The Principal Cause of Death

by Mark Richard Zubro

  I decided to give up and go home. I live in a farmhouse in one of the last cornfields in southwestern Cook County. I own the house and two acres around it. I enjoy the quiet and solitude. Last year they put in a subdivision a half-mile from my place. I’m going to have to move soon.

  I found Scott sprawled on the couch in the living room. He always spends the first days after the season at my place, to avoid the jangling phones and hectic pace of the city. He wore faded blue jeans, white athletic socks, and no shirt. I noted his end-of-year baseball tan. The deep bronze on his arms stopping abruptly at the elbow where his baseball uniform started, then starting again at his neckline. He’d fallen asleep with a book open on his chest. It was Allan Bérubé’s Coming Out Under Fire. On the day after he pitched, Scott usually tried to take an extra nap sometime during the afternoon.

  Quietly as I moved, he woke when I crossed the room.

  As he sat up, the book fell to the floor. He retrieved it and said, “How’s my favorite murder suspect?”

  “I’ve got a couple of people I’d like to line up and blast with a machine gun.”

  “That bad at school?” he asked.

  “Not as bad as I thought.” Sitting next to him on the couch, I told him about my day.

  When I finished he said, “I’m worried about the threat from the Bluefield kid. The father is nuts. The son is unstable. I don’t like that part about him saying he knew where you lived.”

  “We’ve got the alarm system you installed,” I said. Scott can do anything mechanical. When he’s done fixing things, they actually work.

  “He could do something crazy,” Scott said. “An alarm system is only so good. I think we should stay at my place for a while.”

  “Probably not a bad idea.” I leaned my head back on the couch. “I’m really depressed about all this. Not about being a murder suspect, because I know I didn’t do it, but about the reaction of the faculty. I mean, my friends were great, but some of the others were just like Meg said, rats deserting a sinking ship.”

  “Trust Meg,” Scott said. They knew and liked each other. “You can’t really blame the people. They don’t want trouble.”

  “I do blame them,” I said petulantly. “They should want to help.”

  “Am I listening to the man I’ve heard decree numerous times that people need reality fixes?”

  “I’m just frustrated,” I said.

  “Let’s go talk to some of these other people tonight,” he said. “You can’t stop asking questions. Somebody did it. You’re right, someone could be trying to frame you.”

  “It’s kind of hard to believe. I don’t have any major enemies on the faculty. In the English department we get along pretty well. I don’t know that many people outside the department well enough for them to build that kind of hate.”

  “What about Bluefield?”

  “I don’t think the kid has the smarts or the courage to commit murder. Besides, Jones was his big buddy. Why try to hurt him?”

  “He had the courage to attack you,” Scott said.

  I didn’t have a good answer for that. We agreed to go out after we ate, to try and talk to the rest of the people who’d been in the school.

  I tried cooking some dinner. Neither of us is very good at it, but what’s to making pasta? Boil a little water, open a jar of sauce, heat a little garlic bread, toss a salad. The pasta boiled over on the stove and the burner chose to short out from the excess water. When I shoved the garlic bread in the oven, I let go of the door too soon; it crashed down and one of the hinges snapped. Hearing the noise, Scott entered the kitchen.

  “This is not my day,” I said.

  “Hasn’t been your week, so far,” he muttered. He took the bread out of my hand, placed it on the counter, and steered me to a kitchen chair. While he put the kitchen back in order, I gazed at the Lord of the Rings poster-calendar he’d given me for my birthday this year. Finally Scott handed me the lettuce and the knife. “See if you can cut this without slicing off a finger,” he said.

  I wanted to be more amused for him, but I was too depressed. He managed to forget the sauce on top of the stove while he was fixing the oven door. It burned and crusted on the bottom of the pan.

  When he finally plopped spaghetti on my plate he said, “Another gourmet meal at the Mason household.”

  While we ate, we discussed the recently completed baseball season. He might go to some of the playoff games in California after we got back from our weekend away.

  We decided to begin our round of evening conversations with the student teacher. I hadn’t seen her in school. I found her name on the faculty and staff list right after the part-time custodians. I drove Scott’s Porsche to her place in River’s Edge.

  We found her house on 149th Street, just west of a recently built bowling alley. A handsome man in his mid-twenties answered our knock. He wore white sweat pants and a sleeveless T-shirt with ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY printed on the front. I told him we wanted to talk to Clarissa. He stared hard at Scott. “Aren’t you … ?” he began.

  Scott nodded. The dreaded recognition issue. Going out in public is a chancy business. He’s been on enough posters, been interviewed by enough television reporters, been on enough sports shows to be more recognizable than most politicians. Last time we tried shopping in a suburban mall, he was mobbed. We wound up running for the parking lot, trailing fans behind us. Other times, we’ve strolled through huge crowds totally unnoticed. The younger the fan, the more tolerant Scott is. He’s one of the few major-league players who doesn’t charge for his signature.

  “No shit, Scott Carpenter,” said the guy.

  “Who is it, Ralph?” Clarissa appeared behind him. She saw me. “I don’t want to see him,” she said.

  He looked back at her in some confusion. “This is Scott Carpenter,” Ralph said.

  “Who?” She’d only seen me. Now she took in Scott. No glimmer of recognition appeared on her face.

  “Scott Carpenter, the baseball player. I always wanted to meet him.” He turned to us, opened the door, and invited us in.

  “I don’t want …” she began.

  Before she could complete her protest, we were inside the door. She stomped off farther into the house. Ralph shook Scott’s hand. I introduced myself.

  Ralph led us into the living room. The house was upper-class track, but the sparse furnishings reflected the newness of their marriage. A picture window looked out on a backyard with trees still small enough to need stakes to keep them from bending over in the wind. We sat on a brown sofa that would need a huge dumpster in another year or so.

  Ralph gushed at Scott for a few minutes. Scott’s used to it, and performed the rituals graciously. Ralph was about five feet seven, with a wrestler’s compact body, as if the gym outfit he wore reflected actual workouts rather than simple style preference.

  Eventually we got around to the purpose of our visit.

  Ralph’s face quickly changed from delight at meeting Scott Carpenter to grim seriousness. He lowered his voice. “Clarissa’s been pretty upset. She didn’t go to school or to her classes. I tried to talk to her. I don’t think she’s mad at you. I think you just remind her of what happened. She could barely talk to the police when they interviewed her.”

  I said, “I don’t want to make anything worse for her. If it will just upset her, we can go. Mostly I wanted to see if she was all right. And if possible, to check on what happened with the kid who attacked her. I was curious to know if she’d seen the school principal before he was murdered.”

  “I don’t think she knows anything about that,” Ralph said. “But don’t leave. Look, I’ll go talk to her.”

  He left the room. Moments later we heard voices from somewhere deeper in the house.

  “I can’t. I won’t,” were the only words we heard clearly.

  Minutes dragged on beyond fifteen. When it got to thirty minutes, I wanted to leave, but felt awkward searching through their house for them.

  Five minutes
later they both entered the room. We rose as they walked in. She strode toward us purposefully. She said, “I am not going to discuss what happened. He tried to rape me. I don’t know if I’m going to press charges. I don’t know if I want the humiliation. I’ve said this much to please Ralph. Now go.”

  “Why didn’t you at least send help?” I asked.

  She looked angrily at me. “I wanted to get out. Get as far away as I could.”

  She didn’t apologize for not sending help, and I had no intention of intruding on her pain. At the door Ralph apologized profusely. He said, “I’ll try and get her to talk to you.”

  We left. In the car Scott asked, “Is the fact that she’s not pressing charges going to make it easier for Bluefield’s dad to make a case against you?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  “Now where?” he asked.

  “I talked to most of the people at work today. I’d like to try Marshall Longfellow again.”

  Longfellow lived in River’s Edge, near the train station. We drove up to a gray brick two-story home. He answered our knock himself and let us in. We saw a great deal of the mass of red veins inhabiting the whites of his eyes as he stared at Scott. My lover introduced himself, and Longfellow continued to stare.

  I gently nudged the man toward the interior of the house. We walked through an entryway crammed with boots, overcoats, hats, gloves, random tools, even a rusting snowblower in the corner.

  This opened into a living room. A sleepy cat stretched itself across the floor and disappeared around a corner. Longfellow plopped himself into a cloth-backed easy chair. He motioned for us to sit. Looking around the room, I saw that the drapes covering the front window were water-stained and torn. The couch we sat on had been recovered from the dumpster Ralph and Clarissa would soon be bringing their sofa to. Cat hair and fur balls spaced themselves randomly around a carpet that at one time might have been pleasantly gold.

  “Scott Carpenter,” he managed to gasp at last. “Mr. Mason, how do you know him? Why are you here?”

  Scott said, “We live together. We’re—”

  Longfellow shook his head, “Mr. Mason, you live with a famous baseball player. I don’t believe it. I didn’t know that. Wow, that’s incredible. Can I get an autographed baseball?”

  Scott had been about to say that we were lovers. Scott’s being gay didn’t seem to be much of an issue any more. As his best friend on the team said, “Do you really think people don’t know?” I went to his team functions and he came to faculty parties whenever they included the bringing of significant others. This happened rather less than one might suppose. School functions being inherently boring, most significant others didn’t bother to attend, and team functions were few and far between. Scott has an enormous speaking schedule that takes him around the country, but I’m usually stuck in the classroom.

  So far the local media hadn’t seen fit to place our relationship in the sports pages or the gossip columns. If you want to know why not, you’ll have to ask them.

  Poor Marshall Longfellow simply gaped at us.

  “I wanted to ask questions about yesterday afternoon,” I said.

  He gulped and stared at me. “Yesterday afternoon?” He began to look stubborn.

  Scott said, “It would really help, Mr. Longfellow, if you could tell us who was there besides yourself, if you heard or saw anything suspicious.”

  Longfellow nodded. “If I can help,” he said. He offered us drinks. I took a diet soda and Scott accepted a beer. Longfellow chugged on a pint bottle from one side of his chair, and from a beer can on the other. He looked to be functioning as well as he ever did at school. This wasn’t saying much—only that he seemed lucid for the moment.

  “Did you see anybody yesterday between five-thirty and six-thirty?” I asked.

  He placed the liquor bottle on the left side of the chair and clutched the beer bottle tighter. He said, “I saw that chess-club lady, Fiona What’s-her-name, lurking in the halls. She doesn’t seem to ever leave. She must not have much of a home to go to.”

  I considered the squalor around me. Great to be in a position to judge.

  “Anybody else?”

  “All the day-shift custodians went home at the regular time. I was with the night shift waiting for some supplies by the back door most of the time. Some of the kids are always roaming the hall. I think I remember seeing the Bluefield kid.”

  “What time was this?” I asked.

  “Pretty close to six, I think. It could have been him. Whoever it was looked like he had a cast on his arm.”

  “Bluefield was still around,” I said. “He must have been talking to Dalrymple.”

  Longfellow mumbled on for a while longer, but we got no further information from him. Scott got an autographed baseball out of the car and gave it to him. He carries around a supply of them.

  We decided to stop at the River’s Edge police station, then call it a night. I wanted to talk to Frank Murphy. From seeing him yesterday I knew he had the four-to-midnight shift. We found him in the squad room, working on reports. Only a few cops were around and none of them made a fuss over Scott. Frank had met Scott often before, so he didn’t find it necessary to gush.

  “It’s good you came in,” Frank said. He sounded grim.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Plenty. Dan Bluefield says he saw you outside the school office ten minutes before you called in.”

  “That piece of shit,” I said. “All that proves is he could have done it.”

  “How’d he know the correct time?” Scott asked.

  Frank shrugged. “Kid doesn’t say, but it wouldn’t be hard to guess from when all the commotion started. Just back up the times. Remember, we can’t pinpoint the exact moment Jones was killed. There was nearly half an hour between when Tom left and when he came back and found the body. I wish I had the case—it would be no problem. But Daniels and Johnson are tough. I don’t think they’ll do anything unfair, but they don’t know you like I do. I know you didn’t do it, but they have to go on the evidence. I’ve talked to them, and they know Bluefield’s reputation, so it should be okay.”

  “Should be?” Scott asked.

  At that moment Daniels and Johnson walked in. They chatted with Frank a few minutes, then asked if they could talk to me. Meeting Scott did not deter them from the questions they wanted to ask.

  For an hour and a half we sat in a windowless gray cubicle while they went over my statement from the day before, line by line and comment by comment.

  When we finished Johnson said, “You had the time to kill him, and you’ve got no alibi.”

  “Look—” I began.

  “No, you look,” Daniels said. “The blood on your shirt matches Jones’s.”

  “Maybe we have the same blood type,” I said.

  They didn’t even bother to respond to this but went on firing questions at me.

  Finally I asked them if they were charging me with murder. They both said no, but they didn’t sound any too happy about not doing it. I made an awfully good suspect. Arguing with the future corpse, last one to see him alive, finding the body, blood on my shirt, all very nasty things that would make any cop suspicious.

  I found Frank and Scott in Frank’s office. I slammed the door shut behind me and kicked a chair against the wall. Each tried to calm me down. Frank said he would talk to Daniels and Johnson again, but that I was to try to stay calm. He was going on vacation for two weeks, but he gave me his number in case things got worse.

  In the car I managed to nearly dent the dashboard of the Porsche the third time I swung my fist down on it.

  Scott is generally the calmer one in our relationship. It takes me a while to lose my temper, and my rages can be fairly spectacular, but I’ve calmed down a lot in the last few years. Getting old does that, I guess. Scott’s known in the sports pages as the Ice Man. That calm exterior is tough on opposing batters. I’ve seen him lose it only on rare occasions. He spent the time in the c
ar letting me rant, not even trying to calm me down.

  Halfway home I said, “It’s late, but we need groceries. It can’t wait. We’re out of toilet paper, orange juice, a couple of other basics.”

  I hate taking him grocery shopping. If he survives unrecognized, he is a menace, worse than a little kid, throwing perfectly useless items into the cart. Stuff he’s never going to eat, much less have the time or expertise to cook. We’ve ruined enough meals together to write the Don’t Try This Cookbook. I try to get any basic grocery shopping done without him. He’s only a problem with food. He’s fine in a mall with clothes, appliances, whatever. Tonight we were both subdued, managing to exit the Omni store on 159th Street with the only slightly odd item a package of mixed vegetables featuring okra, broccoli, and onions.

  At my place I turned off the car. I left the window open and stuck my elbow on the door. The cool autumn breeze brought lingering whiffs of the smell of burning leaves.

  He squeezed my arm gently. “You’ll get through this,” he said.

  “The kid out and out lied. I wasn’t anywhere near the fucking office at that time.”

  “I know,” he soothed.

  “And the cops seemed to believe the little fucker. The little piece of shit is deliberately trying to ruin my life, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Easy,” Scott said. “I’m here. Nothing bad’s going to happen as long as I’m around.” His support and his soothing tones calmed me down.

  We keep a set of weights in my basement so we can work out together. He hadn’t started on his off-season exercise schedule yet, and it was too soon after pitching for him to go full-out, but he did a light set. In deference to my still-sore arm, I punished the stationary bicycle for half an hour. After showering and dressing I grabbed a diet soda and moseyed to the living room to wait for him to finish his shower. I left the lights off and stared out the picture window to the moon-drenched fields of corn. I’d seen the big harvesters working early that morning on the crop across the road. They’d probably move over here tomorrow or the next day.