The Dead Student (7 page)

She smiled, trying to be gentle, but it wasn’t hard to feel the cynicism in her advice.

Moth silently collected the package of picture copies and reports that Susan Terry had prepared for him. He took a few moments to examine each picture, letting each one crease his memory, almost as if he could flow into the image and find himself back in his uncle’s office. His hand shook a little and he paused as he stared at a photograph of the gun next to his uncle’s hand. He started to say something, then stopped. He rapidly flipped through the pictures, until he came to a second one. He stared hard, then shuffled the photos quickly until he came to a third. He took the three pictures and spread them out on Susan’s desk. He pointed at the first:
gun on the floor; outstretched hand.

“This is what I remember,” he said. His voice was ragged and dry. “Like, no one moved anything?”

“No, Timothy. Crime scene specialists never move anything until it is photographed, documented, and measured. They’re really cautious about that.”

Then he pointed at the second picture.

Desk. Bottom drawer. Open perhaps an inch and a half.

“This picture … Like nothing was changed?”

Susan craned her head over. “No. That’s the way they found it.”

A third picture.

Desk. Bottom drawer. Wide open.

A .40-caliber black matte semiautomatic pistol resting beneath some stray papers, encased in a tan leather sheepskin-lined sheath.

“And this …” The words were posed as a question.

“I opened that drawer myself,” Susan said. “With the technician taking pictures. That’s the spare handgun your uncle had registered. He purchased it a number of years ago, when he was doing pro bono therapy at an inner-city clinic in Overtown. He was going in the evenings. A pretty rough area. Not surprising that he toted a handgun to those sessions.”

Susan paused. “But he quit that work some time ago. Kept the gun, though.”

“Didn’t use it, I guess.”

“Timothy, lots of people in Miami own more than one handgun. They’ll keep one in their glove compartment, one in a briefcase, one in a handbag, one in a bedside drawer … You know that.”

Moth started to speak, stopped, started a second time, stopped, stared at the pictures, leaned back.

“Thank you for your time, Susan. I will see you at a meeting,” he said abruptly. He turned to Andy Candy. “I’m an alcoholic,” he said bitterly, as he gestured toward the prosecutor. “But Susan likes cocaine.”

“That’s right,” Susan said coldly. “But not anymore.”

“Right,” Moth replied. “Not anymore. Right.”

Andy Candy was a little unsure what this last exchange meant.

“I guess we’ll be leaving now,” Moth said.

They all shook hands perfunctorily and Andy Candy and Moth exited the office. He didn’t acknowledge the secretary. Instead, as soon as they passed through the outer door to Susan Terry’s office he seized Andy Candy’s wrist and started to walk quickly, pulling her along as if they were
terribly late to a meeting instead of having just finished one. She could see his lips were set, and his face seemed stiff, like a frozen mask.

Through the office, out through security, down the elevator, back through the passageway next to the building metal detectors, out into the sunlight, across the street, until they stood in front of the older courthouse building.

Moth nearly dragged Andy Candy the entire way. She had to almost jog to keep up with him. He said nothing.

Outside, they were hit by a burst of sunlight and heat, and she saw Moth crumble a little—as if struck with a sudden punch—as he stopped in his tracks at the bottom of a wide flight of entry stairs. Trees and foliage had been planted by the access, to give the place a less severe look. This was unsuccessful.

The two of them were quiet for a few moments. In front of them, an old, wizened maintenance man with a water hose and a large push broom was cleaning up what Andy Candy thought was the oddest-looking mess by the curb to the street. She could see feathers and a streak of red-brown on the gray cement. The maintenance man swept up the material into a pile, used a shovel to dump it into a wheelbarrow, then turned on the hose and started to spray the area.

“Dead chicken,” Moth said.

“What?”

“A dead chicken. Santeria. You know, the religion that’s like voodoo. Someone has a court case inside, so they hire a
brujo
to come sacrifice a chicken in front of the courthouse. Supposed to give them good luck with a jury, or make some judge cut their sentence or something.”

Moth smiled and shook his head. “Maybe we should have done the same.”

Andy Candy tried to speak softly. She figured Moth was still devastated by his uncle’s death and she wanted to be kind. She also wanted to get away. She had her own sadnesses to deal with and she felt caught up in something that bordered on crazy and emotional when she thought that what she needed more than anything was something rational and routine.
“So, that’s it?” she asked. She knew he would understand that she wasn’t talking about a dead chicken on the steps to the courthouse.

She saw Moth’s lip quiver. She thought,
Better help him get through the next bit. Get him to go to that meeting. Then disappear forever.

Moth said, “No.”

She didn’t reply.

“You saw the pictures?”

She nodded.

He turned toward her. He had paled a little or else the bright sunlight had washed some of the color from his skin.

“Sit at a desk,” he said stiffly.

“Sorry, what?”

“Sit at a desk, just like my uncle did.”

Andy Candy plopped down on the steps, then stiffened her back, holding her hands out like a prim secretary. “Okay,” she said. Moth instantly sat next to her.

“Now, shoot yourself,” Moth said.

“What?”

“I mean, show me how you would shoot yourself.”

Andy Candy felt like she was sliding under the surface of a wave, almost as if she was holding her breath and looking through darkening waters as she sunk down. The argument within her—forgotten in the return of Moth to her side—suddenly resounded.
Killer!
she heard in her head.
Maybe you should kill yourself?

Like a poorly trained actor in some forgettable local production, she formed two fingers and her thumb into the shape of a gun. She lifted it to her temple theatrically. “Bang,” she said quietly. “Like that?”

Moth mimicked her actions. “Bang,” he said, just as softly. “That’s what my uncle did. You could tell from the pictures.”

He hesitated. Andy Candy could see pain in Moth’s eyes.

“Except he didn’t.” Moth held his finger-pistol to his temple. “Tell, Me, Andy, why would someone reach down, start to open a desk drawer where he had a gun that had been there for years, maybe pull it partway open,
and then suddenly decide instead to use the
other
gun that was on the desk in front of him.”

Andy tried to answer this question. She could not.

Moth pantomimed the actions again.
Reaching down. Stopping. Reaching onto a desktop. Raising a pistol.

“Bang,” he said a second time. A little louder.

Deep breath. Moth shook his head. “My uncle was organized. Logical. He used to tell me that the most precise people in the world are jewelers, dentists, and poets, because they worship economy of design. But next in line are psychiatrists. Being a drunk was sloppy and stupid and he hated that part of it. Recovery for Ed meant examining every little action, understanding every step … I don’t know, being smart, I guess. That’s what he was trying to teach me.”

Anger mingled with despair in his voice.

“What makes sense about bringing
two
guns to a suicide.”

He paused before he took the two-fingered mock pistol from his temple and pointed it out in front of them, as if he was taking aim at heat waves above the parking lot. “I’m going to find him and kill him,” Moth said bitterly. The
him
in his threat was a ghost.

5

“I’m really concerned,” said Student #1. “No, way beyond concerned. I’m really worried.”

“No shit,” said Student #2.

“Why don’t you add
scared out of your mind
to that particular algorithm,” said Student #3.

“And precisely what do we do about it?” asked Student #4. He was trying to remain calm because everything about the situation seemed to warrant an approach closer to panic.

“Actually, I think we’re totally fucked,” Student #1 said with resignation.

“Do you mean academically fucked, emotionally fucked, or physically fucked?” asked Student #2.

“All the above,” Student #1 replied.

They were seated in a corner of a hospital cafeteria, around simmering cups of coffee. It was midday, and the cafeteria was busy. From time to time they looked nervously about.

“Dean’s office. Campus security. Maybe we go to Professor Hogan, because he’s the resident expert on explosive personalities and violence. He’ll have an
idea what we can do,” Student #2 said. She was a hard-edged former nurse in an ICU who had taken night school classes and relied on her fireman husband to watch over their two small children while she battled her way through medical school. “I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna let this situation get any more out of control. We know this is illness. Schizophrenia. Paranoid type. Maybe manic depression—it’s one of those. Maybe intermittent explosive disorder. I don’t know. So there’s a real diagnosis to be made. Whoop-de-do. We just have to take some action before we’re all caught up in a mess that impacts our careers. And it’s dangerous.” Her pragmatism was uncomfortable for the three other members of the psychiatry study group, who were eager to train themselves in the ability to not leap to conclusions and not draw hasty opinions about behaviors, no matter how bizarre and frightening.

“Yeah. Great plan,” said Student #1. “Makes sense until it’s us that gets hauled before the faculty board for a clear-cut academic transgression. You can’t just call in the hounds on another student without a firm abso-fucking-lutely solid case. And this sure as hell isn’t plagiarism or cheating or sexual harassment.” Student #1 had seriously considered law school instead of medicine, and had a literal bent to his thinking. “Look, we’re just speculating here, about the exact illness and about what just might happen, no matter how dangerous it seems, because all predictions are just bullshit. And you can’t turn another student in to administrators just because you think they just might do something terrible and because their behavior is off-and-on erratic, maybe delusional and fits into all these categories that we know about because we just happen to be studying them right now. It’s not evidence-based. It’s feelings-based.”

“Anybody in the group not have those feelings?” Student #2 asked cynically. No one answered that question.

“Anybody not feel in danger?”

Again the group remained silent. Coffee was sipped.

“I think we’re screwed,” Student #3 said after a long moment. He reached to the chest pocket on his white lab coat. A week earlier he had finally given up smoking, and this was a reflex action. The others noted it—as they were all honing their skills at observation. “And I agree with both of you. But we have to do something, even if it means taking a risk.”

“Whatever it is we do, I’m not getting an official reprimand. I don’t want something going into my permanent record. I can’t afford it,” Student #2 said.

“Your permanent record won’t mean shit, if …” Student #1 blurted out. He didn’t need to complete his sentence.

“Okay, right …” Student #2 continued. “Well, then I say we go to Professor Hogan for starters, because that’s the least provocative thing we can do.” Her voice cracked a little. “And we go to see him right damn fast. Or, at least one of us does.”

“I’ll go,” said Student #4. “I’m getting an A from him. But you will all have to back me up if he calls you in to confirm what I tell him.”

Heads nodded rapidly. They were all jumpy, nervous—any sudden noise from elsewhere in the cafeteria caused them to shudder. The routine clatter and clank of dishes, the occasional burst of conversation from another table—none of this faded benignly into the background as it usually did. They were all worried that Student #5 was going to walk through the door at any minute, gun in hand.

“I need a list,” Student #4 said. “Everyone write down accurate assessments about frightening behaviors. Be as detailed as possible. Names. Dates. Places. Witnesses, and not just that moment where we all saw him strangle that lab rat for no fucking reason. Then I’ll take all that stuff and see Professor Hogan.”

“As long as there’s no delay,” Student #1 said briskly. “You guys know as well as I do that when someone’s on an edge, they can tumble pretty fast. He needs help. And we’re probably helping him out by going to Professor Hogan.”

The others stared at the ceiling and rolled their eyes. “Probably,” Student #1 repeated.

“Probably. Sure,” Student #3 said.

No one actually believed they were helping their fellow student in the slightest, but speaking this lie out loud was reassuring. They all knew that really what they wanted was to protect themselves, but no one was willing to voice this.

“We’re agreed, then?” Student #4 said.