Jack in the Box

by Blake Banner

  “Yeah. She stole my money…” He shrugged. “Though, in reality, if I could have seen things more clearly, it was her money because she was working for it. You know what I’m saying? But I was her pimp. I was crazy at that time.”

  “Did you feel that Helena belonged to you?”

  He stared at me, with his eyebrows high on his forehead, then burst out laughing. “You crazy? Helena didn’t belong to nobody! She was her own woman, man! What are you talking about?”

  Dehan spoke suddenly. “Do you remember the last class, the one that was cancelled?”

  “Yeah, we turned up and there was a sign. Said there had been an accident or some shit. Classes never started up again. But I knew she was OK cause she published a new book that same night. I read it. It was good.”

  “You ever meet her husband?”

  The laughter faded from his face and he narrowed his eyes at her. “No, man. I never met her husband. What’s this about, man? You ambushing me? Should I have a lawyer here with me?”

  I shook my head. “We are not about to charge you with anything, Lenny. We are just trying to find out what happened that day.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me what happened that day?”

  “You know that’s not the way it works, Lenny. Can you remember what you did that Thursday?”

  “That was five years ago. How the hell would I remember that, man?”

  Dehan shrugged. “Maybe it was a notable day. Was it?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  I said, “Does the name Jack Connors mean anything to you?”

  He pulled down the corners of his mouth and raised his shoulders. “No. I don’t know. Did I beat him up some time? I beat up on a lot of guys. I used to be a real violent son of a bitch. I never lost a fight. You know that? Couple of guys I beat up almost died.”

  “I know. We’ve seen your sheet. Jack Connors was Helena’s wife.”

  “Oh. She didn’t take his name?” He smiled. “That’s just like her. Independent woman.” He stopped and frowned. “Wait. You said was. He died and you want to pin it on me cause I was in her class? That’s fucked up, man.”

  I shook my head. “We don’t want to pin it on anybody, Lenny. We want to know who did it.”

  “Really?” He turned to Dehan. “Really? How many other people from the class you been to talk to?”

  I answered. “None. We thought we’d start with you.”

  “No kidding. There was other black dudes in the class. Some were blacker than me. Why don’t you start with them and work your way down to the white guy?”

  “Believe it or not, Lenny, we didn’t come to see you because you’re black. We came to see you because you were the only person in the group who had decapitated somebody.”

  “What?”

  “Jack Connors was decapitated. And that last class was cancelled because somebody sent his head to Helena in a parcel, to her class. Somebody who knew she had classes there on that day, and would be there half an hour before the class started.”

  His mouth sagged open. “Oh, man. That is fucked up. She was a sweet lady. I would not do that to her. She did not deserve that, man. No way.”

  “So what were you doing that day?”

  “I have no idea. I can’t remember what I was doing on that particular day five years ago. Nobody can remember somethin’ like that. But I would not do that to her. She didn’t deserve that.”

  I nodded. “OK, so what were you driving at the time, Lenny?”

  “Boy, you really out to frame me, huh?”

  “No, Lenny. We are out to find the truth. And please remember that whatever you tell us, we will check and verify. If you didn’t kill Jack Connors, that’s good for you.”

  He sighed heavily, then smiled at the memory. “I had a bright red 1960 Cadillac convertible, red leather seats, drinks cabinet in the back, man, you never seen nothin’ like that baby.”

  “You ever own a white van?”

  “A white van?” He scowled at me. “Do I look like a fuckin ’lectrician to you? Or a fuckin’ plumber? Car gives a man status. Car you choose says a lot about you. I always owned Caddies, since I was fourteen, when I bought my first wheels.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table for a moment, feeling there was something unasked and unanswered, but unsure what it was. I looked at Dehan. She shrugged.

  “OK, Lenny. That’s all for now…”

  He made a gun out of his manacled hand and pointed it at me. “You should look at the other people in the class, man. If they knew the time she would be there, half an hour early, either they was stalking her, or they were in the class. That class was a big mix of people, man. I can’t remember them all, ’cause I wasn’t real interested in them. But like I said, they all had a story to tell. And they all loved her. We all did.”

  Dehan narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “You’d send a decapitated head to the person you love?”

  He looked momentarily mad. “No, Detective Dehan, I would not. But I can see how some people would, if they was in hell long enough; either to punish her for not loving them back, or as a sign that they had set her free.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, then called the guard. As the door rattled and clanged, I met Lenny’s eye and said, “Thanks, Lenny. You’ve been very helpful.”

  And we left.

  Down in the parking lot, a north wind had suddenly risen and was gently bowing the trees in the nearby woods. As we approached the car, Dehan turned and held out her hands. “Let me drive.”

  I threw her the keys. She snatched them from the air, unlocked the door and turned to face me.

  “Stone, what did you take away from that?”

  “That he loved her and has no alibi.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s go surprise Alornerk.”

  “Boston?”

  “I’ll phone him on the way, see where he is.”

  NINE

  Alornerk was not pleased to hear from us and questioned our authority to speak to him in Massachusetts when we were New York cops. I told him it was an unofficial visit and we were just trying to get a better understanding of the background to the case and what happened on the day of the murder. He didn’t like it, but agreed to see us that afternoon at five. It was going to be a five hour drive from Malone, so that suited us fine. For the first half hour, Dehan just drove and stared at the road ahead, while I went over in my mind everything that Lenny had told us. When I had gone over that a few times, I started going over the case from every angle, trying to fit everything everybody had said into a kind of 3D abstract puzzle.

  I spoke my thoughts aloud and said to Dehan, “Let’s look at this from a different angle. Jack was taken and killed and decapitated in a very narrow window of time between one PM and five PM on that Thursday. Allow for the head to be boxed and taken to UPS and then delivered to the college and we are looking at a window between one and four PM, and that is generous. That is a three hour time frame in which the killer has to isolate Jack, snatch him, take him to a location where he can decapitate him, box up and send his head in time for it to reach Helena at college. So, what are our pool of suspects doing in that period of time, between one and four PM?”

  She sighed loudly through her nose. “Penelope says she was hung over, which means she had no alibi. Grant Shaw threw us out before we got the chance to ask for his alibi, but he confirmed the wild party with Penelope on Wednesday night, and in any case made it clear that if he killed anyone, he had plenty of pros to do the job for him. Helena was having lunch with Alornerk and his European friends, and he was having lunch with her and his European friends.”

  I scowled out at the passing trees in the exquisite springtime landscape. “So, so far the only people with alibis are Helena and Alornerk.”

  “And then,” said Dehan with another sigh, “there are all the other people on her list of pupils and, if you want to feel really demoralized, all her fans.”

 
I shook my head. “Unless we are dealing with a highly skilled stalker, I think we can discount her fans. This killer was familiar enough with Jack’s movements to know that he was leaving for lunch, something, remember, he did not often do.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Not only that, Dehan, he was able to kidnap him, drug him and transport him to a quiet, secluded place in very little time, hardly leaving a trace of his—or her—presence.”

  “That takes a lot of skill, or at least detailed prior knowledge of his movements.”

  “So we are either looking at somebody with professional skills, such as a mercenary…”

  “Yeah, you know, when you put it like that, it does kind of point pretty strongly to either Penelope or Shaw. Shaw has the kind of guys who could carry out an execution like that, and…” She stopped, turned to look at me and shrugged. “Are we being a bit blind, Stone? I mean, where the hell was he going, if not to meet Penelope?”

  I nodded. “And so far we have had no indication that he had any other lover at the time.”

  We sped over dappled shadows on the blacktop between tall walls of trees that towered over us on either side. She puffed out her cheeks and blew. “So, this suddenly looks pretty obvious, Stone. It’s either A or B, right. I mean, A, she tells Jack Connors how she feels about him and that she wants to marry him. He blows her off. She freaks out, meets Shaw, lets off steam trying to forget Jack but she can’t—to the point where she actually tells Shaw she is going to marry Jack. Next day, she calls Jack and arranges to meet him to talk. He comes to her apartment, she drugs him, kills him, cuts off his head, parcels it up and then disposes of the body. Feasible, motive and opportunity.”

  I nodded. “Yes, it’s possible.”

  “B, she really was in love with him and he was in love with her. Shaw proposes and she says no. Remember his philosophy of life?”

  “According to her.”

  “If you can’t buy it, shoot the owner and take it. So his guy, in the white van, sees Jack arrive, and as he is leaving, he snatches him, bundles him in the van, yadda yadda.” We continued in silence for a while along the dappled road and after a while she added, “They are the only two options that really jibe.”

  I frowned at her curiously.

  “Why are you dismissing Lenny so easily?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is a hell of a coincidence, Dehan, and he just got through telling us he loved her and he has no alibi.”

  “Hmm…” She glanced at me. “Is there any point in my asking what you think?”

  “I think the narrow time frame is crucial. I think the familiarity with his movements is crucial. And the familiarity with Helena’s schedule is crucial.”

  I smiled at her and was momentarily mesmerized by the procession of trees moving across the lenses of her aviators. She said, “What?”

  “There is one other person with a very powerful motive for killing Jack, perhaps the most powerful, who was familiar with his movements, knew about his affair and was familiar with Helena’s schedule.”

  She frowned. “Who?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Helena herself.”

  She shook her head. “Nah…”

  “We need a lot more facts, Dehan. We should not write anybody off yet. You know…” I beat a tattoo on my knees with my hands. “You were right. This case does remind me of the lock up case. There are several things, the dismembered body, the fact that the rest of the body never showed, the fact that the head was delivered to a particular person in a particular place… all that, but especially the feeling that there is someone at the back of it all, watching and manipulating. That is the part that increasingly stands out for me.”

  She nodded for a bit and then shrugged. “That, for me, points to one of two people. Penelope and Shaw. They are both manipulators and controllers.” She was quiet for a bit, then added, “Plus, Penelope was probably the last person to see him alive, if that is where he was going at lunch. That, Stone, that for me is crucial.”

  I thought about it and said, “I agree.”

  * * *

  Alornerk lived practically on the beach, on the corner of Quincy Shore Drive and Arnold Road. It was an ugly, two story house with a gabled roof, a chimney and an extension built over a large garage. The whole thing was set behind a chain link fence in the middle of a flat lawn with no flowers.

  I pulled into his driveway, blocking his garage, and stood looking out at Quincy Bay and the broad, sandy beach that led down to the sea. The front door of the house opened, beyond a dead flowerbed, and a tall man with very long arms and legs stepped out and looked at us briefly. He was wearing black jeans and a black university sweatshirt, both of which made him look thinner. His pear-shaped head was balanced on top of his neck, so that the bulbous bit seemed about to overbalance at the top, while his chin barely protruded beyond his Adam’s apple at the bottom. His hair was dark and short, and what little chin he had was unshaven.

  He trotted down the steps to the lawn and approached us.

  “Are you the detectives?”

  “Detectives Stone and Dehan. As I said to you on the phone, we have no jurisdiction here. We are just hoping you can clarify…”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s go over to the beach. We can sit on the wall. I’m sick of being stuck in the fucking house all the time.”

  “Sure…”

  But by the time I’d said it, he was already across his front yard, opening the gate and crossing the road. Dehan and I exchanged a glance and followed him.

  Beyond the sidewalk there was a concrete wall, and beyond the wall there was a drop down to the white sand. Alornerk stood on the wall a while, with the sea breeze whipping his sweatshirt, and as we crossed the road and joined him, he seemed to fold up and rearrange himself into a sitting position, looking out at the sea. Dehan sat on his left and I took my position on his right.

  “I’m assuming you are Alornerk Smith?”

  “Of course I am.” He said it without inflection and without looking at me.

  “We would like to ask you some questions about the day Jack Connors was killed. Have you any objection to that?”

  “I assumed as much. Of course I have no objection. It was four and a half years ago, but my memory is pretty good.”

  Forty or fifty yards away, on the shore, a kid ran past, chasing a huge ball that was being blown by the breeze. It bounced and rolled in big bounds, and the kid’s laughter came to us in ragged snatches.

  “How is Helena?”

  The question surprised me. “You haven’t seen her recently?”

  “Not in a while.”

  Dehan was watching the kid with his ball. He’d managed to catch it and was now running back towards his mother, holding it in front of him. She spoke absently, like she wasn’t really interested. “You guys used to be pretty close.”

  “She used to work here, in the English department. We became very close. Her husband was based in New York, she was based here. I thought it would go on like that forever. Then she had her first best seller.” He looked down at his long, thin feet dangling from his long, thin legs. “It’s almost unheard of, you know?”

  Dehan asked the question. “What is?”

  “For an academic in English literature to be a successful author.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I never really expected her to become a success.”

  I studied his face a moment. He still hadn’t looked at either of us. “You were in love with her.”

  “When your whole life revolves around academic mathematics…”

  He trailed off and looked at me for the first time. His eyes flicked around, examining every feature on my face.

  “Because,” he said, as though answering an unspoken question, “mathematics is everywhere, and everything, like God. It is the hidden meaning that inhabits all things. But in academia we take it and we abstract it so that all it has left is its numeric value. And then, when your whole life revolves around acad
emic mathematics and numeric values, you can lose the ability to integrate abstract human feelings into your understanding of the world.”

  I looked back at the sea and saw that the little boy’s mother had him now by his ankles and was holding him upside down. The ball had escaped again and was being pursued into the sea by a red setter. “I can’t imagine how you would do that,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Emotion is an entire chaos system in its own right. How can you give a value to a chaos system?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you could.”

  “You can’t.”

  Dehan looked up at the sky directly above us. The blue was an intense contrast to the white sand. “So, when you went to New York for the launch of her book, were you still lovers?”

  He looked at his hands, at the palms; they were long and thin like his legs and his feet. Dehan sighed and added, “I mean, in the ordinary sense of the words.”

  Now he looked at her for the first time and nodded. “Yeah, I get bogged down in trying to understand the meaning of words and symbols, because there are no sharp lines separating one meaning from another…”

  “Alornerk?”

  He sighed and looked away. She persisted. “Were you lovers, in the ordinary sense of the word, when you went to her book launch in October, 2014?”

  He licked his lips and drew breath several times. “Yes, yes we were lovers. Just, barely, anymore… How? How do you quantify dying love? And if you can’t quantify it, how can you understand it?” He looked back at her for a moment. “Nothing hurts more than not understanding.”

  I nodded. “Not understanding definitely makes pain worse. No doubt about that. So, are you telling us that in October 2014, Helena had only recently moved to New York?”

  “You didn’t know that? Her first book had been a smash. And it was looking like the second one was going to be even bigger. Advance sales were off the chart. She told me she was moving to New York. She had some story about teaching creative writing to underprivileged people in the Bronx, but I knew the real reason was that she wanted to be closer to that Jack.”