Knife Music

by David Carnoy

  “Who was that?” he asks as they make their way down the stairwell.

  “That,” Gwen says, “was C. J. Watkins. He’s a junior and, as you can see, a little full of himself.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “Kath thinks he’s gay. Isn’t that so, Kath?”

  “I definitely get that vibe, don’t you?” Kathy says.

  He can’t tell whether she’s asking him or Gwen, but no, he says, he didn’t get a gay vibe.

  “Good-looking guy, though. Lots of girls like him,” Gwen says.

  “A lot of stupid girls,” her friend opines.

  “Oh, come now, Miss Jorgenson,” Gwen mocks her goodnaturedly. “Don’t insult yourself like that.”

  “OK, I had a crush. Freshman year. For like fifteen minutes. I admit it. Guilty as charged.”

  Forgetting who she’s with, she doesn’t think anything of the last remark—and neither does he—until Gwen makes a face, admonishing her.

  “Oh, sorry,” she says, mortified. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He smiles, opening the front door to the frat for them.

  “I know,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

  May 11—5:21 p.m.

  “Hank, I lost him. I could swear he gave me the slip.”

  Madden’s in the apartment of a rape victim, a twenty-six-year-old woman who alleges she was accosted by an upstairs neighbor. In the living room, Burns is interviewing the roommate of the victim. He’s stepped into the kitchen to take Billings’s call.

  “Where are you?” he asks in a low voice.

  “I’m over at the university. He drove over here around five and went to the bookstore.”

  “So you think he saw you and purposely gave you the slip?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But he was there in the stacks, looking at some books, and he went behind a row, and the next thing I know, he’s gone.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m back at the parking lot. I went to see if his car is still here.”

  “Is it?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Shit.”

  “What do you want me to do, Hank?”

  “What’s he doing over at the university?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing here. I’m just following the fuck.”

  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”

  “What’s the name of the frat?” Billings asks. “I was going to check over there, but I don’t know which one it is.”

  “Rejection House. It’s the old admissions building, right in the middle of frat row.”

  “Rejection House?”

  “Yes, just ask someone when you get close. Don’t worry, they’ll know. I gotta go. We’re doing an interview. Call me after you get there.”

  May 11—5:31 p.m.

  “No, I don’t know anyone personally who had an STD,” Jim Pinklow says a few minutes later in his dorm room.

  “Not personally?” Cogan asks.

  “Well, I mean I heard this story about how these two guys went to Miami a couple of years ago and got totally trashed and one of them ended up sleeping with a stripper and getting some STD from her—I think it was chlamydia. And the other guy ended up sleeping in the bathtub in the hotel room while the other guy was having wild sex all night in the bed. That was the big joke or irony or whatever you want to call it. The guy who paid for all the drinks didn’t get laid and the other guy did, but he ended up getting an STD. There was something karmic about that, you know.”

  “That was two years ago?”

  “Yeah, these guys are seniors now. I know who they are, but I’m not friends with them or anything. That’s what I meant by not knowing them personally.”

  Cogan looks at the kid, taking in his features. It’s not immediately apparent, but when you look hard, you can see his sister, Carrie. The eyes are the same, blue and set wider apart than average. Similar builds, too. He’s pretty short—maybe five-foot-seven or five-foot-eight—and slightly stocky. He’s also tense. He isn’t sure who’s making him more anxious, him or Gwen, who’s decided to take a stroll around the room and give his personal effects the once over. The other girl volunteered to stay outside (“Me and Jim had a little falling out after that night,” she says), so it’s just the three of them standing there. But it still feels plenty crowded in the small room.

  “Who’s this?” Gwen asks, pointing to one of three framed pictures on top of a bureau.

  “Someone I met in Germany last year,” is Jim’s perfunctory reply.

  While she quizzes him on the blonde in the shot, Cogan does his own little sweep of the photo gallery, not sure what he’s looking for, but confident he’d know when he saw it. He picks up one of the frames to get a better look: the shot is of Jim and two buddies, probably high school friends, standing at the top of what Cogan recognizes to be the Headwall lift at Squaw Valley with Lake Tahoe in the background. They’re all wearing sunglasses, looking tan and their version of cool.

  “Why do you want to know if I know someone who had an STD?” Jim asks.

  “It’s just a theory I’m working on,” he says, putting the frame down.

  “What sort of theory?”

  “He thinks someone else slept with Kristen that night,” Gwen says.

  “Someone else? You mean, besides him?”

  “Not him.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  He ignores the question, even though it seems to be directed more at Gwen than him. In fact, Jim now seems to be speaking as if he isn’t there.

  “You said you were with Kristen most of the night,” Cogan cuts in. “So you’d noticed if she’d taken off for a bit? Or you would have noticed if she was with another guy?”

  “Yeah, I was definitely keeping an eye on her, especially later on.”

  “But you didn’t see her talking to anybody else?”

  “Sure, some guys talked to her.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Kyle, I guess. And my friend Rob came over and was hanging with us for a bit. But he was mainly talking to me. And Brad Deering, I think.”

  He turns to Gwen: “Do you know those guys?”

  “I think so. Kyle, for sure. I’m friends with his girlfriend, Holly.”

  “Look,” Jim says, “I would have noticed if someone walked away with her. Even for five minutes.”

  “You weren’t watching your sister?”

  “I was kind of watching her, too. And some of the time they were together.”

  “But you were more concerned with Kristen?”

  “Do you have a sister?”

  “No. I have a brother,” Cogan says.

  “Well, you can be concerned but not want her to be there at the same time. I wasn’t all that interested in hanging with my little sister at a party. I was doing her a major favor even allowing her to come.”

  “But hanging out with her friend was OK?”

  “She was cool. I’d known her since I was a little kid. What do you want me tell you? I’ve been through this like ten times before. You’re the guy who should be answering the questions. My sister trusted you.”

  Cogan feels his phone vibrating in his pocket. Partly out of habit and partly because he wants to diffuse Jim before he really went off, he pulls the cell out and looks at the caller ID number on the flip’s external LCD. It was a local number he didn’t recognize. “Sorry,” he says, putting the phone back in his pocket.

  “Whatever,” Jim says, confused over why he had apologized. He thought he was apologizing for asking redundant questions, not taking his phone out in the middle of a conversation. “It’s a fucked-up, tragic situation. I just—it’s just getting way tired, you know. There’s no closure.” He’s rambling now. “I just keep thinking that none of this ever would have happened if her parents didn’t find her damn diary. Her father’s a bastard. He’s always been a hard-ass. Why didn’t they ask her what she wanted? Does anybody care about what she wanted?”


  “I know what she wanted.”

  They both look at him.

  “What?” Gwen asks.

  “She wanted her memory to be hers. She didn’t want to let anybody take it away from her.”

  “How do you know that?” Gwen asks.

  “Male intuition.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “Not usually. But there’s a pill you can take now.”

  She smiles. “An intuition-enhancer?”

  “Exactly.”

  The conversation may have tipped into a full-blown flirt session if Gwen didn’t notice that Jim is lost in thought. From the disconcerted expression on his face, he seems to be having a little trouble digesting his conclusions. They’re giving him heartburn.

  “What’s wrong, Jim?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” he says. “It’s just that I never thought about it like that. For some reason I always thought she’d want to forget what happened.”

  “You don’t write in a diary to forget what happened.”

  Gwen said it, but oddly the kid looks at him—really looks him in the eyes for the first time—and for a brief moment he feels a strange sort of commiseration.

  “No, I guess you’re right,” Jim says.

  May 11—5:29 p.m.

  “He’s not here,” Billings says.

  “Was he there?”

  “I just talked to two guys out front. They said they hadn’t seen him. Couple of girls and a guy went up a bit earlier. They knew them, though.”

  Madden is silent on the phone. He doesn’t know quite what to say. The campus is big. Cogan could have gone anywhere. By the same token, the bookstore is big. He may have never left the bookstore.

  “Hank, what do you want me to do?”

  “Just go back to the car.”

  “What if it’s not there?”

  “Call me if it’s not there.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Hey, it happens,” he offers half-heartedly, unable to hide his disappointment. “But you really think he gave you the slip on purpose?”

  “I was watching him closely. I looked down at a book for a sec, and when I looked up he was gone. What does that strike you as?”

  “What book was it?”

  “What book was what?”

  “Were you looking at?”

  “I don’t know. Some whale book. One of those coffee table books with pictures. Save the whale and shit.”

  “Save the whale, huh?”

  “Yeah, save the fucking whale.”

  May 11—5:43 p.m.

  He walks them back to the library, where they’d left their books. They pause in front of the modern-styled building, and he begins to make his farewells, thanking them both for the tour, when Gwen tells her friend she wants to speak to him alone, she’ll catch up to her in a minute.

  After Kathy goes inside, she says, “I’m sorry for not telling you she was coming.”

  She’s speaking more softly, which gives him pause for concern. He isn’t quite ready for another frank conversation.

  “No, it was the sensible thing to do,” he says. “It would look funny if we were walking around alone together.”

  “I want you to know that I’ve never said anything to anybody about what happened between us.”

  “Ditto.”

  He hopes she might read the brevity of his response as a red light, but she only sees green.

  “You know, I perjured myself.”

  A smile breaks onto his face.

  “That’s funny?”

  “No,” he apologizes. “Just the way you said it. The legalese.”

  He says it reminds him of something one of his patients had once told him about downloading music on the original Napster. Everybody was calling it stealing. But technically, the crime was copyright infringement, not theft. The language made the act seem less egregious.

  “OK, so I lied,” she says. “I didn’t tell your lawyer you called me after that night. I was going to. I told her about you asking for my phone number—”

  “I know. I heard the tape.”

  “So, are you going to use it against me? Will it come out? Because it’s been going well with Mark. We’re supposed to live together over the summer.”

  Oh, so that’s why you’re here, he thinks. That’s why you agreed to meet me.

  “Gwen, we’re doing everything we can to keep this from going to trial. If they get me on this, they’re going to bring me up on murder charges. Do you understand that?”

  “Can they do that?”

  “There’s something called foreseeable harm. Ask your buddy at the law school about it. If they can prove that I had sex with Kristen, they can argue that that crime led to her taking her life.”

  Just then a girl walks past them and says hello. Gwen’s disposition changes completely.

  “Hey, Steph,” she says, smiling cheerily, as if exchanging greetings at a cocktail party. “I’ll be up in a minute. We’re on three in the usual place.”

  She waits for the girl to drift out of earshot before resuming the conversation.

  “I’ll do what I can to help, Ted. I don’t know why, but I don’t believe you did it. I guess because I saw you there with her, and how you acted. But I’d like to stick to our agreement. I think it would be best for both of us.”

  “That would be my preference as well—ideally.”

  The last word falls heavily. She nods, her eyes downcast, her mouth in a calculated, stoic pout, not so different from the one he’d received from Carolyn earlier. She hadn’t quite gotten the response she was looking for, and she looks more beautiful for it. This is not the same girl whom he remembers putting her clothes back on in his room, parting demurely. “Thank you,” she’d said. “That was nice. I’m going to go now. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Polite, straightforward, subdued yet passionate, a careful risk-taker with a rocket body: that’s Gwen Dayton, or the abbreviated version he knows. There isn’t a manipulative bone in her body, and yet there the angle is, now jutting out at him, tempting him to make promises he can’t keep. Luckily, before he does, like a warning alarm, his phone goes off again.

  “This is Cogan,” he says, not bothering to check the caller ID.

  A male voice informs him that he’s calling from the Kinko’s on Colorado. He has copies waiting for him at the front counter.

  “I didn’t make any copies.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sir. There’s an envelope here with your name and phone number on it.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “You want me to open it?”

  “Yeah, open it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He hears the muffled sound of a tear, and then: “It says ‘Clinic Visit Form’ at the top.”

  Jesus. Beckler. Did she come through? Is it possible?

  “There’s a name,” the guy goes on.

  “Chris Ray?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “OK, put it back now. Thanks.”

  “What is it?” Gwen asks after he closed his phone.

  “Nothing. Someone made a mistake.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looks at his watch and, seeing the time, wheels around abruptly, scanning the area for his shadow; he’d completely forgotten about him. His eyes dart from one person to the next: most of them are students who are either on the move or chatting in small groups of twos and threes in front of the library, just as they’re doing. A biker whizzes by, and then another. It’s going on six; rush hour has begun.

  “I gotta go,” he says, and in his exuberance, almost kisses her on the lips. “Just do me one favor: If Jim says anything to you, please call me.”

  “I will.”

  He touches his hand to her cheek. “And smile. It’s going to be all right.”

  35/ REDHOTS AND ROSE PETALS

  May 11, 2007—5:45 p.m.

  JIM HAD NEVER HAD A GUN—OR A WEA
PON OF ANY KIND, KNIFE, spear, bow and arrow, baseball bat—pointed at him in his life, which is why it’s so easy to answer the question he’s now being asked.

  “Tell me, Mr. P., you ever had a gun held to your head before?”

  C. J. Watkins is standing behind him, indeed holding a gun, a Walther PPK, directly to his right temple.

  “No,” Jim gasps through Watkins’s headlock.

  “How does it feel?”

  “Cold.”

  “Good,” says Watkins. “That’s the way it’s supposed to feel. Now that we’ve got that all straightened out, we’re going to talk about what just transpired in this room a few minutes ago. Why were you speaking to the Daytona 500 and that dude who looks an awful lot like the doc we read about in the papers? I saw them go into the house, and guess where I found them: on the third floor.”

  “They came to see me,” he struggles to say.

  “What’d they want?”

  “They wanted to know whether I saw Kristen go off with anybody that night.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said I was with her the whole time.”

  Jim feels Watkins’s arm muscles flex against his throat as he tightens the lock. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  He can barely breathe.

  “You better not be. I’ll come back here and put a slug between your eyes. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Finally, Watkins releases him. He tumbles on to the bed, first gasping then coughing uncontrollably. At one point, his gag-reflex kicks in and he makes a horrible vomiting sound, but nothing comes out.

  “You all right?” Watkins appears genuinely concerned. “Sorry, kid, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “What the fuck?” His breathing finally starts to return to normal. “Are you crazy? Is that thing real?”

  “’Course it’s real. For an airgun.”

  “Shit, man. It looks real.”

  Watkins holds it up in front of him, admiring it.

  “The Walter PPK. German craftsmanship at its finest. The firearm of choice of Mr. Bond, James Bond, and the CIA.”