Quoth the Raven

by Jane Haddam

  They were out on the edge of Minuteman Field, walking silently toward the path that led to the top of King’s Scaffold and the parking lot, when Jack began to get restless. He had been walking with his arms at his sides. He lifted them, wrapped them around his chest, unwrapped them, hooked his thumbs through his belt. He looked up at the stars, sharp and bright in the clear cold darkness, and sighed. Finally he said, “Mr. Demarkian? Do you know what all that was about, when I offered to walk Chessey to her door?”

  “You wanted to kiss the girl good night in decent privacy,” Gregor suggested.

  Jack smiled. “That, too, maybe. But it wasn’t the main point. The main point was rape.”

  “Rape?”

  “You look so surprised. This is a college campus.”

  “This is the middle of nowhere.”

  “What’s the matter,” Jack said. “Do you think rape doesn’t happen in the middle of nowhere?”

  Gregor brushed this away. “Don’t be ridiculous. I read the Uniform Crime Statistics every year. But venue does matter, Mr. Carroll. The middle of nowhere never has as high a crime rate as, say, New York City.”

  “That’s probably true. But I’m president of students. I get this report the Student Security Service puts out—that’s a security organization run by students, by the way, no fudging the numbers the way the administration might to pacify the parents. There were twenty rape attempts on this campus last semester and three successful ones. This semester there’s been I don’t know how many yet, but a lot. Chessey’s friend Evie Westerman got jumped right in the foyer of Lexington House at two o’clock in the morning not a month ago. Dick Corbin and I heard her screaming, smashed through one of those big windows on the main floor, made enough noise to wake the dead and still had to drag the guy off her by main force. And in case you think it was some local yokel getting back at the college, it was a sophomore from Concord House. Daddy makes a million and a half a year, Mommy has her own personal art gallery in Rittenhouse Square, and the kid came up to college with a Visa gold card with a twenty-thousand-dollar line of credit just for him. The dean put him on suspension, but I don’t think the message got through.”

  They had reached the path, its wide beaten rut detectable even in the darkness. Jack led the way up and Gregor followed him.

  “I take it you don’t approve much of the way your fellow students were raised,” Gregor said. “You must know they don’t all turn out like that, even if they’re rich.”

  “Of course I know,” Jack said. “Chessey didn’t turn out like that. More to the point, Evie didn’t turn out like that, and I think she’s got something like fifteen million in her own right. Car money, from Detroit. She’s still one of the sanest and most honest people I know. But Mr. Demarkian, I come from the kind of background that’s supposed to land kids in trouble. Alcohol, dope, sex every night at ten in abandoned cars in vacant lots—I keep thinking of all the guys I grew up with, including the ones who are already in jail. I can’t think of one of them who would have pulled the stunt that asshole pulled on Evie Westerman.”

  “You can’t think of one of them who would commit rape?”

  “Rape is one thing. Lying in wait for a girl two years older than you are just because she wouldn’t go out with you is something else. And I’ll—tell you what else is something else. The faculty. At least when students pull this kind of crap, it’s usually either alcohol or dope.”

  “Is there a lot of both here?”

  “Alcohol right out in the open, to hell with the Pennsylvania sale to minors laws. Dope—you probably couldn’t buy any, but if you want an ounce of crack you just let me go stand by the Minuteman for about fifteen minutes.”

  “What did you mean about the faculty?” Gregor asked him. “Somehow, I can’t see Dr. Crockett jumping on some girl in his eight o’clock class. I certainly can’t see Tibor doing it.”

  “Father Tibor is all right,” Jack said, smiling, “as for Dr. Crockett—” He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with old Ken these days. But they weren’t who I was thinking of. You ever heard of this guy Donegal Steele?”

  “Vaguely.” They had reached the steepest part of the path. It was much steeper than Gregor remembered from coming down, and it made him wonder. What did they do about the students in wheelchairs, of whom there were several? What did they do about anybody and everybody, once the ice storms started in the winter? Gregor said, “He seems to have disappeared, this Donegal Steele. At least, I haven’t seen him since I got here, and Tibor says he lives right next door.”

  “I haven’t seen him either,” Jack Carroll said, “not since the night before last. At the time, he was on his way to pop beers—”

  “What’s popping beers?”

  Jack explained. “When he didn’t show up on campus yesterday I figured he’d just gotten totally bombed and passed out at somebody’s house in the hills and was too hung over to get back. Now I think maybe he’s avoiding us. All this Halloween happiness was making him crazy. He’s supposed to have all sorts of standards.”

  “You don’t sound like you think he does.”

  “It depends on what you’re talking about,” Jack said. “Chessey’s got one of his classes. She says it’s pretty rough, a lot of required background knowledge, if you don’t have it you’re pretty confused. A lot of papers. He’s a real terror about grammar and punctuation.”

  “But?”

  “But he’s been chasing Chessey’s ass since the semester started and telling everyone on earth he got it when he didn’t—and I know he didn’t, because Chessey spends just about every spare minute of every day with either me or Evie. She’s not what you’d call a solitary person. He’s been after Dr. Elkinson, too. I heard her tell a friend of hers she nearly threw him off her balcony once, she was so pissed. She goes out with Dr. Crockett. And then he talks, you know what I mean? He philosophizes.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”

  “I ran into him in this place called the Beer Cellar one night, sitting at a table full of guys, all students, giving this lecture on how we’ve all been pussy-whipped and if we want to get into some woman’s pants we ought to let her know who’s boss and just do it.”

  “He sounds like a prince.”

  “Yeah.”

  They had reached the top of the path, the flat plain above the plain that was Minuteman Field. When Gregor looked in the direction of the campus, he could see the back of the jack-o’-lantern head of the effigy jutting up above the ridge of the Scaffold. When he looked in the other direction, he could see the shed bathed in the light from a trio of security lamps. It still looked ready to fall over.

  “Here we are,” Jack said, threading his way through the parked cars, not looking back to see if Gregor was keeping up. “You’re sure this is what you want to see, huh?”

  “To see and to ask you a few questions about,” Gregor said. “I don’t know very much about cars. I don’t know very much about machinery of any kind.”

  “Yeah, well, I know all about cars. Where I come from, you learn it as soon as you learn to talk. Before that, I guess you just don’t know how to ask your father for the keys.”

  Jack had reached the shed, a good six yards ahead of Gregor. He opened the door, snaked his hand in, and turned on the light. Then he started to take a step inside, and froze.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said, “the jerk’s been back and on the job again.”

  2

  “THE JERK,” IT TURNED out, was someone—identity unknown—who came in, used the solderer, and departed without cleaning up after himself. Sitting at the workbench and doing the cleaning himself, Jack told Gregor all about it. In his voice was the outrage of a man who loved and trusted good machinery. In his hands were what looked like thousands of miniature solder eyelashes. They were on his hands, too, and climbing up the sleeves of his black bat suit. As soon as Gregor Demarkian had seen them, scattered thick as dust over every inch of the workbench’s surface, he had been
sure he had come to the right place at the right time.

  Gregor had taken the only regular chair in the room and pulled it up to Jack Carroll’s side, so he could look on and talk while Jack was working. He was busy suppressing his fear and distrust of the mechanical—and his crushing sense of inadequacy in the face of machines—so that he could hear himself think.

  “The real pisser about all this,” Jack Carroll was saying, “is that it’s beyond my comprehension how he manages to make all this mess. I mean, for God’s sake, Mr. Demarkian. Soldering isn’t exactly what I’d call a fine art, not most of the time. It looks like he was sitting here with a toothpick making little pieces of crap to cause me trouble with.”

  “Mmm,” Gregor said. “You said the first time you saw a mess like this was this morning?”

  “Not this morning, yesterday morning. I was up here with Ted Barrows, fixing the speedometer cable on my car. I drive a wreck, in case you haven’t guessed. Usually if I’m going to mess with my car, I do it down in town where I work. They’ve got a better setup. But the timing wasn’t right yesterday, so I came in here, and I found—this.”

  “This this? Just like this?”

  “Just like. Maybe worse. I don’t know how long it took me to clean it up. Look at this solderer—solder gun, some people call it. If you leave it all gunked up like this, you can ruin it. A couple of hundred dollars right down the drain for no good reason at all.”

  Gregor was still thinking about timing, trying to make it go—but it wouldn’t. Maybe it would have if he’d known what he was getting at beyond the concrete, but he didn’t. He pushed it aside and took another tack.

  “Tell me something,” he said, “according to Miss Flint, this afternoon, just before Miss Veer keeled over, you were standing near her and Dr. Elkinson in the cafeteria line.”

  “That’s right. I’d gone up to get a Coke.”

  “Dr. Crockett was there, too.”

  “He came in while Dr. Elkinson and I were talking,” Jack said. “I think he was getting a Coke, too. It might have been lemonade.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Jack grinned. “Chessey came hauling up and dragged me out of there practically the minute Ken arrived. I think she’s sort of had enough of Ken. I’m not even sure I blame her.”

  “Now,” Gregor said. “Think. You were standing next to Miss Maryanne Veer.”

  “Right.”

  “She was holding a cafeteria tray.”

  “Right, too.”

  “What was on it?”

  “A cup of tea,” Jack Carroll said promptly.

  “That was all?”

  “That was absolutely all. I remember wondering what she needed the tray for. She could have carried the cup in her hands.”

  Gregor sighed. “It’s impossible,” he said. “It’s just impossible. There has to have been something else on that tray.”

  “Why?”

  This time, Gregor hesitated only a moment. There was no real reason not to let everyone know what he had worked out—what he knew had to be true. There were several reasons why that kind of revelation might be to his advantage. He told Jack what he had told Chessey Flint and David Markham before her, then sat back to see what Jack’s reaction would be.

  Jack’s reaction seemed to be entirely intellectual, as if he’d been handed a logic problem and told that its successful solution would determine his grade in Advanced Psychological Methods for the term.

  “You know,” he said, “just because there wasn’t anything on her tray when I saw it doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything later. She hadn’t reached the cash register yet.”

  “She had, however, reached the end of the line,” Gregor pointed out.

  “Well, yes, I know. But she was a little upset. Maybe she forgot and went back for her food after Chessey took me away.”

  “What was she upset about?”

  This time, Jack Carroll’s grin was broad and rueful. “Oh, well,” he said, “you’re not going to believe this, but it was Donegal Steele. I say you’re not going to believe it because Miss Veer doesn’t like him any better than I do—than any of us do. I think Donegal Steele may be the most disliked man on this campus.”

  “Because of his views on the sexuality of women?”

  “Because of everything,” Jack said. “The man is a crud, Mr. Demarkian. You pick a topic, he’ll be a crud about it.”

  “Do you know what kind of, um, crud he is being to Miss Veer?”

  “Sure. Miss Veer’s been running the administrative side of the Program since forever. Dr. Steele thinks she ought to be forcibly retired and replaced with someone a little easier on his eyes and a little more tractable about his demands. He’s always threatening Miss Veer that when he gets to be Head he’ll make her—”

  “Head?” Gregor said. “I didn’t know Dr. Steele was Head.”

  “He’s not. I’m not even sure he’s going to be, Mr. Demarkian. He’s just always saying he’s going to be. He says that’s what he was hired for.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I think I hope not right along with you.” Gregor drummed his fingers impatiently against the workbench, now almost clean. Jack had been working while they talked, without a break, not needing to concentrate to accomplish something he had accomplished so many times before. Gregor wished he hadn’t explained that a solderer was sometimes called a solder gun. It made the damn thing seem even more lethal than it looked.

  “Let’s get back to this afternoon,” he said. “What was Miss Veer upset about in relation to Dr. Steele?”

  “That he was trussing, of course.” Jack had taken the solderer apart and laid its pieces in a line along the workbench, to clean them individually. “Miss Veer takes care of everybody’s schedules and that sort of thing. Classes. Office hours. I guess Dr. Steele missed his whole day Tuesday, and then he wasn’t around this morning, either, and she was worried about it.”

  “How worried?”

  “Worried enough to want to call the police and report him missing,” Jack said. “That’s what she and Dr. Elkinson were talking about when I came up. Dr. Elkinson was trying to talk her out of it.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On what grounds do you think? Verbally, anyway. Steele isn’t the world’s most trustworthy character. He doesn’t usually skip office hours and classes and things, but still. Personally, I think Dr. Elkinson doesn’t care one way or another if the man is dying in a ditch somewhere by the side of the road. I wouldn’t either.”

  “Mmmm.” Gregor looked down and saw that he was still drumming his fingers against the workbench. He picked his hand up and put it in his lap. “Let’s go back to something else,” he said. “Miss Veer didn’t have any food on her tray but she wasn’t at the cash register yet. If she had gone back to get something to eat, could you speculate on what she might have taken?”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “I used to work lunch in the cafeteria freshman year. That was the worst of it financially and I needed the two jobs. I’ve seen her once or twice since then, too. She always ate the same things.”

  “Which were?”

  “A chef’s salad with blue cheese dressing. A Belleville Lemon and Lime—that’s a regional brand of soda made locally. She drank the soda with the salad. She drank the tea after the salad. She’d put the tea in the bottom of the cup, dump water in on top of it and let the thing steep all through lunch. By the time she was ready to drink it, it was black.”

  Gregor thought about it. In one way, it was perfect. He couldn’t imagine anything more appropriate in which to disguise lye—especially commercially produced lye products, like Drano or toilet bowl cleaner—than blue cheese dressing. The color was right. The consistency was right. Any small gummed-up wads of lye would look like minuscule pieces of cheese. Still, it wouldn’t work.

  “It would have been all over everything,” he explained. “Pieces of lettuce and turkey and cucumber. Smears of dressi
ng. Nobody could have removed all the traces or even removed a significant portion of them soon enough. It had to be something else. Something more self-contained.”

  “Maybe she changed her pattern this afternoon because she was so worked up,” Jack said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Demarkian. I only saw what I saw. It wasn’t much.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Jack had the solderer put together, lying clean and shining in front of him on the workbench. “I’m done here now,” he said. “We could get on to what you wanted to come here for. I’m sorry I held you up.”

  “That’s all right, too,” Gregor waved it away. “Are you sure I’m not holding you up? It’s not getting too late? What I want you to do may take some time.”

  “Chessey will wait. If she doesn’t, I’ll wake her up.”

  Gregor wanted to tell him not to get too cavalier about that young woman. She might be a little distraught at the moment, but she didn’t look like an eternal pushover. It wasn’t any of his business.

  “That thing,” he said, pointing at the solderer. “Is it all cleaned up and ready to go again?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fine. Now I want you to make me something with it, or make this thing out of solder one way or another. A small cylinder, about half an inch across and less than a quarter of an inch thick, absolutely flat or even a little concave at one end, a little bumped out at the other.”

  Jack Carroll was staring at him in astonishment. “Mr. Demarkian, what are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Gregor said, “but when we’ve made one right I will know that. Will you do it?”

  Jack Carroll would do it, but it was clear he thought Gregor Demarkian was crazy.

  Five

  1

  WHEN DR. ALICE ELKINSON told Dr. Kenneth Crockett that she wanted to come down to his apartment for the night, rather than having him come up to hers, he found it only a minor inconvenience—usually, he would have found it a major pain in the ass, and protested. Alice had one of the three apartments in this building with full kitchens. Ken only had a cooking alcove, like Father Tibor’s and Donegal Steele’s. The problems came with breakfast, which Ken always wanted to overeat, and which he didn’t like going to the cafeteria for. Alice was remarkably accommodating about breakfast, considering how she operated in the rest of her life. Sometimes, her willingness to cook for him surprised Ken beyond reason. Ken often told himself that that was what he loved about her, her surprises, the fundamental contradictions in her personality—even though some of those contradictions made him nervous. He often told himself that she would be perfect if she would only rid herself of her fickleness. Alice was always hating someone one minute and loving him the next, or vice versa. It made Ken wonder about what was going on between the two of them, and how long it would last. So far, it had lasted five years without a serious break. When he got very, very nervous, he told himself he ought to be satisfied with that.