Eye of the Beholder (23 page)

I put my hands together and applaud silently. Albany doesn’t know that Ciancio was first, so he got the ice pick. Evelyn got the switchblade.

“You think this is connected to that song?” Stoletti asks.

“Who can say?” He nods at me. “I assume that’s why Mr. Riley is here. Last I heard, the counselor was doing quite well in the private sector. Evelyn Pendry comes to my door asking about Terry Burgos, then she’s murdered, then here is Mr. Riley himself.”

“You have an opinion on the subject?” she asks.

“Not—I’m a teacher,” he answers. “Terry took the words of a troubled high school student and read into them biblical implications. Is someone else doing the same? I don’t know. I do know there are an awful lot of Web sites devoted to Terry.”

“We’re looking at those,” she says. “Do you? Look at the Web sites, I mean?”

“I’ve seen them. To the extent that what he did to those women has been glorified, it’s part of my class.”

“You’re still teaching that class?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “More popular, and relevant, than ever. You listen to any hip-hop music lately? They talk about beating and sexually abusing women more often than ever. They talk about having intercourse so violent that it destroys a woman’s vaginal walls.”

Stoletti nods at him. “And what do you think about that?”

“I think it’s disgusting. But, I must say from a cultural standpoint, fascinating, too. We focus on the first verse of the song, by the way,” he adds. “The first verse identifies victims—not by name, of course, but how they affected Tyler Skye. Girls who rejected him. Girls who mocked him. The second verse—well, the ice pick lyrics are directed at a man. A couple of them are specifically directed at women. Some of them don’t specify a gender. And none of them explains why he’s killing them. There’s nothing about being rejected or betrayed or insulted. The second verse is simply a description of how the murders will be committed.”

That’s true. The second verse was less personal.

“We’ll need a copy of your course materials.” Stoletti thinks a moment. “And a list of your students for the past few years.”

“Well, the course materials, no problem: ” The professor shrugs. ”The students’ names could be problematic. I think you need to speak with the administration. There are privacy laws, yes?”

Neither of us answers. Albany swivels in his chair and reaches into a cabinet, pulling out three-ring binders, getting together the course materials. Stoletti looks at me with her eyebrows up. Albany slides a course packet across his desk to Stoletti and asks, “Anything else?”

I can see that his initial nerves have subsided and now he’s back to being the arrogant asshole I’ve always known. Good. Now it’s time.

“Yeah, one more thing,” I say. “You can tell us everything that you and Evelyn Pendry discussed.”

He gives me a look, like he already did that.

I fix a look right back on him. He’s no fan of mine, but I’m pretty sure he still has a switch I can flip. “Professor, we have the notes that Evelyn wrote up from your interview. We know what you talked about with her. So let’s hear it.”

Albany looks away, then leans back in his chair and crosses a leg. Then he crosses his arms. A defensive posture. “If you already have her notes, then why are you asking me what you already know?”

“It’s your call, Professor. You can tell us or lie to us, like you already have.”

Albany loses the color in his face. He’s been down the road of accusation with me before. He didn’t like it so much last time.

“Then maybe—” Albany’s throat closes, which betrays his attempt to stay cool. The smirk is long gone. “Maybe I should have a lawyer present?”

“I’m a lawyer,” I say.

“Hey, Professor,” Stoletti chimes in. “It’s your office. You can kick us out. We’ll come back later. Maybe in the middle of one of your classes. I’ll bring my handcuffs.”

“Listen to me,” I say. “You’ve made false statements to a police officer. That’s a felony. But if you come clean with us right now—and I mean right now—you have corrected your statement. No crime. Once we leave, that statement is complete. And false.”

The professor gives a wide, bitter smile, coughs a brief laugh, before getting out of his seat and pacing behind his desk. “You blame me for what happened to those girls.” He looks at me. “I know you do. Everyone does. I taught a class, teaching about the demeaning ways popular media depicts women, and suddenly I’m the
poster
boy for violence against women. The one person trying to
stop
it is now the one known throughout the country, throughout the academic community, for
sponsoring
it.”

He waves his arms angrily. His eyes fill. “Now someone’s doing it again and it’s going to be my fault all over again.”

Having been on the defense side for some time now, I can see his point in a way I never could, as a prosecutor. He’s right. In some ways I did blame him. Everyone did. He fed this material to a monster who used it to kill six women.

“We’re waiting,” I say to him.

He takes a moment, a couple of heavy sighs, a wipe at his face, a long shake of the head. “I told that reporter that I didn’t know what she was talking about,” he says evenly. “Cassie was fighting a lot of demons. What, precisely, I didn’t know. On the surface, she had everything. But she couldn’t get past whatever was troubling her. She should have been the most popular girl on campus, but Ellie was her only friend. Yes, I knew her a little bit. Yes, I occasionally socialized with the students. But I didn’t know
those
kinds of details.”

Stoletti is smart enough to let this thing ride out, and we remain quiet until we’re sure he’s done. Done for the moment, at least. There’s more, but I don’t know what. I was bluffing before, of course. We don’t have Evelyn Pendry’s notes from her interview with Albany or with anyone else. We’re completely in the dark. I just recognized something in his eyes and acted on it.

“Tell us the details,” I try.

“I’m saying I
don’t know
the details.” He waves his hands, pleading. “I don’t know if she was even pregnant, much less whether she got an abortion.”

“Keep going,” I say instinctively. In my job, you learn to control your reactions. I want to keep the focus on him so it’s not on Stoletti or me. Stoletti has a notepad and she casually scribbles something.

Pregnancy? Abortion?

Cassie Bentley?

I feel a burn through my chest. All of this is news to me.

The professor, deflated now, shakes his head. He has nothing more to tell us. I believe him.

“Who told Evelyn about this?” I ask. “How did she know to ask these questions?”

“I have no idea. She’s a reporter. She probably wouldn’t have told me if I asked. And I didn’t.”

True enough. Christ, Evelyn said nothing about this to me. Then again, I didn’t give her much of a chance.

“Did Cassie even have a boyfriend?” I ask, feeling something swimming in my stomach. That’s a question to which I, of all people, should know the answer.

The rumor had been she was gay. And then none of the details of her personal life mattered, not for the case, once we dropped the charges on her murder.

“I have no idea,” Albany says.

Stoletti looks at me and I shrug. She slips him her card and gives the standard line,
If you think of anything else, don’t be a stranger.
I walk out first, through the hallway, down the stairs and out the door, not entirely sure where I am.

But having some idea where I need to go. I call Shelly on my cell phone.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” I ask her.

S
TOLETTI AND I drive back in silence. She was never exactly warm to me, but since learning that I’m Harland Bentley’s lawyer the temperature has dropped still further. It feels odd, the silence, because both of us were floored upon hearing this talk of Cassie possibly having been pregnant and gotten an abortion. Such a blockbuster, and Stoletti treats me like a passenger in a taxicab. I sense that this supposed open-door policy has become decidedly one way.

When she drops me off at the station, I switch to my car. I dial information on my cell phone and ask for a number in Lake Coursey, where Harland thought his niece might still be living. “Gwendolyn Lake,” I say.

The operator tells me there are two numbers. “A Gwendolyn Lake on Spring Harbor Road, and a Gwendolyn’s Lake Diner on County Road 29.”

Party girl-heiress Gwendolyn Lake runs a diner?

I tell him I want addresses as well as phone numbers, and I’ll take them for both entries. Then I call my assistant, Betty, and tell her to get directions to both addresses off MapQuest.

I swing by the law school where Shelly works. She’s waiting out front. She didn’t have to be in court today and it’s summer, so she’s casual in a blouse and blue jeans. My disillusionment with Professor Albany’s revelations notwithstanding, I feel an immediate lift.

She jumps into the car, and I take in her scent. I consider reaching over to kiss her, but then I think,
Slow.
I promised.

But I don’t resist when she turns my face toward her and plants one on me.

“So this is how you entertain your dates?” she asks me. “A witness interview?”

I start driving. “It’s up north,” I explain. “Your kind of country.”

Shelly grew up downstate, where her father was a prosecutor before running statewide for attorney general, and later governor. She’s a city girl now, but she’s complained more than once about not seeing the stars at night and how she misses the clean, crisp, unpolluted air.

“While we’re up there,” I add, “we can look for a second home. Some place on a lake with a boat.”

She doesn’t take the bait, so I keep going.

“But first things first: We have to get you pregnant. And then the wedding, of course, at the governor’s mansion. I’ve got a preliminary invitation list. Is two thousand too many?”

I keep my face straight and my eyes forward.

“You mock me, Mr. Riley.”

I take her hand, which she reluctantly yields, and kiss it.

“Ms. Trotter, you’ve never known slow like I’m going to show you.”

“Don’t forget, Paul, I’ve seen you on the jogging path.”

Life is grand. I’m like a teenager after his first kiss.

“Tell me about last night,” she requests.

I had to leave Shelly last night when I got the call about Evelyn Pendry. I give her the long version, and because we have almost a hundred miles to go I tell her about Professor Albany today, too.

When I’m finished, she says, “Whoever’s doing this has an agenda.”

The interstate is relatively clear midday. I push it past seventy as we head through the northern part of the state, mostly underdeveloped, rural flat land.

“The victims aren’t random,” she elaborates. “Evelyn called Fred Ciancio, and both of them are dead. And he lets you see the weapons, from the song. He writes ‘I’m not the only one.’ He’s not hiding what he’s doing. The question is, why?”

She’s right about the victims. Ciancio can be linked back to the Burgos case because of the phone call he made to Carolyn Pendry. And then, recently, he called Carolyn’s daughter, Evelyn. This is not random.

“The other question,” she adds, “is where Cassie Bentley comes in. The thing about pregnancy and the abortion. You didn’t know anything about that?”

I shake my head. “The word, back then, was that Cassie had been ‘troubled.’ That was the word we always heard. Intensely private, too. She had, like, two friends. And her closest friend was Ellie, one of the other victims, so we never learned too much about her.”

“Troubled how?”

“Like locking herself in her room. Not going to class. Not socializing. Not even eating.” I shrug. “Rich kid who can’t be happy: ”

I feel Shelly’s eyes on me.

“Don’t be dismissive. It’s not easy having a famous family.”

Well, Shelly would know. She didn’t exactly have a winning relationship with her folks as her father ascended to the highest office in the state.

“Apparently,” I say, “it got worse around the time she died. She went into a cocoon.”

Shelly doesn’t respond, but I know the same words are on the tip of her tongue as mine.
Pregnancy. Abortion.
Enough to send an already troubled college girl into a nosedive.

“Did Terry Burgos know Cassie?”

“Not so far as we could tell. He certainly never said so.”

“Do you think these things going on in Cassie’s life have anything to do with why Burgos killed her?”

“No,” I answer. “I think he killed Cassie because she was Ellie’s friend. He needed another victim and she was it.”

“What sin did Cassie commit? I mean, each victim had a specific sin, right?”

“Well, that’s the thing. The last murder in the first verse was suicide. ‘Now it’s time to say good-bye to someone’s family. Stick it right between those teeth and fire so happily.’ He’s talking about killing himself. Burgos knew, I think, that he was supposed to kill himself but he didn’t want to. He came upon Cassie and killed her instead. Thus, she ‘saved’ him.”

“How did he ‘come upon’ Cassie?”

We don’t know. Burgos didn’t testify, and when he talked to the shrinks all he talked about was God and sinners. He didn’t get into specifics with any of the girls. I tell Shelly all of that.

“So you don’t know how he abducted Cassie.”

I feel like I’m on the witness stand. I’ve seen Shelly cross-examine witnesses and I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end.

“Does that bother you?” she asks me.

“No, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Then why are we going to Lake Coursey, Paul?”

“Gwendolyn Lake was Cassie’s cousin.” Other than Ellie Danzinger and a young guy whose name I can’t recall, Cassie’s cousin, Gwendolyn, is the only person I can think of. She wasn’t around when Cassie was murdered, but she apparently flew into town now and then and spent time with Cassie.