The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  Mark closed his eyes.

  At last Farr spoke for himself and Taylor. The woman he described was articulate and graceful, her voice the music of their household, her love the touchstone of their lives. He spoke of Anne’s countless acts of kindness, performed with a tact and lightness that called no attention to itself and asked for nothing in return. It struck Mark as true to his sense of her: though her sensitivity was plain to see, there were few light anecdotes to share. He, with so few good memories of family, wondered what Taylor would remember.

  Still she stared ahead, as though she were alone.

  AFTER THE SERVICE Mark spoke to Farr, who embraced him, then to Anne’s father and mother, to whom, clearly, he was just another stranger in a pageant that filled them with unspoken horror, two parents who had outlived their only child. But when Mark paused in front of Taylor, her stoic mask dissolved. Silent tears ran down her face.

  Instinctively, Mark held her. When at last he drew back, Taylor’s eyes locked his with something akin to desperation. “I missed you,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry.” He clasped both of her hands in his. “You still have your dad, Taylor. You can lean on him now. That’s what he wants you to do.”

  For a moment, she looked as though she had not heard him. Then she squeezed his hands, keeping him there an extra moment before her grandmother introduced her to a woman she did not know. As Mark moved on, Taylor turned back to look at him.

  That afternoon, as on every Sunday, Mark went to see Steve Tillman.

  9

  W

  HEN YALE LAW ACCEPTED HIM, MARK WAS LESS ELATED than relieved. He was moving on—life beyond Caldwell was tangible now. His graduation a month later was not so much a culmination as a way station. Though Farr congratulated him warmly, the ceremony reminded Mark that, unlike his classmates, he had no family to inflate the moment; nor, given their own pain, could he have asked Steve’s parents to come. Tactfully alluding to Angela Hall, Clark Durbin said nothing about the person Mark missed most keenly, his closest friend.

  He spent his final summer in Wayne working construction, losing himself in the doing of tasks, the oddly pleasant ache of joints and muscles. On the Sunday before he left for Yale, Mark paid Steve a final visit.

  Steve gazed at him through the Plexiglas. “So you’re off to law school,” he said.

  Mark felt a stab of guilt. “Yeah.”

  “You’re on your way, pal.” Steve’s lips compressed. “My lawyer thinks I’m going to the pen.”

  “Did he say that?”

  Doubt and anger surfaced in Steve’s eyes. “Not exactly. But he asked me to think about involuntary manslaughter—letting the jury consider that along with a murder charge. If I was too drunk to know what I was doing, Griff says, maybe I can get off with ten years.”

  Mark wondered if Steve was asking for advice. He had none to give. Something about Griffin Nordlinger bothered Mark—an air of distraction, a sense of always running behind, combined with Mark’s knowledge that the lawyer’s bills were likely to cost Steve’s parents the only home they had ever owned. But in the last few weeks Mark had heard vague rumors of another witness who bolstered the prosecution’s case. Mark was bedeviled by the thought that this person might help corroborate Joe Betts’s story, making Steve’s failure to answer Mark’s phone calls seem more damning. Cautiously, Mark asked, “What did you tell him?”

  Steve’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Going for involuntary manslaughter would be like saying I killed her but can’t remember. Who’d believe that? They’d just convict me of murder.” His tone was at once pleading and insistent. “I may not remember things, but alcohol and a little coke didn’t turn me into some other person. Besides, I liked her.”

  Once more, Mark had a terrible sense of randomness, a death at once tragic and banal. “Can you remember anything else about what happened?”

  “No.” Reading the doubt in Mark’s eyes, Steve snapped, “If you don’t believe me, don’t come back for the trial.”

  Mark did not have a choice. Farragher might want him to testify about the party; Nordlinger would call him as a character witness. Quietly, Mark answered, “I’ll be there for you.”

  Tears surfaced in Steve’s eyes. Mark had known him since they were twelve; now he could not console him, or even hug him. Briefly, Steve leaned his forehead against the Plexiglas. Then he straightened again, summoning a strained smile for his friend.

  “Do good at Yale,” he told Mark.

  * * *

  ON THE NIGHT before Mark left, Lionel Farr took him to dinner at the Carriage House.

  Mark had little to say. After a while, Farr observed, “You don’t seem very excited, Mark. I gather Tillman still weighs on your mind.”

  Mark nodded. “I’m feeling like I should stay here,” he admitted. “Hardly anyone visits him now.”

  Farr put down his scotch. “And postpone Yale? Or, worse yet, lose Yale?” His face hardened. “I refuse to let you throw your life away because Steve ruined his. Not to mention taking someone else’s life.”

  Mark bridled at his mentor’s certainty. “I’m not sure he did.”

  “That’s what trials are for, Mark.” Farr modulated his tone. “Your boyhood friend did a foolish thing, perhaps a terrible thing. He’s got an able lawyer. It’s not your fault you saw him leave that party with Angela.”

  “Maybe not. But I started this by telling the police that. They came down on Steve before he knew what hit him.”

  Narrow-eyed, Farr looked off into the middle distance. “I don’t know if this helps,” he said at length, “but I’ve spoken to Dave Farragher. He won’t need your testimony at the trial. So that part, at least, won’t be on your conscience. You needn’t come back at all.”

  Mark shook his head. “I will, though. Griff Nordlinger wants me to be a character witness.”

  “To say what?”

  “That Steve’s truthful. That I’ve never seen him act violent, or even be angry enough to hit someone.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I’ve known him half my life.” Mark felt the burden of his secret overtake him. “There’s something else, though. Something I haven’t told anyone.”

  He felt Farr appraising him closely. “Then maybe you should tell me, Mark. Better now than when Farragher cross-examines you.”

  Mark paused a final moment. Then, haltingly, he told Farr about the two phone calls.

  Listening, Farr steepled his fingers, placing them to his lips. Then he looked around, as though concerned that the other diners—couples and college students and families with kids—might overhear. “Let me make sure I get this,” he responded quietly. “Joe Betts will testify that he saw Steve returning to his room at three A.M. or so. Farragher could use this secret you’ve been keeping—that Steve didn’t answer when you called him—to help confirm Betts’s story. The implication for you is this: you think Steve may be guilty but don’t want to help convict him. You also don’t want to lie on the witness stand—for the sake of your own integrity, and because you don’t want to commit perjury to protect someone who may have murdered an admirable girl. Does that cover it?”

  “Yes,” Mark answered miserably.

  “Then there’s only one solution, however imperfect. Don’t go anywhere near that trial.”

  Mark gazed past Farr, torn between the desire to stand by Steve and the need not to seal his friend’s fate or lie on the witness stand. “Do I have a choice?” he asked.

  “I’ll talk to Griff Nordlinger.” Farr’s tone became both kind and weary. “However I feel about this information, I doubt Griff will want you back here.”

  Awash with both relief and a sense of betrayal, Mark felt himself separating from Steve Tillman, even as he felt guilty about making Farr complicit in his secret. When their steaks arrived, Mark did not pick up his fork. “Eat something,” Farr said mildly. “You’ve got a long drive to New Haven tomorrow.”

  Mark began cutting a piece of meat. It struck him
that he had asked nothing about Farr’s life. “I still don’t know how you are,” Mark said simply.

  Farr smiled faintly. “Keeping busy, at least. It seems that Clark Durbin and the board want me to consider becoming provost of Caldwell College.”

  The idea of Farr not teaching seemed unfathomable. “You wouldn’t be a professor?”

  “Maybe I’d teach a class. But there seems to be a feeling, shared by Clark, that I helped keep the school going in the wake of Angela’s murder.”

  “Not a feeling. You did.”

  Farr shrugged. “Whether that’s true or not, it’s difficult to say no. Especially given that taking on a new challenge would be helpful to me personally. To understate things, Anne’s death lingers.”

  Mark sipped his beer, watching a family in an adjacent booth, two parents and three kids cheerful in one another’s company. “What about for Taylor?” he asked.

  Farr frowned. “That’s my one reservation. Taylor can’t seem to reconcile herself to Anne’s absence. She’s become withdrawn, almost angry.” Pausing, Farr issued an uncharacteristic sigh. “These things take time, I know. But I’m worried about our future as father and daughter, so I don’t want to lose myself in work.”

  Mark felt sadness for them both. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, thank you. The question is what I do.”

  The statement had a dismissive sound. Farr lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Then he said softly, “About this other thing, Mark: I’ll take care of it. But let’s not talk of it again, between us or to anyone else. For both our sakes.”

  Once more, Mark felt that he had led this man, who had done so much for him, into a moral gray zone. Nodding his assent, he tried to focus on his steak.

  After dinner, they stood outside the restaurant as twilight descended, deepening the valedictory mood Mark felt enveloping them both. Farr was too much a man of his generation to hug Mark. Instead, he shook his hand, bracing Mark’s arm as he did. Realizing how much he had depended on Lionel Farr, Mark suddenly felt alone. “I’ll miss you,” he said simply.

  Farr shook his head. “There’s so much ahead for you now. Standing here, I think of the night I first approached you.” He paused, his voice rough with banked emotion. “I can’t express how proud I am of you, and how proud you should be of yourself. Take what you’ve achieved and make your place in the world. Leave the past behind.”

  Mark tried, and occasionally, over the next few months, he succeeded. In mid-October, as he prepared for midterms, Steve Tillman was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.

  PART

  II

  The Return

  1

  O

  N THE FIRST SATURDAY IN JUNE, HOURS AFTER HIS RETURN as the seventeenth president of Caldwell College, Mark Darrow called on Lionel Farr at home.

  He had shipped his possessions ahead and driven from Boston to Wayne in his Porsche convertible. Reaching central Ohio, he found the countryside just as he recalled it, green and flat for miles on end, with a gentle roll now and then. But, he noted wryly, he had long since become a creature of urban culture, somehow surprised to pass more cemeteries than hybrid cars. The people of Wayne believed in tradition—they buried, rather than cremated, their dead. Darrow’s mother was one; he supposed he should visit her.

  The president’s house—where he and Farr had met with Clark Durbin, now his predecessor—felt strange to him. Driving to Farr’s, Darrow put the top down, a favorite indulgence when he and Lee had taken weekend trips to Cape Cod. The feel of the air—warm, a touch muggy—brought back his youth; the sight of Farr’s house infused old memories, both pleasant and painful, with a startling immediacy. As he stepped from the car, Darrow felt a curious dislocation, as though he were the unsettled youth he once had been rather than the presumptive savior of Caldwell College. Resolving to act his current age, Darrow knocked on the door.

  To his surprise, it was opened by a young woman in her twenties. Framed by raven hair, her chiseled face was at once aristocratic and startlingly beautiful, with deep blue eyes that gave an impression of wariness, intelligence, and, as she studied him, amusement. Darrow had the odd sense that he knew her, though surely they had never met: hers was a face he would not forget.

  “Hello, Mark,” she said. “I’d still recognize you anywhere.”

  Darrow stared at her, then emitted a startled laugh. “You’re supposed to be eleven.”

  “Twelve,” Taylor Farr corrected him. “Except that I’m actually twenty-eight.”

  “And living here again?”

  She led him inside. “Visiting,” she answered. “I’m taking the summer off from teaching classes at NYU to work on my PhD dissertation.”

  He followed her through the living room. “In what discipline?”

  “Art history.” She smiled at him over her shoulder. “As an artist, I was always long on theory.”

  Darrow realized how little he knew about what had become of her. Farr’s comments about Taylor, sparing and detached, had suggested an unspoken estrangement. “So what’s it like being back?”

  Turning, she paused in the living room, her expression openly curious. “I was going to ask you that.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to acknowledge their shared history. “Weird, at times. When I first came back to campus, I found myself standing in the shadow of the Spire.”

  Her blue eyes seemed to darken. “That was the last place I saw you, remember? You were very kind to a twelve-year-old girl in pain.”

  “I liked you, Taylor. And I’d had my own experiences with pain.”

  Taylor seemed to study him. “And more since then, I know. I’m so sorry about your wife.”

  “Thank you.” He put his hands in his pockets. “It seems that Lee’s death changed things for me. After everything that happened my senior year, I planned never to come back here. But now Caldwell has a need, and maybe I do, too.”

  Taylor simply nodded. In her silence, Darrow felt disconcerted by their moment of near intimacy. But he supposed it was not surprising that he and Lionel Farr’s daughter should retain a kinship. “I know my father needs you,” she said. “He’s in his study, more eager to see you than he’ll admit.”

  She led him there. She was taller than her mother, Darrow noticed, though she had the same grace of movement, the indefinable air of separateness. Softly knocking, she opened the door to Farr’s study.

  Caldwell’s provost rose from his familiar chair to shake Darrow’s hand. “I see you’ve remet Taylor.”

  “Uh-huh.” Glancing at Taylor, he said, “I recognized her right away. Hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “But she has, of course. Taylor’s become her mother.” Giving Taylor a brief smile, Farr added, “That’s a considerable compliment. But Taylor has talents all her own.”

  Taylor’s smile was somewhat arid. “If you’re going to talk like I’m not here,” she told both men, “I’ll make it easier by leaving.” To Darrow, she said, “Do you need anything?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Briefly, she met his eyes. “Then just say good-bye before you go.”

  She left, closing the door behind her. Farr gazed after her. “She does resemble Anne, don’t you think?”

  Sitting, Darrow shook his head. “Actually, Lionel, she looks more like you than Anne, though the results are better than I’d have expected. She also seems more like you.”

  Farr raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

  “More edge.” Darrow hesitated. “Taylor also strikes me as more present. Anne as I remember her was kind but subdued.”

  “She wasn’t well.” A look of reflection crossed Farr’s face. “As for Taylor, Anne’s death seems to have created a wall between us that still exists. The tacit silence builds, and what we do say to each other leaves many things unsaid. I’ve often felt that our idea of family is a myth, the reality of which is bound to disappoint. As a father, I suppose I disappoin
t myself.”

  “Have you disappointed Taylor?”

  “I’m afraid to ask. But a decade-plus of absence—physical and emotional—made that plain enough. This may be our last chance. That’s why, despite any awkwardness, I’m glad to have her back.” Farr leaned forward, speaking with more cheer. “I’m also glad to have you back, Mark.”

  Darrow smiled at this. “The least I could do.”

  “Oh, it’s something.” Farr gave a rueful wince, wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “The fig leaf of ‘health’ we used to cover Clark’s resignation is in shreds. During your trip out, someone leaked word of the embezzlement. As of this morning, the media carried the story of our missing near million all over Ohio. I’m already hearing from alumni, and our board chair, Ray Carrick, is apoplectic.”

  Darrow’s shrug was philosophical. “It was bound to get out sometime. The real problem is that we’ve lost control of the story. Do you know who leaked it?”

  “No. But a good guess is any board member who wants Clark Durbin pilloried.” Farr sat back. “This leak puts Durbin on the hot seat, and you along with him. Welcome back to Caldwell, Mark.”

  “This is why you hired me, isn’t it? Tell me what else I’m facing the next few days, and then we’ll think through this embezzlement.”

  Briefly standing, Farr reached into his rolltop desk and handed Darrow two stapled pages. “As we discussed, I’ve prepared a schedule for the next three weeks. Why don’t we look at it now?”

  Darrow scanned the pages. “You’ll see,” Farr told him, “that you’ve got meetings with key donors in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago, as well as alumni events in each city. When you’re on campus, you’ll meet with our CFO, the finance committee, and the investment committee, headed by Joe Betts.”

  “That reunion should be jolly,” Darrow said. “In light of the embezzlement.”

  “Yes. You’ll find Joe’s feeling a little raw. Ditto with the faculty. Some have great ambitions for expanding our curriculum and won’t be happy that Durbin’s now-public defalcation may derail yet another capital campaign. Which is why,” Farr added pointedly, “throwing Durbin to the wolves—or, more specifically, to Dave Farragher—would provide the discontented a welcome distraction from whatever cuts you’re forced to make. There are times when your new job requires a certain ruthlessness.”