The Dead Student (29 page)

Andy Candy thought she should have a thousand additional questions, but she could not come up with any. She looked out the window of the
car and saw people starting to emerge from Redeemer One
.
She realized suddenly that the hand holding her cell phone was slippery with sweat.

“Sorry. I don’t know if I’ve helped you or not,” the doctor continued. “That’s all I recall. Or, possibly, that’s all I care to recall. You let me know where I should send that contribution to the memorial fund.”

The psychiatrist hung up.

24

Gotta love Facebook.

Student #5 was getting to know Andrea Martine from a distance. He was staring at an electronic array of her wall pictures and reading captions and comments, lots of silly, inconsequential words that concealed some important elements:
dead father the vet; music teacher mother; happy college times that seemed to stop abruptly; no posts for weeks. I wonder why.
Bits of information flooded him as he carefully sorted through the typical teenager-to-college-student chaff in his search for hidden details that would help him plan. He had an odd thought:
Did Mark Zuckerberg ever imagine that his social network could be used to make a decision whether to kill someone?

He smiled and had an added thought:
It’s a little like preparing to go on a blind date, isn’t it?
He imagined himself seated across a restaurant table, exchanging pleasantries with Andrea Martine. He spoke in a nice, friendly voice:
“So, you like adopting animals, do you? And reading Emily Dickinson poems and Jane Austen novels both for class and in your spare time? Isn’t that interesting …

“It sure sounds like you have a fascinating life, Andrea. Full of possibilities. I would be so sorry to have to cut it short.”

This dialogue made him laugh out loud. But the burst of humor didn’t manage to conceal troubled thoughts that were lurking in the back of his imagination.

He read through everything, then read it all again, revisiting photos and archived materials. He looked closely at a single picture of a grinning Andrea arm in arm with a dark-haired, thin boy. No name. This picture had the caption
EX
beneath it.

Student #5 noted frequent use of a nickname:
Andy Candy
.

Interesting construction,
he thought.
Sort of like a porn star’s nom de sex.

He thought Andy Candy was pretty and recognized that she had a disarming smile and a lanky, sleek figure. He guessed that she was devoted to her studies and a good student. He imagined she was outgoing, friendly, not overly social but no wallflower either. She had posted pictures showing her drinking beer with friends, riding a two-person bicycle, bikini-clad on vacation dropping from the sky harnessed into a parachute towed behind a speedboat. There were pictures of her on a soccer field and playing basketball during her teenage years. There were baby pictures, with the obligatory question written beneath:
Wasn’t I a beauty?
She wasn’t at all like anyone he’d killed—up to this point.

One old person. Four middle-aged psychiatrists. Study Group Alpha.

But Andy Candy went into a different category.
This would be a killing of choice. This would be a killing to protect your future and to hide what you have done.
Uncertainty made him pause. Made him slightly unsettled.
What’s she guilty of?

Student #5 eyed one particular photo. He guessed she was in her late teens when it was taken. Andy Candy was cuddling on a fluffy sofa with a mutt—and dog and girl were looking directly at the camera, cheek to cheek, each wearing a slightly skewed baseball cap from the University of Florida and a wide grin, even if the dog did look a little uncomfortable. The picture went directly into the young person’s category of “cute.” There
was a joking caption underneath the picture:
Me and my new boyfriend Bruno getting ready for freshman orientation Fall 2010
.

Innocent,
he thought.

He bent toward the computer screen. “What were you doing in Doctor Hogan’s house, young lady?” he asked, a stern schoolteacher wagging a finger under the nose of a miscreant classroom cutup. “What did you see? What did you hear? What do you mean to do now?”

He almost expected one of the pictures to answer him. “Don’t you understand what it means?” Silence filled the room. “I might just have to kill you.”

Student #5 shut down the Facebook page and turned his attention to Timothy Warner. No social network site for him—but there were other sources of information, including police records.

Timothy Warner showed up twice for driving under the influence. There was a district court adjudication—six months’ nonreporting probation and loss of license.

He found some other entries for Timothy Warner: magna cum laude from the University of Miami, undergraduate degree in American History, and the recipient of a prestigious award. This news release from the university conveniently included a picture and the information that Timothy Warner was continuing at the university to obtain a doctorate in Jeffersonian Studies.

He fixed his eyes on the picture. “Hello, Timothy,” he said. “I think we’re going to get to know each other.”

The
Miami Herald
website listed Timothy Warner in the “survived by” category following its obituary report on his uncle’s suicide. Some additional quick clicks on the keyboard, and within a few seconds he had addresses and phone numbers for both Andy Candy and Timothy the nephew.

Student #5 rocked in his chair like an eager sub hoping to be called to go into a game.

He knew what they looked like, and he knew where to look for them,
and he believed that whatever blanks he had left on his
Do I need to kill them both?
list could be filled without too much trouble.

He split his computer screen and put up the picture captioned
EX
next to the university press release of Timothy Warner. This interested him.
Did love bring them back together?

He shook his head.

More likely: death.

25

Andy Candy thought they had entered into some weird parallel universe. Where they stood, the morning sun was insistently bright. The air was warm. Gentle breezes stirred palm fronds into a rhythmic, benign dance.

And now what connected the two of them was murder.

And fear, too,
she thought. But she wasn’t quite able to gather all that anxiety up into a neat package and describe it to Moth the way she had related all the details of her conversation with the West Coast psychiatrist the night before. When she told Moth all that the doctor had said, she imagined herself some sort of executive secretary of killing. Details had flooded her afterward, and she’d tried to sort through them all:
You go to a college frat house party and it becomes death. You get a call from your old high school boyfriend and it becomes death. You fly to talk to an old psychiatrist and that becomes death.

What’s next?

Too many things were conflated together inside her head. She wanted to grasp something solid, but nothing seemed quite real to her any longer.

Dead monkeys in a psych lab thirty years ago.

Was that real?

Names of dead people on a page in front of her. Accident, accident, suicide.

Were they real?

The baby she’d aborted.

Was it real?

Andy looked over at Moth.
No,
she suddenly thought.
It’s not a parallel universe. It’s the theater of the absurd and we’re both eagerly waiting for Godot.

“Are you hungry, Andy?” Moth called out.

He was standing at a counter, collecting Cuban coffees for the two of them.

They were outside a window-front restaurant on Calle Ocho
,
the main thoroughfare through Little Havana, engaging in a Miami tradition: dynamiting oneself awake. A line of folks—from businessmen in dark suits to mechanics in greasy overalls—were sipping small cups of sweet, frothy, strong coffee and eating pastries. Andy Candy and Moth were both on their second cup of the brew, which they knew was more than enough caffeine to keep them going for hours.

“No, I’m okay,” she replied. She waited until he joined her on a small cement bench.

Moth did not believe he was proving to be much of a detective. His working knowledge of police work was limited to what he’d seen on television, which ranged from the incredible to the gritty with a good deal of mundane mixed in. His approach was a typical student’s: He considered reading modern cops-and-robbers fiction and wondered whether he should spend some time absorbing true-crime accounts of famous killings as well. He scoured the Internet assessing scholarly papers on DNA testing and forensic website entries describing varieties of killers. These ranged from deranged moms who drowned their children to cold-blooded serial killers.

None of what he learned seemed to help him.

Everything he’d done seemed backward.
Cops start with details that create questions and get answers that paint a clear-cut portrait of a crime. I
started with a certainty that has been replaced by doubt. Their approach is to eliminate confusion. Mine has only created it.

Andy Candy could see the troubled look on Moth’s face.

“Moth,” she said briskly, an idea occurring to her. “We should watch a movie.”

“What?”

“Well, maybe not the movie. Do you remember what the assignment in Mrs. Collins’s tenth-grade English class was?”

“What?”

“The main reading for the fall semester. I know it was the same for you even if you were ahead of me, because she never changed a thing, year in, year out.”

“Andy, what are you …”

“I’m serious, Moth.”

“Okay, but what has it got to do—”

She interrupted him with a wave of her hand.

“Come on, Moth. The book that fall …”

Moth lifted his small cup, smelled the aroma, and smiled.

“
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Alexandre Dumas.”

“Right,” Andy replied, with a small grin. “And what’s it about?”

“Well, lots of things, but mainly revenge that is exacted years later.”

“And your uncle’s death?”

“Revenge that was exacted years later.”

“That’s what it seems.”

“Right. That’s what it seems.”

“So, the next step is we get a name from medical school way back then. The fifth student in that study group. Then we track that person down.”

“Edmond Dantès,” Moth said.

Andy Candy smiled at the literary reference. “Kind of,” she said. “Shouldn’t be that complicated. The schools keep records. But we just find him. Heck, Moth, we could just subscribe to one of those
Find Your Classmates
websites and they’d do most of the work for us. I know we can do that.”

“I’ve always thought those sites exist so that people can reconnect with
some crush they had in high school and have adult sex,” Moth said. “But you’re right. Let’s get that name. That’s the obvious next step. And then …”

He stopped.

Andy Candy nodded, but said:

“And then we have a choice to make.”

“What’s that?” Moth asked.

“Either we’re finished … or we’re just starting.” This was a question wrapped in a statement.

Moth took the time to sip more coffee before responding. “I get the impression that this is not the sort of case a Miami cop is eager to handle,” he said. “But, hell, what do I know? Maybe. I’ll bundle it all together and take it to Susan Terry. Put it on a platter and serve it up like barbecue. She’ll know what to do …

“Except why do I still get the feeling she will just laugh at me if I try to explain it to her?”

And then Moth laughed. False laugh.

Andy Candy joined him. The same false laugh.

But in that moment they both realized that nothing was really humorous about their situation. It was more a moment of intense irony, overcoming the two of them as quickly and efficiently and totally as the strong coffee hitting their bloodstreams.

She had said
we
but in reality she meant
I,
as Andy Candy had perfected her telephone style with registrars and alumni offices. Moth listened to her work the phones, inquiring, pleading, and finally cajoling. He watched her face, as it changed from smiles to frowns and back to a satisfied grin. He thought she was a performer on a stage, a one-person show, able to run through and express emotions with speed and accuracy.

When she got
the
name, she first wore a smug
That was easy
look. But then, as she wrote down details, Moth saw her look change. It wasn’t precisely fear that crept back into her eyes, nor was it anxiety that began to make her voice quaver. It was something else.

He wanted to reach out for her, but did not.

She hung up the phone.

For a moment she looked down at a scratch pad, where she’d taken some notes. “I have the name,” she said. Her voice seemed thin. “Study Group Alpha. Student number five. Asked to take a leave from school in the middle of his third year. Never went back. Did not graduate.”

“Yes. That’s the guy. Name?” Moth knew he sounded eager and that this enthusiasm was somehow inappropriate.

“Robert Callahan Jr.”

Moth breathed in sharply. “Well. There we go. Now we get started on where …”

Moth stopped. He saw Andy Candy shaking her head.

“He’s dead,” she said.