The Book of Kills (24 page)

“You’re entitled to have a lawyer with you.”

“What for?”

“We’re investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

“But you’ve already arrested Bacon!” He glanced at Phil and then stared at the tabletop. “Carlotta put you up to this, didn’t she?

“Up to what?”

“Oh come on. Look, I didn’t kill Orion.”

“Why would you deny an accusation that hasn’t yet been made?”

“Yet.”

“Is there anything you want to tell us?”

“Why don’t you tell me why I am here. Maybe I will call a lawyer.”

“I’ll wait.”

Byers’s voice had risen in defiance, but now he slumped in his chair.

“We have the murder weapon, you know. The tomahawk. There are prints on it.” This was accurate enough except that the prints were smudged beyond recognition.

Byers perked up. “I was wearing gloves that night.”

Stewart let the words echo in the room. “Would you like me to get a lawyer for you?”

“I still don’t need a lawyer.”

“Because you were wearing gloves?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“That I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Why did you think Carlotta Bacon would accuse you of killing Orion and setting up her husband?”

“Because he’s her husband.”

“Orion was the husband of Marcia.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’ve reestablished relations with her, haven’t you? Indecently quickly, I might add.”

“I’ve tried to help her through this. We all have.”

“But no one else has moved in with the widow.”

“I have my own place.”

“You have a key to the house. You’ve been seen letting yourself in as if you owned the place. How many nights would you say you’ve stayed there?”

There is a rhythm to interrogations. Fear and defiance alternate, anger begins when the same questions are asked again and again. Byers began to have the look of a cornered man. Phil considered the young man’s plight.

Jimmy said that they knew Byers had been seeing Marcia right up to her marriage to Orion Plant. “That must have come as a shock to you.”

“I was surprised, yes.”

“Disappointed?”

“I suppose.”

“Angry?”

Byers did not answer. Wondering how anything he said might be taken had made him seem furtive, the manner of someone hiding what the questions were circling toward.

“Damn it, are you going to arrest me or what?”

“On what charge?”

“What you’ve been hinting at all along.”

“What would that be?”

“Come on.”

“Why don’t you just tell us all about it.”

“All about what?”

“What we are talking about.”

“That I used to go with Marcia before she got married? That I have been seeing her since Orion was killed? Is that a federal offense?”

“Killing Orion?”

“No. Seeing a woman. Staying with her, so what? She isn’t married.”

“Because her husband was killed.”

“Yes, Orion was killed. That isn’t news.”

“And that left an open path for you to reclaim your true love.”

And so it went. Like Bacon before him, Byers was adamant that he had not killed Orion Plant. Bacon, however, had admitted to removing the body and taking it in Roger’s cart and dumping it in the wooded area beneath Fatima Retreat House. The mystery of why he had bothered to do that remained, and it was the hook on which to hang the charge that he had murdered Orion before taking away his body. The case against Byers was more tenuous. He had gone with Marcia and suddenly she had married Orion Plant, leaving him presumably with the standard reaction of the jilted male. He had all but moved in with the new widow after the
event, suggesting that this had been the point of killing Orion. But it was all conjecture. Unless, of course, Carlotta Bacon did indeed suspect Byers and had reason for doing so. But would she not then have told the police of her suspicion?

Stewart was off on a tangent, explaining to Byers the procedure for taking him before a judge and making a formal charge. Byers followed this as if it were a technical problem he was glad to be informed of. Finally, Stewart got up.

“I am going to leave you now with Detective Knight. I am going to get a lawyer for you so we can go through all this thoroughly.”

“Oh my God.”

The door closed behind Stewart and silence fell over the room, a silence Phil did not intend to break. His presence at the interrogation was not according to Hoyle and Stewart would have to go through the questions again once he had secured a lawyer for Byers.

“I didn’t do it.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“I would be surprised if you admitted it.”

“Of course I haven’t. Because I didn’t do it.”

Silence.

“You’re the brother of Professor Knight, aren’t you?” “That’s right.”

“Why are you here?”

“The university has retained me.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know my brother?”

“I know who he is. He’s hard to miss.”

Phil did not react. He did not encourage comments on
Roger’s girth. He himself was beginning to wonder if he really enjoyed being back in the saddle again, to the degree that he was. From the beginning, he had been quietly scandalized by the series of events meant to embarrass the university in the matter of its claim to its land. He might have felt differently if any real Native Americans were involved in the incidents. But it all had the look of radical chic, borrowed indignation, an exercise in political correctness. It dismayed him that anyone should want to bring the university into disrepute. It dismayed him more that the administration seemed to have no swift way of handling the charges. He had heard of the planned White Paper, not a bad idea, but by the time it was written, time would have passed and it might serve only to stir up what had died down.

The door opened and Jimmy beckoned him into the hall. “Wait for me,” he said to Byers.

The busy hallway was a contrast to the isolation of the interrogation room. Jimmy waited for several officers to pass.

“I’m going to let him go.”

Phil nodded. Jimmy must have been thinking how difficult it would be to get an indictment.

“The murderer has confessed.”

“Bacon?”

Jimmy looked directly at him then, and it was difficult to decipher his expression.

“No. Professor Otto Ranke.”

PROFESSOR OTTO RANKE’S
confession that he had killed his former student Orion Plant electrified the campus. Roger Knight had been kept abreast of developments by Phil, and by Lieutenant Stewart’s visits as well, but he had not felt any impulse to get involved, not after his inquiries had turned suspicion on Orion Plant. The investigation pursued all the available spoors, but Roger was a firm believer in the contingency of things and thought, but did not say, that the murderer could easily be someone utterly unconnected with what Jimmy and Phil were pursuing. Bacon had conveniently admitted to transporting the body, but his denial that he had killed Orion was plausible to Roger just because it seemed so implausible that he would go to such trouble to remove the body of a man he had not killed. As for Byers, the events had the requirements for a fictional plot, but seemed devoid of solid legal base. Roger’s heart sank within him when Phil called to tell him of Otto Ranke’s confession. In a way he would have hesitated to call intuition, Roger was immediately struck by the plausibility of the professor’s confession. It might seem that Ranke had no compelling motivation for killing Orion, but Roger knew otherwise. Above all, he knew about Ranke’s daughter, Laverne. He decided to go to Holy Cross House and talk with Father Carmody.

It was the first time he had used his golf cart since its role
in transferring Orion Plant’s body had become known. The police had finally returned it to him, but Roger had eschewed its use. When he came within sight of the library, he abruptly changed his mind. First he would have a chat with Whelan.

The news about Ranke brought back Whelan’s stammer and for half a minute he could say nothing. Then his ease with Roger asserted itself.

“He confessed?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“He says because he killed Orion.”

“I meant, why would he kill him?”

“Revenge.”

He explained it to the learned archivist, but Whelan was inexperienced in the ways of love, of man for woman, of parent for child. “The man was dropped by the university. He would have gone away.”

“But he hadn’t.”

He realized that Whelan did not know all he knew. It took time away from more interesting topics to pass on to the archivist the twists and turns of the investigation into Orion Plant’s death. Laying out in linear order the things that Orion had engineered to embarrass the university, the effort apparently accelerated by the expulsion Whelan had mentioned. On the fatal night, there had been a meeting and then Orion had set out to stage a solo raid on the worshipers at the grotto. He never got there, though his lifeless body might have been carried past the grotto as it was taken to where it was found.

“But none of that has anything to do with Professor Ranke. Surely he didn’t take part in any of those things.”

“His daughter did.”

Whelan sat back. “The girl who worked downstairs.”

“Laverne Ranke.”

“She has the reputation of being strange.”

“She and Orion were very close. I think it was assumed that marriage was in the offing, and then suddenly he married Marcia.”

“She worked in the Huddle.”

For an apparently dedicated bachelor, Whelan seemed well informed about unattached females on the campus.

“Leaving Laverne in the lurch.”

“So.”

“Recently they had renewed their relations. To Professor Ranke’s disgust. If he learned of his daughter’s involvement in Orion’s silly pranks, well . . .”

“You really think he killed Orion Plant?”

It would have been so easy to say no. Roger wanted to say no. But from what he knew of Professor Ranke he could believe that the eminent historian would take strong measures against a man who threatened to ruin his daughter’s life a second time.

“I don’t believe it,” Whelan said.

“I hope you’re right.”

But Whelan suddenly changed gears. “I better get busy gathering materials on this, for the archives.”

“For
The Book of Kills?”

“I hate puns.” But it was the amateur compiler of the initial account of strange deaths at Notre Dame who peeved Whelan.

Roger left, and when he emerged from the elevator on the first floor he was surprised to see Laverne Ranke working at the check-out counter. She performed her task with chill efficiency—scanning the identification card into the computer, doing the same with the books, running their spines over a magnet
that would deactivate them so they would not sound the alarm when the bearer left the library. She was pasting a slip into the back of a book when she noticed Roger. Her cold mask of a face broke into a grotesque smile and she waggled her fingers at him.

She could not know yet about her father. Roger had no inclination to be the bearer of such news. He waggled his fingers in answer and passed into the concourse of the library.

Outside, snow had begun to fall, driven at a slant by the north wind. Roger gathered his scarf more tightly around his neck. The action put him in mind of a noose. Professor Otto Ranke had put his own head into a noose. He would not include in his confession that he was doing this for his daughter. When that occurred to the investigators, it would prompt them to ask why he would do anything so drastic to protect Laverne. What had she done? Or what had Professor Ranke thought she’d done? Roger stood for a moment peering through the blinding snow. There was of course the straightforward explanation that Ranke gave. He had killed Orion because the man was a dangerous fool who had brought dishonor on his former department and on the university. That he had also trifled with Ranke’s daughter only added fuel to the fire of his rage. It was quite possible that Otto Ranke had confessed to killing Orion Plant because in fact he had killed him.

But how must Mrs. Ranke be taking all this? Roger lowered his head and headed into the weather toward his golf cart. He would stop by the Ranke house to talk with Freda.

She looked out at him over the door chain with frightened eyes. He threw back the hood of his commodious jacket and she cried out with recognition.

“Professor Knight, come in, come in.”

The house was warm as toast, but the absence of Otto was palpable. He was surprised to find her alone, but so she was. She took his coat and still holding it looked at him tragically. Suddenly, she threw herself in his arms and he tried to comfort her. She was babbling in the German dialect of her girlhood, but it was scarcely articulated sound. This was the wail of a woman crushed by events. She stepped back, her eyes aswim with tears, looked at his dripping coat and then, scolding herself, bore it away to the closet.

“He didn’t even tell me what he was going to do. I received a phone call from a reporter and then I checked and it’s true. He has gone mad.”

“Does Laverne know?”