The Book of Kills (21 page)

As he left, Stewart had a fleeting glimpse of a young woman peering at him from another room and quickly withdrawing when their eyes met.

Before talking with young Bacon, Stewart brought the lab boys—two of them women—back to campus where they inspected the area around the parking space of Roger’s vehicle. There were footprints galore, of course, but several particularly deep ones caught their attention. They made impressions. A match was made with a pair of Bacon’s shoes. A crucial moment had arrived: That Bacon could be shown to have been near Roger’s vehicle, that the imprint of his shoes was deep even though snow had been falling—perhaps the snow served to preserve them—suggesting he had been carrying something heavy, this was the most circumstantial of evidence. That a resident of the village should leave footprints all about the place was hardly incriminating. Bacon had visited Roger Knight within the week of the murder. But when Stewart explained to Bacon what they had found, his wife Carlotta let out a shriek. Unnerved, Bacon blurted out his story. Yes, he had used Roger Knight’s golf cart to remove the body of Orion Plant.

“But it’s not what you think! I didn’t kill him.”

He was taken downtown and booked. Bartholomew Leone offered his services pro bono and appeared with his new client at the arraignment. But not even the mellifluous Leone could get Bacon free on bail. The young man languished in the county jail, awaiting trial, insisting that he had not killed Orion Plant. He had found the body and carted it away. Perhaps Leone believed this, but Stewart had long experience with accused killers. Bacon could scarcely deny the evidence that had been
amassed. But despite his admission he clung to the notion that the obvious implication could not be drawn.

Stewart would have been more content with this outcome had not Chief Kocinksi been so unctuous in his praise. Moreover, he received a call of congratulation from Ballast, the university counsel. If only Bacon would admit to killing Orion Plant.

ANITA TRAFFICANT WAS AS
relieved as anyone in the Main Building when Bacon was arrested. Maybe more so. That the culprit proved to be a graduate student in good standing—although the story of his being accused of plagiarism became known; it was, after all, the presumed motive for what he had done—displeased the chancellor. He would have preferred some total stranger descending on the campus in the midst of a snowstorm and wreaking havoc.

“They wouldn’t have caught a total stranger,” Anita observed.

“I suppose you’re right. To think that fellow was my kidnapper. What had I ever done to him?”

“It wasn’t you he kidnapped,” Anita said. “He kidnapped the chancellor of Notre Dame.”

Like any occupant of office, the chancellor had difficulty distinguishing between his private person and the official position he held. He had come to fuse the two in his mind and looked forward to reappointments into the indefinite future. That desire had been shaken by his ordeal and only recently reasserted itself. The president had a committee at work producing the White Paper the trustees had suggested. Suggested? It had been a condition of their not making a devastating proposal to the full board of trustees. Their determination had been weakened by the exciting game they had seen on Saturday and now
the arrest of Bacon altered the picture completely. Like another high official, and with infinitely less cause, he had faced impeachment and removal from office. But now the cloud had gone.

A cloud had lifted in Anita Trafficant’s mind as well. The inescapable fact that Harold had altered his personnel file, removing the middle name that suggested a connection with that long-ago slayer of Indians, set off dark suspicions. Had Harold decided to stop the renewed condemnation of his ancestor? Anita had become uncomfortable with Harold and, she felt, he was equally uncomfortable with her. Had she failed to disguise the thoughts she had? But now the killer had been found and once more sun shone on South Bend, on the campus of Notre Dame, and on Anita Trafficant.

“What is your middle name?” she asked Harold.

They were dining in the Lasalle Grill where he had been commenting on the minuscule portion of his entrée. Identifying it as nouvelle cuisine had not altered his disappointment. He was sipping his wine when she asked her question. He set his glass on the table.

“You know what it is.”

“Cruelle.”

“That’s right.”

“And you deleted it from your personnel file.”

“The name has associations and I didn’t want you to be influenced by them.” He put his hand on hers. She turned hers over and felt his warm palm on hers. To think that she had imagined Harold’s could be the hand of a killer.

“Did you think I would be? Something that happened a century ago?”

“His blood runs in mine.”

“And Cain’s runs in all of us.”

He squeezed her hand and let it go. Later, after the wine and the lifting of misunderstanding between them, she half dreaded, half hoped that he would want to come in when he brought her to her door. But he kissed her chastely on the forehead and that was it.

Inside, disappointment gave way to admiration at his tact and the respect it represented. Now if only he would ask the big question.

She was more than ready to stop working and settle down as a housewife and eventual mother. The supposed equality of women had come down to endless dissatisfying jobs where women could enjoy their terminal inequality with men. There was nowhere to go from where she was. What post higher than that of secretary to the chancellor was open to her? And the chancellor, hitherto so olympian in his eminence, had become unglued by the ordeal of kidnapping. This was understandable enough, but the lingering effects of what he had been through seemed permanent. He had been putty in the hands of the Schippers delegation. Anita, of course, acted as liaison with the committee put together to compose the White Paper. To her surprise, Sandra Trepani, the toothy sociologist who was a prominent figure in the faculty senate, was a member. She clearly saw herself as a surrogate for Quinlan.

“White Paper,” she had said before the first meeting of the committee, in a sibilant whisper. “White Wash would be more like it.”

Anita looked at her. If she was disenchanted with the administration,
she was filled with distaste at such faculty contrariness. A pox on both of them.

“Pox
tibi,”
she said to Sandra.

“Et cum spiritu tuo.”
Followed by a conspiratorial giggle. Good Lord.

PHIL HAD NOTICED THE
presence of Byers when he and Stewart talked with Marcia Plant before the body of her husband was found. For some reason he did not seem then, or later when Marcia had become a bereaved widow, like just another friend paying his respects. Others came and went and he remained and only eventually left. This stayed in his mind, and Bacon’s adamant refusal to admit that he had done anything more than transport the body to where it was found increased his curiosity. He visited Bacon.

After only a few days in captivity, Bacon looked like the man in the iron mask. Was it possible that he was equally innocent? He had aged, his unwashed hair fell from his head as if it would uproot itself and leave Bacon bald.

“Care to talk?”

“You’re Roger Knight’s brother?”

“Yes. Philip Knight.”

“A private investigator?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I hire you? How much do you charge?”

“What’s the assignment?”

“Find the bastard who killed Orion.”

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

Bacon looked wildly about, then shook his head in despair.

“I wish I did. But it’s not easy wishing someone else in my place, unless I really knew. I don’t.”

“Let’s just talk it through. You are at the great disadvantage of having a motive.”

“That paper? I was exonerated.”

“Because you destroyed the evidence.”

“Who could prove that?”

“Now that Orion’s dead? Probably nobody. Of course, Professor Ranke can give second-hand testimony.”

“He wouldn’t,” Bacon said, apparently not knowing that Ranke already had. “Anyway, would I kill someone for that?”

The guilty almost never admit their guilt. Phil knew this. But something about Bacon gave him pause.

“I want to go over every detail with you. Of course you needn’t talk to me.”

“Can I be your client? How much do you charge?”

“Look, I am still more or less retained by the university. They are satisfied that no mystery remains. In any case, I shall go on investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

“You think I’m innocent?” Bacon’s expression was one of surprised, almost servile gratitude.

“Until you’re proved guilty.”

The elation drained from Bacon’s eyes. “Everyone is.”

“Let’s start at the beginning.”

Phil had Bacon go over the sequence of that fateful night. He had found the body, he had remembered Roger’s golf cart and to his surprise found the key in the ignition. The vehicle made no noise, running on a rechargeable battery.

“My big fear was that the battery was low, that I would run out of power before I got the body out of there. I considered
recharging it at my place, running an extension out from the apartment.”

“That would have taken time.”

“And made Carlotta wonder what I was doing. I had to be careful not to attract her attention. I was so horrified by what I had found I didn’t want her to know.”

“Did you go back to your apartment?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“To pick up the body. That’s why I made off with your brother’s golf cart?”

“But didn’t you find the body by the cart?”

“No. It had been put on our front steps.”

“Your front steps?”

“Yes.”

“You never mentioned that before.”

“What difference does it make?”

Phil had long wondered why the body of Orion Plant had been lying next to Roger’s golf cart, as had been his assumption and Stewart’s all along.

“Probably none,” he said, not wanting to raise Bacon’s hope. But this was a potentially critical detail. If what Bacon said was true, and the fact that he had revealed the original location of the body so casually suggested it was, someone had placed the dead body of Orion Plant on the Bacon doorstep. The clear reason for that was to draw suspicion away from the perpetrator and to Bacon. Bacon had indeed come under suspicion, but because he had decided to remove the ghoulish evidence from his doorstep.

That night Phil went for a walk up Bulla Road. The lights
were on in Plant’s house—or his mother-in-law’s, as it happened. Phil continued on to Ironwood and then started back. As he was approaching the house again he saw a figure hurry from a car that had not been parked there when Phil first went by. It was a male and at the door he stood for a moment and then let himself in, obviously with a key. Phil had stopped to observe this, and when he continued it was stealthily. At the house he left the road and went across the risible lawn and along the side of the house to the back. Drapes had been pulled over the front windows, but the kitchen windows were ablaze and unshuttered. Inside, Marcia Plant was being embraced by a man who snuggled his face in her hair. And then he drew back. Scott Byers.

Phil went on home, where Roger was engrossed in his global e-mail correspondence. The impulse to tell his brother what he had learned faded. What after all had he learned? The accused continued to deny that he had killed Orion Plant; he had revealed an element in his alleged discovery of the body that seemed critical but might have been a shrewdly planted point to engage the interest of a private investigator he hoped to hire. Byers? However tasteless it was of him to rush to comfort the widow and step into her slain husband’s shoes—and of course reciprocally of Marcia Plant to allow him to do so—it would not be the first time a bereaved widow had posted with such dexterity to incestuous sheets, as Roger might have said. He would harbor what he might have learned awhile.

The following day, Phil stopped by the Huddle where Marcia had worked but from which she was now on indefinite compassionate leave. He took a cup of coffee to a table and noticed
that at a nearby table several employees were enjoying their break. After a time all but one, an adenoidal youth, got up and returned to their posts. Phil took his coffee to the table and sat. The adenoidal youth looked up. His name tag said Dave.