Death at Charity's Point (22 page)

“Of course,” I said. “Harvey Willard. I knew about that.”

“I know you did. But you aren’t aware of the autopsy report, I don’t think.”

“No.”

“Mr. Willard was murdered.”

I found myself nodding. “Are you sure?”

“We can say that it’s my professional opinion. I would judge that he was murdered with clear intent by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.”

“How…?”

Dr. Clapp cleared his throat. I waited for his discourse. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. “His larynx was crushed by a sharp blow to the throat. Right below the hyoid bone—under your jaw, Mr. Coyne—there are little cartilaginous horns. Delicate little things. They were broken, as was the hyoid bone itself. What happens is this: A blow sharp enough to produce that kind of damage will overstimulate the carotid arteries, which are extremely sensitive to that sort of thing. They’re like little pressure gauges. They send messages via the vagus nerve in the neck to the heart via the brain. What happened to Harvey Willard was that because of this sharp blow to the throat, his heart received an explosive set of nerve impulses. Cardiac arrest. Sudden, silent, absolutely deadly. We call this ‘vagal inhibition.’ I expect the boy was dead before he hit the ground.”

“Good God!”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see…”

“The police are quite convinced that the boy was picked up while hitchhiking, and that whoever picked him up drove him to that rest area beside the highway and tried to rob him, or maybe made a sexual advance, and when he resisted, well, a man who knows his karate makes a quick jab with the tips of his fingers…”

“All right, but…”

“But I’m not completely convinced that that theory is accurate.”

“You’re not.”

“No. I may be wrong—it’s what we call an inductive leap—but I think there’s a connection between the two deaths. Between this one and Gresham.”

“Well, I wondered,” I said.

“Yes. You may remember one of the several injuries Mr. Gresham suffered. The burst testicle.”

I shuddered. “I remember. You said it was consistent with the fall.”

“I said it was consistent. It’s equally consistent with a karate blow. Or simply a hard kick to the testicles. Immediately and totally disarming.”

“I should imagine so,” I said. “So you think this same person…?”

“A distinct possibility, yes. And in the case of Harvey Willard, he transported his body to the highway and rolled him down the slope. The body could well have gone undetected for a month. That’s how often the highway department mows the grass.”

“So if we find who killed Harvey, we’ve got George’s murderer as well.”

“Oh, it’s not that simple, of course.” The doctor sighed. “It’s speculation. A theory to pursue—a useful theory, I think. Maybe the best theory, at this point.”

“Except for coincidence.”

“You’re right, of course. The odds never favor coincidence, by definition. Yet they happen all the time. The police are following the principle that the commonest things most commonly happen. And that principle still suggests that Mr. Gresham committed suicide and the Willard boy’s murder is unrelated to it, and that the possibility of a karate injury to each constitutes no more than a coincidence. And the scientist in me is obliged to agree, or at least to look at both sides of the sheep.”

“The sheep?”

Dr. Clapp laughed. “One of those apocryphal stories laboratory scientists like to tell. A scientist is driving along a country road with a friend when they come upon a flock of sheep grazing on a hillside. ‘Those sheep have been shorn recently,’ observes the friend. ‘On one side, anyway,’ says the scientist.”

“I get it,” I said.

“That isn’t to say that the good scientist doesn’t
think
that the sheep are shorn on both sides. He just recognizes that he doesn’t
know
it, that it’s a theory, a hypothesis, based on evidence, that remains to be proved. I want to see the other side of the sheep in this case.”

I thought about that for a moment. “I’m not sure why you’re calling me,” I said.

“Because I think you know who did it.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” I said. “I
don’t
know who did it. I don’t know who did anything. I
thought
I knew who killed George Gresham. If he was killed. I thought it was Harvey Willard. I was obviously wrong. The sheep aren’t shorn on the other side. I don’t know any more about this than you do.”

“I didn’t say you
knew
that you knew, or that you even knew
what
you knew. If you follow me. But you’re the one with all the pieces to the puzzle, I think, now that I’ve given you this last one. The solution is there, on the table in front of you.
If
there’s a solution. Move those pieces around. Make sure they’re all face up and start trying to fit some of them together.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“You start with a couple of premises. They are, of course, just premises. But it’s what we have. One, George Gresham and Harvey Willard were both murdered. Two, they were murdered by the same person. That, so to speak, puts the border on the puzzle. Fill in the inside with the pieces you have. If the premises are reasonably accurate, the picture will emerge.”

“I see,” I said.

“You’re an attorney. Use your training.”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

“Call me any time, if I can help you move around the pieces that I’ve given you.”

“I will,” I said. I thought for a minute. “One thing.”

“What is it?”

“This murderer—this alleged murderer. What do we know about him? What have your autopsies told you about him?”

“Two things, I think. One, he is obviously trained in karate or one of the martial arts. Knows that a blow to the testes is one of the most dependably disabling maneuvers one can make at close range. Knows that a thrust to the hyoid can kill, and will certainly render a victim unconscious.”

“The second thing?”

“The second thing is that he has killed twice. That he has inflicted unthinkable pain on two men, and has, with cold malice and very possibly with clear-headed premeditation, killed them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yes,” said Dr. Clapp. “Obviously.”

“Okay.”

We said good-bye and hung up. I buzzed Julie and told her that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed, and would she mind terribly bringing me the coffee pot because I didn’t want to stop when I needed a refill.

I had to figure out how to climb up that hill and steal a look at the other side of those sheep.

M
UFFY TAYLOR, HARVEY WILLARD’S
girlfriend, sat with me in Bartley Elliott’s office, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. Her eyes were red, and her face was puffy. She was a tiny little thing, with a little, pointed nose, and a pointed chin, and small, pointed breasts. Cute, as my mother used to say, as a button.

“They’re having a memorial service for Harvey,” she was telling me. “At the chapel. Day after tomorrow at four. I don’t know if I can take it.”

Her inflamed eyes appealed to me.

“It’s been rough,” I said. I tried to imagine Harvey, all two hundred and twenty-odd pounds of him, making love to this child. He would, I thought, have riven her in twain.

“They’re saying someone might have killed him,” she said. “Who’d want to hurt Harvey? He was gentle, Mr. Coyne. A very kind, gentle person. Everyone liked him.”

Okay then, I thought. If he was so gentle and kind, maybe he wouldn’t rive her in twain. I said, “Muffy, that’s the question. Who
would
have wanted to hurt him?”

“I talked to a policeman already. I couldn’t think of anybody. Except poor Mr. Gresham. Harvey didn’t like Mr. Gresham. I suppose—at least, Harvey
said
—that Mr. Gresham didn’t like him either.” She smiled forlornly at me. “But that doesn’t help, does it? I mean, Mr. Gresham’s dead, too.”

“What about the Spender boy?” I asked. “Didn’t Harvey have a fight with him?”

Muffy cocked her head at me. “That was a couple weeks ago. It was stupid. Cap was talking to me, that’s all. Harvey got all bent out of shape and Cap said something and Harvey grabbed him by the shirt and Cap hit him.”

“Hit him a pretty good one, by the look of Harvey’s eye.”

Muffy shook her head slowly. “Don’t let Cap fool you, Mr. Coyne. He’s very strong, and he knows how to fight.”

“What did Harvey do?”

“Punched him in the stomach. Cap sat right down and started huffing away, trying to get his breath. That was it.”

“So Cap Spender might want to hurt Harvey.”

Muffy seemed to consider that. “I suppose so. But, knowing Cap, he’d go after Harvey with a gun.”

“Or a gang?”

Muffy shrugged. “I don’t think he’d do that,” she said. Her eyes brimmed. “I don’t know who’d do that.”

“Did you see Harvey the night he died?”

“Yes. I usually saw him after dinner. Except for a few days a little while ago, when we were having an argument. We’d go for a walk, usually.”

She bowed her head. I touched her arm. “Hey, now,” I said. I fished out my handkerchief, which she took and blew her nose into. Then she looked up at me.

“I know this is hard,” I said.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry.” She tried to smile. “Sometimes we’d walk down past the football field. There’s a big grove there. It’s quiet, private. Our special place, we always said. We pretended no one else knew about the grove. We went there to be alone. There’s not many places around here where you can be alone, and sometimes we wanted to. Be alone. You know?”

I nodded. I thought I knew.

“Did you take your walk that night?”

“No. Harvey had something on his mind, I could tell. He was preoccupied. Said we couldn’t go down to the grove. He had stuff to do, he said.”

“What kind of stuff ?”

Her eyes beseeched me. “I don’t know, Mr. Coyne. Harvey was—” she seemed to be groping for the precise word “—he had been
weird
lately. Ever since he wrote that stupid paper.”

“What stupid paper?”

Muffy dropped her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I promised Harvey I wouldn’t tell.” She blew her nose into my handkerchief.

“Look,” I said. “Harvey is dead. Maybe this paper has something to do with it.”

“I can’t say anything. I promised.” She stared at her hands which moved in her lap, twisting and tugging at my handkerchief.

“Was this the paper he wrote for Mr. Gresham?”

She glanced quickly up at me. “How did you know?”

“It makes sense, that’s all. He copied it, didn’t he?”

Muffy nodded.

“And when Mr. Gresham found out…”

“Oh, he didn’t find out. Everything might have been different if he’d been caught. I think Harvey
wanted
to be caught. That’s what I meant. He felt awfully guilty about that paper. And scared, too, I guess. That he’d be caught. But at the same time wanting to be caught. Does that make any sense?”

I nodded. “Yes. I think it does. You say that Mr. Gresham didn’t find out about it?”

“No. He never did. Harvey would have told me. No. He got a C on the paper. Harvey said to me, ‘How could he give a C to the
Atlantic
?’ Of course, he made some stupid errors on it to make it seem like it wasn’t copied.” She stopped. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.” She dabbed at her nose with my handkerchief.

I touched her arm. “Can you think of anything else, Muffy? Anything Harvey might have said that would help us know where he went that night, or who he might have been with?”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t mention the paper?”

“No. Not that night.”

“Or Cap Spender?”

“No.”

“And as far as you know, nobody ever found out about his copying that paper?”

“Except me, no. I didn’t really find out. He told me.” She looked up at me. “And you. You won’t tell, will you?”

“I guess it wouldn’t do anybody any good.”

Muffy managed a small smile. “Thank you.”

“Well, okay,” I said. “You’ve been a big help. Really. You could help me a little more if you’d tell me how I might be able to find Cap Spender today.”

“What do you want him for? You don’t think…”

“I don’t think anything, Muffy. I’d just like to talk to him.”

“… because I guess I should tell you that I’ve been sort of seeing Cap lately. I mean, not that I stopped seeing Harvey or anything, you know. But…” She flapped her hands like butterflies.

“Did Harvey know this?”

“I told you. They had this sort of fight.”

“I didn’t realize you were seeing him.”

“I guess you’d find that out soon enough, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably. Look, Muffy. Is there anything else that you haven’t quite told truthfully? It could be very important.”

She shook her head back and forth several times like a stubborn infant refusing to eat her vegetables.

“Okay. Tell me how to find Spender.”

“He’ll be in the Student Union. There’s a table near the back, beside the water fountain. He’s almost always there in the afternoon.”

Outside the office Muffy and I went in opposite directions. I stood for a moment to watch her go. She wore her grief proudly, I thought. She managed to walk as if she were bearing up bravely. I pictured her with her wrist to her forehead, head thrown to the side, while Tara burned in the background.

I turned and headed for the Student Union.

Spender was where Muffy said he’d be, with his back to the wall like a careful soldier. He wore his military clothes and his shiny head. He was hunched forward, his elbows on the table, talking intently to a dark-haired boy who was sitting with his back to me. As I maneuvered among the empty tables toward them, I saw Spender nod and sit back. The other boy reached across the table to punch Spender playfully on the shoulder, then stood up and turned to leave.

For the second time I had mistaken Alexander Binh for a student. He seemed to hesitate when he saw me walking toward him. Then he nodded his head at me.

“Mr. Coyne,” he said.

“Hello Mr. Binh.”

“May I help you?”

“I’ve come to talk to Mr. Spender, here.”

Binh’s eyebrows twitched. Then he flashed me his insolent grin. “Be my guest.”