Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  At the far end of the entrance hall, a solitary student scuttled, roach-like, out of view.

  Pausing to pocket their gloves and unbutton their coats, Bob looked around to see that the building's empty two-story lobby featured a high-backed bench to the left. Beyond the bench, old-fashioned, dark wood display cases mounted above a vertically grooved walnut-varnished dado.

  In the showcases were what looked like old photographs of nineteenth-century graduating classes.

  Z seeming to show interest in the exhibits, Calder resumed his historic monologue. "The founder of the school was an eccentric named P. T. Bateman. Seemed to have made his fortune in the gold rush of '49 when he was young. In his old age, he bought the land here, land that turned out to cover a rich vein of native limestone. In fact, this building is built out of the stone quarried from beneath it. Old Bateman used student labor for the most part. That's why the building's so lop-sided and has such surprising nooks and crannies. In some ways, he was before his time. Had the vision that the School of the Ozarks later carried out -- of poor students sweating out their tuition on the job. That was before Bateman became a rich kid's school.

  "Straight ahead," Calder said, pointing, "is the school's auditorium. Through those arches."

  The access ways Calder was indicating were located fifteen feet to either side of another moldering trophy case, both horseshoe arches robed in black velvet. Through the curtained entrances would be the standard old-barn-of-an-auditorium: gray cement floor falling precipitously from back to front, wood-laminate arena seats bolted to the floor in curving rows, orchestra pit between the front row and the elevated stage, a two-story, many-folded curtain mantling the platform.

  Grand style, dark wood staircases curved up to either side to give access the theater's balcony. The kind of stairway Rhett Butler mounted to sweep a feebly protesting Scarlett up to bed.

  Glancing at the ceiling above the end-of-the-hall-trophy-case, Z noticed two soaring plaster eagles sculpted in old-fashioned high relief, the eagles flying at each other.

  Prowling the ten steps it took to stand beneath the birds, he pointed up. "Eagles?"

  "That's the school's original mascots," the professor called, his raised voice rebounding from the walls. "We're the Lions, now."

  "Two of them?"

  Left behind, the professor quick marched his approach. A hollow silence came with his arrival. "Just another thing you can put down to the quirkiness of Old Man Bateman."

  Z looked up again. No doubt about it, the birds were either going to kamikaze into one another or smack into the top of what looked like a stylized mountain placed between them.

  "It was a long time before I knew the significance of the eagles," Calder continued. "It was Oliver Washburn, our Classics man, who told me what the eagles represent. Bateman got them from a Greek myth." Calder, lecturing.

  "The Greeks believed that, in the beginning of the world, the head god set two eagles loose, one from the eastern edge of the earth, one from the western. Flying inland, the eagles met at the exact center of the world."

  Calder pointed up, between the eagles. "See that funny-looking thing between them, that conical lump that looks like a big thimble?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's the Omphalos – the elaborately crosshatched, bullet-shaped rock that ancient Greeks set up to mark the center of the world where the eagles met. You find this bird-and-Omphalos motif in the strangest places in this building. In carved wood panels; outlined in tile on the bathroom floors." He grinned. "My guess is that this place was the center of old Bateman's life. And that's the reason for this kind of symbolism."

  Though Z didn't know what to say to "symbolism" -- it wasn't a word much used in the detective trade -- he had a flash of insight about where he'd seen that fancy engraved rock. "Old Man Bateman" had used, not asparagus tops, but Omphaloi for capitals on the columns outside.

  Finished with his lecture about the college's former mascot(s), Calder stuck out his arm like a cavalry commander signaling troops, then took off to the left, Z following, the two of them skirting the front of the assembly hall, their footsteps ricocheting down a dark and empty, grim-doored corridor until they'd "cleared" the auditorium's width.

  Turning right at that point, they single filed down a too-narrow hall, sidling past sallow-skinned students, a boy then a girl, coming their way. Drama majors?

  Finally, Calder still in the lead, the two of them angled sharply right to rattle down a rickety flight of warped, splintery stairs, the steps descending into ... blackness.

  At the pitchy bottom, patting his hand around the wall, Calder found, then snapped a switch, banks of industrial fluorescents flickering on to show a dirty-walled, windowless basement jammed with scabby tables topped with cardboard boxes, wrought iron light stands, and rusty cylindrical klieg lamps.

  The floor was littered with colored squares of filter gel, crumpled play bills, pieces of ragged scrim, grease pencils, rusty tools, saws, old-fashioned ball-peen hammers, screwdrivers, a wood T-square, corroded nails, and decaying screws.

  Leaning against the far wall were stacks of ripped-up canvas flats.

  The pungent scent of spirit gum spiced up the room's stale air; the background odor ... oil paint gone bad.

  In front of the ruined flats were racks of clothing (costumes?) -- all these items no doubt used at some time in some play.

  A series of free-standing wardrobe-like wooden stalls had been built along the right wall, their warped doors swung wide.

  At the back of each cell, a dusty full-length mirror.

  A low shelf was fastened inside each partition. Straight chairs inside.

  Dressing rooms for student actors, was Z's guess.

  Dr. Calder still in the lead, they threaded their way through the room's junk; stepped over bent nails; passed a hundred cankerous paint cans stacked along the walls, Z tripping up a wad of dirt-encrusted muslin near the back.

  After a brief search at the far wall, the professor gave a chuckle as he pointed out a narrow, wood door behind a square stone buttress.

  "This wasn't so hard to find, after all," the professor bragged, beaming.

  But only if you'd been given detailed directions, Z thought, Z wondering how many years it would take someone to stumble across that recessed door. Decided it would be longer than a student was likely to be enrolled at Bateman.

  Meanwhile, Calder had turned the dented doorknob and squeaked the door open.

  Moving behind the professor, looking over Calder's shoulder, Z could see shadowy stairs that, after four steps, plunged into gloom.

  Again by feel, Calder found an old-fashioned circular switch, turning it to snap on a faint light far below.

  Now with at least some light to see by, in single file because the ladder-like stairs were so constricted, Calder in the lead as always, they started down, the doctor going cautiously, the walls and ceiling of the cramped stairway wedging in as they descended through murky semi-darkness toward the light source at the bottom, Z buttoning his coat with one hand as they "fell" into the ever-colder pit, using his other hand to clutch a handrail loosely pinned to the right stone wall.

  Determined to keep up, he was on Calder's heels as the professor clopped off the last step into the rakish light of what must have been a 150 watt bulb -- its dazzling steel coil blazing through clear glass -- the bulb dangling from twisted, cloth-wrapped wires hung in the center of the low room's limestone ceiling.

  Squinting in the glare of the tungsten filament, shielding his eyes, Z saw that the floor of this subterranean cavity -- like the basement above -- was crammed with theater decor, a room filled with padded chairs and gangrenous divans, all of them long banished to this theatrical graveyard. Plainly, this was the place where old props came to die.

  Junked at the front were two festering horse hair sofas, multiple rips in their brown cloth cushions leaking dirty kapok.

  Mangled end tables had been piled on the divans, scrofulous throw rugs draped over the s
ofa's backs.

  A squat coffee table rested on its back before a sofa -- the table's sawed-off leg no doubt a casualty of the Civil War.

  Art deco lamps with dented cardboard shades stood on wobbly stands.

  Moldering dressers, taborets, stools, and sideboards were tumbled here and there. One spindly gate-leg -- too infirm to stand on its own -- was propped up by an ottoman.

  Two dressers with cracked mirrors, were shoved against the right wall, the wood veneer of the vanities' sides sloughed off in the underground wet.

  Limp rolled-up rugs were stacked in a long, unlovely pile against the far wall.

  Z's quick appraisal of the place was that, while a junky could do drugs in a hole like this, it was no place to take a girl. Certainly not one of the upscale cutes in the college world above.

  Three of the room's walls looked like they'd been hacked from solid rock, the one to the left built of hastily cemented cinder blocks.

  No wasted paint down here in the damp.

  A second once-over confirmed Z's first impression. The place was as dank as any crypt.

  "This is where it happened?" A scrubbed spot. Blood cleaned up?

  "Yes. According to Kaiser quoting Terbrugghen, Tommie V was found over there in front of the fireplace." Though speaking in a normal tone, Calder's voice twanged from the stone walls like the thump of a one-string, steel guitar.

  Fireplace? Yes. Against the left wall, a fireplace. As absurdly placed as in a room designed to chill cadavers!

  Fascinated by finding a fireplace in this hole, Z stared at it.

  Until ... he saw something ... truly odd.

  Casters.

  The fireplace had casters.

  Casters? ......

  Of course!

  Like everything else in the room, the fireplace was a counterfeit -- a theater prop, the casters there to make it easier for stagehands to roll it on and off the stage above.

  Observing the hearth, Z noticed a flying eagle engraved in the limestone floor before it, the bird hell-bent on self-immolation in the fake fireplace.

  Eagles in odd places, Calder had said -- this being one of them.

  Had Old Man Bateman considered even this room to be the center of his world? (Z fervently hoped that, while investigating the Victor case, the center of Z's world would not become this blighted place.)

  A further reconsideration of the room had Z noticing that, beside the sinkhole's "grave-like" odor, the space had ... another smell. Equally unhealthy. Acrid. Poisonous.

  Testing the air carefully, trying to categorize that stench, he wondered if he'd smelled anything like it.

  On the other hand, why wouldn't the room smell bad? Everything here was ... filthy, the crumbling limestone sifting rock dust to the floor.

  "The paper said the gun was a prop." In this morgue, even Z's whispered voice hissed back. He could imagine how deafening the report of a gun would be down here.

  "Used in a play before my time. A detective thriller, Kaiser said," Calder continuing to explain. "As a safety measure, a modified starter's pistol is generally used in plays, a gun that fires nothing but blanks. It was just that this particular drama took a number of guns, some of them borrowed from who-knows-where. The gun that was used on Tommie V had never been returned to its owner, it seems. Lucas said the police found the gun beside Tommie V. Also the cardboard box the gun came in, the box nearby on the cushion of a sofa." Calder pointed to the most likely place the box could have been: about the only open spot on the rug-strewn, table-piled divans. "The box had extra bullets in it."

  "So anyone might have run across the gun. Loaded it." Z thought of something else. "All this comes directly or indirectly from the same professor?"

  "Oh. Yes. It was Lucas who found the body. Led the police down here."

  Figured. Calder had said this was the director's building.

  "What was the janitor doing here? Not cleaning." Z waved a finger at the dusty furniture.

  "Doesn't look like it. But, in fact, that's just what he was doing. Or, I probably should say, was getting ready to do. The powers-that-be had ordered the school cleaned from top to bottom or, in this case, from bottom to top. Part of the on going facelift of the college. Even I knew a general clean-up was in the works." Calder paused. "Some of us thought that faculty offices should be next in line at the renovation trough, but ....." Calder shrugged. Smiled the smile of the good loser. "Tommie V was on overtime that night. Someone remembered hearing him say he was going to start at the bottom and work his way up. He'd brought a bucket of water and a string mop down here."

  "Mop and pail? Doesn't seem like someone bent on suicide."

  "Not to me," Calder agreed.

  "Do you know where he was shot?" Using his forefinger for a gun barrel, Z pointed to his own temple.

  "In the chest," Calder corrected. "Twice!" Calder's meaning: a suicide couldn't have pulled the trigger more than once.

  It was Z's turn to shrug. "In K.C. sometime back, a suicide shot himself three times -- with two different guns."

  "Oh." Calder was disappointed.

  "Pretty rare, though. The old rule generally holds. Jumpers are crazy or on drugs -- trying to fly as often as not. Women take pills, but not enough. Men drive into bridge abutments, run their cars in closed garages, or shoot themselves in the temple. Cops eat their gun barrels -- which is the best way. Blows off the top of your head."

  Calder turned even paler in the unflattering light.

  "Actually," Z said quickly, changing the subject more to distract Calder than to point it out, "while the furniture is dirty, the floor looks pretty clean -- except for that white, rock dust along the left wall."

  And that was it for "clues."

  Nothing helpful -- no surprise there. Detective work was nothing like on T.V., clues found at the crime scene rarely pointing to the criminal. As for fingerprints, a seasoned crook hadn't left his prints in 40 years. The bad guys were caught -- if and when -- because a "friend" made a deal with the D.A. -- or out of revenge -- or for money. Under police pressure, hookers ratted out Johns. Cops rarely busted anyone without a tip.

  So, what about this case? Like Calder, Z saw it as a killing. Even more so because the janitor had brought his cleaning gear. Also because, while two shots to the chest was possible like he'd told the professor, it was rare.

  What the death could not be was an accident -- the janitor finding an unloaded gun (the most deadly gun of all,) fooling with it until he accidentally zapped himself. The second shot ruled out accidental death.

  Had the custodian's prints been on the gun? Had they discovered powder burns on the janitor's hand? Had big money warned the cops off this case? Or more likely, had someone dropped what seemed to be a low-class ball.

  If honest, the fuzz were wrong. Again.

  Maybe, Z thought, if he'd been able to see the body before the police removed it .......?

  Still .... something could turn up ... somewhere ... sometime. Luck, be a lady tonight.

  And that was that.

  Hardly any chance of luck either, Z knew, as he followed Calder up the stairs. Luck never happening to the little guy. Not to the Tommie Victors of this world.

  From his own experience, Z knew the only luck that poor folks could expect was bad ... day after day ... in all the sorry, humdrum corners of the world.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9

  As Z waited in his office -- the metal incinerator lids behind the office complex reflecting interesting light patterns through the grime of his "front" window -- he thought about how rare it was to have everything go right.

  In the first place, he was making money; had most of the Maddox thousand. In addition, except for what the locks would cost, he still had the eight hundred he'd collected from Ms. Ogden. (A couple hours work next Saturday and the Ogden project would be finished.) He'd also make an indeterminate amount of money from Calder for looking into the Victor murder.

  Because he had no illusions about being able
to find the janitor's killer, he felt uneasy about accepting Calder's money. Technically, of course, all he'd been hired to do was look for the murderer. (Certainly more than anyone else was going to do.) Still, knowing there was little chance of success was a violation of "results guaranteed."

  To make himself feel better, he decided to limit Dr. Calder's fee to two hundred dollars, the Victor case almost over, after all, Z needing only to put in a call to Ted Newbold to find out if the local cops knew anything they weren't telling. And that would be it. Two hundred dollars for half the Bateman College trip, plus a phone call -- a fee that compared nicely with the hourly rate of plumbers.

  The best news was not about money but that he'd gotten Susan on the phone. (Since he'd remembered she didn't have classes on Friday nights, he'd called her early.) When he'd asked, Susan had confirmed his deductive powers by admitting she'd been pulling the plug on the phone after getting home from night school, then going right to bed.

  Talking to Susan, he realized for the first time that going to school was like Susan taking on a part-time job after working all day. "Moonlighting" like that, it figured she'd be too tired to see him all that much; also too exhausted to party with her brand-new college friends.

  The best news of all was that Susan had invited him over for dinner tomorrow night, dinner and what would develop later -- the best of reasons to be in a great, good mood.

  Even the day had turned out to be a warm 20 degrees. Pretty good for January in Western Missouri. A perfect day -- except that the K.C. detective would soon be arriving.

  Without being aware of it, Z found himself with lighter in hand, nervously flicking the flame off and on.

  Stopped himself.

  Slipped the lighter back in his pocket.

  Wanting to calm himself some other way, he got up from his desk to get the latest paperback out of the top file drawer, a Hillerman novel.

  At the desk again, leg propped up comfortably, Z was soon "beamed" to the Arizona desert -- all sand and wind and sheep and Navahos and Indian customs. A place as far removed from the life of Big Bob Zapolska as the Man-Kinz space wars were from Kansas City.