Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  “No kidding? Who?”

  “Ray Eagle.”

  “Wait … the guy who helped us with Abernathy’s sister’s case? Why would the professor have his number?”

  “Ray Eagle,” Manny said, clearly irritated, “says to give you this message: ‘If Ollie Chandler wants to know why the professor called me, I’ll meet him at the precinct tomorrow morning.’ He said he read Abernathy’s article on the investigation, so he’s invited too.”

  I heard the slow burn in Manny’s voice.

  “Can you join us?”

  “No. I’ve got work to do. Trying to solve a murder.”

  Mulch got restless and talked me into a 9:00 p.m. walk. As we headed toward a nearby greenway, a light, cool rain blew into my face, and a thought hit me like a bolt out of nowhere.

  What if that call to me from the professor’s house wasn’t made by him? What if it was made by the last person there after he died?

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25

  Before leaving for work, I saw Saturday’s newspaper on the recycle pile. It inspired me to pull out the VCR manual. I put on my reading glasses and found the page about setting the clock. I didn’t manage to set the correct time, but at least I stopped it from flashing. I raised a Budweiser in victory when it turned to 12:01.

  You never know when some smart-aleck journalist might drop by.

  Ray Eagle, short and athletic looking, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, Levis, and an OSU baseball cap, met Clarence and me at the Justice Center. I refreshed my memory before he came. He’d been a Detroit cop fifteen years, five as a detective before moving back to Portland.

  After we took five minutes to catch up, I asked, “So what was the professor doing with your number?”

  “Palatine called me twice. He wouldn’t identify himself. Caller ID gave me nothing. I had the next call traced.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Friends in the right places,” he said. “I used to be a cop, remember? Anyway, he called from his home, not the college. He said he’d gotten some threats, but they were oblique.”

  “He used the word oblique?”

  “Yeah. I checked it online five seconds after he said it to make sure I knew what it meant.”

  “It’s a college professor word,” I said. “They throw it out there to impress you. Journalists do the same.”

  “People like you are why we write at a sixth-grade level,” Clarence said.

  “If I were one of your readers, I’d be insulted.”

  “If you were one of our readers, you’d be informed.”

  “You guys need a counselor,” Ray said, raising his hands.

  “What was the threat about?” I asked.

  “He’d been getting phone calls every week, near midnight. The caller implied that Palatine was going to be held accountable for how he’d wronged someone. I think he knew what it was about but didn’t tell me.”

  “Why’d he call you?”

  Ray took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. “Somebody recommended me. I told him if he thought his life was being threatened he should call the police. He didn’t want to. His second call was Tuesday morning, thirty-six hours before he was killed. When I heard about the murder, I wished I’d done more. Maybe I should’ve called the cops.”

  “Why didn’t you call us after the murder?”

  “Cops don’t like PIs sticking their noses in. I figured you’d be calling me. Sure enough, you did.”

  After Ray Eagle left, I drove the five minutes to the PSU library, by the Park Blocks. It would have been a fresh but drippy half mile walk. Showing my badge to a wide-eyed librarian, I requested the videos of the professor’s lectures, which I’d learned existed from a previous call. He carried three videos and escorted me to a private viewing room with an uncomfortable metal chair.

  I’d asked computer forensics to send me all Palatine’s lecture notes. With a keyword search, I’d located the notes corresponding to these exact lectures and had them with me. Two were the same presentation from his Philosophy 102: Ethics class, given in back-to-back sessions. I watched both sessions to see what I could learn about him. What struck me was how he would roll his eyes up, as if searching for a word. Then suddenly he’d come up with it, when it was right there in front of him in his notes and he’d said the same thing in the previous class, also rolling back his eyes and searching for that same perfect phrase.

  In other words, Palatine was the south end of a northbound horse.

  He spoke about the dominance in literature and philosophy of dead white males. Never mind that he was a white male. And dead to boot.

  He talked about the naïveté of believing in moral absolutes. Listening to the professor, and the student comments that mirrored him, reminded me that many educated people believe there’s no such thing as right and wrong. And that many educated people, therefore, are stupid.

  Why would I be a cop if there wasn’t right and wrong? Steal their skateboard, stereo, or spouse, and suddenly they believe in moral absolutes.

  I’m no church boy, but the Christians have it right on this one. When you deal every day with crimes against people, you can’t stomach all this waffling on right and wrong. As I listened to the lectures, it struck me as odd how much money people are willing to pay to be taught ethics by people who don’t believe in ethics. It ticks me off that all of us are paying the price for raising a generation that doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong

  But what would I know? I’m no college graduate. I’m just a working stiff, trying to keep the next person from being mugged or raped or murdered by people who—guess what—don’t believe in moral absolutes.

  Jake called me about football at my place that night. He assured me that many philosophy teachers these days believe in moral absolutes, and Palatine was a throwback to moral relativism. Well, okay, but do universities offer students their money back when the philosophies they learned there ruin their lives … and other people’s?

  The professor’s lectures were as heavy on ego as they were light on morals. After the fourth video, I was surprised someone hadn’t killed him years ago. And dumped him and his smart-aleck philosophy-quoting answering machine into the Willamette River.

  For the third and final time I absolutely ruled out suicide. Could a gun, in a recoil back on the finger, fire a second time? Maybe. Could a man put a noose around his neck and put a gun to his chest? Sure. But after watching Palatine’s lectures, I decided I’d never seen a man with less self-loathing. If he killed himself, he’d have done it the easiest way, mourning humanity’s loss of himself.

  After leaving the PSU library and entering the real world, I pulled up the collar of my trench coat, pulled down my wool fedora, and leaned into the icy rain to my car eighty feet away. I thought of my cousin Harvey in San Diego. Maybe I should move there. If I did, I’d stay away from Harvey. But the weather sounded great.

  I went to the old brownstone for lunch and worked through the afternoon. Sarge knows I work well at home, so he gives me a long leash. I changed into sweatpants and sweatshirt, sat down at the kitchen table, threw away the mail, heated Nalley chili, smothered it in cheddar cheese and chopped onion, and sat back with a box of Ritz crackers, thinking step by step through the crime.

  After getting a second glass of milk, I found myself staring at the message on my fridge: “Examine the evidence. Then follow wherever it leads.”

  Monday night football, usually at Jake’s, was at the brownstone tonight. I scanned the house, put in some elbow grease, and ten minutes later the place was spotless.

  Clarence came at five thirty to show me a draft of his next article. I told him to strike a couple of sentences that said too much.

  “You’ll notice my VCR clock isn’t blinking,” I said nonchalantly.

  “It’s three hours fast,” he said.

  “It was made on the East Coast.”

  Jake joined us, the pizza arrived, and one of those great kickers named Jason set a football on the tee.<
br />
  During halftime my cell rang.

  “No kidding? You’re sure?” I hung up, staring at nothing.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “The Franklin Terrace apartments.”

  “What happened?” Clarence asked.

  “Our binocular-gazing hamster-loving Mr. Paul Frederick … the guy who told us the man at the professor’s door might’ve been wearing a stocking cap and looking for his lost dog?”

  “How could I forget him?”

  “They say he had an accident thirty minutes ago. He fell off his second-story deck. He’s dead.”

  10

  “I must take the view that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 8:45 P.M.

  WE TURNED OFF FOOTBALL. Sitting there in my living room, Clarence and I told Jake about Frederick and what he saw at the professor’s through his binoculars.

  “Are you going to Frederick’s to check it out?” Clarence asked.

  “It’s Karl and Tommi’s case. I have to let them sort things out first.”

  “Frederick actually fell?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “After he was pushed. Gravity’ll do that.”

  “Why would somebody kill him?” Jake asked.

  “Because they knew he saw something.”

  “But how would they know?”

  “My question exactly. Did someone tail us to the apartments to see who we were interviewing? I keep thinking about those narrow apartment hallways with their creaky steps and floorboards. How could somebody follow us without us seeing him?”

  “But we talked with maybe ten people,” Clarence said. “Manny talked with more, didn’t he? They haven’t been killed. Why single out Frederick?”

  “He’d seen the guy at the professor’s from a distance. Did the killer have eagle eyes? Did he spot him up there with the binoculars? Or was it something Frederick told us that made him worth killing? Or something he might tell us but hadn’t yet? But how could anyone know?”

  Clarence shook his head, saying something about how short life is.

  “Frederick left a handwritten will,” I said.

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. He designated you as Brent’s legal guardian.”

  “Who’s Brent?” Jake asked.

  “Forget it,” Clarence said.

  “This guy Frederick getting killed,” I said. “It’s another example of why I don’t believe in God.”

  “You believe in free choice?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t free choice demand the freedom to choose evil?”

  “Not if it causes this much suffering.”

  “How much suffering is acceptable? Can you have real choices without consequences, both good and bad?”

  I shrugged.

  “Isn’t it inconsistent,” Clarence piped in, “to say it’s good for God to give us free choice, but then say He shouldn’t allow evil consequences from evil choices?”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” Jake said.

  These guys were a regular tag team.

  “I’ve made some bad choices,” I said. “If I had it to do over again, I’d have been there for my daughters. But if God’s all-powerful, couldn’t He have made me do it right in the first place?”

  “Made you do it right?” Jake asked. “What do you want, for God to make us all into Stepford wives?”

  “I always thought the Stepford wives were kinda cute.”

  “If I were to offer to make things okay in your life, but to do it I had to take away your ability to choose, would you take me up on it? Ask me to make all your decisions for you?”

  “Then it would be your life, not mine,” I said.

  “Exactly. So how can you expect God to give us free choice, then fault Him because He did? What could He do to make you happy?”

  “Give me Sharon back.”

  Jake nodded. “He went so far as to give His life on the cross and conquer death in His resurrection so that you and Sharon and everybody who accepts His gift could be together forever.”

  “So you say. I’ve looked at Christianity, and I don’t like what I see.”

  “You don’t like love, grace, forgiveness, justice, feeding the hungry and caring for the sick? You know where hospitals came from? Christians. Atheists and agnostics aren’t behind prison reform. They’re not the ones who got slavery outlawed. It was Christians.”

  “Don’t forget the Crusades and inquisitions and all the killjoys, like my grandmother. If I were to judge Christ by some Christians I know, He’d look pretty bad.”

  “I agree,” Jake said. (I hate it when he says that. It throws me off.) “So why don’t you judge Christ by Himself instead of by others?”

  “Christians are just into rules and dos and don’ts.”

  “Some are,” Jake said. “But I can’t think of anything more pointless than Christianity without Christ. And nothing more exciting than knowing Jesus and following Him.”

  “Pardon me for not agreeing.”

  “You don’t need my pardon,” Jake said. “But you’re my friend, and friends tell each other the truth. I’m asking you, Ollie, take your focus off the church and off Christians you’ve known, and just look at Jesus. Read the Gospel of John, and judge Him by what He said and did, not by everybody who claims His name. Who did He claim to be? Investigate. Then make up your own mind about Him. And stop assuming things are as they appear.”

  “In other words,” Clarence said, “practice what you preach.”

  It was time to change the subject. I pulled out my yellow notepad. “Here’s my verse for the day. It’s from Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op. He says, ‘In the case of a murder it is possible sometimes to take a shortcut to the end of the trail, by first finding the motive.’ ”

  “How do you find that shortcut?” Jake asked.

  “By figuring out who benefits from Palatine’s death. Someone’s trying to come out ahead. Possible motives? Money. Power. Romance. Business. Revenge. Self-preservation. Justice. Somebody thinks the murder makes perfect sense. They think they’ll sleep better knowing he’s dead. It’s 99 percent motive. Remember that Purpose Driven Life study you guys tried to con me into?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “We were hoping to bilk you out of your mansion in the Caribbean.”

  “Well, let me tell you about the purpose driven murder. There’s always a purpose, always a motive. Find it and you have the killer. But to find the killer you must know the victim. That’s why I listened to the professor’s lectures and why I’m becoming a student of philosophy. That’s why I’m reading Bertrand Russell.” Okay, I’d read eight pages. “Which reminds me, has somebody written Nietzsche for Dummies?”

  “So what are the possible motives?” Clarence asked.

  “Nothing unusual about the professor’s finances. Doesn’t appear to have been a big gambler. Manny called his attorney about the will. Has no kids. Divorced. Looks like it goes to his brother, a wealthy doctor.”

  “Romance?” Jake asked.

  “Possibly. Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned. Isn’t that in the Bible?”

  “Nice try,” Jake said.

  “What about a student?” Clarence asked.

  “Maybe a student was humiliated by the professor. Manny says last term three students were caught plagiarizing papers from the Internet. Palatine flunked them. Manny’ll pay them a visit.”

  Clarence was taking notes.

  “The question with murder,” I said, “is always this—who’s better off because this person is dead? Better off in body, mind, or bank account? A victim’s abused wife is better off. A victim’s girlfriend’s husband is better off because he’s eliminated the competition and gotten revenge. Whose life’s easier because Palatine’s gone? Or rather, who might imagine his life would be easier? Because murder complicates his life in ways he neve
r imagined.”

  “Your sins will find you out,” Jake said.

  “A man reaps what he sows,” Clarence said.

  After a pause, I cleared my throat and said, “A rolling stone gathers no moss?”

  11:00 Monday night, Mulch and I kicked back on the couch. I was still pondering Frederick’s murder. Suddenly, I thought of something he’d said to us. A mental picture formed. Why hadn’t it dawned on me before?

  If I was right, it would explain how the killer might have known what Frederick said to us. And why, knowing that, he might kill him. The two fit, like gun and holster.

  I thought it through backward and forward. Usually I fear that I won’t discover the truth. This was one of the few times I’d been afraid I had discovered it.

  My nerves were like worms on a fishhook.

  The one thing that keeps me from drinking at night is the need to stay sharp to figure out a case. But this time, if my mind was catching the right scent, the last thing I wanted to do was stay sharp. I didn’t want to go where the evidence was leading me.

  I had to say yes either to the train of thought or to the six-pack.

  It was an easy choice.

  11

  “Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 8:00 A.M.

  I WOKE UP with a hippopotamus sitting on my head. The fact that it was invisible unnerved me.

  By the time I got to the office the hippo was the size of a rock badger—not overwhelming, just annoying. At nine, crime lab said the toxicology report was ready. Clarence joined me.

  “It’s bizarre,” the tech said, handing me his report. “Somebody injected this guy with over twelve ounces of ink. Pelikan ink, royal blue, same stuff in the bottle, only more. Maybe he found extra bottles. Or brought his own. He used that syringe you found at the scene.”