Gun out, he raised the barrel above the edge of the desk top and returned fire.
Above the din he could occasionally hear Fenwick bellowing. “Fuck, double fuck, and triple fuck.”
Turner emptied all twelve rounds toward the doorway. He yanked his gun back behind the desk to reload. Silence.
“Buck?” Turner called. He heard grunts and the sound of clothing scraping against the floor. Buck’s head appeared around the left side of the desk. “You okay?” Turner asked.
“Not as good as I’m going to be when I get that bastard.”
They listened carefully but didn’t hear any sounds beyond their own breathing. Carefully, Turner raised an eyebrow and his gun over the edge of the desk. He heard Fenwick calling in their situation.
Eventually they decided it was safe enough to venture forth. They met their reinforcements at the head of the stairs. An hour and a half followed, filled with explanations, on-the-spot paperwork, and interviews with the all the brass that showed up.
The Area Ten commander arrived. Half an hour later, Turner and Fenwick walked out. The last thing the commander said to them was, “Find out what is behind all this. I don’t care how many people you have to use. This is madness.”
Turner and Fenwick sat in the car. “I was scared,” Fenwick said.
“Me too,” Turner said.
They’d been friends many years. It didn’t bother them to admit the truth to each other. They sat in silence for fifteen minutes, enjoying the comfort of each other’s presence. Finally Fenwick shook his head. “I’m hungry.”
Turner looked at his watch. “Nearly seven.”
“Missed Jeff’s game,” Fenwick said.
“Yeah,” Turner said. “He’s got one tomorrow night. I’ve missed too many family things lately.”
“I know how it is,” Fenwick said.
And Turner knew that Fenwick did know how it was, and he was content with his partner’s sympathy, but the feeling of absence from his boys gnawed at him.
“I’m hungry,” Fenwick repeated.
“You can eat at a time like this?” Turner asked.
“I’ve never had a time exactly like this,” Fenwick answered.
“When I got shot in the butt ten years ago, I was embarrassed and in pain. Now I’m hungry enough to eat the contents of a bakery early on a Sunday morning. The more creamed-filled doughnuts the better.”
They settled on Ann Sathers on Fifty-seventh Street.
“We got Kempe, Molly McGee, and Laura Giles to see,” Fenwick said over his third dessert.
“We’ll have to roll you to the interviews,” Turner said.
“You should eat more chocolate,” Fenwick said. “It’s disgusting when a guy in his mid thirties hasn’t started putting on excess weight.”
Turner wasn’t up to debating metabolism. “It’s Saturday night. I’m tired, still a little shook, but I want to follow this up now.
“We could get shot at again,” Fenwick said.
Turner said, “So, we solve the case. Problems over.”
Fenwick gazed at him carefully and said, “No guts, no glory.”
They started at McGee’s house. At eight-thirty Saturday night only a dim light shone from upstairs.
“Getting colder,” Fenwick said, as he gave the door several more significant knocks. Turner watched his breath form steam.
Someone switched on a light in the foyer. Brightness gleamed through the strips of stained glass windows on either side of the entrance.
Molly McGee opened the door. “My grandfather’s asleep,” she told them.
“We need to talk to you,” Turner said.
She looked confused but let them in. She led them to the room they’d talked to her grandfather in. She sat in the chair her grandfather had been in several nights before. She wore loose blue jeans and a turquoise sweater. She curled one foot under her. “What do you need?” she asked softly.
The room seemed to call for near whispers. Turner responded quietly, “We understand you had words with Gideon Giles?”
“Yes. Years ago. So what? It’s not a secret. Half the people in the ward saw me.”
“What was it about?” Turner asked.
She shut her eyes and threw back her head. When she opened her eyes, Turner thought they were icy with hate. “I said to him that night, that he was an unprincipled piece of dirt and that I hoped he died a horrible and lingering death. I didn’t kill him,” she said. “I didn’t even see him that day when he came to talk to my grandfather.”
Fenwick spoke in his normal tone. It sounded like trumpets in an outhouse. “Anybody could have gotten into his office from Monday morning until Tuesday at noon and poisoned his drink. Can you account for all your time for those twenty-four hours?”
“No,” she said, “but I’d bet most of the people in this city would have a tough time coming up with a minute by minute remembrance of any day.”
“Most of the people in the city didn’t hate Gideon Giles the way you did,” Fenwick said.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said, “and neither did my grandfather, who did a great deal for this city and deserves to be left alone.”
The door to the library slowly swung open. A spectral figure hovered at the edge of the light.
“Molly, what is this?” Mike McGee tottered toward them. He wore a silk bathrobe over pajama bottoms. His slippered feet felt their way across the carpet. Molly jumped up and rushed toward him. She lead him to his chair. He gazed at the detectives.
“Mr. Turner and Mr. Fenwick,” the old man said. “And why are you here?” McGee asked.
Turner explained.
“You think my Molly killed him, because of what that sniveling, lying, wise guy did to me? No, I would have done it myself. I hate him far more than Molly possibly could. If you’re looking for hatred as a motive, then I’m your man, not Molly.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Turner said, “but we’re looking for opportunity. With all due respect, you don’t get around all that well. You couldn’t have possibly snuck into the University and placed poison into Giles’s drink. It needed someone quick and daring who could blend in with the other university students. Molly fits that.”
“But she wasn’t seen there, was she?” McGee asked.
“No,” Turner admitted.
“Found any of her fingerprints?” McGee asked.
“Fingerprints were mostly a mess,” Turner admitted. “We have Giles’s and lots of random others. We could try matching hers.”
Mike McGee tottered to his feet. He thrust a boney finger toward Turner. “How dare you! In my own home! Accuse my granddaughter! How dare you! Get out!”
His thin voice was high and raspy. Near the end he could barely gasp the words out. Molly rushed to him, comforted him, held him.
She glared at the detectives. Turner returned the gaze calmly.
They all listened to Mike McGee recover his composure. Finally, Molly McGee took her grandfather’s hand and said, “I’d be happy to be fingerprinted. Mine won’t match any there. I haven’t been in Giles’s office.” She looked at the cops spitefully. “They are accusing me, and I know I can prove them wrong.”
“Won’t find her fingerprints,” Fenwick said in the car.
“I wish she made a better suspect, but she’s not really more likely than a lot of other people. We can’t just start fingerprinting the entire Fifth Ward.
Turner called into the station. He talked to the watch commander. No news.
When he was done, he said to Fenwick, “It’s nine-thirty. Late to go questioning,” Turner said.
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s four in the morning. I want to talk to every single one of these shits.”
They drove to Kenwood Avenue and down to the Giles’s home. Alex Hill, Giles’s brother-in-law, answered the door. He held it open but didn’t invite them in. “It’s late,” he said.
“We’re sorry,” Turner said, “but we need to talk to Laura Giles.”
; Hill led them through an entryway still filled with winter coats on hooks. He opened another door to a living room. He asked them to sit. He would tell his sister they were here.
The room had a black leather couch with two matching love seats grouped around a glass-topped coffee table. One wall had a massive stereo system, silent now. The wall opposite the electronics had shelves filled with knickknacks and paperback books.
Laura Giles entered. She wore a severe black dress, and carried a box of pastel-colored tissues. She sat on the couch. Her brother started to sit next to her.
“We’d like to talk to you alone, Mrs. Giles,” Turner said.
Hill glared at him, but Laura Giles put her hand on her brother’s arm. She nodded at him. He left.
Turner and Fenwick sat on either side of her on the love seats.
Turner apologized for the lateness of the visit.
She waved this away calmly.
They asked if she’d remembered anything that might help them in their investigation, especially in terms of Giles’s health-food beverages, but she told them she hadn’t thought of anything new.
Fenwick asked, “We understand, Mrs. Giles, that your husband had changed over time, especially at the time he got involved in politics. Could you tell us about that?”
“Changed?” She looked thoughtful for a minutes. “I think some others saw him as this man who emerged from the quiet world of academia to the bright light of ambition and power.” She gave them a brief smile. “I always knew he was ambitious and driven. He told me about his high school years. He was president of one thing or another, his class, clubs. I think he loved the struggles at the University. The power games everybody tried to pretend didn’t happen. It just wasn’t enough for him.”
“Did he change toward you?” Turner asked.
“I don’t think so. Over time we saw each other less, but we both had careers. I was always deeply involved in his campaigns. Someone told you that we didn’t get along?”
“When one person moves to a big new position, sometimes it’s hard for the rest of the family to adjust,” Fenwick said.
“We had no children,” Mrs. Giles said. “I had my career.”
They left a few minutes later.
“Big nothing,” Fenwick said in the car. “Where’s Kempe live?”
Kempe lived in the Beverly neighborhood, a block west of the corner of 111th Street and Longwood Drive. The exterior was English Tudor. Kempe greeted them in stocking feet, gray slacks, and a smoking jacket. Turner apologized for the lateness of the visit. Kempe pulled a pipe out of his mouth and invited them in.
A long hallway with an antique Oriental rug and a granite ledge, led to a living room with carved wood sculptures of medieval monks above the fireplace, an antique Persian rug, ivory-colored sofas in silk and cotton, and soft peach walls. On the opposite wall from the fireplace, a stereo system softly played classical music.
Kempe stopped at a pipe holder in the middle of the fireplace mantle, took out a pouch, refilled his pipe, and sat down.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked.
He busied himself with tamping down his tobacco and lighting his pipe.
“It was more than friendly rivalry with Giles, wasn’t it?” Fenwick asked.
Kempe stopped waving out a match and glared at him. A second later, he said, “Ouch,” and flung the still-glowing remnant into the fireplace.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kempe said.
“Cut the crap,” Fenwick said. “Tell us what really happened.”
“I told the truth on Tuesday. My God, I tried to save that man’s life. I pounded on his chest, put my lips to his to try and breath life into him.”
Turner said, “We’ve been told your rivalry was a great deal more than what you lead us to believe. We need to clear that up.”
“Who’s been talking?”
The cops didn’t answer.
“What goes on in the University should stay in the University. We have no need for outside interference.”
Turner said, “We’d like you to tell us what really happened between the two of you.”
“I suppose you’ve talked to half the backbiters in the department, haven’t you,” Kempe said. “Jealousy is rife among those fools. We used to have a pretty laid-back department. Everybody like a family, willing to go out of their way for the other. It’s changed like everything else. I think it all started when they moved part of the department up to the third floor of Swift Hall years ago. They should never have separated us.”
“What happened between you and Gideon Giles, Mr. Kempe?” Turner asked.
“All right. It was probably that Atherton Sorenson who told. I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s going to retire in a few years. Some of us manage to think ahead. We want to plan for an orderly succession. He doesn’t like me. Thinks I’m scheming for his job.” He puffed on his pipe until it went out.
The detectives waited in silence.
“All right. Giles was a thief. Every time I turned around he’d be topping me. If I had article coming out in Chaucer Monthly, he always seemed to have one the month before in The Chaucer Review. I never openly accused him of cheating, stealing my research or ideas. It’d sound like a petty departmental jealousy. For a while it was quite a joke. He never duplicated my research, but if I’d come to a unique conclusion based on true scholarship, he seemed to have the same thing based on little more than pure whimsy.”
“If journals published his materials, he must have had research to support his conclusions,” Turner said.
Kempe pointed the stem of his pipe at Turner. “You make an interesting point. Yes, his research was there, but where did he get it? Did he steal it from some graduate student? That’s been known to happen. I joked with him to his face, but I knew him for the snake he was. I watched him like a hawk. After you people went through his papers, someone in the department called Mrs. Giles to see if she wanted them. She didn’t. So I volunteered to go through them. I found what I was looking for. Proof that the rat had been cheating for years.”
“You didn’t find this out for sure until after the murder?” Fenwick asked.
“Right, but I knew him well for the conniver he was. For a while I thought he was trying to undermine me in departmental meetings. Always seemed to take the opposite side from me. I was too smart for him. I began waiting until he had made his position clear, then I’d make my move.”
“Isn’t this all just a little overdramatic?” Fenwick asked. “This is only a university. I thought you guys were supposed to be reading books, studying, educating, all that.”
Kempe chose not to condescend to Fenwick. He put his pipe aside, rubbed his right index finger under his nose. “I’ve been thinking about this since the murder. I’m afraid you’re more than right. Being a university professor should be one of the most delightful jobs on earth. Some of us make it into a vicious gossiping society. We’ve got to change.”
They asked him about Laura Giles, but he’d only met her at faculty functions, and they had spoken little more than beyond what was polite.
They talked for a while longer. They couldn’t get Kempe to go beyond his admission that the rivalry between him and Giles had been intense.
It was after eleven. At Area Ten headquarters, they turned in the unmarked car. Turner found stacks of paperwork and two messages on his desk. The top note was from Ian. He had set up a meeting with the heads of numerous liberal groups for noon the next day.
The bottom one was from Clark Burke. He tossed it among the mounds of paper on his desk. He could fuss with the love-struck nineteen-year-old tomorrow.
EIGHT
Paul trudged up the steps into his house. No lights shone here or in Mrs. Talucci’s next door. He’d worked nearly sixteen hours every day since Tuesday. His shoulders sagged, his head drooped. He used his key to unlock the front door. He felt for the light switch to the right and flicked it on. The brass lamp on the end table nearest the door shone dimly.
Turner halted. Giovanni Parelli sat in the brown overstuffed chair. Recliner pulled out, feet resting on it, Parelli gave him a smile. Turner saw even white dentures. He gazed at the dark brown eyes, the only real color in the gray ashen face.
“Who let you in?” Paul asked. He glanced toward Jeffs room then toward the stairs and Brian’s.
“Your boys are fine,” Parelli said.
Paul glanced around the room. A noise from the kitchen drew his attention. The burly guard shuffled into the room. Paul heard him dragging something behind him, then realized it was someone. The guard dumped Frank Ricken onto the couch.
“Dad.” Brian appeared from in back of the guard. He had a red mark under his chin. “I tried to keep them out,” Brian said. The guard didn’t try to stop Brian from joining his dad near the door.
Paul examined his son’s face. “Is Jeff all right?”
“Yeah. He’s still asleep. They didn’t bother him.”
Paul turned to Parelli. “What is this?” he demanded. “How dare you break into my house?”
Parelli said, “I’m old. I’m sorry. I forget. I have news and I’m angry. Your son was overly vigorous in trying to keep us out. I’m sorry we hurt him. He’s a good boy. Takes after his father. Wanted to protect his younger brother most of all. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important. Again I apologize. Please sit down.”
Paul tossed his coat on the back of the couch and sat on the armrest closest to Parelli. Brian stood behind him. The guard moved into the shadows of the hallway he’d just emerged from. Paul noted the rise and fall of Ricken’s chest. In the soft light from the one lamp he could see a multitude of bruises on the right side of his face. Dark crimson patches stretched from shoulder to waist on the front of the shirt.
“Is he okay?” Paul asked.
“I’m told he will regain consciousness and will have a tremendous headache. The bruises you see. His wound was tended. He will be all right.”
“What happened to him?” Turner asked.
“He was going to blow the whistle on our entire scheme,” Parelli said. “I didn’t know that. For Mrs. Talucci’s sake, I will swear to you that I did not know that when you came to see me last night. I have no idea if you could possibly believe me. Maybe that isn’t important.”
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