‘You heard what Reagan said when his wife came to the hospital?’
‘Some line from a movie . . . something about forgetting to duck, right?’
Don Carvalho nodded. ‘Honey, I forgot to duck. That’s what he said. Why would he say that, John? He forgot? Surely you only forget what you’ve already been told to do.’
‘He was told to duck?’ I asked.
‘I’m not saying that,’ Don said. ‘I don’t have an opinion about this one way or the other. Specific events mean nothing. Reagan’s assassination attempt will be forgotten in five years’ time. It’s not the attempt to kill him that means something, it’s that someone could even get that close that’s really the disconcerting fact here.’
‘But what about Kennedy?’ I asked. ‘Kennedy said that anyone could be killed if the killer was prepared to lay down his own life.’
Don laughed. ‘Of course he said that. Kennedy said a lot of things. Doesn’t mean that they were true. Kennedy was the golden boy, the one to save the nation, and then he became a pain in the ass just like the rest of them. They created him, just as they’d created every single one before him, and when they had him they realized it had been a terrible, terrible mistake.’
‘What does Lawrence Matthews call it? The sacred monster?’
Carvalho smiled. ‘Better believe it, my friend . . . you better fucking believe it.’
FORTY-THREE
Miller and Roth drove to the college campus, learned that Robey had left some minutes before their arrival, and it was at that point that they decided to separate.
‘McCullough,’ Roth said. ‘That’s what I want. Young said that he replaced the original guy assigned to the Seventh. Well, he must have come from somewhere. He must be in the system—’
‘Thing I’m learning on this one is that nothing is what it’s supposed to be,’ Miller replied.
‘Regardless, the guy was a cop. There’s the records we found at the Fourth when we spoke to Gerrity . . . at least that’s a start.’
‘See if you can’t find out what the earlier drug bust was all about, the one from September,’ Miller said. ‘The one where the stuff went missing from evidence.’
‘I’ll find whatever I can,’ Roth said. ‘So - Robey’s apartment next?’
They reached the corner of Franklin and New Jersey and pulled over. ‘Going to walk the last block,’ Miller said.
‘And if he’s not there?’
‘I’ll find a coffee shop or something. I’ll wait half an hour or so and then go back to the apartment.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘We don’t have anything concrete. Six days since Catherine Sheridan was murdered, right?’ Miller shook his head slowly. ‘We haven’t even gotten to Natasha’s apartment, let alone the other victims’ houses for God’s sake. Do whatever you can on McCullough, and see if you can’t get Metz and Oliver to get some of these records together on the phones and the internet usage.’
He got out of the car. Roth came around the front and got in the driver’s side.
Miller buried his hands in his pockets, watched until Roth drove out of sight, and then started walking to Robey’s apartment.
‘Detective Miller,’ John Robey said matter-of-factly when he opened the door.
‘Professor Robey. Have some more questions if you don’t mind?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact I’m rather busy marking some test papers. Could this wait for another day?’
Miller took a deep breath. He felt the weight of the brush in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry, no, it really can’t wait. I am following numerous lines of investigation relating to these murders, and there’s certain questions I have that I think only you will be able to answer for me.’
There was a momentary flash of exasperation in Robey’s expression, and then he stepped back, opened the door, asked Miller to come in.
‘You want some coffee or something?’ Robey asked.
‘Yes . . . please, that would be good.’
‘How d’you take it?’
‘Cream, no sugar,’ he said. ‘And could I possibly use your bathroom again?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You know where it is.’
Miller made his way down the corridor, entered the bathroom, ensured the door was locked securely behind him, and then carefully withdrew the plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket. He waited a couple of minutes, and then he depressed the flush lever, used the sound of rushing water to obscure the rustling of the bag as he took out the hairbrush, opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, and replaced it precisely where he’d found it. He folded the bag neatly, tucked it into his pocket, and then turned on the faucet as if washing his hands.
The sense of relief he felt as he stepped back into Robey’s front room was immense. He knew how utterly reckless and ill-considered his action had been. He could not bear to think what might have happened had Lassiter or Nanci Cohen learned of what he’d done.
‘Your coffee,’ Robey said, and indicated a cup on the low table centering the room.
They sat in facing chairs, Robey with his back to the window.
‘So you have some further questions, detective.’
‘I do, yes. Last time we spoke . . . last time I was here, you were talking about Nicaragua. You talked about a lot of things . . . some of them I don’t remember too well.’
‘You were very tired I think,’ Robey said. ‘I myself have spent a little time thinking about who you might believe I am . . .’
Miller smiled.
‘You find that amusing?’
‘Amusing? No, not amusing. People don’t just smile when something is funny. They smile when they recognize a truth where it wasn’t expected.’
‘And what truth did you recognize?’
‘That we spend so much of our time concerning ourselves with what others might think of us.’
‘My interest wasn’t prompted by vanity or egotism, detective. Perhaps self-preservation . . .’
‘Self-preservation?’
‘Everything we do is driven by self-preservation, and if not self-preservation then the preservation of something that we consider is ours. Your killer here, he does these things because something is threatened perhaps.’
‘An individual who does these things must be insane. He must be, or he wouldn’t do them.’
‘By whose standards?’
‘Ours,’ Miller said. ‘Society’s standards. The rules and regulations we have agreed to.’
‘And that is the standard against which you can consider someone insane?’ Robey asked. ‘You forget so easily the discussion we had last time you were here?’
‘About what? About Nicaragua? About the cocaine that was smuggled into the U.S.?’
‘Is being smuggled, detective. This still continues today. Would you not consider that such things were the work of insane men?’
‘Of course I would . . . certainly by men who believe money has greater worth than human life.’
‘You have to look at the bigger picture,’ Robey said.
‘And that would be?’
‘I’m sorry to harp on about Nicaragua,’ Robey said, ‘but it’s a subject that’s close to my heart—’
‘Why is that, Professor Robey, why is Nicaragua so close to your heart?’
‘I lost a friend some years ago. He was a good man, a colleague of mine. He found out that his son was a drug addict. He came to me, he asked me for help, but I knew nothing about such things. The son overdosed before his father could do anything effective to help him, and the loss hit him so hard he never recovered. Four months after the death of his son he committed suicide. He was a truly exceptional scholar, and I can honestly say that I have never felt so impotent in my life.’
‘And how does this connect to Nicaragua?’
‘That’s where he was from. At least that’s where his family was from. He managed to get out before Reagan’s war really tore the country apart, but his son stayed behind, fought with the Contras for a while, and that’s where he first became acquainted with drugs.’
‘I am sorry, professor—’
Robey waved his hand nonchalantly. ‘Like I said, it was all of twenty years ago. The experience taught me something however. It taught me that pretending not to see such things does not lessen their effect. In fact, it has been said that the less one faces something the greater the chance it has to master you . . . like your little difficulty some months ago.’
Miller was aware of how obviously his eyes widened.
Robey started laughing. ‘I checked you out as well,’ he said. ‘This little situation you had with the pimp and the hooker. Brandon Thomas, right? And Jennifer Irving? That whole fiasco was another beautiful example of something becoming what someone else wanted it to be.’
Miller was still taken aback. ‘I don’t understand—’
‘What? You don’t understand what exactly? How that situation was made to appear as if it was something else? A simple matter of questioning a potential witness becomes a question of coercion, of vested interest, of whether or not a police detective is corrupt. Were you involved with her? Did the detective fuck the hooker? Was the argument with her pimp because the pimp saw that the hooker had fallen in love with the cop and might leave him behind? Was it jealousy? Was the pimp fucking the hooker, or was he beating on her when the detective came calling? Did they fight, and was it a fair fight, and did the detective defend himself? Or did he pull his gun and walk that pimp out to the stairwell, and then push him down the stairs? What really happened that day?’
Miller opened his mouth to speak but Robey interjected.
‘I’m not asking you, detective,’ he said. ‘It really isn’t any of my business whether you killed the pimp or not. To tell you the truth, if you did it would be of no concern to me whatsoever. The issue here is not whether you killed the pimp intentionally. The question is how the newspapers made it a question of race. The hooker was black, the pimp was a mulatto with dreadlocks. He had a rap sheet. He had been arrested four times in the previous year for aggravated assault. He probably deserved to die. Faced with a man like that in their back yard . . . Jesus, any one of those liberal assholes who bleated endlessly about how you should have been hauled before the grand jury would have prayed for someone like you to blow the guy into the neighbor’s swimming pool . . .’ Robey paused. He was almost breathless.
Miller was watching him intently, the way he emphatically stated everything as if it was so important. The man was driven, somehow compelling.
‘This is the world within which we live, Detective Miller, and this is the world we have created for ourselves, and though you might have a hundred thousand questions for me the truth of the matter is that you should not be looking so narrowly at what has taken place.’
‘You say these things, Professor Robey,’ Miller said. ‘You say these things as if you have some idea of what’s happening here . . . like you know things that I don’t. And I’m listening to what you’re saying, and even as the words are coming out of your mouth I’m wondering what the hell it is that you know.’
‘I know almost nothing, Detective Miller, only what I have read in the newspapers.’
Miller felt angry, infuriated. He wanted to grab Robey by the throat and shake him. He wanted to hold him still and press a gun to his forehead and ask him how, if he knew nothing, if he only knew what he’d read in the papers . . . then how the fuck did Catherine Sheridan’s hair wind up in a brush in his bathroom?
But he did not ask this. Robert Miller did not take out his gun, nor did he raise his voice, nor did he grab Professor John Robey by the throat and push him against the wall. Robert Miller leaned back in the chair.
‘I believe you are being too patient, detective.’
‘Too patient . . . what the hell are you talking about, too patient?’
‘All these things I’ve talked about . . . about Nicaragua, about the cocaine wars that went on back then—’
Miller raised his hand. ‘This is somewhere we are not going.’
‘Not going? What d’you mean, not going? It is already somewhere we have been, detective. This is the sacred monster you are looking for . . . this is the thing you are finding it so hard to face. You are looking for a man, and what you need to be looking for is a monster that men have created.’
‘If you have something to tell me then tell me, professor—’
‘I believe that there is something you have to tell me, detective.’
Miller thought to respond, and then he stopped dead in his tracks. Robey looked at him with such knowing certainty that Miller felt tension crawl along his spine and grip the back of his neck. He thought of the illegal removal of evidence, of soliciting the help of Marilyn Hemmings, of implicating and involving a colleague in a felony, of how the papers would view it, of the photograph in the Globe, and how they would run that picture over and over again . . . Assistant Coroner Marilyn Hemmings and Detective Robert Miller, now appearing before an Internal Affairs enquiry, making statements before the Grand Jury regarding whether they had conspired to implicate respected author and Mount Vernon College Professor of Literature, John Robey . . . hell, if they could steal something from such a man’s house, then wasn’t it possible that they planted the hair of the dead woman? The dead woman was right there in the coroner’s freezer. It could not have been easier. Take some of her hair, wind it between the bristles, and suddenly they have incriminating evidence. How convenient. How perfect. People capable of doing such things were evidently more than capable of falsifying autopsy documentation. Did the mulatto pimp fall or was he pushed? The exonerated detective now looks like an altogether different type of man, and his accomplice, the beautiful and dangerous assistant coroner . . . ?
Miller closed his eyes for a moment. He felt something, but for a moment it was difficult to identify it as fear. For so long he had pretended that these events had not touched him, could not touch him, but every time he closed his eyes he saw the image of Jennifer Irving, and then beside it, almost as if those images were related, was the image of Natasha Joyce, the way she’d been found lying there on her bed, the sheer brutality inflicted upon her . . .