’t figure out why he wanted Angela. Except maybe that she was with me.”

  “Maybe so. But I ran into Laurie that night, Steve. She and Joe had just broken up.”

  “No shit? Did she say why?”

  Darrow hesitated. “Not directly. But for her part, Laurie was very clear that she and Joe were through.”

  Intent, Steve pondered this. “Then maybe it was about Angela. Guess you’d have to ask Laurie. Any idea where she is?”

  “No. But I could find out easily enough. To escape our development office, you have to enter the witness protection program.”

  Steve did not smile. “If you find her,” he said softly, “tell Laurie I said hi.”

  To Darrow, the statement was at once wistful and bitter. “I know you’ve gone over this a thousand times,” he said. “But do you have any idea at all why Joe said he’d seen you outside the dorm?”

  “Besides that he’s spiteful enough to lie?” Steve’s voice became hard. “I’ve thought about that for fifteen years—my brilliant lawyer made quite a point of asking who would have killed her, then carried her body all the way to the Spire. But he never gave the jury an answer. Thanks to him, I’ve had the time to develop one on my own. Joe Betts.”

  Though Darrow had been expecting this, hearing it spoken aloud was jarring. “It’s a theory,” he allowed. “But Joe would have had to maintain an insane level of anger for several hours, wait for her outside the dorm, then strangle her. That’s obsessive to the point of madness. It also raises the question of where you imagine Angela was going.”

  A new brightness made Steve’s eyes glint. “Still, I can see I’m not alone. You’ve thought about it, too. So who strikes you as likeliest to kill a woman? Betts or me?”

  Darrow did not answer. “Is there any way that you could be innocent and Joe still be telling the truth?”

  “How? Because I blacked out, and sort of sleepwalked out of the dorm? Or maybe wanted a gulp of air at the same time Betts did? Or maybe I followed Angela in a drunken stupor to the Spire, changed my mind about killing her, then left before somebody else did. And then literally forgot about it.” Steve shook his head in seeming bewilderment. “Of course, I forgot a lot of things that night. The last thing I remember, or believe I remember, is Angela saying she had to leave. And what sense does that make?”

  “I don’t know. There are a few things about this no one can make sense of.”

  “One person can,” Steve said succinctly. “The guy who actually killed her. He knows everything. Including why he did it.”

  That night, alone again, Darrow pondered this. He could not seem to sleep.

  20

  T

  HE FIRST TELEPHONE CALL OF DARROW’S WORKDAY SURPRISED him.

  “Mark,” the thin voice said, “this is Clark Durbin.”

  “Hello, Clark,” Darrow said phlegmatically, then waited for whatever might come next.

  Faced with Darrow’s coolness, Durbin sounded shaky. “I wanted to congratulate you. I mean, you’re my successor. It feels odd we haven’t talked.”


  “Not so odd,” Darrow answered in an even tone. “You’re accused of stealing nearly a million dollars. That’s why I’m here. Given that, I have a say in whether you’re indicted. It’s not as though you’re passing me the baton so I can run a victory lap.”

  A brief silence ensued. “That’s why I need to talk to you,” Durbin said.

  The simple statement held a pleading note. “Under the circumstances,” Darrow said, “I can’t meet with you alone. There can’t be any misunderstanding of what either of us may say.”

  Durbin exhaled. “All right.”

  Darrow glanced at his calendar. “I’ve got an hour free at ten. Meet me at my office—I’ll ask Lionel to join us. Bring a lawyer, if you like. In fact, I’d advise it.”

  “All right,” Durbin repeated. He sounded like a beaten man.

  Hanging up, Darrow called Farr. “Durbin wants to meet with me,” he said.

  “No surprise,” Farr said with an edge of disdain. “He’s been insisting, however incongruously, on his innocence. You’re a new audience, potentially the difference between jail and mere penury. No doubt he wants to appeal to whatever quantum of mercy you haven’t lavished on Steve Tillman. The only question is whether he’ll try to make you feel like you’re about to execute Bambi, or whether he’ll float all the sympathetic reasons he chose to steal our money. Perhaps he was drunk.”

  The remarks were so caustic and so comprehensive that Darrow laughed aloud. “Ten o’clock,” he said. “My office. After that you can tell me which president of Caldwell is the bigger fool.”

  TO DARROW’S SURPRISE, Durbin came alone.

  Darrow sat behind his desk; Durbin, in one of two wing chairs facing him. Farr settled in the other, studying Durbin while the former president focused on his successor. Always slight, Durbin looked diminished, his hair dyed an unconvincing black, heightening the contrast with his thin but sagging face. With a tepid smile, Durbin said, “I can’t help but think about the first time the three of us met together. Strange, isn’t it?”

  Darrow thought so, too. Then, he had been hardly more than a boy, sickened and confused, grateful for Durbin’s kindness; now, at least in theory, he was the most powerful man in the room, Durbin his supplicant. “Well,” Darrow said, “at least this time no one’s dead. But the school’s been shafted. If you were me, what would you do about you?”

  Darrow caught the flicker of Farr’s arid smile, perhaps at the toughness of his protégé, perhaps because the reversal of fortune was so complete. But the chill look in Farr’s blue eyes suggested that he was not amused by the subject of the meeting—or, Darrow surmised, by the fact that it was he who had once saved Durbin’s presidency. Still watching Darrow, Durbin leaned slightly forward, fingers steepled in a precatory gesture. “No matter what you have been led to think,” he said slowly, “I did not do this.”

  “Clark,” Darrow answered softly, “there’s a paper trail that followed you here. The orders are from your e-mail. Money went to your bank accounts—”

  “I didn’t send those e-mails,” Durbin interrupted. “I didn’t open those accounts—”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Darrow cut in. “For that to be true, some mastermind would have had to know where Caldwell had parked nine hundred thousand dollars in CDs, used your personal computer to ask Joe Betts to transfer them, and forged your signature for two different banks, all in an elaborate effort to frame you. Got anyone in mind?”

  Durbin ignored his sarcasm. Stubbornly, he said, “It would have had to be someone on the investment committee.”

  “That certainly narrows down our list of suspects, doesn’t it? Aside from you, that leaves Ed Rardin, Paul Johns, John Stewart—and Joe, of course. None of whom live in Wayne. Which one had access to your computer?”

  Durbin seemed to rock in his chair. “None that I know of. But they were often here.”

  “Let’s skip over that, then—as well as the slander inherent in suggesting that one of four honorable and wealthy men is a crook. Who among them has the skill to forge your signature?”

  Durbin grimaced. Tightly, he said, “Someone could have traced it.”

  Farr, Darrow saw, was staring at the rug, as though he could no longer stand to look at Durbin. “Clark,” Darrow said with renewed gentleness, “your investments went bad. Your son was in rehab for heroin addiction. Your wife was terribly sick. You needed money.”

  Durbin shook his head. “I’m not a thief, Mark. If I were, I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  Darrow gave him the glacial stare he had perfected in the courtroom. “Desperate men do stupid things. You had no other source of money. In my experience, embezzlers imagine they can cover themselves before they’re caught, often by moving around more cash. This embezzler was smart enough to game the system—which, as you pointed out, suggests an insider, someone with access to the information held within the investment committee. Which gets me back to the question you can’t answer: which one had a key to your office?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I can’t help you. So help yourself, Clark. Tell us where the last eight hundred and fifty thousand went.”

  Durbin stared at him, his expression slack. “I don’t know where the money is.”

  “Too bad,” Darrow said in a pitiless tone. “Should you remember, please come back. Bring a lawyer with you next time, and do be quick about it. After this morning’s performance, I’m an hour closer to calling up Dave Farragher.”

  Mechanically, Durbin rose, not trying to shake hands. “By the way,” Darrow inquired casually, “who was supplying your kid with smack?”

  Durbin’s eyes were moist. “I don’t know that, either. But maybe it was Carl Hall. Ironic, isn’t it.”

  Still sitting, Darrow shrugged.

  Farr stood, opening the door for Durbin. As Durbin paused there, looking back at Darrow, Farr placed a hand on his shoulder, a gesture that, to Darrow, combined a fleeting compassion with a reminder to leave. Somehow this moment reminded Darrow that, just yesterday, he had heard another plea of innocence. Perhaps there was nothing else Steve Tillman or Clark Durbin could have said.

  Farr closed the door behind Durbin. “Human wreckage,” he remarked, then looked at Darrow intently. “I haven’t seen that side of you.”

  “A professional necessity. If Durbin’s smart, he’ll drop the fantasy that he’s somehow getting away with this.” Darrow waved Farr to his chair. “Can you stick around a minute? There’s something else we need to talk about.”

  Farr sat back down. “Concerning?”

  Darrow paused a moment. “Taylor,” he answered. “We’ve been spending time together.”

  Farr’s expression was neutral. “So I understand. I’m pleased you’ve become friends.”

  “We’re certainly friends. But this may have a little more texture.”

  Farr raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

  Darrow considered how to answer. “When I’m with Taylor, I don’t think about Lee. For the first time in a long while, a greater part of me is living in the present.”

  Farr seemed to look inward, as though monitoring his own reactions. “Can I ask how far this has gone? Emotionally, I mean.”

  “It’s still very new. But we’re going to Boston together.” Darrow waited until Farr met his eyes. “This isn’t the Dark Ages. In any other situation, I wouldn’t owe Taylor’s father an explanation. But it’s you, and you’re the provost—college presidents generally don’t pursue their provost’s daughter. I’m not sure if the fact that this involves you and me makes it better, or more awkward.”

  Farr smiled slightly. “Some sort of incest taboo, you mean?”

  “Jesus, Lionel. That is weird.”

  “Excuse my wan attempt to make light of this.” Farr paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. “Given our relationship, the idea that you, as president, are involved with my twenty-eight-year-old daughter doesn’t qualify as a scandal. The main complication for me is that I care for you both—I want
both of you happy, and neither of you hurt. The chances are good that one of you will be; that’s the inevitable outcome of almost every romantic relationship between a man and a woman. And either outcome would be hurtful to me. So forgive me for having mixed feelings.”

  Darrow felt deflated. “You mentioned happiness. The only way to get there is by assuming the risk.”

  Farr studied him. “Then how do you assess the risk with Taylor?”

  “To her? Or to me?”

  “Both.”

  Darrow leaned back. “For myself, all I can say is that I feel more open. Even before I had to deal with Lee’s death, I never found it that easy. I very much want to see where this goes.”

  “And Taylor?”

  “I’m not sure yet. There are remarkable elements to her personality.”

  Farr nodded. “I agree. Like her mother, Taylor has many gifts. But I also worry that she has a tendency toward melancholy that perhaps you’ve yet to see.” Pausing, Farr added quietly, “Also like her mother.”

  Darrow managed a smile he did not feel. “Are you warning me off?”

  Farr frowned in thought. “Merely cautioning you. For your own sake, but also for Taylor’s. I believe that life has made both of you more vulnerable to hurt than others might be.”

  Darrow watched him. As remarkable as the conversation was, he sensed that there was a second conversation hidden beneath the first, the words to which remained unspoken. “Is that all there is?”

  Farr looked down, studying a patch of sunlight on Darrow’s Persian rug. “Perhaps not,” he said at last. “Perhaps, in a non-Oedipal way, I’m a little stung—or at least saddened—that your new relationship with Taylor may be stronger than my own. I hope that’s not affecting me. But self-knowledge is, at best, imperfect. Never more so than when the entire truth about oneself may be less attractive than one hopes.”

  Darrow felt a wave of sympathy. Though armored in his confidence and reputation, Farr might well be lonelier than he allowed. “That’s only human, Lionel. Thanks for being honest.”