Angel Food and Devil Dogs (12 page)

"Well the students did but, I did hear him yelling at someone on the phone, once and one time he got really angry at Jim Harmon. Right in front of a class."

"Really... what did he say?" I asked him.

Leavitt thought about it and then said, "Um... that Jimmy was a cheat or something like that. Jimmy tried to reason with him. Carl shouted. Jimmy put his hand on Carl's shoulder, Carl pushed Jimmy away. All of the sudden, Jimmy looked like he was going to hit Carl. I was sitting right there so I said, 'Jim, stop it.' Jimmy kind of shook his head and calmed down and then walked right out of the room."

Leavitt had been there on the day Carl died. When I asked him to tell me exactly what happened he said: "I came in at noon, that's my regular time. I brought all the control room panels back to default settings. About 20 minutes later, Mike Jacobsen and Caitlyn Zale came in. They're students. Caitlyn was going to sing and Mike was going to do the tech. Mike's homework really. Caitlyn was just helping him out... Caitlyn and Mike started to work. She was singing some pop ballad kind of thing, she has a great voice. After a while, maybe about 20 minutes later, Carl came in. He had his cane open. I could hear him tapping it. Caitlyn had to stop singing because Mike was picking up the tapping. Carl said he was sorry to Mike. Um... then... Carl asked if I was there and I called out to him. He said, 'Hi.' Then Carl went in his office."

Leavitt told me that even though the doors to the offices were supposed to be soundproof, they were really only about 80%, which made Jimmy Harmon
postal
when he was trying to make a recording because sometimes sounds from Carl's office got picked up. Also anytime Carl opened his door, it spoiled a recording session.

Leavitt told me that no one came in to see Carl, but he suddenly remembered..."Carl may have gotten a phone call."

"Really?" I asked with interest, "you heard it ring?"

"I didn't," explained Leavitt, "but Mike stopped the recording because he heard ringing over the mics. They're pretty sensitive. I'm not sure of the exact time, but Mike would know."

I made a note to check this with Mike Jacobsen, especially because Leavitt told me that Carl left his office just after the call. Leavitt went on to describe the chaos that ensued after Carl's fall from the balcony. He ended it with... "I keep remembering the last time I saw him, Carl got in the elevator and... waved... just by holding his hand up, like this." Leavitt raised his hand, palm out, not moving it, "And the doors closed and... I didn't say goodbye." He became quiet.

I asked Jack Leavitt to stay while I took a preliminary gander at Carl's office in case there was anything in there I needed him to explain. It was free of the typical paper clutter of most offices, since Carl had no use for hard copy files and written memos.

"You came in here on that day?" I asked as I took in the office space.

"Yeah, I brought him some CDs that students had dropped off, some completed projects... assignments," he said.

"Was his computer on, did he have the screen turned on?"

"Uh huh."

"What was up on it?

"Um, a blank text document."

"A text screen ready to type on?" I suggested.

"Yeah, or one that he could talk the text onto, using the Voice Transcription System. His mic was set up."

"Could it pick up someone else's voice?"

"No, the program's really amazing, it only recognized Carl's voice. It took a long time to set up. Dr. Smith helped him."

"Dr.
Georgia
Smith?"

"Yeah, she'd come in every few weeks and update it for him. It's easier for a sighted person to do that, because they can read the words that are coming out on the screen to be sure they're right."

I made a note of that.

After Leavitt left, I poked around the computer music hook ups, electronic piano keyboards, digital speakers, and the large microphone in the middle of the desk next to the phone.

The computer typing keyboard was gone, the police had taken it to check for fingerprints. I found an extra one in a different office, plugged it in, then booted up Carl's computer and scanned his files. I reviewed Carl's suicide note, it was the same as the hard copy Bouchet had handed out.

In the top drawer of the desk, I found a very powerful laptop computer next to a nearly full box of Devil Dogs snack cakes. I opened one of the plastic packages of Devil Dogs and sniffed it while I copied all of Carl's written files and program information from the desktop onto the laptop. The snack cakes were a little stale, but as I hadn't had dinner, I ate the whole package of three. I didn't think Carl would mind.

I managed to open the Voice Transcription System program and accessed the files. I copied them onto the laptop; the voice transcription software was already loaded into the laptop.

The Voice Transcription Program would read any text out loud in a voice selected by the program user. One would read any text to the tune of "Happy Days Are Here Again." Why would anybody need that, I wondered. By using this program, Carl could
read
all his student's papers by just having the computer convert the text to voice or musical sound. He could hear emails using it and he could check his own typing to be sure he hadn't made mistakes. This was one of the ways it was possible for him to function in a college full of sighted people.

Carl could also use the program as a text translator. He could talk into a mic and the words he said would come out as text. Cool. I looked around the room to see if there were any software manuals with directions on operating that program. The software books were all in a stack in the corner. They weren't anything Carl could use, but if he had a problem, the College tech people could come in and access them.

I found the one for the Voice Transcription Program and flipped through the five hundred or so pages of
simple
directions. There was no way I could figure this out tonight. It was getting very late.

I couldn't access Carl's email without his password. I gave guessing it a shot, trying a few dozen combinations of letters and numbers that might have been important in his life, but no dice. I looked around his desk to see if he'd written it down.
Mental head slap
. He was blind
.
Maybe he had a Braille reminder. If he did, it wouldn't do me any good. It was almost midnight. I put Carl's laptop and the software manual in my shoulder bag, left Carl's office snapping the padlock back in place, then passed through the large dark recording studio en route to the elevator.

I decided to go to the top floor and see the balcony where Carl Rasmus met death. The elevator door opened into darkness on the sixth floor. Carl had killed himself in the middle of the day, but it would have been darker for him than this was for me. The balcony Carl Rasmus fell from was reached by a pair of locked French doors off the hall. I didn't have the key. Peering through the glass, I could make out the four-foot cement railing that probably bruised Carl's legs.

Could it be that he'd just rode up there and jumped? How did he even know there was a balcony there, anyway? Where did he get the key? How did he know there wasn't a huge awning under the balcony that would break his fall? The whole thing seemed implausible. If someone had pushed him, though... I looked up and down the hall.

All the killer would have to do was push him off, then walk over to the stairs. There were plenty of ways to get out of the building. Killing a blind man wouldn't have been that hard to do... but Carl had left a suicide note in a locked room ... and that I couldn't explain.

I walked home. The snow had stopped and the wind was less than a whisper. The city lay quietly nestled under a white blanket. I was carrying Carl Rasmus's laptop, which I may have removed from his office illegally, but I'd take my chances with that.

I remembered watching Kathryn Anthony talking in the Quad. I realized that I'd had a pang of jealousy when I'd seen her gently touch Jimmy Harmon's arm.

You might be sweet on that girl, I teased myself.

The small parking lot in front of my building had already been plowed out by the maintenance service. They'd done a fairly good job, but the space they made through the snow pile to the building entrances was pretty narrow. I had to turn sideways. Sara would complain to the landlord, and the landlord would be me.

I was planning to work out for about an hour, have a bowl of Jessie Wiggins' homemade chicken soup and then go to sleep as fast as possible. My 9:00 AM meeting with Skylar Carvelle was coming up fast.

I gathered the mail in the foyer and trudged up the stairs to my loft, but when I reached the second floor landing I noticed a note with my name on it taped to the door of my office.

All it said was, "Maggie, List on Evelyn's desk."

Inside Martinez and Strong Law Offices, I scooped up two sheets from the front desk. A handwritten note from Sara on one of them said, "Maggie, please run this list. It's from Daria's party."

The list had about 40 names. How did Daria ever fit that many party goers into her tiny apartment? Apparently Sara wanted me to send this list to my fact checkers to see if any of these people had been charged or convicted of violent acts.

In my own office, I faxed the list off with a note of explanation and my pin number for the service. I made a notation on my calendar. Credit results should be back by Friday evening. More extensive information would take longer. If any of these people had been guilty of rape or sexual assault in the past, it could help get Mickey off. The whole procedure only took about ten minutes. I locked up and resumed my climb to the third floor.

I'd finished converting my loft to living space a few weeks ago. The hard work to get it done over the last six months had paid off and I was unabashedly proud of myself for the way it had come out. Fun to come home to it, but right now I was a little too tired for full-fledged appreciation.

As I unlocked the door a nagging feeling I was forgetting something tickled my conscience. In the back of my mind I knew there was something else I was supposed to do. What was it?

I hung my jacket on a peg near the door and sat down at the kitchen table, staring off into space. Visions of Kathryn Anthony clouded my concentration. Even after everything that had happened yesterday and all the information I'd gathered today, I just kept coming back to the way she'd looked at me when we'd met. Maybe it was all my imagination, but the look in her eyes seemed very personal.

I wish I could call Farrel and talk to her about all this, I thought.

It was too late to call her though... too late to call Farrel and Jessie and besides... they're away doing an antique show. Oh shit! They're away and it snowed... and I have to shovel their walk! I couldn't believe I'd forgotten. I'd even reminded myself when it started snowing. What a moron. Now I'd have to go back out in the cold. Damn!

I put my new parka back on, grabbed my keys and leather gloves, and went back out into the night.

Farrel and Jessie lived on Washington Street on the south side of Washington Mews. In fact, they have two rowhouses next to each other that they joined into one. When you live in Washington Mews, you ultimately succumb to the
propriety police
. Mews people can be painfully rule-oriented. It's like a cult. It's considered impolite to leave snow on the sidewalk in front of your house in Washington Mews. So the Mewsians, including Farrel and Jessie themselves, lobbied City Council to pass a law that requires all residents of the historic districts of the city to shovel their walks down to the pavement within 24 hours of the snow stopping. There's even a $35 fine.

Because Farrel and Jessie have two houses combined into one, they could get a $70 ticket! Even more serious, was the danger of the disdain of their neighbors. A disdain meted out in sideways glances and turned up noses. It could be a stinking black spot on their reputations for years.

There are a lot of gay and lesbian families in the Mews, and they often seem to be the most insistent on rule following. Gay and lesbian homeowners who began buying and restoring Mews homes twenty years ago had rescued this neighborhood, like so many historic areas all over the country.

The snow had just stopped a few hours earlier. If I could get there before too many pedestrians walked by, I could get the four or five inches of powder off the sidewalk before boots trampled it into an icy packed down mass.

What the heck, I shrugged, half an hour of rapid shoveling and I won't have to work out. I glanced at my watch. It was 1:10AM. There shouldn't be anyone out at this hour on a Wednesday night, just
after hours
folks like vampires and guys like Herman Munster.

It was just over a block to Farrel and Jessie's house from my building. By the time I was half way there I'd decided a vampire would be flying rather than strolling and that Herman Munster had that hot-ride-hearse, so the sidewalks would probably be empty.

Things seemed different in the Mews, like a world apart. I stopped for a minute to appreciate the rare beauty of the snow. It was clean and pure white. A bright full moon had risen in the southeast in counterpoint to the rest of the night sky, which was as soft and dark as black velvet. Overhead was a shoal of a thousand stars. It was impossible to look at any point in the northwestern sky and not see a dozen tiny dots of light. Some were beacons in the recognizable patterns of constellations, others almost too small to discern individually, were like a fist full of shining grains of sand flung by a Greek god onto an inky background.

The old-fashioned streetlight globes on their ornate copper columns were dimmed by little white caps. Bushes and tree branches seemed dusted with talcum. Every car parked along the sidewalk sported a new white ragtop. The snow on the park lawns in the center of the Mews was as smooth as fondant icing. The deep powder muffled every sound. Even my own footsteps made only a quiet chuffing as I moved along.

Farrel and Jessie keep a snow shovel in their foyer from November until April. I had keys to their house. Though Cora Martin was taking care of their cats, Cora was not expected to shovel. I'd do her walk as well.