Stillness & Shadows

by John Gardner

  McClaren puckered his lips as if to kiss. “It’s very peculiar,” he said. “As if someone were interested in framing Professor Furth. We know, as no doubt you’re aware, that she was murdered elsewhere.”

  “Mmm.”

  McClaren smiled, faintly admiring in spite of himself. “We’ve talked with all the people here,” he said after a moment. “Nothing special in her life, so far as anyone knows—including her friendship with your neighbor Ira Katz.” Carefully, or so it seemed to Craine, he did not look up. “She was an excellent programmer, by all reports. A food faddist, sometimes ran workshops on ‘the primal scream.’ No relatives, according to her file; no known former attachments. Lived in a little house in Cobden. Studied in New York, to be an actress, some years ago. Lived in Boston for a while, associated with an ashram—worked there as a cook. Beans and millet, things like that. In school she got A’s in mathematics, also languages. Spent a year teaching Latin. Smart and ordinary, so it seems.” Now he did look up. “What was your impression?”

  “Smart and ordinary,” Craine said.

  McClaren thought about it, decided to let it go, for now. “It’s a puzzle,” he said.

  “How was she killed?” Craine asked.

  “Stab wounds,” McClaren said, studying the mess on the desk top. “It’s an interesting problem, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They were all killed by stab wounds—but never the same knife, never the same way. You can’t help but wonder if maybe we’re dealing with six different murderers. It’s crazy, right? Statistically impossible—six murderers in a year, in one small town. I mean, this is the hypothesis: somebody kills some girl with a knife, somebody else wants to kill some girl, he imitates the earlier murder as best he can, trying to make us believe it’s some psychotic. Six times it happens—one original, five bad imitations. But it’s queer. Too queer. You’d think at least two of them would kill the same way. It’s like sex: how many positions can you find? Most people—you know—without even thinking about it, they do it the same way. You stab into the chest, or you stab into the throat … But six murders, no two of them the same—”

  “Interesting,” Craine said.

  McClaren shot a look at him, for an instant believing he was innocent. “Yes, interesting,” he said.

  After a moment, Craine asked, “What do you know about this Professor Furth? How come he’s not in today? Office like this—”

  “I don’t know. That’s interesting too,” McClaren said. “But what I was saying before—” He looked up. “It doesn’t look like the work of a psychotic or a professional killer,” he said. “Both of them, they’d both do the same thing every time. And I can’t quite believe it was six different killers—”

  “Any connection between the six different women?” Craine asked.

  McClaren studied him, fingertips drumming. “Not that we can find,” he said. “Nothing at all. We’ve had our computers working on it. You’re right, of course. There’s got to be one.”

  Craine nodded, thoughtful, then remembered to look drunk.

  McClaren’s head had drifted upward a little, lifting his heavy body. He pointed. “What’s that in your coat?”

  Startled, Craine looked down, then half rose from his chair and reached down into his bottomless pocket and drew out the book on clairvoyance. “Book I stole from the library,” he said. He held it up so that McClaren could read the binding.

  “Clairvoyance,” McClaren said. His eyes sharpened, meeting Craine’s, then he smiled. “Yes, interesting business,” he said. “I imagine you’re familiar with Phil Tummelty’s operation?”

  Craine raised his eyebrows.

  “You should go check it out, if you’re interested in parapsychology. He’s got people over there—very strange, believe me.”

  Craine’s heart jerked. “You’re friends with Tummelty?” he asked mildly.

  “Poker pals,” McClaren said. He smiled.

  It struck Craine now that he’d been staring for some time at the insurance company calendar, upside down from Craine, on Professor Furth’s desk. Various dates on the calendar were circled and had writing around them. One was the thirteenth. Poker, he thought, almost in panic, hunting for the connection. McClaren and Eggers had talked of poker, it came to him, in the Chinese restaurant, the thirteenth, two days ago. That night, April Vaught had been murdered. His heart recoiled. Wrong track. All the same, there was some track.

  “As I’m sure you know, he’s a specialist on the brain,” McClaren was saying. “Very famous surgeon in his younger days—author of several books. I’m afraid he’s a terrible poker player.” He laughed.

  Craine smiled, appreciative of McClaren’s implied skill.

  Abruptly, the door opened and a young man poked his head in— someone Craine knew or had anyway seen before—then quickly pulled it back and closed the door again. Craine strained to remember where he’d seen him before.

  “Dennis Reed,” McClaren said, seeing Craine’s struggle. “He works here—technician. Fixes the computers. Listen.” He leaned forward, planting both elbows on the book-cluttered desk top, his elbows moving things aside as they settled in. “I’ve told you what I know. How about you telling me what you know?”

  “One other question,” Craine said, getting his pipe out, then patting his pockets for matches. “What’s he like, this man Professor Furth? I think you mentioned he’s a friend of yours.”

  “We’ve worked together a good deal, yes,” McClaren said. “Over there in Crime and Correction, where I am, we frequently have use for a computer man. Believe me, Furth’s the best. Experience with some of the finest computers in the world, I understand. NASA, Ma Bell, FBI, some computer in Chicago called PLATO …”

  “Older man, I take it?”

  “Oh, fifty—early fifties. I suppose you could say that’s old in computers.” He smiled, professorial.

  “Married, I suppose?”

  “No, single man. Married to his work, you might say.”

  Craine nodded. “Travels a lot, I take it. Some kind of computer trouble-shooter. You mentioned he’s got a van.”

  Suddenly McClaren was uneasy, Craine sensed. His pale blue eyes bored steadily into Craine’s, and his grin went dead. “That’s very clever,” Inspector McClaren said. It was clear that he intended to volunteer no more.

  “Nothing going on between Furth and April Vaught, I suppose.” Craine shook his head, saving McClaren the trouble of answering. “No, that’s the first thing you’d have mentioned, if there was. So why isn’t he in today?”

  “I imagine it’s upsetting, finding some young woman you know in your van, dead …” Dead and naked, he almost said, Craine saw, but then censored himself. He was an interesting man, this McClaren. Suppose he, McClaren, was the murderer—cracked by a profound inability to deal with the fact that we’re born, as somebody put it, between urine and feces.

  No wonder how I lost my Wits;

  Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits!

  Mysterium tremendum, as somebody else said, the bottom line of creation’s non-sense: to fashion radiant feminine beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are, to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out—the eyes that gave even dry Darwin a chill, to do all this, and to combine it—O horrors!—with an anus! Too much! O Christ where is Thy triumph? So McClaren, anally fixated Platonist, struck back. (“So it’s you!” the guru would say, Ira Katz had said. Big smile from both parties …)

  “…tried him several times,” McClaren was saying, “but no answer.”

  Craine’s wandering attention returned. “You happen to check to see if the van’s there?”

  McClaren’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking? That he might’ve made a run for it? or somebody might’ve grabbed him?”

  “Just like to know where everything is,” Craine said. “I misplace things a lot. Sometimes it takes me half the morning to find my
shoes.”

  McClaren was watching him steadily again, so intent that he forgot to smile. What the danger was, Craine had no idea, but he understood that somehow he was in danger. “What’s the date today?” McClaren asked from nowhere, as if suddenly remembering he had a dental appointment.

  Craine touched the palp of his thumb against the tips of his first three fingers, one by one. “Thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” McClaren said, remembering now. “The fifteenth.” He smiled. “Funny that you started with the thirteenth.”

  Craine smiled back, no more readable than McClaren. “Yes it is.”

  “So tell me,” McClaren said, “how’s your young friend Ira Katz?” He pressed his fingertips together, shaping a kind of cricket box over his chest.

  “I haven’t seen Ira since the morning we found Carnac,” Craine said. “He was all right then.”

  “And also you saw him the night before, I think? With April Vaught?”

  “Yes that’s right, I did. Actually I went over quite a while before she got there, borrowed a cup of sugar and stayed a while—”

  “Arguing—”

  Craine glanced at him, puzzled. “No, not arguing … I don’t think so.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember pretty well. It was late in the day, of course—”

  “And you’d been drinking—”

  “In moderation, yes. Since early morning.” He spoke solemnly, as if humorlessly, and watched the inspector’s reaction.

  McClaren blushed and jerked up one side of his upper lip, baring three gold-framed teeth. Stupid bastard, he said, or seemed to say; the next instant Craine wasn’t sure, because McClaren was saying, genial, “Put it this way, why don’t you tell me what happened that night, from beginning to end?”

  Craine sighed and, after he’d filled and lit his pipe, obeyed. It didn’t take long. He could remember now only snippets of the conversation—which McClaren found uninteresting anyway. For no real reason, he said nothing of how the light on the stereo had gone off. When he mentioned that the phone call was from Ira’s wife, McClaren perked up. “Hold on, now,” he said. “You know it was from his wife?”

  “I suppose I can’t swear to it,” Craine said. “That was my impression.”

  McClaren was leaning on his elbow, his head to one side, his fingers elegantly curled to support his cheek. Craine had a sudden sharp vision of him in navy whites, then, revising it, dressed him in a pea coat. There was no way on earth he could be wrong, Craine knew. Twenty, thirty years ago, McClaren had been a navy man. What it meant about his psyche Craine wasn’t sure yet, but he’d get it, in due time. His left hand went into his suit coat pocket and struggled out again, dragging a paper scrap. “You got a pencil?” he said.

  McClaren’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch while his right hand, as if of its own accord, went for the pen in his pocket and held it toward Craine. “What’s the note?” McClaren asked, one eyebrow lifted.

  Craine held it up and read, “ ‘McClaren—former navy man.’ ”

  “Jeesus!” McClaren hissed, then leaned in hard on both elbows. Though his blush was dark and his small, far from prominent chin slightly trembled, his voice was, though thin and nervous, even. “I’ve put my cards on the table. I thought you agreed in advance to do the same.” (It wasn’t true, and he knew it, Craine thought; but never mind.) The inspector jerked one hand out, palm up, effeminate. “What makes you think Ira’s phone call was from his wife?”

  “Several things—nothing that would stand up in court. His look when the phone rang, his tone of voice, the effect it had on him—only a wife can hit the weak spots with such absolute precision.”

  “A wife or, sometimes, a neurotic mother,” McClaren said.

  “True, except that Ira’s mother’s dead.”

  McClaren nodded. After a moment: “Can you remember what was said?”

  That too Craine could tell quickly. He could remember only one short outburst: “Kill them! That’s a wonderful idea! Kill them and pin the thing on me!”

  “What?” McClaren said, looking at him harder. “You’re sure he said that?”

  “Don’t make too much of it,” Craine said.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “As an ordinary observer of humanity,” Craine said, “I’d say Ira Katz and his wife were very angry, saying whatever they could think of to give pain.”

  “You’re not making this up,” McClaren said, studying him.

  “Any reason I should?”

  McClaren evaded it, slowly swivelling around in his chair to frown thoughtfully at the blank gray wall. “Anything else you can tell me about Katz?”

  “Well,” Craine said, hesitant about saying what he had in mind but interested in seeing how McClaren would react, “in the battle between Ira Katz and his wife, I’d say his wife wins hands down up at the English Department.”

  “Oh?” McClaren said. It seemed to come to him as news.

  “I was talking with the chairman.”

  “Wendel Davies.”

  “That’s him. Very fond of Katz’s wife—nothing intimate, you understand. Likes her cooking, things like that. As for Katz, Professor Davies seems pretty well certain he’ll never get tenure.”

  “Interesting,” McClaren said. “No tenure, no job—no alimony, no child support …”

  “That’s true too,” Craine said. “I guess they both lose.”

  “Funny man, Wendel Davies—as you’ve noticed. I occasionally see him at faculty meetings and whatnot. Independently wealthy; family’s in plastics. Sometimes you get the feeling he’s made of plastic himself. Great humanist, head full of poetry and fine feeling, but sometimes you get the feeling that back behind all of it …” He let it trail off, as if embarrassed. He cleared his throat.

  “Very logical mind,” Craine said.

  “Yes, so it seems.” McClaren glanced at his watch. “Of course I hardly know him,” he added. Despite the glance at his watch he was pretending he had all day. No question about it, he was spending more time on Craine than made sense. “That reminds me,” McClaren said, abruptly turning. “What about Carnac—where does he fit in? I assume you’ve got some theory?”

  “No theory,” Craine said. “I’ve thought about it, naturally.”

  “As for myself, I keep thinking of that idea of Tummelty’s, that Two-heads Carnac, crazy as he seems, may in fact be an authentic psychic.” He leaned forward, fingertips of both hands pressed together, as if trying out the idea on Craine. “Suppose our murderer is someone who knows Carnac well, knows he can ‘see’ things. That would make Carnac a threat, you’ll admit.”

  “Carnac’s about as psychic as my left foot,” Craine said, and gave a laugh.

  McClaren studied him, shaggy eyebrows lifted with interest. “You know that for a fact?”

  “I know that every two, three weeks he gets kicked into the street because his fakery’s so obvious any child can see through it. Tarot, tea leaves, that crazy mason jar—”

  “Mason jar?” McClaren echoed.

  “Claims it works better than a crystal ball,” Craine said, and gave an angry little goat laugh. “Believe me, if he’s psychic—”

  “But isn’t it true,” McClaren broke in, “that with some people psychic ability comes and goes? I’m sure you’ve read of any number of cases—the Fox sisters, Eusapia Palladino, Nelya Mikhailova, for example, or better yet, the famous cousin of William James—I’m sure you’ve read of cases of authentic psychics who, as their powers waned, turned to trickery to keep from disappointing their disciples, or in order to stay in business, or for even more complicated reasons. Think about it a moment. Supposing that there really are people of psychic ability—and believe me, on that score Tummelty’s operation leaves very little doubt—doesn’t it seem natural, on the face of it, that Carnac—at least once in a while—is one of them? Think of that remarkable collection of junk in his shanty—dowsing rods, Ouija
boards, canes, crank books and magazines, not to mention stuffed animals, voodoo candles, little bottles of God knows what …”

  “Unlike you, I have never been in Mr. Carnac’s shanty,” Craine said.

  “Be that as it may,” McClaren said, “the question is, Why is he so interested in such things? If we begin with the assumption that he has had certain psychic experiences from time to time—disturbing experiences, more likely than not, since that’s the usual case … I’m sure in all your reading you’ve run into these things …” Detective Inspector McClaren was rising from his chair as if having an otherworldly experience himself. He dipped his fingers into his sport coat pockets and half-turned away as if to look out a window, though there was no window there. “They’re almost always unpleasant, and usually extremely unpleasant, these psychic experiences. I was reading, in a book Dr. Tummelty lent me, about the dreams people had before the Alberfan disaster in Wales, back in 1966. You probably remember it—coal slide that killed a hundred forty-four adults and children. More than two hundred people reported dreams and premonitions—all exceedingly unpleasant. One woman dreamed of children standing by a building—the school—below a great black mountain. Hundreds of black horses came thundering down the mountainside dragging hearses! Think of Abraham Lincoln’s recurring dream just before his death—alone in a boat, drifting out farther and farther on a still gray sea. But dreams are the least of it. Think of the horror that must have tingled in the back of the mind of that schoolboy who said—famous case—‘How can I be lying down there if I’m standing up here?’ Shortly afterward he was drowned in the well. Or worse yet, think how it is with psychics who work on murder cases, like Hurkos or Croiset. I had the dubious fortune to watch such a psychic myself one time. There were four murders, each of them quite horrible. One after another the psychic went through them, experiencing the pain of each murder himself. I saw him choke—you’d swear there was a wire around his neck—it made his eyes bug out …

  “Heaven knows why it has to be this way, but it’s sorrow and pain that leaves the strongest impressions, as they say in the trade. So you can imagine how it would be for a man like Carnac—not a clever man, in fact somewhat dull-witted, so it would seem. He gets these terrifying visions—smells, tastes, sounds, not to mention things seen … No wonder he buys books, tarot cards, black candles, does everything he can to understand and gain control. Surely all this has occurred to you, Craine. There’s no one in Carbondale closer to Two-heads Carnac than you are.”