Chapter Three
“True Love (Part Two)”
"A memory. I am eight, maybe nine years old. It is summer—"
"Do you mind?"
"Excuse me, Dave. I had no idea that I was bothering you in any way. Rest assured—would you please keep your eyes on the road?"
Dave looked away from Cecil and back out the windshield as he was, nominally at any rate, in charge of the car. The light about fifteen feet in front of them was red. Dave pressed a bare foot hard onto the brake pedal. The car slid sideways through the intersection and slammed its rear end into a light pole, which tilted at a suddenly drunken angle.
Dave grinned. He liked cars. He pulled a newly made fetish from his medicine bag, a small Matchbox car at the end of a leather thong. He shook it over the steering wheel and shouted "VAROOM!"
Dave hadn't been in the States very long, you see.
At any rate, he stomped on the accelerator and wrenched the wheel around, and the car did leave the immediate vicinity of the light pole and proceed down Main Street at a reasonably rapid rate. Getting rapider.
"So what the hell was that?" asked Dave. He stole a quick look at Cecil, who was sitting upright in the passenger seat, so upright it must have hurt, with his fingers clenched whitely on the armrest and his eyes clenched tightly shut. "It's okay," said Dave. "You can look now."
Cecil muttered something under his breath which sounded remarkably like "Praise God above or Whomever that there is no traffic in Herschberg at eleven o'clock on Thursday nights." Cecil might as well have said “any night, any time.” Herschberg, Minnesota was not the largest of towns.
As Dave narrowly missed the tall brick gates flanking the entrance to Herschberg, Cecil said from behind his clenched-tight eyes, "I was composing. Those sparrows inspired me. Reminded me of something..."
"What?”
"O'Henry dorm, Dave. Turn left. Left!"
Dave was new to the States, you see.
But he did manage left. On the second try. The hedge would be repaired in the morning.
O'Henry had become a hive of activity. In the small parking behind the dormitory there were four security cars (the fifth was perpetually broken down in the parking lot of Herschberg's Dunkin' Donuts, Herschberg's only concession to fast food culture as yet), five marked Herschberg Police Department cars (the sixth was perpetually parked next to the fifth Herschberg University security car, both hoods up, a tangle of jumper cables like intestines strung between the two; in fact, no one could now remember which had broken first; Security Officer Flannery and Police Officer O'Halloran met weekends and tried to sort the whole mess out), a full SWAT team from the outskirts of Minneapolis that had had nothing better to do, and the President of Herschberg U.'s car; now Dave pulled the one unmarked car that the police department of Herschberg owned (fought over between Herschberg PD's homicide department and Herschberg PD's one narc—Cecil and Dave usually won it as they outweighed the narc) behind the SWAT van, narrowly missing a row of armored men playing cards.
"Gin," said the blasé SWAT captain.
"Shit," said Cecil, getting out of the car.
"What?" said Dave.
"Gin," explained the gentleman who was counting out five dollars into the SWAT captain's hand. He was wearing a chauffeur's uniform. Dave guessed he was the president's driver, as just before he came over to the states, they'd shown him a picture of this really long car and this man standing beside it in a similar uniform. Dave wondered what a chauffeur was for. "A card game, involving—“
"No," said Dave, to Cecil. "What sparrows?"
Cecil shook his head and swept his black trench coat closely about him and stormed up the steps of O'Henry, followed closely by Dave.
"No, really," Dave said. "I didn’t see any sparrows. I was too busy staring at the cow. The calf. It was amazing! I've never seen a calf quite like that before!"
•
Chris hadn't realized where their feet were taking them until he saw the full moon framed between the two enormous bare oaks that marked the Back Gate into Herschberg's Arboretum.
"Shit," he said, "Shit, shit, shit!" twirling about and flapping his arms.
"What?" said Stephanie, huddled tightly in her grey coat.
"We're here."
"Here?"
"Here!" He stomped his feet.
"Look," she said. "I really think we ought to—"
"Shhh!"
"What?"
"Shhh!"
There was a long period during which nothing was said.
"Christian—" she said.
"Did you hear that?"
"No."
Without really noticing this either, Chris grabbed her hand and dragged her back in the direction of the dorm where they'd left Mark and Janis. "Something," he said, and he gasped for breath as he was out of shape, really, and he had a long run ahead of him— them. "Terrible…has…happened," he finished.
They ran. Useless, that, because it had all happened before they'd left Mark and Janis at Saki dormitory.
•
"I sense a presence I haven't felt since—" Cecil stalked the room.
It was an ugly sight.
There was blood splattered on the bed, the floor, and the wall A police artist was finishing the chalk outline that started against the wall, sprawled out across the bed, and dribbled two empty legs off towards the floor. The body was being gurneyed off in a giant black bag. Dave halted the two stretcher attendants and unzipped the body bag. He sniffed. Under the spilt copper smell of human blood he could pick up the chalky residue of makeup. Girls in the states wore entirely too much of the stuff, in Dave's opinion. They wore entirely too much of everything, in Dave's opinion, but then, with the climate the way it was, it was no wonder they painted their faces —to keep them from freezing. Dave grinned at the memory of Cecil's face the first time his partner had seen him experimenting with the stuff. Even if it did smell chalky, it was great for spirit lines along the body.
Dave pulled his trench coat tighter about his body (damn weather was too cold for a loincloth alone) and checked out the hallway. The attendants were wheeling the girl off, the President was butting his head against the wall, and the Chief of Security for Herschberg U. was standing there with a notebook.
"Sergeant David Harrison?" asked the Chief, looking Dave up and down with obvious distaste.
Whatsamatter, he wanted to ask, never seen anybody in body paints, a loin cloth, and a trench coat before?
Instead he said: "Inspector Youngjack. Call me Dave, all my friends do. They used to call me Mbwengea, but I understand you folks can't pronounce that." Once thing Dave had picked up since arriving in the States was tact.
"Dave, then. We have a suspect in custody, a junior. One Albert Feinstein. This was his room, the victim was his girlfriend. Motive, opportunity, and we're currently dusting the piano wire for fingerprints."
"You can't do that!"
"Why not?"
"You're the Security Department of a rinky-dink University! This investigation is now under PD control! You can't touch our stuff! Your fingerprinting alone is going to fuck up any auras I could get off it!"
The Chief of the Security Department for Herschberg University was a tall, thin, distiguishedly-greying gentleman with long, thin, tapering fingers, and his mouth pursed at this misuse of the Queen's Tongue.
"Actually," said the President, "It's quite an open-and-shut case." Thump went his head against the wall. "We'll have it all cleared up soon." Thump. "There is no reason to panic." Thump. Thump.
"There is no question about it,” said Youngjack complacently. “Love, David. One of the two true motives in the world."
"What's the other?"
"Money.”
"Oh," said Dave. "That shit."
"What," from between pursed lips, "praytell, is your partner doing?"
Cecil in this case was standing with one foot in a still damp puddle of underclassperson blood, both hands to his temples. Cecil was, contrary to what you might think, on the stocky side: balding, florid, with sandy blond hair that furred the backs of his skull and his hands. Like Dave, he was young. He was muttering under his breath and staring darkly at a spot three inches away to the right from the head of the chalk outline.
"He's, uh, detecting," said Dave.
"I see," said Youngjack.
The President had stopped thumping his head against wall. "Florida State," he was muttering, over and over again.
"Would you like to question young—"
"He," said Cecil suddenly, "didn't do it!"
•