The Book of Kills (25 page)

“Oh my God, the girl.”

“Sit down, Freda. Sit down.”

“What possessed him to say he killed that terrible young man?”

“Who will believe him?”

“The police! They are holding him. What should I do?”

“My brother Philip is with him. In a moment I will call him and get news.”

“You must take some schnapps.” The suggestion was an order. She poured two small glasses with a deft twist of her wrist and brought one immediately to her lips. It was clear who needed the schnapps. Roger lifted his glass and sniffed it, he rolled the viscous liquid in the glass, and set it on the table. If charity demanded, he would drink it, but there was enmity between him and alcohol.

Freda sought the great therapy of talk. She gave a jumbled account of their dealings with Orion Plant. She said the name as if doing so were a confessable fault. How he had led poor
Laverne on, and all of them, if the truth were known. That the young couple should marry seemed inevitable. Freda had only realized when Orion married another how much she disliked him. It had broken Laverne’s spirits. Freda took the rest of her schnapps and looked speculatively at the other glass. He pushed it toward her.

“Then he came back. A married man, and he came calling on Laverne as if nothing had happened. How she welcomed him. Oh, the stupid stupid girl. But there is more, something worse.”

“What?”

“Laverne . . .” Her eyes had been full of tears all along, but now they leaked from her eyes and ran down her Dresden china cheeks. “The stupid, stupid girl.”

There is no easy way for a mother to communicate such a disgrace. Roger would have been hard pressed later to recall the exact words Freda had used. Some of them were German. But the message was clear. Laverne was with child. The father had to be Orion.

“Didn’t she say?”

“She boasted of her condition. She has no shame.”

“I wonder if Orion knew.”

Freda didn’t know. There was a sound of the lock of the front door turning, but Freda had put up the chain. She went to the door.

“Mother, let me in. Why have you chained the door?”

A moment later, Laverne came in. Her uncovered head was asparkle with melting snow, her cheeks were flushed, she looked momentarily beautiful. She stared quizzically at Roger Knight. Not half an hour before they had exchanged waves in the library. She turned to her mother.

“Is it true?”

“You’ve heard.”

“I was told to come home, something had happened to Dad. Where is he?”

“In jail!”

Roger did not want to sit through another rendition of the story. Freda got his coat and kissed him wetly on the cheek, her lips sticky with schnapps. “Thank you for coming, Professor Knight. You are a good man.”

Laverne gave him a small smug smile, a woman with a secret. Roger could imagine her boasting of her condition. He went out into the snow.

THE REACTION IN THE MAIN
Building was ambiguous. The arrest of Bacon had seemed to write finis to the troubles that had been plaguing the university, but then Ballast brought word to the chancellor that the police had taken another graduate student in for questioning. Scott Byers. Anita Trafficant brought up his file, printed it out, and brought it in to the chancellor. He looked at her like a man who had just learned that his canceled execution was rescheduled for the morning. He studied the print-out. It meant nothing to him. Ballast took it and frowned over it.

“Did you ever hear of him?” he asked Anita.

“No.”

She had heard the soap opera details of Byers’s on-again, off-again relations with Marcia Younger Plant. “The life of the mind?” The chancellor hit his head. “And people complain about the behavior of our athletes.” Another storm that had blown over.

“Maybe Byers is one of the band that kidnapped me.” He looked around with a Lone Eagle expression. Anita felt something akin to compassion. Who does not magnify his own troubles? She went back to her adjoining office. It was there that she got the call from Maudit that Professor Otto Ranke had turned himself in and confessed to the murder of Orion Plant. Maudit wanted to know what the reaction of the administration was.

“You’re making this up.”

“So you haven’t heard.”

There was a lilt in his voice at the possibility. “Look, go tell the great man and then come back and describe it for me.”

She hung up. After a moment’s hesitation, she called the police and asked for Lieutenant Stewart. He was busy. She was giving the number he should call when she had a thought. “Is Philip Knight there?”

“Just a minute.”

And in less than a minute Philip Knight was on the line.

“Is it true about Professor Ranke?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Do they believe him?”

“He is very persuasive. And calm.”

“He says he killed Orion Plant?”

At that moment Ballast passed her desk and heard the question. He skidded to a halt. Anita ignored him.

“He couldn’t have. Are they holding him?”

“He insists on it.”

Philip Knight had to go, they were still going over Professor Ranke’s story with him. Anita rose and, with Ballast at her heels, went into the chancellor. She felt like Captain Hornblower about to witness a flogging.

“Professor Ranke has confessed to the murder of Orion Plant.”

“Otto Ranke? Nonsense.”

Anita waited. He saw that the message was true. Ballast cried, “I’ll get down there to represent our interests.”

“Yes, yes. Can it be kept quiet?”

Ballast knew when to answer and when not to answer. He hurried off. The chancellor plunged his face in his hands. Anita
withdrew, not wishing to see a grown man cry. Had he given any thought to poor Professor Ranke?

Her phone rang off the hook and she directed callers to public relations. Bartleby from that office called and asked what the hell was going on. She directed him to the police.

“They’re saying that Professor Ranke has been arrested for murder.”

“Actually, he confessed.”

“And you didn’t let me know?”

Bartleby managed to slam down his phone before she could slam down hers. And then a moment of silence reigned. But in Anita’s mind an old thought started up again. The jail was filling with people suspected of killing Orion Plant. Images of Harold rapidly replaced one another on the screen of her mind, mental MTV. Doubts she thought she had quelled came back with renewed force. After he admitted erasing his middle name from his file when he found it on her computer, he had gone on about his family. She had been almost surprised by the atavistic enthusiasm with which he spoke of his ancestors. The fact that they had lived here from the beginning obviously meant much to him. His job at the university, however humble, promised promotion, and it had reestablished the connection of his family with the university, after all these years. He talked of the Cruelles and the Youngers.

Younger. She called up Orion Plant’s file, still in the database despite the fact that he had been dropped from the graduate school, despite the fact that he was now dead. Married? Yes. Spouse’s name. Marcia Younger Plant. The Youngers had been one of the early families too. Marcia worked in the Huddle. Had that reestablished a link between her ancestors and Notre Dame? Anita had a sudden sense of a vast infrastructure beneath the
present, a past all but unknown to those who occupied this land now. Had Marcia Younger’s pride been similar to Harold’s? Had she been behind her husband’s mad campaign to prove this land had been gotten in a questionable manner?

Sandra Trepani, the toothy senator, called and asked if they could talk.

“So talk.”

“Can I come there?”

“I guess so.”

She blew in on the bad news she had just picked up, smiling like Bugs Bunny. She glanced at the closed door of the chancellor’s office.

“How is he taking it?”

“I talked him out of hanging himself.”

“He should have followed the advice of the senate.”

“Which advice?”

“The open hearing.”

Quinlan, his mind agog after hours of C-Span, had indeed proposed an open hearing, himself presiding, in which testimony would be given on the matters now contested concerning the title rights to the land on the shores of Saint Mary’s and Saint Joseph’s lakes. It would be televised, of course. Had he imagined himself bearing down on administrators and extracting incriminating admissions?

“How did they drive Ranke to do this? What do they have on him?”

“It obviously benefits the university to have a senior professor confess to murdering a graduate student.”

But irony was wasted on Trepani.

“Quinlan has a new idea.”

“Ah.”

“He has already summoned the executive committee of the senate for an emergency meeting.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

She glanced at her watch. “I have time. I had hoped you would give me some sense of the line the administration will take.”

“At the moment, they are disposed to let the law take its course.”

“Sacrifice Ranke?”

“He has thrown himself on the altar.”

That was better than Trepani had hoped for. She gathered up her things and tottered on her high-heeled snow boots. She urged Anita to call her with news of any developments.

“I can be summoned from the special session. Or you can leave a message on my home phone.”

“If something comes up.”

A little gloved hand grasped Anita’s. It might have been the secret handclasp of the sisterhood.

When she left, Anita felt that the chancellor had been abandoned and was naked to his enemies. Ballast had gone downtown. He sat alone on his seat of power, none of his advisors about him. Anita asked if she should call someone to be with him.

“That is good of you.”

“Meaning yes?”

He waved a weary hand. “No. I think not. I want to be alone for a time.”

When she arrived home, Harold was waiting for her.

BACON WAS RETAINED IN
custody, pending bail. Although Ranke’s confession freed him of the most serious charge, the fact that he had tampered with the scene of the crime and transported a dead body were cause enough to charge him. Not that Jimmy thought that anything would come of it, but the investigation into the death of Orion Plant had taken too many twists to accept any present simple solution. The fact was, he did not believe Ranke’s confession, but then he didn’t quite disbelieve it either.

“Too bad for the university,” Kocinski said, in conference with Kreps the prosecutor. “But nice for us. People are complaining that we’re giving Notre Dame special treatment.”

“With three people from there under lock and key?” Kreps favored monosyllables so that the occasional iambic foot made his level tone seem almost musical.

“But not all of them are guilty. The professor is a godsend.” Kocinski was demeaning himself in his effort to impress the prosecutor. Kreps, after many lucrative years in the legal department of a local bank, had to the surprise of all his friends announced his candidacy for prosecutor. Since he had no previous political experience, he looked the picture of innocence next to his experienced and thus tainted opponent. But his opponent was a member of the party that had controlled the city
for years, whose members would vote for a serial murderer if he had the party’s nomination. Kreps launched his campaign by saying that one of his first acts would be to indict his opponent for malfeasance in office. Whereupon he began to tick off offenses the opponent had thought were known only to himself and his dark angel. Kreps was elected largely because people wondered if he would keep his promise. He did. It was a relief for the police not to have to rely on his predecessor, but Kreps always needed convincing that a legitimate case could be made, by which he meant one he could not lose. Jimmy was glad he would not have to persuade Kreps that Byers had done in Orion.

“What are we holding him for?” Kreps asked.

Kocinski looked at Jimmy.

“Adultery.”

Kreps looked at Kocinski, but his eyes returned to Jimmy. “There is a statute on the books, but I don’t think anyone has ever been prosecuted for adultery in this county.”

“I want to hold him the maximum time without indicting him.”