Resolve (11 page)

The next ten minutes in my office were about as productive as my first five. I sat at my computer and searched the university’s phone directory hoping to find a cell phone number for Steven. No luck there. Eventually, I scrolled down the page and found that he had an apartment listed in the Mt. Washington neighborhood that overlooked the city. I jotted down the address on the same coupon with his phone number and stuffed it in my pocket. Determined not to stand around idly and watch my career become road kill, I propelled myself out of the office.

By the time I had walked to my car in the campus parking garage, beads of sweat had formed on my forehead. I stripped off my sport coat, threw it over the backseat of the dark green Jeep, and within seconds was winding my way down Ohio River Boulevard and eyeing the climb onto Mt. Washington. The Wrangler groaned as it pushed its way up onto the platform that presented an incredible panoramic view of most of the city. I cracked a window to let the early spring air dry my face, and thought about how I would explain things to Steven.

The apartment was set back from the edge of the ascent, and was concealed by a series of overrated and expensive restaurants that capitalized on the view. Steven’s building was a faded light blue, four-story structure that looked like a haven for wannabe artists and musicians. It was easy to see why a graduate student would choose to live here. Steven was listed as the occupant of apartment 2G, so I passed by, trying to eyeball the second floor. Each apartment had a door opening up onto a walkway that was visible from the street.

On my second trip around the block, I found a parking space on the street. As I evened my rear bumper with the car positioned in front of the open space and shifted into reverse, I swiveled my body in order to parallel park. My foot had started to release the brake and move toward the gas pedal when I caught sight of them. The two men were standing on the second floor outside an apartment. Hartz was knocking on the door while Shand stood watch. The detectives were positioned on either side of the door and didn’t appear to be engaged in any unnecessary chatter. Any decent police academy hammers those two things into your brain when it comes to approaching a residence: 1) never stand directly in front of a door in case someone starts blowing holes in it; and 2) shut the hell up so you might hear what is going on inside.

Hartz knocked two more times, and the frustrated-looking detectives exchanged glances before walking toward an exterior stairwell. Deciding that I didn’t want to stick around and shoot the breeze with them again, I shifted the car back into drive and slowly pulled away. Not being a big believer in coincidence, I didn’t think it was too much of a stretch to conclude that they were looking for Steven and had come up empty. There was no way that they had let the entire weekend pass without trying to interview him. Not with a high-profile case like this one. They either hadn’t been able to find him during the past two days, or they were attempting a follow-up interview for some reason. Regardless, I realized it was highly unlikely I’d be able to speak with Steven prior to his meeting with the dean.

Back on campus, I pulled into my designated parking spot and sat listening to the radio. As I pondered my situation, Tom Petty was singing “Breakdown” in the background. I could wait outside the Whitlock Building in hopes of catching Steven on his way in, but I didn’t even know what time the meeting was. Silo said the meeting was scheduled for the afternoon, but I couldn’t make out a time in his appointment book.

Looking at my watch, I was surprised to see it was almost noon. I was supposed to meet the guys for our usual Monday run in half an hour. I initially dismissed the idea, finding a seven-mile run trivial at the moment; but considering my limited choices, I got out of the vehicle and started the trek over to the recreation building. A hard run usually clears my head, and at this point I had clutter piled up in every corner.

We met in our usual spot in front of the recreation building, and stretched our hamstrings, quads, and calves. The skies were clear and the thermometers were supposed to tease us today with a high of around sixty. Randy’s extreme exuberance for the unusually nice weather was evidenced by his wearing shorts and a T-shirt he had picked up at some 5K race a few years ago. He looked as if the weekend had recharged him: he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet doing his best Rocky Balboa imitation. I hated it when he was in a good mood—it made him unbearable when he got on a roll. He had a temporary moment of panic when he noticed a small streak of dirt on his ankle that he must have gotten while stretching before I had come outside. The panic subsided when he brushed it off easily. If the man could run in a plastic bubble, I think he would. I could just see him rolling down the Boulevard of the Allies like a giant runaway hamster.

Aaron was more apprehensively attired in a long-sleeved shirt—made of something no human can pronounce, and similarly constructed long pants. He was wearing his Brooks. Wednesday, it would be his Adidas. He rotated shoes so the muscles in his feet and legs wouldn’t get used to the exact same movements. I know, it sounds crazy; but according to the modern literature on the subject, he was right to do so. The things we do to gain the tiniest advantage.

Jacob had a thick, plush-looking, purple hooded sweatshirt cloaking his torso. For some reason the comfortable sight of it made me want to take a nap. His black cotton shorts had the letters
TRU
printed on the left side and carried a small depiction of the school mascot on the right—“The Railer.” This made-up term, and the accompanying logo, were intended to represent a railroad worker pounding a steel spike into the ground with a ferocious-looking sledgehammer. I actually thought it more closely resembled a man in the middle of a backswing with a golf club preparing to strike a slightly misshapen penis.

The four of us made small talk as we finished warming up.

“No, no, no . . . Cimitrex is going to get bought out; it’s just a matter of time,” Randy rambled about his latest stock tip.

“I never invest heavily in tech stocks,” said Aaron. “Sure, I missed out on a lot during the early nineties, but when the bubble burst, I stayed nice and dry.”

“Cyprus, did you take my advice on that mutual fund?” Aaron asked as he paid extra attention to a troublesome calf muscle.

I distractedly told him that I hadn’t, but I would look into it.

Randy and Aaron continued ranting about the market, while Jacob and I continued limbering up.

Jacob spoke quietly, “How did things go with Silo?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Aaron and Randy weren’t listening, but I didn’t want to get into it with them around. It seemed that word of my blowup during the police interview hadn’t reached them yet.

Changing the subject, I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to have a meeting this week with the federal guys about some grant money?”

“Spent two hours with them at WVU this morning. I just got back here on campus. It’s looking pretty good, but there is still some finagling to do.”

I slipped into the bitchy cynicism that cops have sometimes. “So they made you spend ninety minutes driving to Morgantown for a two-hour meeting, just so you could turn around and drive ninety minutes back? How courteous of them.”

Shrugging it off, Jacob said, “They have the money for research and TRU wants me to do the research. That’s the way the game is played.”

I didn’t care about any of this. I was just trying to act normal. Trying to
feel
normal. I started feeling foolish for engaging in what Jacob had to know was a weak effort at self-distraction.

I got quiet and pulled a leg back behind me to loosen a quad muscle.

“You don’t look well, my friend. You have to relax. Even if Steven does find out about it, perhaps he won’t be upset.” Jacob consoled.

“Steven is just part of it,” I admitted. “I don’t think I told you, the murdered girl had come to my office on the day she was killed.”

I had a short inward debate about telling Jacob about why she had come to see me, and opted to keep that information to myself.

I changed course with, “I’m no stranger to seeing death, but it’s never easy to see somebody alive one minute and know they were gone a short while later.”

Jacob nodded his understanding.

“I’ve been here a long time, Cyprus. Unfortunately, this happens from time to time. Usually it’s an accident—a car crash or overdose—but it’s always hard to take when it happens to a student you had in class. For most of the city, it’s just some blonde girl who had a future snuffed out like the flame on a candle. But for anybody who was in the classroom with her, they’ll be stuck with an empty seat to remind them of the loss. I know it’s weird. Even when you don’t know your students well, you still feel responsible for them. It’s like their parents, whom you never met, entrusted their child to you. You illogically think it is your job to protect them, but you can’t.”

The four of us finished stretching, ran out of small talk, and set out southward toward the Allegheny River. Lindsay’s murder didn’t come up in conversation until the third mile, and even then it mostly consisted of typically empathetic comments about how the parents must be devastated and how young she was. The only one who didn’t seem to have gotten the memo on appropriate emotional responses after a death was Randy. He chugged away in front of me, and tried to move us away from the subject of Lindsay’s death by talking about how too many people were going to be allowed to enter the Pittsburgh Marathon this year, and what a travesty it was that the route was changed. I actually agreed with him on both points, but we were barely halfway through March and May was still weeks away. There would be plenty of time to bitch about it when a coed hadn’t been murdered the previous Friday.

We raced down a trail that parallels the river, to the sounds of barges hauling coal and traffic creeping over the multitude of bridges. Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice, which is great for scenery, but lousy for traffic. By the time we reached our turnaround point at Washington’s Landing, Randy was less hyper than when we began and his face was showing signs of impatience.

“The paper said she was from Clearview,” Aaron puffed while moving to the left side of the path to avoid a protective looking goose standing watch over her goslings.

Or is it geeslings? Or ganders? I would have to look that up along with the finch thing.

“I think it was Clarion,” Jacob corrected. “And she was planning on becoming a journalist, according to the story.”

I had avoided the news, so I was a little behind.

I inquired, “Was that what her degree would have been in?”

Aaron responded, “Yep. Scheduled to graduate this spring. Heather Braun over in the Journalism department told me that the girl seemed a little wild, but she was anything but flighty. She was actually very focused during class. Coming from Braun, that’s high praise.”

“Gentlemen, can we move on?” Randy’s dam finally cracked. “You act as if you’re shocked that this stuff happens!” His pace picked up to compete with his anger. “Most of us have been in this business for at least twenty years and you know that students die sometimes! You know this! Let’s not make a saint out of the girl!”

Randy paused as a cyclist passed by.

Throwing a quick look my way, he continued, “Hearing this level of naiveté from
the sapling
is one thing, but you two ought to be a little more seasoned at this point in your careers, don’t you think? Let’s not all be children.”

“Stop.” I grabbed the back of Randy’s shirt and pulled back. The entire group halted as if I had yanked on the reins of a horse. Spinning Randy around, I kept my voice even as I chose the words to drill into him.

“If you enter a room and see pieces of a burnt-up Brillo pad and an empty Coke can, what’s been going on in there?”

I once responded to a disturbance call where I found a teenage boy standing in his bedroom, naked, with the exception of a football helmet. He had a rose tied around his little railroad spike and was rubbing a vibrating cell phone on his testicles. The look I had on my face when I entered the room must have been similar to the expression Randy was now giving me.

He managed to fumble out, “I . . . I . . . wha-what?”

“Someone’s been smoking crack and using the steel wool as a screen and the Coke can as a pipe.” I poked a finger into his sweaty shirt. “That’s a tough one. Let’s try again. You know those pens with the ink that turns a different color when it comes in contact with counterfeit money? Why does the ink turn a different color?”

“Look here, I’m not . . .”

“Wrong answer. The ink contains iodine that reacts to the starch that is contained in normal paper. Real money is made from a special cotton and linen blend that doesn’t react the same way.”

Jacob started to step in. “Cyprus you’ve made your . . .”

“Here, Randy. I’ll toss you a softball. When police officers make a traffic stop, they usually touch the back of the car they are approaching. What’s that all about?”

Randy was wide-eyed and his mouth was open, but nothing was exiting the tunnel. He had been hit by the one-two punch of not expecting me to go off like this and not having a clue as to what I was talking about.

“It’s to make sure that the trunk or hatch is secure and nobody will get behind them when they walk toward the front of the car, Randy. And it has the added bonus of putting fingerprints on the car in case some psycho guns down the officer when he reaches the driver’s side window! That way there is at least some sort of evidence on the car and the son of a bitch might get convicted!”

I poked hard with each of the last three words.

“But you don’t know any of that, do you, Randy? You can talk about general deterrence versus specific deterrence or social disorganization theory until you’re blue in the face, but the truth is that you are an idiot when it comes to putting theory into practice! So you can talk down to me all you like and call me kid, or kiddo, or junior, but the sad truth is that you are a pathetic fraud who wouldn’t be able to hack it on the street for five minutes! Try walking into a death-trap of an apartment and seeing a three-year-old dead on the floor while the mother sits on the couch getting high! Take a shot at getting a schizophrenic fifteen-year-old the help she needs, only to find out later she cut off her own ears to silence the voices after Daddy sold her meds on the street. Or how about you watch helplessly as some of your coworkers disappear from roll call because some crackhead didn’t want to give up his stash, or some maniac thought trying to avoid three months in the city jail for simple assault was worth a cop’s life! Is that not the kind of resume you’re looking for, Randy?”