by Alan Russell
“How did you select what you read to her?”
“I didn’t really. I just pulled books down from the library and started reading. Sometimes I would simplify words for her.”
“But,” said Cheever, “some of the myths are very graphic.”
Cheever knew they weren’t exactly family entertainment, not with sons killing fathers, daughters arranging the murder of mothers, sons sleeping with mothers, and mothers serving their own children up for dinner.
“Have you ever watched Saturday cartoons?” laughed the professor.
Cheever didn’t join in his mirth. He sensed the professor was being far too facile. “How long did Helen retain her interest in mythology?”
“It continues to this day, as far as I know.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Helen essentially left home when she was sixteen and we have had very little contact in the years since.”
“She left home very young.”
The professor nodded.
“Why?”
“She wanted her independence.”
Cheever thought about that. It certainly wasn’t unique. “Since you taught Helen her mythology, Professor, I was hoping that we could discuss her personalities on both a mythological and personal level. I’d like to just throw out names and get your responses to them.”
“That sounds like fun,” he said.
“Cronos?”
Jason Troy nodded happily. “Born of Earth and Sky. His father, Earth, hated him, hated all his children. Those patriarchal gods were always afraid of being supplanted, you see? But Cronos’s mother helped him get revenge on his father by making him a great metal sickle. When Earth came to lay with her, Cronos emasculated him. Of course, the sins of the father continued with the son. Cronos hated his own children enough that he started eating them. He swallowed them whole. Helen was always fascinated by that painting—who was the artist?—Goya?—of Cronos gorging on his children. The painting was in one of my books and I’d always catch her staring at it.”
“Eris?”
“Her brother was the god of war. The goddess of discord came by her ways honestly. She liked to make pots boil. Helen liked Loki too, I remember. The tricksters always appealed to her. She liked their wiles.”
“Eurydice?”
“Ah, love that goes beyond the grave. Helen was always after me to tell that story. I must confess to being very fond of it myself. Imagine Orpheus descending into the underworld, driven by his love to get Eurydice back. But, oh, the sadness that Orpheus and Eurydice never achieved their earthly reunion.”
“Hygeia?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head while remembering. “I think Helen was interested in the goddess of health because her mother was never well. Where else would a little one turn for healing?”
“How did your wife commit suicide?”
“The Roman way. She opened some veins in a warm bathtub.”
“Who discovered her?”
“I did.”
“Did Helen see her in that state?”
“Thankfully, no.”
Cheever returned to the myths that made up Helen. “The Maenads?”
“There is something attractive about the wild—don’t you think so, Detective? Most of the time we like to forget that we are animals. The Maenads are our vital side, our bestial side. Give them wine, red wine, and they revel in orgiastic pleasure. They also hunted down animals as a troop, frenzied women overcoming beasts, tearing at their flesh, lapping at their spilt blood. Occasionally they tore apart humans too.”
“The Moirae?”
“Those crones are always turning up in one form or another throughout mythology. Little ones are attracted to witches and Helen was no different. She always wanted to hear about those eldritch women dispensing their lots.”
“Nemesis?”
“Over time, the one lesson we all learn repeatedly is that life is not fair. How many times on your job, Detective, have you seen something particularly grisly and said, ‘There but for the sake of providence go I?’ The young don’t understand that. I think that’s why they love their superheroes, beings who can make things right. Nemesis was Helen’s superhero. She drew crayon pictures of her flying around in her chariot of griffins, going forth to bring justice to the world.”
“Pandora?”
“There’s an interesting case. Pandora has so many faces. In mythology she’s both a femme fatale and an earth mother. The gods blessed her, but cursed her with curiosity. Because of Pandora opening a box she was told not to, humanity was denied a paradise, but she redeemed herself partially by allowing hope a place on this planet.”
“Does the name Caitlin hold any significance for you?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a name I’m familiar with.”
“What about Holly?”
“It was my wife’s middle name.”
“What was her first name?”
“Delores.”
Cheever sat in thought. For once, Jason Troy didn’t prattle. “How did you and your wife meet?”
“At the university. I was an associate professor at the time, and some years her senior. Minor scandal, that, if you don’t mind the double entendre. You’re not supposed to date your students, and Delores was only a freshman. She was a bright flame, but then they say those burn out twice as fast.”
“Did she show any signs of mental illness while you were dating her?”
“I suppose there were signs, but who notices those kinds of things when passions are enflamed? She drank too much, certainly, but that seemed to be the thing to do back then.”
“How long after you were married was Helen born?”
“Less than a year. But I wouldn’t want you to think my courtship assumed Zeusian wiles.”
Cheever’s raised eyebrows asked the question. The professor smiled and pointed to one of the paintings on the wall. Several women, attended by maids, were disrobing. To the left of the painting was a naked youth with wings strumming the lyre. There was a large white bird flying away, and another goose or swan was pursuing a naked adolescent. The youth appeared unsure of the bird, was fending it off with her hand. In the center of the picture was a beautiful nude woman. Her eyes were closed, and the pleasure on her face was apparent. She had her legs spread open. A large white bird with a very long neck was raising itself into her lap. The bird’s neck extended from the woman’s navel up to her chin, navigating upward between the curves of her breasts. There was something very phallic about the erect white neck, something very seductive and yet aggressive in the bird’s posturing.
“Correggio,” the professor said. “He entitled the painting Leda and the Swan. You see, Helen of Troy was conceived in a manner that was rather unusual even for the gods. Zeus desired to have Leda, a mortal girl, for a lover, but he feared that Hera would find out about his infidelity, so he disguised himself as a swan. In the words of Yeats:
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?”
There was a power in Troy’s voice that Cheever hadn’t expected. His passion vented, the professor smiled.
“You make,” Cheever said, “the feathers fly.”
Troy bowed. “I miss the classroom. Ah, the lonely life of a professor emeritus. The students used to enjoy when I would bring the ancient tales to life. I would quote Milton, and all the pagan romantic poets, and, of course, Yeats. You don’t need to be Stentor with the right kind of words. Yeats understood intensity and ardor.”
“You don’t teach anymore?”
“They throw me a bone now and again. I even said I’
d teach ancient Greek and Latin, but the administration says there’s not enough interest in those courses to warrant any classes. Of course there’s not enough interest. How could there be if they don’t offer the classes?”
“When was the last time you saw your daughter?”
“About a year ago. I used to see her more frequently when she needed money.”
“I am told Helen doesn’t remember several years of her early life.”
The professor made a noncommittal motion of his hand. “It’s possible, I suppose. I can remember as a young woman she told me she had tasted of the River Lethe.”
He looked over to Cheever, repeated the word Lethe, then waited in the manner of an intimate, much as lovers do when reciting words to “their” song or a shared poem. Much to his apparent regret, Cheever didn’t know the reference.
“The river at which the souls of the dead sip,” the professor said, “so as to forget everything.”
Cheever refrained from saying that he knew a lot of the living who sipped from the same trough.
“You must have admired Helen of Troy to have given your daughter her name.”
The professor shrugged. “Having a surname of Troy dictated the choice more than anything.”
“It would seem Helen has ambivalent feelings about the name. She started calling herself Holly when she was a young girl, didn’t she?”
“I suppose so.”
“But you continued to call her Helen?”
“A rose by any other name...”
“Why did she choose another name?”
The professor shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Any guesses?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to be identified with the historical Helen.”
Or maybe the modern one, Cheever thought.
“Was Helen always...” Cheever stretched for the right word.
“Different?” said the professor. “Unusual? Odd? Don’t worry about offending, Detective. We can dispense with euphemisms. To paraphrase Emerson, she always marched to a different drummer.”
“Even as a little girl?”
“Especially then. Retracing steps, are you?”
“Just wandering along a few paths.”
“Then you should remember what Virgil said:
Facilis descensus Averni;
Nectes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.”
“If you want me to know what Virgil said, you’ll have to translate.”
“Oh? I would have suspected you of having a classical education.”
“The public schools did offer some classical insights, but none into ancient languages.”
“Virgil said, ‘The descent of Avernus is easy; the gate of Pluto stands open night and day; but to retrace one’s steps and return to the upper air, that is the toil, that is the difficulty.”
“It’s a one-way ticket to Hades,” Cheever said.
“That has usually been the case.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Cheever had a headache that he figured had originated in the Mediterranean. Helen Troy, plural, kept invading his thoughts. The day before he’d felt sorry for her. He had been intrigued by her condition, had been hard pressed to keep his usual impersonal distance. Now Helen interested him more professionally than she did personally. He considered her both a potential suspect and witness.
Assuming she wasn’t the murderer, Cheever wondered if Helen could have had the presence of mind(s) to have realized what was happening to Bonnie and then acted to save herself by posing as a statue. Cheever tried to visualize the scene, tried imagining Helen standing there unmoving as her friend’s throat was being cut. It might not have been that calculated, he knew. He had encountered many trauma victims who had frozen when confronted by violence. There were usually three responses to a serious threat: flight, fight, or freeze. He supposed it wasn’t inconceivable that Helen had stood there frozen for hours. This was a woman, after all, who cried blood and grew wounds. Her being a potential witness to Bonnie Gill’s murder might even explain her stigmata. Cheever had originally thought Helen’s mortification of flesh had occurred over a period of eight hours, with the time clock starting after he had shown her pictures of Bonnie’s wounds. But if Helen had been at the gallery at the time of the murder, she would have had almost a full day to sprout her lesions.
Cheever remembered how she had come to him looking for forgiveness. The image made him think of something. He had never really considered the location of Helen’s wounds. Cheever pondered the matter so intently he stopped breathing for several seconds. No, it wasn’t just coincidence. The stigmata on Helen paralleled Bonnie’s wounds, duplicating those on her neck and back. Bonnie’s murder was written all over her—literally.
He tried calling Helen again, but there was no damn answer, just like the last half dozen times. Maybe she just wasn’t answering the phone. He’d find out. He was close now, only ten blocks away, which in downtown San Diego blocks wasn’t very far. The short distances between the streets, and the lack of any alleys in downtown San Diego, were the legacies of Alonzo Horton, the founding father of San Diego. In the late 1800s, Horton earned the nickname “Corner Lot Horton.” The developer had early on learned he could get more for corner lots, reason enough for him to design the downtown area with short blocks. Like all cities, San Diego was built on greed, though its blueprint was a little more apparent than most.
Helen lived on Seventh Avenue, but no one would have mistaken her loft for the high-rent district. Her building was four stories of long-ago whitewashed brick that had needed a coat of paint for at least a decade. The brick itself dated the building. In earthquake-prone Southern California, developers had long eschewed brick, knowing it was a material that sometimes didn’t even stand up to minor tremblers. Maybe that’s what the owner was hoping for, an act of God that would save the price of demolition.
The building was a converted warehouse. It had probably been constructed during the boom years of the Second World War and to survive had gone through several metamorphoses. The first floor was commercial, with a print shop and a dry cleaner facing the street, while the second floor had been converted into office space. Even with the continuity of off-white shades and uniform fluorescent lighting, floor number two appeared more deserted than not. There was a sign hanging on the building that read INEXPENSIVE WORK LOFTS AVAILABLE. Someone had used a marker on the sign to add an upward-pointing arrow with the notation PETTING ZOO UPSTAIRS. The mishmash of draperies, blinds, sheets, and naked windows on the third and fourth floors advertised the location of the lofts.
The entrance to the building wasn’t readily apparent. Cheever finally found a security door with an intercom around the corner from the dry cleaner. Helen’s unit was 4B, but no one responded to Cheever’s button-pushing. He walked around the sides of the building, didn’t see another means of egress besides the entry door or the fire escapes, then went back to the intercom and pushed it a few more times. This time there was an answer, a dog’s barking, deep and loud enough to travel down four floors. Cheever walked out to the sidewalk, looked up. He wasn’t the only one doing some looking. A big tan and black face was pressed against a fourth-floor glass window. The rottweiler barked at him once, the dog’s version of a warning shot. Cheever took a few more steps into the street to get a better view. Though the loft was dark inside, Cheever could make out the shape of someone standing there. After a minute of looking, Cheever realized the figure belonged to a statue. At least he thought so.
The dog watched Cheever all the while he walked to his car. He was still watching him as he drove away. Cheever didn’t wave. He made a slight detour on the way to headquarters, stopping at the downtown library on E Street and coming away with an armful of books. He was five minutes late for the meeting with Rollo Adams, but the developer was even later than that, arriving fifteen minutes after Cheever.
He looked like an older and heavier Jimmy Stewart still ready to go to Washington. Rollo was no longer the wunderkind, being almost fifty, but he had a youthful appearance and mannerisms. For years Rollo had been mentioned as a potential candidate for the city council or Congress. He’d flirted with the notion, but hadn’t entered the political ring. It was probably easier for him to buy candidates, or anoint them, than be one himself.
“Gentlemen,” he said. He took a seat at the head of the table, a position he was obviously used to. Rollo made eye contact with Cheever and the sergeant. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
Falconi returned his pleasantries.
Rollo announced the agenda: “We obviously have a mutual goal, gentlemen: finding the murderer of Bonnie Gill. From what you have said, Sergeant, we need more cohesion in our joint efforts.”
Falconi nodded. Cheever continued to listen. Rollo had a winning voice. There was a soft twang to it. The media had portrayed him as a poor country boy who had made good, his roots just a step up from a log cabin, or a manger, depending on the publicist. He had grown up in Georgia on a small pig farm, said that construction projects were easy compared to his early days of “slopping and chopping.” His speech was an odd mixture of business jargon, modern buzzwords, clichés, and down-home homilies. It was like Reader’s Digest come to life.
“I am here to answer any questions you might have,” Rollo said, “and am hoping you will extend that same courtesy to me.”
“Naturally,” Falconi said.
Cheever said, “Tell us about your reward.”
Rollo tilted his head forward. “Gladly. We decided we couldn’t wait for a Good Samaritan to come forward. It stands to reason that someone, somewhere, knows what happened to Bonnie Gill. To bring that someone forward, we have committed fifty thousand dollars to the Carnation Fund.”