The Spire (24 page)

Bender put the dead cigarette in his pocket. Alone, Darrow went back to his office.

D

ARROW CAPPED A REVIEW OF C ALDWELL'S FINANCES BY taking Joe Betts to dinner.

The venue was the Carriage House. As before, the owner seated Darrow in the booth below his photograph'the much younger Mark Darrow brandished the ceremonial axe from atop the Spire. 'This seems to have become my table,' Darrow remarked.

Eyeing the picture, Joe shook his head. 'That was a moment. Too bad the day didn't end there.'

The waitress took their drink orders. 'Just give me Ch'teau Perrier,' Joe told her amiably. 'I hear May 2009 was a good month.'

When the waitress left, Darrow said, 'You really
did
give it up, didn't you''

'Cold turkey,' Joe answered. 'After that night, I didn't need a twelve-step program. I
knew
.'

He looked unsettled by the memory. 'That was years ago,' Darrow said. 'You've done well, Joe. Certainly for Caldwell'given the times, our portfolio could have taken a far bigger beating than it has.'

Joe grimaced. 'Not many good places to put our money, what with the housing bubble and the rest. My great achievement was not losing more. Compared to letting Durbin embezzle close to a million bucks, I guess that's a point of pride.'

Joe might have changed, Darrow thought, but not entirely; beneath the smooth exterior, he sensed the touchiness and insecurity Joe had tried to conceal in college. 'No one figured Clark Durbin for a crook,' Darrow responded. 'The flaw was in the system, and your proposals for fixing it are sound. Once we get them in place, it'll close the books on this whole sad episode.'

'We'll close the books, Mark, when we throw the book at Durbin. You ready to do that yet''

Darrow sipped his martini. 'Not quite. I still want my guy Mike Riley to take a look at this. Call me thorough.'

To Darrow's surprise, Joe flushed with anger. 'That's not diligence, for Chrissakes'that's necrophilia. Especially after we found the account where Durbin transferred money back from Switzerland. I'm with Ray Carrick: nailing Durbin to the mast is what the alumni need to see. New financial controls are good and well, but they don't satisfy the viscera.'

'Whose viscera'' Darrow asked mildly. 'I've been called a lot of things, but 'corpse fucker' is pretty novel.'

Joe managed a sour smile. 'Okay,' he acknowledged. 'The Durbin thing is personal to me. I feel like a buffoon, and now it's like you're second-guessing Greg Fox and me. For no reason either of us can detect except that you can.'

'I'm way too busy for petty shows of authority,' Darrow answered firmly. 'So bear with me. I owe a debt to Caldwell College, and have ever since Lionel got me in. That's why I came back despite all the reasons I had to stay away.'

Taking off his horn-rimmed glasses, Betts wiped both lenses with a napkin, removing spots only he could see. 'I know that, Mark. Believe me.' He paused a moment. 'Have you gone to see Steve again''

'Yeah. It's becoming a regular stop.'

'Anything new''

'Not much happening at the pen'or many distractions, either. Prison seems to breed a certain monomania. It's fair to say he still blames you for his misery.'

Joe put his glasses back on, fiddling with one of the stems. 'That's pretty misdirected, wouldn't
you
say''

Darrow shrugged. 'I guess that depends on whether he killed her. Steve still swears she walked out alive and that he never left the dorm.' He hesitated, then asked mildly, 'Any chance at all the guy you saw was someone else''

Joe's jaw set, defensiveness flashing in his eyes. 'No matter what had happened between Steve and me, I wouldn't put a friend in jail unless I
knew
. Even if I hadn't glimpsed his face, the guy
limped
. I'd have known Steve Tillman if he'd been walking with fifteen other guys.'

After a moment, Darrow nodded. In a tone of idle curiosity, he asked, 'Do you remember what he was wearing''

'Not really, no.'

'Did you happen to notice the time''

Joe was quiet for a moment, brow slightly furrowed. 'I thought it was around three o'clock, but can't remember why. Leaning out that window, I still felt pretty fucked up.'

Darrow thought quickly of his own memory, still undisclosed, that he had tried to reach Steve Tillman after three o'clock. Joe's sense of time, were his story true, would put Steve back in his dorm room an hour before. But the significance of this'if any'was unclear. 'Between the party and whenever you spotted him,' Darrow inquired, 'did you see Steve or Angela at all''

'You mean after he drove off with her' No.' Joe bit his lip. 'The mood I was in, if I'd known they were screwing one floor below, I might have busted in on them. Would have been better if I had'Angela Hall might still be alive.' Joe's voice softened. 'As it was, all I did was go home and puke in the upstairs john. I remember being on my hands and knees, grabbing both sides of the commode, then staggering up to look in the mirror. I hated what I saw there'not just how I looked, but who I was.'

'A bad night, Joe.'

Summoning a look of candor, Joe met Darrow's eyes. 'No,' he answered. 'A bad
guy
. I'd lost my girlfriend. I'd fought with Steve. I'd made a fool of myself in public. All I wanted was to get off the earth somehow'not just leave the night behind; leave
myself
behind. Other than my own face, the last thing I wanted to see was those two cops, wanting to go through what I'd done, over and over. I didn't tell them about Steve until I had to.'

The latent ambiguity in this last statement left Darrow quiet. Joe's expression became pleading. 'I'm different now, Mark. My whole life is different. My career's good. Katie and I are good, and we've got two great kids. Now I'm on Caldwell's board, and I like to think, despite this screwup, that I'm repaying my own debt to the school.' He paused, then added in a lower voice, 'I didn't become my old man, after all. The guy you saw that night isn't me anymore. He's as dead as Angela Hall.'

Darrow had a deep sense of sadness. He remembered Steve Tillman saying much the same thing after his arrest''That's not me.' Except that Joe Betts was disowning the person he had been, not the act for which Tillman was imprisoned. Beneath Joe's plea, Darrow felt the man's fierce desire never to reprise memories that, whatever his reason, frightened him too deeply to conceal.

'I understand,' Darrow said gently. 'Do you happen to have a picture of Katie and the kids''

With evident relief, Joe pulled a picture from his wallet, sliding it across the table. In her tennis dress, Katie Betts looked athletic and well-groomed, a classic blonde from some wealthy precinct of Connecticut. Standing beside her, a bright-eyed boy and his gap-toothed sister were laughing at something off-camera.

'Nice,' Darrow affirmed. 'I envy you, Joe.'

D ARROW LEFT THE Carriage House a little after nine o'clock. He stood on the sidewalk, breathing in the lightly humid air and recalling the summer evenings he had savored before his senior year at Caldwell transformed his memory. Reaching back in time, he located Donut King in his mental map of the past.

It was next to the Greyhound bus station, a one-story building with the same red neon sign. As he entered he saw, sitting at the counter, a man in a windbreaker and another in the jacket of a bowling team drinking fruit drinks, a new offering since Darrow had last come here after his high school prom. But the place still smelled like the glazed doughnuts he no longer allowed himself to eat.

A waitress in her fifties, peroxide-blond hair tightly curled, greeted him with a smile that lit her gaunt face. 'You're Mark Darrow,' she said.

Darrow smiled. 'Guilty. And you are . . .'

'Pat Flynn. What can I get you''

'Black coffee. Wish I had room for a doughnut'after twenty years, I can still taste them.'

Flynn laughed. 'I've been here so long I smell like one. But they're still good. Sure I can't tempt you''

Darrow grinned. ' 'You're a long time dead,' somebody once told me. So, sure.'

She returned with coffee and a doughnut. 'You've still got that same smile,' she informed him. 'Guess you're back to clean up this latest mess.'

'That's the idea. Really,
this
mess isn't that bad.'

At once Flynn became somber. 'You mean no one died this time.'

'Yeah.' Darrow took a sip of coffee. 'That can't have been easy for you, Pat.'

She looked unsettled for a moment, and then the expression passed'Wayne was a small town, her role in Steve's trial common knowledge. 'All I said is what I saw. It wasn't my place to say what it meant.' More sadly, she added, 'Still, I remember Steve Tillman coming in here a few times. Always polite. Always friendly, the last person you'd imagine doing what he did. But that's probably what all those dead girls thought about Ted Bundy, right up until his mask slipped.'

Darrow eyed his doughnut. 'You just don't know, I guess. Anyhow, you never told them it was Steve.'

'God, no. At the time, I wasn't quite sure what I'd seen. It was all, like they say, circumstantial.' Her mouth formed a wispy smile. 'Guess I watch too much Court TV. But his frat buddy's the one who nailed him. I couldn't have picked the guy I saw out of a two-man lineup.'

'How'd you even happen to be there''

'It was late, past three o'clock, and I was so tired I could hardly see straight. My car was in the shop, so I decided to take a shortcut home.' She poured Darrow a refill of coffee. 'I'd done that a couple of times before'to me it was better than walking through deserted streets. Anyone you'd meet might be out for no good reason, whereas'or so I thought'the campus would be empty. Dumb, huh''

'Not that anyone would have thought.' Darrow sipped his coffee. 'Where were you when you saw him''

'Near College Hall, a fair distance from the Spire. There weren't any lights there. But the moon was full, as I recall, and there weren't any trees nearby to block the light. When I saw him, I just froze'half scared, half just surprised. At first I couldn't see her at all.'

'How do you mean''

'He had his back to me. So I couldn't tell
what
he was doing.'

Darrow put the cup down. 'I'm trying to envision this. If you were by Caldwell Chapel, and he had his back to you, then he must have been more or less facing in the direction of Steve Tillman's dorm.'

Flynn squinted, searching her memory. 'I guess so, yeah.'

'Which was closer to you, the Spire or the man you saw''

'The Spire.'

'So he had his back to the Spire and was facing toward the dorm.'

'Uh-huh.' Her eyes became wary. 'He wasn't coming
from
the dorm, if that's what you mean.'

Darrow gave her an easy smile. 'I'm not sure what I mean.
You
watch too much Court TV;
I've
spent too much time in courtrooms.'

Flynn's face relaxed. 'No, this is interesting. Thinking back, I don't believe Steve Tillman's lawyer asked me about all this.'

Nordlinger had not, Darrow knew. 'Could you make out what this guy was wearing''

'Some sort of overcoat, I thought. Seemed like I could only see his legs below the knee.'

'When did you first realize that he was carrying a body''

Flynn glanced at her two other customers, assuring herself that they were content. 'He turned sideways, sort of looking around. That was when I saw that he was cradling something'maybe a sack, is what I thought. Then he started to lay it down, and her arm sort of dangled.' Her voice turned thin. 'That was spooky. I thought maybe the person was drunk. But when he laid her down, she didn't move at all. The guy just hurried off, like he was afraid of being seen.'

'Could you tell in which direction''

'No. Like I said, except for the moon it was dark. He disappeared in seconds.' She shook her head. 'I still didn't know what I'd seen. But it really creeped me out.'

Darrow nodded in sympathy. 'Other than thinking he wore a coat, what do you remember about him''

'That he was tall, and pretty slim, it seemed. Nothing else to remember. I couldn't have told you his age, or whether he was black or white or Asian or had landed in Roswell, New Mexico.'

'Or if he was wearing glasses''

'Nope. The police asked me that. If I couldn't see his face, I sure couldn't make out glasses.'

'Guess not.' Darrow feigned thought, as though something had just occurred to him. 'Was there anything funny about how he walked''

'How do you mean''

'A limp, maybe.'

Flynn considered this. 'Not that I remember. Of course, his legs were mostly covered. Mainly, though, I just wanted to get out of there. So I did.'

'Yeah. I would have, too.'

Slowly, Flynn nodded, and then eyed his plate. 'You going to eat your doughnut' Or you want a bag for that''

Darrow smiled. 'How about a bag'' he said. 'I'll enjoy having it for breakfast.'

I

T WAS CLOSE TO ELEVEN WHEN D ARROW LEFT THE D ONUT King'time, he supposed, for the normal thirty-eight-year-old college president to go home to his empty bed. Instead, still arranging and rearranging facts'the compulsion of an ex-lawyer and Steve Tillman's onetime friend'he found himself heading for the Alibi Club.

The neighborhood had not changed much: as with the rest of Wayne, on the southeast side the global economy was, at most, a rumor. As he approached the club, a clump of young men on a corner eyed his Porsche with envy and suspicion. Parking on the half-empty street, Darrow approached the door of the Alibi Club, feeling that he was about to turn back time.

Hugo sat on his stool by the door, more massive than ever, his close-cropped hair turned white. His eyes widened at the sight of the newcomer, his mouth forming a grim smile of displeasure before he curtly nodded Darrow inside.

In the darkness, the first thing that hit Darrow was the pulse of rap music. He half-expected to spot some white kids at the bar, where he once had perched, chatting with Angela, while Steve scored pot from her brother. Instead, the patrons appeared older'men and a few women drinking whiskey or beer and listening to a rapper who, if Darrow's ear was good, might be Kanye West. The smell of cigarettes and beer evoked the DBE party on the night of Angela's death; like prosperity, the anti-smoking movement had bypassed the neighborhood. But Farr's campus control measures had clearly worked'the club was no longer a haven for underage would-be alcoholics from Caldwell College. Darrow was the only white man in the place.