The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  The attenuated quiet that followed, Darrow knew, could be professional caution or something more. “Give me a clue,” Hall demanded. “I don’t want to be wasting my time.”

  Darrow thought quickly. “Among other things, your sister.”

  Hall’s voice became quieter, less derisive. “What about her?”

  Darrow decided to take a chance. “You can talk to me, Carl. Or I can go to Garrison.”

  “I guess you know where I live,” Hall said at length.

  “I can find it.”

  “Tonight then. Say ten o’clock.”

  Hall hung up.

  Darrow sat at his desk, motionless, wondering what mistake he might have made, what secret Angela’s brother might harbor. All he knew was that Carl Hall had one.

  DARROW SPENT THE day on autopilot. He met with the chairs of the English and history departments about their needs; wrested more time from Ray Carrick, albeit with increasing difficulty, to dispose of Clark Durbin; importuned a wealthy but irate alumna not to strike Caldwell from her will; began recruiting a committee of alumni, faculty, and board members to address Caldwell’s goals and more sharply define the school’s identity; spoke to a specialist in minority recruitment; coordinated with Taylor to find dates for their trip to Boston; then asked the alumni relations director to schedule meetings during those days with prominent alumni. After normal working hours he reviewed potential budget cuts over dinner with Josh Daily, Caldwell’s chief financial officer, and Joe Betts, who also suggested ways of further protecting Caldwell’s endowment from adverse market conditions. Pushing his disquiet to the edges of his consciousness, Darrow did not mention Laurie Shilts. By the time he reached home, it was well past eight o’clock, and the house felt more lonely than normal. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not watch the news.

  Something was badly wrong, he believed, and had been for sixteen years. Whatever that was, Darrow had the sense—more intuitive than reasoned—that it shadowed Caldwell still. But until he learned more, he could trust no one with his thoughts, not even Farr or Garrison. Neither man, he was sure, would feel this unease as keenly as he; both might reasonably question his preoccupation with Angela Hall’s murder and—given Caldwell’s very real problems—Darrow’s judgment in stepping outside his role. He could not yet put a name to his suspicions, or risk his own or another person’s reputation by accusing someone other than Steve Tillman.

  He sat in the living room, glancing at his watch, turning facts and surmises over in his mind, arranging and rearranging them in a kaleidoscope of possibilities. The ones that troubled him most were those he could least afford to speak aloud.

  At nine forty-five, Darrow left the house.

  CARL HALL LIVED in a ranch-style home surrounded by several acres of fallow land, sequestered at the end of a cul-de-sac on the outer reaches of Wayne. Everything about it served the interests of a man running an illegal business: the gravel drive was long, and the house itself, shrouded by trees, could not be seen from the road. At night, Hall’s normal business hours, a visitor could come and go without being identified. But as Darrow parked near the house, his footsteps crunching gravel, it struck him that for a man in a dangerous business this solitude could be a problem, depriving Hall of the protections offered by living on an urban block. No doubt Hall had weapons.

  There were no lights on inside the house. Perhaps this was defensive; perhaps not. But Darrow felt pinpricks on the back of his neck. More clearly now, he saw the risk inherent in having told no one of this visit to an isolated place. If the threat he posed to Hall was greater than he knew, Hall might well make him disappear. Darrow did not like the stillness all around him, the darkness of the house itself.

  He stepped up to the porch and stopped. Eyes adjusting to the thin moonlight, he found the doorbell. The ring inside chimed through what must have been an open window.

  Nothing. Darrow tried again. Aside from the bell, the only sound he heard was the chirping of crickets.

  He pressed the door latch with his thumb. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. Carefully, Darrow slipped into the dark inside, the door still open behind him.

  “Carl?” he said quietly. His own voice sounded forlorn to him, hollow in the darkened space.

  Still he heard no sound. Instinct told him to leave; nothing—at least nothing good—would come of staying. But he could not seem to move. Still facing a room too dark for sight, he felt for a wall switch by the door.

  Finding one, he hesitated, stopped by fears he could not define. Then he chose to flick the switch.

  He stood in the entry to a half-furnished living room. Carl Hall sat slumped in an overstuffed chair, as if asleep. For an instant, he reminded Darrow of his own father, save for the absence of an alcoholic’s ragged snores.

  Darrow felt his skin crawl. “Carl?” he said again, then recognized how foolish this was.

  He stepped forward, softly, as though concerned with startling his host. But Darrow was acquainted with the dead: first Angela Hall; then murder victims at crime scenes; last, the body of his pregnant wife, lying in an Iowa morgue. In every case there was a terrible difference between slumber and death. Hall’s lips were parted and his eyes wide, as though surprised by his own fate. On the arm of his chair was a hypodermic needle.

  Darrow felt the shock wearing off. Unlike other deaths, Carl Hall’s evoked no sadness or pity. What seeped through Darrow was a deepening fear of the unknown.

  He took out his cell phone and, with a calm that surprised him, called George Garrison at home. “George,” he began, “I’m at Carl Hall’s house. I think you’d better come.”

  THE POLICE ARRIVED, then the team of specialists familiar to Darrow since he had found the body of Angela Hall. “First Angela,” Garrison murmured. “Now Carl. Only their mother left.”

  For a time Garrison left Darrow with a detective. Standing outside the house, Darrow heard Garrison directing the others. Then the chief joined Darrow and the detective, his eyes keen in an emotionless face. “Let’s hear it,” he demanded of Darrow. “Starting with why you’re here at all.”

  Darrow gave them the minimum: facts stripped of surmise; nothing about anyone but Hall. “You know I’ve been looking at Angela’s murder,” he told Garrison. “Carl’s role seems pivotal. His own sister—who he lives with—is murdered, but Hall won’t talk to the police until Fred Bender leans on him, and even then he tells Fred nothing. His mother says a white guy called for Angela; Hall doesn’t know who. His mother says Angela kept a diary; the diary’s missing, and Hall claims not to know it ever existed. Angela starts disappearing at night; Hall says he doesn’t know why or where. I think he was lying about it all.”

  In an even tone, Garrison inquired, “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he had something to lose by talking or to gain by keeping quiet.”

  “But you don’t know what the ‘something’ is.”

  “Look,” Darrow said, “every problem Caldwell has seems to involve Hall. Angela was murdered after a party; Carl was at the party. Griff Nordlinger tanked Steve’s defense because of a cocaine problem; you think Hall was Nordlinger’s supplier. Ditto Clark Durbin’s son, only the drug was heroin. Part of Durbin’s motive for embezzlement, the story goes, was to pay for his son’s rehab.”

  “Carl sells drugs,” Garrison said with muted impatience. “Carl likes money.”

  “So why is he dead?”

  His eyes slits, Garrison examined the ground, as though debating whether to answer. “Looks like he died from a heroin overdose. We found the makings for an injection in the kitchen.”

  “Why would Carl use his own product? He’d know too well what it does.” When Garrison said nothing, Darrow added, “I couldn’t see track marks on his arm.”

  Garrison shoved his hands into his pockets. “You can also smoke the stuff. Or snort it.”

  “Then why change delivery systems? Because he’d started worrying about lung cancer?” Darrow softened his voice. “I’ll ma
ke you a bet, George. Once toxicology runs their tests, they’ll tell you that there’s no other sign Carl was using, and that he died from an overdose massive enough to kill a basketball team. If so, there’s a good chance someone murdered him.”

  Garrison glanced at the detective, scribbling notes at Darrow’s side. “With Carl’s cooperation?” Garrison said curtly. “Why not suicide?”

  “Because Carl lacked the requisite self-awareness.”

  To Darrow’s surprise, Garrison laughed softly. “That’s another problem—people liked Carl a whole lot less than he liked himself. Anyone might have decided to kill him—a rival dealer or a customer wanting drugs.”

  “Maybe so. But they’d have put a bullet through his brain.”

  The front door opened as two paramedics carried Hall, shrouded on a stretcher, to an ambulance waiting in the driveway. Darrow and the police chief watched until the doors of the ambulance slammed shut, echoing in the night.

  “I walked right through an unlocked door,” Darrow said. “Any sign of a robbery or break-in?”

  Garrison exhaled. “No. Guess that means that Hall let somebody shoot him up, after he was nice enough to let him—or them—in through the front door.”

  “He knew him, George,” Darrow said urgently. “Bear with me. I called Hall this morning, threatening to go to you. He sounded worried; he couldn’t know how little I knew. Suppose he told somebody I was coming—someone who knew everything I don’t, and couldn’t let anyone else find out. If so, you won’t find his fingerprints.”

  The detective glanced at Garrison. “Of course not,” the chief said flatly. “Or any evidence that he exists. Be nice if you’d give this nameless ghost a motive.”

  Darrow tried to remain unfazed. “I can’t. But do me a favor and I’ll give you my best guess.”

  In the moonlight, Darrow saw Garrison’s hard stare of distrust. “What’s the favor?”

  “Keep my name out of this, for now. For Caldwell’s sake, and also mine. There’s no good explanation for me meeting a drug dealer.”

  “That’s why you shouldn’t have,” Garrison snapped. “Bad judgment; tough luck. You should have called me.”

  “Maybe so. But you get nothing from making me look bad.”

  Garrison shrugged in indifference, moving his heavy shoulders. Tiredly, he said, “What’s your guess?”

  “It’s possible Hall killed his sister, though I can never work out why. But if Carl didn’t kill her—and Steve Tillman didn’t—then Carl knew who did.” Darrow’s voice gained force. “I think Carl was blackmailing someone. Look for the diary, and for secret bank accounts or anywhere else where Carl might hide money.”

  Garrison stared at Darrow. “You should have called me,” he repeated softly.

  “Would you have listened?”

  Garrison fell silent. “I’ll cover you for now,” he finally said. “As a favor to an old teammate. Unlike Tillman, you were never a prick.”

  Darrow left without mentioning Joe Betts.

  PART

  III

  The Spire

  1

  F

  OR DAYS DARROW WENT ABOUT HIS LIFE, BUSY ON THE surface, preoccupied beneath it. No one but the police—and, perhaps, a murderer—knew his secret.

  He made speeches, chaired meetings, pushed his new committee into life. He saw Taylor often, enjoying each new intimacy of thought and feeling, yet fighting back the knowledge—most intense when he was with her—of concealing that which consumed him. His interactions with Joe Betts were shadowed by things he did not wish to know, suspicions he did not wish to have. He visited Steve Tillman, saying nothing new about the case. The principal salve to his conscience was that he had placed the matter in Garrison’s hands. But even there he had hidden much. For now he would wait to see what Garrison did, then decide what else to do.

  The character of Joe Betts preoccupied him. Abusing Laurie Shilts and obsessing about black women did not in themselves implicate him in Angela’s murder. But Joe could have been the caller mentioned by Angela’s mother. Nor had he any corroboration for his assertion that, in the last hours of Angela’s life, he was alone in his dorm room. It was disturbingly convenient that, by Joe’s account, he had awakened just in time to become the witness who put Steve Tillman in prison.

  That was Darrow’s dilemma. For now, he was caught between his belief that Steve might be innocent and the reluctance to accuse a prominent member of Caldwell’s board, a man with a seemingly sound marriage and blameless life, of an ugly murder. Especially when one basis for the accusation, Laurie’s account, might change that life for good.

  At several points Darrow was tempted to confide in Lionel Farr. The closest he came was when Farr, remarking on newspaper accounts of Carl Hall’s death, expressed puzzlement that “a man who lived off other people’s misery would inflict it on himself.” Given his own misgivings, the remark deepened Darrow’s unease. Joe Betts had been in Wayne on the night of Hall’s death. But though Darrow tried to envision Joe with a needle in his hand, he could not easily imagine the mechanisms of a murder by heroin injection. More than anything, this was what kept him from confiding in Farr a theory so lurid yet so speculative that it could transform Farr’s concept either of Joe or of Darrow himself.

  Eleven days into Darrow’s paralysis, Garrison called him. “I want to see you,” the chief said brusquely. It was not a request.

  THEY MET IN Garrison’s office, alone. Garrison closed the door behind him.

  At once, Darrow feared that his role in Hall’s death was about to become public. The chief sat behind his desk, his gaze penetrating and cool. “Well?” Darrow said.

  “We’ve got things to talk about. Some of which you can’t tell a living soul.” Sitting back, Garrison regarded Darrow in momentary silence. “You were right about Hall’s death. There’s no evidence that he used heroin before that night—no tracks, no sign in his blood or tissues. The dose he took would kill anyone. An experienced user would know better, and so would Hall.”

  Though unsurprising, the revelation heightened Darrow’s unease. “We pretty much knew that.”

  Eyes hooded, Garrison continued: “There were also abrasions on Carl’s wrists, bruises on his ankles. It’s possible that his arms and legs were bound or handcuffed at the time he was injected.”

  Absorbing this, Darrow asked, “How would that have happened?”

  “If it did? Someone could have held a gun to his head and made him shackle himself. But that’s only a guess—not many folks carry handcuffs around with them.” Garrison paused, then continued in a lower register: “The point is that we can’t rule out your idea that someone killed him. And that Hall knew the man who did.”

  Quiet, Darrow gazed out Garrison’s window. The day was sunny; traffic moved at its normal pace, people going about their lives. But Darrow felt his world changing. Facing Garrison, he said, “You’ve got no reason to tell me this. There’s something else.”

  After a moment, Garrison nodded. “We found a safe deposit box. Inside was a bag of diamonds worth over half a million dollars.”

  “So that’s how Carl converted drug money.”

  “Maybe. But Carl knew how to launder money through the Alibi Club. Plus, from the record of entry for the box, he’d apparently begun depositing diamonds thirteen years ago and stopped five years later. Pretty rich for a guy whose drug business was small-time way back then.”

  Absently, Darrow touched the knot in his tie. “Same question, George. Why are you telling me all this?”

  Still watching Darrow, Garrison opened his desk drawer. He took out a single piece of paper and slid it across the desk. Glancing down, Darrow saw a typed schedule, showing numerous transfers of money into seven different bank accounts for businesses Darrow did not recognize. “What is this?” Darrow asked.

  “Keep reading.”

  As Darrow did, a pattern emerged. The transfers had occurred within the last year. By Darrow’s swift calculation, that total exceeded six
hundred thousand dollars, all in amounts less than ten thousand. “What this suggests to me,” he said at length, “is an effort to avoid transfers above the threshold that triggers an automatic inquiry by federal bank authorities.” Looking up at Garrison, he asked, “Who’s the signatory on these accounts?”

  “Carl Hall.”

  Edgy, Darrow scoured the schedule again. “All these transfers,” he said slowly, “happened after Caldwell’s money disappeared.”

  A glint appeared in Garrison’s eyes. “You’d be the one to know. No one from the college has taken the embezzlement to Farragher. At least not formally.”

  Darrow did not respond to this. “Who transferred the money to Hall?” he asked.

  “The Security Bank of Geneva. Familiar?”

  It was a different bank, Darrow recognized at once, than the one that had transferred money to an account in Clark Durbin’s name—the last piece of evidence in the case against him. “Only by name,” he said. “It’s also a dead end. A Swiss bank will never disclose whoever controls this account. Only Carl could have told you what this means.”

  Garrison sat back. “Any idea what Carl might have to do with Durbin?”

  “Other than that Hall supplied Durbin’s son with heroin? That’s the only connection I can make between Hall and Caldwell College—except for Angela’s murder, which happened sixteen years ago. I can’t get to why Durbin would be siphoning Caldwell’s money to Carl Hall.”

  Garrison propped his chin on folded hands. “What about Durbin’s son?”

  Darrow shook his head. “He would’ve had to use his dad’s computer to e-mail Joe Betts, then forge Durbin’s name to open bank accounts. Pretty sophisticated for a twenty-something drug addict. Beyond that, you’d also need an inside knowledge of Caldwell’s financial system.

  “Obviously, the members of Caldwell’s investment committee had that, including Durbin. So maybe Durbin’s kid went through his father’s files. But he would have had to figure out that Joe Betts’s firm had $900,000 in CDs, and that his father had authority to move it by sending Joe an e-mail. Which gets us back to the question of why Durbin—or Durbin’s kid or anyone else at Caldwell—would embezzle money to pay off Carl Hall.”