The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  It was her refusal to apply for admission at Notre Dame that marked the turning point. Not even a loving paternal eye could see in Laverne someone young men would find a concupiscible object. All the more reason for her to be inured to higher pleasures.

  “It would be like home schooling,” she said, when the subject of her going to Notre Dame arose. “I’ve practically lived on the campus all my life.”

  He tried reason, he tried threats, Freda resorted to tears. To no avail. A long-lived dream suffered a sudden death.

  After this hostility to the university to which Otto Ranke had given his heart and his life, Laverne returned with a library degree and got a job in Hesburgh Library. A menial job. A job he had no wish to tell his colleagues of. It occurred to him that she had taken the job to spite him. But the worst was yet to be. He had introduced an adder into the bosom of his family. Orion Plant came with others from his seminar, but unlike the others he noticed Laverne. A friendship began and prospered. He and Freda made themselves scarce while the young people giggled and laughed in the family room. It had seemed a reasonable hope that marriage was in the offing and that Laverne would end up as a faculty wife, even if not at Notre Dame. And then abruptly, cruelly, offhandedly, Orion informed the professor who had been his solitary champion in the face of more than reasonable complaints that he had married.

  Laverne was devastated. Freda was dumbfounded. Otto Ranke was incredulous. Was it possible for a young man so to toy with the affections of a vulnerable female? He restrained himself. He did not tell Orion what he thought of him. He would not give the scoundrel the satisfaction of his paternal indignation at his treatment of Laverne. But he bided his time. When the graduate committee next met, Otto Ranke withheld any defense of his candidate. Orion Plant was justly and rightly dismissed from the program.

  The father of children is destined to know dark days that eclipse the bright ones, and there had been no darker day than that on which Otto Ranke again heard the familiar whispering and giggling emerging from his family room. The miscreant was back, the faithless lover had returned, and Laverne, the idiot, had welcomed him.

  By then, Laverne had years of practice defying good advice. She seemed to have convinced herself that Orion was as eligible as he ever was because he had married his wife before a judge and had not sought the sanction of the Church. That the incumbent Mrs. Plant might be enraged by such a suggestion did not bother Laverne.

  “All’s fair in love and war.”

  Marcia Plant had alienated Orion’s affections when Laverne had been sure of them; now, turnabout was fair play. Worse, her renewed relations with Orion had drawn her into his silly plotting to embarrass the university on the matter of its title to its land. He was certain that she had been involved in the atrocity in Cedar Grove, leading Orion into the cemetery by way of the Ranke backyard and returning by the same route. The two of them had been in the family room together, accorded immunity from any inquiry as to what they were up to. They could have done the damage to the cemetery in fifteen minutes. When the toppled tombstones became known, Professor Ranke found incriminating shoes in Laverne’s closet and himself removed the telltale clay from them. But he lived in dread that imprints of those soles would be found and an effort made to identify the wearer of those shoes. A demeaning precaution. For all the outrage and disgust that desecration elicited, there had been no serious effort to find the culprits.

  The kidnapping of the chancellor was another and far more threatening event. Laverne had left the house in the yellow slicker she had affected, as if she were a homeless person. The garment fairly glowed in the dark. Surely someone would have noticed the wild-eyed young woman wearing it. Ranke took it from Laverne’s closet one day when she was arguing with her mother in the kitchen. He drove with it to a Mishawaka mall, removed the balled up Kleenex and other contents from the pockets, tore out the label, and, with the certainty that all eyes were on him when he did so, opened the door of a Dumpster and dropped the slicker inside. The mystery of that missing garment threw the house into disorder; of course, he had not communicated to Freda his fears, but Professor Ranke rode it out in silence. To such lengths will an injured father go to protect his offspring.

  With the death of Orion, even darker suspicions grew. Marcia Plant could not have viewed with indifference her husband’s inclusion of his once and present love in the conspiring group. He easily imagined the animosity of the two women, rivals for the worthless favor of Orion. Had Laverne been repudiated again? Anyone who learned of these events might suspect that Laverne had availed herself of the obverse of the unwritten law. Once admitted, this thought was difficult to dismiss as incredible. Laverne’s prolonged absence from the parental roof would feed the suspicion. Otto Ranke began to fear for his daughter.

  The visit of Lieutenant Stewart and Philip Knight had seemed to encircle the question without ever formulating it. Professor Ranke was certain they suspected Laverne. For days he agonized. And then he decided to make the supreme sacrifice.

  40

  CARLOTTA BACON HAD come to console her at the loss of Orion, and after Russell Bacon had been arrested for the murder the two women became even closer. This was welcome to Marcia, if only because it equalized their conditions, in a sense. Being commiserated with was not something she wanted to get used to. People had a way of treating her as if she were somehow to blame, but she felt they probably meant that Orion had trodden a dangerous path and what had happened to him, while terrible, was not unexpected.

  “Why is Scott always hanging around?” Carlotta asked, lifting her brows receptively. There was the slightest playful edge to her voice.

  “You’d think he’d wait until the body is cold, wouldn’t you?”

  “Which body?”

  “Carlotta!” But she had laughed, laughed more than the joke deserved, and it was as if she was driving from her system all the rituals of mourning.

  “You are eligible again, after all.”

  “We used to go together once, before I married.”

  “Aha.” But Carlotta looked as if she had already known that.

  “We were quite serious. And then Orion came along.”

  “A historian rather than a mathematician.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that. Other things aside . . .” she paused and let Carlotta fill in the blank. “Other things aside, Orion was closer to finishing, or so I thought. I wanted to get away from here, not live for years as a student’s wife.”

  “It’s not so bad.” But a cloud gathered on Carlotta’s face. “I tell myself not to worry about Russ. He says he didn’t do it and I believe him. I can’t imagine him doing harm to anyone.”

  “No. Still, he didn’t hesitate about taking the chancellor into custody.” That event had never been called a kidnapping by Orion or any of the others.

  Would she have sat talking with Carlotta like this if she thought Russell Bacon had killed Orion? If he had, that wouldn’t make Carlotta guilty, anymore than Marcia was guilty of the things Orion had done.

  “Laverne Ranke was along on that too,”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose she was a kind of insurance, a faculty daughter, in case things went wrong. The police wouldn’t prosecute a faculty member’s child.”

  “Why not? She’s not even a student. Never was.”

  “You can never get her to really talk about things, you know? She was always aloof at work, and the next thing I know she was recruited by Orion.”

  Marcia peered at her friend, unable to tell how much knowledge lay behind the remark.

  “They used to go together.”

  “Who?”

  “Orion and Laverne Ranke.”

  “No!”

  “Didn’t you know that?”

  “What happened?”

  Marcia smiled. “I stole him away from her.”

  “And dropped Scott.”

  “You’re sure you never knew about Orion and Laverne?”

  “You know, I’m trying to think. I
didn’t know about it, but now that I do some things make more sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that you two hated each other. I said she was aloof.” Carlotta chuckled. “I said to Russ once that Laverne certainly plays her cards close to her chest. He said, she has no choice.”

  “That’s mean.” But Laverne was straight as a stick. What did men see in women like that? In Orion’s case, she suspected it was Laverne’s link to his professor.

  “Anyway, she took refuge with us for a few days—apparently her father is an absolute tyrant. Russ didn’t like it, you know how small the place is, but what could I do? It was like she was asking for sanctuary. Finally Russ told her father. She had a home, it wasn’t as if we were throwing her into the street. While she was there we had a chance to talk and she wasn’t as close as she usually is.” Carlotta paused. “She told me she was in love with Orion.”

  “Carlotta, she’s been carrying a torch ever since Orion and I married.”

  “When I told her he was married she just looked at me and said, not in my eyes, he isn’t.”

  “The bitch.”

  She didn’t tell Carlotta that Orion had gone back to visiting Laverne, in her parents’ house, in the way he had once jokingly told her all about. The professor in his den, the professor’s wife knitting in the living room, listening to music, Orion and the daughter being trusted alone in the family room. If she let him in and they spent time in the family room, Orion wouldn’t waste time as he claimed he had before he married her. Pathetic, meatless Laverne must have felt like a femme fatale, luring Orion back into her lair. What she wouldn’t have done if she learned Orion was just using her. Carlotta was right about that. It was the connection with Professor Ranke that brought Laverne into the group. Orion never spelled it out, but he was setting Laverne up. If she was caught red-handed, it would be his revenge on the professor who had let him down.

  “Orion, she’ll tell everything she knows.”

  He had shaken his head, smugly.

  “For old times sake?” she’d asked sarcastically.

  “She hates her father more than I do.”

  Scott had been hiding in a bedroom during Carlotta’s most recent visit, and Marcia did not hurry the conversation. Let Scott stew up there. He took too much for granted and Marcia worried that she had made things too easy for him. She wished she hadn’t given him that key. This morning she had considered taking it from his pocket while he still slept. He would think he’d lost it. And she would take her time about giving him another. Let him worry. It couldn’t happen right away, but giving Scott the run of the house might make him less keen to take the trip to the courthouse she had made with Orion.

  “What were you two talking about?” Scott asked, peeved, when she went up to release him from his hiding place.

  “Not you.”

  “Good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” He looked tender. “I was thinking of you. Excuse me a minute. I didn’t want to use the bathroom while she was here.” And he scuttled off in his skivvies. She went to his trousers and took the house key with her downstairs. But she made coffee for him, and scrambled some eggs. When they were seated at the table, a gray day at the window, the game weekend parking lot beyond looking desolate and deserted, she laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “She didn’t say it right out, but I think Carlotta suspects that you killed Orion so I would be free to marry you.”

  Scott studied her. “That’s desperate. She’s trying to protect her husband.”

  Marcia didn’t like the way he danced away from the real purpose of her remark.

  “You mean it isn’t possible?”

  “That I should have killed him?”

  “That you should want to marry me.”

  Suddenly, through the window, she saw Philip Knight looking in at them. He waved. And then the front doorbell rang. Philip Knight had disappeared and Scott had not seen him. He pushed back from the table.

  “They know you’re here.”

  “They?”

  “The police.”

  It was Lieutenant Stewart at the front door. Philip Knight came around the house and joined him. “He’s inside, Jimmy.”

  They came in and heard the sound of the back door being unlocked. You wouldn’t have thought men that size could move so quickly. They returned with the struggling Scott held securely by his arms.

  “We’re taking you downtown,” Lieutenant Stewart said.

  “What for?”

  “Why don’t we save that for downtown.”

  Scott looked at her, wild-eyed, and then he calmed down. His expression was now that of a man who has been betrayed.

  41

  PHIL SAT IN ON THE INTERrogation, admiring Jimmy’s skills.

  “You’re entitled to have a lawyer with you.”

  “What for?”

  “We’re investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

  “But you’ve already arrested Bacon!” He glanced at Phil and then stared at the tabletop. “Carlotta put you up to this, didn’t she?

  “Up to what?”

  “Oh come on. Look, I didn’t kill Orion.”

  “Why would you deny an accusation that hasn’t yet been made?”

  “Yet.”

  “Is there anything you want to tell us?”

  “Why don’t you tell me why I am here. Maybe I will call a lawyer.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Byers’s voice had risen in defiance, but now he slumped in his chair.

  “We have the murder weapon, you know. The tomahawk. There are prints on it.” This was accurate enough except that the prints were smudged beyond recognition.

  Byers perked up. “I was wearing gloves that night.”

  Stewart let the words echo in the room. “Would you like me to get a lawyer for you?”

  “I still don’t need a lawyer.”

  “Because you were wearing gloves?”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “That I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Why did you think Carlotta Bacon would accuse you of killing Orion and setting up her husband?”

  “Because he’s her husband.”

  “Orion was the husband of Marcia.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You’ve reestablished relations with her, haven’t you? Indecently quickly, I might add.”

  “I’ve tried to help her through this. We all have.”

  “But no one else has moved in with the widow.”

  “I have my own place.”

  “You have a key to the house. You’ve been seen letting yourself in as if you owned the place. How many nights would you say you’ve stayed there?”

  There is a rhythm to interrogations. Fear and defiance alternate, anger begins when the same questions are asked again and again. Byers began to have the look of a cornered man. Phil considered the young man’s plight.

  Jimmy said that they knew Byers had been seeing Marcia right up to her marriage to Orion Plant. “That must have come as a shock to you.”

  “I was surprised, yes.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Angry?”

  Byers did not answer. Wondering how anything he said might be taken had made him seem furtive, the manner of someone hiding what the questions were circling toward.

  “Damn it, are you going to arrest me or what?”

  “On what charge?”

  “What you’ve been hinting at all along.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Come on.”

  “Why don’t you just tell us all about it.”

  “All about what?”

  “What we are talking about.”

  “That I used to go with Marcia before she got married? That I have been seeing her since Orion was killed? Is that a federal offense?”


  “Killing Orion?”

  “No. Seeing a woman. Staying with her, so what? She isn’t married.”

  “Because her husband was killed.”

  “Yes, Orion was killed. That isn’t news.”

  “And that left an open path for you to reclaim your true love.”

  And so it went. Like Bacon before him, Byers was adamant that he had not killed Orion Plant. Bacon, however, had admitted to removing the body and taking it in Roger’s cart and dumping it in the wooded area beneath Fatima Retreat House. The mystery of why he had bothered to do that remained, and it was the hook on which to hang the charge that he had murdered Orion before taking away his body. The case against Byers was more tenuous. He had gone with Marcia and suddenly she had married Orion Plant, leaving him presumably with the standard reaction of the jilted male. He had all but moved in with the new widow after the event, suggesting that this had been the point of killing Orion. But it was all conjecture. Unless, of course, Carlotta Bacon did indeed suspect Byers and had reason for doing so. But would she not then have told the police of her suspicion?

  Stewart was off on a tangent, explaining to Byers the procedure for taking him before a judge and making a formal charge. Byers followed this as if it were a technical problem he was glad to be informed of. Finally, Stewart got up.