Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_03 (3 page)

His eyes bored into mine.

I looked at him steadily.

“I understand you are especially gifted at teaching investigative reporting.” The empty pipe bowl glistened richly in the sunlight.

It didn't take a blaring Klaxon to alert me. But it came as no surprise. Why else would I have received this summons?

“That is a specialty of mine.”

“What is your definition of investigative report
ing, Mrs. Collins?” His tone was pleasant, deceptively bland. He placed the pipe neatly in a pristine, amber-colored glass ashtray.

I like to dance, but not the minuet. I prefer a Charleston.

And yes, I'm impulsive.

“To discover facts that are important to the public. Often, these are facts which have been deliberately hidden.” I pointed to
The Clarion
on his table. “Perhaps I can best illustrate my point by describing work one of my independent-study students is currently doing.” I rose and reached for the newspaper.

“If I may—” I opened the paper to the boxed quarter-page ad and pointed to it. “Perhaps you noticed this announcement in today's paper?”

He was a quiet, brooding presence, arms folded now across his bulging chest. His flesh-ringed eyes watched me somnolently. But there was a flicker deep in their paleness.

I thought it might have been a flash of admiration, the kind a German ace would accord his prey just before annihilation.

“I did happen to see it.” His deep voice was thoughtful. “It looked to me like a dabbling in sensationalism, Mrs. Collins. Surely raking up these sad old stories for no discernible reason—to the distress of so many in our community—doesn't accord with your definition?”

Tucker had honed in on exactly the element that concerned me.

But I didn't like the blandness in his moon face.

And I definitely didn't like where this conversation was leading.

Real men do what men have to do.

Real women love beyond reason.

Real reporters never turn tail.

“Of course it would not,” I said firmly. “But that definitely isn't the case in this instance, Dr. Tucker. My student, Maggie Winslow, is pursuing leads which may reveal what actually happened in these three crimes. She is bringing a fresh eye to the facts. Maggie is an extraordinarily resourceful reporter.”

Oh, by God, Maggie, you'd better not let me down
.

“Indeed. I can see that she has persuaded you of that. But, Mrs. Collins, I urge you to rethink this assignment for your student. I know Ms. Winslow has confidence in her abilities, confidence you apparently share. But, frankly, I see no reason to believe Ms. Winslow can discover anything that the authorities, who are also extremely capable, failed to bring to light.”

I felt I couldn't do better than quote Maggie's parting shot to me. “President Tucker, somebody always knows something.”

“Nonetheless, you could assign her to another topic.” His tone was casual. He might have been discussing the weather.

“I could, Dr. Tucker. But I won't.” My tone was as pleasant as his. “There's a small matter of academic freedom to consider.”

His ice-blue eyes widened in mock surprise. “Mrs. Collins, I would never infringe upon any Thorndyke faculty member's freedom to teach as he or she sees fit. Certainly not.” He pushed back his chair, heaved to his feet. His thin mouth stretched into a cold smile. “I'm delighted we had this opportunity to visit.” He came around the table and
took my elbow to walk me toward the door. I could smell pine-scented aftershave. “You have certainly brought a distinguished presence to our University.”

“Thank you.” We were almost at the door.

Tucker looked down at me. “It's wonderful for the University to have faculty with so much professional expertise.” His huge hand was hot on my elbow. “But, of course, you are not a
tenured
professor.”

This time I didn't say anything.

He held open the door for me. His expression was quizzical. “Do you enjoy teaching at Thorndyke, Mrs. Collins?”

 

Dennis Duffy is big, blond, brash, a first-rate city editor, and a sexist asshole.

“Henrie O, sweetheart, how's God's gift to the Fourth Estate?” He grinned, but his putty-colored eyes glistened with malice.

“I'm fine, Dennis.” I was almost past his desk when I paused and asked, as if it were a casual afterthought, “Oh, Dennis, did you enjoy your talk with President Tucker?”

For an instant, Duffy's pudgy face froze; then he shrugged. “What the hell, lady, gotta take the heat if you want to play in the kitchen.”

“When did Tucker call you?”

Duffy glanced at his computer, typed a command. “The big dude got on the horn early. Woke me up. But it shows he starts the morning with our newspaper. Can't beat that.”

“And you couldn't wait to tell him I assigned the series to Maggie.”

“True. Or false. Not an essay question.” His tone mocked.

“And you'll be running the series, of course.”

“Sure.”

“Dennis?” I waited until he looked away from his computer and up at me. “You're tenured, aren't you?”

His eyes twitched away from mine. “What's that got to do with it?”

But he knew as well as I did.

 

At my desk, my eyes slid past a recent photo of Jimmy and me climbing the steps of the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán. Instead, I reached for the silver-framed photo of Richard. Holding it, I could feel some of my anger and frustration seeping away. I could hear his voice, as I heard it so many times for so many years, “Easy does it, Henrie O, easy does it.”

Richard always counseled patience and restraint. At the same time, he enjoyed my volatility. It was Richard who gave me my nickname, saying I packed more surprises into a single day than O. Henry ever put in a short story.

What would Richard do? I sought my answer in the face which had meant the world to me.

I grinned. Richard loved that old newspaper saying, “Your mother says she loves you. Check it out.”

Check it out.

T
HE hallway outside
The Clarion
morgue hosts a row of vending machines. True to the spirit of the nineties, I didn't break for dinner. Instead, I retrieved an apple, a box of raisins, a bag of peanuts, and a can of orange juice. The juice tasted disagreeably metallic. I ate as I continued to work. It was a far cry from long-ago newsrooms, where shiny glazed doughnuts and asphalt-black coffee reigned supreme. Or shared honors with fifths of bourbon stashed in bottom desk drawers.

The Clarion
morgue isn't staffed after five. The silence was broken only once. A sports reporter thudded in, seeking the obituary file of an alumnus who had led the football team to a bowl championship in 1954. Otherwise, I had the place to myself. With the doors to the hall closed, it was as quiet—as a morgue.

The 1988 Rosen-Voss murders and the 1983 Murdoch acquittal were on computer. I had to dig among dusty bound ledgers for the 1976 coverage on the disappearance of Darryl Nugent, dean of students.

I started with the Rosen-Voss case, scrolling up the coverage of Sunday, April 17, 1988:

STUDENTS SHOT TO DEATH IN LOVERS' LANE

That was the lead story. But I read all the coverage, the sidebar features about Rosen and Voss, and the speculative comments of a University criminology professor. (“If I were the cops, I'd look for a rejected suitor or a jealous woman. Derry Hills isn't the Bronx. The odds of a random killing are next to none.”)

In later issues, I found the coverage of the two funerals, with stark photos of the bereaved and bewildered families, the reassurances by President Tucker that the Thorndyke campus was indeed safe for students, the daily progress reports by Lieutenant Urschel of the Derry Hills Police Department.

The stories hung on to page one for a week; inside, for several more weeks. But as the days of spring and the academic year dwindled, so did the coverage, until, finally, it was old news, the unsolved campus murders in the spring of '88.

I gleaned a few more facts from the follow-ups.

According to Gail Voss's roommate, Linda Lou Kelly, Rosen and Voss were unofficially engaged, but a wedding date hadn't been set.

Police announced Rosen and Voss had spent most of the evening at the Green Owl. The couple had been deep in conversation. “Laughing a lot,” a waitress recalled. “He kept raising a glass and saying, ‘Here's to Joe Smith,' and she'd smile and say something like ‘Joe's my guy.'”

I knew the Green Owl. It was just a block from Brandt Hall and was still one of the most popular hangouts for students and faculty, a combination restaurant, bar, and coffeehouse. Members of the English and philosophy faculties were especially likely to be found in the game-room area, around old oak tables with inlaid squares for checkers and chess.

On the final night of their lives, Rosen and Voss ate in one of the wooden booths at the far back. “They were regulars,” the waitress said.

But when I'd read all the stories, the bottom line was that the murder weapon was never found and no suspect in the murders was ever named.

The in-depth profiles pictured Howard Rosen as boisterous and outgoing, with a booming laugh and a penchant for practical jokes. Gail Voss was described as serious, intense, responsible. Both were superb students. Rosen had been named a Fulbright scholar and planned to spend the following year in Berlin, studying the subversion of the German press in the decade preceding World War II.

I studied their pictures.

Howard Rosen exuded the vitality of a buccaneer. In another age, he would have been at home in an elegant doublet and brandishing a sword. His wickedly merry eyes gleamed with deviltry, and his full, sensuous mouth stretched in an appealing grin. Any woman would love to smooth his thick dark curls. No sweet maiden would have been safe from his blandishments.

Gail Voss stared shyly into the camera. Smooth hair framed a heart-shaped face. Her lips curved in a sweet smile. She was the girl next door, your kid sister, Miss America.

Anger flickered within me.

Howard Rosen should be jumping to his feet at a press conference, his voice raised in demand, or straddling a chair at a coffeehouse, regaling fellow reporters with ambitious plans to climb a mountain or run a marathon.

Gail Voss should be hurrying to meet a deadline and, perhaps playing the dual role of many of today's young women, thinking about dinner and picking up the baby at day care.

They should not be moldering bones and desiccated flesh in corroding coffins.

I fished the last peanut from the bag and swiftly scrawled several questions beneath the heading
“Rosen-Voss.” Then I turned back to the computer, punched in “Candace Murdoch,” and pressed the search key.

The first story in what became the Murdoch case ran on Thursday, July 22, 1982:

CIVIC LEADER SLAIN AT HOME

In subsequent stories, suggestive facts emerged: Candace Murdoch was twenty-three years younger than her husband. It was his second marriage. She'd been a masseuse at his health club.

The family cook, Cordelia Winters, told police Mr. and Mrs. Murdoch had quarreled that evening over the death of Mrs. Murdoch's parakeet.

Candace Murdoch was arrested and charged with first-degree murder three weeks after her husband's death. She pleaded not guilty, claiming that at the time the shots were fired she was on the telephone. Murdoch claimed that a representative of a local charity had called, requesting that she place donated items on the front porch for pickup the next week. Murdoch said she couldn't remember the woman's name or the name of the charity because of all the excitement and turmoil attendant upon the murder of her husband. Murdoch issued an emotional plea for the caller to come forward and confirm the conversation.

The trial began in February of 1983. The prosecution contended that Murdoch had broken the neck of his wife's pet and placed it on her dinner plate that evening, and that they had quarreled bitterly. The prosecution claimed that Candace Murdoch took her husband's pistol from a drawer of his desk in the study and followed him to the garden, where
she shot him. Her fingerprints were found on the gun, and the white dress she wore that evening was snagged and grass-stained.

The lead story on February 10, 1983, had a three-column headline:

MYSTERY WITNESS COMES FORWARD, ALIBIS WIFE ACCUSED OF MURDER

The headline in next day's
Clarion
said it all:

CANDACE MURDOCH ACQUITTED

I only wrote one query on my pad: Angel Chavez?

It was half past six and I was tired. I don't work twelve-hour days anymore. I stood, stretched,
glanced at the bound volume of
The Clarion
for March 1976.

No, I had to finish tonight.

And that's when I heard shouts.

My response was instinctive, automatic. Over the years, covering wars, trials, and riots, I've heard every level of human expression, from deep anguish to desperate fear to demonic anger. I know emotion when I hear it.

As I hurried up the hall, a woman's voice rose to a screech. “Where's Dennis? Where the hell is he? Are they in his office?”

I reached the newsroom doorway.

Rita Duffy, the city editor's wife, stood in the center of the newsroom. Her appearance shocked me. Rita glories in the latest fashions, whatever they may be. But tonight she looked slovenly in a wrinkled red silk blouse and tight green slacks. And she wore no makeup, leaving her puffy face naked and splotchy. She shoved Duffy's empty chair hard against his desk. The sound caromed across the room.

Startled faces turned toward her. Only a handful of students remained in the newsroom. It was close to the final deadline and most of the stories were in. Only late-breaking news would be used now.

Eric March, the student deputy city editor, stopped chewing a mouthful of Cheetos. “Wait a minute, Mrs. Duffy,” he mumbled, then swallowed. “Take it easy. Okay? Duffy took the evening off. I'm putting the paper to bed.” Eric had a broken nose from intramural touch football, a smear of Cheetos orange on his chin, and a look of exquisite embarrassment. The young editor's job description didn't include handling hysterical wives. He shoved
back his chair and stood, still holding the bag of cheese puffs.