“What about Kenny?”
“What about him?”
“Did she call him, too?”
“Not that I know. No, I'm sure she didn't because he would have told me. He—” She stopped herself.
“He what, Cindy?”
“Nothing.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. Just that he didn't mention her calling.”
“Were you going to say Kenny hated her?”
She looked away. “If you've read the transcripts, I guess that's no big shock. No, he didn't like her one bit. He said she was a— she was manipulative. And a radical feminist— Kenny's kind of conservative politically. And I can't blame him for feeling railroaded. He was already having a hard time at the U, thinking about transferring out. The committee was the final straw.”
“Did he blame Dr. Devane for having to transfer?”
“No, he was just generally down on everything.”
“Life, in general?” I said. “Or something specific?”
She looked up with alarm. “I know what you're getting at, but it's ridiculous. He'd never touch her. That's not Kenny. And he wasn't even in L.A. the night she was killed. He's in San Diego except on weekends when he drives in to see me. He's working hard to get his life together— he's only nineteen.”
“He comes in every weekend?” said Milo.
“Not every, most. And she was killed on a Monday. He's never in town on Monday.”
Milo looked down at her and smiled. “Sounds like you've been thinking about his schedule.”
“Only after you called. We were really surprised, then we figured you'd learned about the committee and we said, Oh my God, unreal. Because you know, the system. You can get caught up in it, people get abused. I mean, it's so absurd that anyone would connect us to what happened. We're kids, basically. The last time I had anything to do with the police was when that guy came to class and told us about parked cars.”
She smiled.
“He had a parrot, that policeman. A trained parrot that could talk. Like, “Stop, you're under arrest!' and “You have the right to remain silent.' I think he called him Officer Squawk, or something. Whatever. I really can take that bag.”
Milo handed it to her.
“I really need to forget all this, Detective Sturgis. I have to concentrate on my grades because my mom makes sacrifices for me. That's why I didn't go to private college. So, please.”
“Sure, Cindy. Thanks for your time.” He gave her a card.
“Robbery-homicide,” she said, shivering. “What's this for?”
“In case you think of something.”
“I won't, believe me.” Her small face puckered and I thought she'd cry again. Then she said, “Thanks,” and walked away.
“Cutie pie,” said Milo. “I just want to give her milk and cookies, tell her Prince Charming is coming soon and he doesn't have a rap sheet.”
“She feels she's found him already.”
He shook his head. “She's a little intrapunitive, wouldn't you say?”
“Very. Blaming herself for what happened between her and Kenny Storm, then for complaining.”
“Storm,” he said. “Smart kid like her hooking up with a dumb guy. What is it, low self-esteem?”
“More interested in Storm, now?”
“Why?”
“His academic career hasn't gone well. Meaning he never got to receive the U's concession money. Meaning he could still be angry and unresolved.”
“And maybe she's willing to lie for him. Maybe despite what she said, he stayed over one weekend.”
“He could have borrowed Cindy's bike,” I said. “Or he has one of his own.”
“Neither he nor his daddy have returned calls . . . selling real estate in La Jolla. Should be easy enough to find out which company, see if the alibi checks out.”
His eyes drifted upward. “Little Cindy. She looks like a fourteen-year-old but talks like an adult. Then again, the sweetheart who threw her baby to the dogs was pretty adorable, too.”
9
We drove out of the Village, hugging the eastern edge of the campus and cutting past Sorority Row. Students jogged and strolled and jaywalked with abandon. The spiked tops of the cactus in the Botanical Garden stuck over the iron fence like supplementary security.
I said, “A picture of Hope seems to be taking shape. Brilliant, charismatic, good with people. But able to bend the rules when it suits her, and from what Cindy said, to change faces pretty quickly. Consistent with the little boxes.”
A laughing couple around Kenny and Cindy's age darted across the street, holding hands, wrapped up in each other. Milo had to brake hard. They kept going, unaware.
“Ah, love,” I said.
“Or too many years on Walkmans and video games. Okay, I'll drop you at home.”
“Why don't you let me off here and I'll try to see Professor Steinberger.”
“The quiet one?”
“Sometimes the quiet ones have the most to say.”
“Okay.” He pulled over next to a bus bench. Two Hispanic women in domestic's uniforms were sitting there and they stared at us before looking away.
“Gonna walk home after that?”
“Sure, it's only a couple of miles.”
“What an aerobicon . . . listen, if you have time and inclination, I don't mind you talking to the other students involved in the committee, too. Maybe you won't scare them as much as I scared Cindy.”
“I thought you did fine with her.”
He frowned. “Maybe I shoulda brought a parrot. You up for student interviews?”
“How do I locate them?”
Reaching over to the backseat, he grabbed his briefcase and swung it onto his lap, took out a sheet of paper, and gave it to me.
Xeroxed photo-ID student cards and class schedules. The reproductions were dark and blurred, turning Cindy Vespucci into a brunette. Kenneth Storm had a full face, short hair, and a sad mouth, but that's about all you could say about him.
I folded and pocketed it. “Any rules about how I present myself?”
He thought. “Guess the truth would be fine. Anything that encourages them to talk. They'll probably relate to you better, professorial demeanor and all that.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Professors are the ones who fail them.”
The tall, white Psychology Tower was on the outer edge of the Science Quad— maybe more than architectural accident— and the brick cube that housed Chemistry was its next-door neighbor.
It had been a long time since I'd been inside the chem building and then only to take an advanced psychopathology course in borrowed classroom space; back when I'd been a grad student, psychology had been the U's most popular major and the lecture halls had overflowed with those seeking self-understanding. Twenty years later, fear of the future was the dominant motive and business administration was king.
Chemistry's halls still oozed the vinegary reek of acetic acid and the walls were toothpaste-green, maybe a bit grimier. No one was in sight but I could hear clinking and splashing behind doors marked LABORATORY.
The directory listed two Steinbergers, Gerald and Julia, both with offices on the third floor. I took the stairs and found Julia's.
The door was open. She was at her desk grading exams with radio soft-rock in the background, a nice-looking woman around thirty wearing a black scoop-necked sweater over a white blouse and gray wool slacks. An amber-and-old-silver necklace that looked Middle Eastern rested on her chest. She had square shoulders, an earnest face that surprised itself by bottoming out in a pointed chin, a serene mouth glossed pink, and shiny brown hair ending at her shoulders, the bangs clipped just above graceful eyebrows. Her eyes were gray, clear and unbothered as they looked up. Beautiful, really. They made her beautiful.
She marked a paper and put it aside. “Yes?”
I told her who I was, trying without success to make it sound logical, and that I'd come to discuss Hope Devane.
; “Oh.” Puzzled. “Might I see some identification?” Pleasant voice, Chicago accent.
I showed her the badge. She studied my name for a long time.
“Please,” she said, handing it back, and pointing to a chair.
The office was cramped but fresh-smelling, gray-metal University issue brightened by batik wall hangings and folk-art dolls positioned among the books on the shelves. The radio rested on a windowsill behind her, next to a potted coleus. Someone singing about the freedom that love brought.
The exams were stacked high. The one she'd put aside was filled with computations and red question marks. She'd given it a B3nus;. When she saw me looking at it, she covered it with a notebook and turned the stack over just as the phone rang.
“Hi,” she said. “Actually not right now.” Looking at me. “Maybe in fifteen. I'll come to you.” Pretty smile. Blush. “Me, too.”
Hanging up, she pushed away from the desk and rested her hands on her lap. “My husband's down the hall. We usually have lunch together.”
“If it's a bad time—”
“No, he's got things to do and this shouldn't take long. So, run that by me again, I'm still intrigued. You're on the faculty but you're working with the police department on Hope's murder?”
“I'm on the faculty crosstown, at the med school. I've done forensic work and occasionally the police ask me to consult. Hope Devane's murder is what they call a cold case. No leads, a new detective starting from scratch. Frankly I'm a member of the court of last resort.”
“Crosstown.” She smiled. “The enemy?”
“I got my doctorate here so it's more of a case of split allegiance.”
“How do you cope at football games?”
“I ignore them.”
She laughed. “Me, too. Gerry— my husband— has become a football fanatic since we arrived. We used to be at the University of Chicago, which believe me is no great seat of athletic achievement. Anyway, I'm glad the police are still looking into Hope's murder. I'd assumed they'd given up.”
“Why's that?”
“Because after the first week or so there was nothing in the news. Isn't it true that the longer a case goes unsolved the less chance there is of success?”
“Generally.”
“What's the name of the new detective?”
I told her and she wrote it down.
“Does the fact that he's chosen not to come himself mean anything?”
“It's a combination of time pressure and strategy,” I said. “He's working the case alone and he hasn't fared well with the faculty people he's interviewed so far.”
“In what way?”
“They treat him as if he's a Neanderthal.”
“Is he?”
“Not at all.”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose as a group, we tend to be intolerant— not that we're really a group. Most of us have nothing in common beyond the patience to endure twenty-plus years of schooling. Hope and I are prime examples of that, so I don't think I'll be of much help.”
“She knew you well enough to ask you to be on the Interpersonal Conduct Committee.”
She placed her pen on the desk. “The committee. I figured it had to be that. In terms of our relationship, we'd spoken a few times before she asked me to serve but we were far from friends. How much do the police know about the committee?”
“They know its history and the fact that it was disbanded. There are also transcripts of the three cases that were heard. I noticed you didn't participate in the third.”
“That's because I resigned,” she said. “It's obvious now that the whole thing was a mistake but it took me a while to realize it.”
“Mistake in what way?”
“I think Hope's motives were pure but they led her somewhat . . . far afield. I thought it would be an attempt to heal, not create more conflict.”
“Did you voice your concerns to her?”
She tightened her lips and gazed up at the ceiling. “No. Hope was a complex person.”
“She wouldn't have listened?”
“I don't really know. It was just . . . I don't want to demean the dead. Let's just say she was strong-willed.”
“Obsessive?”
“About the mistreatment of women, definitely. Which is fine with me.”
Lifting the pen, she tapped one knee. “Sometimes passion blocks out contradictory information. So much so— and this is more your area than mine— that I found myself wondering if she had a personal history of abuse that directed her scholarship.”
The quiet one.
“Because of the extent of her passion?” I said.
She shifted in her chair, bit her lip, and nodded. Placed an index finger alongside one smooth cheek.
“I must say I feel uncomfortable suggesting that, because I don't want to trivialize Hope's commitment— to bring it down to the level of personal vindication. I'm a physical chemist, which is about as far as you get from psychoanalysis.”
She wheeled back, so her head was inches from the bookshelves. A brownish rag doll's legs extended past her right ear. She pulled it down, sat it in her lap, and played with its black string hair.
“I want you to know that I thought highly of her. She was brilliant, and committed to her ideals. Which is rarer than it should be— maybe I should explain how I got involved with the committee. Because clearly it's not going to just go away.”
“Please,” I said. “I'd appreciate that.”
Taking a deep breath, she stroked the doll. “I began college as a premed and in my sophomore year I volunteered at a battered-women's shelter on the South Side of Chicago. To get brownie points for med school and because both my parents are physicians and old-style liberals and they taught me it was noble to help people. I thought I'd heard everything around the dinner table, but the shelter opened my eyes to a whole new, terrible world. Putting it simply, I was terrified. It was one of the reasons I changed my mind about medicine.”
Her fingers parted the doll's hair. “The women I worked with— the ones who'd gotten past the fear and the denial and were in touch with what was being done to them— had the same look I sometimes saw in Hope's eyes. Part injury, part rage— I can only call it ferocious. In Hope's case it was strikingly discrepant from her usual manner.”
“Which was?”
“Cool and collected. Very cool and collected.”
“In control.”
“Very much so. She was a leader, had tremendous force of personality. But when we discussed abuse, I saw that look in her eyes. Not always, but frequently enough to remind me of the women at the shelter.”
She gave a shy smile. “No doubt I'm overinterpreting.”
“Did she ask you to serve because of your experience at the shelter?”
She nodded. “We first met at a faculty tea, one of those dreadful things at the beginning of the academic year where everyone pretends to get acquainted? Gerry had gone off to talk sports with some guys and Hope came up to me. She was also alone.”
“Her husband wasn't there?”
“No. She said he never came to parties. She certainly didn't know me, I'd just arrived. I didn't know who she was but I had noticed her. Because of her clothes. Expensive designer suit, good jewelry, great makeup. Like some of the girls I'd known from Lake Forest— heiresses. You don't see much of that on campus. We got to talking and I told her about the shelter.”
She moved in a way that pinched the doll's soft torso and caused its head to pitch forward.
“The funny thing is, all those years I hadn't talked about it. Even to my husband.” Smile. “And as you can tell, I have no problem talking. But there I was at a party, with a virtual stranger, getting into things I'd forgotten about— horrendous things. I actually had to go into a corner to dry my eyes. Looking back, I think Hope drew the memories out of me.”
“How?”
“By listening the right way. Don't you people call it active listening?” She smiled again. “Just what you're doing ri
ght now. I learned about that, too, at the shelter. I suppose anyone can grasp the rudiments but there are few virtuosos.”
“Like Hope.”
She laughed. “There, just what you're doing: bouncing things back. It works even when you know what's going on, doesn't it?”
I smiled and stroked my chin and said, “Sounds like you think it's effective,” in a stagy voice.
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