The dead student, p.34
The Dead Student, page 34
Susan eyed the two of them. There had been something utterly chaste about their connection up to that moment and she mentally sniffed the air to see if anything had changed. She couldn’t detect anything, so she ignored it. But a part of her sounded a bell of concern.
Then, as quickly, she dismissed it. Screw it, she thought. Deal with what you can deal with. She looked at the list of names.
“Single men. Traveling alone. All within the right age framework.”
Susan nodded. “You’re thinking like a cop, Andy,” she said.
Andy smiled. “Yeah. But that’s as far as I got. How do we narrow it down further?”
The three fell silent.
Moth stared at the papers, letting his eyes sweep across documents over to Susan, then to Andy Candy, then back to the piles on his desk. What does a historian do? he demanded of himself. How does a historian look at bits and pieces of information and determine how events are influenced?
He breathed in sharply, a sound loud enough to make the two others turn in his direction.
“I know how,” he said.
Shot in the dark, Susan thought as she hurried through the warren of desks toward the state attorney’s corner office. But as far as shots in the dark go, not a bad one at all. Her boss’s secretary usually guarded the entrance with Cerberus-like intensity and rarely smiled, but as Susan approached, she looked up from her computer and shook her head.
“Oh, Susan, that looks painful. Are you okay?”
Susan thought joking was the best approach. Make everything seem like no big deal. “Hey, you should see the other guy.”
The secretary nodded and smiled wanly. She gestured toward the door to the inner office. “He’s waiting to see you. Go right on in.”
Susan nodded, took a step forward, then stopped. This was calculated, part of the performance. It had to be done before she got fired, if that was to be the outcome of the meeting.
“I wonder …” she started, then stopped. “Oh, probably won’t help, but …”
“What is it?” the secretary asked.
Susan pounced.
“I have a list of names from the TSA. I need to pull state driver’s licenses on each of them.” She motioned toward her arm in the sling. “It’s so hard for me to type into the damn computer right now …”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” said the secretary. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Is this part of your investigation?”
“Of course,” Susan said. The boss’s lie about an investigation seemed to be all over the office. Helpful. She smiled. The secretary would have access to all the law enforcement databases around the nation. “Boy, would I ever appreciate it.”
She handed the secretary the list Andy Candy had created. Now all she had to do was avoid being fired in the next few seconds.
She switched back and forth between concoctions and contradictions effectively, rapid-fire.
“I know what you told me, but it was a closed case where questions had cropped up, and with the sort of addiction problems I’ve experienced, lingering job-related issues can really trigger some of the behaviors I’m working my way through,” she told her boss. She let words race through her lips, wanting to be persuasive, which required speed, but not wanting to sound manic, hopped up, or strung out. This required more performance on her part.
“The young people I was with, they were involved in the case and had raised some possibly legitimate doubts about our investigation.” She looked over at the head of Major Crimes, searching his face for clues that what she was saying was having an impact. A frown. Raised eyebrows. A nod. A shake of the head. She barreled forward, hoping.
“I knew that you hate it when people have questions after some case has been officially closed, so, really it was intended to be therapeutic on my part. You know—quick trip up to speak with the potential witness. Get a statement. Rewrap the case up nice and tight, no holes anywhere. End of story …”
She noted a rueful smile. Her boss knew all about no holes and end of story and how unlikely that was. She persisted: “… Get back into the rehabilitation cycle. Back in time to make my meetings and see a counselor, just as you requested.”
Now she shrugged.
“Look, I had no idea the guy I went to see was running some sort of backwoods, low-rent, small but dangerous meth manufacturing site in his old trailer, and when he saw us coming, thought that he was being busted and decided to go out in some sort of blaze of glory—like that guy on television did. Jesus, could have killed us all, but we were lucky and the local cop I was with was damn good—maybe ought to consider him for down here on our investigative staff …”
Every word she spoke was calculated to convert something murderous into something benign. She was particularly pleased with her suggestion that she was trying to make sure a mistake hadn’t been made in a case. Like any top prosecutor, her boss was sensitive to anything in his domain that might devolve into a front-page news story that had the word incompetent implied somewhere in it close to his name.
“I know, boss, this all sounds like a major-league fuckup, and I’m not denying that it is, but my intentions were good …”
He believed that.
It surprised her.
He didn’t change her status—other than to warn her that there could be no more incidents that got in the way of her rehabilitation program. She knew this was a sincere threat.
Thin ice that just got thinner.
But as long as she didn’t move too quickly, she wouldn’t plunge through into freezing waters.
As Susan was on her way out, back to what her boss assumed was the process of getting sober and straight, the secretary handed her a large envelope. She fingered the collected pages inside, almost as if they would burn a hole through the paper until they reached the killer.
44
Susan resisted the temptation to rip open the envelope instantly, waiting until she returned to Moth’s apartment.
She was oddly formal as she dropped it on the desk. “Okay, Mister Warner. Here is the information you requested.” She saw Andy Candy blanch slightly, not all of the blood draining from her face, but a good deal of it. The contents of the envelope, Susan realized, ranged from utterly irrelevant to extremely dangerous. Opening it had the potential to set them on a course that there might not be any walking away from. She realized—as the oldest person and the only real professional in the room when it came to crime and punishment—she needed to point this out.
“You sure you want to look at this?”
Moth hesitated. “That’s what all this has been about, right?”
“Right. It’s just that up to now no one has broken any laws—maybe stretched them a bit, I’ll admit, but actually done something that I, or someone exactly like me, could successfully prosecute in a court of law? No. I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“There’s a but coming, isn’t there?”
“Yes. Open that envelope and then do what you’ve been saying you’re going to do, well, that’s a different thing altogether, isn’t it? ‘Conspiracy’ is a word that comes to mind.”
Susan used the same tone of voice that she’d employed when Moth first came to her office.
Moth didn’t answer. He just stared at the envelope.
Susan softened her tone—which contradicted much of the harshness in what she was saying.
“Look, Timothy, I know what you’ve said you want to do, but have you really thought it through? I don’t think you’re a criminal—and I don’t think you want to become one, either. But you’re about to. Shouldn’t we try to find some alternatives now?”
“Alternatives almost got us all killed,” he replied.
“I just want you to consider—” Susan started, but Moth interrupted her.
“Isn’t that all we ever do, Susan?” he asked quietly. “Every day. Is this the day we stay sober? Or is this the day we fail?”
Now it was Susan’s moment to remain silent.
“I am tired of being who I am,” Moth added. “I want to be someone different.”
Moth’s hand shook a little as he reached for the envelope, and it wasn’t the sort of quiver that he was familiar with: the morning after a night-long bout with the bottle. He looked over at Andy Candy, who seemed frozen in position, because what had once been intellectual, a challenge, a puzzle spread out on a table in a thousand pieces waiting to be fitted together, was now something different. “Andy,” Moth said quietly, “I see what Susan’s driving at. This just might be that totally crazy moment we talked about. If you want to leave, right now would be a good time to walk out the door and not look back.”
Saying this nearly nauseated him. A montage of grim futures flooded him. She walks, I’m alone. She stays, and what are we doing?
Thoughts pummeled Andy Candy.
Go, go, go, go, she thought. Then: No way.
She disagreed with herself: You’re being stupid. So? What’s new? Been stupid from the start. Why stop now?
When Andy shook her head, Moth felt an immense relief. Without explanation, she took the envelope from Moth’s hands. “Let’s see what we can see,” she said, not really trusting her voice much. “Maybe he won’t be here. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Maybe we won’t be sure. Then we can make some decisions.”
Coming to a decision seemed to renew her confidence. She reached over and grabbed the driver’s license photo of Blair Munroe. Whether he was the dead man or not was something being determined miles away, by forensic analysts in Massachusetts. The maybe dead man seemed very distant. The man who had called her on the phone and pushed her into a near panic seemed much closer. She set the maybe dead man’s picture on the table, then opened the manila envelope. Acting a little like a television game show host, she removed one sheet of paper.
The three of them craned over the pictures as Andy Candy set them side by side.
A man from a suburb outside Hartford, Connecticut.
“No,” Susan said. “Timothy?”
“Agree. Not him.”
Another picture.
A man from Northampton, Massachusetts.
“Nope,” Moth said. “Wrong hair. Wrong eyes. Wrong height.”
“Correct,” Susan said.
A third picture.
A man from Charlotte, North Carolina.
This picture made each of them lean forward. There were some similarities, obscured by eyeglasses. For a moment, Andy Candy held her breath; then she exhaled slowly as she realized it wasn’t the man they were seeking.
“Go on,” Moth said. “Another.”
Andy thought it was a little like playing the children’s memory game Concentration, where the idea was to place all fifty-two cards in the deck facedown, then turn them over two at a time, trying to remember where the previously exposed cards were to make pairs. She reached into the envelope and withdrew another picture.
A man from Key West, Florida.
Andy Candy gasped.
She wanted to shout. Raise her voice, let loose, keep going until she was exhausted. Instead, she simply put the remaining twenty-odd pages in the envelope aside, walked over to the sink, and drew herself a glass of water. She gulped it down, unable to tell whether it was hot or cold.
Moth was unsure how long the three of them were quiet. Might have been seconds. Could have been longer. It was as if he’d begun to slip through time. When he did speak, it seemed like his voice echoed, or else came from some distant location or some different person—a stranger.
“So, Susan,” he asked quietly, “exactly how do I get away with murder?”
Andy Candy recalled a reading from a literature class, her third year at college. An unraped year, she thought. Lots of seminar discussions about existential writing. The only real choice in life is whether to kill yourself. Or not. She tried to remember: Was it Sartre? Camus? It was one of those French writers, she was certain. She glanced over at Susan Terry. Well, she’s caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, isn’t she? This was almost a joke, and Andy stifled a smile. She didn’t dare to look over at Moth. She tried to imagine what it was like for him to look down and see the man that killed his uncle pictured on something as ordinary as a driver’s license. She felt an odd sense of things coming together, as if instead of confusion, things were slipping into place, joining up, linking into a chain. She stole a look at the killer’s photo, but in her mind’s eye it was replaced by the grinning face of the frat boy who’d fucked her, impregnated her, and abandoned her. Kill them all, she thought.
A small silence.
“Timothy, I cannot tell you that,” Susan Terry said.
“Can’t or won’t?” Moth asked.
Susan ignored this question. “What we should do is call my boss. Hand over everything to investigators. Let them put together a prosecutable case. Make an arrest. Complicated, sure, but possible. Come on, Timothy, don’t be dumb. Let’s let someone with expertise handle this.”
Moth paused.
“When you prosecuted murder cases,” he said slowly, “it had to occur to you as you put everything together before going into court : This factor, this piece, this bit of evidence—take any one little thing away, and the whole case would crumble. The person best able to see how to avoid arrest and going to prison isn’t the criminal, because he’s wrapped up in what he’s doing—it’s the cop or maybe a prosecutor like you, who view it all in hindsight.”
Susan Terry nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s a reasonably accurate statement.” She sounded like a law school lecturer.
“So it stands to reason that an experienced member of law enforcement, like you, would—intellectually speaking, of course—know where the pitfalls and fuckups really lie.”
Susan nodded. She felt a little as if she had awakened on some strange planet, where blood and death were treated like subjects for a term paper.
“All right,” Moth continued, picking up a little momentum. “Let’s speak hypothetically, then.”
It was easy for Susan to see where he was going. She didn’t stop him, although a part of her deep within was screaming for her to do precisely that.
“Hypothetically, and all together generally,” Moth continued. His voice was cold with barely restrained fury. “What are the specific areas where people screw up and get arrested for murder?”
Susan took a deep breath. Ah, well, she thought. Guess I can’t hold back the tide. “In my experience, and speaking hypothetically, naturally it’s in connections. Relationships. What links the killer to the victim? Usually, they know each other, or they have business together. What the police look for is how they intersect.”
Moth was leaning forward, almost predatory. “So the most difficult kind of killing to solve …”
“… is when the connection isn’t immediately apparent. Or remains hidden. Random. Witness-less. Obscured by something—shit, Timothy, pick whatever word you like. It’s where the motivation for the murder isn’t clear and how person A got into the same place as person B. With a gun.”
Moth was thinking fast. Susan could see things turning over in his head.
Andy Candy interjected: “You mean like some guy who stalks and kills members of a medical school study group years after whatever the hell they did was done and everyone had moved on to something else, except the killer?”
There was much cynicism in her voice. Andy could hear it, and she actually rather liked it. It was like opening the door to a refrigerated room.
Susan tried to ignore her. She talked to Moth. “Look, there are also forensic links. Don’t underestimate what police labs can do. I mean, it’s not like how it’s portrayed on television—you know, instant this and instant that and bingo, we know who a killer is. But they can match fingerprints, hair samples, DNA—you name it. They take their time, and they are reliable as all get-out. And ballistics. That science is pretty advanced.”
Moth looked over at the desk and the two pictures. He picked up the photo of Blair Munroe on the Massachusetts license. “I know what connects me to this man,” he said quietly.
He replaced the picture on the desk surface.
Taking the other picture in his hand, he looked at it for a moment. Stephen Lewis. Angela Street, Key West. “But what connects me to this person?” he asked.
Susan hesitated. “Just me, and what I’ve done,” she said in a low voice.
Moth held up both pictures. “And exactly what do you suppose connects this man to this man?”
Susan inhaled sharply. It was as if in that second, she could see a murder. She didn’t know whether Moth saw it as well. “Probably nothing, if he’s as smart as we think he is.”
Moth smiled.
“Goodbye, Susan,” he said. “I think you should go to Redeemer One tonight. Yes. Absolutely. You should make one hundred percent certain you are at Redeemer One tonight. Make sure you testify. Talk about every one of your troubles in detail and make everything you say memorable. You wouldn’t want anyone at that meeting to forget that you were there—in case anyone should ever ask them.”
45
A one-sided conversation:
“Don’t be rash.”
“You can fuck up your entire future.”
“You will get caught.”
“You think I can protect you? Think again. I won’t.”
“Murder isn’t a game, Timothy. It isn’t some sort of academic exercise. It’s real, it’s nasty, and it takes a whole lot more toughness than you have.”
“You think you can look that man in the eye and kill him? Ask yourself that question first. It might be easy for Hollywood movie stars in fake dramas, but in real life it’s not so damn simple.”
“You think you can pull a trigger?”
Pause. No reply. Continuing:
“Cops aren’t stupid, Timothy. And they have time on their side. No statute of limitations on homicide. And they have resources you wouldn’t imagine.”
More silence. Words that exploded in the still of the apartment seemed to have no impact.
“What makes you think that when I pick up the paper tomorrow and read about a murder in Key West I won’t go walking into the Major Crimes Division of the city police and say, ‘I know who did this …’ And even if it takes them a helluva time to piece it together, they will. Count on it. And if I decide to help them, it won’t take all that long. So, kill that man and enjoy your final forty-eight hours of freedom, Timothy. Spend that time picturing what you might have done with your life.
