Stephen L. Carter

by New England White

EVEN IN HIS SPECIAL FORCES DAYS, Bruce Vallely had rarely worked alone. He was trained to be part of a team, and a teammate was what he needed now. Julia Carlyle would have been best, but he would take what he could get. So, on a pretext, he enlisted Gwen Turian, his no-nonsense, by-the-book deputy, whose formal rank was lieutenant, and who, perhaps influenced by Hollywood, insisted on being addressed by last name only and calling her boss, even to his face, simply “Director.” Late Friday morning, he stood in the lobby of the building that housed his minuscule staff, stamping filthy snow from his boots as he struggled to shrug off the remaining tension of having been present, by rule, when the state narcotics squad served a warrant at one of the dormitories, where drugs were being sold by a pair of weak-eyed political-science majors whose parents were, unfortunately, not well enough connected to get Trevor Land on the phone. One of the students had leaped from the window in his panic, breaking a toe, and Bruce knew he would be dodging complaints of police brutality for the next month or two. He had just picked up mail and messages from his cubbyhole when Turian materialized beside him, tall and skinny and nervously distant, blue serge uniform draped like the wrong stage prop.

  “Good morning, Director,” she said stiffly, handing over an envelope. “I have the research you ordered.”

  “Thank you, Gwen.”

  The lieutenant frowned, perhaps because in the films she would have been just “Turian.” The gun at her hip was larger than what the rules specified, and it seemed to Bruce that the extra straps could not possibly be regulation. But the uniform itself was something of an affectation: by university tradition, patrol officers wore blue but supervisors wore business attire. She seemed reluctant to go, and, as he turned toward his office, she followed.

  “Is there a problem, Gwen?”

  “May I speak frankly, sir?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant,” he said, and her hard green eyes lit up. Unlike Bruce and most of the others, Turian had never been part of a real police force.

  “Sir, this information—is it part of an authorized investigation?”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about what it’s part of, Gwen?”

  “Yes, sir. Only, I had to use a back channel to get it, and I had to tell them something—”

  Alarm. “What did you say?”

  “That the university was facing the possibility of litigation because of an old case. I’m sorry, Director, it was the best I could come up with.”

  Bruce smiled. “Excellent work. That was well done…Turian.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said his deputy, unsmiling back.

  (II)

  THE CAR belonging to the Vehicle Identification Number on the insurance form Kellen Zant had hidden in his kitchen was a Jaguar XKE, or had been, for the adjuster had declared it totaled. The owner had been a Jonathan Hilliman. Bruce sat at his desk, frowning. The name was familiar.

  He swiveled to face his monitor, ran the name across Google, and had the answer in a fraction of a second: Yes. Jonathan Hilliman—“Jock,” everyone called him—was an alum, a scion of the Hilliman family, whose money was about as old as money gets. The Hillimans lived behind walls of money, like whoever it was in Gatsby, and rarely emerged except to have buildings named after them. Jock, a bit of a playboy, had died three years ago of a heart attack. He left no heirs—but there were plenty of Hillimans still around.

  So what? Why did Kellen Zant care so much about Jock Hilliman and his automobile accident? And why did his name resonate in Bruce’s head? But Gwendolyn Turian, in her zeal to get her duty right, had appended a note; reading it, Bruce remembered a smidgen of the briefing he had received when hired. On the top level of one of the university dormitories, commanding majestic views of the skyline and water, was Hilliman Suite, a fantastic four-bedroom affair far swankier than any other campus housing. The Hilliman family had built it fifty or sixty years ago, and provided substantial funds for its upkeep, with the proviso that, whenever a Hilliman was in residence, he (in the old days always a “he”) would have use of the suite, and could select his own roommates.

  That explained why the name Hilliman tickled at Bruce’s head. But why had it tickled at Kellen Zant’s?

  Back on Google, he tried searching for the Hilliman name alongside the economist’s and came up with nothing of any substance. Something buried, then.

  He thought back. What had driven Zant? His ego, obviously. His need to escape his past through accumulating material possessions. Fine, but a cliché. He remembered the photographs in the economist’s study, half featuring Julia Carlyle. Another sort of drive.

  Why not?

  He searched for intersections between the late Jonathan Hilliman and the name Carlyle, and his screen lit up with thousands of hits. Perusing a couple, he swiftly had the connection, although not the one he expected. The two names occurred mainly in profiles of the great Lemaster. Of course. The Fabulous Four, the Four Horsemen, the many other names they were given, or gave themselves. In college, they had been a frat boy, a campus politico, a three-sport star, and the grind who set grade-point records. Today the three survivors were a President, a Senator with his eyes on the White House, and Lemaster, who succeeded at everything he tried.

  The Horsemen.

  Turian had appended a profile of Jock Hilliman that ran in The New Yorker back in the nineties, when all four were busily making their names. Bruce skimmed the article, not sure what he was looking for, letting the words form impressions:

  I think Mal came up with the name…only later did we become roommates…a truly odd quartet…amateur troublemakers…soon had a bit of a reputation around the place…others began trying to join but I always said no to an increase in membership…from my father that the better portion has to stick together…I decided the group should be allowed to die when the last of us graduated…Students and faculty alike began to respect…Hilliman Suite was not exactly party central but we held our own…kind of a four-man secret society…built on trust…shared pretty much everything…

  No new members allowed: Lemaster would have liked that part, Bruce decided. An exclusive white club to go with all the exclusive black ones he would later join: the better portion sticking together.

  Back to the story. He flipped the pages, fascinated.

  …each had a specialty…Lemaster was determined to finish first in the class, because it had never been done by a…missed out by a half-point when he got a B on the final in an advanced calculus course…

  Bruce smiled, lost for a moment in admiration of the man he still half suspected of involvement in the murder of Kellen Zant. Fighting to finish first, he nevertheless takes advanced calculus rather than some survey course where he could phone in for an A. Skimming to the next page, Bruce stopped again, and read the text carefully:

  The university admitted its first class of undergraduate women in our final year, and, like the other senior boys, we achieved a rapid Nirvana. Before that, we fulfilled our needs, you might say, each according to his proclivities. Lemaster was very discreet, dating a quiet young lady from the Catholic women’s college up in Norport. Mal was heavily involved with a slightly crazed graduate student in anthropology who had big plans for blowing up the world and starting over. As for me, well, they accused me of having a new woman every week, or perhaps I should say a new girl, because age was a matter of indifference. My own specialty was seducing the innocent teenaged daughters of members of the faculty….

  Bruce read no more. He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. What had Zant thought himself on the track of?

  The innocent teenaged daughters of members of the faculty.

  Like the overprotected Gina Joule? Because, by all accounts, the teenager led a sheltered, rule-bound life, severe even for that era. Had Jock Hilliman, in the interview, meant this as a joke? Because, if not, the mystery surrounding the night Gina vanished might be simpler than it seemed. Bruce pulled out the copy of Vanessa’s term paper he had taken from Kellen Zant’s house. Gina had just turned seventeen. She had fought
with her mother, marched out of the house, stopped in at Cookie’s for ice cream, then evidently wandered around the Green until DeShaun picked her up. A woman named Janet Spicer, one of her teachers, now deceased, had a house on the Green and saw her climb into the stolen BMW with DeShaun. End of the story.

  Or was it?

  He went to his safe, shoved aside the gun he was not allowed to carry on campus unless he was in uniform, and pulled out the other materials he had taken from Professor Zant’s house. A diary page:

  Deputy Nacchio also reported that around nine that night she knocked on the door of one of her teachers, a Mrs. Spicer, and asked to use the telephone. That report was later…

  Later retracted. Wasn’t that the word that would have appeared had he found the next page? Or was the word confirmed?

  Bruce worried the problem around in his mind. Perhaps the facts were no more than they seemed. Say that Jock had somehow pierced the protective shield Gina’s parents built around her and managed to meet her, even seduce her. She told her friends at Cookie’s she would walk home but, really, was meeting her secret lover, Jock Hilliman. Perhaps the fight with her mother was even a ruse. It was Valentine’s Day after all, and Gina surely wanted to see her boyfriend. So she stopped at Mrs. Spicer’s house to call Jock—no cell phones in those days!—and he picked her up in his Jaguar. The Jag was wrecked, according to the adjuster’s report, a week after Gina Joule vanished, and in Scottsville, nowhere near Tyler’s Landing. But a report, as the policeman in him knew, was only a piece of paper.

  All right.

  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Hilliman family, with its money and power, had the report fudged. Bribed the adjuster, the body shop, the police, whoever was necessary. Then the connection was plain. Gina Joule died after climbing into the Jag that night, and somehow the secret had been kept all these years.

  That had to be what Kellen Zant had discovered. That was the reason for the secrecy. Kellen had learned that the university, through one of its most prominent alumni, was connected to the death, whether accidental or intentional, of Gina Joule. He wondered how many knew. And how many were covering up.

  And his excitement faded as swiftly as it had built. The hypothesis was wrong. Nobody would kill Kellen Zant to hide the facts behind the murder if the murderer was dead. And Jock Hilliman was, indisputably, dead.

  Shared pretty much everything.

  Was that it? Was that the key? That the Four Horsemen had “shared everything”?

  Might “everything” not have included the Jag?

  Except that witnesses saw Gina on the Town Green talking to DeShaun Moton, sixteen years old, who indisputably stole a car in the Landing that night, and, a few days later, was chased by the police, and caught, and slain.

  Case closed.

  The trouble was, the other witnesses just saw the teenagers talking. Only Janet Spicer claimed to have seen Gina Joule climb into the stolen car. And DeShaun was not named as a suspect in the slaying until after he was killed.

  Bruce turned to Vanessa’s term paper once more. Merrill Joule was among the most popular professors on campus. And one of the best connected. His wife was a cousin of Cicero Hadley, then president of the university. Gina’s godfather was a minor Lombard Hall functionary named Trevor Land.

  What had Nate Knowland said? Bruce leafed through his notebook. There. Nate had overheard Kellen Zant and the unknown black woman talking about Lemaster Carlyle on Town Street the night the economist was murdered, and, in particular, had heard Zant whisper that the university president was too big for them to take on.

  Bruce walked over to the window, which looked out into the drab lot where the university stored the fleet of recycled school buses, repainted in the college colors, that wheezed around the campus in a parody of efficient transport. Ordinarily the lot was also home to snow-plows of all sizes, but the state had been cursed with an unexpected thaw, and the plows were all out failing to clear the slush. Oh, but he was tired of New England winters.

  Gina was seen with a black man.

  And the Horsemen shared everything.

  No wonder Julia Carlyle had warned him off with such adamance. She knew or suspected the same truth that Bruce did.

  Lemaster Carlyle. Too big for Professor Zant to take on.

  But murder? Unless Kellen Zant possessed some evidence far more persuasive than the fragments Bruce had found beneath the burner, the reaction seemed…extreme. On the other hand, murderers, in his experience, rarely acted rationally.

  The telephone rang, his direct line, and the caller ID displayed his least favorite extension.

  “Chief Vallely? Trevor Land here. Merry Christmas and so forth. Wonder whether you might pop by my end of the campus on your way home.”

  (III)

  THEY SAT IN PLUSH EASY CHAIRS in front of a fireplace that, by a miracle, still worked, possibly the last one on campus, probably a violation of the fire code. The flue must have gone years between cleanings, because the air was smoky. The secretary wanted first to talk about the raid on the dormitory this morning, murmuring about how this would surely “redound to the detriment” of the school’s reputation. Bruce told him that he considered the raid a mistake, and had issued a strong protest on behalf of the university.

  “And how might one have handled the matter differently, I wonder? Drug sales and whatnot.”

  “I would have arrested them elsewhere on campus between classes. No risk of harm.”

  “Quite.” The lidded eyes hid whatever the secretary thought. “But our state’s attorney has to face the voters, Chief Vallely, whereas you do not. Bashing the university—trashing, whatever—may not be good police work, but it is good politics. Especially when she has so much egg on her face over the Zant matter.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bruce, now that the true subject of the meeting had been broached. The smoke from the illegal fireplace was making the shadowy room dimmer.

  The secretary stated his needs. A review of Bruce’s progress. The details of his interviews. But Gina Joule had been Trevor Land’s goddaughter, and the cop in Bruce was not about to give up all the information he had collected.

  “I’m still fairly early in my inquiry,” he said.

  The secretary nodded, scarcely listening. Bruce could barely see him through the haze slowly filling the room.

  “Thing is, this Zant has raised more than a few hackles. Not sure what the problem is, really, why everybody’s up in arms, but everybody is. Alums on the phone every day. Have two dead professors now, not one, so it’s hard times, Chief Vallely. Hard times for the school we love. All right, Gibbs was an accident. Zant was a robbery. Still, don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, sort of thing, do we, Chief? Men of the world and so forth. But a little early to man the lifeboats, Chief Vallely, don’t you think? Can’t let the school suffer, can we? All pull together, kind of thing. Truth. Leadership at the top is weak at the moment. Well, all right, not his fault. Business with his daughter and so forth, unfortunate, but one of those things. Professors up in arms over this or that. Not really the best moment to go to the president for decisions. Your chain of command runs through the vice-president, but she’ll just ask the president anyway. Doing the man a bit of a service, I should think, if we don’t bother him with these concerns. Better bring everything to me instead.” Bruce’s eyes were tearing from the smoke, but Trevor Land seemed to tolerate it just fine. “Needs must, Chief Vallely. Institution cannot be allowed to suffer. Try to keep a lower profile. No harassing the professors, they don’t like it and they complain. Students, same. This Knowland. Father’s been in to see me. Mustn’t antagonize the alums. Look into the Zant thing, yes, but without making noise. Have a lead for you,” he said, and paused to swirl his brandy.

  “I’d be grateful,” said Bruce, swirling but not sipping his own snifter, for his late wife had made a teetotaler of him, and he was not about to go back on anything he had promised her. They were now at the real point of the meeting. Outside the long, h
igh windows, a sinking sun spread shadows of unseen buildings across the snow-shrouded lawn.

  “Yes. Well. Final point, Chief. Final point. Other reason alums are on my back. Not just the scandal, as it turns out. Some of them had business dealings with Zant. Research, consulting, I don’t know what all. Happy with his work, most of them, and so they should be. Brilliant man, all accounts. But a few of them, Chief Vallely, seem to think he took something that belongs to them.”

  “Something like what?”

  The secretary dropped his clever gaze to examine the brown liquid in his glass. “Wouldn’t know, really. Corporate secrets. Inside information. Formulas. Not one’s field, Chief. But, whatever he took, they’re rather desperate to have it back.”

  “Can you tell me if the item was something physical—a notebook, say, or papers maybe—or the sort of thing a man might carry around in his head?”

  “Wouldn’t know, really. Alums not terribly forthcoming, I fear. Want it both ways. Get the item back without saying what it is. Detective work. More up your alley than mine.”

  “Perhaps if I could talk to these, ah, these alums—”

  “Out of the question, Chief Vallely. Confidential sources, sort of thing. Trust me, because I’ve known ’em forever.”

  Bruce effaced himself, easy enough in the cavernous office. “I see,” he murmured.

  “If you find it for them, Chief, one rather thinks they’ll be grateful. Write your own ticket, sort of thing.” That lift of a finger, so like a Roman emperor. “Word of advice. Don’t ever cross the alums, Chief Vallely. Power corrupts, sort of thing. True as morning. Not bad people, really, the alums, but rather accustomed to getting their way.” The clever eyes sparkled with glee. “They do tend to get their backs up when they don’t get what they want.”

  “I see,” said Bruce again, his own back rising in anger.

  “Not the sort of people you’d want to cross, I think,” said the secretary, and poured a fresh tot of brandy. A small shake of that clever head, then the conspiratorial smile with which Trevor Land closed every meeting. “Alums,” he said, and drank.