The dead student, p.28
The Dead Student, page 28
34
Two phone calls and an argument—each upsetting in its own way.
The first call came to Moth, mid-morning. He thought it would be from Andy Candy, just as Moth was beginning to worry about her being a little late. He snatched up his phone—but the caller ID came up Anonymous and he paused before answering. His first thought was that the killer who had called Andy was now calling him and he tried to prepare something to reply. He felt abruptly naked—yet was unable to not answer.
“Yes?”
“Timothy?”
He vaguely recognized the voice, but didn’t place it instantly.
“Yes.”
“This is Martin from your aunt’s office.” Cold. Flat. Atonal.
Moth was taken aback. He stammered, “Yes, Martin, ah, how can I—”
“I thought your aunt was totally explicit when you spoke with her.”
“Explicit?”
“Yes. I believe she made herself abundantly clear.”
Moth gathered himself. “Yes. She didn’t seem to want any contact, especially if it had something to do with Ed …”
“I think she meant Ed—or anyone else.”
“Yes, okay, Martin, but I don’t see …”
Deep theatrical sigh, followed by a chilled voice. “Your aunt does not like to be threatened.”
Moth was confused. “Threatened?”
“Yes. Threatened.”
“Martin, I’m not following you …”
Martin the art purchasing assistant, sex provider, and all-around factotum business partner continued in an irate, indignant, irritated tone that told Moth that he had rehearsed his speech.
“Let me explain so there is absolutely no confusion. Shortly after we opened the gallery this morning we received a call from some thug. Let me repeat his words precisely so you will know exactly how angry we are: ‘Tell your fucking nephew Timothy to stop fucking around with me or else I will fuck him up, but I will also fuck you and your business up and maybe do a lot worse. Got it?’ Nice question to end on. Of course I quote got it end quote.”
Moth reeled back. He wanted to say something to the obnoxious assistant, but his mind went blank.
“So, Timothy, your aunt Cynthia would like me to say the following to you: ‘Whatever drunken or drugged-up mess you are now in, please don’t involve her, or else you will hear from her lawyers, who will be equipped with a restraining order and will make your miserable life even more miserable.’ Is that perfectly clear?”
Couldn’t make that threat any more pretentious, Moth thought. It was a pretty clear contrast from the other threat—not guns, knives, and murder, but lawyers. Typical of his aunt. But her threat was minuscule. He knew who had made that call. He just couldn’t see why. Moth suddenly felt awash in a sea of danger. He tried to gather himself, maintain a non-panicked sense of understanding. He wished Andy Candy were there because he respected her rational side and her ability to see the larger picture. He felt blind. This is all part of a plan. It has to be. This thought wasn’t reassuring. He admonished himself: You need to figure out what is going on.
Moth took a deep breath. “Yes, but Martin—”
“Is it clear?”
“It is.”
“Then we have nothing more to speak about.”
“Martin, please, was there any indication who was making this call?”
The assistant paused briefly. “You mean, Timothy, there is more than one person who might be angry enough with you to go around threatening innocent people?” This was said in a fake-incredulous voice.
“Please, Martin. Help me out here, so at the very least I can make sure that whoever it is doesn’t bother you or Aunt Cynthia again.”
This was a false promise. Moth actually wished for one evil second that he could find a way to steer the killer in his aunt’s direction. Fuck them up as promised. That would be great.
Martin seemed to hesitate. “Well, no, no indication, except for one thing.”
“One thing?”
“Yes. The caller’s accent.”
“Accent?”
“Correct. I would have expected this thuggish talk from someone different …” Martin began.
Moth knew that Martin—whom he imagined was an utter racist—meant black or Hispanic when he used the word different. Moth wished he could use that moment to display all the contempt he had for his aunt’s assistant and his aunt, but he did not.
“Yes,” Moth replied.
“Clearly, this fellow wasn’t from around here. Broad a sounds and dropped g’s. Reminded me of …” Martin hesitated. Moth could sense the assistant’s shrug over the phone line before he continued. “… my days as an undergraduate in Cambridge. You know: ‘Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd.’ That’s it. Very New England accent. Sounded like a character from some violent movie like The Departed or The Town. Could have been Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Massachusetts, but certainly not Miami or anywhere in the South. I hope this narrows your choices down. Regardless, this conversation is now over.”
Martin hung up. Moth pictured the smug, self-important look the man would have on his face, but then this portrait dissipated and he began to pace around his apartment aimlessly, on edge, his feet driven by a sudden wave of questions.
The other phone call was equally curt.
Susan Terry was just out of the shower, drying her hair, unsure what the day held for her, unsure what her next step was—either with Moth and Andy Candy or with her addiction—when her phone rang. She answered casually, befitting her semidressed state.
“Yes, this is Susan Terry.”
“Miss Terry, this is Michael Stern. I represent—”
She knew whom the lawyer represented. The man who sold her drugs and then sold her name to detectives for his freedom.
“Yes. This is my private home line,” she said, snapping rapidly to attention, like a soldier on parade.
“Your office informed me that you are on special assignment.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss my current job.”
This was a statement designed to cut this conversation off quickly, even if she had a slight curiosity as to why this lawyer was calling her this morning. The attorney hesitated, clearly already angry with her snippy tone.
“Perhaps you would like to tell me who Timothy Warner is,” he demanded. “Of course, if you would prefer, I can go to your boss and ask him. Would Warner be someone from the University of Massachusetts, perhaps? Or does he simply like their hats?”
Susan’s mouth opened but no words came out. A few seconds passed before she managed to croak, “What? Hats? What are you talking about?”
“Timothy Warner. The confidential informant who implicated my client unfairly in felony charges that have already been dropped.”
“How did you get that name?”
The lawyer mocked her. “I’m not at liberty to discuss my sources.”
Susan took a deep breath. “Neither am I, then,” she said. She had dozens of questions flooding her, but didn’t ask any. “I do not think I care to speak with you any longer,” she said. Her voice had a confidence and a haughtiness that was pure performance, because she felt the exact opposite. Why would Moth know anything about my dealer? she wondered. How would he know his name? She tried to remember if she’d ever used the dealer’s name at Redeemer One but she knew that she had not. And why would Moth call Narcotics? What would he gain by turning me in and making a mess of my life?
God damn it. And what the fuck was that about a baseball hat? And Massachusetts?
She had never been to Massachusetts. She didn’t think she knew anyone from Massachusetts. But clearly it was important, although how and why eluded her.
No reason occurred to her, except she understood that no reason could say as much as something clear and to the point. She was unable to control her gathering fury.
The argument—as so many arguments do—started off innocently enough: a conversation that began with, “I had a terrible day. A real creep wanted a lesson.”
Andy Candy’s mother said this, trying to penetrate the immensely thick emotional walls that her daughter seemed to have erected. She was willing to talk about anything—her music students, the weather, politics—if it would lead into a discussion about Moth, or about Andy Candy’s secretive, nervous behavior, or what plans she might be making to finish up her degree at the university and get on with her life. Andy Candy’s mother, though blissfully unaware of how dangerous it was, was aware that her daughter was trapped in the midst of something.
For her part, Andy felt caught on some sort of hellish merry-go-round—but maintaining silence on all subjects having to do with murder seemed to her to be the only way she could protect her mother from any harm. It was as if by not speaking, she could bifurcate her life. Safe part—home, mother, dogs, fluffy comforter on her bed, happy memories of childhood. Deadly part—school, rape, Moth, the murdered Doctor Hogan, some ghostlike killer who seemed no farther away than a phone call. Keeping these two lives separate seemed crucial.
“What do you mean a real creep?” Andy Candy asked, aware that since the killer had called her, everything in her dual existences was electric. She could feel her skin tingle.
“Guy calls out of the blue, wants a lesson right away, then when he gets here, lies about his piano experience and starts asking inappropriate questions, like ‘Do you live alone?’ and ‘Do you have a gun?’ And I caught him staring at the photo of you hanging on the wall, like he was trying to memorize it. Made me uncomfortable, but you shouldn’t worry, I refused to allow him back for another lesson.”
Shouldn’t worry. In Andy Candy’s mind, this went well beyond irony. “Who was it? I mean, what name …”
“Oh, he lied about that, too.”
Andy Candy exploded. High-pitched, sweat-driven, furious questions rocketed from within her. She bombarded her mother, trying to determine who it was that had occupied the piano bench, and why he had come there. Every answer she received made her anger more frantic and pushed her deeper into uncertainty, which felt very much like a black hole opening up beneath her feet.
When she’d heard everything—Munroe, driver’s license, some town up north that started with a CH—Andy Candy raced unapologetically from the house and drove hard for Moth’s apartment, leaving her mother both confused and teary-eyed. In that tire-squealing, run-the-stop-sign moment, Andy Candy didn’t think she would be safe at her home any longer. She didn’t know if there was anyplace safe for her. But at least she knew Moth would understand the danger, even if she had no idea what they could do about it.
Student #5 decided to fly north first-class. Totally deserving, he thought. He used a credit card to pay—one assigned to his Key West persona. It was a slight indulgence, he could easily afford it, and it would be a welcome reward for what he was already thinking was a damn good bit of work. All his years of careful planning directed toward his other killings had given him confidence about the seat-of-the-pants deaths he was now constructing. He thought of an athlete who spent years drilling proper form and technique into his muscles, called upon once again to remember all those hours of lessons and pitch a ball, throw a pass, shoot a puck. It never leaves you.
Nothing he’d created would tell The Prosecutor, The Girlfriend, and The Nephew anything concrete—other than the idea I’m close. Very close.
It would cause them to argue with each other, probably confuse them, and possibly even scare them. Everything they would experience was designed for one result: They will think they know just enough to hunt me down.
It will not occur to them that it’s me hunting them.
The stewardess arrived and asked him if he wanted a drink. He did. Scotch on the rocks. The bitter, seductive taste flowed into him. He liked Scotch because the liquor was relentless.
One sip. Two. The plane was lifted up past the bright Miami skyline toward its cruising altitude and he leaned back, closing his eyes. A memory of a favorite childhood book came to him: Uncle Remus—fried-chicken-and-chitlin tales from a happy-go-lucky, benign Old South that never actually existed, stories that were totally politically incorrect with obvious racist undertones.
One in particular was psychologically astute: Br’er Rabbit speaking in a deep, Southern-tinged voice that right at the moment seemed oddly like his own, pleading piteously for hunters to not do precisely the thing he wanted them to: “Please don’t throw me into that briar patch.”
Then a second story came to mind, equally sophisticated, and probably a little closer to what he intended. This tale revolved around a doll named Tar Baby.
35
Moth and Andy Candy lay on his bed, wrapped together like spoons. They were fully dressed, but touching as if they had just had sex. They had not, although it had occurred to both of them. Andy held Moth’s hand tightly between her breasts. Moth rested his head against her back. Their breathing was raspy, shallow, but driven more by unsettled fear than anything else. They whispered to each other like the childhood lovers they once were, but it was a conversation that seemed to contradict the way they held each other.
“What are we going to do?” Andy asked, except this was a rote question and she already knew the reply.
“What we started out to do,” Moth answered. “What else can we do?” Again, this was an expected response.
Neither really understood what they meant by this. They had more or less the same thought: what had begun as a bit of barely controlled bravado and revenge fantasy had progressively become more and more real. They had seen one man die, and now they knew that someone else had to die. It’s one thing to say I’m going to kill someone and another thing altogether to actually do it. Neither—although they would not share this doubt—believed they could kill someone. They had moments where they imagined it might be possible—others where they had zero confidence.
In a world that seemed to take violence and killing for granted, they were naïve about methods of murder. No military or police training. No mafia or drug cartel culture of killing. They weren’t psychopaths or sociopaths who could flick off death like an unwanted bug landing on an arm. They were normal—even if Moth’s alcoholism and Andy Candy’s victimization and subsequent abortion made them feel unique. Secretly, both longed for the simplicity of teenage days past that seemed to have suddenly been stripped away from them.
“We have a gun,” Moth said. “And we have someone who knows about killing. At least, intellectually.”
For a moment Andy Candy stiffened, and then she realized that Moth was referring to Susan Terry. A law school understanding. An after-the-fact comprehension that went along with being a prosecutor, Andy Candy realized. Can Susan pull a trigger? Hell if I know.
“What will happen to us?” Andy Candy asked.
Moth smiled, stroked her hair. “We will get through this, grow old, fat, and happy, and never think about it again. I promise.”
He left out the word together. And Andy Candy didn’t actually believe the word promise.
“Well, if we do nothing, we know what will happen,” she persisted.
“Do we?” Moth replied.
The two of them began to unfold, and within a few seconds were seated side by side, upright on the edge of the bed, like a pair of wayward children being disciplined and forced to sit still as punishment.
“Maybe he thinks he can just scare us into silence.”
Andy Candy nodded. “That would be great. Except how would we ever know? Silence for how long? He took years and years to kill off the other people. Who’s to say we wouldn’t look up fifteen years from now—you know, living some nice suburban, soccer mom and coach dad life—and suddenly be staring at a gun. Bang! That’s what he did to the others.”
“What the fuck good does silence do for either him or us?”
Moth rose from the bed and began pacing around. “You know, the great men I study in history—they were always trapped into decisions. They never knew with absolute one hundred percent certainty if any course was right. But they believed that failing to try was worse than actually failing.”
Andy Candy smiled wryly as she watched Moth travel back and forth, gesturing with his arms with each point made. It reminded her a bit of the moody but energized Moth of high school, somehow grown into someone familiar but different. Moth liked to drift into lecture tones. He will make a good academic, she thought. He will have a nice life performing in front of a classroom—but only if he lives through this. “Except—what does failing mean for us?” This question chilled the room.
“In a way, the same thing that it did for them,” Moth replied, trying to force a smile. “What they faced was a loss. Maybe humiliation. Freedom. Gallows. Firing squad. Prison. I don’t know. High stakes. That’s what we know.”
“Doesn’t seem all that different for us,” Andy replied. “Hit-and-run. Fake suicide. Hunting accident.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What do you suppose he will invent for us?”
Moth didn’t answer. His mind reeled with possibilities, none of them good.
Another pause. The practical Andy Candy started to emerge: “Shouldn’t Miss Terry be here?”
“Yes.”
Susan Terry remained in her car, parked outside Moth’s apartment. She was on the twin edges of rage and despair, unsure about both.
What she craved—more than anything else—was to descend into more drug use and instantly forget everything that had happened to her in the past few days. After that morning’s phone call from the lawyer she had immediately fueled herself with the last dregs of coke she had left, wondering only once why she hadn’t flushed it down the toilet in the wake of her suspension and her trip at Timothy’s side to Redeemer One. She took a deep breath. I don’t care what I promised those assholes, she aggressively lied to herself. The siren song of cocaine seemed to pledge a lotuslike forgetfulness: You won’t have to worry about your job or your career. You won’t have to worry about some killer. Every promise you made to everyone everywhere can be ignored and forgotten. Every pain you feel can be erased.
