Irish Alibi (14 page)

“Could O'Toole have slipped away from the condo without Quintin Kelly noticing?”

“Kelly thinks so. He was out like a light and is just guessing, but he's right. It's possible.”

“Both men are being held as material witnesses. Kelly has hired Crumley to represent him. O'Toole's newspaper is sending a lawyer from Atlanta.”

“So what do you plan to do, Jimmy?”

“Arrest Magnus O'Toole on suspicion of murder.”

“Do you think you can get a conviction?”

“I just arrest them, Roger. The prosecutor tries them.”

Roger clapped his hands on his knees and looked around brightly. “Who would like popcorn?”

12

Larry Douglas couldn't believe it when Crenshaw, the head of campus security, told him that the university was dropping all charges against Malcolm Kincade.

“He stole a truck! He pulled down a statue!”

“He moved a truck from one place on campus to another. How does that count as theft?”

“You should talk to Jackson.”

“The university will compensate him for the inconvenience.”

“Is pulling down a statue an inconvenience, too?”

“If the university says it is.”

It was typical of Crenshaw that he welcomed the removal of a problem, by whatever means. He had put in hard years as a member of the Elkhart police and had taken this job as a species of retirement. The antics and misdemeanors on campus never rose to the level of the awful things he had once faced, and he was unlikely to think that parking violations really mattered. Larry's initial assignment had been to ride a bicycle around campus wearing a funny helmet, slapping violation notices under the window wipers of misparked cars. His zeal had met with reprimands rather than praise.

“Lay off, Douglas. What do you care where people park?”

Laura agreed, suggesting he just enjoy the campus as he wheeled around it.

Finally, he had been transferred to the office and put in charge of maintenance. “The motor pool,” Crenshaw had chortled, apparently recalling his days in the army.

The bad part of being in the office was that Laura was there. To call her possessive was like calling a lioness ferocious; she was given to little displays of claiming affection lest anyone not notice the solitaire Larry had reluctantly bought her. This prompted Henry Grabowski to extoll the joys and freedom of the single life. “Don't let her trap you, Larry.”

Henry had alienated the affections of Kimberley in the coroner's office after Larry had gotten onto a fast track with her by reciting poetry. It had been his shame, but it became his boast, that he loved poetry rather more than most. He had memorized poems since he was a kid, and held Kimberley enraptured.

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

“What is that from?”

“‘Renasence.' Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“It's beautiful.”

“She was just a kid when she wrote it.”

Kimberley had asked Larry if he wrote poetry. He put a finger to his lips and closed his eyes. Well, he tried. After Kimberley ditched him for Henry, who had topped him by reciting in French and Italian, Larry labored over some lines.

I miss the mirror of your eyes

I long to hear again your sighs

But he couldn't go on. It broke his heart to remind himself of his broken heart. Besides, Laura found the lines and thought they were addressed to her.

“Take her,” Henry had said of Kimberley. “She reminds me of a watch my uncle bought in Naples. All face and no works.”

He sounded like St. James. Visiting the morgue and seeing Kimberley in the flesh was worse than trying to write poetry. She was as cold as one of the bodies downstairs. His excuse for going there again was to talk to Feeney about the death of Madeline O'Toole.

“You still got the body?”

“They just arraigned O'Toole this morning.”

“The husband.”

“Yes, and that raises the question of who claims her when the body is released.”

“So the husband did it?”

“That's what they say.” Feeney's voice was heavy with skepticism. The assistant coroner whiled away the boredom of his days by reading the reports his father had smuggled to him from the detective division.

“You should read poetry,” Larry said, raising his voice in the hope that Kimberley in the next office would overhear and remember the days of yore.

“My guess is the student Kincade.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He's the last one who saw her alive, for one thing.”

Larry sat forward. Kincade. The student who had got off scot-free after stealing a tow truck and toppling the statue of Father Corby, to say nothing of chewing up the lawn in front of Corby Hall when he backed the tow truck across it to the statue.

“What's his motive?”

“The gonads of the young, Larry. I shouldn't have to explain that to you.” Feeney's eyes slid toward the outer office, where Kimberley was moving rhythmically about to whatever tune her iPod filled her ears with.

Feeney went on. The boy, still smitten, returns on Sunday morning, to take his lady love to Mass. A perfect ploy. Afterward, they return to the motel suite. They have drinks brought from the bar.

“How do you know that?”

“Phyllis Brickhouse was a classmate of mine at St. Joe's. Her name was Llewellyn then. She brought them drinks. Love and alcohol, Larry. I could tell you stories. Say he misreads her behavior, thinking she shares his passion. He advances, she resists; in a cloud of passion, and angry now, he starts to strangle her, then settles for a pillow, pressing it to that lovely face and snuffing out her life.”

“You should write fiction.”

“I do the next best thing. What else is an autopsy report but the final chapter of a life?”

Larry's mind was awhirl with thought. A minute later, he rose, said good-bye distractedly, and walked through the outer office without even noticing Kimberley. On the drive to the campus, his thoughts jelled. The police were pursuing an obvious spoor, the aggrieved husband. Larry was not criticizing, you understand; he considered Jimmy Stewart as, if not a friend, a mentor. He dreamt of becoming his colleague. All he needed was some political clout to get onto the force. If he established the validity of Feeney's guess, the assistant coroner could prove to be Larry's way to becoming a real cop. How often had he listened to Feeney's tale of woe, his career as a pathologist broken on the rock of his devotion to his father? His father was the protégé of the notorious Casey, the king of local political patronage. Larry realized that he was humming, and without the aid of an iPod.

At his desk, he got out the campus phone directory and looked up Kincade. There were three Kincades, Sarah, Malcolm, and Eugene. Well, it couldn't be Sarah. The Kincade boys had the same room number in Alumni Hall.

“Where are you going?” Laura asked.

“Out to give a few traffic tickets.” He pushed through the door and into the bracing autumn air.

Across the road, Flanner lifted its eleven stories, blotting out a view of the Hesburgh Library. Catty-corner, at the firehouse, they were hosing down a gleaming hook and ladder. Professionals. Larry felt like raising his hand and casting a Corby-like benediction on them. He, too, was a professional. The one serious member of campus security. It was he who had faced the shamefaced indignation of Jackson. What must Jackson think, having the theft of his car regarded as a forgivable prank?

Crossing the campus in the direction of Alumni, trying not to be bumped off the walk by students, he felt his proletarian resentment rise. These kids were on the path to affluence and security, plucked from the masses by the accident of their SAT scores to vegetate here four years before joining the ranks of the elite.

Larry's own SATs had excited Torsion, his advisor at St. Joe's, a few years ago. He urged Larry to pursue his studies after high school. “Apply at Notre Dame.”

“I couldn't afford it.”

Torsion waved this away as an irrelevancy. “There are scholarships. Anyway, you hedge your bets by applying at IU and Purdue as well.”

No one in Larry's family had gone beyond high school; some had not even finished that. His grades and scores were a fluke they did not understand. Take your high school diploma and get a job with a pension as the end of the rainbow, they advised. Larry had applied at Notre Dame—for a job, and had landed in campus security.

When Henry Grabowski came on the job, he had a kindred spirit. Henry was brilliant. Henry had applied to Notre Dame and been turned down. He knew he was smarter than half the student body. He sat in on classes; he read everything; he could recite French and Italian poetry. Larry had made the mistake of introducing him to Kimberley. She had fallen for him like a ripe peach, the sensibilities raised by Larry now addressed by the polylingual Henry. And Larry, like an idiot, had turned to the smothering embrace of Laura for consolation. Like Boethius, he saw it as a death sentence.

As he neared Alumni, he wondered if he should have phoned first. But Laura would have overheard, and he wanted to operate solo. Now it occurred to him that he could knock on the Kincade door and get no answer, this long walk a waste of effort. No. If there was no answer to his knock, he would telephone. If the telephone was not answered, he would make use of the technique Henry had taught him to tap into campus records.

It was the last possibility that he was driven to. He left Alumni and crossed to the law school, sought out a computer cluster, and in a minute had called up the list of the classes Malcolm Kincade was registered for. He checked Eugene Kincade as well and found an identical list of courses. But when he called up one of the courses, he found only one Kincade listed. He pulled up the other courses—with the same result, except that sometimes the Kincade was E. and sometimes M.

“How did you find that out?” Malcolm Kincade asked when Larry finally tracked him down in Legends. The student bar was aroar with noise, television sets adding to the din. The life of the mind.

“It's a matter of record.”

“I thought records were private.”

“That's why I'm investigating.”

“I don't get it.”

“We're worried about hackers.”

“So you became one.” But the kid found it more amusing than threatening. He explained the way he and his brother registered. “This way only one of us has to go to class. We take turns.”

“But then only one of you can get a grade.”

Kincade looked at him with a smile. “Maybe we're the hackers you're after. We put both our names down before the final.”

They had another beer. Larry liked the kid. At least he treated him as an equal. It was the scratch on Kincade's face that interested Larry. “You realize that you're incriminating yourself, don't you?”

“Not really. Who do you think I am?”

“Malcolm Kincade.”

“Not Eugene?”

“Are you Eugene?”

“I'll never tell.”

“Where did you get that scratch?”

“From a Georgia Tech cheerleader.”

“Not Madeline O'Toole?”

The kid seemed surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Where did you go after you pulled down Father Corby's statue last Saturday?”

Kincade was no longer amused. Within minutes, he excused himself, leaving half a glass of beer.

Larry finished his, thinking. He was excited. He knew he was on to something. What if he couldn't tell one Kincade from another? That scratch was better than a proper name. He decided that it was time for him to have a talk with Jimmy Stewart, cop to cop. But first he told Henry.

“Cop
ad
cop
loquitur
?”

“I don't know Italian.”

Henry's reaction made him hesitate. Maybe he should learn more before he spoke to Stewart. It was then that he had the idea of speaking to Grafton, the reporter.

13

“You Phyllis Brickhouse?”

Phyllis looked at the guy across the bar. He looked like a boy cop. She had talked enough to the police lately. She told him so.

“I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“I was talking to Sean Feeney the other day. Remember him?”

“We were in school together.”

“He's now assistant coroner.”

“I know. I voted for his opponent.” Phyllis looked to left and to right, then leaned across the bar. “The first time I ever voted Republican. I didn't want Sean wasting himself in such a job.”

“He's doing it for his father.”

“I know that. His father isn't worth it.”

“Shame on you.”

“Oh, maybe you're right. But he was voted the boy most likely to succeed when we graduated. How could I vote for him as assistant coroner?”

“We're working together on the Madeline O'Toole case.”

“I've told you all I know.”

“My interest is the student who was here that night. A kid named Kincade.”

“What a hunk. If I were a few years younger…” Her voice drifted off. She looked speculatively at Larry. “How old are you?”

“In or out of uniform?”

“Don't be nasty. Care for another beer?” The cop was no hunk, but this was a slow night. After all the excitement of police swarming all over the place, the motel seemed suddenly dull. “I'll come around and join you.”

“Don't you have to take orders?”

“They can yell if they need me.” There were only two or three others in the bar. Phyllis took him to the table that the dead woman had occupied Saturday night. “Of course, she was still alive then.” Phyllis sat. He sat. “What's your name, Officer?”

“Larry Douglas.”

“You work nights or what?”

“I'm off duty.”

“Give me an hour and I will be, too.”