by Todd Ohl
Amid the tilting landscape, he was able to catch a glimpse of the bum bolting away. John tried to get up but it was no use; the best he could do was to roll slightly in the general direction of the fleeing man. He watched helplessly as the guy disappeared behind a building.
A kid appeared next to Amy and laughed out, “Dude, you were wrecked, man.” His voice seemed a little closer than hers had a few seconds ago.
“Shut up, Jerry!” Amy yelled. “You are such an asshole. Get help! Go!”
Blood soaked John’s shirt, and he felt his face to confirm that it was coming from his nose. The tilt-o-whirl kept moving. He tried to focus on Amy’s face. In all his years as a cop, he had never passed out, and he hoped he would stay conscious now.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he gurgled through the blood running down his throat.
“You’ll be OK. Just look at me; focus on something close,” Amy directed. She started digging in her purse, pulled out a travel pack of tissues, and thrust one of them forward. “Here, take this.”
He held the small tissue to his nose, and it became instantly soaked with blood. He dropped it and took another from Amy.
After a few minutes, the world leveled out.
John propped himself up on his elbow and looked for his cell phone. It lay about five feet away with the flip-top bent to the left.
“That lid is not supposed to bend like that,” he gurgled.
John turned and saw her staring at his side. Following her gaze, he realized that his gun was exposed. He covered it with his coat and looked up at Amy.
“I take it you are not faculty,” Amy prodded.
“No, I’m not.”
“It figures. Profs are usually all talk and no action. So far, you seem to be the opposite.”
“Believe me, if I had the choice, I’d opt for talk at this point.”
He managed to sit up and felt increasingly steady. John then caught motion out of the corner of his eye. Across the commons, he saw two men from campus security running his way.
“Oh good,” he scoffed. “Looks like it’s time for me to talk to these guys.”
John started to get up, and she took hold of his arm to steady him. His first reaction was that she was too close. He was still a little disoriented and wanted some space. When he reached a full stance, however, he found he was still shaky and was glad she lent a hand.
“Are you OK, sir?” asked the closer of the two approaching guards. He sounded remarkably full of breath, despite his recent sprint.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” John grunted.
“We have an ambulance on the way. The crew will take you to the hospital to get checked out.”
“I’d appreciate some help over to that bench, but we don’t have time for anything else.” John pulled out his wallet and revealed his badge. “I need you to seal that building off as soon as possible, gentlemen. It’s now a part of a murder investigation.”
The security guard looked at John’s badge and the identification next to it. “Sure thing, Detective McDonough. The commander told us that you were on campus. We’ll call in and seal off Logan as part of a police request.”
“Thanks, but just Dunglison’s office and the roof would be enough for now.”
John sat down on the bench and took a fresh tissue from Amy. He watched the two security guards conferring in a low tone. They did this well enough that John was not sure whether they were talking themselves into taking action or talking themselves out of doing anything about the situation.
“Hey guys, I don’t think that homeless guy just happened along and randomly chose to punch me in the face today. I found a ton of evidence in that building already, and if it’s gone when forensics gets here, a murderer is going to get away.” John was bluffing, but due to the throbbing in his head, he did not have the mental agility to be persuasive in any other way.
With that, a guard spun toward him with an outstretched arm and waved his hand. “We’re on it, Detective McDonough. Just stay here until the ambulance shows up.”
“There’s no time for the ambulance; you can tell them to go home. I need to get somewhere.” He watched the security guards walking away and yelled, “Hey!”
The talkative guard turned toward him and asked, “Yeah?”
“Thanks again, gentlemen.”
The guard gave a nod and continued his stroll toward the building.
As he watched the men disappear into Logan, John said to Amy, “Thank you, too.” Turning toward her, he could tell she had been staring at him.
Her cheeks suddenly flushed. She turned quickly to her purse and put her empty pack of tissues away. She rustled in her purse, closed it, stared at the ground for a second, and then turned back to John.
“Sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“I was staring at you. You caught me. It’s just…” She thought for a moment, then continued, “Well, a lot of cops would have been a lot less kind to campus security. I’ve seen it here before.”
“Less kind?”
“Most cops are jerks to campus security. The whole rent-a-cop stigma is an issue.” She blushed again and fidgeted with the clasp on her purse. “You sure are different from most of the guys I find here.”
John was glad he came off that way. He shrugged, and then asked, “Besides the gun, what makes me so different?”
“Most of the guys here are trying to puff up their chest to show how important they are. They’re willing to screw you over and treat you like crap to get ahead. I guess, in all fairness, that is not limited to the men.”
“You have a bleak take on humanity,” he laughed.
“Chalk it up to experience,” she said with a shrug. “Is it true? I mean, are you really here about a murder investigation?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it Dr. Dunglison?” She winced. “You were in his office.”
John hesitated for a second, and then he knew what he had to say. “Yeah,” he grunted, as he braced himself for a flood of tears.
Amy blinked once, then shrugged and said, “It’s really crappy to say, but I don’t think I’ll miss him.”
John had expected her to start blubbering about the loss. Now, he was wondering whether Amy would wait for the corpse to get cold before she filed the sexual harassment claim that Brinker had predicted. He opened his mouth to see what drove Amy’s ambivalence, but she broke the silence first.
“The man was a bit of a prick, but I really shouldn’t be mad at him.” She smiled and sighed, “Just par for the course, I imagine.”
“So, what was it you didn’t like about Professor Dunglison?” he asked.
“Do you know the old saying, ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead,’ Detective McDonough? I should probably follow it. I don’t think it will matter much.”
“Cops have an old saying too: ‘Everything is relevant,’” he countered. While there was no such saying, he figured the tiny lie would be harmless and might save him a few minutes of trying to be clever with his questions.
“When I first got here, I had a crush on Dunglison. Here was this guy making a living at doing what I wanted to do. He was smart, successful, and good-looking. He seemed like the perfect man.”
“But…” John prodded.
“Then I met Ted Hallman, and Ted would tell me about the stuff he was working on, and the stories he was finding. A few months later, Dunglison published almost everything Ted had gathered without even including him in the credits. Ted was crushed; he almost left Dunglison. That was how I learned the two of them were gay, and right away, I knew my fantasy of Dunglison and I getting together was not going to happen. He was gay, which meant he would never want to be with me. More importantly, he was thieving prick, which meant I would never want to be with him.”
“Ted and Dunglison stayed together, though.”
“As far as I could tell, yes. Ted was screwed, and I don’t mean that literally. With Dunglison being his advisor, Ted didn’t have much choice if he ever wanted to get his deg
ree.”
The old saying, “Don’t crap where you eat,” popped into John’s head. He was smart enough not to utter it.
“I think this is going to be rough on Ted,” she said. “I think it will be good for him in the end, though. Do you know if they told him?”
John thought about whether he should say anything. While she kept her composure at the news of Dunglison’s death, upon delivering this news, he would again risk a gush of tears. She had been open with him so far, and he reasoned that he wanted to keep her that way. If she eventually learned he had withheld the information about Hallman’s death, she might start withholding information as well. He braced himself, and said, “Ted Hallman was also at the scene. He’s dead as well.”
He watched as her eyes darted between his. After what seemed like a long time, she sat down on the bench.
“Wow,” she said. She looked at John, cracked a weak smile, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Did Hallman ever talk to you about his work?” he asked.
“Yeah, he did, a lot. It’s rare to find someone here that you can trust to proof and critique your work without trying to steal it. We shared our work a lot. His writing was a lot better than mine.” She wiped a few tears from her eyes.
“Did he ever talk to you about something called The Book of 21, or something called The Core Codex?”
“Le Coeur Codex,” Amy corrected him. “You don’t think that had something to do with Ted’s death, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. What do you know?”
“They’re the same book. It was the topic of probably the worst paper Ted ever produced.”
“Why is that?”
“The whole thing started out with a good folk tale. There were these twenty-one gods that ruled the universe. They were the embodiment of things that were both good and terrible. People thought it would be good to imprison the terrible ones because, well, they were really bad. The problem was that the people found that they had to take the good with the bad; they couldn’t imprison the bad ones and leave the good ones free for a variety of reasons. Sorry if I don’t have the details; it’s not easy to remain totally clear at a time like this.” She paused to wipe away an overflowing tear and then continued, “Anyway, the people decided to go for it and reduce their suffering, even if meant reducing their joy. Will you trade the chance at ultimate joy for a reduction in ultimate suffering? The tale had good themes. It kind of read like a study in Keynesian economics of the soul.”
“That’s it? That was The Book of 21?”
“No, that’s just the folktale,” she countered. “It got Ted published; he was smart enough to keep that one away from Dunglison until it was accepted by a journal. It was really a great story.”
“So, then why was the paper so bad? It got him published.”
“It was sort of like the tale itself; it was both his ultimate high and ultimate downfall. Ted heard the folktale on a trip to Turkey and then went to the little village that it seemed to originate from. He wanted record it properly, based on the tales told by the people. When he was there, he heard other tales about a book that was written to record not only how the gods were imprisoned, but also how to release them. According to the stories, the book was carried back to Europe by a crusader. Once there, it came to be known as Le Coeur Codex, or the core book. Ted would not let that storyline go.”
“Why was that a problem?”
“It was our job, as scholars, to record the tale, but Ted’s paper on the topic started to sound like a conspiracy theory. He started drawing connections to real events and artifacts. Then he started talking about one group that wanted to find the book to restore the gods, and another that was protecting the book with funding from the church.”
“What you call ‘funding’ sounds a little like protection money,” John said. “What church?”
“He never really specified, nor could he find out. The whole theory seemed rather silly. Richard humored him and tried to show him that he should move on, but he started linking almost everything he studied back to the book.”
“Like what?”
“Well, it’s hard to remember everything right now.” Amy rubbed her forehead.
“How about the Brethren of Roxborough?”
Amy cringed. “Yeah, that was the group here locally that he felt may be the guardians of the book. It was crazy—the idea that they would happen to be right here where he was studying. Over the last few weeks, we all started to wonder if he might losing his grip on reality.” Amy kneaded her hands nervously. “Should we have said something? He didn’t seem dangerous.”
“Who knows?” John replied. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about Ted?”
She breathed deeply and shook her head.
John regarded her for a second. She seemed to be handling the stress better when she focused on the tales, but now her eyes were misting up again. He decided to give her some time to calm her emotions before he pressed too much further.
John looked at his watch; he really needed to make a few phone calls and get over to Hallman’s before someone else did. The guy that punched him in the nose might be on his way there now, and this was taking longer than he had planned. If he came back later, Amy might be able to pull herself together, and if he could find some aspirin, he might be able to stop the pounding in his aching skull. The opening he needed suddenly presented itself.
“I have to get to class,” she muttered. She wandered over to her papers, still strewn about the lawn, and started to gather them.
John stood and followed her. “Ms. Ritter…”
Without turning from her papers, she said, “Please, call me Amy.”
“OK, Amy, would it be OK if I stopped by to talk to you more later?”
“I’d like that.”
He stood there for second, somewhat puzzled by her odd response. Deciding that it might be best to clarify, he said, “Thanks, I think you may be able to add to the facts we should consider here. By the way, someone might be contacting you later for a hair sample, just to rule out any hair of yours they find up there.”
She stood up and John found himself staring into her deep blue eyes. The sunlight lit them up like sapphires. He wondered whether the hue was the result of actual pigmentation or colored contacts. He watched as she dropped her jaw ever so slightly and parted her glistening lips. After a second, she slipped her backpack onto her right shoulder and put her left hand in her pocket.
“My TA office is in Logan, the floor below Dunglison’s,” she said. “I have a class now and at two, but otherwise, I’ll be here until five.”
“Did Ted Hallman have an office as well?” John asked, puzzled at why campus security did not mention it.
“No, he was a research assistant; he didn’t teach any classes.”
“Ah, anyway, is there phone number I can use to reach you later?”
She took a paper from her stack, scrawled a number on it, and handed it to him. “There’s my office number. See you later,” she said softly. She turned and walked across campus.
He walked over to his busted cell phone and moaned. He loved that phone. Getting a new one would not be hard, but the extra chore was one more task he did not need.
After mentally constructing a list, he realized there was a lot to do. He had to go inside and make sure the right parts of the building were secure. He had to call Harry again and get a CSA team over here quickly. He needed get over to Hallman’s before someone else did. Most importantly, he needed to tell the officer at Hallman’s apartment to be ready for trouble.
Chapter 6:
Hallman’s Apartment
Hallman’s apartment building was dark and smelled like stale cheese. John walked up the dingy staircase to the fourth floor and headed down the hall. He found the officer-on-duty standing outside a doorway; next to the cop, a short old man in a t-shirt and plaid flannel pants fumbled with a large ring of keys.
“Mr. Klingman is the building super. He’s more t
han happy to let us in,” the cop, Pete Alvarez, said as he pointed at the short, beady-eyed old man who needed a shave and a shower.
John approached the super and held out his hand. “I’m Detective McDonough. Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure, Detective,” the old man wheezed.
Klingman fumbled with the keys for a few more seconds, found the right one, pulled his t-shirt over his exposed belly, and moved to the door. He took some time to steady his shaking hands long enough to get the key in the lock. After a second, Klingman sighed, looked back at John, and weakly grinned.
John guessed that Klingman’s shaking was not due to cold or fear, but his age. He watched the old man labor painfully at the lock for a few more seconds. Just as he stepped forward to offer help, he heard the lock turn and saw the door pop open. Klingman slowly stepped back from the open door to allow John access.
The open door revealed an immaculate apartment. Whitewashed woodwork edged butter cream walls. A glass-topped coffee table sat before a brown leather sofa that looked as if it belonged in the Reform Club of jolly old Pall Mall, waiting for Phineas Fogg to rest his keester upon it and declare that he could make it around the world in eighty days. A red oriental rug concealed the tattered living room carpet. The fresh scent of cinnamon billowed outward and extinguished the scent of spoiled dairy that permeated the halls. The room was nicer than anything John had ever called his own.
“It’s a shame,” Klingman wheezed. “He was a very good man. I wish that all the other tenants kept their apartment as well and paid their rent so reliably.” He looked in at the living room, and said, “I will miss young Ted.”
John stepped into the living room. To the right, two doors flanked Hallman’s computer desk. They opened into the bedroom and kitchen.
Bookcases covered the wall to the left. Stuffed onto their shelves were classics of literature and contemporary literary works. In the classic genre, John saw The Canterbury Tales, Crime and Punishment, Heart of Darkness, The Inferno, and Paradise Lost. On the contemporary side, he saw Atlas Shrugged, The Name of the Rose, and Tropic of Capricorn. Other books also covered a spectrum of works outside the contemporary and classic titans. Hallman had arranged all the books alphabetically by title.