Dante's Dilemma (25 page)

“Speaking of which, what
do
the typed reports say?”

Not much, as it turned out. Except that, according to the neighbors, there were several people in and out of Westlake's home on the night he was killed, though no one had followed up on their identity. There was also this tidbit about Westlake's daughter, Olivia:

May 16, 11:30 a.m. Visited W's daughter at her dormitory at 5801 South Ellis to notify of suspected homicide. Residential Advisor present. Young lady very distraught, asking after her mother. Daughter cannot say who may have killed father. Believes possible victim of hate crime . . .

“That's odd,” Hallie said immediately. “Her first thoughts were for her mother. I thought the two didn't get along.”

I remembered that, too. “And according to the news, Olivia didn't show up for a single day of trial.”

“That's right,” Hallie said. “She wasn't even interested enough to be there for the verdict. If it had been my mother, you would have had to put me in chains to keep me away.”

“Did you ever try to contact her?”

“Rachel asked me not to. And I admit I didn't see any reason to before now. Do you think she knows something?”

“No idea.” It suddenly struck me as significant that in all the hoopla, no one had heard a peep out of Olivia. Not even the press had managed to hound a statement out of her. I thought back on the night of the faculty party with Candace. What was it her friend Amanda had said about the girl? That she was shy and rarely spoke up in class. Maybe that explained it. Either way, it was high time someone had a word with Rachel's daughter.

Hallie agreed it was worth following up on. “As well as talking to those neighbors. I want to know if any of them saw or heard something that didn't make it into the file.”

That settled, we turned to the ME's report, which as usual was dry and filled with detail. Hallie read from a perch on the coffee table while I lounged with my back to the sofa, listening to the steady cadence of her speech above the comforting hiss of the fire. It felt sublime to be back in her orbit again, even if I had to undergo thorough humiliation to get there.

“
Subject is a well-developed white male, approximately one hundred sixty pounds in weight . . .
”

Before long, I was growing impatient with all the tiresome jargon. “Skip to the cause of death.”

“
. . . immediate cause of death, blunt force trauma to the head with cerebral contusion, subarachnoid and subdural hemorrhage . . .
”

“Which means that he died from a skull fracture,” I said irritably. “Why doesn't it just say that?”

“
Localized injuries, including laceration above the right orbital cavity, suggest decedent struck with a heavy metal object between eighteen and twenty-two centimeters in diameter. Blood samples taken from fireplace poker found at scene will be tested to confirm . . .
”

Several pages and much hemming and hawing later, the report moved on to postmortem injuries.

“
Severing of the genitalia produced massive bleeding
in situ,
approximately 1300 c.m. based on recovered samples. Using regression analysis it was determined that the interval between time of death and the removal of the decedent's penis and testes was no longer than thirty minutes based on the formula established by Spencer-Fleming: amount of postmortem bleeding (cm = .9571 × time since death (h) + 626.659 . . .
”

“There,” Hallie said. “That's what I was saying before about timing.”

I nodded, thinking. As a rule, when the body dies, the heart stops pumping blood to the arteries, so that injuries inflicted on a corpse produce little bleeding. The ME's report indicated that enough blood was found where Westlake fell to suggest his genitals were removed within a short time after his death. The conclusion seemed solid, but I was still mindful of Brad's remark to his wife about the body being moved. And there was something else I wanted to know.

“Hallie, see if says anything in there about lividity.”

“Remind me again what that is.”

“It's a medical term that comes from the Latin word for
black and blue
. After the heart stops beating, gravity forces blood to settle into the lowest areas of the body, producing patches of purplish discoloration under the skin, except for places where the body was in contact with a hard surface, where the skin remains white, or blanched. Eventually the blanching becomes fixed. It's one way a coroner can tell if a body's been moved postmortem.”

“All right,” Hallie said. “But everyone knows Westlake's body was moved after his death. Why would it be significant?”

“I don't know. But Brad evidently thought it was, so humor me.”

“OK, I'm looking.” Hallie flipped silently through a few pages. “Here we go,” she said at last.

“
Livor mortis blanching most noticeable in the decedent's buttocks, at the backs of the calves, and to a much lesser extent, along the shoulder blades . . .
”

As would be expected if Westlake's corpse had been removed from his house shortly after death and then spent the night on its back in the university quad. There didn't seem to be anything there, either. What on earth had caught Brad's eye?

Just then, a log collapsed in the fireplace with a muted crash.

“Do you want me to put another one on?” I asked, half stirring from my place on the sofa.

“No, I'll get it,” Hallie said.

As she stood and moved past me around the coffee table, a piece of her robe slipped and grazed my leg. On top of the alcohol I'd consumed, the thought of what her movement may have exposed—and that I couldn't see—sent blood rushing into my groin. I felt my penis begin to stiffen and . . .

“That's it!” I almost shouted, sitting up straight and groping for a pillow.

“What is?” Hallie said, turning around from the fire.

I hastily plopped the pillow over my midsection. “That's what Brad meant about the body being moved!”

“At the risk of being boringly repetitive, so what?

My erection had subsided almost as quickly as it had started, so I stood and moved into the center of the room. “Here, I'll show you. Come over here and hit me on the head with something. Preferably not a fireplace tool.”

“Are you sure? It sounds like you could use some sense knocked into you.”

I glared at her. “Use my cane. It's over by the door.”

When Hallie returned, I asked her to stand a foot or two away from me. “Now, pretend to smash me over the head with the handle right here.” I pointed at my temple above the right eyebrow. Hallie complied—using, I thought, a little more force than was strictly necessary—and I mimicked staggering back. I got down to the carpet and assumed more or less the same position I had occupied on the sofa minutes earlier, stretched out with my feet in front of me and my back on the floor. To add even more verisimilitude, I lolled my head to one side like a dead man.

Hallie started to giggle. “Don't tell me I'm now supposed to go and fetch a carving knife from the kitchen.”

“I'm not that insane.”

Her giggling degenerated into full-blown mirth. “Hell, I know this isn't supposed to be funny, but you look so . . . authentic.”

“Probably the glassy-eyed stare. Now, let's assume I've been lying here dead for several hours. Based on what I told you about gravity, where would you expect the blood in my body to settle?”

“Here, beneath your shoulders. And here,” she said, nudging my buttock with a toe. “On both sides. And here too, under your calves. Except it wouldn't, because they're all touching the floor. So they'd be white in appearance, not purple.”

“That's right. Now go back and read what it says in the ME's report.”

She did:

“
Livor mortis blanching most noticeable in the decedent's buttocks, at the backs of the calves, and to a much lesser extent, along the shoulder blades . . .”

“. . . ‘to a much lesser extent along the shoulder blades,'” I repeated after her. “Now, looking at me right now, why do you suppose that is?”

“I don't know,” Hallie said thoughtfully. “They should all look the same.”

“Uh-huh. Unless this isn't how I landed after you struck me. Let's do it one more time.”

We repeated the experiment. Only this time, instead of falling to the floor, I reached over and found the wall next to the fireplace and, placing my back to it, slid to the floor in a seated position, like a drunken marionette with my legs splayed out before me. “Where is the blood going to pool now?”

“In your . . .” Hallie stopped. I'd never known her to be shy about naming body parts, but that part of my anatomy was clearly a dicey subject—for both of us.

“That's right,” I said, patting my fly innocuously. “So if you came upon my corpse and opened me up, uh, . . . here, a lot of blood might escape my body, even if it was more than half an hour after my death. That's why it's important that the body was moved. Because it was moved and everybody knew it from the beginning, nobody paid any attention to where the discoloration was strongest.”

Hallie caught on quickly. “And, therefore, nobody ever thought to ask what position Westlake's body was in before it was moved. But if you're right about this, he could have been dead for longer than the ME thought and that means—”

I filled in the rest. “—Rachel might not be the real killer after all.”

TWENTY-THREE

It was well past midnight when we finally finished scouring the case file and Hallie was busy laying out a plan of attack.

“We need to find out anyone, besides Rachel, who might have wanted to see Westlake dead.”

“That won't be easy,” I said. “We're probably talking dozens.”

“True. But most murder victims are killed by someone close to them. The problem will be getting past the gates of the ivory tower. When it's a scandal like this, institutions always close ranks. I can picture the administration breathing a huge sigh of relief when the police arrested Rachel. They're not going to welcome us showing up on campus and trying to reopen the case.” She let out a sigh. “I'll have to call around to my partners tomorrow. One of them has to have donated to the alumni fund this year—enough of a contribution to get us past the door. I give every year too, but not the pots of gold that would earn us an entrée.”

I hesitated before volunteering that I might know a faster way in.

“OK, let's have it.”

I explained about Candace and the faculty party in December, leaving out my unfortunate encounter with the drunken head of campus counseling and whose bed I'd ended up in that night.

Hallie wasn't fooled in the slightest.

“This Candace is your neighbor?”

“A little more than that,” I said, opting for a modest degree of candor.

Hallie let a long minute pass. When she spoke again, it was with strained stoicism. “I guess I couldn't have expected anything else. I mean, I was the one who—”

I had an overpowering urge to jump across the several feet that separated us and . . . well, ravage her wouldn't be putting it too strongly. But something I couldn't explain held me back.

“Once you offered to clear the air,” I said. “About us. There's nothing I want more. But after we're done with this mess. After we've done what we can for Rachel.”

Hallie indicated her assent by reaching over and taking my hand. It burned like a bonfire in mine and almost caused me to chuck my good intentions. I took a deep breath. “I can't let you drive me home tonight, but would it be OK if I slept here—on the couch?”

It was the most gentlemanly thing I had ever done.

And one I would later earnestly come to regret.

The next morning found us on our way to Hyde Park after a brief stop at my place for a change of clothing and a phone call to Candace. Candace, bless her generous heart, had been happy to be of assistance, and we were on our way to meet with Erik Blum, the head of the Sociology Department I'd met at the party, who agreed to grant us an interview in between classes and meetings.

Despite the low mercury reading, the sun was shining like polished steel as we sped down a post–rush hour Lake Shore Drive. While she steered us in her vintage MG, Hallie kept up a running commentary on the scenery, a habit left over from her childhood, when she'd been inseparable from her brother Geraldo, twelve months her senior and blind since birth. In those days, they'd traveled all over the city together, not because Gerry needed the help but because, being so close in age, they were almost like twins. Gerry's nickname for her was Nancy Drew, and it had stuck with her into adulthood. As a trial lawyer, she was renowned for leaving no investigative stone unturned, a reputation that only underscored her chagrin at having dropped the ball—as she kept saying—on the Lazarus case.