The Dead Student Page 11

  She put the car in gear.

  There are some people, Moth thought, who sit behind a desk and create an impenetrable wall of authority and there are others for whom the desk-barrier is barely there and almost invisible.

  The man across from them seemed to fit in the latter category. He was an athletic man, with thinning brown hair that fell across his forehead and poked up in back in a cowlick, making him seem younger than his fifty-plus years. He had the habit of constantly adjusting his glasses on the tip of his nose. He wore a neck strap around the spectacles, so occasionally the doctor dropped them to his chest completely, made a point, then lifted them again and replaced them haphazardly, often slightly askew.

  “I’m sorry, Timothy, but I don’t know how much I can help you and Miss Martine in your inquiries. Patient-physician confidentiality and all that.”

  “Which doesn’t survive a patient’s death,” Moth said.

  “You sound like an attorney, Timothy. That is true. But that would also mean that you had placed a subpoena on my desk, which you have not. As opposed to merely arriving here to ask questions.”

  Moth realized right then he should be careful.

  He also realized he had no idea what being careful would mean. So he began with the question that he’d already asked twice that day.

  “Do you know of anyone, did my uncle ever mention anyone, who might hold a grudge or some sort of long-term anger—you know what I’m driving at, Doctor—that finally boiled over?”

  The psychiatrist paused before answering, in much the same way that Ed Warner would.

  “No. I can think of no one. Certainly not anyone that Ed mentioned in our years of therapy.”

  “You would recall if …”

  “Yes. Any element of a conversation that implies a threat is one that we take very good notes on, both for the obvious reason—we want to be sure of safety—and also because how people respond to either real or perceived external dangers is a crucial element of any therapeutic situation. And not to mention that we just might have an ethical obligation to inform the police authorities.”

  He smiled. “Sorry. I sound like I’m giving a lecture.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Let me be simpler. No. Did I imagine Ed was ever in danger? No. His risky early behavior, the drinking and anonymous, unprotected sex—that might have created something, I don’t know what. But that ended some time ago. He was here merely to understand what he’d gone through, which was a lot, as you know.”

  “Do you think he killed himself?” Andy blurted.

  The psychiatrist shook his head. “I have not seen him in years. But when he completed therapy, there were no suicidal indications whatsoever. Of course, as the police who came to speak with me so quickly pointed out, he would have been more than capable of concealing his emotions, even from me, although I don’t like to think so.”

  This was cover your ass talk from the doctor, Moth thought.

  The doctor paused again, then added:

  “You knew him well, Timothy. What do you think?”

  “No fucking way,” Moth replied.

  The psychiatrist grinned.

  “The police like to look at facts and evidence and what will fly under oath in a court of law. That’s where they routinely find their answers. In this office, and in your uncle’s, the investigation is far different. And for a historian, Timothy?”

  “Facts are facts,” Moth replied, smiling. “But they slip and slide and change over years. History is a little like wet clay.”

  The doctor laughed. “Very apt,” he said. “I believe so, too. But it is not so much that the facts change as much as it is our perception of them.”

  The doctor picked a pencil off his desk. He tapped it three times, then started to doodle on a pad.

  “He wrote ‘My fault’ on a paper …” Moth started.

  “Yes. That troubled me,” said the doctor. “It’s an intriguing choice of words, especially for a psychiatrist. What do you make of it?”

  “It’s almost as if he was answering a question.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “But was it a question that had been asked or was it one that he expected to be asked.”

  The doctor scratched his pencil hard against the pad, making a black mark.

  “In the study of history, Timothy, how do you examine a document that might tell you something about your subject?”

  “Well, context is important,” Moth said.

  But what Moth was thinking was: Place. Circumstances. Connection to the moment. When Wellington muttered “Blucher or night …” it was because he understood that the battle hung in the balance at that precise second in time. So, Ed writes “My fault” because those words have a bigger context right then.

  “I have another question,” Moth said.

  The doctor didn’t reply, other than to lean forward slightly.

  “Why would Ed own two guns. Or even one gun?”

  The therapist’s mouth opened slightly. He seemed to think for a moment.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Another silence.

  “That is troubling,” the doctor said. “Unlike Ed.” He seemed to think hard—as if the two weapons seemed to represent some facet of personality that he’d failed to explore. “And the note—the ‘My fault’—where precisely was that on the desk?”

  Moth had not thought about this. He replied slowly, cautiously. “Just a little to the left of center. I think.”

  “Not to the right?”

  “No.”

  The doctor nodded. He reached out, grabbed a prescription pad, held his hand over it as if he was about to write something. Then, he looked down, pointing. “But it was over here …” He gestured at the opposite side of the desk. “Perhaps that means something. Perhaps it does not. It is curious, however.”

  He looked at Andy and then to Moth.

  “I think you will need to be more than curious,” he said.

  This statement seemed to indicate that the interview had ended, as did the doctor’s pushing back in his chair.

  Andy Candy had been quiet, listening.

  “If not exactly who, then what was Ed afraid of?” she asked.

  The doctor smiled.

  “Ah, a clever question,” he said. “Despite his education and training, like many addicts and alcoholics, Ed feared his past.”

  Andy nodded.

  In Shakespeare, she thought, there are Seven Ages of Man, from infancy to childhood and on to old age and extreme old age. Ed never made it to that stage and the first two are probably hidden, even for a historian like Moth. So, look to the stages where Ed became an adult.

  “Do you know why he came to Miami?” she asked.

  The doctor paused. “Yes,” he said. “At least perhaps in part. He spent many years fleeing from who he was, trying to escape his family, who had insisted on his medical education taking place amidst all the trappings of prestige that only the Ivy League and similar institutions provide. Timothy, I suspect, is familiar with this pressure. His marriage was the same picture—do what others expect of you, not what you want. This is not that unusual in Miami. I know we’re a great place for refugees from all over the world. But don’t you think we’re an equally good spot for emotional refugees?”

  Andy saw Moth lean forward. She recognized the look. He sees something, she thought. At least, this was what she hoped she saw in his face.

  11

  Student #5 was on the back deck doing early morning yoga exercises when the bear walked through the rear of the yard. He froze in position so not to startle the animal, holding a pose called falling butterfly. He could feel his stomach muscles tighten with exertion, but he refused to lower himself even to the worn wooden floor. The beast would be alert to any odd noise or telltale motion.

  The bear—four hundred pounds of lumbering black bear with all the grace of an old Volkswagen Bug—seemed intent on finding a fallen tree and scraping out an I’ve just awakened f
rom winter hibernation and I’m damn hungry appetizer of grubs and beetles, then probably moving back into the thick trees and scrub brush that bordered on Student #5’s modest riverside property to find a more significant meal.

  An easy shot, he thought. Just inside the house was a Winchester 30.06 deer rifle. But it would have to be a kill shot. Heart or brain. Big animal. Strong. Healthy. More than capable of running off and dying slowly in the deep woods where I couldn’t track him down and put him out of his misery. He was reminded of the U.S. Marine Corps sniper mantra: One shot. One kill.

  He was tempted to lower himself to the deck and crawl to the weapon, draw a bead, and fire. Good practice.

  He watched as the bear inspected and rejected a few of the rotting opportunities, wearing what Student #5 considered a look of bear-frustration coupled with bear-determination. Then, with a visible shrug that seemed to make every inch of luxurious midnight-colored fur twitch, the bear wandered off into the woods. A few bushes quivered as the animal passed by and disappeared. Student #5 thought it was as if the weak, gray, early morning light had enveloped the bear and cloaked him in fog. The dark forest that rose behind stretched for miles, though steep hills and empty onetime logging lands, now set aside for wildlife preserves. His house—actually a ramshackle double-wide trailer perched on cinder blocks with a small wooden deck built off the tiny kitchen—was barely a hundred yards from a bend in the Deerfield River, and the early day hours trapped all the cool night moisture that gathered above the waters.

  He listened carefully for a few moments, hoping to catch a fading bear sound—but he could hear nothing, so he lowered himself to the deck. He breathed out sharply, thinking it was like being underwater. He looked out at the backyard area, trying to spot some residual sign of the bear’s morning intrusion, but there were none, save for a few damp streaks in the dew where paws had been set down.

  He smiled.

  I’m the same sort of predator, he thought, hungry, finished with hibernation, only a lot more lean and a lot more focused. And my tracks fade just as quickly as his do.

  I’m the same sort of predator.

  Patient.

  In the kitchen behind him an old-fashioned windup alarm clock rang. End of exercise time. Student #5 lifted himself up and stretched a little bit before he hustled back inside to dress. Even in a world that bordered on ancient, where a bear was his neighbor, Student #5 prided himself on organization. If he set aside forty-five minutes for physical fitness, then forty-five it was. Not one second less. Not one more.

  By mid-morning he was folding donated clothes and stacking canned foodstuffs at a combination Salvation Army outlet and attached free food pantry on the outskirts of Greenfield in a sad strip mall that featured a Home Depot, a McDonald’s, and a boarded-up space that had once housed a bookstore that had gone out of business. He volunteered at the outlet whenever he arrived in Western Massachusetts. There were pockets of poverty throughout the rural area he lived in, and the small city had been hard hit by recessions and tough economic times.

  To his coworkers he maintained the fiction that he worked at the VA hospital twenty miles away making beds and emptying bedpans—but his enthusiasm and hard work habits kept anyone from asking too many questions. He was always willing to lift some heavy furniture or climb a ladder to reach higher shelves.

  From time to time, Student #5 would pause in what he was doing and examine the people who came into the store. There were occasional undergraduates from local colleges looking for bargain winter clothing, and there were other young people who found “secondhand” to be chic, but for the most part there were people to whom the words hard times were worn like so many worries lining their faces. These people interested Student #5.

  Shortly before his lunch break, Student #5 saw a woman enter the large, warehouse-style building. He wasn’t sure exactly what there was about her that attracted his attention—perhaps it was the seven-year-old child in tow, or the slightly confused look on the woman’s face. He watched her as she hesitated, just inside a wide set of glass doors. He thought the woman was holding her daughter’s hand to steady herself, as if the child was propping her up instead of the other way around.

  He was in the men’s clothing section, hanging donated suit coats on racks, making sure that price tags were attached to the out-of-style, worn jackets and slacks. There were many odd sizes—anything in a commonplace 42 regular or long was thoroughly dated, with wide lapels and off-putting colors. The suit coats and slacks that were modern tended toward sizes that wouldn’t fit anyone save the cadaverously thin or the dangerously obese.

  He watched the woman and her child go to the adjacent children’s section. He thought she was strangely beautiful—a fashion model’s high cheekbones and a haunted look in her eyes—and the child impressively cute in the irrepressible way that children manage to combine shyness with excitement. The child pointed at a colorful, pink sweater that had a dancing elephant embossed on it and the woman glanced at the price tag and shook her head.

  Just the act of saying No seemed to hurt the woman.

  Never thought this would happen to you, he thought. So, you are new to the world of belt-tightening and unpayable bills. Not much fun, is it?

  Student #5 was about ten feet away, so he barely had to raise his voice.

  “We can lower the price,” he said.

  The woman turned to him. She had deep blue eyes and sandy-colored hair that seemed to him to be as untamed as the thickets behind his trailer. The child was a mirror-copy of the mother.

  “No, it’s okay, it’s …” The woman’s voice trailed off into the echoes of Please don’t ask me to explain all the reasons I’m here.

  Student #5 smiled and walked over to them. He held out his hand to the child. “What’s your name?”

  The child tentatively shook his hand. “Suzy,” she said.

  “Hello, Suzy. That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. You like pink?”

  Suzy nodded.

  “And elephants?”

  Another nod.

  “Well, I promise you, Suzy, you’re the only young woman we’ve had in here in weeks that likes both pink and elephants all at the same time. We’ve had some young women who prefer pink, and we’ve had a couple who seem to like elephants, but we’ve never ever ever had someone who likes both.”

  Student #5 took the sweater from the rack. The yellow price tag read “$6.” He took a large black flow pen from his shirt pocket, and crossed out the number and replaced it with “50 cents” and pushed the sweater into the little girl’s arms. Then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed Suzy a dollar bill. “Here,” he said. “Now you can buy it for yourself, because I really like elephants and I adore that color, too.”

  The mother stammered, “Thanks, but you don’t have to …”

  He shook his head to cut her off.

  “First time here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it can be a little overwhelming at first.” When he used the word overwhelming he wasn’t thinking about the size of the store. “Do you think you need some groceries, too?”

  “I shouldn’t, I mean, we’re fine …” She stopped abruptly, shook her head. “Groceries would be helpful,” the woman said.

  “I’m Blair,” Student #5 said, pointing to a name tag on his shirt that displayed his Western Massachusetts alias.

  “I’m Shannon,” the woman said. They shook hands. He thought her touch was delicate. Poverty is always soft, he thought, filled with doubts and fears. When you have a job, that’s when your grip gets firm.

  “Okay, Shannon and Suzy, let me show you how to maneuver the food pantry. All the stuff there is free—if you can make a contribution, they like that, but it’s not really necessary. Perhaps sometime in the future you can come back and make a donation. Follow me.”

  He leaned down toward the child.

  “Do you like spaghetti?” he asked.

  She nodded, ducking partway be
hind her mother’s leg.

  “Pink. Elephants. Spaghetti. Well, Suzy, you’ve come to the right place.”

  Leading the woman and child, he steered them toward the foodstuffs, found a small basket for them to place items in, and walked them down the aisles. He made sure they took two large cans of premixed spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Thank you,” Shannon said. “You’ve really been kind.”

  “That’s my job,” Student #5 replied cheerily. Not really, he thought.

  “I’m going to get back on my feet soon,” Shannon continued.

  “Of course you will.”

  “It’s just things have been …” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Unsettled.”

  “That’s what I would have guessed,” Student #5 said. He let a small silence prompt her next reply. It’s remarkable what a little bit of quiet can prompt, he thought. I would have been an excellent shrink.

  “He walked out on us,” she said, a tinge of bitterness coloring her words. “Cleaned out the bank account, took the car, and …” She stopped. He saw her bite down on her lip. “It’s been hard,” she said. “Especially on Suzy, who doesn’t really get it.”

  “Up at the registers,” he said, “they have a list of the state and local social service agencies that can help you. They have counselors. They’re really capable. See one. Talk to them. It will help, I promise.”

  She nodded. “It’s been, I don’t know exactly …”

  “But I do,” he said. “Stress. Depression. Anger. Sadness. Confusion. Fear. And those are just for starters. Don’t try to handle it alone.”

  When they reached the register, Suzy proudly handed over her dollar bill and carefully counted her two quarters in change. Student #5 reached behind the counter and took a printed sheet of paper from a box. It listed all the numbers for help and names of therapists willing to do pro bono work. He handed it to the mother.

  “Make a call,” he said. “You’ll feel better when you do.”

  You always feel better when you directly address the root causes of your problems, he told himself.