“Over the last five or ten thousand years, we haven’t had complete success with that,” I said.
“That’s no reason not to try,” Charles said.
“Had about the same success eliminating crime,” I said.
“Again, that doesn’t mean we can’t,” Charles said. “To think otherwise is to consign man to permanent imperfection.”
“True.”
“I’m not prepared to do that.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“Are you?” Charles said.
“Prepared to say that humans are imperfect?”
“Yes.”
“I am,” I said.
“That’s defeatism,” Charles said.
Elizabeth poured herself more wine. My mother drank some bourbon. Charles was aglow with the excitement of his intellection.
“You ever meet a serial killer?” I said.
“Whether I have or not,” Charles said, “is irrelevant to the discussion.”
“Let’s not let experience cloud up the theory?” I said.
“Serial killers are an aberration. They’re insane.”
“That’s often not the case,” I said.
“Of course it is,” Charles said. “Anyone who does what they do is insane.”
I nodded. Charles was a professor with a Ph.D. He spoke several languages, had traveled widely in the world, and, as far as I could tell, possessed a brain the size of a Rice Krispie.
“I guess you’re right,” I said.
“No, no,” Charles said. “Don’t give up, I love intellectual rigor.”
“Nope, I can’t compete with you,” I said. “Have you two guys set the date yet?”
“In the fall,” Elizabeth said. “October probably.”
It was quiet for a short time while we all sipped our wine and ate as much as we could stand of our tuna-noodle casserole. No one had as yet attempted the tomato aspic.
“Ship them all back to Africa,” my mother said. “You want to solve the crime problem, send them all back where they came from.”
Elizabeth looked as if something hurt. Charles’s face had a sort of wooden stiffness to it. I sat and pondered, as I had so often. How much genetic responsibility did I have to my mother and sister? How thick was blood? At what point would it become acceptable to simply get up and leave? I’d never quite done it. Was this going to be the day?
My mother got up and took her glass to the kitchen. We were quiet. None of us had essayed the tomato aspic.
Then Elizabeth said, “Charles, tell Sunny about your book.”
“I’ve just published a book on Dante’s cosmography,” he said.
“Gee,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“Pembroke University Press is bringing it out, and it’s causing some excitement.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“One reviewer said it amounts to a complete rethinking of The Divine Comedy,” Charles said. “A reconceptualized affirmation of the integrative accord between microcosm and macrocosm.”
“Wow,” I said.
My mother came back in from the kitchen with her glass full again, and sat down.
“How come no one’s eating my tomato aspic?” she said.
44
Bob Johnson and I ate lunch together in a small café in the basement of his building. I was lunching with a possible serial killer, but at least there was no tomato aspic.
“That girl on the Esplanade,” Bob said. “That was him, right?”
“Probably,” I said.
“You getting any closer?” Bob said.
He was eating a Reuben sandwich. When I dined with Bob, I was never very hungry. I had a salad.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
We were outside on a little patio, below street level. The late-August weather was almost autumnal today.
“You know the cops are questioning some of my friends?” he said.
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah, isn’t that cool?” he said. “It’s like they had a list of people I knew, like I’m like a real suspect.”
“I suppose,” I said, “until they catch the guy, everybody’s a real suspect.”
“Yeah, but I must be more of a suspect than some people,” he said. “I mean, they can’t be questioning everybody’s whole list of friends.”
“You were at the scene of one murder,” I said.
“A lot of people were,” he said. “Nope, they’re suspicious of me.”
“Does that bother you?” I said.
“Bother me? No, there’s no evidence. I think it’s kind of fun.”
“Fun?” I said.
“Yeah. It’s like playing cops and robbers: exciting, but with no real danger, you know?”
“Because you didn’t do it.”
“Of course,” he said.
So far everything we’d done to investigate him seemed to titillate him. Maybe I should push it a little. But if I talked about Vicki Russo, was I putting her at risk? No way to know. I didn’t dare.
Instead, I said, “Talk to me a little about your father’s death.”
For the first time since I’d met him, there might have been a flicker of something behind his affable mask.
“I don’t like to talk about that,” he said.
I nodded.
“It must be hard,” I said.
He nodded.
“You notice that the last three victims have been women?” Bob said.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand your father died in his office at Taft.”
“I told you,” Bob said. “I don’t like to talk about that.”
I nodded and ate a small nibble of my salad. As always, I had dressed very carefully for Bob. Designer jeans, tight but not too tight. A pale green leather jacket over a white T-shirt. It would have been funny if he weren’t what I thought he was. I gave more thought to my appearance at lunch with a serial killer than I did for a date.
“Of course,” I said. “Do you think there’s anything significant in the fact that our guy has killed three women in a row?”
“Maybe he’s more interested in women these days,” Bob said.
“How would that work?” I said.
“Why, Sunny,” Bob said, “I don’t really know. Even old Spare Change himself may not really know. I mean, you have things in your head and the next thing you know, it’s influencing what you do.”
“You think he has a girlfriend?” I said.
Bob did an elaborate shrug and finished the last bite of his Reuben. He patted his lips carefully with his napkin.
“How about you and me, Sunny?” he said. “Are we ever going to have a real date?”
“This isn’t a real date?” I said.
“You know what I mean,” Bob said. “Dinner, dancing, a walk in the moonlight, a good-night kiss, maybe more?”
“Slowly, Bob, slowly.”
“Been burned before?” Bob said.
“Yes,” I said. “You?”
He shrugged again.
“Let’s just leave it that I understand,” he said.
“Romance is hard,” I said.
“You got that right,” Bob said.
I was quiet, hoping for more. Nothing more appeared. We remained quiet while he gestured for the check and, when it came, paid it in cash.
“What a great day,” Bob said. “Want to stroll down Commonwealth a ways?”
“Is it possible that your father might have committed suicide?” I said.
Bob stood up abruptly and walked away without a word. I was pretty sure he was not going for a stroll on Commonwealth.
45
Walford police headquarters shared
space with the Walford District Court. The cops on the first floor, the court on the second. My father and I were in the chief’s office on the first floor. His name was Wallace Spivey. He was tall and lean and scholarly-looking, with rimless glasses and gray hair.
“Wally and I used to share a patrol car,” my father said. “Before he sold out to the suburbs.”
Spivey smiled.
“Your father always insisted on driving,” Spivey said.
“Still does,” I said.
“After you called,” Spivey said, “I went through what we had on the Robert Johnson death at Taft. And what we got is nothing.”
“What a coincidence,” my father said. “That’s what we got.”
“I know the chief over at Taft,” Spivey said. “Jerry Faison. But maybe better, I know the guy was chief when Johnson died.”
“He used to be on the job?” my father said.
“With me,” Spivey said. “But they made him a nice deal over there.”
“Soft duty,” my father said.
Spivey nodded
“And you think I sold out,” he said.
“Can we talk with him?” I said.
“We can try,” Spivey said. “I checked with him, and he said he had nothing to add to the official report.”
“Maybe if we sat down with him,” my father said. “And maybe we could find somebody who was on duty at the college infirmary when they brought him in.”
“I asked Faison if he’d look into that,” Spivey said. “I haven’t heard back yet.”
We drove over in Spivey’s car to see the former Taft police chief.
“Name’s Corey Hall,” Spivey said as we pulled up in front of a white colonial house with green shutters.
“He doesn’t know what we’ve found out from the infirmary people, does he,” I said.
“We haven’t found anything out that I know about,” Spivey said.
“Mr. Hall doesn’t know that either, does he?” I said.
“No,” Spivey said. “He probably doesn’t.”
We sat on the back porch of Hall’s house and had some iced tea that his wife made us. Hall was white-haired, though he was almost certainly younger than either my father or Spivey. He had a square build and a healthy outdoor look about him. At the foot of his neat back lawn was a vegetable garden. From where I sat, I could recognize corn, and tomatoes, and pole beans, and maybe summer squash.
“Don’t know why this has come up again after all this time,” Hall said. “Man was not conscious by the time we got there. Took him over to the infirmary, it was too late.”
“They called it a heart attack?” my father said.
“Yep.”
“You remember the name of the certifying physician?” my father said.
“Nope. Must be in the report, though.”
“We’ll get that,” Spivey said.
“Folks at the infirmary seem to remember blood,” my father said.
“Nobody over there even worked in the infirmary when this happened,” Hall said.
“It’s my understanding that there was blood,” my father said.
Hall shook his head.
“Don’t know nothing about that,” he said.
“Why would there be blood on a heart attack victim?”
Hall shrugged.
“Ain’t saying there was any. But if there was, coulda hit his head or something when he collapsed.”
“So the presence of an abrasion would be in the report, too,” my father said.
“There wasn’t no abrasion,” Hall said. “There wasn’t no blood. I’m only saying if there was. Which there wasn’t.”
“You seem very young to be retired, Mr. Hall,” I said.
“Can’t say I’m feeling too young,” Hall said. “But you’re right, I took early retirement from Taft. Kids were on their own by then. Me and the missus don’t need that much. I got a damned good retirement package.”
“Do you remember how long that was after Professor Johnson’s death?” I said.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Hall said. “A year, maybe longer.”
“No hint of suicide surrounding Professor Johnson’s death?” I said.
“Suicide?”
“Well, he died locked in his office. Was there any sign of a weapon?”
“If there was, it woulda been in the report,” Hall said.
He looked at Spivey.
“What’s going on here, Wally, this girl a cop?”
“She’s working with her father,” Spivey said.
“Well, I think she ought to go work someplace else and stop annoying me,” Hall said. “And take you both with her.”
A big springer spaniel with a gray muzzle came onto the porch. He sniffed each of us carefully before he went slowly to Hall’s chair and lay down beside it. My father put his iced tea down. He leaned forward in his chair and rested his forearms on his thighs and clasped his hands, and looked straight at Corey Hall.
He said, “I been a cop for more than forty years, Corey. I like being a cop. I like cops. I been friends with Wally Spivey for damn near as long as I been a cop. And you’re a friend of his and you used to be a cop. I am willing to go a long ways for you if I need to. The death of Professor Johnson may, or may not, be tied to a string of serial murders that continues. The longer it goes unsolved, the more people die just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You talking about the Spare Change thing?” Hall said.
“Yes,” my father said. “If there’s something you are not telling us about Professor Johnson’s death, then a lot of people know what it is. The woman who discovered the body, the campus cops who showed up first at the scene, the EMTs, the people at the infirmary, the physician who certified him. It’s been twenty years, but unless they were real old, most of them will still be around someplace. It may take time, but we’ll find them. We have FBI on this, and the Staties, BPD, half the city and town police departments in the state.”
“Including mine,” Spivey said.
“Do you think if there’s something to cover up, every one of them will cover it up?”
Hall’s voice was hoarse.
“Why do you think there’s a cover-up,” he said.
“Because I got a witness who saw blood,” my father said, “and there’s no mention of it in any of the paperwork.”
Hall was silent.
“Phil’s a decent guy,” Spivey said to Hall. “You got something to tell us, we’ll protect you. We’ll keep you as much out of it as we can. But if you know something, you gotta tell us. We can’t let this guy keep on killing people.”
“How is the serial business connected to Professor Johnson?” Hall asked.
“We suspect his son,” my father said.
Hall sat motionless in his chair on his back porch in the soft summer afternoon with his old dog asleep on the floor beside him. He gazed silently at his orderly backyard and the orderly garden at the foot of it. Tears formed in his eyes and slid onto his cheeks.
He nodded his head slowly. Nobody said anything.
“We’ll protect you as much as we can,” my father said.
Hall nodded some more. Still, he didn’t speak. Mrs. Hall came out of the house. She looked sort of like her husband. Stocky body, gray hair, young face. Her movements were brisk, and her voice was cheerful.
“Anyone need more iced tea?” she said.
“No, thank you, Bea,” Spivey said.
Bea looked at the group on the porch for a moment. Her gaze lingered on her husband, whose back was stiffly to her.
“Well, you change your mind,” she said, “you just give me a holler. I’m in the kitchen.”
“Thanks, Bea,” Spivey said.
We were quiet for a moment after she went back in the house.
Then Spivey said, “What do you say, Corey?”
Hall nodded his head slowly.
“Yeah,” Hall said. “He killed himself.”
46
Here’s how it went,” Hall said.
He got up and walked to the end of the porch. The spaniel raised his head and watched him and decided they weren’t going anywhere and put his head back down. Hall stared at his vegetable garden for a while, then turned and walked back.
“The department secretary called it in,” Hall said. “One of my guys was there in maybe a couple minutes. It’s not like we’re all fighting crime night and day over there. EMT arrives about another minute later. There’s a .38 revolver on the floor beside him, one round gone. Appears to have put it in his mouth and fired. Made kind of a mess. We got him to the infirmary, but we knew there was no point to it. He was gone by the time he hit the floor.”
“So why didn’t you call me?” Spivey said.
“Called the president first,” Hall said. “Remember him, Larsen?”
“Perry Larsen,” Spivey said.
“You know what he was like,” Hall said.
“Attila is what I believe the faculty called him.”
“Yeah,” Hall said. “First thing he says when I tell him is, ‘He had a heart attack.’ I say a lot of people already know he didn’t. He says, ‘How many?’ I say, ‘Well, there’s the secretary, the EMT, a doctor and a nurse at the infirmary. That’s a lot of people.’ Larsen says, ‘I’ll deal with them….’”
Hall was silent for a moment, looking at his tomatoes ripening at the foot of his neat lawn.
“And he did?” my father said.
“He did,” Hall said. “Including me.”
“Wow,” my father said.
“Larsen was a tough bastard,” Hall said.
“Why the cover-up?” my father said.
“Good of the school,” Hall said. “Larsen was trying to get Taft onto the elite college list. Johnson had just been voted teacher of the year. Got an award for some book he wrote. Larsen was afraid of what might come out if there was an investigation. I mean, he must have had a reason for killing himself.”
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