Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  “The BPL? The AAS?”

  “Oh, sorry. The Boston Public Library. The American Antiquarian Society. That’s in Worcester.”

  He wrote it down.

  “Now I’m going to say something totally off the wall. No matter how incredible it may seem, it’s possible that these murders have something to do with Randy’s work, with his research and writing.”

  “Humh,” Piotrowski grunted, but I didn’t wait for him to speak.

  “How it could be, I don’t know. His work was interesting, but only in a limited way, for a very limited audience.”

  I paused, thinking about the delicious scandal these murders must be causing at the Modern Language Association convention, being held that very moment in San Francisco. This was Astin-Berger’s real constituency—ten thousand scholars of the written and spoken word. Only among these people would you find anyone who could possibly conceive of Randy’s work as being “to die for.”

  I thanked whatever angels might be hovering over me that I’d decided not to go to the MLA this year. The literate tongues wagging, the articulate horror, the morbid theoretical badinage: I shuddered at the thought, and went on.

  “The fact that his computer—”

  “Can I help you?” Piotrowski’s gruff voice tore through my meditations. I looked up, surprised. Ned Hilton was standing in the doorway, his face the color of the three-day-old snow on the campus quad.

  “I thought—I thought—” he stuttered. Then he swayed and grabbed the door frame. The lieutenant caught him before he fell, and began to steer him toward one of the black-lacquered Enfield College captain’s chairs with which all college offices seem to be furnished. Ned resisted.

  “I’m all right,” he said, making a visible effort to pull himself together. “I don’t want—to go in there. I’ll be okay. It’s just that …”

  “What?” Piotrowski’s brusqueness with this distressed man irritated me.

  “It’s just that … when I saw the door open and the light on … Oh, God—I’m such an idiot.” He shook his head, as if to clear his thinking.

  “What?” Clearly Piotrowski hadn’t taken any of the sensitivity training courses Tony had talked about.

  “I thought—for a second—that—that—he was back.”

  “Who?”

  “Randy…. I thought Randy was back.” Ned rubbed his eyes with a broad, pale hand. “But I’m all right now. What a stupid thing. I don’t know what you must think….” He hefted his fat briefcase from the hall floor where he’d dropped it and wandered off toward his own office.

  The lieutenant stared after him. “Hmm.” Then he turned to me. “Do you know this young man at all?”

  “Hardly.” I was still pissed at his abrupt manner with Ned. “His office is next to mine. I see him around once in a while. That’s all.”

  Piotrowski gazed at me pensively. Then he nodded his head once, seemingly having made a decision. “You ever see him in the victim’s office?”

  “No.”

  “You have any idea why his prints would be on Astin-Berger’s desk? Two complete and distinct sets, right in the center of the desk? Like he was leaning forward facing the victim?”

  “Noooo.”

  The lieutenant registered my taciturnity. “Just trying to get things straight, here, Doctor. Don’t get upset. And, for your information, I figured I’d get more out of the guy if I didn’t coddle him. And he’d be better off, too. He’s not—er—unbalanced, is he? Thought he saw a ghost! Jeez!”

  I remembered only too well my own spooked reaction a week earlier when Randy’s door opened and Avery came out. Prudence cautioned me to keep that little incident to myself. “No,” I said, “as far as I know, he’s not—unbalanced.”

  Piotrowski shrugged. “Okay, Doctor, go on.”

  “Go on? With what?”

  “With what you were saying—about the scene here.”

  “Oh.” I shifted in the desk chair, thinking back to the moment before Ned’s appearance. “I was going to say …” It was difficult to pick up the thread.

  “You said, The fact that his computer …’”

  “Oh, yes. The fact that Randy’s computer was totally erased suggests to me that his work was of some—what?—threat?—value? to someone. The intruder didn’t have the time to go over everything, so he took the backups and destroyed the main files.”

  “He?”

  “He. She. Whatever. So, I would think that what the intruder was looking for might have been on the computer, and I assume that, like most active scholars, Randy used his computer almost exclusively for his research and for the articles he was working on.”

  Piotrowski removed a sheaf of papers from the captain’s chair. The sheets were held together with a large paper clip, but were fanned out as if they had been shaken vigorously. I recognized row after row of Randy’s bold, left-slanting scrawl. Piotrowski looked at the writing closely, and then placed the cluster of pages on a pile of journals on the floor. He sat in the chair. It creaked audibly as his weight settled in.

  “You confirm my hunch,” he leaned back, his hands clasped behind his neck, “that the motive for these killings could be a scholarly one. And that baffles me. Not that scholarship should elicit murderous passion. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen everything under the sun do that—from a jug of Thunder-bird in a fleabag motel in Springfield to a corner office in a Fortune Five Hundred executive suite. So why not scholarship? Nothing surprises me, Doctor.

  “But what stymies me is how I should go about investigating this, when the subject is so obscure that there’s, from what you tell me, only a handful of specialists in the world.”

  He looked at me. It was a hopeful look.

  “Oh, no, Piotrowski.” I jumped up from the desk chair, and tripped over a large bound volume. A closer look revealed it to be The Annals of the American Pulpit by Dr. W. B. Sprague. “I’m no expert here.”

  “You know …” He ignored my disclaimer. “The first thing that struck me when I saw this mess is that it’s not finished.”

  “What’s not finished?”

  “Whatever this is all about. A custodian found the office in this state on her six A.M. cleaning rounds. She called campus security and they contacted us. When I got the phone call, it gave me a cold shiver, because this break-in tells me it’s still going on, whatever it is, and I have no idea where it’s going to hit next.”

  I experienced a cold shiver myself as he was speaking.

  “Lieutenant, were you or your officers here yesterday afternoon? Say, around five P.M.?”

  “No.” He was suddenly doubly attentive. “Why do you ask?”

  “Someone was. When I walked by the window on the way to my own office, there was a light in here. I assumed it was you.”

  “You don’t say? And you on the scene again, huh?”

  “What do you mean by that, Piotrowski?”

  “I don’t mean anything, Dr. Pelletier. Other than that you can’t seem to shake loose of this, can you?What were you doing here? You’re on vacation, aren’t you?”

  I told him about the call from Avery, and about waiting for the girls in my office. He wanted to know what Avery and I talked about. He asked pointed and specific questions. He wrote in his notebook for a long time.

  “And you were in your office when this was going on, were you?”

  “I don’t know if anything was ‘going on’ when I was here. A light was on, that’s all I can testify to. Not that anything was ‘going on.’”

  “Right. There was no light at six A.M. And the door was locked.” He wrote some more. Then he glanced up from his evidence book, cocked his massive head, and said, “Your office is so close to this one—ya ever see anyone hanging around here, shouldn’t be?”

  “Only Avery.” Then I wanted to bite my tongue. Shit! When was I going to learn to keep my mouth shut around cops?

  “Mitchell?” Piotrowski’s tone was sharp. “Mitchell was here—in this office? When?”


  “Oh, last week sometime. I don’t remember exactly. Maybe a couple of days before Christmas.”

  “Yeah? And what was he doing here?”

  I decided to omit mention of the files Avery had been carrying—especially that I had seen a similar stack on the desk in his office. They were his business, not mine. And, besides, all file folders look alike. “How would I know? I’m not in President Mitchell’s confidence.”

  The lieutenant squinted at me, as if to get a better bead on whether or not I was lying. “You sure?”

  I stared back at him, innocent as sin. “I’m sure.”

  I could see him weighing whether or not to press the issue; he decided to let it go.

  “Well, okay.” The notebook came into play again. Scribble. Scribble. Scribble. Avery would be receiving visitors shortly.

  For some reason, Piotrowski must have decided he could trust me, because he went on. “You know, I don’t think this intruder found what he was looking for. The disorder here is too general. There’s no one place where it stops. He kept looking until he had looked everywhere.”

  “He?”

  “Or she.”

  He got up from the chair and walked over to the window, gazing out at the frozen quad with its piles of lumpy snow. In the full morning light the planes of his face were impressive. Wide, flat cheekbones and a strong jawline defined a countenance whose individuality was not lost, even with the amount of weight Piotrowski carried. His mouth was wide, with attractively full lips, but was set, at this moment, in a fairly grim line. His brown eyes stared out at the common, seemingly without seeing either the denuded trees or the occasional faculty member wandering to an office or library research carrel. His gray suit jacket hung a little loosely across his shoulders, as if it had been made for an even larger man.

  He turned away from the window and looked down at his notebook while he spoke. “And since he hasn’t found what he’s searching for here, he’s gonna look somewhere else. Where will that be? Astin-Berger’s house? We’ve got someone there now. No sign of entry.”

  “What about Randy’s carrel?”

  “His carrel? Where’s that?”

  He called security and then asked me to accompany him and the security guard with the keys to the library. Randy’s narrow, fusty research carrel was practically empty. Four books on the history of American religion were stacked neatly on the shelf over the desk, but didn’t look as if they had been touched in months. No sign of entry there, but as Piotrowski pointed out, there wouldn’t necessarily be. There was no mark on the office lock, either, so the intruder probably had access to a passkey of some sort.

  “So …” Piotrowski zipped up his winter jacket, a new one, I noticed, navy blue with gray collar and pocket flaps. “… If not there, where? That’s what worries me: Where? And when? And, even more, who? Who’ll be in his way this time?”

  He pulled on gray wool gloves that matched the jacket trim. He actually looked put-together. I wondered if his wife had gotten him the jacket and gloves for Christmas. I wondered if he had a wife.

  As we walked down the library steps, the campus carillon rang noon. Piotrowski invited me out for a sandwich. On the BCI, he said. And over a hamburger and thick fries at Rudolph’s he made me a proposition. Well, yes, a proposition. Out of what seemed like the proverbial clear blue sky the lieutenant offered me a consulting fee for investigating Randy’s research interests.

  “You may not be an expert in Astin-Berger’s particular subject, but you know the field and you know how to go about researching it professionally. Am I right? You know all this archive shi—er, stuff. Right? And you know the larger picture—what, the historical context, is that it? You’d know what to look for. You’d know how to recognize the significant detail, the incongruity. And you’re not working right now. Am I right?”

  “Well, I am working.” I gave vent to my usual knee-jerk reaction to people who think academics have a soft life. “I’m just not teaching.”

  “Yeah, well …” He waved my objection away.“You mentioned a per diem earlier. What do you get a day for consultation?”

  “Piotrowski, I was just mouthing off. I wasn’t serious….”

  “Well, I am, Doctor. There’s a lot of pressure on us about this case. Ya know what I mean? High-level pressure. Enfield grads are everywhere—in the senate, in the governor’s office. This investigation is being watched closer than a drag queen at a DAR ball.”

  I blinked at his simile.

  He went on, “You may not realize it, but you’ve been real helpful, and I really do need a professional researcher. The BCI does not run to scholarly types. What do you get?”

  “Well …” I foundered around in my brain for a figure, finding one that could only serve to get me off the hook. “Last month Amherst College paid me five hundred dollars for an evening lecture on working-class literature. Wined me and dined me, too.”

  “Five hundred, huh?” He nodded his head slowly and looked impressed. “I might be able to get you that. I definitely couldn’t get you any more.”

  I choked on my hamburger, then croaked, “You could get me five hundred dollars a day? Are you serious?”

  “And expenses. I’d have to clear it with the suits, you know. And it could only be for a limited time. But if that’s your professional fee … Hey, we’ve been known to hire psychics to assist in investigations. Why not a scholar? I think they’ll go for it. Like I said, my hunch is that the motivation for these murders lies somewhere in Astin-Berger’s work, and with your professional expertise we could maybe get at it a little sooner.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “What do you think?”

  I thought about my still-unpaid education loans. I thought about Amanda’s tuition. I thought about my MasterCard balance. I thought about the leather jacket I’d been wanting to buy my daughter for her birthday. Maybe now I could get a really good one—one like Randy’s. “I’ll think about it.” My voice came out with a bit of a squeak.

  “Good.” Piotrowski sat back and signaled for more coffee. I noticed he was drinking it black. “Good. And just one more thing, Doctor. Don’t tell anyone you’re looking into this, will you? And I do mean anyone.”

  Sixteen

  SEVEN P.M. on New Year’s Eve found me soaking in my big, claw-footed tub trying to get sufficiently relaxed to go to a party. It was difficult to reconcile such a frivolous pursuit with my day’s activity. I’d spent a full eight hours in an evidence room at BCI headquarters sorting through cartons of papers the police had removed from Randy’s office. When I protested to Piotrowski that I could just as easily do that at the college, even in Randy’s office, he said, “No. No, I don’t think so.” When I pressed him he elaborated, “As far as people at Enfield College are concerned, you have nothing to do with this investigation. You’re simply out of town for the day. Ya got that? I’m serious about this, Dr. Pelletier. Dead serious.”

  So after a mind-numbing day of separating index cards from call slips, photocopies from hand-written notes, and the Reverend Mr. Abbott from the Reverend Mr. Beecher from the Reverend Dr. Sprague, trying to recreate Randy’s research patterns, I was up to my neck in hot water and Chanel No. 5 bath oil. Thinking about what I would wear. Thinking about who I would see. Wondering if Avery Mitchell would be there.

  And feeling a little bit like Mata Hari.

  At the last minute, Greg had decided to have a party. He had called the day before to invite us.

  “I know this is in bad taste,” he said. “What with two murders hanging over our heads.”

  “You could say that.” I was ambivalent about getting together with a group of people I had last seen just before the corpse of a colleague fell at my feet. “And your metaphor is lousy.”

  “Yeah. Kind of chokes you up, doesn’t it? You will come, though? Things are so grim around here, we need some festivity. And I’ve got a lot to celebrate: getting tenure, turning forty….”

  Getting back with I
rena, I thought, but didn’t say it.

  “You’re forty? Hey, that is something to celebrate. Let’s set a precedent for wild fortieth-birthday bashes; mine’s coming up in the not-too-distant future.”

  “Noooo, Pelletier. Can’t be.”

  “Flattery will get you anywhere, Samoorian.”

  “I wish.” His retort was properly lascivious, but the undercurrent of genuine possibility had vanished. We were back to the joking innuendo of buddies.

  As I soaped my legs and ran the pink plastic razor over them, stroke after stroke, I wasn’t feeling very festive. Piotrowski’s insistence that the violent events were not finished had made them more real to me.

  He’d asked me that morning if I was going out to celebrate the new year. I’d swallowed my resentment at the intrusion into my privacy; I was becoming very tractable.

  “I’ve been invited to a party, but I don’t think I’m going.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, Sophia doesn’t want to go, which I can understand. She’s too embarrassed. And Amanda won’t leave her. And, Piotrowski, you’ve got me so spooked I don’t think I should leave them alone out there in the boonies.”

  “You should go.” After a moment’s thought he added, “I want you to go. Don’t worry about the girls, er—young women. I’ll make sure they’re all right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that there’ll be someone around to make sure they’re not molested.”

  “You mean—surveillance?”

  “Something like that. Go to the party. Have a good time. Everything is normal. Ya get my drift? Just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Just keep your eyes open. That’s all.”

  “So, what, now I’m a paid informer?”

  “Doc-tor Pelletier …” Very weary. And a supplicating gesture with the hands.

  Well, if I was going to be Mata Hari I might as well play the part well. I rubbed Keri lotion on my legs, and dusted myself with Chanel No. 5 body powder. Then I put on the only set of fancy underwear I own, magenta lace. My wardrobe does not run to dressy clothes, and I still didn’t know what I was going to wear to the party. The white dress was out. I’d worn it to the fatal Christmas reception, and I didn’t think I’d ever put it on again. Otherwise all I had was a couple of silk blouses that would go with black silk pants or—the Suit.