The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (28 page)

The cadets had come out of their holes and were already lining up for parade. The crackling ice magnified each step a thousand times over, and in that din, I passed with no interference to Gee's Point. I'm not sure what took me there. I suppose it was the same idea that had come over me my first day there, the notion that I--or, if not me, someone--could just keep going. Take that river to somewhere he'd never been.

Behind me came footsteps, crunching down the path. A soft, deferential voice.

"Mr. Landor?"

It was Lieutenant Meadows. Who was, by coincidence, the officer who'd been escorting me the last time I stood here. He was positioned ten feet behind me now, just as he'd been then, and he was braced, as though he were getting ready to leap a moat.

"Good evening," I said. "I hope you're well."

His voice was stiff as a quill. "Captain Hitchcock has asked me to come for you. It pertains to the missing cadet."

"Ballinger's been found?"

Meadows said nothing at first. He'd been instructed, clearly, to say no more than was needed, but I took his silence to mean something else. Half under my breath, I spoke the word he couldn't.
"Dead," I said.

His only assent was silence.

"Hanged?" I asked.

And this time, Meadows did consent to nod.

"The heart," I said. "The heart was--"

He cut me off then, as brusquely as if he were carving a joint. "The heart is gone, yes."

It might well have been the cold that made him shiver and set his feet dancing. Or else he'd seen the body.

The moon, just rising over Breakneck Hill, was sending down a soft gauzy light that caught the planes of his face and gilded his eyes.

"There's something else," I said. "Something you haven't yet told me."

Under normal circumstances, he'd have fallen back on the usual refrain: Not at liberty to say, sir. But something in him wanted to say it. He stopped and started and stopped again and then, after great effort, confessed:

"An additional infamy was perpetrated against Mr. Ballinger's person."

Absurd wording--formal, empty--and yet it seemed to be his only hedge against the thing itself. Until it couldn't be hedged anymore.

"Mr. Ballinger," he said at last, "was castrated."

A silence fell over us then, broken only by the distant sound of ice crunching beneath cadet boots.

"Maybe you'd better show me," I said.

"Captain Hitchcock would prefer if you met him there tomorrow. The day being so far along, he considers there's not enough light to--to--"

"To examine the scene, I see. Where is Mr. Ballinger's body being held for the time being?"

"In the hospital."

"Under full guard?"

"Yes."

"And what time does the captain wish to meet me tomorrow?"

"Nine a.m." "Well, then," I said. "The only thing I now require is a place. Where are we to meet?"

He paused, to do the name proper justice, I think.

"At Stony Lonesome."

There is, it's true, a good bit of stone and lonesomeness to all of West Point. But at least when you're looking out from Mr. Cozzens' hotel or standing on Redoubt Hill, you're in view of the river, with all the freedom it promises. Venture out to Stony Lonesome, and you leave behind all signs of settlement, and your only companions are trees and ravines and maybe the low hiss of a stream... and the hills, of course, crowding out the light. It's the hills that make you feel like an inmate. Many cadets, I'm told, after two hours of sentinel duty here, come to believe they will never leave Stony Lonesome.

If Randolph Ballinger was one of those, he was right.

The search for him had picked up again the moment the storm stopped. No one was counting on the ice to start melting almost as quickly as it had come. The spell blew off like chaff, and it was just a few minutes after four o'clock when two privates, filing back to the commandant's quarters to make their report, were stopped by a noise like a thousand hinges. A nearby birch tree was shaking off its cloak of rime and springing open to reveal--huddled inside, like the pistil of a lily--the naked body of Randolph Ballinger.

A skin of ice had sealed him round and knitted his arms to his sides, but it failed to keep him from gyring, ever so slightly, in the onrushing wind.

By the time Lieutenant Meadows led me there, Ballinger had been taken down, and the branches that had formerly cocooned him had sprung back to their full height, and the only thing left to see was the rope, which hung now to its full length, stopping somewhere about my chest. Stiff and bristly and a fraction askew, as though some magnet were pulling it off track.

All round us, melting ice was falling--in pebbles and in large ragged sheets--and the sun was laying a dazzle on the earth, and the only things you could look at after a while, the only things that weren't swatting the light right back to you, were the rhododendrons, still in full leaf.

I asked, "Why a birch tree?"

Hitchcock stared at me.

"I'm sorry, Captain, I was only wondering why, if you're going to hang someone, you'd use such a bendy sort of tree. The branches aren't nearly as thick as an oak's, say, or a chestnut's."

"Closer to the ground, perhaps."

"Yes, I suppose that would make things easier."

"Easier," agreed Hitchcock. He had passed into some new realm of tiredness. The sort that swells your eyelids, pulls down your ears. The sort that roots you in the ground because all you can do is either stand perfectly straight or drop.

I like to think I was kind to him that morning. I gave him any number of chances to retire to his quarters, where he'd have plenty of space to gather his thoughts. And when he needed me to repeat a question, I did, no matter how many times it took. I remember, when I asked him what had distinguished the condition of Randolph Ballinger's body from that of Leroy Fry's, he looked straight at me, as though I'd confused him with someone else.

"You were there," I prompted, "when both bodies were found. I was curious, you know, what made the--the look of this body different."

"Oh," he said at last. "Oh, no. This one..." He stared up into the branches. "Well," he began, "the first thing I noticed was how much higher he was. Relative to Fry."

"So his feet weren't touching the ground?"

"No." He took off his hat, put it back on. "There was no subterfuge this time. Ballinger had all his wounds on him when he was found. Which is to say he was killed, he was cut open-- and then he was strung up."

"No chance, I guess, that the wounds could have been inflicted--"

"Afterward? No." He was warming up now. "No, not from that height, it would be nearly impossible. Impossible just to keep the body still." He thumbed at his eyes. "A man can't take such injuries and then go hang himself from a tree, that's obvious. Therefore, the whole pretense of suicide is voided."

He stared at the tree for a good long time, his mouth hanging just slightly open. Then, remembering himself, he added:

"We're a good three hundred yards from Ballinger's sentinel post. We don't know if he came here willingly, or if he was even alive when he came. He may have walked, or he may have been dragged. The storm, as you see..." He shook his head. "It's made a hash of everything. Mud and snow everywhere, dozens of soldiers traipsing through. Footprints all over the place, yes, and no way to tell one from the rest."

He put an arm against the trunk of the birch and let his body tilt a foot or so.

"Captain," I said, "I'm very sorry. I understand what a blow this must be."

I don't know why, but I gave him just the slightest pat on the shoulder. You know the gesture, Reader; it's the sort of thing men do to comfort one another--the only thing they do sometimes. Hitchcock didn't take it that way. He jerked his shoulder away and wheeled on me with a fury-blanched face.

"No, Mr. Landor! I don't think you do know. Under my watch, two cadets have been murdered and savagely desecrated, for reasons that beggar understanding. And we are no closer to finding the monster who did it than we were a month ago."
"Well, now, Captain," I said, still soothing. "I think we are closer. We've narrowed our field, we're moving apace. Yes, I think it will only be a matter of time."

He scowled and ducked his head. From his tightly pressed lips came the low but unmistakable words:

"I'm glad you think so."

I smiled. I squeezed my arms against my chest.

"Maybe," I said, "you'd care to explain that remark, Captain."

Undaunted, he turned on me the full force of his gaze. "Mr. Landor, I don't mind telling you that Colonel Thayer and I have serious reservations about the progress of your inquiries."

"Is that so?"

"I should be only too glad to be corrected. Indeed, you now have a golden opportunity to defend yourself. Why don't you tell me if you've found more evidence of satanic practices? Anywhere on the reservation?"

"I haven't, no."

"Have you found the so-called officer who persuaded Private Cochrane to abandon Leroy Fry's body?"

"Not as yet."

"And having now held Mr. Fry's diary in your possession for nearly a week, have you yet found a single clue that might be of use in these investigations?"

I could feel the muscles tightening round my eyes.

"Well, let me see, Captain. I know how many times Leroy Fry diddled himself on a given day. I know he liked women with heavy buttocks. I know how much he hated reveille roll call and analytical geometry and--and you. Will any of that do?"

"My point is--"

"Your point is that I'm not competent to undertake this investigation. And maybe never was."

"It's not your competence I question," he said. "It's your allegiance."

Such a soft sound that I couldn't place it at first. Then I realized: it was the grinding of my own teeth.

"And now I'm going to have to ask you to explain yourself again, Captain."

He studied me for a long while. Wondering, maybe, how far he could go.

"It's my suspicion, Mr. Landor--" "Yes?"

"--that you are protecting someone."

Laughter. That was the only response I could manage at first. Because it was too funny, wasn't it?

"Protecting someone?" I repeated.

"Yes."

I flung up my arms. "Who?" I cried. And the word rang out to the nearest elm tree, rattled its branches. "Who in this whole godforsaken place could I possibly want to protect?"

"Perhaps now," he said, "is the time to talk of Mr. Poe."

The tiniest knot, forming in my stomach. I shrugged, made a show of confusion.

"And why should we do that, Captain?"

"Begin with this," he said, glancing down at his boots. "Mr. Poe is, so far as I know, the only cadet who ever threatened Mr. Ballinger's life."

He looked up just in time to catch the ripple of surprise on my face. I will say this: there was nothing cruel in the smile he gave me then. It looked more like a twisted sympathy.

"Did you really think you were the only one he confided in, Mr. Landor? Just yesterday, at dinner, he was regaling his tablemates with heroic accounts of his epic tussle with Mr. Ballinger. Every bit the equal of Hector and Achilles, to hear Mr. Poe tell it. Interestingly enough, he concluded his account by declaring that he fully intended to kill Mr. Ballinger should they ever cross swords again. To those listeners present, he could not have been any less equivocal."

No indeed, I thought, remembering once again Poe's words on the Plain. Hard to mistake his meaning. I will kill him... I will kill him...

"See here," I said. "This wouldn't be the first time Poe's made a silly threat. It's--it's part of his nature..."

"It would be the first time that his proposed victim turned up dead within twenty-four hours of the threat's being uttered."

Oh, there was no wheedling this fellow. Hitchcock would hold to his opinion as skin hugs a bone. Maybe that's why notes of desperation were starting to creep into my voice.

"Come, now, you've seen Poe, Captain. Can you honestly tell me he subdued Ballinger?"

"There would have been no need. A firearm would have turned the trick, don't you think? Or a surprise assault? Instead of Hector and Achilles, perhaps we might better ponder David and Goliath."

I gave a chuckle, scratched my head. Time, I was thinking. Buy time. "Well, then, if we're going to seriously consider your little theory, Captain, we'll have to admit one problem. Whatever his relations with Ballinger, there's no sign of any link between Poe and Leroy Fry. They didn't even know each other."

"Oh, but they did."

Silly me, thinking he had only one card to drop. When in fact he had a whole deck up the sleeve of that spotless blue coatee.

"It has come to my attention," he said, "that Poe and Fry had a tussle of their own during last summer's encampment. It appears that Mr. Fry, in the usual manner of upperclassmen, decided, along with two of his fellows, to make sport of Mr. Poe, who apparently took such offense at their treatment that he hurled his musket directly at Mr. Fry--bayonet forward. Another inch or two and he might have seriously damaged Mr. Fry's leg. Mr. Poe was then heard to say, by more than one listener, that he would suffer no man--no man--to use him in such a way."

Hitchcock let the news sink in for a few seconds. Then, in a softer voice, he added, "I don't suppose he ever volunteered that bit of information to you, did he?"

Oh, there'd be no getting past the captain today. The best I could hope for was a draw.

"Call in his roommates," I suggested. "Ask them if Poe ever left his quarters on the night Ballinger was killed."

"And if they say no, what will that prove? Only that they're sound sleepers."

"Arrest him, then," I said, as lightly as I dared. "Arrest him, if you're so persuaded."

"As you well know, Mr. Landor, it's not enough to demonstrate motive. We must find direct evidence of the crime. I'm afraid I don't see any evidence; do you?"

As we stood there, a raft of ice came plunging from a tulip magnolia and landed with a shudder just six feet behind us. The sound was enough to scare a flock of sparrows from a nearby white oak. They came at us now, boiling like bees, crazed by ice-glare.