Death With Dostoevsky

by Katherine Bolger Hyde

  She got the call from Colin just as she glimpsed a heavy bronze statuette that had rolled a short distance from the body. It was caked in blood, but something about it looked familiar. She had no time to figure out what before answering Colin’s call.

  ‘Emily Cavanaugh.’

  ‘Detective Colin Richards here. My uncle Luke said you needed the police?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve just discovered a dead body.’

  The young voice on the other end of the line squeaked up an octave. ‘A body?’ He cleared his throat, and his voice returned to its normal pitch and deliberately official tone. ‘What is your location?’

  ‘The Bede College campus, Vollum College Center, room three-fifteen.’

  ‘You’re in luck. That’s in our precinct, just, and our team is next up. Stay right where you are and don’t touch anything. We’ll be there as quick as we can.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘Better notify some college authority. They could get sticky if we come on campus without notice.’

  Sticky like the blood. Emily fought down nausea and called campus security, then Luke again, just to fill him in on what had happened and to promise an update later in the day. Meanwhile her unconscious chugged away trying to identify the bloody statuette. For some reason her mind connected it with Daniel.

  Of course. It was Daniel’s Bronze Horseman. She’d seen it on his desk in the library. Daniel looked on it as some sort of talisman. In Pushkin’s poem, the original beyond-lifesize statue came to life and hounded a man to his death. Perhaps as Daniel’s talisman this statuette had taken the initiative to eliminate Daniel’s greatest enemy all on its own.

  She shook off that nonsensical thought. The shock of discovering Taylor’s body must be affecting her reason. Temporarily, she hoped. No, the statuette could not have gotten here unless someone – possibly Daniel himself – had brought it.

  Emily went cold, remembering the state in which Daniel had been when he left her the day before. Despite their discussion last week about personal justice, she did not consider him capable of murder under ordinary circumstances. But what if he’d had a severe seizure and was disoriented, as Svetlana had said could happen? Would he be capable in that state of something he would never normally do? He’d certainly had sufficient provocation. Still, she was reluctant to believe it.

  Her first impulse was to take the statuette and get rid of it somehow. But how? There was no handy body of water she could throw it into, nor did she have time before the police arrived to contrive a hiding place. Besides, she’d learned through experience that trying to protect an innocent party by deceiving the authorities could lead to nothing but trouble for both herself and the suspected person. In fact, it could quite easily backfire and delay or prevent the arrest of the actual culprit.

  Not to mention that if the statue had acted on its own, it might choose not to stay hidden.

  Again she shook off the fantastical thought. She would have to have faith – both that Daniel was in fact innocent and that Colin and his colleagues would be smart enough to figure that out.

  Emily had grown accustomed to murder as dealt with by the skeleton sheriff’s department in Stony Beach, so she was overwhelmed when the Portland police arrived in full force with several uniformed officers, a medical examiner, half a dozen crime scene technicians, and three or four plainclothes detectives, of whom Colin turned out to be the most junior.

  The lead detective looked around and spotted Emily being guarded in a corner by the campus security officer she’d called. Emily felt the officer was being a trifle overzealous in fulfilling his duties, but then the campus didn’t see a murder, or indeed any serious crime, every year. His caution was understandable.

  The detective introduced himself as Sergeant Jonah Wharton. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged black man who looked as if he had perpetual indigestion. ‘You the one who found the body?’ he asked without ceremony.

  ‘Yes. Emily Cavanaugh.’ Something about his attitude impelled her to add, ‘Professor Emily Cavanaugh.’ As if her title would somehow put her above suspicion, or at least gain her a little respect.

  He glanced over his shoulder, then turned to point at a young man she guessed must be Colin, since he looked like a blond version of the young Luke. ‘You. Richards. Interview her.’

  The young man scurried over to her. ‘Detective Colin Richards,’ he said unnecessarily. He gave her a deprecatory smile and a handshake, as if apologizing for his superior’s rudeness and acknowledging his own connection to Emily in one gesture. He asked her where they could talk, and she suggested Marguerite’s office. Marguerite was glad to oblige in exchange for Emily’s whispered promise to fill her in on the whole scoop once she was free.

  Colin took the visitor’s chair while Emily sat on the small sofa. He wrote down her full name and contact information, then asked, ‘Can you take me through finding the body?’

  ‘Starting when?’

  ‘Start with entering the building. What time was that, and why were you here?’

  ‘I entered the building at about eight o’clock. I was on my way here, to this office, to keep an appointment with my friend Marguerite. As I passed Taylor Curzon’s office, I noticed the door was ajar, which seemed odd as she usually kept it locked. I knocked and called, but she didn’t answer. I had a feeling something might be wrong, so I pushed the door open. That’s when I saw her.’

  ‘She was exactly like we found her?’

  Emily nodded.

  ‘Did you call us immediately?’

  ‘Well, I called your uncle Luke first, as you know. He’d told me he had a nephew on the force, so I thought it would be nice to start with someone I had a connection with instead of just calling nine-one-one.’

  ‘Right. I got that call at’ – he flipped back through his notebook – ‘eight oh five. Pretty quick after you found the victim. Did you check to make sure she was dead?’

  ‘No. I could see the blood had congealed, and it seemed pretty obvious she’d been dead a while. That dress is the same one she was wearing yesterday. I didn’t want to disturb anything by checking needlessly.’

  ‘Good call. Did you touch anything at all in the room while you were waiting?’

  ‘Not that I can remember. Only the door when I came in. I did walk around a bit, but only on the clean cement floor, not on the rug or’ – she swallowed – ‘in the blood.’

  Colin gave her an appreciative glance. ‘Sounds like my uncle has you pretty well trained.’

  The verb grated, but she brushed that off and smiled. ‘We’ve been through a few murders together. I know the drill by this time.’

  ‘We’ll need to take your fingerprints for elimination. Have you been in the office previously when you might have touched something?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was in there a couple of times last week, and probably on other occasions back when I was still teaching here. I couldn’t say for sure what I may have touched. Except I know I touched the icon.’

  ‘Icon?’

  Of course, to Colin an icon would be a picture on a cell phone screen. ‘The large painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus hanging over Taylor’s desk.’

  Colin nodded and made a note. Then he paused, tapping his pencil on his notebook, a gesture Emily recognized from Luke. ‘What was your relationship with the victim?’

  ‘We were colleagues. Not friends. She wasn’t the sort of woman to have female friends.’

  He raised one eyebrow. ‘Any bad blood between you?’

  ‘In a sense, yes. She was harassing a young couple I’m rather fond of. Some others and I were in the process of trying to get her sanctioned, or preferably fired, for sexual misconduct.’

  ‘Tell me more about that.’

  ‘She had a series of affairs with her male students. Not entirely consensual. She coerced them with grade manipulation. And sometimes their girlfriends got punished as well.’

  ‘You have proof of this?’

  ‘It’s one of those open campus secrets that everybody kn
ows. But so far the students have been too intimidated to come out and testify against her, so we haven’t been able to bring her down.’

  ‘I’d say she’s down now.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Emily grimaced. ‘A bit more permanently than we had in mind.’

  ‘Did you have a personal animosity against her?’

  ‘No, not really. I hate everything she represented on general principles, but it wasn’t personal. I had no grievance strong enough to make me want to – harm her.’

  ‘How about other people? Like the students she harassed. This young couple you mentioned, for example? Would they want to harm her?’

  Emily sighed. ‘If you’re asking who might have wanted to kill Taylor Curzon, I’m afraid the answer is just about anyone who knew her. She was simply an infuriating sort of person. She was out for herself and didn’t care who stood in her way.’

  ‘All right, then, let me ask this: who knew her particularly? I mean beyond just a casual association.’

  She sighed again, hating to be the one in the position of potentially implicating people whose lives she valued far more than she valued Taylor’s. At least they would have safety in numbers; she needn’t emphasize one over all the others. ‘All her colleagues, especially those in the Lit & Lang division. Not too many of us are on campus at the moment, though. Marguerite Grenier, whom you just met, and Richard McClintock, the department head, had the most to do with her. Besides me.’ She hesitated to disclose the secrets about Richard she’d discovered by unethical means – not because she had any desire at all to protect Richard, but because she was rather ashamed of her own and Marguerite’s electronic eavesdropping. Perhaps Marguerite would mention it. She had fewer scruples, and she had masterminded it, after all.

  Thank heavens neither Oscar nor Lauren had any direct contact with Curzon – she’d hate for Oscar to be targeted in yet another murder investigation. The fact that he could potentially profit from an opening in the department was something the police could ferret out for themselves if they felt the need.

  ‘Then there are her students. Again, not many on campus now. The two I mentioned before are Svetlana Goldstein and Daniel Razumov. Oh, there’s also Sidney … Sidney something. Svetlana or Daniel could tell you. He hangs around them – he sort of worships Daniel – but I don’t know that he had any personal connection with Curzon. Then there’s Svetlana’s father, Saul Goldstein – he was planning to sue Taylor because Svetlana had suffered on account of her unfair grading practices. He interviewed some other students who had been her victims, but you’d have to get those names from him.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but I’d start with the most expensive hotel in town. Oh, and one more person – Taylor’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Douglas Curzon. He’s been trying to negotiate a settlement with her. I do have his number.’ She found it on her phone and rattled it off.

  ‘So this Douglas Curzon would be the next of kin?’

  ‘I suppose so. But as I said, Taylor and I weren’t close. I really know nothing about her family.’

  ‘Right. Backing up a bit. When did you last see the victim alive?’

  She did a mental calculation. ‘Actually saw her? Yesterday morning – say, around nine thirty. Just glimpsed her going out of her office as I was coming in here.’

  ‘Actually saw her? As opposed to what?’

  ‘Well, I heard her for a bit after that. I know she was alive until at least eleven a.m.’

  Colin gave her a quizzical look but did not pursue the matter, to Emily’s relief. Especially in retrospect, she felt all her eavesdropping the day before had been justified, but she was not proud of it.

  ‘I expect someone else will be able to narrow it down closer than that.’ He glanced back over his notes, then looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Uncle Luke did just have time to mention that in addition to being trustworthy, you’re a pretty astute observer. While you were waiting for us, did you happen to notice anything that might be helpful?’

  Although she had talked herself out of hiding the apparent murder weapon, Emily did not feel her responsibility to the police extended as far as identifying the person she believed to be its owner. After all, she couldn’t be certain. There could be another Bronze Horseman statuette on campus besides Daniel’s. It could even have been Taylor’s own.

  But there was something else she could mention. ‘This isn’t something I noticed this morning, but there is another area you might want to look into. It’s pretty vague – nothing more than a feeling, a suspicion, but …’

  ‘Let’s have it. Uncle Luke said you have good instincts.’

  ‘All right. I have a feeling Taylor may have been involved with the Russian mafia in smuggling contraband artifacts from Russia.’ She explained about the icon and the thuggish Russian-speaking visitor. The words sounded outlandish as she heard them come out of her mouth – like something that would happen in a movie rather than in real life.

  ‘Hmm. Kinda sounds like the proverbial intruder from outside that everybody blames because they don’t want to think it could be one of themselves. But we’ll look into it.’

  ‘Right. I don’t think it deserves more than that.’

  He stood. ‘OK, thanks for your help, Mrs – can I call you Emily? ’Cause I guess you’re going to be one of the family pretty soon.’

  ‘Absolutely. Thanks, Colin.’ She hesitated, then said with a smile, ‘Can I ask you to keep me informed? I know I’m just a civilian here with no special privileges, but if I know what’s going on I might be able to be of some kind of help. I promise I won’t get in your way.’

  He hesitated in turn, then grinned a grin so familiar it made Emily’s heart turn over. ‘Sure. I’ll do what I can. What I can get away with, that is. My boss is kind of a stickler. He wouldn’t like it if he knew.’

  ‘Kind of a grouch, too, from what I saw. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’

  ‘You let me worry about that.’

  Emily hung around campus the rest of the day – not in the library, since she couldn’t focus on her work for a moment, but in more public spots, hoping to hear something further about the murder investigation. But either it was still too early or Colin hadn’t had a chance to check back in, because by dinnertime Emily had heard nothing but rumors. For example: Curzon had been strangled in broad daylight. Curzon had been set upon by a gang of thugs in a dark corner of campus at midnight. The murderer had already been caught. The murderer was so clever he or she would never be caught. Curzon hadn’t been murdered at all but had committed suicide. Curzon had suffered a fatal accident. Curzon had been abducted by aliens. Emily was amazed at the ability of even an exceptionally intelligent collection of people such as the Bede community to come up with any story, no matter how absurd, to fill the hole when the truth was unavailable.

  At last she gave up and trudged home. She had been scheduled to attend a class at the Apple Store that night, but she’d never be able to concentrate while in this state of suspense. She waited all evening for a call from Colin, then finally called Luke. He’d heard nothing from Colin and thus had no news for her, but she filled him in as far as she could.

  ‘Hard to make any kind of guess without knowing more about the rest of her day,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘Who do you like for it?’

  The word that popped out of her mouth astonished her with its vehemence. ‘Richard.’

  ‘Richard McClintock? I haven’t met the man, but from what you’ve told me, he seems like too much of a wimp.’

  Emily took a shaky breath. ‘You’re right, he is. I’m not quite sure why I said that.’ She paused to collect herself. ‘Well, yes, I do know. It’s because I have an irrational antipathy to the man. He’s done plenty to earn my dislike on a rational level, but beyond that …’

  She couldn’t finish her sentence without telling Luke about her memories of being harassed. And that would have been so much easier to do in person. Why had she chickened out wh
en she had the chance?

  No getting around it now. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you. I meant to tell you when you were here, but … well, once I had you near me, it didn’t seem that important. But I guess it isn’t the kind of thing that just goes away.’

  His voice softened. ‘Em, you know you can tell me anything. There’s not a thing in the world that could change my love for you. You do know that, right?’

  She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. ‘Yes. I do know that. And it isn’t – wasn’t even my fault. It’s something that happened years ago, when I was a student. Only I’d forgotten all about it until last week.’

  She paused again, and he helped her out. ‘I take it this was the blocking-out-trauma kind of forgetting, not the slipped-your-mind-’cause-it’s-inconsequential kind?’

  ‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath and rushed the sentence out on the exhale. ‘One of my professors put the moves on me and threatened to fail me if I didn’t give in.’

  ‘Shit, Em. No wonder this whole thing’s got you riled.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What happened? You didn’t give in, did you?’

  ‘No. Not that he was waiting for permission. But I got rescued on that occasion and then managed to avoid him after that. Dropped the class.’

  ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that, sweetheart. Men like that should be taken out and shot. Figuratively speaking, you understand. But what’s Richard got to do with it? He’s about our age, isn’t he? He couldn’t have been the professor?’

  ‘No, that prof is long gone. He retired before I came back here to teach. Sure to be dead by now. But Richard reminds me of him. Same attitude, same aftershave, same … I don’t know, aura, I guess. When I’m around him I get the same hideous feelings all over again.’

  Luke was silent a minute. ‘I wish you had told me when I was there. I’m guessing you could use a hug about now.’

  ‘Yeah. Stupid move on my part. But I thought I’d be going home soon and could tell you then. I didn’t know Taylor was going to get herself murdered and bring it all to the surface.’