The Spire (20 page)

Taylor considered that. 'She hardly looked like a woman in danger of regressing.'

'No way. Still, on one level I could understand her'as I said, I still have the superstitious sense that I'll become who I was before Lionel changed everything. But Lee had a depth of fear beyond anything she could express, or I could fathom. The idea of becoming her mother tied her in a psychic knot.' Almost against his will, Darrow felt himself edging closer to the source of his unspoken pain. 'The decision to become pregnant was extremely hard for Lee. But she knew how much I wanted to give a child the love and security I'd never had.' His voice softened. 'Up to the day she died, I worried that she'd just given in. But I never asked. I was too afraid of the answer, and what it might cause her to do.'

All at once, Darrow knew that finishing the story would be too hard. He felt Taylor appraising him and then, without words, deciding not to press him. 'Lately,' she said, 'I've thought about having kids. In a wholly abstract sort of way.'

Relieved, Darrow turned to her. 'What did you conclude''

'That I want them. It came to me when I realized that the guy I was involved with imagined being the only child of our marriage. I'd like to be a mother, as good as I believe my mother was. But for the right reasons.'

'Which are''

In Taylor's silence, Darrow watched her framing the answer with care. 'For me, parenting can't be a means of making up to myself for what I missed, using my child as a surrogate. There's too much narcissism in the way some people parent, and I don't want to become an obsessive mother. Moms or dads like that too often warp their children, or force them to fill parental needs in some fairly unhealthy ways.' After taking a sip of wine, she finished quietly: 'The gap between the myth of what family should be and the sad reality of what it often is can be pretty hard on everyone.'

Perhaps Taylor was talking about her own family, or the better family she hoped to have. But, however tactfully, she had also held Darrow's own image of fatherhood to the light. He felt torn between the desire to say something and uncertainty about what he wished to say. Then Taylor checked her watch. 'I forgot this was a school night, Mark. It's getting late for both of us.'

Darrow felt a stab of disappointment. Awkwardly, he said, 'I hope we're not finished.'

She gave him a swift, sidelong glance. 'With your surroundings' We've barely started.'

Darrow walked her to the door. 'This weekend,' he ventured, 'why don't we do something''

Taylor looked amused. 'Something' Whatever it is, I'm willing to discuss it.'

Later, falling into bed, Darrow felt restless. Then he remembered finding the package Rusty Clark's assistant had left on his doorstep, a partial transcript of Steve Tillman's trial. Turning on the light, he began reading.

T

HE NEXT MORNING, D ARROW MET WITH THE PUBLIC relations expert hired to deal with the embezzlement. It was brief and efficient: all statements by the school would come from Darrow himself, whose focus on imposing strict accounting controls seemed to placate restive alumni. But the next meeting, with Provost Farr and faculty department heads, was longer.

It was the last such gathering before the faculty went off for their various summer studies, trips abroad, or retreats to produce works of scholarship. As a group, Darrow had discovered, the heads represented the usual mix of personalities'wry, enthusiastic, detached, rancorous, intemperate, and ingratiating. Though most accepted his proposal to restrict faculty-student dating, their other complaints were many. Some lobbied to improve the lives of students; others, to assert the primacy of their departments in the battle over Caldwell's slim resources. There was not enough money to satisfy them all'or any of them. Instead Darrow solicited a written summary of their departments' needs and ambitions, promising that, in due course, he would consider these in framing an endowment plan'which, however, must also finance his aim to recruit disadvantaged students. They departed in various states of hope and discontent. It was, Farr told him afterward, the best Darrow could hope for.

His workday ended with a conference call from Joe Betts and Greg Fox, scheduled at Joe's urgent request. With evident satisfaction, Fox reported the discovery of a second account in the name of Caldwell College, opened at the local branch of the First Columbus Bank, for which the signature card bore Clark Durbin's name. 'What's different here,' Fox explained, 'is that the money didn't
leave
for Switzerland'it came back.'

'How much'' Darrow asked.

'Fifty thousand dollars, transferred three months ago.'

'This clinches it,' Joe Betts's voice broke in. 'Durbin laundered the money through Switzerland and sent it back to himself in Wayne.'

'It seems circular to me,' Darrow said. 'Why would Durbin do that''

'Concealment,' Joe answered promptly. 'He was trying to make it harder to trace the flow of cash. This is the last piece of evidence we need to prosecute.'

Darrow scribbled two words on his notepad: 'Why Columbus'' Then he asked, 'What do you think, Greg''

'I'm with Joe,' Fox answered crisply. 'Durbin outsmarted himself. Most embezzlers do.'

'True enough,' Darrow answered. 'I'll let Mike Riley know about this. He'll be in touch with you soon.'

'Your guy'' Joe's voice rose slightly. 'Do we really need him after this' Seems like a waste of time and money.'

'Time, maybe. Not money. I'll pay him myself.'

After a moment's silence, Fox allowed a note of strained patience to seep into his voice. 'I'll be waiting for his call.'

Hanging up, Darrow scribbled, 'Missing: $850,000.' Then he left a voice message with Mike Riley in Boston, and hurried out the door.

IT WAS A soft summer evening, lightly humid, and the rolling landscape outside Wayne evoked a slice of Darrow's teenage years: aimless drives with friends, radio blaring, cold six-packs of beer hidden in the trunk while they searched for a place to drink it. But the once-verdant farmland was now dotted with pseudobaronial homes, their acreage demarked by rustic fences'the retreats of Columbus-based businessmen like Joe Betts, designed to suggest the horse country of Kentucky. Only Carly Simmons's place had been there twenty years ago: a rambling white nineteenth-century farmhouse, with a barn that still displayed a worn advertisement for Red Man chewing tobacco, its yellow letters peeling, its fierce-looking Indian head fading into commercial history. The sight made Darrow smile.

Simmons waited in a fenced-off area in front of the barn, throwing a wooden stick to a black terrier who returned it eagerly and repeatedly. As the wheels of Darrow's Porsche crunched the gravel driveway, Simmons turned and waved by way of greeting. Even after sixteen years she looked familiar, though the blond woman who'd once knelt by Angela's body was stockier now, her curls tipped with gray. Her ruddy face flushed from exercise, she gave him a firm handshake.

'So you're president of Caldwell,' she said without preface.

'Yup.'

'A lot to do, I imagine.' Her tone flattened out. 'You also found her body, I remember.'

Darrow nodded. 'It's something you don't forget. Now that I'm back, I've started thinking about all the things I still don't know.'

'Don't blame you,' Simmons said matter-of-factly. 'It was one of my first cases, and it sticks in the mind. Partly because of the victim, partly because I pretzeled myself to get things right.'

The statement was factual, and undefensive. But her large brown eyes seemed to examine him closely. 'So,' she finished, 'you're back, and now you're nagged by unanswered questions. What do you want to know''

'Several things,' Darrow said, 'in no particular order. For example, how drunk was Angela before she died''

The terrier nudged Simmons's leg, stick between its teeth. Reaching down, Simmons retrieved the piece of wood and threw it toward the fence. 'Drunk enough,' she answered. 'It's hard to be precise. But tests on the two glasses we found in Steve's room showed they'd both kept on drinking. Though from the toxicology report, Angela had begun to metabolize the alcohol before she died.'

Darrow watched the dog scamper for the stick, tail bobbing. 'What does that tell you''

The lines at the corners of Simmons's eyes deepened slightly. 'That she'd stopped consuming alcohol. Also, possibly, that she'd had some form of physical activity.'

'Like walking''

'Maybe. Or sex.'

'How drunk was Steve''

Simmons smiled faintly. 'That was kind of critical, given his story. You don't black out on a couple of Miller Lites. Let alone suffer gaps in memory.' She paused, ordering her thoughts. 'By his own account, Tillman was a seasoned drinker, much more so than she was. That means he metabolized alcohol more quickly.

'By the time we took his blood sample, maybe nine hours later, he was a hair below the legal limit of .08 blood alcohol concentration. Once you stop drinking, you drop about .0125 every hour. So put Tillman up around 2.0 at the height of his intoxication.'

'That's pretty drunk.'

Simmons nodded. 'I can't tell you at what point the kid's lights would start going out. But yeah, that's pretty drunk. Not to mention he'd done some coke.'

'So we've got a drunk with a bum knee lugging a dead body around campus.'

Simmons threw the stick again. 'So they say. Maybe the coke jacked him up. I don't try the cases; I just do the corpses.'

'Any chance she was strangled near the Spire''

The question made her turn, eyes focused on the question. 'Are you familiar with the concept of lividity''

'Uh-huh. Once the heart stops pumping, gravity governs the flow of blood. Depending on the position of the body, blood flows to its lowest point.' Darrow shoved his hands into his pockets. 'I found Angela lying face-up. So the blood should have gravitated to her back.'

'Which it did.'

'Nowhere else''

Simmons slowly shook her head. 'I checked her fingers and toes. No lividity.'

'What did
that
suggest''

Crossing her arms, Simmons ignored the dog at her feet. 'There are two possibilities. The first is that the killer carried Angela to where you found her quickly enough that the blood didn't flow to her extremities. The second is that she was strangled much closer to the Spire.'

Darrow felt his instincts quicken. 'So there's no medical evidence affirmatively suggesting that she was carried there''

Simmons shook her head again. 'I can't rule that out. Nor can I rule it in.'

Watching the terrier paw Simmons's pant leg for attention, Darrow tried to organize his thoughts. 'What about time of death'' he asked.

Simmons threw the stick again. 'That's more art than science. We go on body temperature. But there's all sorts of variables: ambient air temperature, moving air currents, type of clothing, how long the body had been outside. Angela was slender, causing her body to cool more quickly. But she was wearing a heavy coat. So it was hard to be exact.'

Listening to the vicissitudes of science, Darrow remembered Angela herself'her face at the party so human and vulnerable, in death a mask of agony.

'The range we settled on,' Simmons continued, 'was that she'd been dead from six to twelve hours. But my best estimate was she'd died between two and three A.M. Which, as it turned out, was more or less consistent with the trial testimony.'

'From Joe Betts, you mean''

'Yeah, and that waitress.'

'What waitress'' Darrow asked in surprise.

Simmons threw the stick still farther, grunting with exertion. 'I forget her name'she worked the night shift at Donut King. As best I recall, she was taking a shortcut across campus. She claimed to have seen the outline of a man beneath the Spire laying down what looked like a body.'

'What time was it''

'Shortly after three A.M., I think she said.'

Darrow struggled to reorganize the puzzle pieces to accommodate a new one. Joe Betts claimed to have seen Steve outside the dorm around three o'clock; apparently the waitress believed that an unidentified man had deposited Angela's body a few minutes later. But, despite this contradiction, both accounts suggested that Angela had been carried to the Spire. At length, Darrow asked bluntly, 'Was Angela raped''

Simmons pursed her lips. 'There was evidence consistent with rape. That the sperm was Tillman's only proved they'd had sex. Ditto that both their pubic areas contained each other's hair. But there were scratches on his back, and skin under her fingernails'Tillman's, according to the DNA. Add the contusion on her cheek and you can come up with a sexual assault.'

'What about forcible penetration''

'There weren't any vaginal tears. That doesn't mean the sex was consensual. Angela wasn't a virgin, it's clear. And she could have given in to avoid a beating, or just passed out. That's still rape. But you just can't know.'

'Yeah. I keep hearing that.'

Kneeling, Simmons took the stick from the terrier's mouth, ruffling the fur on its neck. 'Enough, Diablo. You're wearing me out.' She stood again, gazing at the landscape in the gently slanting light. Evenly, she said, 'We didn't have all the medical evidence we might want. But there was an absence of any evidence helpful to Tillman. There was no one else's DNA on Angela's body. I tried to get something off her neck'the murderer's fingerprint, or even DNA from the moisture on his fingers. Either one could have further inculpated Tillman or, conceivably, exculpated him. But those were long shots, and neither panned out.' She gave a fatalistic shrug. 'So we lived with what we had. With the witnesses, it turned out to be enough.'

Darrow absorbed this in silence. After a moment, Simmons faced him again. 'There's something else you should think about,' she said. 'Ever try to strangle someone''

'I've considered it once or twice.'

Simmons's expression became grim. 'It's an extremely unpleasant act'for both the victim and the murderer. To asphyxiate another human being by strangulation takes about three minutes. The killer doesn't just need to be strong'he needs to be determined. Whoever decided that Angela Hall needed killing remained firm in his intentions despite ample opportunity to reconsider. Even a drunk had time for second thoughts.' Finishing, Simmons spoke coolly and incisively: 'What that means, Mr. Darrow, is that first-degree murder was the appropriate verdict. This was an intentional homicide, carried out by someone who wanted to make sure this young woman never saw another day, or spoke another word. The murderer was either very cold-blooded or very angry. Maybe both.'