The Dead Student Page 8

  He’d hung up the phone, and spoken out loud: “Well, I should call the police.” They will just think me a cranky, confused old fool, which might be what I am. Jeremy Hogan did know one thing: All his training and all his experience told him that there was only one purpose behind making a call like that. It was to create runaway uncertainty. “Well, whoever you are, you’ve managed that,” he said out loud.

  His third response was to be scared. Bed suddenly seemed inappropriate. He knew sleep was impossible. He could feel light-headedness, almost a dizzy spell as he stared at the telephone receiver. So he went unsteadily across the room and sat in front of his computer. He breathed in sharply. Even with his stiff-fingered, arthritic clumsiness on keyboards, it had not taken him long to find a small entry in the obituary section of the Miami Herald website with the headline: Prominent Psychiatrist Takes Life; Services Set.

  It was the only obit entry that Jeremy thought could be even remotely connected to him—and that was only by shared profession.

  The name was unfamiliar. His initial reaction had been, Who’s that? But this was rapidly followed by: Some former student? A onetime resident? Intern? Third-year medical school? He did some age-math in his head. If the name on the web page was one of his, it had to be from thirty years earlier. He felt a surge of despair—those faces who’d attended his lectures, even those who’d sat in his smaller seminars so eagerly, were pretty much all lost to him now; even the good ones who had gone on to importance and success were hidden deep in his memory.

  I don’t get it, he thought. Another shrink a thousand miles away kills himself and that has something to do with me?

  8

  Moth did more than a hundred sit-ups on the floor of his apartment, followed by a hundred push-ups. At least he hoped it was a hundred. He lost count in the rapid-fire up and down. He was half-naked—boxer briefs and running shoes but nothing else. He could feel the muscles in his arms twitching, about to give way. When he thought he could not coax one more push-up from his arms, he lay flat on the floor, breathing hard, his cheek pushed against the cool polished hardwood. Then he gathered himself, stood, and ran in place until sweat began to crowd his vision and sting his eyes. He listened to ’80s hard rock on his iPod—Twisted Sister, Molly Hatchet, and Iggy Pop. The music had an odd ferocity to it that matched his mood. Uncompromising power chords and relentless cliché-driven vocals crashed through his doubts. He believed he needed to be as determined as that sound.

  As he lifted his knees, trying to gain speed without leaving his position, sneakered feet making slapping noises, he kept an eye on his cell phone, because Andy Candy was supposed to pick him up mid-morning so they could go to the first of the three meetings he’d scheduled for that day.

  These were not meetings like the one he’d attended at Redeemer One the night before. These were interviews. Job interviews, he thought, except the job I want is hunting down a murderer and killing him.

  Moth stopped. He bent over gasping, grabbed his boxers, and sucked in some stale apartment air. He felt dizzy and shaky, tasted sweat on his upper lip, and was unsure whether this was the alcohol being worked out of his body or the pressing need for revenge.

  Moth felt weak, unmanned. He was completely uncertain whether if some well-coiffed, long-legged South Beach supermodel in a black string bikini were to walk into his apartment with an enticing look in her eyes and a welcoming gesture as she undid her bra strap, he could perform. He almost laughed out loud at his potential impotence. Drink can make you into an ancient old man. Limp. Weak. Didn’t Shakespeare write that? Then he replaced the South Beach supermodel in his mind’s eye with Andy Candy.

  A rapid-fire series of memories crowded his imagination: First kiss. First touch of her breast. First caress of her thigh. He remembered moving his hand toward her sex for the first time. It had been outdoors, on a pool patio, and they were jammed together, entwined on an uncomfortable plastic lounge chair that dug into their backs but seemed at that moment like a featherbed. He was fifteen. She was thirteen. In the distance there was music playing—not rap or rock, but a surprising, gentle string quartet. Every millimeter his fingers traveled, he’d expected her to stop him. Each millimeter that she didn’t had made his heart pound faster. Damp silk panties. Elastic band. What he had wanted then was to be fast, matching his desire, but his touch was light and patient. A contradiction of demands and emotions.

  In the solitude of his apartment, Moth gasped out loud. He abruptly tugged the earbuds from his head, switched off his iPod. Silence surrounded him. He listened to his short breath for a few seconds, letting the panting sounds replace his Andrea Martine memories. He told himself that he should studiously avoid quiet. No noise was a vacuum that needed to be filled—and he knew that the easiest, most natural thing to fill this gap would be the drink that would kill him.

  He nodded as if agreeing with some lawyerly internal argument, kicked off his running shoes, and dropped his shorts, so that he stood completely naked, sweat glistening across his forehead and on his chest.

  “Exercise accomplished,” he said out loud, like a soldier giving himself commands. “Don’t make Andy Candy wait. Never make her wait. Always be there first. Be ready.”

  He still did not completely understand why she was willing to help him, but she was, so far, and this seemed the only solid thing in his life, so he believed he needed to regulate himself in a way that would keep her on board, no matter how crazy it all seemed. It was as if he could not allow her the space to actually consider what he was asking of her. Perhaps, he told himself, what we do today will give us an answer or two.

  But he knew it was just as likely to be fruitless. “I need to know,” he said out loud, speaking in the same brusque military tone. Moth felt an urgency to get going, and he marched rapidly toward the bathroom, shoulders straight, grabbing toothbrush and comb as if they were weapons.

  Andy zipped her small car around the corner, heading toward Moth’s apartment building. She saw him standing outside the entrance, waving a greeting.

  It looked completely benign: a young woman picking up her boyfriend—in Miami, su novio—from the sidewalk so they could go off to the beach or the mall.

  As she slowed to a halt, she wondered whether she should tell Moth what she’d done the night before at Redeemer One. She did not know whether she had been right or wrong, if it was a big thing or a little thing:

  “You go ahead in. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “Andy, it’ll be an hour. Maybe more. Sometimes people really need to vent …” Hesitation. “Sometimes I really need to vent.”

  “No. It’s okay. I don’t mind waiting. I have a book I want to read.”

  He’d looked around.

  “It’s in the trunk,” she’d lied. “It’s a trashy-girls-and-sex novel. Lots of hot passion, unrequited love, and fantastic orgasms. I keep it hidden from my mom the constant prude.”

  He’d smiled. “Corrupting your soul,” he joked.

  “The horse is out of that barn,” she’d half-laughed.

  It was perhaps the first moment of familiar banter and humor that they’d shared since he’d called her.

  “Okay. I’m going in. I’ll see you in a bit,” he said. “You sure you’re okay with waiting? I know someone would give me a lift home …”

  “See you when I see you,” she said, smiling.

  She watched Moth get out of her car, bend down to grin at her through the window as he shut the door, then take off quickly across the parking lot. She saw him join up with two older people, a man and a woman, and enter the church. She waited a minute, then another.

  Then Andy Candy exited her car.

  A sticky night was dropping swiftly through the stately poinciana trees that guarded the church entrance and she started to sweat instantly. She glanced at the leaves and knew they would flower bright red. This was South Florida and there was more to the ever-present growth than swaying palms and twisted mangroves. There were huge banyan trees that looked l
ike old gnarled men too mean to die, gumbo-limbo, and tamarind. Their roots all stretched into the porous coral rock that Miami was built on, sucking their growth from the water that filtered unseen through the earth. The trees, she thought, could live forever. Anything anyone put in the ground in Miami could grow. Sun. Rain. Heat. A tropical world, one that existed just behind all the construction, building, and development. She thought sometimes that if people took their eyes off the concrete and asphalt around them and let their guard down for just a few seconds, nature would reclaim not only the earth, but the city itself, and all its inhabitants, swallow everything up, and spit it into oblivion.

  She moved to the front door, opened it cautiously, and slipped into the church. Cool air and quiet greeted her.

  Andy Candy had no plan. All she had was a compulsion: She wanted to see. She wanted to hear. She wanted to try to understand.

  She moved stealthily even though she knew there was no real need for caution. She knew if she simply walked into the meeting she would be greeted by everyone—except Moth. She would be welcomed by everyone—except Moth.

  It was a little like sneaking up outside some home owner’s window like a Peeping Tom. She imagined herself a burglar or a spy. She wanted to steal information. The Moth she’d once loved without hesitation was different now. She had to see how.

  The inside of the church was shadowy and empty; it was as if Jesus was taking the evening off. She made her way past wooden pews and podiums, beyond golden crucifixes and marble statues, under the watch of stained glass martyred saints frozen in windowpanes. Andy hated church. Her mother, who sometimes filled in for an absent organist, and her dead father had been regular Sunday service folks, and they’d hauled her to church for as long as she could remember, until the moment she’d fallen in love with Moth and abruptly refused to go any longer. She paused, looked up at one of the images in the windows—Saint George slaying the dragon—and told herself, They would hate me here anyway, because now I’m a killer. The thought made her throat dry and she tore her eyes away from the stained glass images. She crept forward until she could hear the murmur of voices down a corridor. There were some empty offices on either side of her and a small anteroom at the end. She feared her feet made loud, clumsy clunking sounds, even though the opposite was true. Andy Candy was lithe and athletic. Moth had once called her My Ninja Girlfriend because of the way she could sneak from her house after midnight to meet him without waking her parents or even rousing the dogs. This memory made her grin.

  She slipped into the anteroom and saw a wide set of double doors at the rear. These opened into a larger room. There was wood paneling and a low ceiling. She glimpsed leather chairs and sofas spread around a circle at the far end of the room, and she clung to a wall and started to listen just as a round of weak applause greeted someone who’d just spoken.

  She craned her head and peeked around the corner—drawing back sharply when she saw Moth stand up.

  “Hello, my name is Timothy, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Timothy,” came the established response, even though he was no stranger to them.

  “I have fifteen days sober now …”

  Another round of applause and some exhortations: “Good going.” “Way to go.”

  “As many of you know, it was my uncle Ed who first brought me here. He was the one who first showed me my problem and then showed me how to get past it.”

  Andy Candy could hear the silence, as if the gathering at Redeemer One had caught their collective breath.

  “You know Uncle Ed died. You know the police think it was a suicide.”

  Moth paused. Andy Candy bent to hear everything.

  “I don’t think so. No matter what they say, I don’t think so. You all, everyone here, you all knew my uncle Ed. He stood up here a hundred times and told you how he’d licked his drinking problem. Is there anyone here who thinks he would kill himself?”

  No response.

  “Anyone?”

  No response.

  “So, I need your help. Now more than ever.”

  For the first time, Andy Candy could hear Moth’s voice start to quiver with emotion.

  “I need to stay sober. I need to find the man who killed my uncle.”

  These last words seemed high-pitched, as if stretched out and wrung tight before being knotted together.

  “Please help me.”

  She wished she could see the silence in the room, see the reactions on the faces of the people gathered there. There was a long pause before she heard Moth again.

  “My name is Timothy and I have fifteen days sober.”

  She retreated as she heard people begin to clap.

  “How was your night?” Andy Candy asked.

  “Okay, I guess. I’m not sleeping great, but that’s to be expected. And you?”

  “Same.”

  Moth was about to ask why but did not. He had many questions, not the least of which was why Andy Candy was home when she should have been finishing school. Moth thought he was using up his last bit of reasonable behavior by not asking Andy Candy to share her mystery. He guessed she either would or wouldn’t sometime in the future. He told himself to merely be glad—no, overjoyed—that she was helping him.

  He shifted in the passenger seat. He was nicely dressed—khaki slacks, black and red striped sports shirt—and he had a student’s backpack on his lap. Notebooks. Tape recorder. Crime scene reports.

  “So, where to first?”

  “Ed’s apartment. Due diligence.” He smiled, before adding:

  “Historians like going over and over the same thing. So retrace the cops. Then …”

  He stopped. Then was a notion he wasn’t ready to explore. Yet.

  9

  A Second Conversation

  Jeremy Hogan knew there would be a second call.

  This belief was not based so much on the science of psychology as it was on instinct honed over years of trying to understand the why of crimes instead of the who, what, where, when that routinely bedeviled police detectives. If this killer is truly obsessed with me, he won’t likely be satisfied with a single call—unless he has it all planned out, and my next breath is my last. Or close to last.

  He racked through his memory, picturing killers of all stripes. It was a gallery of scars and tattoos, a cavalcade of ethnicity—black, white, Hispanic, Asians, and even one Samoan—of pale men who heard voices and grizzled men who were so cold that the word remorseless seemed an understatement. He remembered men who writhed in their chairs and sobbed as they told him why they had killed and men who had laughed uproariously at death as if nothing could be a bigger and funnier joke. He could hear echoes of matter-of-fact murder reimagined as littering or jaywalking, reverberating off cinder block cell walls. He could see harsh, unshaded prison lights and gray steel furniture bolted to the cement floors. He could see men who grinned at the thought of their own execution and others who shook with rage or quivered with fear. He remembered men who’d stared at him with an undeniable longing to wrap their hands around his throat, and others who wanted a reassuring embrace and a friendly pat on the back. Faces like ghosts filled his imagination. Some names popped in and out, but most were lost in the flux of remembering.

  They weren’t important.

  What I said or wrote about them, that was what was important.

  He took a shallow breath, almost like an asthmatic’s wheezy, near-helpless pull at the air, trying to fill stifled lungs.

  He admonished himself as if speaking to himself in the third person: Once you finished your assessment and wrote your report, you didn’t think they were worth remembering.

  You were wrong.

  One of them is back. No handcuffs this time. No straitjacket. No injection of Ativan and Haldol to quiet psychosis. No heavily muscled armed guard in the corner fingering a truncheon, or watching in an adjacent room on a television monitor. No red panic button hidden under your side of the steel desk to protect you from being killed.

&
nbsp; So, one of two things will happen: He will want to kill you right away, because making that first call was the only trigger he needs and he’ll be satisfied with getting on with the murder. Or he will want to talk and tease and torture you, prolong the entire performance because each time he hears your uncertainty and fear it caresses him, makes him feel more powerful, more in control—and after he has stretched the limits of your fear, then he will kill you.

  He will want to do everything possible to make your death meaningful.

  This obvious but subtle observation had taken him several days to reach. But once it flooded him—after his initial fears had dissipated—he knew there was only one real option left to him.

  You cannot run. You cannot hide. Those are clichés. You would not know how to disappear. That’s the stuff of cheap fiction, anyway.

  But you cannot just wait. You’re no damn good at that, either.

  Help him enjoy your killing. Draw it out and draw him out. Buy yourself time.

  That’s your only chance.

  Of course, he had not decided what he might do with the time he purchased.

  And so, he’d taken a few steps to ready himself for the second call. Modest steps—but they gave him a sense of doing rather than sitting around patiently while someone planned his death. He made a quick trip to a nearby electronics store to obtain an attachment to his phone, so he could record conversations. This was followed by a second trip to an office supply outlet to acquire several legal tablets of yellow lined paper and a box of Number 2 pencils. He would tape. He would take notes.

  The recording device was a stick-on suction cup that picked up both voices in a telephone conversation. It attached to a microcassette recorder. The advantage to the setup was simple: It would not make the ubiquitous beeping sound that legal recordings made.

  He wasn’t sure what purpose would be served by making a recording. But it seemed like it might be a wise move, and in the absence of any other forms of protection, it seemed to make sense. Perhaps he’ll make some overt, obvious threat and I can go to the police …