Knife Music

by David Carnoy

  He remembered his brother smiling. “No one’s ever asked me about it like that,” he said. But he didn’t answer the question right away. Instead, he talked about what he’d experienced when he got back. How people had treated him badly. Well, no, they hadn’t treated him badly. They’d just behaved badly. He’d hated how mediocre everybody seemed. How lazy. How misinformed. And all he could think about was that he’d risked his life for these people. He’d risked his life for these awful fucking people.

  “I’ll tell you, Teddy, what I took away from it. The American public isn’t worth dying for. It’s just not worth it.”

  At the time, Cogan didn’t really get it. He was twenty-one, ready to take on the world, a hard-charger who was not only going out to make his fortune, but damn if he wasn’t going to help people while he did it. Yet he had enough respect for his brother, and his life experience, to realize there must be some truth to the statement, and that someday he’d inevitably come to appreciate it.

  As time passed and he settled into his career and life, he did. But he also began to interpret the remark in slightly different ways. Late one evening, after a particularly hard night (and day) at the hospital, he heard himself interpret it in a way that was altogether different.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said to the woman lying next to him. “If the American public isn’t worth dying for, then why is it worth saving?”

  “That’s easy,” she said. She moved closer to him and put her hand on his chest. “They’re worth saving,” she whispered tenderly in his ear, “so I can make more money.”

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  “So am I.”

  Now, sitting across from him, that same woman is smiling nostalgically.

  “Remember?” he says.

  “Yeah. I was happy then.”

  “And you’re not happy now?”

  “In a different way.”

  “Better or worse.”

  “Different.”

  He takes a sip of his drink and wipes his mouth with his napkin. It’s one of the more personal moments they’ve shared over the last month. He’s tempted to try to draw it out further, but quickly thinks better of it. Any time he’s gotten too personal, it’s only led to friction. Instead, he asks, “What do you know about Madden?”

  “Why?”

  “Outside of work, do you know anything about him?”

  She shrugs. “He goes to my church. The old one. On Oak Grove. Church of the Nativity. Or I should say, I sometimes go to his, for my attendance has been seriously lagging these days.”

  “No dirt? No rumors?”

  She shakes her head. “He’s a pretty private guy. I don’t know anybody who socializes with him. He’s got a couple of kids. He’s married.”

  From his front shirt pocket he takes out the folded-up copy of the Mercury article she’d given him. Opening it, he holds it up in front of him, but at an angle, pointing it toward the window, hoping whoever is watching will somehow see it. He’s highlighted a few of the paragraphs with a yellow highlighter. “Read this again,” he says.

  She takes the article from him and skims it quickly, murmuring aloud the passages he’s highlighted.

  “OK,” she says when she’s through.

  He deliberately holds it up between them again and points to one of the yellowed passages. “Do you see this part? The part where it talks about the doctor who sexually abused him.”

  She nods. “Yeah.”

  “I was thinking maybe your investigator should look into it. Take him off the girl and the family for a couple of days. As long as we’re going after everyone, we might as well go after the detective. He’s potentially got a built-in bias toward doctors. Who knows how far he’s willing to go to destroy me.”

  “You think he’d do something illegal?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know enough about him to make that call.”

  “The abuse story checks out,” she says. “I’ve had my guy poking around already. His childhood doctor was dismissed from the hospital.”

  “The doctor is still alive?”

  “Died several years ago. Why, is this something you’ve looked into? Is that the information you’re withholding from me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going tell me? Not even a hint?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I don’t get it, Ted.”

  He looks down at his plate, avoiding her deadly pout. Picking at the remnants of his asian chicken salad, he says, “I’m not trying to manipulate you, Carolyn. I just need a few days to work a couple things out. I’ll tell you everything. Soon. I promise.”

  33/ WAS WHAT IT WAS

  May 11, 2007—5:28 p.m.

  WHEN HE’S “CHILLING” IN HIS BED, LIKE HE’S DOING NOW, or at the gym lifting weights, or just walking alone between classes, it comes to him in little flashbacks, like the ones he’s used to seeing in movies: Watkins’s maniacal smile, Kristen’s lifeless face, the stain on the bed sheet, the pounding beat of the Chemical Brothers. They appear for an instant, solitary and fleeting.

  The flashbacks don’t haunt him exactly. No, he concludes, they don’t rack him with guilt, because when someone kills herself, you feel the worst about what you last said to her, less about what came before. But in recent days, the flashbacks have come more frequently and intensely; the thought that they’re there, suddenly indelible and inescapable, makes him think of what Watkins said, that the dead don’t remember—but they have a habit of making people not forget.

  The other day he watched enviously as Fleischman used the video-editing program on his Mac to slice and dice footage he’d shot with his camcorder. Fleischman showed him how you dragged the marker to a certain point on the story line, hit your mouse button, dragged it to another point, hit the mouse button again, then the delete key, and presto, the section was gone, instantly eliminated.

  He imagined that instead of Fleischman’s footage in the computer, they were working on his. A couple of cuts later, just a five-minute sequence here, a two-minute sequence there, and everything would have been fine, the way it should have been—though, of course, there was no way to erase what happened later at the doctor’s home. He didn’t own that footage.

  If you asked Watkins, he’d say it was just a question of how you looked at the tape. If he really had the footage there in front of him, he’d say look, she initiated the action. She kissed him. And while she may have been out of it, she wasn’t really unconscious. Not totally anyway.

  He’d sometimes wanted to tell her. If he kept Watkins out of it, he thought he could somehow make it OK. He’d even suggested that to Watkins, to try to get him off his back. “If she doesn’t remember,” he said, “why can’t I make the memory for her? I’ll say we hooked up. I’ll make it nice. It’ll be between her and me. You’ll be out of it.”

  Watkins didn’t trust him to pull it off. He’d fuck it up somehow. And furthermore, he didn’t see the point. It was an unnecessary risk. Nothing happened. It was as simple as that.

  He was right. But just a week before she died, he couldn’t resist making an impetuous foray.

  “I want to ask you something personal,” he’d said to Kristen. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

  They were sitting in his car in front of her house. It was early evening and still light out.

  “Ask,” she replied, “and I’ll decide.”

  He put his hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly. “When you were a kid, how did you think you’d lose your virginity?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. I guess I was of the romantic school. The long-term boyfriend thing. But I wasn’t all obsessed by it or anything.”

  He nodded, plotting his next question, but before he could formulate it, she asked, “How about you, how’d you think you’d lose it?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. Lots of ways, I guess. I wasn’t picky.”

  He must have turned red because she laughed and said, “You�
�re blushing. How cute. So, how’d you lose it?”

  And there it was. The opening. The question he wanted, asked in just the right way.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, looking straight ahead, out the windshield. “One of the guys at the frat hooked me up. I was pretty wasted and he got this girl to go up to his room with me. I actually don’t remember much. Just that it was kind of awkward and not all that long.”

  He didn’t look over at her as he spoke, but even in profile, he must have appeared tense, because he heard her say, “You don’t seem OK with it.”

  “It was what it was.”

  “Did you ever speak to her again?”

  Now he looked at her. He was at the edge. He was there, staring down into the ravine, ready to take the fall. All he had to say was, “I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?” And he almost did.

  You did, he now thought, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, tossing a squeeze ball in the air. You did.

  But at the last instant he’d stepped back.

  “Yeah, I spoke with her,” he said. “It was kind of weird. But we spoke and it was cool. We never said anything about it, though.”

  “And you’re OK with that?”

  “Yeah, as I said, it was what it was.”

  How would she have reacted? Would she have been upset? Would she have believed him?

  “Why are you telling me this now?” she probably would have asked. And he would’ve had to say that with everything that had happened he thought it would be too much; it would have been overwhelming. “And what do you think it is now?” he imagined her retort.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers aloud, tossing the squeeze ball in the air. “I’m sorry.”

  And just then he hears a knock on his door. He catches the ball and holds it in front of his face, his fist clenched.

  “Who is it?” he asks tersely, concerned it’s Watkins or the police. Who’s worse at this point, he doesn’t know.

  “It’s Gwen,” the muffled voice comes through the door.

  Gwen? What’s she doing here?

  He gets up from the bed, and opening the door, attempts a suave greeting: “To what do I owe the—”

  But his voice trails off when he sees she’s not alone. A man, an older man, is standing a little behind her to her left. His face looks very familiar. And then he realizes why.

  34/ MISSING MINUTES

  May 11, 2007—4:58 p.m.

  WHEN COGAN ARRIVES AT MEYER LIBRARY, THE FORMER UNDERGRADUATE library that students still refer to by its old tongue-in-cheek acronym UgLy (the cement and glass building is neither attractive nor particularly comfortable to study in, but it does stay open 24/7), Gwen Dayton is already there, waiting for him at the top of the steps, dressed in white jeans and a blue Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt, as tall and lanky as he remembers her, an easy spot. Understandably, she sounded a bit apprehensive on the phone, which is probably why she now has an unexpected escort, a girl whose no-nonsense attitude and firm handshake makes him think future FBI agent. Gwen introduces her as Kathy Jorgenson.

  The awkward greeting behind them, they set off for fraternity row, a cluster of eight or nine houses spread out across three separate streets that appear on the map as a U placed on its left side. Periodically glancing backward to make sure he isn’t being followed, he listens to Gwen tell him what she’d already told Carolyn: the party that night had been at a frat that had been at one time the school’s admissions office. Thus, its nickname: Rejection House.

  The frat prides itself on being eclectic and has a reputation of drawing an attractive roster of guys, many of whom don’t take the Greek concept too seriously and benefit from the “bad boy” mystique of having the word “rejection” incorporated into the description of their brotherhood. Out in front of the white house, on the well-manicured lawn, a couple of members are throwing a Frisbee, daring a black Labrador, who’s dashing back and forth between them, to intercept their passes.

  “Hey, Tom,” Gwen says to the one on the right. “Have you seen Mark?”

  “I haven’t,” says Tom, a wiry guy with short, curly hair, his eyes covered with wrap-around sunglasses. “But he might be up there.”

  Mark Weiss, the frat president and Gwen’s boyfriend, isn’t there. Gwen knew he wouldn’t be there because she’d talked to him earlier that day and he said he wasn’t going to be there. Which is why she’d chosen this time to give him the tour he’d asked for.

  “We’ll make this quick,” she says, leading them up the stairs. “There isn’t much to see anyway.”

  There really isn’t.

  “She was sitting there,” Gwen says, pointing to a spot on the floor. “She was propped up against that wall, right next to the radiator.”

  They’re standing in the middle of the third-floor bathroom, which has an old, slightly rundown, institutional vibe to it, though it’s surprisingly clean and free of the faint scent of stale beer that greeted them on the ground floor. There’s two of everything. Two urinals, two stalls, two showers, two sinks, even two windows, one of which is open, drawing in a light but steady breeze of warm spring air.

  Gwen sets the scene, describing the people who were around Kristen. He stares at the spot. Listening to Carolyn’s interview tapes and later reading the transcript, he’d imagined the scene many times. He hadn’t expected a catharsis visiting the place, but seeing it now is an oddly empty experience, for there’s little his imagination hasn’t already filled in. Even the flaking of the silver paint on the radiator is strangely familiar.

  He looks at Kathy, Gwen’s friend, who’s been virtually silent during the tour.

  “Were you here?” he asks.

  No,” she says. “I’d left already. But I saw her earlier, dancing. She was drunk. But not prop-me-up-against-a-radiator drunk.”

  “Let me ask you guys something,” he says. “And this may seem like a little bit of a weird question. But do you know of anybody at school who had an STD in recent months? You know, a venereal disease?”

  They look at each other, slightly taken aback.

  “I know a girl with herpes,” Kathy offers after a moment. “She got it from some guy last summer in Spain. Does that count?”

  Before they leave the floor, he takes a quick peek down the adjacent hallway, which is lit during the day by two skylights that, with the sun now lower on the horizon, aren’t drawing in a ton of light. He might have investigated further; Gwen, however, is wary of knocking on any doors because she says many of the guys had been interviewed before, some of them several times, and they’re getting fed up with all the questions, especially since their punishment, in the form of two years probation for the frat, has already been exacted by the authorities.

  He scans the doors, counting four on each side of the hall. Two on each side are doubles, according to Kathy, and two are singles, bringing the total number of occupants on the floor to twelve. He remembers Carolyn telling him that thirty-three “brothers” lived in the house while another eighteen lived elsewhere on campus, which meant that not every floor was laid out exactly the same.

  “Who you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

  In unison, they turn around to face the voice. Standing at the top of the stairwell is a guy who can only be described as a refugee from some vehemently hip jeans ad. He has pretty-boy features but a blue-collar outfit: along with the Levi’s, he’s wearing tan work boots and a short-sleeve T-shirt over a long-sleeve one, the shirt on top splattered in spots with paint that’s faded but visible. In his hand, he’s clutching a rather large organic chemistry book.

  “Oh, hey, Gwen,” he says.

  “Hey, C. J.,” she greets him coolly.

  He can’t t tell whether she’s disappointed to see him or just disappointed they’d been caught standing in the hallway and now had to explain their presence.

  “What’s up? You looking for Mark?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He went up to the city for a dinner with his uncle. You didn’t know?”
r />   “I didn’t think he’d left yet.”

  C. J. turns his gaze on him. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Ted,” Cogan says.

  “You a cop or something? Or a reporter?”

  “I’m the accused.”

  “Shut the front door. You’re the dude? You’re the doc?”

  “I’m the dude.”

  C. J. lets out a staccato laugh, presumably in recognition of some just-discovered irony. “So, what’s up? What you doin’ in our house, Ted?”

  “Getting the proverbial lay of the land, so to speak.”

  “Very smart. I like to see that. Advance preparation is everything. Unfortunately, I’m in the midst of just such an undertaking myself.” He holds up the book. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a final to study for. Adieu, ladies.” He steps between Gwen and Kathy and walks down the hall, to the third door on the left.

  “Hey,” Gwen calls out after him. “Have you seen Jim Pinklow?”

  “P-Flam?” He puts his key in his door. “No, not recently. He doesn’t come by the house much anymore. I think he got a little spooked after that night. Maybe he’s at the library. He sometimes hangs out on the second floor, in that little alcove area.”

  “We didn’t see him at Green or UgLy. Thanks. We’ll try his dorm.”

  C. J. flashes a revealing grin. “You do that.”

  Later, looking back on the visit, that final, parting smirk will be the thing that leaves the most indelible impression. He isn’t sure why at first, but then he realizes that it reminds him of his own smile, which all too often is misinterpreted as conceit or, worse, gloating. C. J. knows something they don’t, but at that moment, watching him disappear into his room, he doesn’t think it has anything to do with Kristen. He only thinks he’s the type of guy who gets laid a lot, a guy who can shift effortlessly from charm to callous indifference.