EQMM, November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "It doesn't take much these days, Professor. If—"

  "I teach History of Western Civilization at Hancock U., Sergeant. Linette's a librarian. We don't ... squabble with strangers. Is she all right?"

  Kovacs hesitated. “They didn't tell you?"

  "Tell me what?"

  "What was your relationship with Miss Rogers?"

  "We ... live together,” I managed. “Two years now. Is she—?"

  "I'm very sorry, Professor Frazier,” Kovacs said, looking away to avoid my eyes. “Linette Rogers didn't make it. She was pronounced dead at the scene."

  "God,” somebody said quietly. Me, I suppose.

  "Look, I'm sorry to have to push this, Professor Frazier, but a half-dozen other victims were seriously injured in that accident. One of them may not survive the night. Several witnesses saw a gravel truck plow into your Toyota without slowing, so if anything happened earlier that—"

  "I told you, there was nothing! Why don't you ask the guy who hit us?"

  "We haven't located him yet. After ramming into your car, the truck fled the scene. We found it abandoned a few hundred yards down the highway. It was stolen from a public-works site. Maybe a drunk, maybe a joyrider. So if you can think of anything at all that could have triggered this—"

  "I have no idea, Sergeant, but it had nothing to do with us. Linette and I were going home for dinner, forgodsake, trying to decide between pasta or Chinese. That's all I can tell you. End of story."

  But it wasn't.

  I checked myself out of the hospital at noon the following day. My left arm was in a sling, badly sprained, apparently when I was thrown from the car. I was bruised and battered, with a bandage covering an abrasion on my forehead. Beyond that, I was more or less intact. From what Sergeant Kovacs said, I was one of the lucky ones.

  I didn't feel lucky.

  I didn't feel anything. I'm a methodical sort, a scholar by trade and by nature. A bit of a plodder, I suppose. Linette used to tease me about being born with an old soul. Perhaps she was right.

  I know students sometimes take my History of Western Civ class to catch up on their sleep. I'm not an inspired lecturer, or even very good at casual conversation.

  But now I would have to say them. Famous last words. Linette's eulogy. The final synopsis of her life. She had no family, so the responsibility would fall to me.

  And I wasn't up to it.

  My idea of a fun Friday night is an easy chair by the fire with Xenophon's Anabasis (circa 400 b.c.e.) and a snifter of Courvoisier.

  Linette was the cheerful sparkplug that kept our relationship fresh and active. Drama Club, poetry nights at Barnes & Noble, faculty mixers. Most of our friends were really Linette's friends. She reveled in people and talk and laughter. And I enjoyed them simply because she did.

  But the truth is, I never needed the company of other people much. Linette was my only need. The warm sun at the center of my universe.

  How could I hope to sum up her life, her very essence, with a few brief words in a funeral-home chapel? For people I scarcely knew.

  It would have been a snap for Linette. She was a poet, a wizard with words. Her verses could flash past like quicksilver or whisper your deepest secrets aloud, in a crowded coffeehouse, soul to soul.

  "Scratch a librarian, you'll find a poet working a day job,” she'd say.

  Which gave me an idea. Her poetry. Perhaps I could open her eulogy with one of her poems. Something light and airy and funny. A verse that would evoke her character more clearly than any clumsy words of mine.

  I collected a handful of workbooks from her desk, carried them into my study, and began scanning through them, panning for a nugget.

  I found a few appropriate verses in the first book but continued on, lost in her language. I had a prescription for painkillers from the hospital, but the relief I really needed was here, at my desk in this quiet room, surrounded by books, savoring the verses of the woman I loved. Hearing her voice echo in every line.

  As the afternoon faded, I switched on the desk lamp but kept on reading. With a growing sense of unease that had nothing to do with the gathering dusk.

  Halfway through the second workbook, I stopped. And carefully closed the book. Unable to read one more word. Shaken to my core.

  I'd found more truth than I'd been looking for. A bitter reality, shimmering just beneath the surface of her poetry. Shrouded in metaphor and allusion. But real, nonetheless. Beyond any doubt.

  Linette had been having an affair.

  If I'd been shattered by the accident and her death, I was far beyond that now. The hardwood floors of our apartment seemed suddenly insubstantial, as though I might fall through them, tumbling down and down to the fiery core at the center of the earth. To burn.

  And I wanted to. To vanish. Cease to be. Anything to ease the searing agony in my heart.

  I must have switched off the lamp, because the room was dark when I heard the noise. Someone rapping at the front door. I didn't answer. Couldn't.

  The rapping grew more insistent and I heard someone calling my name. When the doorknob rattled, I thought they'd go away.

  Until a woman in black eased open the door to my study.

  "Professor Frazier? Are you all right?"

  "No. Not even close, Sergeant Kovacs. How did you get in here?"

  She shrugged, stepping into my room, glancing around. “Picked the lock. The security system in these apartments is lousy."

  "I'll complain to the landlord. What do you want?"

  "Why didn't you answer my knock?"

  "I don't want company."

  "Sorry about that, but you're not the only victim involved here. Like it or not, I have more questions and I need to show you something. Do you mind?"

  Without waiting for a reply, she unsnapped a laptop computer, placed it on my desk, and switched it on. “We pulled this from a surveillance camera at the intersection. It covers the crossroads and the state highway east and west.” Grainy black-and-white images jumped across the screen, the movements herky-jerky from the stop-time photographs.

  "I deleted the frames that showed what happened to your car, you wouldn't want to see them.... There. That's the guy that hit you.” She pointed to a massive gravel truck lumbering east in the right-hand lane. Just before it faded off the screen, the truck jerked to a halt and the driver leapt out. Black T-shirt and jeans, baseball cap pulled low over his face. I leaned in, scanning the image intently.

  "Do you recognize him?"

  "His own mother couldn't recognize him from this. Don't you have anything clearer?"

  "Afraid not. Big Brother's watching, but only at busy intersections. Look again."

  She looped the images, rerunning them in step time, over and over. I stared at them till I thought my eyes would melt. “What's that mark on his upper arm?"

  "A tattoo, I think. Possibly a scar. Can't see enough of it to tell. Why?"

  For a moment, a faint flicker hovered around the outer edge of my memory...

  Then vanished. “Sorry, Sergeant, I just can't see his face clearly enough to identify him."

  "That's because he never shows it. Notice how he raises his arm to shield his face as he exits the truck? Maybe that's not a coincidence."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Maybe he's familiar with the intersection. He could have covered his face to avoid the surveillance camera. Look, he creams your car, then abandons the truck roughly a quarter-mile down the road at the edge of camera range. And just disappears. No one reported seeing him walking or trying to hitch a ride after the accident."

  "Then where did he go?"

  "We don't know. It's possible he had a vehicle parked further on, but nobody noticed one. I think it's more likely that he ducked into the woods along the roadside. Twenty yards into the trees, a jogging path runs parallel to the highway for almost half a mile. A trail that circles directly back to the university campus."

  I was staring at her. “You don't believe he's a drunk or a joyrider
, do you?"

  "I don't know what he is,” she said flatly. “I was hoping you might be able to help."

  "I don't know either! I already told you that."

  "Okay then, let me tell you what we do know. For openers, nobody steals county gravel trucks. They have zero resale value, too easy to trace. Second, that truck is a serious piece of machinery, difficult to handle. But this driver plowed into you in heavy traffic, peeled off, then had to swerve twice to avoid other cars before bailing out. I doubt a drunk or a joyrider could manage all that. So I think it's at least possible you were rammed deliberately. The question is, why would anyone do a thing like that to you?"

  "They wouldn't."

  "No? You haven't flunked anybody lately? Maybe booted ‘em out of class?"

  "I teach history, Sergeant. I have trouble enough generating curiosity, let alone violence."

  "History is violence, Professor, preserved in the amber of the written word."

  I stared at her, surprised. “That's quite good, Sergeant. Sun Tzu, isn't it?"

  "I have no idea, I read a lot. So, no disgruntled students? Can you think of anyone else who'd want to harm you? Or Miss Rogers? Anyone at all?"

  I hesitated, reading her face. A good face, actually, fine-boned, squared-off, and direct. Serious eyes, gray and unreadable as winter ice.

  "I ... think Linette may have been having an affair."

  "You just think so? Do you have any idea who the man is?"

  "No. But you don't seem very surprised, Sergeant. You already knew?"

  Kovacs nodded. “A few of her friends hinted as much. They claimed not to know who the man was, either. I gather your girlfriend was ... discreet about it. How did you find out?

  "I just ... she wrote about it in her poetry. But only in metaphor. She doesn't mention his name. Calls him Apian."

  "Ape—what?"

  "Apian.” I spelled it. “A bee. A busy man, I suppose, a take-charge type. My opposite."

  "Does that reference mean anything to you?"

  "Not yet, but I'm only halfway through the notebooks. I doubt that it's important anyway."

  "Right now, we have no idea what might be important,” she sighed, easing down in the chair beside my desk. “We're just tugging at strings, hoping to God something will unravel."

  "I'd say you're the one who's unraveling, Sergeant. Would you like a cup of coffee? It's already made."

  "What I really need is to zonk out for twenty minutes,” she said, massaging her eyes with her fingertips. “Haven't been to bed since this thing happened."

  "You're welcome to crash on my couch—"

  "I appreciate the offer, but I haven't time,” she said, taking a deep breath, pulling herself together. “The first forty-eight hours are critical. I have to get back on the street. Could you even hazard a guess at who this ... Apian, might be?"

  "No. I didn't know he existed until a few hours ago. What does it matter? What difference does it make?"

  "Violent crime usually involves one of the Big Three: love, drugs, or money. Nobody made any money on this deal and you don't strike me as the drug-dealer type. Which leaves passion. Love, hate, jealousy, in one form or another."

  "I'm the wrong guy to ask about love. I clearly know very little about it."

  "We're all amateurs in that game, Professor. I've been married twice. To cops, both times. Disasters, both times."

  "Sorry."

  "Why should you be sorry?"

  "Because ... you're right. Love's a marvelous thing when it works. It just doesn't seem to work out very often."

  "If it did, we'd be bored out of our skulls and all the blues singers would starve,” Kovacs said wryly. “Let's hope we both have better luck next time. I've gotta go."

  The runaway truck was replaying on her laptop again. I watched the driver dismount, concealing his face behind his forearm....

  "That's the second time you've done that,” Kovacs said quietly. “What do you see?"

  "Nothing. I just ... it's nothing, Sergeant. I wish I could be of more help."

  "I'm the one who should apologize,” she said, snapping the laptop closed, “for barging in at a bad time. I'm sorry as hell for your loss, Professor Frazier. If you think of anything, or if you just need to blow off some steam, call me, okay? Day or night. I keep odd hours."

  And then she was gone. And I was alone. In my arid, empty Brave New World.

  I'd never thought of death as a new beginning, but in a way, that's exactly what it was.

  My love, my old life, and most things I'd believed in were gone. Utterly destroyed. By twenty tons of steel and a few lines of poetry. Yet somehow I would still have to cope. To deal with the details of Linette's death. Her funeral, her eulogy, a burial plot....

  But above all, I needed an explanation. A way to make sense of what had happened to us. Some sort of logic. Cause and effect.

  Had I failed her somehow? Caused her to stray? Had her affair brought on this tragedy? It seemed unlikely, but it was a place to start. And I'm a scholar, by nature and profession.

  So I poured myself a stiff jolt of brandy and sat back down at my desk with Linette's workbooks. To begin researching a new field of study. Well, new to me, anyway.

  Actually, it's one of the oldest subjects. The Architecture of Infidelity. 101.

  Methodology and Procedures.

  I opened the third notebook of verses. In it, Linette described her growing attraction, physical and spiritual, to her Apian. And her sadly reluctant withdrawal from her Lute Player. A reference to me, I suppose. I minored in medieval music at State.

  Over the period of months spanned in the sonnets, she described the physical raptures of new love and ... sweet Jesus. It was very difficult to focus on this. To remain objective.

  As I read on, I kept having flashes of my love, naked and passionate, with another man....

  Suddenly I lunged to my feet, gasping, gagging on a surge of acid bile in my throat. Swallowing hard, I managed to force it back down.

  And then I forced myself back down, to take my seat in that chair again. And somehow go on. If I didn't wade through this now, ugly and painful as it was, I knew I never would.

  And I desperately needed to know. To understand where we'd gone wrong. How we'd gone wrong. And how much of it was my fault.

  So I read on. Sipping brandy against the sting of Linette's poetry. And gradually, the ache began to ease a bit as the affair ran its course. Her wondrous Apian slowly but surely showed himself to be less perfect than she'd believed in that first glow of infatuation. He was human after all.

  And flawed. The self-confidence she'd admired so much proved to be simple arrogance. And his decisiveness left no room for dissent. He was more than strong, he was domineering.

  Abruptly, her verses took on a darker tone. She met a Gray Lady. Who soon morphed into the Good Gray Wife.

  Surprise, surprise. Linette's Apian was married.

  She must have been aware of it, but in the heat of passion she'd brushed it aside. Until she actually met his Good Gray Wife. And liked her. A lot. And the consequences of her betrayal truly began to register.

  Then a second jolt. Her Apian was an even greater rogue than she'd thought. He was not only cheating on his wife, he was cheating on Linette as well, with a new lover. And she felt shattered and betrayed—

  Closing the book, I massaged my eyes, feeling a pain in my chest so sharp I thought I might be dying. Aching for all that was lost. For Linette and our lost love. And for her pain. And my own.

  It's so unfair that love has such terrible power over us. To bathe our whole world in shimmering light, or plunge it into darkness. Why can't things just ... work the hell out? Lovers stay together—

  Because we'd be bored out of our skulls, and all the blues singers would starve.

  The thought jolted me like a slap in the face. I could almost hear Kovacs saying it. Joshing me out of a funk as Linette had done a thousand times before.

  Women. Their hearts are terra inc
ognita to me. I'll never understand them at all. Nor will any other man.

  So I took a ragged breath, and shook off my self-pity. I felt like a fighter who's been decked in the eighth round and still has four to go, but I couldn't quit now. I was nearing the end.

  And so was the affair. As I paced the room, scanning the final verses, I realized that Linette's infatuation with her Apian lover was finally over. She told him she wanted to break it off—

  And he hit her!

  Damn it! I remembered a bruise on her jaw only a week ago. She said she'd banged into a door at work and like an idiot I'd believed her—but there was more. After calling him the coward he was, she promised to warn his Good Gray Wife.... And that was the final verse. I flipped through the rest of the pages, but they were blank. There were no more verses.

  I closed the book slowly. Stunned. When Linette tried to break off the affair, her Apian reacted with violence. And then she'd threatened to tell his wife...

  And now she was dead. And a lot of people were injured. All because of an affair that had gone terribly wrong?

  I didn't know that, not for sure. And it didn't matter anyway because I still had no idea who the man was.

  But maybe I could find out. I may not be a man of action, but scholars know how to study. And learn.

  I didn't need the verses now. I only needed to concentrate, to think through the situation clearly and objectively. About a woman I adored making love to another man.

  It was even tougher than reading the verses.

  Pacing my small office, I mulled through the minutiae of betrayal. Several verses had referred to making love in fading or waning light, so they'd probably met in the late afternoon. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Linette's library shift ended at three-thirty. Two hours before my last class got out. She usually picked me up after ... I swallowed. After whatever happened.

  She was never late. Nor could I think of many unexplained absences. Which narrowed it down to those two hours, or less, if you counted driving time.

  Our apartment was a thirty-minute commute from the campus library, so for the affair to work, they must have been meeting somewhere near the university. Or on it.

  Which meant her Apian might well be one of my colleagues. Perhaps even a friend ... and for a split second I glimpsed the film fragment of that tattoo again—Damn it! I'd seen it somewhere before. I knew it! But couldn't place where.... Forget it. It would come in its own time. Or not.