by Linda Barnes
Right, I thought. Start by filing the rough edges, pretty soon you’re working with a cookie cutter instead of a file. Jeannie picked at her food, breaking the bun to pieces with nervous fingers.
I said, “What about Denali—did she like Chaney, too?”
Jeannie’s eyes narrowed. “Everybody wants to know about Denali, and then when I don’t answer, they think I’m hiding something. I don’t know if she liked Chaney or hated his guts. I don’t know where your stuff is! And I didn’t make her move out. I liked her. I mean, like, I never had a roommate before. I don’t have any sisters or brothers. She was pretty and smart, you know, blond and all, but really strong.” Abruptly, she was crying again. The brunette waitress gave me the eye from behind the counter, checking to make sure I wasn’t slapping the kid around. “Like, all the other girls, they got along fine with their roommates. They were like sisters.”
I nodded encouragingly at the waitress, patted Jeannie on the shoulder. “But not you and Denali?”
“Like, I tried; I had a lot of friends in high school. Everybody told me my roommate would be like my best friend, but Denali didn’t want to spend time with me or talk to me or anything. I mean, like the only time she ever started a conversation was when she had a toothache and wanted to know did I know a good dentist. Honest to God. And my mom’s college roommate, she was, like, maid of honor at her wedding, and she’s still her best friend. But that’s in Illinois. You know, this place is so weird.” She lowered her voice to a throaty whisper. “They tell you its not like cliquey here, not like high school, but everybody sorts themselves out: future presidents, business leaders, lawyers, and shit.” She tried to force a smile, but it only made her look more miserable. “Then there’re the also-rans.” She didn’t add “like me,” but she might as well have.
“And Denali?”
“Oh, she was no also-ran. I mean, she was an athlete and everything, a rower. Maybe that’s another reason they paired us. I’m, like, interested in rowing, but she was here on a rowing scholarship. She was world-class. She had, like, boxes of trophies. What, am I gonna talk to her about, like, the time I came in first at camp?”
She was thin and small, with a plain, earnest face and close-cropped dark hair. Her T-shirt was frayed, but it fit like a glove. It might have cost her twelve bucks at a discount store, but I thought it had probably run a hundred at a boutique on Newbury. She had rings on her fingers that weren’t dime-store merchandise and small diamond studs in her ears. Her sandals tied at her ankles and her toenails were painted pearly orange.
Food was steadily disappearing off her plate; she seemed to be regaining some color. “I mean, how am I supposed to concentrate? This is, like, almost finals week, and here I am, talking about my ex-roommate instead of going to class. How can I study or anything when there’s, like, this stupid lawsuit looming over everything?”
I’d been about to order another Pepsi, more milk. Instead, I froze and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, I repeated that single word lawsuit, raising my pitch to make it a question.
She moistened her finger and stabbed at some wayward crumbs. “Well, Denali’s family—it’s, like, a wrongful-death suit. Like she shoulda been in the dorm, and they’re gonna make me testify, and then they’ll blame it all on me, on how I was such a shitty roommate.”
“Jeannie, look at me. Nobody kills herself because her roommate tries to be friendly.”
“Worst of all, I didn’t tell anybody when she left. I mean, I was, like, so embarrassed. What was I supposed to say? Excuse me, but my roommate moved out ’cause she can’t stand me? I mean, I didn’t know what to say.”
“She didn’t leave a note or say good-bye?”
“You knew her, right?”
“A long time ago,” I said, lying.
“Well, believe me, she didn’t do a whole lot of explaining. Like when she first moved in, she had almost no clothes, you know, and sometimes she’d borrow my stuff, but she’d never ask. It’s not like I minded or anything. I didn’t complain when she kept her kayak in the middle of the floor or her trophies under the bed. And when I said maybe we should buy curtains and bedspreads and stuff, she said no, the room was fine the way it was, just bare. I mean, she didn’t even sleep on the bed, just rolled her blanket out on the floor.”
Guilt poured off the kid in waves.
“I got mad at her because of the stinking kayak. I mean, why couldn’t she leave it in the boathouse? Did she think somebody would, like, steal it?”
I shrugged, but I don’t think she noticed.
“It was like the only thing she had. I mean, she hardly had anything, like she coulda put all her stuff in a cardboard box, another box for the trophies. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t mind when she borrowed my clothes. I even tried to give her my sleeping bag.”
“Jeannie, did she have a place where she kept special things? A place for jewelry or old photographs?”
“Like where she maybe kept your stuff?” She placed her tongue between her teeth and frowned in concentration. “Well, she had this old candy box, not even like Godiva, some drugstore thing. An old Whitman’s Sampler box. Yeah.”
“Did she leave anything behind, a slip of paper, something you might not have thought was important?”
She avoided my eyes, staring down at the table. “I found one of her trophies, a small one, under the bed. I was going to give it back to her sometime. I didn’t throw it away. Do you want it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I want you to have it. I mean, you were her friend.”
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? Why did you run away?”
“They told me not to talk about her. They told me not to talk to anybody. Grayson and Miranda and this guy they sent over from Legal Services.”
Grayson was one of the housemasters.
“You won’t tell anybody I said anything? Like you’re not gonna testify I said I didn’t like her, are you? I didn’t really mean it. She didn’t like me, so I was glad when she left. And now she’s dead and I just fucking missed my science class and I’m going to flunk out before they kick me out, and my parents will be so upset.” She shoved her plate away and her head sank until her cheek met the tabletop.
When I was twenty-one, a close friend killed himself. Last person in the world to do it, I thought, so I didn’t accept it as suicide. I saw it as another kind of murder, and I wanted to find the culprit. I blamed his parents, blamed his friends, blamed myself. Why the hell hadn’t I been sharp enough, smart enough, to see it coming, head it off?
“Come on.” I urged her out of the booth, plunked money on the counter, and raised my eyebrows at the inquisitive waitress.
Chaney seemed to have put his feelings for Denali Brinkman in a box, locked it, and buried it six feet under. Chaney might not blame himself for Denali’s suicide, but this girl did. I grabbed her hand and explained where we were headed. For a moment, I thought she’d run again, but then I caught a glimmer of relief in her eyes.
Harvard Health Services is four floors up, in Holyoke Center. The waiting room was far from crowded, and after twenty minutes of “fill in the forms” inaction, I made myself unpleasant. The reception gorgon was brittle and defensive. Her nameplate said Jo, and she wanted me to know she was overworked.
“Her roommate committed suicide,” I said.
“We follow protocols here. Policies. Who are you?”
“Somebody who knows what a protocol is, thanks. You want to wait till you’ve got another suicide on your hands, fine with me. I’m sure Legal Services will be enchanted.”
Jo’s foot started tapping as soon as I mentioned Legal Services. I wondered what a shrink would make of that. I also wondered if Denali Brinkman had a fat file in one of the color-coded rows that lined the wall behind the gorgon’s counter.
When I finally got Jeannie into a chair in a psychologist’s office, things improved. Dr. Rona Kupfer was a total contrast to the waiting-room witch, a motherly forty-five with
a comforting smile and seen-it-all eyes. She wore a floral shawl to cut the chill from the air conditioning. Jeannie took one look at her and started to sob.
I wondered how I could find out whether Denali had made use of Harvard’s psychiatric services. Then I wondered what the hell it had to do with blackmail. I pondered the fact that Denali Brinkman’s family was considering bringing a lawsuit against Harvard. If the family—and who exactly was the family?—knew that a professor had been having an affair with their darling, that would be one more nail in Harvard’s coffin.
Would Harvard protect Chaney? Or toss him to the wolves?
I gave Jeannie my card, not the one that says “Private Investigations,” but the one that gives name, address, and phone number. She promised she’d call and tell me when I could come get Denali’s trophy. I left her in Dr. Kupfer’s gentle care and kicked my way through the dusty plaza in front of Holyoke Center. A flock of pigeons circled, landed, and started hunting for crumbs in the dirt. I wished them luck.
CHAPTER 9
If Jeannie St. Cyr had Denali’s candy box, she was wasting her time as a prospective psych major. She ought to be onstage at the Loeb Drama Center, a full-fledged member of the American Rep acting company.
I wished I could raise two fingers to my mouth, whistle, and get my car to speed over from Central Square like some Western hero’s stallion in a late-night TV rerun. The car was in one direction; my house, my computer, and Dowling’s Somerville address in the other. Dead center between the two was Thompson Hall. And both blackmail notes had been shoved under the door of Chaney’s Thompson Hall office.
Why push notes under an office door when the U.S. mail provides a beautifully anonymous delivery method? Nobody’s gonna catch you lurking by one of those million or so blue postboxes. There’s certainly a greater chance someone will notice you bending and placing a note beneath a door.
Logically, the blackmailer should be someone who would, in the ordinary course of events, be found in the school of education, a native who could credibly say, if caught stashing the note, “Look what I found!” That’s why I’d gone for Jeannie St. Cyr, registered student, over a boyfriend with no Harvard connection.
Chaney had a larger office across the river at a Harvard-affiliated research site and a cubby at the Med School. He owned a house off Brattle Street. Why not deliver the note to the Med School, the research site, the house? Did Mrs. Chaney open her husband’s mail? Do wives blackmail husbands? I smiled at the thought, rephrased it. Do they blackmail their spouses in such a literal way?
As I hurried up Mass Ave, I checked my cell, making sure the battery was charged. I knew Chaney should have the money by now, and I wanted to make sure he could reach me at any time. He was convinced the money drop would be the same as the first time, the faculty lot behind Thompson. I was pretty sure it would be different. The more times you go to the well, the more you expect the well to be guarded.
Hell, if I were the blackmailer, I’d choose a different well altogether. I walked faster, sneakers pounding the brick sidewalk. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the elms. Maybe my blackmailer was a creature of habit. Just because the scene of the crime was Harvard didn’t mean he was bright.
Harvard’s ed school looks a bit like a stepchild. Radcliffe Yard is nowhere near as grand as its big brother; even the grass is less well kept. The buildings don’t share the redbrick Oxbridge look of the Harvard Yard structures. Some seem more like weathered clapboard houses than halls of learning. The small crushed-stone parking lot to the rear of Thompson Hall had places for ten cars max.
Not such a bad place for a money drop after all—sheltered from the street by a tall yew hedge, from neighboring buildings by high brick walls. I took note of entrances and exits, auto and pedestrian, decided where I’d position myself when and if the drop went down here.
Thompson Hall is an undistinguished modern cement and glass rectangle. Query: How difficult would it be for an outsider to shove a note under Chaney’s office door? Building access should be easy enough; the ed school wasn’t some nuclear launch site under Cheyenne Mountain. There was an obvious main door, double-wide, up three shallow granite steps. I used a less notable side door, then gravitated to the main foyer, where a chart conveniently gave the location of Dr. Chaney’s second-floor office.
I passed unchallenged up the stairs. The building smelled musty, like old library books. Sunlight filtered through dusty casement windows on the staircase landing. The banisters were carved dark wood; the steps covered with institutional rubber tread. There was no visible security, just the sublime assumption that the people in the building were people who belonged. Everywhere I looked, heads were bent over tasks. No security guards, and what was there to secure? Desks and chairs? Educational philosophies?
At the door of suite 205, I hesitated. The numerals had been printed beside Chaney’s name on the chart, but the word suite hadn’t accompanied them. The door to suite 205 had a pebbled-glass half window, the look of a door that led into an outer office. I turned the knob.
“May I help you?”
She had fifties-style bouffant hair, sprayed to within an inch of its life. A pink sweater set stretched across her broad bosom, and, yes, her spectacles dangled from a chain. A veritable dragon lady.
“I’m looking for Professor Taubman’s office?” His was the next floor up.
“He has no office hours today. May I please see your ID?”
“You mean today’s Thursday? Shit. Excuse me. God, I thought it was Friday. Oh shit.” I held up my wrist and stared at my watch. “I’m late at the Faculty Club.”
I turned and moved, not so quickly that she’d think I was fleeing, which I was, but briskly enough that not one in thirty security-conscious secretaries would have pursued me.
So much for infiltrating Chaney’s office. I wondered when the dragon lady went home at night, how a Somerville townie could rely on easy access. Might he have an accomplice among Chaney’s teaching assistants, secretaries, colleagues, students?
I scribbled names and numbers while I walked back toward the car. The dragon lady’s nameplate identified her as Esther Cummings. The department chair, George Fording, had digs on the third floor. The window on the driver’s side of my Toyota was plastered with a city of Cambridge Day-Glo orange parking ticket. Exceeding the time on the meter. Damn.
At home, the dishes were still in the sink. No evidence that Roz was there, not that I planned to climb to her third-floor aerie to check. I yelled upstairs instead; I hate to go up there, because her artwork is scary. She does postpunk weird stuff and considers the third floor her canvas. The note I’d left for her on the fridge, asking her to sort through the Chaney Web references, appeared untouched.
I got a Pepsi to sustain me and sat down to play the keyboard, regretting the fact that I never took typing in high school because I wasn’t gonna be anybody’s coffee-fetching secretary. Made three errors entering Benjamin MacKenzie Dowling’s name alone. I typed in his Claremont Street address. With his name and address, courtesy of Officer Burkett’s incident book, I trolled for his birth date and Social Security number. Give me a name, address, DOB, and SSN, and I can find the rest.
Once I knew the golden four, I visited the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles site and discovered that Dowling drove a black ’99 TransAm. I got the plate number. I debated phoning my friend Gloria and asking her to summon up Dowling’s credit history. She owns the local cab company for which I sometimes drive, and she joined CBI, one of the largest credit-rating bureaus, at my urging.
The three major credit bureaus, CBI (aka Equifax,) TRW, and Trans Union are essentially off-limits to civilians. It’s illegal to nab credit status, but the FTC, no less, says it’s okay to access what’s known as “header information.” I decided to call up the header stuff on my own. Gloria likes to talk, and I wanted background on Dowling fast.
I punched keys. CBI was my first try, because they’re the largest and handle most of the East Coast
. I went on to TRW, then Trans Union, a sinking feeling in my gut. No credit record whatsoever.
Maybe if I hadn’t suspected him of blackmail, I’d have shrugged it off, simply figured, Well, maybe Dowling hasn’t had much luck, hasn’t established himself financially. But the man drove an okay car. Who buys a car for cash on the barrelhead? I tried a dot-gov listing to see if Dowling had outstanding college loans. Nope. The lack of a credit history, any credit history, didn’t sit right. Who has no debt? Rich folks who pay cash. Crooks.
Call it a hunch, but it’s based on some of the oldest saws in the book. Criminals tend to start young; criminals are not that bright. They tend to get caught; they tend to repeat their bad behavior.
I dialed Gloria, but instead of asking her to run credit on Benjamin, I asked her to run a CORI, a criminal offenders record check. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts currently allows business owners to check the past criminal misdeeds of prospective employees. They finally got the message that cab companies don’t want to hire habitual DUI offenders, that schools don’t really want a rapist on the payroll.
As fast as I don’t type, that’s how fast Gloria does. Not that she’d devote her full attention to my request. I imagined her in her office, her wheelchair occupying its niche behind the phone console. Gloria’s skin is so dark, it glistens. From the waist up, she’s a whirlwind of activity, what with dispatching cabs, listening to the police scanner, eating junk food. I pressed the phone to my ear; sounded like she was munching Doritos.
My rookie pal, Burkett, hadn’t mentioned the fact that Benjy Dowling had a record, but cops tend to give what they want to give. I wouldn’t put it past even a rook to withhold information.
“Give me the DOB.” Gloria’s weight hovers at 325 pounds.
“Eleven/twenty-one/sixty-nine.” The man was over thirty. Chaney was over forty. The girl had had a thing for older men.
“Bingo.”
“What for?” Damn it, if Burkett had told me, I’d have homed in on Dowling like a hawk on a wounded chicken. Of course, I wouldn’t have found out about the impending lawsuit, wouldn’t have steered Jeannie toward needed help.