“Roy, is it true? There’s no doubt? Have you asked for a second opinion? Is there anything I can do for you?”
I felt embarrassed, as if Diana had found out something shameful about me. I told her I’d never be able to accept her pity. And I didn’t think it’d be the best thing for her to spend her last years with a zombie who couldn’t even remember his own name.
“Dee, I don’t want to talk about it. Not now, not ever.”
“I’d like to come out for a few days. I’ve got nothing else to do apart from filling in this damned application, and even that can wait.”
“No.”
“Please, Roy.”
“I’m living with someone, Dee.”
“You never said anything about it till now.”
“She moved in last week. We met two months ago. Her name’s Leonora Phillis, and she’s from Louisiana.”
“Leonora Phillis from Louisiana . . . you might as well have said Minnie Mouse from Disneyland. I don’t believe you, Roy. You’ve lived alone ever since we split up.”
“I’m serious, Dee.”
“Why are you doing this, Roy?”
“I have to hang up now, sorry. I’ll get you that certificate, I promise.”
“I’m coming, Roy.”
“Don’t do that, Dee. Please.”
I hung up and lay down on the couch, clenching my eyelids until it hurt and my eyes started to water. Interracial couples weren’t common in the early 1970s, not even in the Northeast. I remembered the looks we used to get when we went into a bar, some of them hostile, some of them outraged. There were also complicit looks, as if Diana and I had fallen in love with each other just to prove some point. We both had to deal with it, and I could at least console myself that I’d never be welcome to spend Christmas with my in-laws in Massachusetts. But later I lost everything, when I hit the bottle. When I was drinking, I wasn’t just coarse; I was really bad. I liked to insult her, to blame her for everything, to say stuff I knew would hurt her the most. And even after all the time that had passed, when I remembered the way I was back then, I still felt my stomach turn in disgust.
Forgetting all of that was going to be the only good thing my illness would bring—I’d stop thinking about those years, because I wouldn’t even remember they’d ever existed.
I’d managed to give up drinking three years after the divorce, with the help of many A.A. meetings and a stay in a clinic in Albany; I’d also had to work my way back from two relapses. But I knew that I’d remained an alcoholic and that I’d be an alcoholic until the very end. I knew that the moment I walked into a bar and ordered a cold one or a Jack Daniel’s, I’d never be able to stop. I had sometimes been tempted to do it, especially right after I’d retired, when I used to think that nothing was of any importance anymore. But each time I told myself that it’d be the ugliest kind of suicide possible; there were other ways, quicker and cleaner.
I got dressed and went for a walk in the park, which was about three hundred feet from my house. It was on a hill, and in the middle there was a large glade with wooden benches that I liked to sit on. From there I could see the lights of the town—it made me feel as if I were floating over the rooftops.
I stayed there for about half an hour, watching the people walking their dogs or taking the shortcut to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill. Then I slowly walked back home, wondering whether I’d done the stupidest thing in the world when I’d told Diana not to come see me.
FOUR
On Wednesday afternoon, I arrived at McNally Jackson Books at 4:45 p.m., a quarter of an hour before the start of the event. Laura had published her new book on hypnosis less than a month before, and the lecture that afternoon was part of her promotional tour. I bought a copy of the book and took a seat downstairs. Almost every chair was taken.
Early that morning, I’d stopped off at the company from which Diana needed the certificate. A clerk promised me that she’d send it in an e-mail attachment the next day, so I texted Diana to tell her the problem had been solved. But she didn’t reply, and I thought she must have her cell phone switched off.
Laura looked better than in the photos I’d found on the Internet, and she was obviously an experienced public speaker. I listened to her with interest, even though I was on tenterhooks, wondering how many seconds it’d take her to send me packing once she realized who I was and why I was there.
She finished the lecture, and after a short Q&A session, a line formed for signings. I was the last person to hand her a copy, and she looked at me questioningly.
“Freeman, Roy Freeman,” I said.
“For Freeman, Roy Freeman,” she said with a smile and then signed the book.
“Thanks.”
“And I thank you. Are you a psychologist by chance, Mr. Freeman?”
“No, I’m an ex–police detective, homicide. I investigated the death of Professor Joseph Wieder over twenty-eight years ago. You probably don’t remember me, but I interviewed you back then.”
She stared at me, opened her mouth to say something, and then changed her mind, running her left hand through her hair. She looked around and saw that I’d been the last person wanting an autograph. She placed the cap back on her fountain pen and put it in the handbag on the chair next to her. A middle-aged woman with hair dyed violet was watching dutifully from a few feet away.
“I think I’ll walk a little with Mr. Freeman,” she told the violet woman, who looked at her in amazement.
“Are you sure—”
“I am quite sure. I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Take care of yourself.”
I helped Laura into her coat and then she picked up her handbag and we left. It had grown dark, and the air smelled like rain.
“Debbie is my agent,” she said. “Sometimes she behaves like a mama bear, you know. Did you enjoy the lecture, Mr. Freeman?”
“It was very interesting, really.”
“But that wasn’t what you came for, was it?”
“I was hoping to get the chance to talk to you for a few moments.”
“Usually I don’t agree to talk to anybody after a lecture, but in a way it’s like I’ve been expecting you.”
We were passing Zanelli’s Café, and she accepted my invitation to go inside. She ordered a glass of red wine, and I asked for a coffee.
“I’m listening, Mr. Freeman. After I agreed to talk to a reporter about this story, a couple of months ago, I realized that the postman always rings twice. I knew that I was going to meet somebody who’d ask me about a time long gone. Call it female intuition. Do you know Richard Flynn tried to write a book about the Wieder case?”
“Yes, I know. I read an excerpt from that manuscript. John Keller, that same reporter, gave me a copy. But in the meantime, something occurred, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
I told her about Frank Spoel and his version of what had happened that night. She listened carefully, without interrupting me.
“The reporter probably didn’t believe me when I told him that I wasn’t involved in a love affair with Richard Flynn,” she said, “and nor with Professor Wieder, of course. But anyway, what that man says does seem to fit what happened, doesn’t it?”
“Dr. Westlake, I don’t think Frank Spoel killed the professor. Somebody who had the keys to the house entered while he was there. The professor was still alive at that point. That person almost came face-to-face with Spoel, who managed to escape through a glass door at the last moment. I repeat: the professor was still alive. Spoel just wanted to teach him a lesson. But when a man’s already unconscious on the floor and you hit him hard over the head with a baseball bat, it means you intend to kill him. Anyway, the person who showed up didn’t call an ambulance. Why? I think that person acted like an opportunistic predator, taking advantage of the situation. Wieder was unconscious on the floor, the glass door was open, so it was possible that somebody had broken in, beaten him up, and fled. That person would have been accused of the murder.”
“And you want to ask me i
f I was that person, the ‘opportunistic predator,’ as you put it?”
I didn’t answer, so she went on: “Mr. Freeman, that evening I didn’t go to the professor’s house. I hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks.”
“Ms. Westlake, that friend of yours, Sarah Harper, supplied you with a false alibi and lied to us. And you lied to us, too. John Keller talked to her and then gave me his notes. Harper is in Maine now, but she could testify if necessary.”
“I suspected that you knew that. Sarah was a very fragile human being, Mr. Freeman. If you’d turned the screws on her back then, she’d have caved in immediately and told you the truth. I took that risk when I asked her to tell you we’d been together. But I was trying not to get in the newspapers, not to be bullied by the press. I didn’t want all kinds of dirty insinuations about the professor and me to be made. That was all. I wasn’t afraid of being accused of the murder, but merely trying to avoid a scandal.”
“So where were you that afternoon, after you left the campus? Richard Flynn claimed in his manuscript that you weren’t with him. And you probably weren’t with your boyfriend, Timothy Sanders, otherwise you would have asked him to testify—”
“That afternoon I was at a clinic in Bloomfield where I had an abortion,” she said curtly. “I’d gotten pregnant by Timothy when he was just about to go to Europe. I told him the news when he came back, and he didn’t seem at all enthusiastic. I wanted to solve the problem before I went home for the holidays, because I was sure my mother would realize what was happening. I didn’t even tell Timothy where I was going, and I went to the clinic alone. I arrived home late and had a terrible argument with Richard Flynn. He wasn’t a big drinker, but I think he was drunk. He’d spent the evening with the professor and claimed that he’d told him I was his lover. I packed my bags and went to Sarah’s. In any event, I was planning to move from there after the holidays. Do you understand why I didn’t want to tell you where I’d been that day, and why I asked Sarah to say that we’d been together? I was pregnant, people were already gossiping about a love affair with the professor, so the press could have made a connection between—”
“The reporter, Keller, reached the conclusion that you’d stolen Wieder’s manuscript and published it under your own name.”
“What manuscript?”
“The manuscript of your first book, published five years later. In his project, Flynn said that you’d told him about a very important book Wieder was working on, one that would be a real game changer, something about the connections between mental stimuli and reactions. Actually, that was the subject of your first book, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was, but I didn’t steal the manuscript from the professor,” she said, shaking her head. “The manuscript you’re talking about didn’t even exist, Mr. Freeman. I’d given the professor an outline for my dissertation and the opening chapters. He was very enthusiastic about my idea and provided me with some extra materials, after which things gradually became mixed up and he came to think of it as his own work. I found the proposal he’d sent to a press, in which he’d claimed that the manuscript was ready for submission. In fact, he didn’t have a proper book project, only those chapters from my work and an incoherent blend of excerpts from his older books—”
“May I ask you when and how you found the proposal you’re talking about?”
She took a sip of wine, cleared her throat, and then said, “I guess he’d asked me to put some of his papers in order, without realizing that the proposal was among them.”
“And when was that? You’ve just said that you hadn’t been there for quite a time.”
“Well, I can’t remember when I found the proposal, but that was the main reason why I started to avoid visiting him. He’d fallen out with the people he’d been working with, and he was unable to concentrate on finishing another book. At the same time, he wanted to impress the university where he intended to start work the following year. He wanted to go back to Europe for a while.”
“And which university was that?”
“Cambridge, I guess—”
“Who were these mysterious people he was working for?”
“Well, they weren’t quite as mysterious as the professor would have liked to believe. From what I know, he collaborated with the research department of a military agency that wanted to study the long-term effects of psychological traumas suffered by subjects forced to act under extreme circumstances. In the summer of 1987, the contract expired, period. But the professor was inclined to act like a drama queen sometimes. In a way, he liked to believe that he was being pressured by that agency, mixed up in all kinds of secret affairs, and bullied for knowing too much. Maybe it was an unconscious way of compensating for the fact that, to be honest, his career was in decline. A couple of years before the tragedy, the radio and TV talk shows and the interviews in the newspapers had become more important to him than his scientific career. He was flattered when people recognized him on the street, and at the university he felt superior to the other professors. He’d become a star, in other words. But he’d neglected the genuinely important part of his work, and that had an effect—he had nothing new to say, and he began to realize it.”
“But Sarah Harper—”
“Sarah had serious problems, Mr. Freeman! Don’t think that she took a sabbatical because Professor Wieder was killed. We lived together for a year, and I knew her well.”
“Right, so the book you published wasn’t Wieder’s project?”
“Of course it wasn’t! I published my book once I was able to finish it, after I’d completed my PhD thesis. Today, I think it was clumsily conceived, and I’m amazed by the notoriety it gained at the time.”
“But the first chapter of your book is one hundred percent similar to the chapter sent by the professor to a publisher. Keller got a copy of the professor’s proposal. You’ve said that you saw it.”
“That’s because he’d stolen it from me, I told you.”
“So Wieder was about to steal your work . . . Why didn’t you try to do something? By the time you found that copy, the proposal had already been sent to the publisher. If he hadn’t been killed, he’d probably have published the book under his name—your book, I mean.”
“If I’d accused such an important figure of intellectual fraud, I’d probably have been considered paranoid. I was a nobody, and he was one of the most esteemed psychologists in the country.”
She was right. On the other hand, she was a very determined person and this was her life’s work we were talking about, a chance for her to be recognized as the best. It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine what she’d have done if somebody had tried to hurt her in one way or another, especially concerning her career.
“Okay, so let’s get back to the night the professor was murdered. That evening, after you argued with Flynn and left, did he remain at home?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
“No,” she eventually said. “He took his coat and left the house before I did.”
“Do you remember what time it was?”
“I got home at around eight p.m., and he arrived shortly after ten. I think he went out again at around eleven.”
“So he’d have had time to get back to West Windsor by around midnight.”
“Yes.”
“Had he called a cab before leaving?”
“Probably—I can’t remember.”
“Did he argue with the professor that evening?”
“I don’t remember . . . He seemed very angry. He left, slamming the door, after I’d told him that if the professor had asked me to sleep with him, I’d probably have done so, but he’d never asked. That was the truth. At first, I’d found it amusing that Richard was in love with me, but it had become tiresome. He was treating me like I’d cheated on him or something. I wanted to put a stop to it once and for all. Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful. He harassed me for a long time after that, even after we’d both left Princeton.”
“I remember
the crime scene very well,” I told her. “There were papers scattered all over the place and the drawers were open, as if the killer or someone else had been looking for something in a hurry. But it wasn’t Spoel, because he left the room using the glass door after hearing someone at the entrance. Okay, maybe it was Flynn, who’d have had time to get back there. But if so, why would he have been interested in those papers?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Freeman; I’ve told you everything I remember.”
“When he called you last year, did he confess anything to you? Did he tell you anything you didn’t know about what had happened that night?”
“No, not exactly—he was upset and didn’t make much sense. All I could gather was that he was accusing me of being involved in Wieder’s death, and saying that I’d used him to achieve my sordid goal. He was pitiful rather than frightening.”
She hadn’t said she was sorry about Flynn’s tragic end or even the professor’s death, not even once. Her voice was dry and analytical, and I assumed her pockets were full of carefully prepared answers.
We left the bar, and I helped her find a cab. I’d almost left the signed book behind on the table, but she’d smiled and pointed out that it wasn’t suitable reading for the customers of such a place.
“What do you intend to do now,” she asked me before getting into the taxi, “about the whole story?”
“No idea,” I said, “probably nothing. After Spoel confessed, his attorney tried to reopen the case, but without success. He’s going to be executed in a few weeks—end of the road. It looks like the case will stay cold.”
She seemed relieved. We shook hands, and she got into the cab. I checked my phone and noticed that I’d received a text from Diana. She said that she’d be arriving the next evening and gave me the number of her flight. I answered that I’d pick her up from the airport, headed for the garage where I’d left my car, and drove home.
The next morning, I came across the phone number almost by chance.
I’d made a copy of the list of the calls placed and received on Derek Simmons’s phone before and after his wife’s murder, and I decided to have a look at it. There were twenty-eight calls in all, arranged in five columns: the number of the caller, the address, the number of the subscriber, and the date and length of the call.
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