Perish the Day

by John Farrow

  Inside, Till and Hammond, accepting that this is Émile’s walk-through, hang back. The chief of the Hanover police has not been in the room, either, and takes a look around while standing out of the way. Hammond ascertains that the room is exactly as he left it a day ago. Satisfied with that, he studies the retired Montreal detective while pretending that he’s doing no such thing.

  Émile stands, oblivious to the attention.

  Once again he wants to be quiet, to permit the air in the room or the spaces in his head to have their say, to refine initial impressions to an essence. The process usually strains the patience of any observer and today is no exception. Till shifts his weight from foot to foot, then from his heels to his toes and back again. Guilty of tilting his hips one way, then the other, Hammond perseveres, trying not to stare but at the same time gawking at whatever Cinq-Mars looks at, then sneaking a glimpse at the man’s face to see if he can snag a reaction. Émile remains impassive throughout, and after prolonged immobility becomes more active. He opens and shuts drawers, casts a long glance into a closet. He peers up onto a high shelf and tests the surface for dust. Clean. The bed, he notes, is precisely tucked, pulled tight to the corners, not a wrinkle to be observed on the blanket. Twin pillows look as though they’ve been prepared for inspection, smooth as curved glass.

  When he’s done, he says, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Hammond chooses not to stand aside. Cinq-Mars looks at him, to see what’s up.

  “Share,” Hammond says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what we’re doing now, right? Do it. Share. I’ve been through this place. Didn’t find a thing worth mentioning. You? Any different?”

  Cinq-Mars considers the challenge, flexing his lips a little.

  Hammond encourages him with a more conciliatory tone. “You and me, we got off to a bad start. My fault. Fine. I admit it now. You’ve got a bit of game. Educate me. Is there anything you’re taking away from this room?”

  The older detective concedes with a nod. He notices that Till is waiting for him to speak, as well. “Open the door,” he instructs them both. “Let Roberta in.”

  Till does that and the woman takes her place beside the officers.

  “I asked Roberta in because she was probably eavesdropping anyway.”

  She’s about to protest before she notices his slight grin, and smiles instead.

  “Frankly, she should know how we’re thinking. She’s on campus. She sees and hears what we don’t. The more she knows, the more she can help, and I happen to know that Roberta wants to help.”

  If she felt trepidatious entering the room with the experienced policemen present, she’s beaming now.

  “Trooper Hammond, I’m seeing exactly what you said you saw. The military perfection. The unstudentlike, undormlike attention to keeping one’s quarters to a pristine tidiness that would be bizarre if it wasn’t so telling.”

  The trooper reflects a certain pride that he saw what he was supposed to see, until he realizes that he doesn’t know why—in the mind of this city detective—that’s telling.

  “Now we know,” Cinq-Mars reveals, “what Toomey was doing here at Dowbiggin.”

  As neither of the men respond, Roberta takes a stab at it. “He was teaching.”

  “He was teaching, of course. Not only that,” Émile says, not taking his eyes off Hammond, as though he’s waiting for him to get it.

  Hammond admits, “I don’t get it.”

  “He was recruiting,” Cinq-Mars tells him. “Teaching, in order to recruit, then training his recruits. Look at this room. Vernon Colchester was clearly being trained. Which means he has already been recruited. He was being taught and tested and made to modify his natural behavior. He’s left absolutely nothing lying around that would point to any activity he’s involved in anywhere at any time. There’s not even a clue as to what he’s studying—the books are off the shelves. This is a young man learning to live his life in secret. As a secret.”

  “I think I get that now,” Till mentions, and Hammond nods.

  “Of course, he wasn’t going to tell you anything. What spy talks?”

  “Poor kid. He’s bitten off more than he can chew,” Till adds.

  “An old saying is often used,” Cinq-Mars muses aloud, “in describing American covert agencies. I don’t know where I heard it but it’s undoubtedly valid. American spies are ‘male, pale, and Yale.’ Composed, that is, of white men from Yale, the latter school being its major supplier of personnel. Yale, however, apart from being the most prolific supplier, has been understood to refer in general, and more so over time, and in this instance in particular, to the Ivy League. Toomey’s life as a spy came to a close. He was handed this post at the Dowbiggin School, which draws students interested in a future in the diplomatic corps, or international trade and finance, where he can teach from his lengthy study of international relations and from his considerable experience in the field, and where he continues to serve as someone who recruits and trains star candidates—bright, patriotic, idealistic, impassioned young men—and nowadays, young women—to be the next generation of intelligence gatherers. In our times, a growth profession.”

  “I get it now,” Hammond says quietly.

  “I don’t,” Cinq-Mars contradicts him, and contradicts himself. “I don’t get how all this came crashing down.” Then he looks at Roberta and gestures to his eyes, his ears, and his mouth. Over his mouth he draws closed an imaginary zipper.

  “No problem,” she states.

  The four of them are exiting the building when Trooper Hammond’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He takes it and reads a text to himself, then asks, “Anybody ready for good news?” The others wait expectantly. “Vernon Colchester. They brought him out of the coma they induced. The boy’s awake. He’s sitting up in bed.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  A doctor cautions them before they go inside, which provides an opportunity. The physician wants them to keep it quiet, and not upset his patient. After he steps away, Émile takes advantage of the pause to ask of both Till and Hammond, “Who talks?”

  “Oh, Christ, do I need to pull rank again?” Hammond objects. He considers the issue a closed subject.

  “Your pretty face alone will upset him. Doctor’s orders, we’re not supposed to do that. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “He has a point,” Till agrees. “I can be up front here.”

  “In that uniform?” Cinq-Mars challenges him as well.

  “What’s wrong with my uniform?” Till can’t resist looking down at his shirt and trousers, wondering what’s the deal with his look.

  “It’s a uniform. Chief Till, come on, the kid’s been through hell. Interrogated by state troopers, then abducted, then thrown out of a car during a high-speed chase with police sirens on his tail. Probably there’s nobody he’d rather not see right now than a cop in a uniform.”

  “Get off the pot.” Chief Till mounts his defense. “You’re making a case for yourself.”

  “Sure I am. Look, I’ve talked with Vernon on a friendly basis. I’m practically a friendly face. Hammond, you saw me when he was taken in. Tell the man. I comforted him. I gave him good advice. My niece, her friends, are part of his crowd. I have an in which isn’t a negative, and given the circumstances, who better than me? My gentle touch. This has nothing do with evaluating one guy over another.”

  The three men know that it has everything to do with evaluating one guy over another, and that Émile thinks he’s the best man for the job. Yet he receives backing from an unlikely source, even though it doesn’t come as a total surprise. Hammond recognizes that he’s already gone a few tough rounds with this kid, and tried various techniques on him, to no avail. The last thing he wants now is for another officer from a different force to show him up. Better to go with the retired and apparently famous detective from a foreign country. Plus, there’s honor in standing down. If Cinq-Mars succeeds, Hammond can be thanked for his magnanimity. If the outside guy fails, then
stick him with the blame while the local cops are off the hook.

  “You go, Cinq-Mars. See what you can do.” Till looks as though he intends to object before Hammond silences him. “My call. That’s it. That’s all.”

  They enter the young man’s hospital room.

  Curtains on the windows have been drawn, the lights dimmed low. The television that sits high on a corner shelf has not only been switched off but unplugged as well, perhaps to foil a bored visitor curious about what’s on. Vernon Colchester sits propped up, one arm in a sling, the other bandaged, his battered face partially covered. Both eyes are visible but one is red and the eyelid is puffy. Both his upper and lower lips are sutured where his teeth chomped through them. The bedcovers terminate at his armpits, concealing other injuries down his torso and legs and their wrappings. One leg appears to be elevated by several inches.

  Cinq-Mars looks him over and the boy glances up.

  “None the worse for wear,” the detective kids him.

  That may be a faint smile, the best he can muster across his mouth and swollen cheeks.

  “Seen,” the boy says, then wets his lips. “Better,” he adds. Then concludes, “Days.”

  “Hmm,” Cinq-Mars notes. “We all have. It’s touch-and-go with you for convocation.”

  A slight bob of his head suggests that that’s not the boy’s main concern.

  Cinq-Mars pulls up a chair. The two policemen in uniform hang back. They notice that the boy takes note of their presence. His eyes move across them. Warily.

  “Vernon, all kidding aside, we’re sorry for what happened to you. We’re concerned, of course, that you were abducted and treated horribly. We believe this relates to the deaths of Addie and Professor Toomey, and even to a member of the custodial staff. What do you think? Do you think that’s likely?”

  He rests his forearms on the boy’s bed, and speaks softly near his ear. The other two officers move in a little closer if he’s going to talk that quietly. They see the boy nod slightly, agreeing with Émile’s hypothesis. He completes that concession with a modified shrug, as though to suggest that he’s not sure.

  “They grabbed you off the street. I know things are probably a bit fuzzy for you. Do you remember that part? Just blink your good eye slowly, once, to say yes if that’s easier than speaking.”

  He blinks the eye slowly.

  “Do you know why? A slow eye blink for a yes. A slight move of your head, or rapid eye blinks, to mean no. Do you know why they snatched you, Vernon?”

  His no is perhaps more emphatic than Cinq-Mars had in mind, as he doesn’t want the boy to stress himself with either head shakes or eye blinks. The young man does both.

  “They wanted information, do you think? Were they asking you questions? I’m sorry, that’s two questions. But maybe it’s the same question.”

  He slowly opens and shuts both eyes.

  “What did they want to know?”

  Vernon moistens his lips again, then requests water. He’s satisfied with just a few sips through a straw as Émile holds the glass. He answers, “If I knew. Who did it.”

  “The murders? Addie’s? Or all three?”

  He’s shaking him off, to indicate no. “Didn’t seem to know. I mean … they didn’t … know … what it was. Never said.”

  Émile takes a moment to consider his next question. “Okay. You’re saying that you think they didn’t know what they were asking you for? You mean, like they were on a fishing expedition?”

  He makes the mistake of looking at the two policemen in the room and Hammond takes his glance as license to speak. “That doesn’t seem likely,” he says.

  Cinq-Mars won’t make that error again. Vernon is busy shaking his head, they assume in response to Hammond’s comment, but at the moment everyone’s lost. The retired detective tries to stitch their conversation together again, to make it just between the two of them, the approach slow, careful, and intimate. He’s already thinking that the apparent ignorance of the abductors marks them as hired henchmen, which means that in all likelihood they were outsiders who have fled the region.

  “Go on,” he encourages the boy. “Take it easy. Give us your impressions.”

  “Looked surprised. Real surprised. I said … I didn’t kill. Anybody. Same thing. I told. Trooper Hammond.” He’s getting agitated.

  “It’s okay. You told them you didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Yeah. But. It’s like. They’re not asking me that.”

  “What are they asking about, then?”

  “No clue. With them. It’s like. Why say that?”

  “They don’t get it?”

  He’s trying to shake his head.

  “Take it slowly.”

  “Like. All of a sudden.”

  “Yes?”

  “They’re shitting themselves.”

  Cinq-Mars takes that in, and waits as the boy sips water through a straw. He holds the glass. “You mean, it’s your impression, that this is more than they bargained for, those men, that type of thing?”

  “Yeah. Like. Like. Shocked. Weird, for me. At the time.”

  He coughs, and Cinq-Mars helps him take a few more sips.

  “Do you think they were wondering if maybe they picked up the wrong guy?” Cinq-Mars asks.

  “Maybe. More like. They didn’t want. To do. What they’re doing. Argue. Talk about. Letting me go. Like. Remorse.”

  “They found themselves in over their heads.”

  “Yeah. I tried to get out. Big guy. Starts hitting me. Cop car wailing. One guy. Says jump. Or die. Or he shoots me. I jumped. Sort of jumped.”

  Cinq-Mars needs a breather to process what he’s heard. He leans back and rubs his hands a few times over his thighs. Then leans in again with his elbows on the side of the mattress. “When you said you didn’t kill anybody?” he asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did they believe you?”

  Vernon thinks about the question. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “I think so. But. More like. Why say that? More like. Who died?”

  Hammond mutters at his back, “Just like you said, Cinq-Mars.”

  “Not exactly,” Émile remarks. Looking into the boy’s eyes, he addresses him directly, in a way that gives him no place to hide, nowhere to turn.

  The boy tries to elude him anyway. He asks, “What day is it?”

  “Don’t worry, Vernon. It’s only tomorrow. You only lost yesterday. It’s tomorrow. That’s not too bad. Now, Vernon, I believe you. You didn’t kill anybody and you don’t know who did. They believed you when you had a gun to your head and the pavement screaming by. I believe you now. They might have thought you knew stuff, even if we don’t know what stuff, because you are a candidate to know stuff. In a sense. Am I right? Vernon, what made you a reasonable candidate to know stuff?”

  Along the mattress and through the covers he can feel the boy stiffen up. He’s clamming up. “Can’t say.”

  “Sure you can. We know about you and Professor Toomey.”

  The boy almost laughs. “Right. Think I. Sleep with him.”

  “No, not that, Vernon. You loved Addie Langford, we know that. In a way, though, Professor Toomey seduced you. Nothing to do with sex. You’re in training for a secret service. You want to be a spy and you’ve been developing techniques under his tutelage. You see, we know that. What we don’t know is what you stumbled upon during your training, what worried some folks. What was it that lit up a few switchboards, if you take my meaning? What worried some folks enough to have you picked up and interrogated all over again? Then, when you didn’t give them anything they could hang a hat on, except the possibility that a man was involved in murder, and that man might have been one of them, only without knowing it, they tossed you in a ditch to live or die. Whichever it was, they didn’t particularly care. But you lived, Vernon. You’re going to be fine. Now we’ve got to flesh out the story of what happened and why. We know you didn’t kill anybody. Let’s start there. What I have to ask you today, and what you have to
provide—and this doesn’t go against your spy training, this is what it’s for—is to help out the good guys. Toomey’s dead. What were you two into? What were you talking about? What was being revealed? What would you be saying to him if he was sitting in this chair at this moment under these circumstances? A spy doesn’t merely keep secrets, Vernon. A spy moves secrets along. Up the ladder. Into the right hands. Now is the time for that.”

  * * *

  In fits and starts, between sips of water and bouts of coughing, once pausing to close his eyes and hold his forehead with his bandaged hand, Vernon Colchester recites a story. His speech is governed by his breathing, as though a word can only be emitted on a conscious exhale. Inhaling hurts. Chief Till moves around to the side of the bed opposite Cinq-Mars to hear the boy better, and Trooper Hammond pulls up a chair. In the sleepy darkened room, as light bothers him, the young man talks about a day he drove out to the airport to meet his parents flying in from California, a year ago. He neglected to call ahead and, once there, learned that their connecting flight was held up at Logan Airport in Boston. They wouldn’t be landing for another two hours at the earliest. He had options, but couldn’t afford the taxi back into town then back out again, choosing to kill time by hanging around the terminal, watching people come and go. That’s when he noticed three men.

  “How old?” Cinq-Mars inquires. His senses are alert. He doesn’t know the story yet but this tale of three men must be pivotal. Vernon puts one in his forties, another in his fifties, the third in his sixties. Despite the difference in their ages they come across as solid friends. Vernon’s descriptions, slowly extracted from him, are of generic white men for their age groups, except that one man had a sickly look to him. Like someone who had recently undergone chemotherapy or a major operation.

  “Not oldest,” the boy recalls. “But. Gray hair. His skin. Looked gray.”

  “Go on. How did you come to notice them?”

  “Taking. A leak.” The three men landed in the men’s room where Vernon was urinating, each arriving separately. Once inside, they fist-bumped and tapped one another’s shoulders in greeting. Rambunctious, giddy to see one another. “Finished up. Washed hands.”