That Sleep of Death

by Richard King

  Gaston gave her a handkerchief and some sympathy. “I understand. You were hurt and you had no one to talk to. Take your time. I’m sure you’ll feel better now that it’s all out.”

  There was the little matter of murder but I was sure that Gaston would get to it in his own sweet time.

  We waited for Arlene to regain control of herself and then he asked her, “How long ago did this take place?”

  “Not long, a couple of weeks ago,” she said between her sniffles and her tears.

  “And do you know who he was seeing, with whom he had developed a ‘permanent relationship’?”

  “That’s the really strange thing. At first I thought it was Jane Miller-More again. It’s nuts, I know, but after he dumped me I started to think really hard about things he did around the department. And I began to suspect that there was something going on between them. They didn’t spend any more time together than they ever had, but I imagined there was something conspiratorial between them. They would talk in this kind of strange way so that no one could be sure what they were talking about but they understood each other. It was almost a code. But they were always close friends, even after she married Dean More. Then I thought maybe he’d told her about his new relationship — confided in her as a friend — and that they were referring to some conversation they’d had about it, but you couldn’t be sure when this other conversation took place. And I have no idea who the other woman could have been. It sounds crazy, I know, but that’s the best way I can describe it. And I’m sure Jane knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “I see,” Gaston muttered. “How do you feel about Professor Hilliard now?”

  “I miss him. And I know it’s an awful thing to say about the dead but I wanted to tell him how he made me feel. I wanted to get it out of my system and get on with my life. Now I can’t.” Arlene had her emotions under control. She gave her eyes a final dab with Gaston’s handkerchief and twisted it through her fingers like linen worry beads as he spoke.

  “But you hated him and you were angry and you felt betrayed by him. You know, these are the feelings that sometimes lead to murder. And then we regret what we did and try to hide it. But it never works out. The crime is based on anger and passion and too many mistakes are made and we always catch the murderer.” Gaston had leaned forward and was looking straight into Arlene’s wet eyes as he said this. He spoke softly almost hypnotically and she sat still, apparently mesmerized by what he was saying.

  She was silent for a long moment and then she said, calmly, “I didn’t kill him. It’s not that I didn’t think about it. I wanted revenge. But I could only kill him once. You know what it’s like. You’re mad at someone and you wish they were dead but you don’t really — it’s just anger talking. That’s how I felt. And I know how it must look. But if I had killed him it would have been a crime of passion and I would have made mistakes in trying to hide it, wouldn’t I? And you’re smart enough, you would have found out by now. But you haven’t found one single clue that ties me to his death, have you?”

  I had to admit that she had us there. What made us suspect her turned out to be things that tied her to his life, not his death. Gaston sat back on the sofa and regarded Arlene thoughtfully. I could see that he had developed some respect for her brain power and that he had no answer for her question. As things stood now his own logic proved that she didn’t do it. We’d need physical evidence to tie her to the crime and we didn’t have any.

  “You are quite right, madame. But until we find the murderer I must suspect everybody and that includes you. My suspicions will only be lifted when I find the guilty party.”

  And that goes double for me, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I, too, agreed with her logic, but I was still was not completely convinced of her innocence.

  “I understand,” she said, getting to her feet. “So you had better get on with finding the guilty person. And I’d like to get back to work, if you’re finished with me.” She marched off in the direction of the bathroom and I could hear the water running. She returned looking refreshed and in control of herself. “You know where to find me if you need me and I’m assuming that our conversation today was private.” She gave me a hostile look.

  Gaston spoke for both of us. “You can depend on our discretion. If you’re innocent we have no desire to harm you and nothing you’ve told us will leave this room. If you’re guilty, this conversation will be evidence in court.”

  “It won’t be,” she said, then turned and walked out of the apartment.

  Gaston and I looked at each other.

  “That was quite a performance,” I opined.

  “It was that, but I think that she’s telling the truth now, for the first time since this whole sorry mess began. I’m not ready to take her off the list of suspects yet but she’s not my first choice for guilty either. We’ll have to keep looking. She’s right about one thing. The physical evidence is inconclusive.

  “Inconclusive, how?” I asked.

  “Well, it is not yet clear to the medical examiner if Hilliard was killed by someone about his own size who struck him from behind while he was standing, or by a shorter person who got him while he was seated or perhaps bending over. One of my first cases had to do with a woman who was barely five feet tall, but still managed to kill her biker boyfriend. She did it by tossing him his pack of cigarettes so that they landed on the floor behind him. When he bent over to pick it up she clobbered him with a brick. It looked like he was murdered by someone bigger than he was — and he was big,”

  “Wouldn’t strength have something to do with it? Wouldn’t the murderer have to be pretty strong to hit Hilliard hard enough to kill him?”

  “Strength isn’t really the important thing here. It’s force. If the murderer was able to get a good swing the speed with which the fatal blow was delivered would be enough to kill. Size and strength don’t really matter if there is no resistance on the part of the victim. Remember, we concluded that Hilliard’s office was messed up as a result of a sloppy search not as the result of a struggle. He probably never knew what hit him.”

  We both thought about that for a moment. I looked at my watch and realized that it was one o’clock. “Can I make a quick phone call?” I asked.

  “Use the study,” he responded.

  I checked my answering machine. There were no messages from Susan. That was a relief. But then I felt guilty about feeling relieved. And then for a brief moment I felt guilty about being so rude to her last night. And then I thought the hell with it and put her right out of my mind. I was free! I called the store to tell them not to expect me for a while and I rejoined Gaston.

  At that moment I realized I was hungry, and apparently Gaston did, too, because he said, “Let’s get something to eat and review and plan our next steps.” As we were getting ready to leave, the buzzer from downstairs started ringing furiously and we heard the sound of the elevator.

  “What’s this?” I exclaimed.

  “Uninvited visitors. Follow me.” Gaston answered and quickly gathered up the empty coffee cups and the bag, turned off the lights, and made for the dining room. I was right on his heels and I made sure that the door stopped swinging the moment we were safely on the other side of it.

  Gaston sat down at the head of the table and motioned me to station myself in the corner near the door so that if the intruder came into the dining room I could get between him and the door, blocking the only escape route.

  We could hear a key turning in the lock. Our visitor, not expecting the door to be unlocked, inadvertently locked the door. He or she then shoved against the door and tried the key again. I was afraid that the intruder would realize that if the door was unlocked there must be someone inside the condo. Luckily this didn’t seem to occur to him. The key was turned again and then, with much knob-twisting and door-banging the visitor entered the apartment. There was silence for a moment. Then heavy footsteps (from their sound I concluded it was a man) moved through the living room and turned righ
t. He went into the bedroom and slammed the door, making a lot of noise as he moved around the condo — obviously we were not dealing with an experienced thief. There was no sound from behind the closed bedroom door. Suddenly he emerged and clomped down the hall, past the dining room door. The study door opened, then slammed shut. This time we could hear him inside, yanking open the drawers of the file cabinet and the desk. He spent a little longer in the study than in the bedroom, but not much. A moment later he barged into the dining room and stopped cold, with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on his face, at the sight of Gaston sitting at the dining room table.

  “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Gutmacher? Allan, isn’t it?”

  Allan responded by hyperventilating and when he found his voice he let out a shriek of fear and surprise. “What, what?” He sputtered. “What the hell?” He looked around wildly and turned to run out the way he had rushed in. But I had placed myself in front of the door, blocking his exit. He took a step toward me and I gently shoved him backwards. He stumbled and almost fell.

  “I believe you’ve been asked to sit down. So sit!” I commanded like a movie tough guy. I moved in on him and he had no choice but to flop into a chair.

  His breathing was getting into the normal range and I realized that on both occasions I had run into this guy he was charging around out of breath. I wondered if he ever entered a room in the normally accepted fashion.

  He was wearing almost the same clothing as he had the day he had insisted on joining our interview with Sarah Bloch, the same or similar grey trousers and the same heavy black shoes — which accounted for the racket he made stomping around Hilliard’s apartment. His shirt was blue and he was wearing a red tie with a faded blue pattern of some sort, little crowns which had weakened into polka dots, I think. He had exchanged his blue blazer for a beige wind-breaker — a concession to the more relaxed standards of breaking and entering. As before, he carried a folded section of the National Post. Again, the sketch of David Frum peered at me from Gutmacher’s windbreaker pocket.

  “What are you doing here?” Gaston asked.

  “None of your fuckin’ business,” Allan responded belligerently.

  “Actually it is my business,” Gaston told him. “It’s my business to catch murderers and I think I may have caught one. What do you think, Sam?”

  “You may very well have. I think I know what our friend is doing here, what he is looking for.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are? Dick Tracy?” Allan asked sarcastically.

  I sat down on the side of the table between him and Gaston and said, “I think I’m helping Detective Sergeant Lemieux solve a murder. I think we found the murderer: a hot-headed guy who goes charging into places in a jealous rage. You probably bashed Hilliard on the head because you thought he was interested in your girlfriend. I also think that you tore Hilliard’s office apart looking for something and when you didn’t find it you came up here to search his apartment. What are you looking for? Something to do with Sarah?”

  He clutched the newspaper in his right hand and jabbed it at me, the picture of David Frum the tip of his paper sword. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” he spat.

  “But you do have to tell me,” Gaston said in a calm voice that seemed to further infuriate Allan Gutmacher, who began to shake his head and laugh sardonically, presumably to indicate that we were way off base. “Listen to me. We know you lied to us earlier. Mr. Wiseman checked your story. You and Sarah may have met at the metro station and walked to school together on most mornings but you didn’t do it the morning Hilliard was murdered. You got into the department first. You saw Hilliard was in his office and that there was nobody else around. You were angry at him for making a pass at Sarah and in a fit of jealous anger you killed him. Or maybe you had some other reason to hate the professor. Believe me, whatever it is, we’ll find out. We’ll investigate everything you’ve done in the last ten years if we have to in order to prove that you killed the man. Now what have you got to say for yourself?”

  “You can’t prove a damn thing!” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” I pointed out. “Then how did a key that was missing from the dead man’s pocket get into your hands? Isn’t that what you just used to open the door of this apartment?”

  Allan’s eyes darted wildly. The he sat down heavily on the sofa and covered his face with his hands, apparently realizing that he might be looking at a murder charge. At the very least he was caught breaking into the deceased’s home and searching for something. He sat up straight and placed both hands palms down on the table.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he stated. “I found the body. But I didn’t kill him.”

  “Tell us what happened,” Gaston prompted.

  “It was like you said. I waited for Sarah but she didn’t show up. It happens sometimes and I didn’t think much of it. Sometimes she gets there ahead of me and instead of waiting she goes on ahead and I meet up with her at the history department. So I bought coffee and walked to campus. When I got to the department I put the coffee in the common room and I noticed that Hilliard’s door was ajar so I went down to see if she was there. But I didn’t really think she was because I didn’t hear any voices. Normally if there is someone around they make noise, you hear typing or someone talking on the phone or pacing around or something. But the place was so quiet I wondered if something was going on. I walked down the hall to Hilliard’s office and looked in. And there he was lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

  “So you returned to the common room and calmly had a coffee with Sarah?” I asked.

  “No, not calmly,” he said, looking at me resentfully. “When I got to the common room Sarah was just coming in. I told her what I had found and we decided to let someone else find the body. We didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  “What did Hilliard’s office look like?” Gaston asked.

  “You saw it. You know what it looked like. It was a mess.”

  “I saw it after you left. I want to know what it looked like when you found the body.”

  “I didn’t touch anything. It was a mess, I’m telling you.”

  “Listen to me,” Gaston said sternly. “How you answer my questions will determine whether or not I arrest you for murder right here and now. Do you understand?”

  Allan nodded and said, “His office was like it always was. Neat. The guy was a bloody fanatic. Except that this time he was dead on the floor and there was blood everywhere.”

  “And you say you touched nothing.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s a lie, and a pointless one. Whatever you touched will have your fingerprints on it. You tore the office apart looking for something, yes?” Gaston reached under his jacket and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He placed them on the table as a reminder of what Allan could expect if he was not totally honest.

  Allan’s head sagged forward, and he said, almost inaudibly, “Yes.”

  “What were you looking for? I’m asking you for the last time.”

  “Anything that would inadvertently tie me or Sarah to a murder we didn’t commit. That’s the truth.”

  “Why would there be anything in the office that would tie you to the murder, if you didn’t commit the crime?” I burst in. “Anything that tied you to the murder would hardly be inadvertent, would it? You weren’t studying with Professor Hilliard. But Sarah was … you were afraid that she might have got to the history department ahead of you. Am I right? And that Hilliard made another pass at her and she bashed him on the head to defend herself?”

  “Yes, goddamn you. But Sarah didn’t do it. She got to the department after me.”

  “But you couldn’t know that at the time you were in Hilliard’s office. So you pulled Hilliard’s office apart looking for anything that might incriminate Sarah and stole his keys, right?” Gaston asked.

  “It was easy to identify the keys I needed. Once when Sarah was working with Hilliard she was supposed to meet me but she phone
d and said she had to go over to his office with him to borrow some historical journals. I was over in two minutes to make sure I went with them. Sarah was mad at me but she knew what I thought of the guy so she just let me go along. He seemed kind of pissed off, of course, but I didn’t care. I noticed that fancy key he had when he opened the door. After that I checked from time to time to see if a key to his apartment ever showed up with Sarah’s keys. It was a good thing for him that never happened. Anyway, I knew which ones they were. I figured that if I only took the keys to this building and left his key ring no one would notice.”

  “So, I can expect that your fingerprints will be all over the office? How were you planning to explain that?”

  “That wouldn’t prove anything. I’ve been in and out of Hilliard’s office a thousand times. So has almost every other graduate student in the history department not to mention the faculty.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps,” Gaston said. “We’ll see when I get a report from the crime scene unit.”

  “What would you have done if you had found something that pointed to Sarah?” I asked.

  “Destroyed it,” Allan answered bluntly. “I love her and I want to protect her.”

  “So you do believe she might have killed Hilliard?” Gaston looked at him curiously. “You love her enough to try to cover up a murder you think she committed? Bizarre form of love, if you ask me. It seems more likely that you killed Hilliard on the impulse of the moment, because you feared that Sarah was getting more interested in him than in you. You’re not much of a planner. You act impulsively. You come barrelling into Hilliard’s condo without checking to see if it’s empty or under surveillance; for all I know you went charging into his office with the same disregard for consequences and killed him. For all we know you trashed his office covering up the traces of your own crime rather than trying to protect Sarah.”

  “Yeah? Well, bullshit. If that was the case why would I bother to come here at all? There’s no reason for me to check out his apartment if I killed him. I only risked coming here to protect Sarah. Just in case. I’ve been waiting three days for your cops to go away so I could get in.”