Chapter Seven
“Murder Will In”
Albert Arnold Feinstein stood at the window, glaring furiously at the dead rabbits below. Albert had always detested rabbits. He particularly detested the manner in which people persisted in thinking of them as "cute," presumably because they were small, weak and stupid. Albert did understand that in fact these three adjectives were, taken in their cumulation, the accepted definition of "cute;" what he had never been able to comprehend was why humanity as a whole seemed to consider cuteness a virtue.
During the interminable summer vacations which he had been forced to spend with his Uncle Ben (due to the bewildering parental assumption that sufficient proximity would necessarily lead to affection, and not—as others had so often and so correctly hypothesized—to contempt), Albert had wasted a good deal of time staring with disgusted fascination into the rabbit hutch which his uncle had kept in the back yard. The hutch, Ben had told him, had to be monitored carefully, as its inhabitants bred so rapidly that they could easily overcrowd their home; if this happened, the rabbits would begin to eat each other. Albert had wanted desperately to catch the rabbits in this singularly appropriate—even divinely just—act, but he had done so in vain. Rabbits typified everything Albert had always despised about nature; when as a child he had watched nature specials on The Wide World of Disney, he had always raised a silent cheer whenever a predator was shown ripping the bowels out of one of the horrible little creatures, although—to be fair—the predators themselves were little better: ugly, senseless, smelly beasts (even on a television screen, it was apparent that they stank to high heaven) who hadn't even the good sense to keep themselves from being brought to the verge of extinction. Albert had nothing but scorn for those who became upset over the endangerment of species; as far as he was concerned, any animal without the sense to develop opposable thumbs deserved whatever it got.
The rabbits themselves, however, were not really responsible for Albert's present ire. At least they were dead, thus acknowledging their proper place in the cosmic order. No, what irritated Albert at present was the fact that he had to go to the bathroom very badly, twinned with the fact that he appeared to be locked in this room. He might have assumed that his presence had been forgotten, had it not been for the visit he had received some hours earlier from the moron in the cop uniform who—Albert was forced to concede—might truly have been a cop, but who had behaved more like a bad character actor from the ABC 4:30 Movie.
"Bet you think Daddy can get you out of this one, huh, kid?" the moron in the cop uniform had said, as if reading directly off of some off-screen cue card. "Just throw some of his fancy words and his big money around here, and it'll be all over and done with, right? You college kids make me sick. I'm going to tell you something now, kid, and you'd better listen to me, 'cause I'm gonna tell you something about life."
At this juncture, Albert had noticed that the Moron In Cop Uniform had a piece of spinach lodged firmly between his two front top teeth. It was an astonishingly well-placed piece of spinach, so centrally-located and dark in color that at first Albert had thought that the man's teeth were merely badly in need of orthodenture.
"This ain't just like knocking up some teeny-bopper slut in the back seat of Daddy's Mercedes," the MICU had informed Albert, his accent growing noticeably more rural by the minute. "Daddy won't be able to fix this one up for you. This is murder, kid, maybe even Murder One. You hear what I'm saying? You took a human life. That mean anything to you? Well, it will to the judge, I can tell you that, and—"
"Will my scholarship be affected if I'm acquitted?" Albert had interrupted to ask.
The MICU had stared. Clearly, Albert was going to have to be more specific. He enunciated very carefully.
"My scholarship. If I am indicted, will that affect my scholarship, even if I am later acquitted?"
Again the blank look. Albert took a deep breath.
"You see, my tuition is presently being paid by the Minneapolis Police Department Veteran's Fund, and I simply wish to clarify—"
"Your Dad is a cop?"
"Was," Albert snapped. "He was fatally shot in the line of duty seven years ago, as it happens, and so I'm sure you can appreciate that it is of the utmost importance for me to ascertain, both for my own peace of mind and for my mother's—"
But Albert had to go no further, for the MICU, eyes brimming with tears, had suddenly clasped his shoulder, and in a voice choked with emotion, rasped:
"Just hang in there, kid. We'll clear you of this. And...and God bless you," and then fled the room so quickly that Albert had not even had time to ask him about going to the bathroom. Over the sound of the door being locked once more, there had been a series of stifled sobs and then…silence.
Albert permitted himself a brief, mean smile. He hated cops.
That had been several hours ago. Albert's bladder was now so engorged that he was beginning to fancy that he could feel his pelvic bones interfering with its inexorable expansion. Although Albert could acknowledge the potential intellectual fascination of this sensation, he was finding it difficult, under the circumstances, to accord the matter all of the attention it so richly deserved. This was an irritation.
Albert was so intent on focusing his rage upon the dead rabbits outside that he did not respond to the sound, behind him, of the door being unlocked and thrown open until it was followed by a very definite thud.
Framed in the doorway stood a man who was refreshingly unlike anyone with whom Albert had associated recently, as most undergraduates eschew body paints as a matter of unspoken aesthetic consent. On the floor lay a younger man, who was made remarkable only by the fact that copious amounts of blood were pouring down his face. Specifically, it was pouring down the right half of his face, the left half remaining unbesmirched, so that the face as a whole distinctly resembled a mask of the sort worn by one of the strong men in the subliterate picture books which earlier that evening, Bobbi and Pile had been perusing on Albert's floor.
Upon further scrutiny, Albert identified the source of the blood as a nasty gash on the young man's right temple. This was a disappointment. It was, he supposed, a very typical gash on an even more typical right temple. He'd seen ones just like it in hundreds of movies already, although in the movies there was usually a lot less blood. The tableaux was even further ruined by the utterly mundane presence of the Moron In Cop Uniform, who was following close behind, complaining in a whiny sort of voice:
"Sir? But, sir, you can't just.. Sir? Sir, I think that man really ought to go to the hospital. Sir?"
"Feinstein?" the painted man asked perfunctorily.
"Sir?" Albert responded, realizing only after he had spoken that he was echoing the MICU's babble, and therefore glaring malevolently at the unfortunate officer.
"We'll get your statement later. Leave this room. Go home. Out. Out. Out." He gestured towards the door with little flicks of his hands, as if trying to whisk Albert away on the air currents caused by their motion.
"Sir, that man appears to be losing a lot of blood," the MICU objected weakly, as Albert dashed past him, forgetting, in his haste, that he now had no particular home to return to.
Dave slammed the door in Officer Riley's face, realized that it could not be locked from the inside, and wedged a chair beneath the handle. He regarded the young man lying crumpled at his feet with distaste.
"Get." he said very, very quietly. "Up."
The young man moaned, but made no other response. Dave sighed and crouched down on his heels beside him.
"The aura of a conscious individual," he said, "differs from that of an unconscious one in more ways than I could possibly even begin to explain to you. I was taking you to the hospital when I saw you awaken in the car. You are not seriously hurt. Yet. This has been a very upsetting evening for me already, and you're making it way more complicated. So I would really suggest that you get up."
"Gosh, Detective," the young man said, without opening his eyes, or for that matter, moving anything but his lips. "Is this the first round of a game of Good Cop, Bad Cop?"
"Gee, Unknown Perpetrator," Dave replied. "I would love to play Good Cop, Bad Cop with you. But, you know, my partner is the Good Cop, and they've just taken him off to the hospital with a broken neck. Open your eyes and get up."
"But it's nice down here," the young man said amiably. "Cool." He opened the one eye which was not caked over with blood and rolled it towards Dave. "Tell me," he said. "Have you been in the States…very long?"
"Why?"
"No reason." The young man sat up gingerly, shook his head, and winced. "I understand you were upset," he said, "but did you really have to hit me that hard?"
"I didn't hit you."
"No?"
"No," Dave informed him. "That was a falling bowling pin." He had clearly intended to leave the statement at that, but then something in his eyes brightened, and he added "Most amazing thing. We were running down the stairs, and we'd just gone outside when for some reason, I looked up to the third floor room, you know, the one with no wall now? And there it was: this bowling pin, just balanced up there, like it had been leaning against the wall that was no longer there? And it was teetering: back and forth, back and forth..." He tilted his hand from side to side, demonstrating.
"We notice odd things at stressful moments," remarked the young man blandly.
"It looked like it had stabilized, so I forgot all about it, and then..."
"The wind." The young man poked at his temple experimentally. "Rather a lot of blood."
"It's a scalp wound. They do that."
"I know. But it's disconcerting." He did not seem in the least bit concerted. "You don't seem to be angry with me anymore. Am I under arrest?"
"Look," Dave sighed. "I know that you are not who you claim to be. While you were unconscious, I took the liberty of examining your identification. In the computer. In the car. Vroom."
The young man blinked.
"Vroom?"
Dave shook his head.
"You know, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the person your identification says you are doesn't even exist? I mean, not at all. Which is really lousy fake ID, you want to know the truth. And that looks pretty bad under the best of circumstances, but when the person with the lousy fake ID is spying on police activities in the dead of night, hiding under shrubbery…" He smiled, shrugged. "So. I'm sure you see what I mean. Perhaps you'd like to explain…"
"Sergeant Harrison!" Officer Riley pounded on the door. "Sir? There's a phone call for you."
"Can't it wait?"
"It sounds important, sir. It's Doctor Shriever."
The coroner, over the phone, was simultaneously cranky and groggy. Dave, who had occasionally been forced to deal with Cecil in the mornings, was familiar with the phenomenon. He still could not understand why people in this country were so incapable of making the transition between sleep and wake, but the fact remained that Doctor Shriever was clearly not a night person.
"Dave. Bit of a problem here. Wanted to talk to Cecil. Guess you'll do."
"Thanks."
"Welcome. About that girl…" A rustle of papers. "Mankevich?"
"Yeah?"
"About the body. Disappeared."
"WHAT?"
There was a muffled moan from the other end of the line.
"Sorry, Doc. Maybe you should get some coffee. What do you mean—"
"Without a trace. All that's there is..." The coroner's voice trailed off in horror, as he realized that he was on the verge of speaking a complete sentence, thus breaking a long-standing and locally notorious custom. There was an awkward silence.
"Is what?" Dave asked.
The coroner sighed in relief.
"A note. No body. Just a note. Nothing else."
"A note? What does it say?"
"Damnedest thing. I..." There was a series of clicks and then a deafening blast of static. Dave held the phone away from his ear. Faintly, through the white noise, he could hear the doctor mumbling:
"Bad night…very bad night..."
"Doc?"
Dial tone. Then, nothing.
Dave stared at the dead receiver, slammed it down in the cradle, and bolted back to the room where he had left the young man. To his relief, the young man was still there, gazing with mild interest at a symmetrical pattern of fanned pieces of paper that had been left on the desk.
•
"I don't get it," Mark was saying. "I just don't get this at all."
Janis shivered in the overheated lobby of Saki Hall and shook her head wordlessly.
"First you want me to take you away from the Student Union, and then you decide that you don't want to go outside, so we watch the rest of the movie, but then you say you have to talk to me again, and so you send Chris away again, and now you won't even tell me what's going on?"
"I can't," Janis whispered. "I just can't..."
"Jesus! How do you think Chris must feel?"
"Since when," Janis snapped, "do you care how Chris feels?"
"What? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You know I like Chris."
"I know."
"So what is it?" Mark looked at her. "Look, if you don't want to tell me what it is you remembered, that's all right, but—"
"No, I do want to tell you. I just.. .1 don't know." Janis sat awkwardly at the edge of one of the lobby's couches. "Mark," she said, "would you run to my room and get me my new pack of cigarettes? They're on my desk."
"What?"
"I want to sit here and tell you about it, but I need my cigarettes and I’m out." She was shaking. "Please?"
"Sure." Mark shook his head. "Sure."
Janis and Jill's room was on the fourth floor of Saki Hall. It was sub-tropical up there, baking in the risen heat from all the overheated dorm, steamy with exhaust from the antiquated radiators, clammy, tubercular. Mark was always reminded up here of rain forests and locker rooms, of dirty socks and jungle rot. He felt that the fourth floor of Saki was a place where microbes would breed freely, where disease would be rampant, and recovery long. The fourth floor was, however, a highly desirable residence. The rooms were very large.
Janis had handed him her key, and Mark now inserted it into the lock. The door swung open. It had not even been shut all the way. Funny, he thought, since Jill was at O'Henry with Albert—but then he switched on the light and did not think that anything was funny anymore.
On her bed, facing the door, Jill stared dully at him. She was leaning against the wall, head to one side as if trying very hard to understand a singularly unamusing and obscure joke. Her posture, clothing, bed…all was as it should be, except for the livid scar running from the underside of her left ear to her right collarbone. And her eyes, which did not blink.
Mark did blink. It seemed the only response he was capable of. That was when he realized that Jill was not blinking. He took two steps forward, and noticed her hands. They were clasped neatly on her lap, and the fingers were interlaced just so. The fingers of her right hand had nearly been severed. They were being held in place by the fingers of her left hand, which Mark was beginning to suspect were probably stiff. Yes, yes, in all probability this was indeed the case. Yes indeedy.
Mark giggled and took two steps back. He took them back. He had given them forward, and now he was taking them back. He took all of them back, in fact; he took them all back and closed the door and removed the key from the lock. Then, remembering that the door had been unlatched, he opened it again. Just a crack. Right.
She looked pale, he thought, on the way back down the stairs, two minutes before he suddenly began to scream. She looked pale. Later, the coroner was to determine that she had been drained of nearly all the blood in her body. Brittany was to comment that at least it had been a tidy murder. Chris was to hole himself in his room, not to emerge for seven days, and Stephanie was to be left with the task of calling all of Jill's high school friends to tell them the news. What it fell upon Janis to do, however, was unknown, because Janis was to disappear. When Mark got back down to the lobby of Saki Hall, she had vanished.
•