The Architect (10 page)

Clevenger knew that prominent families were often represented in any discussion involving the law. “Not at all,” he said. He paused. “And I want to say how sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Van Myer said.

Carolyn Van Myer nodded solemnly.

“What is it we can help you with?” Van Myer asked. “If I understand correctly, you’ll be preparing a psychological profile of Chase’s killer?”

Clevenger was struck by the way the words “Chase’s killer” rolled off Van Myer’s tongue. Most parents fresh from losing a child to murder can barely
stand to think of it, let alone speak of it. “That’s right,” he said. “And to do that, I need to know as much as possible about your daughter.”

“We’ve already given the police a list of the men she’s been involved with—at least the ones we know about,” Carolyn Van Myer said.

“Drug dealers, some of them,” Van Myer said. “Who knows what other garbage?”

“Criminal records, the whole nine yards,” Burns added.

Clevenger had invited the Van Myers to speak about their daughter, and her mother and father had begun with her sexual history, not her talents or dreams or how much they had loved her. “Was that a problem of hers?” he asked, as sensitively as he could. “She lacked control in that area?”

“To say the least,” Carolyn Van Myer said. “And now ...” She looked away, shook her head.

Van Myer laid his hand on his wife’s leg.

“Why was that, do you think?” Clevenger asked.

“Why was what?” Van Myer asked.

“Why was she acting out that way?” Clevenger asked.

“The drugs,” Carolyn Van Myer said, looking back at Clevenger.

“But it was more than that,” Van Myer said. “Chase suffered with borderline personality disorder. I’m told the drugs and... indiscretions are typical.”

Clevenger nodded. “Borderline personality disorder is a diagnosis, a label,” he said. “Many people with that diagnosis do use illicit drugs. They get lost in highly charged relationships. But they do both to escape
waves of depression and anxiety.” He leaned forward. “My question is whether either of you know
why
your daughter would have had trouble controlling her emotions.”

“Our other children had no trouble,” Carolyn Van Myer said. “Until they saw what Chase was getting away with.”

If it was unusual for Chase’s father to speak of his daughter’s
killer
, it was extraordinary for her mother to be blaming her for whatever else might be going wrong in the family. Parents of murder victims usually idealize them, describing them as “angels,” “too good for this world.”

Burns leaned forward. “I think we’re getting a little off track,” he said to Clevenger. “Would it be helpful if the Van Myers shared their list of the men Chase was involved with? I wonder whether you’ll find any of them fits the profile of a serial killer.”

Burns was trying to direct the discussion away from the Van Myers themselves. That didn’t mean they were guilty of anything, but it did mean that Burns was feeling that he should protect them.

Clevenger pushed a little farther. “The list will be important,” he said. “But I’m trying to get at something else.” He looked at the Van Myers. “Do either of you have any sense why Chase might have been drawn to the kind of men she was, or why she had a low enough opinion of herself to tattoo a slur on her thigh?”

“I’m sure we don’t,” Van Myer said. Something new and predatory came into his eyes. “I take it you’re a Freudian.”

Clevenger didn’t confine himself to any one school
of thought in psychiatry. But that wasn’t the point. Van Myer was invoking the name of Freud to discredit him, to suggest that he was lost in psychological theories about the past, unable to see the truth of the moment. “I think the roots of suffering like your daughter’s can go very deep,” he said. “I believe to turn her around someone would have had to dig down that far. I suppose Freud would have said the same thing.” He looked into Scout Van Myer’s eyes, saw a flash of guilt and worry. He didn’t want to lose him completely. “But I see your point. No sense getting bogged down in ancient history now. So, please tell me more about these men Chase spent time with.”

The Van Myers ran through a list of unsavory characters.

Clevenger took notes, asked questions. Now and then, he glanced up at the wall beside him, covered with framed photographs, letters, degrees, awards. It took him about fifteen minutes to find what he was looking for. Nearly lost amidst the rest was a small black-and-white photograph of Harkness Tower, Yale University’s most recognizable building, a Gothic tower with four copper clock faces. The tower appeared on the
Yale Herald
masthead. It contained a famous fifty-four-bell carillon, played daily by members of a university club founded just for that purpose.

When the Van Myers were through downloading their list of Chase’s lovers, Burns moved to shut down the meeting. “Does anything jump out at you immediately, Doctor, or would you like to reconvene at some point?”

“I’ll need a little time,” Clevenger said. “I think I have plenty to get started on.”

Scout Van Myer nodded.

Burns stood up.

Clevenger stood, shook hands with Burns and the Van Myers. He nodded at the photograph of the tower. “Is that Harkness, by the way?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” Van Myer said.

“You went to Yale?” Clevenger asked.

“My father.”

“I took a few public health courses there one summer,” Clevenger said. “Quite a place.”

“We support it aggressively,” Van Myer said. “It was a big part of my father’s life. Captain of the football team, Skull and Bones. The friends he kept were the ones he made in college.”

“He loved the tower especially?” Clevenger asked.

“He helped raise funds to renovate it.”

“A worthy cause,” Clevenger said. “I’ve heard the bells.”

“Dad adopted a number of prominent buildings to restore,” Van Myer said. “Churches, mostly. He was passionate about architecture. We had that in common.”

“I gathered as much, from your home,” Clevenger said.

“Thank you for saying so.”

“Please call us if you need anything at all,” Carolyn Van Myer said.

Except, Clevenger thought to himself, if I need any information about Chase’s childhood or insight into her emotional life. “I will,” he said.

Burns escorted Clevenger to the foyer. Three boxes packed with stuffed animals, trophies, and what looked like art projects were lined up near the front door.

Clevenger heard footsteps upstairs and looked up. The teenage boy he had seen before was carrying another box out of the room on the second floor. He placed it in the hallway.

“Someone moving?” Clevenger asked.

“Tristan and Gabriela are trying to help their mom and dad get over this” Burns said.

“Chase’s brother and sister?” Clevenger asked.

“That’s right”

“How are they helping?”

“Packing Chase’s things,” Burns said, unable to utter the words as matter-of-factly as he probably had hoped.

“Packing,” Clevenger said, stunned. “No sense keeping bad memories around, I guess.” He reached into one of the boxes, pulled out the painting Chase had done of a young girl nailed to a cross, looked at it for several seconds. It told him much more about her than her parents had. He gently put it back in the box. “Her bedroom was up there?” he asked Burns.

“Yes.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

Burns hesitated.

“I won’t be more than a minute,” Clevenger said.

“I suppose...”

“Let me know if I’m overstaying my welcome,” Clevenger said, moving past him, up the stairs.

Burns followed him.

Chase’s brother Tristan was filling yet another box
when Clevenger got to Chase’s bedroom, a masculine space with fir-paneled walls and a fir-beamed ceiling.

Clevenger introduced himself to the boy, a wiry kid of about fifteen, with a crew cut and two silver hoops through each ear. He reminded Clevenger of Billy. “Pretty unusual room for a girl,” he said.

“It was hers, then it wasn’t, then it was again,” Tristan said. “They just never put it back the way it was.”

“Chase moved out to her own apartment when the house was renovated,” Burns said. “Her bedroom became the billiards room. She couldn’t make it on her own. She wanted her old space back.”

Scene of the crime, Clevenger thought. “People get attached to places,” he said.

“Where are the boxes going?” Clevenger asked Tristan.

He shrugged. ‘That’s Dad’s deal.”

A brother who didn’t know or seem to care where his murdered sister’s art ended up. “I’m sure he’ll keep them safe,” Clevenger said.

Tristan shrugged, picked up Chase’s clay sculpture of a woman with nails for teeth and tossed it into the box.

“Your sister Gabriela got tired of helping out?” Clevenger asked.

“She did a lot,” Tristan said. “She’s hanging with her friends.”

“Young people get support where they can,” Burns said quickly. “I found that with my own kids “

“If they’re lucky enough to get it at all,” Clevenger said.

“Are we all set then?” Burns asked.

Clevenger nodded. “Thank you, Tristan.”

“No sweat,” the boy said.

“Fm very sorry about your sister.”

“Thanks, man.” He pulled the pink comforter off his sister’s bed and threw it toward the open box.

Clevenger and Burns walked back downstairs.

“Thank you for all your help,” Clevenger said. He held out his hand.

Burns shook it.

Clevenger noticed Burns’s signet ring, engraved with the distinctive seal of Yale University, carrying the Hebrew text
Urim v’Tumim
and its Latin translation
Lux et Veritas
. The most common English translation was “Light and Truth,” but many scholars insisted a more accurate translation was “Light and Perfection.” In the Bible, the words appear on the breastplate worn by the high priest in the temple. “So, you’re Yale, too,” Clevenger said, nodding at the ring.

“Undergrad and law school,” Burns said. “They couldn’t get rid of me.”

“Get back much?”

“Whenever I can,” he said. “In a lot of ways, I never left. Most of what I am, I became when I was there.”

TWENTY-ONE

Clevenger stopped at a
pharmacy on Michigan Avenue and wrote himself a prescription for a few Ativan tablets to slow his pulse and stop the churning in his gut—both symptoms of withdrawal from alcohol. He was in a taxi on his way to the airport to meet Whitney McCormick for their 5:45 flight to D.C. when he finally thought to check his messages. He turned on his cell phone and dialed his voice mail.

The first message was from from Tony Traini, one of the best criminal attorneys Clevenger had ever worked with. He had heard Billy was in trouble and was offering to help.

Clevenger wondered whether he ought to take him up on his offer. Letting a public defender handle Billy’s case would prove a point, but if it cost Billy years in jail, hanging out with hardened criminals, it could also prove to be the end of Clevenger’s dreams for him.

The second message was a dinner invitation from Jan Urkevic, one of Boston’s leading psychiatrists.
Urkevic looked like a rock star and had lived like one until he had gotten married and had his first child, a glistening little girl named Ava. Clevenger liked spending time with him, his wife, Lisa, and their four lads at their estate just south of the city. When Clevenger’s hopes for a normal life dimmed, he could sometimes rekindle them just by watching Urkevic shower love on his family, and watching his family love him back.

The third message, from North Anderson, dwarfed the first two. “I’ve got a little news about Billy you ought to know,” he said. “Give me a call as soon as you get a chance.”

Clevenger hung up and dialed him.

“Hey, buddy,” he answered.

“So, what’s up with Billy now?”

“He made bail.”

“What? Bail was twenty grand.”

“His public defender petitioned the court and got it reduced to five.”

“He doesn’t have that kind of money.”

“He didn’t post it himself. Dave Leone called our office from the Middleton Jail to give us the heads-up. A group of those gangbangers Billy used to tangle with walked in with cash. The Royals. No way the jail could turn them down.”

Clevenger’s heart sank. “Any idea where he is?”

“Not yet. I’m in New Haven. I meet with the dean of alumni services in ten minutes. I put the word out to our friends at the Chelsea police station to look out for him.”

“Thanks.” He was about to say he would head home right away, but McCormick was probably already at the airport waiting for him. At some point, he needed
to start salvaging his own life, not just Billy’s. “Phone’s on,” he said. “Call me with anything.”

“You know I will. Anything else?”

Clevenger could barely focus on what he needed to tell Anderson about the case. “One thing before we hang up,” he said. “Scout Van Myer’s father was a Yale grad and major contributor. I’ll tell you more later. But we’re definitely up to four victims with connections there.”

“Worth the trip,” Anderson said. “Can’t wait to hear the rest.”

“You will.”

“Stay safe, man.”

“You, too.”

They hung up.

The taxi dropped Clevenger off at the American Airlines terminal. He met McCormick at the gate.

“I thought you were standing me up,” she said. “We’re about to board.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Not a chance.” He heard how forced the words sounded as he spoke them. He looked toward the line of passengers forming at the doortothejetway.

She knew him well enough to know there was something wrong. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, barely glancing at her. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

She didn’t move. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Frank.”

He shrugged. “Billy, again. Big surprise, right? I mean, he’s fine, so far as I know. But he ... He made bail. He’s out.”

The line of passengers started to move.

“You said bail was twenty thousand dollars.”

“His public defender got it reduced to five. Then some members of that gang in Chelsea—the Royals— paid it.”