An Occasional Hell Page 9

  “His room’s on the second floor, sir. Go on up and talk to him if you want. His door’s the one with the picture of Donald Trump on it.”

  DeWalt went upstairs and knocked on Trump’s forehead.

  “Nobody home!” came the reply.

  DeWalt opened the door and peeked inside. “I’m not disturbing you, am I, Craig?”

  He had not recognized the name but he recognized the student the moment he saw him, a familiar face in the hallways, a confident and smiling young man always with an arm around a pretty girl. A starter on the tennis team, Michelangelo’s David with a double major in Marketing and Economics. He was at his desk, a textbook open in front of him. Startled, he swiveled around to face the door.

  “Professor DeWalt, hello. What, uh …?”

  DeWalt smiled amiably but said nothing for a moment, letting the boy worry, letting him sort through the dozen unhappy possibilities for a faculty member making a personal call on a student he had never taught. Besides, he needed to get his breath back. He had taken the stairs too quickly, wanting to get to Fox before a warning could reach him from downstairs.

  There was no place to sit except on the waterbed’s padded frame, and DeWalt needed to sit. But as he moved toward the bed, Fox quickly stood and offered his desk chair.

  “Here, sir, sit here. I’ll sit on the bed.”

  DeWalt then explained the reason for his visit, at the same time appraising the room. The kingsize waterbed enclosed in a padded velveteen frame, a velveteen coverlet the color of port wine. On the walls were framed prints of Peter Max and Leroy Neiman paintings. A carpet of three-inch white shag on the floor. A windowbox air-conditioner, a stereo, a nineteen-inch color television with video cassette recorder, and, within easy reach of the desk chair, a squat little refrigerator. There was also an anomalous scent to the room, vaguely musty, dry, almost chemical; a familiar yet elusive and unpleasant odor DeWalt could not name.

  “You wouldn’t have anything cold to drink in there, would you?” DeWalt asked, and nodded toward the refrigerator.

  “Yeah, sure, let me just—”

  But DeWalt leaned forward and pulled open the door before the student could cross the room. Inside were ten or twelve soft drinks, a bag of cookies, a quart of milk, half a loaf of bread, a package of deli ham, a jar of brown mustard. Nothing interesting.

  DeWalt chose a bottle of New York seltzer. “Anything for you, Craig?”

  “No, I had a soda not long ago. Thanks.”

  DeWalt swiveled the chair so that he faced the bed. He unscrewed the bottle cap. “The guys downstairs told me that if anybody here knew Rodney Gillen, it would be you.” He looked up at Fox and smiled.

  “Well, yes, I guess that’s true. Except that I don’t know him all that well myself. I’m the guy that hands him their check, and tells him when we need them, and all that, but otherwise.…”

  “Strictly business.”

  “Exactly,” Fox said.

  “They play here fairly often, don’t they?”

  “Well, you know, they’re local, and they’re reliable, and.… they’ll never make it on MTV though, that’s for sure.”

  “How much do you pay them?”

  “Three hundred a night.”

  “That seems like a lot of money to be laying out for a band every week.”

  “We’ve never lost money on them.”

  “No?”

  “We get two or three hundred people in and out of here over the course of the evening. Three bucks admission for the guys, two for the girls. So we still turn a profit, even after refreshments.”

  “And where do all these profits go? You’re a nonprofit organization, am I right?”

  “They pay our expenses here, part of the rent and insurance, things like that. Plus, we have two major social functions every year. And each Christmas, we make a contribution to a charity. Last year we gave a thousand dollars to Children’s Hospital.”

  “That’s something to be proud of,” said DeWalt. He took his first sip of seltzer. “About Rodney Gillen though. Is there anything you might know about him? Anything at all that could help us track him down?”

  “I wish I could think of something. But I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Did you ever see him with any particular girl when he was here? Other than his wife, I mean.”

  “As far as I know, his wife was never here. I can’t remember meeting her if she was. And as for him being with other women … I don’t think I ever saw him with anybody, no.”

  “When his band finished playing at the end of a night, did they pack up and leave, or would they hang out for awhile?”

  “A little of both, I guess. What I mean is, while they packed up their equipment, they’d drink a few beers, help themselves to some munchies, things like that.”

  “Do a few lines maybe?”

  “Sir?”

  “I hear that Rodney used cocaine regularly.”

  “Rodney Gillen? Seriously?”

  “So I was told.”

  “By whom? Not by one of the guys downstairs.”

  “Let me think.… I guess it might have been a student, I’ve talked to so many people today.”

  “Well, he didn’t do drugs here, that’s all I know. Not in this house.”

  “You sound fairly adamant about that.”

  “Well for one thing, we could lose our charter. And I mean permanently. As an officer, I could never allow us to take that risk.”

  DeWalt nodded, a warm paternal gleam in his eyes. “You knew Dr. Catanzaro, I’m sure.”

  “I had him for a couple of classes. My freshman and sophomore years. He was a great guy.”

  “Did you ever hear anything, gossip, rumors, whatever, about him and Gillen’s wife?”

  “Nada,” said Fox.

  DeWalt watched the pale bubbles ascend from the bottom of his bottle. Finally he looked up and smiled. “I’ve run out of questions, Craig.”

  Fox held out both hands, palms up. “I’ve run out of answers, sir.”

  DeWalt screwed the cap onto his bottle, then placed the bottle in the oak-finished trash basket beside the desk. He saw nothing in the trash to tell him the source of the thick earthy scent sticking in his nostrils.

  He pushed himself to his feet. “I hear the Kinetics will keep playing, even without Rodney.”

  “One more weekend anyway,” Fox said. “But I’ll tell you what. That keyboard really filled out their sound. You know the Doors’ tune, Light My Fire? Try to imagine that without a keyboard.”

  “I don’t think I can,” said DeWalt.

  “My prediction is, the Kinetics will die fast and hard without Rodney Gillen.”

  “A sad day in musical history,” DeWalt said. He took a step toward the door, then paused. “Did Rodney or any of the other band members ever mention having a fire at their garage?”

  “What kind of a fire?”

  “Any kind.”

  Fox thought for a moment. “Like I said, I really didn’t know any of them on a personal basis. I’m sorry.”

  Ten minutes later, in his own bedroom again, DeWalt sat on a straightback chair and watched the clear dialysis fluid trickling through the long tubing attached to his waist. The bag on the floor was beginning to swell, its liguid contents reflecting the overhead light, a polluted moon. He knew that he should consider himself a lucky man, just as a paraplegic must learn to love his wheelchair. He knew this and he accepted it as truth. But there were times when the plastic bag seemed a cannonball; times when the slender tubing dragged like chain; times when he remembered the buoyancy of youth, those years of levitation. And then, looking ahead, seeing all his tomorrows draining into a swollen bag, this bag or the next, a thousand hopes to be quietly flushed away, he could only curse his rare good fortune.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I am getting nowhere and it angers me. It shouldn’t, because that is the nature of the business. You spend a lot of time getting nowhere, marking time, treading water, and then suddenly you are
there.

  What am I trying to prove to myself? You are not the light of the world, DeWalt, so stop expecting to shine. You are a thirty-watt bulb with damn few kilowatt hours left.

  I’ve got too many metaphors for truth, that’s my problem. Truth is a sculpture crafted from the clay of experience. Truth is a light to illuminate dark corners. Truth is a laboratory hybrid of fact and imagination.

  These are all good metaphors but they imply that truth can be constructed bit by bit, or sneaked up upon, unearthed, systemically revealed. It isn’t so, damn it. Truth is an epiphany, a sudden unexpected and often undeserved blessing. Most often, it comes only after all hope of discovery has died.

  Maybe truth is a koan: If you wish to achieve the fulfillment of your dreams, you must first wake up and rid yourself of desire.

  Only on the calmest of nights may you hear your soul rustling in the wind.

  Only in the absence of love may you know love’s fullness.

  Christ, why did I waste my time as an investigator, a writer, a teacher? I could have been a famous pop philosopher, Baba Ram Ernie. Could have counseled the Beatles, hung out with Leary. Could have kept my organs intact, my piano in tune. Could have dispensed truth like jelly beans; been as reflective as aluminum foil.…

  Hey Ernie, listen to yourself. You’re thinking in the first person again. No wonder you’re confused. Better get yourself out of the picture, professor. You’re blocking the view.

  DeWalt nudged his car in beside Trooper Abbott’s empty blue and white, taking the last space in the apartment building’s lot. DeWalt had telephoned the trooper earlier, requesting an opportunity to examine the Gillens’ apartment, and Abbott agreed to meet him there at three in the afternoon. By DeWalt’s watch, it was now 2:57.

  The air in DeWalt’s lungs as he climbed the outside stairway felt as heavy as oatmeal. He wished he could get some energy back, some motivation. He went through the motions as thoroughly as he knew how and he would continue to do so but he felt as drab as the sky. The sky today was a chalky white but if he looked at it directly there was a glare that stung his eyes.

  He found Abbott standing in the middle of the Gillens’ small living room, standing motionless as he stared at the blank wall, squinting hard at the beige surface as if angered by what he saw there, a pale oval of reflected light from the ceiling fixture, an innocuous golden stain illuminating nothing.

  “If you’re meditating,” DeWalt said softly from the threshold, “I can wait. Let me know when you hit nirvana.”

  Abbott turned. Deadpan, he said, “I have been to nirvana, but I came back. The food was terrible there.”

  “I should have known you’d be thinking about something to eat.”

  DeWalt knew in fact that food was, right now, probably the last thing on Abbott’s mind. Larry Abbott was one of the most intelligent cops DeWalt had ever met, one of the few with an active sense of humor, a wide-ranging mind and a catholic appreciation of knowledge.

  Ducking under the police’s yellow plastic strip that stretched across the doorway, DeWalt stepped inside. “Might as well close that door,” Abbott told him, and DeWalt did so.

  For a few moments then DeWalt walked slowly about the room, looking closely at each banal object, hoping to see in one of them what he knew he would not.

  Abbott said, “I convinced Sgt. Shulles that you and I have a good working relationship.”

  “In other words, you told him you could keep me in line.”

  “I told him I’d try. Plus, I promised him an acknowledgement in your next book.”

  “That was generous of you, Lar.”

  “I’m a generous guy,” the trooper said. “So Ernie, listen. What exactly is it you’re looking for here?”

  “I wish to God I knew.”

  “You read the report already. You saw the photos of the crime scene. You know as much as we know, and we know there’s nothing here.”

  “Sometimes it helps just to get the feel of a place.”

  “This place feels weird, if you ask me. You notice how clean everything is? It’s all garage sale stuff, but it’s like … it’s just not talking, is it?”

  “You notice a peculiar smell, Larry? Kind of stale? Dry?”

  “The place needs aired out, that’s for sure.”

  But it was something else. It was the same odor DeWalt had detected in the frat rat’s room, although less strong here, older. The scent that comes off the earthen walls of an unlighted basement … but not quite. The scent of a pile of dead leaves overturned. No, more like the dusty, cloying scent of pollen spores.

  Or maybe it’s yourself you smell, DeWalt. Old mold and rot. Cobwebs and insect shells.

  “All of the girl’s belongings still here?” DeWalt asked.

  “As far as we can tell. Anyway, the closet and dresser drawers are crammed full. Plus the entire range of feminine toiletries.”

  “Rodney’s stuff?”

  “Some empty hangers, and a couple of drawers only half full. It looks like some things might be missing. There’s no shaving kit, and only one toothbrush in the holder. And no sign of that portable keyboard he practices on here.”

  “How about magazines? Anything pertaining to muzzle-loading weapons in particular?”

  “Last month’s Cosmo and Self, plus last week’s TV Guide. And a copy of Hollywood Wives in on the nightstand. But don’t worry, Ernie, I’m sure they both read your book. Probably lent it out to a friend.”

  DeWalt said, “Fifty-eight percent of graduating high school seniors can’t read a newspaper. Seventy percent of America has never been in a bookstore.”

  “Those figures sound a little low to me.”

  DeWalt stepped into the bedroom. Abbott followed a moment later.

  “Any suggestion of unusual sexual practices?” DeWalt asked.

  “I haven’t suggested anything yet, no. What do you have in mind?”

  The bed was neatly made. “Okay if I look at the sheets, Larry?”

  “Just don’t sniff them in front of me, all right? That’s a side of you I’d rather not know about.”

  “Killjoy.” DeWalt peeled back the worn chenille coverlet. The sheets and pillowcases were clean, unwrinkled by the weight of a body. Interesting, he thought. He smoothed the cover back into place.

  “What’s this about unusual sexual practices?” Abbott asked.

  “According to a waitress at the Colony, and this is what Jeri told her, Rodney couldn’t get it up unless they made a game out of it. He liked going outside and peeking in at her, looking at nude pictures of her, things like that.”

  “Weird guy.”

  “You didn’t find any pictures though?”

  “No nude shots of Jeri, if that’s what you mean. Do you know for certain that such pictures exist?”

  DeWalt did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “I’m extrapolating is all.”

  “I stopped doing that when I got married.”

  DeWalt smiled. He returned to the living room and took another slow turn around it, then into the kitchen, careful not to touch anything. The place was too clean; cleaned before the police got to it. Dishes washed and put away. Furniture dusted, carpets vacuumed. Bedsheets changed and bed neatly made. But by whom? Had Rodney done all this, calmly preparing for his departure prior to the murder? He would scarcely have had the time, not if Elizabeth Catanzaro telephoned him at 10:30 AM, and her husband had died sometime during the next hour. Had, then, Rodney murdered Alex, returned here with the body of his wife in tow, either alive or dead, and proceeded to clean the apartment? And what was the cleanliness meant to conceal that Rodney’s disappearance had not already revealed?

  DeWalt stared into the empty sink. “Exactly what do we know at this point?”

  “We know what we don’t have,” said Abbott from the living room.

  “Which is?”

  “We don’t have a single piece of incriminating evidence here in the apartment. At the murder scene we’ve got no prints other than those expe
cted. No fibers, no hair or blood—except for the victims’, of course. We’ve got no eyewitness reports, no tips, no clues, no lead. We’ve got a primary suspect, complete with motive and opportunity, except that we don’t know where he is. The only thing we do have, Ernie, is your client. Who, by the way, also comes equipped with motive and opportunity.”

  “You’ve got a whole lot of nothing, my friend.”

  “I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.”

  “So your guys are playing it as a straight double homicide?”

  “Until Jeri Gillen turns up as queen of the Autumn Fair, yep.”

  “Maybe it was contrived to appear like a double homicide.”

  “Contrived by whom?” said Abbott.

  “You’re short one victim, right? Who didn’t leave any of her blood at the scene, am I right?”

  “You’re suggesting that she and Rodney offed the professor.”

  “She wasn’t the naif she appeared to be.”

  “I never had her pegged as a naif, Ernie. I talked with some of the boys who knew her in high school, and she was, how shall I say, extraordinarily popular.”

  “Borderline slut,” said DeWalt.

  “From the other side of the border.”

  “It’s unlikely that Dr. Catanzaro knew that about her, though. Or about her cocaine habit.”

  “Where did you get that information?”

  “She and her husband both. Regular users. And another thing. It appears that Rodney Gillen knew about Jeri’s affair long before Elizabeth Catanzaro clued him in to it.”

  “What’s the source of this information, Ernie?”

  The source was a combination of what Della had told him in confidence, what she had implied, and what his instincts whispered to him—a difficult source to identify. “It’s solid, okay? There’s nothing to be gained by having your guys re-interrogating my informants and having them clam up on me. So just take what I’m giving you, all right?”