The Dead Student Read online

  “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.

  Glances across the table as the members of the group eyed one another for support. “Yes,” times four.

  “All right. I’ll see Professor Hogan tomorrow morning before his lecture,” Student #4 said cautiously. “You will all need to get me your lists before then.” This assignment seemed simple. They were students accustomed to hard work, note taking, and outlining under deadline. Doing patient assessments came automatically to them, and this assignment seemed little different. Then Ed Warner glanced at a clock on the wall. “It’s April first, 1986,” he said, “April Fools’ Day. That will be easy to remember. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon and all four members of Psychiatry Study Group Alpha are in agreement.”

  Andy Candy lingered a few strides behind Moth as he surged down the hallway toward his uncle’s office—only to stop short when he saw the yellow police tape sealing the entrance. There were two long strands with the ubiquitous black “Do Not Enter” message. They created an X that crossed in front of the office plaque: “Edward Warner, M.D. PhD. P.A.”

  Moth raised a hand, and Andy Candy thought he was going to tear away the security tape.

  “Moth,” she said, “you shouldn’t do that.”

  His hand abruptly flopped to his side. His voice sounded exhausted. “I need to start somewhere,” he said.

  Start what? she thought, then felt that perhaps it was wiser not to answer her question.

  “Moth,” she said as gently as she could, “let’s go get something to eat, then I can drop you at your place and maybe you can think all this over.”

  He turned to his onetime girlfriend and shook his head. “When I think, all I get is depressed. When I get depressed, all I want to do is drink.” He smiled wryly, just a light rise at the corners of his mouth. “Better for me to keep going, even if it’s in the wrong direction.” He raised a finger and touched the police tape. Then he reached for the door handle. It was locked.

  “Are you going to break in?” Andy Candy asked.

  “Yes,” Moth replied. “Fuck it. Truth somewhere. And I’m going to start knocking down every door.”

  She smiled, although she knew that forcing the door was wrong, and probably illegal. This sounded very much like the Moth she’d once loved. He would combine psychological with practical with poetic in a stew of action that to her was like honey, sweet and endlessly attractive, but sticky and probably destined to make a mess.

  But as he started to reach for the tape, behind them down the hallway another door opened, and they both turned to the sound. A slightly dumpy, dark-haired, middle-aged man tugging on a blue blazer emerged. When the man saw them, he stopped.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “There’s no entry there.” His accent was tinged with Spanish.

  “Going inside my uncle’s office,” Moth replied.

  The man hesitated. “Are you Timothy?” he asked.

  “In the flesh,” Moth replied aggressively.

  “Ah,” the man said, “your uncle spoke of you often.” He moved toward them, extending his hand. “I am Doctor Ramirez,” he said. “My practice has been next to your uncle’s for, oh, I don’t know how many years now. I am so sorry for what happened. We were friends and colleagues.”

  Moth nodded.

  “I did not see you at the funeral,” Doctor Ramirez continued.

  “No,” Moth replied, and with a fit of nervous honesty that surprised Andy Candy, he added, “I went on a bender.”

  The doctor looked noncommittal. “And now?”

  “I hope I’m back under control.”

  “Yes. Under control. This is difficult. Sudden great emotional blows. I have had many patients in treatment for years, and then the unexpected topples them when they least expect it. But you know, your uncle was very proud of the sobriety the two of you shared. We would often go to lunch between patients, and he would speak with great pleasure and obvious pride about your progress. You pursue a doctorate in history, I believe?”

  The doctor had a half-lecturing way of talking, as if every opinion he voiced should be immediately rendered into a life lesson. In some people, this might have been pretentious, but in the almost roly-poly psychiatrist, it seemed welcoming.

  “Working on it,” Moth said.

  They were quiet for an instant, before Doctor Ramirez said, “Well, should you want to speak about matters, my door is open.”

  “That is kind of you,” Moth replied. This was a psychiatric act of grace—I know you are troubled and the best I can offer is an ear. “I might take you up on that.” Moth thought for a moment, before asking, “Doctor, your office is right next door. Were you there when my uncle …”

  Doctor Ramirez shook his head. “I did not hear the gunshot, if that is what you are asking. I had left already. It was a Tuesday, and your uncle was routinely the last person on the floor to leave on Tuesdays. Typically a few minutes before six. On Mondays, I have a late patient. Other days, some of the other psychiatrists on the floor stay a little late. There are only five of us with offices here, so we always try to keep each other’s schedules in mind.”

  Moth seemed to process this.

  “So, if I had come up to you and asked, ‘What evening is my uncle alone on this floor?’ you, or anyone else, would immediately have replied, ‘Tuesday,’ right?”

  Doctor Ramirez gave Moth an appreciative look. “You sound like a detective, not a history student, Timothy,” he said. “Yes. That is correct.”

  “Can I ask a personal question, Doctor?”

  Doctor Ramirez looked a little surprised, then nodded. “If you like,” he said. “I do not know if I will be able to answer.”

  “You knew Uncle Ed. Did you think he was suicidal?”

  Doctor Ramirez thought for a moment, his face marked by a processing of memories and suspicions. Moth recognized this. It was a quality his uncle had, a psychiatrist’s need to assess the impact of what he would say, why he was being asked, and what was really behind the question, before responding.

  “No, Timothy,” he said cautiously. “There were no overt signs of depression that I saw that suggested suicide. I told this to the police who questioned me. They seemed dismissive of my observations. And the mere fact that I noticed nothing does not mean they didn’t exist, and that Edward didn’t do a better job of hiding them than others might. But I saw nothing to alarm me. And we had lunch the day before his death.”

  He paused, then pulled out a pad and rapidly wrote a name and address down. “Ed saw this man many years back. Perhaps …”

  The doctor then reached down into his pants pocket, removed a set of car keys, and sorted through them. He deliberately removed one key from the chain and with an exaggerated, theatrical motion, dropped it to the carpeted floor. “Ah!” he said, with a grin. “The spare key I have to your late uncle’s office door. I seem to have misplaced it.”

  Then the doctor gestured at the door. “If you are going to break in, would you wait until I leave? I would prefer not to be too much of an accomplice here.” He laughed a little at his
obvious lie. “I’m sorry,” he said, slightly apologizing, his tone turning both sad and cautious. “I do not know what you will find inside, but perhaps it will help you. Good luck. I do not ordinarily turn my back on people seeking answers. You can slip the key under my door when you are done.”

  Doctor Ramirez turned to Andy Candy, made a small, polite bow, and then retreated down the hallway and disappeared into the elevator.

  Moth and Andy Candy sat uncomfortably side by side on the couch that his uncle had used for his few remaining psychoanalytic patients. Behind them was a large multihued photograph of an Everglades sunset. On another wall was a bright, abstract Kandinsky print. One wall had a modest bookcase—medical texts and a copy of The Fifty-Minute Hour. There were three framed diplomas near the desk. But there was little that said much about the personality of the man whose office it was. Andy Candy suspected this was by design. Moth was staring at his uncle’s solid oaken desk, an edgy intensity in his gaze.

  “I can’t quite see it,” he said slowly. “It’s like it’s right there, and then it fades away.”

  Andy Candy was caught between trying to guess what Moth was eyeing and trying to imagine what he would do next.

  “What are you trying to see?”

  “His last minutes.” Moth suddenly stood up. “See, he’s sitting there. He knows he’s supposed to meet me and it’s important. But instead he takes the time to write ‘My fault’ on a prescription pad, reach for a gun that wasn’t the one he’d owned for years, and shoot himself. That’s what the cops and Susan the prosecutor want to say happened.”

  Moth paced around, approaching the desk, maneuvering past a single armchair for nonanalytic patients. He nearly choked when he saw the dried maroon bloodstains on the beige carpet and the wooden desktop. When he spoke, his voice was a little shaky. “Andy, what I see is someone in that chair, with a gun. Making my uncle do …” Moth stopped short.

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Andy Candy stood up. “Moth, we’ve got to leave,” she said softly. “Every second you stay here, it’s just going to make it harder for you.”

  He nodded. She was right.

  Andy Candy made a small wave toward the door, as if to encourage Moth to lead the way. But suddenly an idea occurred to her. She hesitated a second before speaking.

  “Moth,” she said slowly, “the police and Miss Terry—they would have to be certain this wasn’t a killing, right? Even with the gun right there on the floor next to your uncle. So, first thing, they would check out all the usual suspects. The usual suspects, just like the movie name. That’s what she said they did: They went over his patient list—probably his ex-patient list, too—talked to friends, neighbors, see if he had any enemies, right? See if there was someone threatening him. They made sure he didn’t owe money to gamblers or drug dealers. That’s what she said, right? They would have ruled out all sorts of things before coming to their conclusion, right? Right?”

  She repeated this last word with an icy determination.

  “Yes,” Moth said. “Right and right.”

  “So, if it is what you think it is and what they don’t think it is, we have to look in the places they didn’t look,” Andy Candy said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  She was a little surprised at her logic. Or antilogic. Look in the places that don’t make sense. She wondered where this idea had come from. She gestured toward the door again.

  “Time to leave, Moth,” she said cautiously. “If there really was a killer in this room like you said, sitting right there, then they sure weren’t going to leave something behind that would make the cops suspicious.”

  Her practicality astonished her.

  6

  Two conversations. One imagined. One real.

  The first:

  “He’s holding us all back. We want to get rid of him.”

  “Well, file a complaint with the dean. But clearly your fellow student is in emotional trouble.”

  “We don’t care how much trouble or stress or difficulty—whatever you want to call it—he’s caught up in. So he’s sick. Big fucking deal. Screw him. We just want him out, so that our own careers aren’t compromised.”

  “Of course. That makes complete sense. I’ll help you.”

  If it had actually taken place that way it would have made sense for everyone except one person.

  And the second:

  “Hello, Ed.”

  First, a moment of confusion: expecting one person but getting someone very different. Then speechless. Jaw-drop.

  “Don’t you recognize me?”

  The speaker already knew the answer because it was evident in the sudden recognition in Ed Warner’s eyes.

  Then he had slowly and quite deliberately removed his gun from an inside jacket pocket and pointed it across the desktop. The gun was a small .25-caliber automatic loaded with hollow-point bullets that expanded on contact, made a mess, and were preferred by professional assassins. It was the sort of weapon favored by frightened females or uneasy home owners who imagined it would keep them safe from midnight criminal invasions or run-amok zombies, but which probably would do neither. It was also a favorite of trained killers, who liked a small, easily concealable weapon that was easy to maneuver and deadly at close distances.

  “You didn’t think you’d ever see me again, did you, Ed? Your old study group partner here to visit.”

  It had gone more or less like the others. Different but the same—including the moment he had written “My fault” on a notepad on Ed’s desk and then walked out.

  One of the things that had astonished Student #5 was how preternaturally calm he’d grown over the years as he’d perfected the act of killing. Not that he precisely thought of himself as a killer in the usual sense of the word. No scarred face and prison tats. No street thug wearing baggy jeans and a cockeyed baseball cap. No cold-eyed professional drug dealer’s hit man who could wear his psychopathology like others wore a suit of clothes. He did not even consider himself to be some sort of master criminal, although he did feel a slight conceit in how he’d honed his abilities over the years. Real criminals, he believed, have some fundamental moral and psychological deficit that renders them into who they are. They want to rob, steal, rape, torture, or kill. Compulsion. They want money, sex, and power. Obsession. It’s the need to act that drives them to commit crimes. Not me. All I want is justice. He considered himself to be closer in style and temperament to some sort of classical avenging force, which gave him significant legitimacy in his own imagination.

  He stopped at the corner of 71st Street and West End Avenue and waited for the light to change. A taxi jammed on its brakes to avoid a man in a shiny new Cadillac. There was a quick squeal of tires accompanied by an exchange of horns and probably some obscenities in several languages that couldn’t penetrate closed windows. City music. A bus jammed with commuters wheezed out pungent exhaust. He could hear a distant subterranean subway rattle. Beside him a young woman pushing a baby in a stroller coughed. He grinned at the child and waved his hand. The child smiled back.

  Five people ruined my life. They were cavalier. Thoughtless. Selfish. Fixated on themselves, like so many preening egotists.

  Now only one is left.

  He was sure of one thing: He could not face his own death, could not even face the years leading up to it, without acquiring each measure of revenge.

  Justice, he thought, is my only addiction.

  They were the robbers. The killers.

  Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. One last verdict to go.

  The light changed and he crossed the street, along with several other pedestrians, including the woman with the child in the stroller, who maneuvered the curbs expertly. One of the things he liked the most about New York City was the automatic anonymity it provided. He was adrift in a sea of people: m
illions of lives that amounted to nothing on the sidewalks. Was the person next to him someone important? Someone accomplished? Someone special? They could be anything—doctor, lawyer, businessperson, or teacher. They could even be the same as him: executioner.

  But no one would know. The sidewalks stripped away all signs and identities.

  In the course of his studies on murder—as he’d come to this philosophical conclusion—he’d spent time admiring Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution. He believed he had wings, like she did. And he certainly had her patience.

  And so, to launch himself on his path, he’d taken precautions.

  He’d become an expert with a handgun and more than proficient with a high-powered hunting rifle and a crossbow. He’d learned hand-to-hand combat techniques and had sculpted his body so that the years flowing past would have minimal impact. He’d finished Ironman Triathlons and taken many speed-driving courses at an auto racing school. He dutifully went to his internist for annual checkups, became a health club and Central Park jogging path addict, watched his diet, emphasized fresh vegetables, lean proteins, and seafood, and didn’t drink. He even got a flu shot every fall. He studied in libraries and had became a self-taught computer expert. His bookcases were crammed with crime fiction and nonfiction, which he used to harvest ideas and techniques. He thought he should have been a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

  I have become a doctor of death.

  He continued to walk north. He wore a tailored dark blue pinstriped three-piece suit and expensive Italian leather shoes. A dashing white silk scarf was looped around his neck against the possibility of a chill breeze. The late afternoon sun reflected off his mirrored aviator sunglasses. It was a fine time of day, with fading sunlight slicing through cement and brick apartment canyons, as if picking up momentum as it made its final foray across the dark waters of the Hudson. To any passerby, he must have looked like a wealthy professional heading home from the office after a successful day. That there was no office, and that he’d merely spent the prior two hours happily walking Manhattan streets, did nothing to undermine the image he projected to the world.