“I was just reviewing the budget from last year. The theater got new rigging. That was an expenditure of over $10,000, the largest capital improvement of the season,” Helen said.
“That’s simply not true!” The professor sounded irate. He turned to Wilson to rally her support. “Is there any truth in that?”
Wilson touched the professor’s arm and whispered something. He looked reluctant, then nodded.
“Forget it,” he mumbled and sat down.
On her way out the door, Wilson tried to stop Helen. Her fingertips grazing Helen’s hand, sent a shiver of sparks across Helen’s skin. “Not now,” Helen said, and glided past Wilson, speaking without stopping. “I will handle this.”
A second later, a hand tapped her shoulder. Helen whirled, ready to chase Wilson away. It was only old Professor Lebovetski. He stared up at her, his eyes gleaming within wrinkled lids.
“What can we do for you, Dr. Lebovetski?” Drummond had appeared at Helen’s side. He put his hand on Lebovetski’s back. “How is your research going?”
Lebovetski lowered his voice. “I have to talk to you, but not here. Come to my office in Boston Hall. This has to do with our little ‘administrative issue’ in the woods. You see, there has been a development, and I fear I am at the center of this new occurrence.”
Lebovetski smiled. He was loving every minute of this. To Helen’s surprise, Drummond seemed as eager to talk to the professor as Lebovetski was to bend their ears.
Reluctantly, Helen followed the two men to Boston Hall, a small colonial–style house nestled between the library and one wall of the science building. Inside, Lebovetski led them up a flight of stairs. He clung to the railing with one hand. In the other hand, his cane marked each step. When they reached Lebovetski’s office, Lebovetski flung open the door. Helen gasped. The place had been ransacked.
****
“You see, someone has been in my office. They’re looking for something,” Lebovetski said.
“Have you called the police?” Helen asked.
Lebovetski laughed. “Oh, this?” He waved a dismissive hand at the disaster. “This is just an old man paying attention to the more important aspects of life. To scholarship!”
Lebovetski motioned for her to follow him. With surprising dexterity, he picked his way across the floor. “I want to show you this, lovely lady.”
He led them to a door in the corner of his office. Helen had not noticed the door among the clutter of bookshelves and overstuffed furniture. From his pocket, Lebovetski withdrew a key and turned it in the lock. The door opened into another, smaller room. A table rested in the center. Along the walls, stood several chests of drawers. On the floor lay a pair of white gloves. Other than that, the second room was as clean and sparse as the first room was messy.
“Careful,” Lebovetski said. “Look here.” He motioned to the light switch. “The light is on. I always turn it off.” He pointed to the gloves. “On the floor. I would never. But this is what worries me most.” He moved to a chest of drawers. “Look how each drawer has been pulled out.”
To Helen, the drawers looked closed. Lebovetski followed her gaze.
“Ah, you must think I have gone crazy. Come. See how I push this drawer back. A quarter of an inch. The lock prevents it from coming out more than a little bit, but I always push the drawers in until they sit. Otherwise, you get moisture, dust. A historian knows, a quarter of an inch is a mile when you are preserving old documents.”
“Is that what’s in here? Old documents?” Drummond asked.
“Yes, documents, and someone has been trying to get into these drawers. Someone has been in my office.”
Helen glanced at the open door that led to the larger office and then back at Lebovetski. He was ninety years old if he was a day, and the outer office looked like it had been hit by a tornado.
“This is very interesting, Dr. Lebovetski, very interesting work,” Drummond said. “Tell me… which documents?”
“A fine question! I tell you.”
Helen groaned inwardly, even as she admired Drummond’s patience. Now was not the time to fuel the fire of academic scholarship.
“All the primary research for my grand œuvre, ‘Buried Practices: The Unclaimed Dead of Kirkbride Asylums from 1855 to 1955,’” Lebovetski said, warming to his favorite subject. “Doctor’s logs. Diaries. Funeral programs. Maps. It is all within.”
“Which maps?” Drummond asked. “Where did they come from?”
“The rare book room.” Lebovetski’s eyes grew brighter. “And someone has been asking for them back, but I will not yield.” He carefully pushed each drawer back into its appropriate spot. “Do you think there is a connection between the Pittock legs and this break in?” He looked pleased with the idea. “Two such strange occurrences within a few weeks of each other? Will you help me, Dr. Ivers? I must keep these treasures near me. I have so much work to do.”
Drummond bowed to Lebovetski. “Doctor, I must implore you to return these books to the library. At least give us a recording of what you have. They are clearly not safe here, with someone riffling through your office.”
“Dr. Ivers?” Lebovetski asked.
Helen glanced at Drummond. He shook his head a fraction of an inch.
“I trust, Mr. Drummond,” Helen said. “If he thinks you should return them to the library, I concur.”
Chapter Thirty-two
A few hours later, Helen headed downtown, feeling like an adulterer. Darting. Furtive. Guilty. She’d told Drummond she was popping home to check something on her laptop. She had told Patrick she was available by phone, then switched off her cell and dropped it in her purse.
Arriving at the police department, she looked both ways before slipping inside. There she found Chief Hornsby eating lunch at his desk. It looked as though he had lost his appetite, and eating the sandwich depressed him. His uniform, which had been crisply pressed when they first met, was wrinkled.
“What now?” he asked by way of greeting.
Helen remembered that Hornsby’s wife was dying and spoke formally, politely. “Good afternoon, Chief Hornsby.”
“I’m sorry,” Hornsby mumbled, wiping his hand on his pants before extending it to her. “Dr. Ivers. What can I help you with?”
Helen pulled up a chair. “I have some concerns about the Pittock legs. I wonder if you can put my mind at rest.”
“Everybody’s got some concerns about the legs,” Hornsby grumbled.
“I’m sure they do. You’ll have to address mine right now. I know you don’t have definitive answers, but I want to understand the questions and the pieces of this puzzle.”
“Which pieces?”
She relayed Sully’s allegation that the victim had been alive several days after the discovery of the legs. She told him about Wilson’s over–exposed cell–phone photograph and her conviction that the legs had been scarred. She finished with Wilson’s investigation into the trains and her own growing fear for Carrie Brown.
“I have called and emailed her and made it very clear why I am contacting her. And nothing. Not even a ‘leave me alone’ or a new message on her voicemail. It’s like she has disappeared.” Helen waited. “I will understand this,” she added when Hornsby said nothing. “If it’s true, or even possible, that two women were killed the same way, we need to find out who did it. Our students—my students—are in danger. I have to protect them. I cannot let anything come between me and my obligation.”
Except Wilson. Tell him where you were last night.
In the silence of Hornsby’s office, a clock ticked. Hornsby folded his arms across his chest. He stared at his desk.
Tell him. A words repeated in Helen’s mind, adding to the clamor of voices that had become her constant companions. Help me, Helen.
“You want to look at the medical examiner’s report?” Hornsby asked finally. “You want to do my job?”
His eyes were watery and red. There was a fleck of mustard on the corner of his mouth. His ch
eeks sagged, as though he had aged since she last saw him. He’s falling apart.
“There were no unusual marks on the legs,” Hornsby said adamantly. “Carrie Brown is at UMass, failing calculus and paying her rent on time. And Sully…she’s told us everything over the years. UFO landings. Political assassinations. She predicts it all. Sully would say anything for a hot meal and a fiver.”
“What about the torso?” Helen asked. “Does it match the legs? Can you check the blood type?”
“You want the medical examiner’s office to rush results when they have a hundred other cases, and we know this girl was homeless and mentally ill?”
She shot Hornsby a warning look.
“Fine. I checked the blood type.” Hornsby exhaled heavily. He had run out of steam after his short burst of outrage. On his desk, the sandwich glistened, deconstructed on its paper wrapper. “The blood type for the legs matched the torso of the homeless woman found under the train.”
Helen saw Thompson and Giles lingering outside Hornsby’s office. When they caught her watching, they disappeared.
“The blood type matches. The wounds match,” Hornsby added.
“DNA matches?” she asked.
“We don’t have the results yet, but she had the same plastic ties on her person as we found on the legs.”
Helen wished she could talk to Hornsby about the yellow Jeep. In Pittsburg she could have told the police that her tires had been slashed in the parking lot of a one–night–stand hotel. Vandusen had a good working relationship with the Pittsburg police, but the police had a thousand other businesses under their jurisdiction. The president of a small college was nobody to them. In Pittock, Helen was the most interesting public figure for fifty miles. If she enlisted the police department’s help in discovering who slashed her tires, they would need to know why she was at the Cozzzy Inn and who was with her.
“What about the emails from the group in Boston? The devotees?” Helen persisted. “They say some guy is attacking them online.”
“A creep.” Hornsby shrugged again. “Every pervert west of Holyoke has something to say about the case.” Hornsby dug in a desk drawer. He came out with a large binder. “Look.” He opened to a red tab. “These are Internet alerts. It’s stuff people send me, stuff I found on my own. It’s sick.”
Helen flipped through the pages, reading at random. One writer extolled the beauty of the Pittock feet. Several accused the victim of being a sexually promiscuous, drug addict who deserved what she got. “God will rain down punishment on the wanton,” one wrote.
“When you’ve been in law enforcement as long as I have, you see things.” Hornsby said. “Even in Pittock. I wish I could say this all came as a surprise to me, but it didn’t. Bad things happen, especially to the homeless. It’s hard out there, and it’s hard for us to protect them because, quite honestly, they don’t always want us to. There also isn’t a lot of money for pursuing cold cases.”
“The legs were discovered less than a month ago. That’s not a cold case.”
“Yesterday, Springfield PD found two women in a dumpster.” Hornsby pushed some papers aside. “Boston had a John Doe wash up in the harbor. In Holyoke there was a gang shooting that injured three minors.”
There it was again, that weariness, as if Hornsby could barely manage to speak. Helen shook her head. She felt as tired as Hornsby looked. A yellow truck, like one of those Tonka toys.
“Is there any suspect you haven’t investigated? Anyone whose alibi is questionable?”
Hornsby picked up a pencil and twiddled it between his fingers. He squinted at the watch on his wrist, then looked out the front window. “Are you asking about Ricky?”
Helen nodded slowly.
Hornsby shifted in his seat. “Ricky had nothing to do with this. Marshal Drummond told me himself. Ricky was at home that night playing computer games. We have records of his log–in and log–out. That’s as good an alibi as we’ve got for anyone. Adair Wilson doesn’t even have that good an alibi.” Hornsby shrugged, as though something had crumbled inside him. “She didn’t call anyone that night. She didn’t buy anything. Didn’t send an email. She lives alone. No one saw her go in her apartment. No one saw her leave.”
Chapter Thirty-three
No one saw him cut the rusty padlock with a pair of bolt cutters and enter the asylum. It was 4:30 a.m. The morning joggers would not be up. The homeless slept in their camp. Still, he moved quickly and quietly. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
Memories rushed back: The smell of bleach. The echoing halls. His legs raw from Father’s belts. The nurses hurrying past him without seeing. Carla Braff screaming from her wheelchair. The schizophrenics in Ward C, shuffling across the floor, their tongues protruding, their shoulders twisted around their ears.
“All a product of the medication,” Father had said casually. “It’s better. This way we can see them. They are more manageable if we can identify them by sight.”
“Does it hurt?” he had ventured, when he saw one of the men pounding his head on the ceramic tile wall.
“Does it matter?” Father countered.
He understood now. Some things were more important than pain. Helen Ivers would suffer more than the others, because she would live. This did not matter because she would soothe the need. He would keep her, and she would fulfill him.
The asylum was built in wings. All were in ruin, but when Father had been the administrator, the central wing—where he stood now—had looked like an upscale hotel, complete with chandelier and marble staircase. The farther one moved from the center, the more the asylum resembled a prison.
He had to find the right place for her surgery. He hoped it would be Father’s old office. Once he found it, he cursed. He’d thought it was on the second story, high up and secluded. Here it was, on the first floor, near the central nurses’ station. The windows looked out on the garden, almost at ground level. This would never do.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor. The floor was spongy in places and completely disintegrated in others. Vandals and weather had broken the glass in all but the highest window panes. He could not take the risk. If Ivers crawled to the window, she could call through the iron grating.
An hour later, he found his way to the theater with seats going up in rows. He liked the space. After all, he was producing a love story. Unfortunately, a dozen entrances led to the theater. Too many variables. He would have to go underground.
He was just about to leave, when he noticed a white, metal cupboard, lying on its side near a window. He opened it. On one side were several syringes, a box of tongue depressors, a brown bottle of unidentified fluid, still preserved by a rubber cork, and one pair of pliers. The pliers were rusted orange. On the other side of the cupboard, sat the bulk of a folded straitjacket. He picked it up and shook it. The buckles had rusted like the pliers, and rust had stained the canvas. It would make a nice souvenir. He picked it up. It would make a nice gift.
****
Helen waited anxiously for the second Tuesday of the month, when the devotees of Boston met. Under the guise of visiting alumni, Helen left the Mass Pike for the narrow streets of Boston.
The site of the meeting was a church, stuck between row houses. The stairs were warped, the paint peeling. A faded banner read, “Holistic Wellness and Conference Center.” The door opened onto a hallway with rooms on either side. Some of the doors were open. One door bore a plaque reading, “Meditation Lounge.” The orange sofas within looked like they’d been salvaged from an airport waiting room. A hand-written note taped to an easel read, “Devotees/Wannabes/Pretenders downstairs. Free coffee.”
Downstairs, it looked like the setting of an AA meeting. A few people sat in a circle on folding chairs. On a table by the door, the coffee pot sputtered.
A young man in a green vest caught sight of Helen and smiled too broadly. “Devotees, wannabes, and pretenders?”
She nodded.
“Come in. Come in.” He gestured e
xpansively, as though welcoming her to a party. “Coffee’s ready. I’m Blake.”
“Helen Ivers.”
Blake’s smile vanished. “Helen Ivers from Pittock?”
She nodded.
“Who told you to come?”
Helen could not tell if he was angry or frightened. “You did,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had to drive to Boston if you’d just answered my calls.”
Blake looked down. “We have a confidentiality policy in this group.” His voice took on the same indignant tone Helen had heard on the phone. “This is a safe space.”
Helen said. “I’ll do my best to respect that, but I need to ask some questions.”
The door opened and a man in a motorized wheelchair arrived, bellowing a greeting. Helen and Blake made room for him to pass. The man took a place in the circle of chairs and proceeded to recount a recent run-in with a grocery store manager. His face was animated. The rest of his body remained frozen.
“You know what the manager said?” The man had a thick Boston accent. “He said ‘I thought welfare put people like you in a home.’ I nearly jumped from my chair and clocked him.”
There was a ripple of laughter among the people in the circle.
“That’s Chuck,” Blake said quietly. “He’s the only wannabe in the group right now. He identifies as a C5 quadriplegic. He really wants to go through with it.”
“Go through with it?”
“Become a C5,” Blake said. “This group is for devotees, wannabes, and pretenders. I’m a pretender. I’m not in my chair today because I’m having a new seat put in. Plus, I have a job interview this afternoon, and I take the train. I couldn’t very well park it outside my interview.”
“What do you do?” Helen asked. The whole scene was surreal.
“I’m a machinist. That’s why I’m not a wannabe. I’d have to totally retrain if I wanted to work at a desk. That’s a big mistake people make. They think we want to live on welfare because we want to use our chairs. It’s not true. We just want a society that makes it possible to live a productive life with a disability.”
The Admirer Page 16
