The Dead Student (32 page)

“Jesus,” Susan recoiled a step and blurted out. “What the hell …”

And then Detective Gonzalez told her a story. It was a midnight story, with a touch of Poe or Ambrose Bierce and typical of South Florida.

A solitary older man—crippled in an industrial accident years earlier so that he now limped on a deformed leg—whose primary source of income was occasionally training dogs for illegal underground fights unfortunately happened to live next door to a family whose two young boys taunted him mercilessly. Fed up, the old man had invented a fast-release lock on the caged area where he kept his dogs and stopped chaining the dogs securely. Slipknots and weakened links. The boys stopped in front of his house this past night, decided to throw rocks at the dogs they believed were safely locked up, threw other rocks at the old man’s windows. Woke him up. Called him names. Just a little bit of local nastiness on a night that was far too hot, far too humid, and destined for something terrible.

The old man assumed that his wire fence in front would hold the dogs in, and he triggered the pulley system he’d designed, freeing two of the animals. He’d figured that the sight of two seventy-pound dogs flying across the yard, teeth bared, would do an adequate job of putting the right sort of fear in his tormentors. The fence would stop the dogs, the kids would
be terrified, and he’d have a measure of satisfaction without even bothering to take the usual Dade County approach, which was brandishing a handgun.

He’d been wrong in all his assumptions.

Both dogs slammed into the fence. It buckled, gave way, and they scrambled through the opening.

Both dogs had easily run down the panicked youngsters.

Both dogs had rapidly ripped the life from the children before the old man could get loops and chains around their necks and get them under control.

End of story. She could feel weakness in her core.
Awful. Not tragic. Just sick.

“You don’t want to see these bodies,” Gonzalez said to Susan.

She choked at the thought of mauled children. “I have to …” she started.

“The dogs,” the detective said. “Are they, like, weapons that we should impound? What sort of homicide is this? We talking a strange sort of Stand Your Ground law thing here? I mean, after all, the kids were throwing rocks. But these dogs, well, are they evidence? Seems like a bunch of legal questions, Counselor. If it was up to me, I’d shoot ’em right here. But I wanted to consult with you first.”

Susan nodded. She knew what she wanted to say:
”You’re a hundred percent right. Shoot the dogs. A little instant street justice.
She did not say this. “Seize the dogs. Have Animal Control maintain a constant record, just like if they were a gun or a knife at a murder scene, so we have proper chain of evidence to produce in court. Make sure you take sworn statements from those officers about how dangerous the dogs are and make sure you get some of that …” she gestured toward the back of the truck, where she could still hear the dogs slamming against their restraints, “… on video. Arrest the old man, read him his rights, and charge him with first-degree murder. Have Crime Scene make sure they keep that locking system intact, so that we can present it in court. Get pictures of the fence, where the dogs broke through …”

She took a deep breath. The orderly prosecutor inside her was shaken. “Jesus,” she added.

“I’ve seen bad,” Gonzalez said. “But this one. Those dogs, they go straight for the jugular. Trained killers. Hell, they’re worse than some professional hit man and twice as efficient. Kids didn’t have a fucking chance. People think, it’s just a dog, how hard could defending myself be? They’ve got no clue.”

He took her arm and steered her farther into the crime scene. One body was in the side yard. The other was just outside the front door. Susan took another deep breath.
That one almost made it,
she thought. She paused when she saw an assistant medical examiner. Even in the flashing lights, she thought he looked pale. He was poised above a small body. She looked down at the kid’s bright blue high-tops, not his throat. Then she forced herself to lift her eyes.

That was Susan’s morning.

Mauled, half-eaten child; it had played some terrible chord deep within her and she’d tripped. Stumbled. Fallen. Failed.
Evil is relentless and routine,
she thought.

Every addict knows two numbers to call when they see something or do something or learn something that makes them totter on that edge that they thought was far away, but is really right beneath them all the time; when something happens that suddenly strips away all the facades of normalcy and reestablishes all the pain that resides hidden inside. One number is for a sponsor, to talk them out of doing what they want to do. The other number is the dealer, who will provide the alternative.

I wouldn’t have called if it hadn’t been for dogs and dead kids’ bodies. I thought I had it all beat. I was back to being the tough prosecutor with the knife edge and granite surface. Things bounced off me. That’s what I thought. No more desire. Except for tonight and all that children’s blood.

Susan believed if she were truly smart she would be able to look at her life and say to herself:
Oh see, I wasn’t loved enough as a child and that’s why I’m an addict.
Or:
I was beaten and abandoned and that’s why.
Or:
I
was weak when I should have been strong, lost when I should have been found, hurt when I should have been healthy.

In possession of understanding, she would be armed against herself.

It didn’t work that way.

Instead she was back in her apartment hours later, drinking hard and staring at the choice on her glass tabletop. Gun and coke. Coke and gun.
Shoot the dogs. Shoot yourself.

One death or another.

When the phone rang behind her, she jumped.

First there was silence.

Moth looked around at the others gathered at Redeemer One and doubted they’d ever heard a story like his before. It wasn’t a story about the types of compulsions they were all familiar with.

He didn’t have to wait long before the group burst into a chaotic mishmash of questions, comments, fears, and suggestions that all came flying at him as he stood in front. It was like being buffeted by a strong wind. The usual Redeemer One decorum and orderly processes of sharing were instantly shattered. Voices were raised. The air was electric with opinions. Arguments, sarcasm, even some shaky doubts all reverberated around him.

“Call the police.”

“Like 9-1-1? That’s nuts. Some cop will show up and have no clue what to do.”

“Well, then how about the cops that already investigated Ed’s suicide?”

“Yeah. Call them and tell them how stupid they’ve been. That will work.”

“Well, how about hiring a private detective?”

“Better yet, hire an attorney who employs a private detective.”

“That makes some sense, except how many attorneys know how to deal with some revenge killer? How do you look up that category in the phone book? Where is it? Somewhere between defending DUIs, divorces, and estates and wills?”

“You have to speak to Ed’s family and his partner. They need to know what you’ve discovered.”

“Right. And how exactly will they help?”

“Why not call the
Miami Herald
? Tell an investigative reporter, put them on the story. Or
60 Minutes.
Or someone who can independently look into it.”

“Don’t be silly. The press would just screw it up. And have you read the
Herald
lately? It sure as hell ain’t what it used to be twenty years ago. They can barely get the details of a zoning board meeting straight. I say go back to New Jersey and hand it over to the state police.”

“What will the cops up there do? They’ve got no jurisdiction down here. And anyway, Timothy doesn’t have evidence—he has connections. He has suppositions. He has some guesswork and some possibilities. He has a motive for murder, and even that is pretty far out there. And he’s got a lot of coincidence. What else?”

“He’s got more than that.”

“You sure? The sorts of facts that would stand up in a court? I don’t know about that.”

“I think Timothy should write a book.”

“Great. That will take a year or two. What should he do right now?”

“I wish Susan the prosecutor were here. She’s a professional and she would know what to do.”

Moth answered this last comment.

“I can call her. She gave me her card, with her home number.” He reached into his wallet and pulled out Susan Terry’s business card.

This made the room grow quiet again. Heads nodded in agreement.

Sandy the estate lawyer reached into her purse and produced a cell phone. “Here,” she said. “Call right now, while we’re all here.” This was said with maternal insistence. It also reflected the widespread understanding at Redeemer One that promises to call someone weren’t the same as actually calling them.

Moth started to dial, but stopped when the University of Miami philosophy professor—who had up to this point been oddly noncommunicative—finally leaned forward, holding up his hand like a student in one of his classrooms.

“Timothy,” he said slowly, “something occurs to me that seemingly hasn’t been noted by the others. I actually believe you’ve heard some good suggestions here, and you should follow up on them,” he stated in the same tones he would use in a faculty meeting. “But what I fear is something different.”

Moth paused. “What’s that, Professor?”

“If this person, this former medical student you’ve identified that apparently has been so proficient at killing … so good at it that he’s committed, what? Five killings without being caught …?” Again he drew out his response in a pedantic fashion. “What makes you think he doesn’t know about you?”

Silence.

The regulars at Redeemer One were frozen in position.

“Well, I mean how …” Moth stammered.

He stopped, knowing that this was about to become a question neither he nor anyone else there could successfully answer.

Another silence.

“Dial that number,” Sandy the estate lawyer said. Her voice was steel.

Moth looked about the room. People were leaning forward in their seats, expectant, energized.

Not the typical meeting tonight by any means,
Moth thought wryly.

He resumed dialing, as the professor continued:

“And, Moth,” he added softly, “if he does know about you, what will he do about that?”

29

“Put it on speakerphone,” someone said.

“Susan, everyone can hear us,” Moth spoke loudly.

“Why aren’t you here tonight?” asked the philosophy professor pointedly.

Susan Terry did not answer this question. She held her phone in one hand and put the other to her forehead, stroking her temple aggressively, as if that motion could help massage away the fears spread out on the coffee table. For a nervous moment, she imagined that everyone at Redeemer One could see the array in front of her, disapproving looks on their faces. She was slumped down against a cheap, uncomfortable couch, wearing a sweat-stained white tank top and baggy gray sweatpants.
Cocaine-snorting clothes,
she thought.
Clothes to escape in.
Her dark hair was bedraggled, sticking to her neck. She knew her makeup had run, giving her a raccoonlike look around the eyes. She wore no shoes, and she wiggled her toes, almost like a person afraid she’d damaged her spine might, to reassure herself that she still had the ability to stand up.

“I had an early morning call,” she said. This was truthful. “I was exhausted and fell asleep.” This was a lie.

Holding the cell out like a religious offering so that everyone could hear her, Moth looked around. He was unsure how many of them believed Susan right at that moment. Every meeting combined layers of disbelief warring with blind acceptance, a combination that shouldn’t logically work, he thought, but somehow managed to.

Susan could feel sweat between her breasts. It was clammy. But she adopted the tones of the put-together, no-nonsense prosecutor. She wondered where that person had disappeared to. She didn’t know if she could handle any feeling of being judged, because she knew she would come up short.

“Why are you calling?” she asked abruptly.

Moth was about to answer, but was cut off by Sandy the corporate attorney. “He’s calling because we all insisted he call. Every one of us,” she said loudly enough for the phone to pick up every word, like a mother calling children to the table. She made a hand gesture to encourage the others, and there was a general murmur of assent from the gathering.

Fred the engineer added, “He has been explaining everything that leads him to believe his uncle was killed by someone. We think he makes a compelling case. Very circumstantial, we concede, but still compelling. Fascinating, actually. You are the only person we could all agree to reach out to.”

The voices coming across the cell line were tinny, almost hallucinatory. Susan leaned back, hesitating.
Closed case. Maybe. Doubts. Open case. Maybe. Doubts.
“His uncle’s suicide has been thoroughly investigated and closed. Timothy and I have gone over this extensively—” she started.

“He’s not the only one,” Moth interrupted sharply. He kept his eyes on the crowd in the room.

Susan rocked a bit on her apartment floor, leaned her head back as if exhausted, felt like her tongue was growing thick. What she wanted was to bend over the table, snort the remaining lines of coke, and embrace everything that meant, or else pick up the automatic and finish everything
that remained of her life all at once.
I’m dying,
she thought.
I’m all alone and I’m always all alone.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but heard a voice that sounded strangely like her own speaking firmly, almost as if there were another her in the room.