by Donn Taylor
I chewed on the question while I chewed my way through a ham sandwich and decided I’d better find out a lot more information a lot faster than I’d been doing. I’d started out only to combat a threat to my job, and then to disprove the allegation I’d had an affair with Mitra. But the more questions I asked toward those ends, the more I got tangled up with her death. Everyone thought I was investigating that anyway, so I might as well do it.
The best source of what happened on campus at night would be the night watchman, Elmo Koonz, but he would not come on duty until later. I’d have time for prayer meeting and could catch him afterward.
I drove to St. Mark’s Grace Church because I badly needed its prayer meeting. For a long time, I’d felt that my prayers simply bounced back at me off the ceiling. I hoped for a better result if I kept trying. The quiet of the sanctuary and the solemnity of the introductory hymns restored my sense that here things were actually right—that the values we’d struggled to maintain during the week were not imaginary, that the struggle was worth the toil and pain.
Nothing on earth is perfect, though. I felt a pang that Mara was not present. Was she angry over my encounters with Cynthia and Brill, or was there a more ominous reason? I pushed these thoughts from my mind and surrendered to the solemnity of the music.
Then Cynthia Starlington entered and sat beside me. Very close.
“I hoped I’d find you here, Press,” she whispered. “I need to talk to you.”
“Later,” I said and shushed her with a finger over my lips. I refused to give up this hard-found sense of rightness.
She made a show of pouting, but she did comply.
After an opening prayer, Pastor Tammons read Christ’s statement from the Gospel of John. “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” God’s active work in this world does not cease, the pastor said, but to see its results we must think not year-to-year or even century-to-century. We must think in units no shorter than five hundred years. For it took a full five hundred years for the Church to halfway civilize our ancestors, the Northern European barbarians.
For thousands of years, he continued, slavery was a standard practice throughout the entire world. And it is only in the past few centuries, even then only in the nations with a Christian heritage, that God’s light has convinced us that slavery is evil. In this and in many other things, we can see the work of the hand of God ...
My mind raced ahead of him then. As I’d said, I had no doubt that God directs the great tides of history. But does He control the individual waves? And how about those waves that lash out at each other?
The pastor’s theme reminded me of my recent studies in popular Renaissance emblem books like those of Andrea Alciato and Claude Paradin. Each emblem used visual art and writing to illustrate fundamental truths or beliefs, usually derived from biblical or classical origins. The emblem that stung me now was called “Truth, the Daughter of Time.” It held that, given time, truth would always find its way through falsehood. As one of Shakespeare’s characters put it, “in the end truth will out.”
I wanted badly to believe it. But even if truth did win out in the end, and I was proved innocent of an affair with Mitra Fortier, would I still have a job when the end came?
The piano’s introduction to the closing hymn jarred me from my brooding. I became conscious of Cynthia’s shoulder leaning against mine. It moved away briefly as we stood for the hymn, then closed in again during the second stanza. I admit I enjoyed it.
After the benediction, she turned to face me. “Let’s go some place where we can talk, Press.”
“Has something new happened?” I asked.
“Not really.” She looked suddenly demure. “We’d just talk about things in general. Maybe at Goolock’s.”
An age-old battle raged inside me. Heaven knows I was attracted to her. And heaven also knows my intentions were not altogether honorable. I knew I didn’t love her. But if it made her happy to love me, why shouldn’t I play along? That’s what one part of me said. Another part demanded that I hold back.
I made the reticent part prevail, if only for tonight. “I can’t do it tonight, Cynthia. Remember that thing you wanted me to look into? I have to talk to someone I can’t catch at any other time.”
“Let me go with you,” she said. “I always wanted to be part of an investigation.”
I grimaced. “The problem is that you’re already part of it. Your presence would skew what people say one way or the other. I’m sorry, but to get a straight story, I have to do it alone.”
Her voice hardened. “Your historian’s demand for accuracy, I suppose. All right, then. Another time.”
Suddenly soft again, she touched a finger to my cheek, pivoted, and was gone. Only then did I see that we had an audience. When I glanced up, they quickly looked away. Now I was glad Mara wasn’t there. Strange that I worried about what she’d think even when she wasn’t there.
The drive home passed unremarkably except that a dark car seemed to be shadowing me. I didn’t try to shake it off, but drove directly home and parked in my usual place in the driveway. The dark car continued and turned off two blocks farther down. I hoped I was wrong about the shadowing, but if someone was trying to frighten me, he was doing a good job of it.
I didn’t go inside, but trudged through the winter night back up to the college to find Elmo Koonz. I found him in the janitor’s room in the basement of the Liberal Arts Center, his usual hangout on cold nights.
At fifty-five, Elmo was only five years my senior. But he looked closer to seventy. His hair was iron gray, and he sported a ragged beard to match. He stood about five-feet-eight, but hunching under a stiff back made him look shorter. Whatever work he’d done in his life must have left him unsatisfied, for he accepted any attention paid him the way a hungry man accepts crumbs.
“Hello, Professor Barclay,” he said as I entered his domain. “I been wondering when you’d come talk to me.”
He occupied the only chair, so I perched on a drum of cleaning fluid.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” I said. “Things have been pretty hectic.”
He showed a yellow-toothed grin through his beard. “I guess they have, what with all the stories about you going ’round. Not that I believe any of it, you understand. ’Specially them stories about you and Professor Thorn.” He slapped his knee. “Now there is one sweet little lady. Do you know one Sunday morning last fall she brought me donuts and coffee? We sat and talked together for more than a hour, I guess.”
“She’s a very fine woman,” I said. I didn’t tell him that Mara’s assignment that day was to keep him occupied while I studied the personnel files of suspects for Laila Sloan’s murder
“I knew you’d come see me sooner or later,” he continued, “’cause you’d want to know what I told the police about the night Professor Fortier got killed.”
“You guessed right,” I said. “I would like to know.”
Elmo clasped his hands on his fat abdomen. “Well-l-l-l, I told ’em what I saw, up to a point.” He paused and studied my reaction. “Early in the evening I saw the usual students milling around here and there— on these winter nights they go straight from one warm building to another. And I didn’t see none of them go in the science building.”
“And later on,” I prompted, “after the reception broke up?”
“By that time, the students had pretty much settled down to wherever they were going to be for the night … ”
I did not ask for details.
“... and the faculty folks from the reception mostly went places off the campus.”
He paused again to watch my reaction. I made none.
“From the corner windows on the third floor,” he said, “I can see the whole campus circle without freezing my whatzis. If I leave the lights off, no one can see me.”
I made a note to remember that if I made any more nocturnal excursions on campus.
“That’s where I was after the reception,” he said.
“Like I told the police, it was maybe ten o’clock when I saw three guys go into the science building.”
“What kind of guys?” I asked.
Elmo scratched his head. “They wore coats and hats, and at that distance I couldn’t see faces. But they sure was chummy—close together with their arms locked. Well, they went in the front door of the building and that was the last I saw of ’em.”
I wanted clarification. “You said ‘three guys.’ Does that mean all three were men?”
He continued scratching his head, and I wondered if he had psoriasis. “Couldn’t say either way. They was wearing heavy coats, and I don’t know if they wore pants or skirts. Not that that would prove anything these days.”
“Did you see them come out?”
“No. I heard some noise over toward the Executive Center, so I went and checked ... Turned out to be just a truck engine on the street beyond, and I nearly froze my whatzis finding that out. So since I was frizzen anyway, I might as well loop by the science building before I come back here to get warm. That’s when I saw one person come out.”
“Out of the Science Center? Only one person?”
“Only one person. She didn’t see me, ’cause she was in a big hurry to get somewheres else.”
“You said ‘she’?”
“Yep, it was that new woman professor they hired this year.”
A vision of Mara leaped into my mind. What would she be doing there that time of night? Why hadn’t she told me about it? My imagination leaped ahead of the facts, and I wondered if she had a guilty reason.
Then my rational faculty caught up. “Which woman professor was that?”
“I don’t ’member her name—that pretty one with the brown hair, used to be a student here. She replaced the guy what killed Laila Sloan.”
“That would be Cynthia Starlington.”
Elmo nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s her name. I recognized her first by the long dark hair, and then I saw her face under one of the lights.”
“And you’ve told the police all this?” No wonder they were questioning Cynthia!
“Naw, not quite.” The yellow-toothed grin showed again. “I didn’t tell ’em about that lady ... didn’t want to make trouble for a pretty little girl like that.”
The police really would have questioned her if they’d had that information. My temper began a low simmer deep inside—here was another case where Cynthia hadn’t told me the complete truth.
I stood up, hoping the drum of cleaning fluid hadn’t branded my derriere. “Can you think of anything else out of the ordinary that night?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing. I hope you catch him.”
“Catch who?”
“The guy what killed her, of course. Ain’t that what you’re after?”
“We all are,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
The night had grown colder, with frigid gusts whipping in off the plains. I snugged my overcoat collar closer around my neck as I hurried down the walkway from the campus and hoped I wouldn’t freeze my whatzis. Cold or not, though, I approached my house with caution. I opened the door and surveyed the entryway before stepping into it. But caution ended there, for the phone was ringing.
Cindy sounded like she’d been crying. “Daddy, things didn’t go well at the hearing today. Mark and I have been suspended.”
My anger surged, but I needed facts. “Suspended for how long and under what conditions?”
“The ... the suspension is indefinite. But we can petition for reinstatement if we do several things ...”
I knew what kind of things, but I waited for her to tell me.
“We have to write a public apology confessing that we engaged in hate speech and that our demonstration incited violence and endangered the safety of students and faculty …”
I saw more red than Lenin and Stalin put together, but I waited for the rest of it. I’d been around long enough to know much more would come.
“Beyond that, we have to go through sensitivity training and perform twenty hours of community service. If we complete all that ‘satisfactorily,’ we can petition for reinstatement.”
“That will take weeks,” I said. “What happens to your studies in the meantime?”
Cindy sighed. “They didn’t say anything about that. I guess it doesn’t matter to them.”
“Were others besides you and Mark involved?”
Cindy exhaled sharply. “Three others, but they got off with sensitivity training. They’ve accepted it because it lets them stay in school.”
“The go-along-and-get-along response?”
“That’s it. Mark called them cowards, but they just looked at the floor and kind of slunk out. He and I are in it alone.”
“I can’t tell you how angry I am about this,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse with emotion. “What will you do now?”
“You told us about that organization ... the Council for Individual Rights on Campus. Mark has already phoned them, and they’re interested. Tomorrow we’re going to talk to them some more.”
“That’s the best you can do, Cindy. Do you need to come home?”
“No, Daddy.” Her voice grew stronger. “They’re not going to run me out of here. I’m going to fight.”
My heart swelled with pride. “That’s the spirit. Call me if there’s any way I can help.”
“I will, Daddy.”
We said we loved each other, and she rang off. I would have been glad for her to stay there and fight the unjust decision in any case, but I was doubly glad because my affairs were in such a mess here. Cindy didn’t need my troubles piled on top of her own.
The phone rang again. I heard Dr. Sheldon’s great voice, now trembling with its own anger.
“Press, where have you been? I’ve tried to reach you all evening.”
So much for my refusal to buy an answering machine.
Dr. Sheldon breathed hard into the phone. “Mara has been arrested. They’ve found child pornography on her computer.”
CHAPTER 25
The news hit like a thunderbolt. Like thunder in a violent storm, it echoed back and forth among my clouded memories of recent events like Bruno Pinkle trying to get into my computer. But dealing with the echoes could wait. What I needed now was facts.
“How did it happen?” I asked.
Dr. Sheldon snorted. “Your friend Captain Staggart and Patrolman Pinkle made the arrest at her office late this afternoon. They handcuffed her and marched her out to their car and took her to the police station. She says the TV cameras were waiting for them there—trust Staggart to arrange that. They read Mara her Miranda rights and she took the Fifth. She used her phone call to tell me what happened, and I sent a lawyer down to spring her.”
“Brice Funderburk again?” He’d gotten her a habeas corpus last fall, but the way he looked at her left no doubt whose corpus he wanted to habeas.
Dr. Sheldon grunted. “Like him or not, he got her released on her own recognizance. She just called me from home. She’s pretty much in shock and doesn’t know how that stuff got in her computer.
“I have an idea about that,” I said. “I’ll have to check it out, but then I’ll give Mara a call. Meanwhile, can you warm up your computer for more research?”
“What’s the subject?”
I could almost hear the old lion lick his chops.
“Steven Drisko,” I said. “His wife tried to bribe or scare me off the case today. See what you can find out about their marriage. Where and when it happened, anything you can find on her background. I don’t know if it’s pertinent, but it might be.”
“Consider it done,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Well, I keep running into Gordon Samstag and Emory Estes. It wouldn’t hurt to know something about them, too.”
He agreed and hung up, obviously invigorated at the thought of more research.
I punched in the number of Richmond Seagrave, my colleague from Army days and the computer security expert who’d given
Mara and me those fingerprint readers for our campus computers.
“What kind of trouble are you in now, Press?” he asked. “You never call except when you’re in trouble.”
Music and female laughter in the background indicated he had a party going. I envied him.
“I think someone has planted illegal material on Mara’s computer,” I said. “Is there any way to get around those fingerprint readers?”
“Are you sure someone planted it there, or is your blonde Wiccan leading a secret life?”
“Former Wiccan,” I said. “Besides, I’m pretty sure our mutual friend on the Overton City police force tried to put some bad stuff in my computer.”
“Just a minute,” he said, and then, away from the phone, “Hey, you guys hold down the noise.”
A female voice in the background said, “I’m not a guy, honey. Didn’t you know?”
But the noise did quiet down, and Seagrave continued, “How come they couldn’t get it in your computer and did get it in hers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I hide my fingerprint reader in my bookshelf, and maybe she leaves hers on her desk. Is there a way to bypass it?”
“It can be done. You have to have a fingerprint to work with. Given that, all you have to do is lift it onto transparent tape and put the tape over the fingerprint reader. Your culprit has to be either the police or someone who knows how to work fingerprints.”
“I’ll bet on the police,” I said. “A friendly cop told me Staggart has assigned someone to frame me for any kind of felony he could, so maybe he’s after Mara, too.”
Seagrave laughed. “You have nice policemen down there. They make the Mafia look like Boy Scouts.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” I said. I thanked him and rang off.
Next I tried to call Sergeant Ron Spencer, but I again got his wife.
“He’s not here,” she said, irritation in her voice.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He didn’t say where he was going or when he’d be back,” she said, her voice on the edge of anger. “If you see him, tell him to call home.”