For five weeks during July and August Ryan dated Harriet Malcomb and saw her often. I assumed what brought them together was purely sexual, because what would they have to talk about? But later I found that was not entirely the case. Then Ryan broke up with her, primarily because of her involvement in the vandalism of Homeland Cemetery. He didn’t report it, even though he understood it made him an accomplice after the fact. It seems he was unsure of Harriet for other reasons too. As he told Franklin, “She asks too many questions about Janice.”
Three weeks after Ryan stopped seeing Harriet, the phony bomb was found at Albert Knox Consolidated School. Right from the start, Ryan conducted his own investigation with officers on the Aurelius police force. I say that because the state police were also investigating. But ever since Janice’s murder, Ryan hadn’t had a good relationship with the state police. Though he worked with them on a hundred other matters, he couldn’t forget how he had been removed from the McNeal case. Professionally, he knew that the state police’s behavior had been correct, but personally he found it unforgivable. That was another trait of Ryan’s: he had a long memory. He didn’t treat the state police with anger, he simply remembered, with the result that if there was a case in which they were involved he might not tell them all he knew.
One Friday morning ten days after the bomb had been found at Knox Consolidated, Ryan left his office about nine without saying where he was going. This was not especially odd, but Patty McClosky, Chief Schmidt’s secretary, said she saw him checking his pistol and putting a pair of handcuffs in his pocket. Privately, Patty called him Old Silent.
Ryan took an unmarked police car, a gray Ford Taurus, and drove over toward Aurelius College, which had been in session since the end of August. It was one of those cool sunny days that make you realize that summer is gone and something new is beginning. Kids were in school and the streets were quiet.
Ryan parked on Juniper Street near the corner of Spruce, a few blocks from the Aurelius campus. He locked the car, checked a piece of paper he took from his pocket, then walked half a block back to 335 Juniper, a white Victorian house that had been broken up into six apartments rented by students. The house needed paint, the front porch sagged, and the front lawn was a mixture of weeds and bare dirt scarred with tire tracks. Two empty Budweiser cans lay on the porch.
Ryan Tavich entered the house. Oscar Herbst rented an apartment on the second floor. Ryan checked the number on the door against the number written on the paper, then he knocked.
After a moment, Ryan heard a muffled voice. “Who is it?”
“Police,” said Ryan.
He waited. Then he knocked again, louder. He paused and listened at the door. Quickly, he stepped back and kicked at the lock. The door flew open. Ryan ran into the room. He started to draw his pistol, then didn’t bother.
Oscar, wearing a T-shirt and jeans but barefooted, was halfway out the window. Ryan grabbed him by his belt and yanked him into the room. Stumbling, Oscar fell to the floor. He darted a look at Ryan, then jumped to his feet and ran toward the door. Ryan grabbed him again, a little rougher this time.
“Stop it,” said Ryan.
Oscar again tried running for the door.
Ryan grabbed him, slapped him, then put the handcuffs on him. Oscar was about four inches shorter than Ryan.
“We’re going to the police station,” said Ryan. “Do you want your shoes?”
Oscar licked at the stud in his lip. “Fuck you,” he said.
Ryan took the shoes anyway.
On the street, Oscar tried to run again, but Ryan held him by the back of his neck. “You want me to carry you?” said Ryan.
He put Oscar in the backseat of the Taurus, then drove to police headquarters.
“You still fucking Harriet?” said Oscar behind him.
Ryan didn’t bother to answer.
“You should be scared of me,” said Oscar.
At headquarters, Ryan took Oscar into his office and shut the door.
Patty McClosky saw all this. A few minutes later when Phil Schmidt left his office to play racquetball at the Y, Patty said, “Ryan’s got a college student in his office. He’s got handcuffs on him.”
Schmidt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He hated to be late for his racquetball games. Just then Ryan came out of his office with Oscar.
“This kid’s confessed to planting those bombs,” he said.
Ryan booked Oscar and put him in a cell. He left it to Phil Schmidt to call the state police.
Though Oscar had confessed, he also claimed to have acted on his own. A man walking his dog early in the morning had seen him outside Knox Consolidated, and another witness had placed Oscar outside Pickering Elementary School the week before.
“They weren’t real bombs,” said Oscar. “It was a joke.”
That same Friday and over the weekend, Ryan talked to the other members of Inquiries into the Right, including Houari Chihani. All claimed to know nothing of Oscar’s actions.
The problem was Aaron. Ryan was positive that he knew more than he was telling, but Ryan had a complicated relationship with Aaron. After all, he was still in love with Aaron’s dead mother.
“I don’t know anything about those bombs,” said Aaron. “Oscar must have been acting on his own.”
“He never said anything about it?” asked Ryan.
“Not to me he didn’t.” He spoke coolly to Ryan, as if he disliked him.
Aaron kept Ryan standing in the hall outside his apartment door. Ryan wondered if Harriet was with him and he imagined her naked body in Aaron’s bed. She, too, had told Ryan that she knew nothing about the bombs.
Franklin interviewed Oscar in jail. Because Oscar was arrested on Friday and the paper didn’t come out until the next Thursday, everybody knew about the arrest from the Utica and Syracuse papers long before the Independent was printed.
Oscar told Franklin, “They’re lucky they weren’t real bombs.” Then he said, “Why don’t you write a story about a cop fucking a student half his age?” And he called Franklin “a capitalist lackey.”
“What’s a lackey?” Sadie asked me when the paper came out.
“A servile follower,” I told her.
“Like a servant?”
“Technically, I believe it’s a footman.”
Oscar spent the weekend in jail. On Monday his father drove down from Troy to bail him out. After talking to the judge, Mr. Herbst withdrew his son from Aurelius College and took him home. There would be pretrial hearings and other visits to Aurelius before the trial, but otherwise Oscar would stay in Troy.
The news that Oscar had planted the bombs was surprising and in trying to explain it people heard a lot about Inquiries into the Right. Questions were raised at the college and in the city council concerning the possibility of banning the group.
There was also an attempt to remove Houari Chihani from his position at Aurelius, but Chihani was used to such tactics and retained a lawyer. He was in the second semester of a three-year contract and unless wrongdoing could be proved against him he planned to stay every minute of his time. Of course he had no hope of being rehired at the end of his contract, but by then the whole matter was irrelevant in any case.
Ryan talked to Chihani in his home. Had he perhaps encouraged Oscar and the others?
“Why would I do such a thing?” said Chihani. “I am a philosopher. I am not a revolutionary.”
“Don’t you preach revolution?”
“I teach people to see clearly. I preach accuracy of vision.”
“Don’t you feel some responsibility?”
“None.”
“What if it had been a real bomb?”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Oscar Herbst was your student.”
“He has an excitable nature. That is a matter of genetics more than education. Yo
u would do better quizzing his parents.”
“Do you know what conspiracy is?” asked Ryan.
“Conspiracy is something that needs to be proved in a court of law,” said Chihani.
Franklin talked to Chihani as well.
“Education,” said Chihani, “provides young people with information about the world. If those young people act upon that information, we cannot blame their teachers, just as we cannot blame the newspaper for the news that it prints. I am simply the medium for a particular kind of information.”
“Don’t you feel responsible for Inquiries into the Right?” asked Franklin.
“They are a study group, nothing more. They read books and meet to discuss them.”
“Do you think one of these books set off Oscar Herbst?”
“We go back to the nature of information. It is possible that Oscar was driven to action by something he read. He’s enthusiastic. In learning about the nature of the world, he grows indignant. That’s not surprising, is it? But what worries me, Mr. Moore, is that you consider punishing the book and the teacher.”
“I assure you I have no such intention.”
“Then I do not understand the direction of your questions.”
It seemed unlikely to some people that Ryan Tavich could have deduced Oscar’s involvement without there having been an informer within the IIR. There was much speculation about this. Harriet swore she had told him nothing. After all, they had stopped seeing each other weeks before the bombs were found.
On the Sunday morning after Oscar’s arrest, Barry was on his way to Aaron’s apartment. The weather was mild and a few maples had begun to turn, branches of orange leaves on predominantly green trees. As Barry turned onto the sidewalk in front of Aaron’s unit, he heard a car pull to a stop at the curb. He turned to see Jesse and Shannon getting out of their Chevy, recognizing their blond ponytails even before he saw their faces. Since Aaron had said nobody else would be coming over, Barry felt disappointed. Then he realized that Jesse and Shannon were angry. Barry hurried toward the door of Aaron’s unit.
Jesse tackled him before Barry got halfway. When Barry tried to scramble to his feet, Jesse slapped him in the face, knocking off his glasses.
“You told,” said Jesse.
“Told what?” asked Barry.
“Told about Oscar,” said Jesse.
“No, I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
Barry sat on the ground, rubbing his face with one hand and holding his glasses with the other. The bridge had snapped and he held the two pieces in his palm. He kept blinking. Without his glasses everything was bright and wobbly.
“You’re lying,” said Shannon.
Barry heard the front door of the apartment unit slam open, then he heard Aaron’s voice. “Leave him alone.”
“He told the cops about Oscar,” said Shannon.
“Little Pink didn’t tell anyone about anything,” said Aaron.
“I bet I can make him talk,” said Shannon.
Aaron put a hand on Shannon’s arm. “Did you hear what I said?”
Barry couldn’t see very well and the sunlight hurt his eyes. He could just make out Shannon’s and Jesse’s blond goatees. The brothers looked at each other. Jesse shrugged.
“Come on,” said Shannon. They walked back to their car. Protruding from their skinny backs, their shoulder blades under their T-shirts looked like incipient wings.
Barry got to his feet. He rubbed his face where it had been slapped. “I didn’t tell, I really didn’t.”
“Don’t blubber,” said Aaron. He took Barry’s arm and began leading him to the door. “I know you didn’t tell.”
Fourteen
Oscar’s arrest was accompanied by a sense of completion: a crazy thing had been done and a crazy person had been found responsible. Much was made of the fact that Oscar wore a gold lip stud. What wouldn’t have made sense would have been for the culprit or culprits to be so-called normal teenagers known to everyone for years, although that had been feared. The only regret was that the rest of the IIR couldn’t be tied to the bombs as well. Surely all ten members were involved and Chihani had encouraged them. At least this was argued. Because it was known that Franklin was seeing Paula McNeal, it was supposed that Franklin was protecting her half brother. And everyone knew of Ryan Tavich’s relationship with Aaron’s mother. There was much talk about a conspiracy of silence between these men, and the person who spoke most loudly about a conspiracy was Hark Powers. He would hold forth at Bud’s Tavern on how Chihani and Aaron were plainly behind the phony bombs. Of course, since Aaron had bitten off Hark’s ear, Hark’s credibility was suspect. But people talked among themselves and it seemed unlikely that Oscar had acted on his own.
The rumors of Franklin’s and Ryan’s complicity grew so common that one morning Phil Schmidt called Ryan into his office. Schmidt had been police chief for twenty-five years and had come to see Aurelius as his personal property. He was a big man with a big stomach and he liked to rest his hands on it when he talked. He wore suits rather than uniforms, but they were suits that resembled uniforms: blue and shiny. His wife, Gladys, worked at the post office and between them it seemed they knew everything to be known in Aurelius.
“I don’t want to offend you, Ryan,” said Schmidt, “but I need to ask one question.”
Ryan knew what was coming. “I’m not trying to protect Aaron McNeal,” he said.
“D’you think he was involved with those bombs?”
“Aaron denies it and Oscar says he did it by himself.”
“Do you believe them?”
“I don’t work according to belief, I work according to evidence.” Ryan caught hold of his growing irritation and took a breath. “I know nothing more than I put in my report. And Franklin doesn’t either, for that matter.”
“Are you friendly with Aaron?”
“Are you kidding? He seems to hate me.”
If Phil Schmidt was satisfied, others weren’t. Chihani was grilled by the college president, Harvey Shavers. His secretary described how she could hear Shavers’s booming voice and Chihani’s dry voice going back and forth for an hour. At last Shavers gave up, apparently having learned nothing.
The Good Conduct Committee of the college queried the members of the IIR who were students. Since they hadn’t been caught in any wrongdoing, they couldn’t be punished, but Barry said they were reminded of the college’s fine tradition.
“Wherever you go,” Dean Phipps told them, “people don’t see Jason Irving or Harriet Malcomb or Bob Jenks. They see Aurelius College.”
Shannon Levine made half-audible pig noises with his hand covering his mouth, though Barry said that Shannon was scared. Had it been known they had vandalized the cemetery, they would have been expelled. Every week in the Independent there were indignant letters about the vandalism and every week Chief Schmidt said that the investigation was continuing.
Fear of conspiracy can be an insidious fear. The fact that the IIR claimed to be innocent was meaningless. People believed they were plotting. This very belief became a kind of evidence. Very few people felt the bombs were the end of it and most waited for a new transgression. Indeed, they looked forward to it.
Then something happened that almost wiped Oscar Herbst and his phony bombs from people’s memory. But it didn’t wipe them out completely and that was part of the problem.
—
Megan Kelly lived in a small white house at the edge of Aurelius, the last on Jefferson Street before the intersection with Adams, which along that stretch has Hapwood’s Tire and several town storage sheds. The first house on Adams leaving town is a farmhouse, the Bells’, a quarter of a mile from town. Megan Kelly was in her midsixties. Her husband, Winfred, had worked as assistant manager at the Trustworthy Hardware but he had died of a stroke five years earlier. They had had four daughters, all of whom had moved away.
To supplement her Social Security, Mrs. Kelly cleaned people’s houses.
Mrs. Kelly had worked for me for several months, cleaning every Thursday, but I found her something of a busybody and I let her go. She was too curious about my habits and too ready to offer advice as to how I should live my life. I tried to accept the fact that Mrs. Kelly was probably lonely and so took a strong interest in the people for whom she worked. Never did I suspect anything malicious about her interest or that she was a gossipmonger, but her attention to my life was a pressure I didn’t feel I needed. This was partly my own sensitivity.
On Monday afternoon, September 18, Mrs. Kelly was tidying up her living room. “Puffing up the cushions,” as she later explained. It was a little past three and by five-thirty she had to be over at Franklin Moore’s, no more than a five-minute drive away. Glancing from her living room window, Mrs. Kelly saw Sharon Malloy on her bike on Adams Street, bicycling out of town. She assumed that Sharon was on her way to the Bells’, whose daughter, Joyce, was Sharon’s age. Sharon was wearing jeans and a blue crewneck sweater. On her back was a red canvas book bag. Her bike was a red and blue mountain bike called a Husky. School had gotten out about fifteen minutes earlier.
Sharon Malloy was fourteen years old and in ninth grade. Her family had moved to Aurelius from Rochester in the mid-1980s. Mrs. Kelly had gone to Dr. Malloy several times about her rheumatism. Though she liked him, she preferred doctors who were actually from Aurelius. Dr. Malloy was an outsider and Mrs. Kelly felt uncomfortable when he touched her. Not that he wasn’t always courteous.
Mrs. Kelly noticed Sharon Malloy, that was all. Several cars went by but the only one she recognized was Houari Chihani’s red Citroën. Mrs. Kelly knew that car—everybody did—and she thought about what she’d read in the Independent about how a friend of Mr. Chihani’s, or maybe a student, had been arrested for leaving those bombs at the elementary school and high school. For Mrs. Kelly this was evidence of the creeping corruption of the cities, evidence of decay and dissolution, which was a phrase that Mrs. Kelly liked.
The Church of Dead Girls Page 12