He stared at me, then refilled his glass and sipped. “All part of your story?”
“All part of fleshing out the portrait,” I said. It sounded feeble.
“Ah, yes, fleshing it out. Of course. Well, it was a tragedy, no two ways about it, and your doctor was rather young to be dealing with it. He was married during his sophomore year to a lovely girl from a good Portland family. Lovely, but outside his circle—the Two Hundred tended to marry each other. The engagement came as a bit of surprise. Six months later the girl gave birth to a son and that mystery was cleared up.
“For a while the trio seemed to be breaking up—Hickle and Hayden slinked off by themselves as Willie attended to the duties of a married man. Then the wife and child were killed and the Heads were reunited. I suppose it’s natural that a man will seek the comfort of friends in the wake of such a loss.”
“How did it happen?”
He peered into his glass and downed the last few drops.
“The girl—the mother—was taking the child to the hospital. He’d woken up with the croup or some such ailment. The nearest emergency facility was at the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, at the University. It was in the early morning hours, still dark. Her car went over the Evergreen Bridge and plunged into the lake. It was daybreak before it was found.”
“Where was Dr. Towle?”
“Studying. Burning the midnight oil. Of course this caused him to be guilt-stricken, absolutely wretched. No doubt he blamed himself for not having been there and been drowned himself. You know the type of self-flagellation embraced by the bereaved.”
“A tragic affair.”
“Oh yes. She was a lovely girl.”
“Dr. Towle keeps her picture in his office.”
“A sentimentalist, is he?”
“I suppose.” I drank some whiskey. “After the tragedy he began seeing more of his friends?”
“Yes. Though as I hear you use the term I realize something. In my concept of friendship there is implied a bond of affection, some degree of mutual admiration. Those three always looked so grim when they were together—they didn’t seem to enjoy each other’s company. I never knew what the link between them was, but it did exist. Willie went away to medical school and Stuart tagged along. Edwin Hayden attended law school at the same university. They settled in the same city. No doubt you’ll be contacting the other two in order to obtain laudatory quotes for your article. If there is an article.”
I struggled to remain calm.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I think you know what I mean, my boy. I’m not going to ask you to present identification confirming you’re who you say you are—it wouldn’t prove a thing anyway—because you seem like a pleasant, intelligent young man and how many visitors to whom I can blab do you think I receive? Enough said.”
“I appreciate that, Professor.”
“And well you should. I trust you have your reasons for wanting to ask me about Willie. Undoubtedly they’re boring and I’ve no wish to know them. Have I been helpful?”
“You’ve been more than helpful.” I filled our glasses and we shared another drink, no conversation passing between us.
“Would you be willing to be a bit more helpful?” I asked.
“That depends.”
“Dr. Towle has a nephew. Timothy Kruger. I wonder if there’s anything you could tell me about him.”
Van der Graaf raised his drink to his lips with trembling hands. His face clouded.
“Kruger.” He said the name as if it were an epithet.
“Yes.”
“Cousin. Distant cousin, not nephew.”
“Cousin, then.”
“Kruger. An old family. Prussians, every one of them. Power brokers. A powerful family.” His mellifluousness was gone and he spat out the words with mechanical intonation. “Prussians.”
He took a few steps. The arachnid stagger ceased abruptly and he let his hands drop to his sides.
“This must be a police matter,” he said.
“Why do you say that?”
His face blackened with anger and he raised one fist in the air, a prophet of doom.
“Don’t trifle with me, young man! If it has something to do with Timothy Kruger there’s little else it could be!”
“It is part of a criminal investigation. I can’t go into details.”
“Oh, can’t you? I’ve wagged my tongue at you without demanding to know your true intentions. A moment ago I judged them to be boring. Now I’ve changed my mind.”
“What is it about the Kruger name that scares you so much, Professor?”
“Evil,” he said. “Evil frightens me. You say your questions are part of a criminal investigation. How do I know what side you’re on?”
“I’m working with the police. But I’m not a policeman.”
“I won’t tolerate riddles! Either be truthful or be gone!” I considered the choice.
“Margaret Dopplemeier,” I said. “I don’t want her to lose her job because of anything I tell you.”
“Maggie?” he snorted. “Don’t worry about her, I’ve no intention of letting on the fact that she led you to me. She’s a sad girl, needs intrigue to spice up her life. I’ve spoken enough to her to know that she clings longingly to the Conspiracy Theory of Life. Dangle one before her—she’ll go for it like a trout for a lure. Kennedy assassinations, Unidentified Flying Objects, cancer, tooth decay—all the result of a grand collusion of anonymous demons. No doubt you recognized that and exploited it.”
He made it sound Machiavellian. I didn’t dispute it.
“No,” he said. “I’ve no interest in crushing Maggie. She’s been a friend. Apart from that, my loyalties to this institution are far from blind. I detest certain aspects of this place—my true home, if you will.”
“Such as the Krugers?”
“Such as the environment that allows Krugers and their ilk to flourish.”
He tottered, the too-large head lolling on its misshapen base.
“The choice is yours, young man. Put up or shut up.”
I put up.
“Nothing in your story surprises me,” he said. “I didn’t know of Stuart Hickle’s death nor of his sexual proclivities, but neither are shocking. He was a bad poet, Dr. Delaware, very bad—and nothing is beyond a bad poet.”
I recalled the verse at the bottom of Lilah Towle’s yearbook obituary. It was clear who “S” was.
“When you mentioned Timothy I became alarmed, because I didn’t know if you were in the employ of the Krugers. The badge you showed me is well and fine, but such trinkets are easily counterfeited.”
“Call Detective Delano Hardy at West Los Angeles Police Division. He’ll tell you what side I’m on.” I hoped he wouldn’t take me up on it—who knew how Hardy would react?
He looked at me thoughtfully. “No, that won’t be necessary. You’re a dreadful liar. I believe I can intuitively tell when you’re telling the truth.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. A compliment was intended.”
“Tell me about Timothy Kruger,” I said.
He stood blinking, gnomelike, a concoction of a Hollywood special-effects lab.
“The first thing I’d like to emphasize is that the evil of the Krugers has nothing to do with wealth. They would be evil paupers—I imagine they were, at one time. If that sounds defensive, it is.”
“I understand.”
“The very wealthy are not evil, Bolshevist propaganda to the contrary. They are a harmless lot—overly-sheltered, reticent, destined for extinction.” He took a step backward as if retreating from his own prediction.
I waited.
“Timothy Kruger,” he finally said, “is a murderer, plain and simple, The fact that he was never arrested, tried or convicted does nothing to diminish his guilt in my eyes. The story goes back seven—no, eight years. There was a student here, a farm boy from Idaho. Sharp as a tack, built like Adonis. His name was Saxon. Jeffrey Saxon.
He came here to study, the first of his family to finish high school, dreaming of becoming a writer.
“He was accepted on an athletic scholarship—crew, baseball, football, wrestling—and managed to excel in all of those while maintaining an A average. He majored in history and I was his faculty advisor, though by that time I wasn’t teaching any more. We had many chats, up here in this room. The boy was a pleasure to converse with. He had an enthusiasm for life, a thirst for knowledge.”
A tear collected in the corner of one drooping, blue eye.
“Excuse me.” The old man pulled out a linen handkerchief and dabbed his cheek. “Dusty in here, must get the custodial staff to clean.” He sipped his whiskey and when he spoke his voice was enfeebled by memories.
“Jeffrey Saxon had the curious, searching nature of a true scholar, Dr. Delaware. I recall the first time he came up here and saw all the books. Like a child let loose in a toy store. I lent him my finest antiquarian volumes—everything from the London edition of Josephus’ Chronicles to anthropologic treatises. He devoured them. ‘For God’s sake, Professor,’ he’d say, ‘it would take several lifetimes to learn even a fraction of what there is to know.’—that’s the mark of an intellectual, in my view, becoming cognizant of one’s own insignificance in relation to the accumulated mass of human knowledge.
“The others, of course, thought him a rube, a hick. They made fun of his clothes, his manner, his lack of sophistication. He spoke to me about it—I’d become a kind of surrogate grandfather I suppose—and I reassured him that he was meant for more noble company than what Jedson had to offer. In fact I’d encouraged him to put in for a transfer to an Eastern school—Yale, Princeton—where he could achieve significant intellectual growth. With his grades and a letter from me, he might have made it. But he never got a chance.
“He became attached to a young lady, one of the Two Hundred, pretty enough, but vapid. This in itself, was no error, as the heart and the gonads must be satisfied. The mistake was in choosing a female already coveted by another.”
“By Tim Kruger?”
Van der Graaf nodded painfully.
“This is difficult for me, Doctor. It brings back so much.”
“If it’s too difficult for you, Professor I can leave now and come back some other time.”
“No, no. That would serve no purpose.” He took a deep breath. “It comes down to a smarmy soap opera of a tale. Jeffrey and Kruger were interested in the same girl, they had words in public. Tempers flared, but it seemed to pass. Jeffrey visited me and vented his spleen. I played amateur psychologist—professors so often are required to provide emotional support to their students and I confess I did a fine job of it. I urged him to forget the girl, knowing her type, understanding full well that Jeffrey would be the loser in any battle of wills. The young of Jedson are homing pigeons, as predictable as their ancestors, reverting to type. The girl was meant to mate with one of her own. There were better things, finer things, awaiting Jeffrey, an entire lifetime of opportunity and adventure.
“He wouldn’t listen. He was like a knight of old, imbued with the nobility of his mission. Conquer the Black Jouster, rescue the fair maiden. Total rubbish—but he was an innocent. An innocent”
Van der Graaf paused, out of breath. His face had turned a sickly greenish shade of pale and I feared for his health.
“Perhaps we should stop for the moment,” I suggested. “I can return tomorrow.”
“Absolutely not! I’ll not be left here in solitary confinement with a poisonous lump lodged in my craw!” He cleared his throat. “I’ll be on with it—you sit there and pay close attention.”
“All right, Professor.”
“Now then, where was I—ah, Jeffrey as a White Knight. Foolish boy. The enmity between him and Timothy Kruger continued and festered. Jeffrey was ostracized by all the others—Kruger was a campus luminary, socially established. I became Jeffrey’s sole source of support. Our conversations changed. No longer were they cerebral exchanges. Now I was conducting psychotherapy on a full-time basis—an activity with which I was most uncomfortable, but I felt I couldn’t abandon the boy. I was all he had.
“It culminated in a wrestling match. Both the boys were Greco-Roman wrestlers. They agreed to meet, late at night, in the empty gymnasium, just the two of them for a grudge match. I’m no wrestler myself, for obvious reasons, but I do know that the sport is highly structured, replete with regulations, the criteria for victory clearly drawn. Jeffrey liked it for that reason—he was highly self-disciplined for one so young. He walked into that gym alive and left on a stretcher, neck and spine snapped, alive in only the most vegetative sense of the word. Three days later he died.”
“And his death was ruled an accident,” I said softly.
“That was the official story. Kruger said the two of them had gotten involved in a complicated series of holds and in the ensuing tangle of torsos, arms and legs, Jeffrey had been injured. And who could dispute it—accidents do occur in wrestling matches. At worst it seemed a case of two immature men behaving in an irresponsible manner. But to those of us who knew Timothy, who understood the depth of the rivalry between them, that was far from a satisfactory explanation. The college was eager to hush it up, the police all too happy to oblige—why go up against the Kruger millions when there are hundreds of poor people committing crimes?
“I attended Jeffrey’s funeral—flew to Idaho. Before I left I ran into Timothy on campus. Looking back I see he must have sought me out.” Van der Graaf’s mouth tightened, the wrinkles deepening as if controlled by some internal drawstring. “He approached me near the Founder’s statue. ‘I hear you’re traveling, Professor,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I’m flying to Boise tonight.’ ‘To attend the last rites for your young charge?’ he asked. There was a look of utter innocence on his face, feigned innocence—he was an actor, for God’s sake, he could manipulate his features at will.
“‘What’s it to you?’ I replied. He bent to the ground, picked up a dry oak twig and sporting an arrogant smirk—the same smirk one can see in photographs of Nazi concentration camp guards tormenting their victims—snapped the twig between his fingers, and let it drop to the ground. Then he laughed.
“I’ve never in my life been so close to commiting murder, Doctor Delaware. Had I been younger, stronger, properly armed, I would have done it. As it was, I simply stood there, for once in my life at a loss for words. ‘Have a nice trip,’ he said, and, still smirking, backed away. My heart pounded so, I was assaulted with a spell of dizziness, but fought to maintain my equilibrium. When he was out of eyesight I broke down and sobbed.”
A long moment passed between us.
When he appeared sufficiently composed I asked him:
“Does Margaret know about this? About Kruger?”
He nodded.
“I’ve spoken of it to her. She’s my friend.”
So the awkward publicist was more spider than fly after all. The insight cheered me for some reason.
“One more thing—the girl. The one they were fighting over. What became of her?”
“What do you expect?” He sneered, some of the old vitriol returning to his voice. “She shunned Kruger—most of the others did. They were afraid of him. She attended Jedson for three more undistinguished years, married an investment banker and moved to Spokane. No doubt she’s a proper hausfrau, shuttling the kiddies to school, brunching at the club, boffing the delivery boy.”
“The spoils of battle,” I said.
He shook his head. “Such a waste.”
I looked at my watch. I’d been up in the dome for a little over an hour, but it seemed longer. Van der Graaf had unloaded a truckful of sewage during that time, but he was a historian, and that’s what they’re trained to do. I felt tired and tense, and I longed for fresh air.
“Professor,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Putting the information to good use would be a step in the right direction.” The blue eyes shon
e like twin gaslights. “Snap some twigs of your own.”
“I’ll do my best.” I got up.
“I trust you can see yourself out.”
I did.
When I was halfway across the rotunda I heard him cry out: “Remind Maggie of our pizza picnic!”
His words echoed against the smooth, cold stone.
23
AMONG CERTAIN PRIMITIVE TRIBES, there exists the belief that when one vanquishes an enemy it is not enough to destroy all evidence of corporeal life: the soul must be vanquished as well. That belief is at the root of the various forms of cannibalism that have been known to exist—and still exist—in many regions of the world. You are what you eat. Devour your victim’s heart, and you encompass his very being. Grind his penis to dust and swallow the dust, and you’ve co-opted his manhood.
I thought of Timothy Kruger—of the boy he’d killed and how he’d assumed the identity of a struggling scholarship student when describing himself to me—and visions of lip-smacking, bone-crunching savagery intruded upon the idyllic verdancy of the Jedson campus. I was still struggling to erase those visions when I climbed the marble steps of Crespi Hall.
Margaret Dopplemeier responded to my coded knock with a “Wait one second!” and an open door. She let me in and locked the door.
“Did you find Van der Graaf helpful?” she asked airily.
“He told me everything. About Jeffrey Saxon and Tim Kruger and the fact that you were his confidante.”
She blushed.
“You can’t expect me to feel guilty for deceiving you when you did the same to me,” she said.
“I don’t,” I assured her, “I just wanted you to know that he trusted me and told me everything. I know you couldn’t until he did.”
“I’m glad you understand,” she said primly.
“Thank you for leading me to him.”
“It was my pleasure, Alex. Just put the information to good use.”
It was the second time in ten minutes that I’d received that mandate. Add to that a similar order from Raquel Ochoa and it made for a heavy load.
“I will. Do you have the clipping?”
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