Frameshift (15 page)

Pierre knew where to find any biology journal on campus, but he had no idea which of UCB’s libraries would have things like
Time
and
National Review
. He wanted to see the pictures of Demjanjuk, both as he appeared today and, more importantly, the old photos from which he’d been misidentified as Ivan. Joan Dawson seemed to know just about everything there was to know about the university; she’d doubtless know where he could find those magazines. Pierre left his lab and headed down to the HGC general office.

He stopped short on the threshold. Burian Klimus was in there, getting his mail out of the cubbyhole with his name on it just inside the door.

From the back, Pierre could see where Klimus’s ears joined his head.

There were white creases there. Were they scars? Or did every old person have creases like that?

“Good morning, sir,” said Pierre, coming into the office.

Klimus turned and looked at Pierre. The dark brown eyes, the thin lips — was this the face of evil? Could this be the man who had killed so many people?

“Tardivel,” Klimus said, by way of greeting.

Pierre found himself staring at the man. He shook his head slightly. “Is Joan in?”

“No.”

Pierre glanced at the clock above the door and frowned. Then a thought struck him. “By the way, sir, I ran into someone you might know a couple of months ago — a Mr. Meyer.”

“Jacob Meyer? That moneygrubbing little prick. He’s no friend of mine.”

Pierre was taken aback — that sure sounded like an anti-Semitic comment, precisely the kind a Nazi would make without thinking… unless, of course, this Jacob Meyer fellow really did happen to be a moneygrubbing little prick. “Uh, no, this fellow’s name was Avi Meyer.”

Klimus shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

Pierre blinked. “Guy about this high?” He held his hand at the height of his Adam’s apple. “Shaggy eyebrows? Looks like a bulldog?”

“No.”

Pierre frowned, then looked again at the clock. “Joan should have been in three hours ago.”

Klimus opened an envelope with his finger.

“Wouldn’t she have told you if she had an appointment?”

Klimus shrugged.

“She’s a diabetic. She lives alone.”

The old man was reading the letter he’d taken from the envelope. He made no reply.

“Do we have her number?” asked Pierre.

“Somewhere, I suppose,” said Klimus, “but I have no idea where.”

Pierre looked around for a phone book. He found one on the bottom shelf of a low-rise bookcase behind Joan’s desk and began flipping through it. “There’s no J. Dawson listed.”

“Maybe it is still under her late husband’s name,” said Klimus.

“Which was… ?”

Klimus waved the letter he was holding. “Bud, I think.”

“There’s no B. Dawson, either.”

Klimus’s old throat made a rough noise. “No one’s first name is really Bud.”

“A nickname, eh? What for?”

“William, usually.”

“There’s a W. P. Dawson on Delbert.”

Klimus made no reply. Pierre dialed the phone. An answering machine came on. “It’s a machine,” said Pierre, “but it’s Joan’s voice, and — Hello, Joan. This is Pierre Tardivel at LBNL. I’m just calling to see if you’re all right. It’s now almost one, and we’re just a bit worried about you. If you’re in, could you pick up the phone?” He waited for about thirty seconds, then hung up. Pierre chewed his lower lip. “Delbert. That’s not too far, is it?”

Klimus shook his head. “About five miles.” Pierre looked at the clock again. An elderly diabetic, living alone. If she was having an insulin reaction…

“I think I’m going to take a swing by her place.”

Klimus said nothing.

Pierre pulled up Joan’s driveway. Something amiss about the house, though: the porch light was still on, even though it was now well into the afternoon. He walked up to the front door. A morning paper, the
San Francisco Chronicle
, was still on the stoop. Pierre rang the doorbell and waited for a response, tapping his foot. Nothing. He tried again. Still no answer.

Pierre exhaled noisily, unsure what to do. He looked around. There were several large stones in the small flower bed in front of the house. He lifted each of them up, looking for a hidden key — but all he found was a large slate gray salamander, another thing about Berkeley he’d yet to get used to. He hefted the largest stone, thought about using it to break the frosted entryway window, but didn’t want to go to extremes…

He walked down the wide stretch of lawn between this house and the one adjacent to it, feeling enormously self-conscious. There was a picket fence, mostly covered with peeling white paint, between the front yard and the back. Part of the fence was a gate, and Pierre lifted the rusting catch, swung it open, and made his way into the backyard, most of which was given over to well-tended vegetable gardens. The rear part of the house had small windows and a sliding glass door overlooking the backyard.

Pierre moved up to the first window and pressed his face against the glass, boxing his eyes against the reflected sky with his hands. Nothing. Just a small wallpapered room with a TV and a corduroy-upholstered La-Z-Boy in it.

He tried the second window. The kitchen. Joan had every conceivable gadget: food processor, juicer, blenders, bread maker, two microwaves, and more.

He moved over to the glass door, moved his face up to it, and—

Jesus God
—

Joan was on her side, facing him, eyes still open. A pool of dark crusted blood more than a meter in diameter had spilled out of her; its shape was irregular on the low-pile carpet, but had neatly filled the tiled area in front of the fireplace. Pierre felt his breakfast climbing his throat. He hurried back to his car, drove till he found a pay phone at a 7-Eleven, and dialed 9-1-1.

Pierre sat on Joan’s front stoop, arms supporting his chin, waiting. A

Berkeley police car pulled up at the curb. Pierre looked up, held a hand to his brow to shield his eyes, and squinted to make out the uniformed figures approaching against the glare of the afternoon sun: a beefy black man and a slim white woman.

“Mr. Tardivel, isn’t it?” said the black man, taking off a pair of sunglasses and putting them in the breast pocket of his jacket.

Pierre rose to his feet. “Officer—?”

“Munroe,” said the man. He nodded at his partner. “And Granatstein.”

“Of course,” said Pierre, nodding at each of them. “Hello.”

“Let’s see it,” said Munroe. Pierre led them down the path between this house and the adjacent one, through the gate, which he’d left open, and into the backyard. Munroe had his billy club out, in case he needed to use it to smash in a window, but when he got to the glass door, he saw the lock had been jimmied. “You haven’t been inside?” asked Munroe.

“No.”

Munroe entered and made a cursory examination of the body.

Granatstein, meanwhile, started looking around the yard for anything the assailant might have dropped during his escape. Munroe came back outside and took out a small notebook, bound with a wire spiral along its top. He flipped to a blank page. “What time did you arrive?”

“At thirteen-fifteen,” said Pierre. “I mean, at one-fifteen.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I look at my watch a lot.”

“And she was dead when you got here?”

“Of course—”

“You ever been out here before?”

“No.”

“Then what brought you here today?”

“She was late for work. I thought I’d check on her.”

“Why? What business is it of yours?”

“She’s a friend. And she’s a diabetic. I thought she might have been having an insulin reaction.”

“What were you doing around the back of the house?”

“Well, she didn’t answer the doorbell, so—”

“So you went snooping around?”

“Well, I—”

“The knife that did it is gone, but judging by the cut it made, it was very similar to the one that killed Chuck Hanratty.”

“Wait a minute—,” said Pierre.

“And you just happen to be at the scene of both killings.”

“
Wait a goddamn minute
—”

“I think you should come downtown with us, make another statement.”

“I didn’t do it. She was dead when I found her. Look at her; she’s been dead for hours.”

Munroe’s one long eyebrow knotted together in the middle. “How would you know that?”

“I’m a Ph.D. in molecular biology; I know how long it takes for blood to turn that dark.”

“All just coincidence, is that right?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“You say you worked together?”

“That’s right. At the Human Genome Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”

“Someone tried to kill you, and now, four months later, someone
does
kill her. Is that it?”

“I guess.”

Munroe looked unconvinced. “You’ll have to hold tight until the coroner arrives; then we’ll head downtown.”

Pierre was sitting on a wooden chair in a small interrogation room at Berkeley police headquarters. The room smelled of sweat; Pierre could also smell Officer Munroe’s coffee. The lights overhead were fluorescents, and one of the tubes was strobing a bit, giving Pierre a headache.

The metal door had a small window in it. Pierre saw a flash of blond hair through it, then the door opened, and—

“Molly!”

“Pierre, I—”

“Hello, Mrs. Tardivel,” said Officer Munroe, moving between them.

“Thank you for coming down.” He nodded at the sergeant who had escorted Molly to the room.

It was a sign of how upset she was that Molly didn’t reflexively correct Munroe about her name. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Were you with your husband last night between five and seven?” The coroner’s initial analysis suggested that Joan Dawson’s death had occurred between those hours.

Molly was wearing an orange sweatshirt and blue jeans. “Yes,” she said.

“We’d gone out to dinner together.”

“Where?”

“Chez Panisse.”

Munroe’s eyebrow climbed his forehead at the mention of the expensive restaurant. “What was the occasion?”

“We’d just found out that we’re going to have a baby. Look, what’s—”

“And you were there from five o’clock on?”

“Yes. We had to go that early to get in without a reservation. Dozens of people saw us there.”

Munroe pursed his lips, thinking. “All right, all right. Let me make a phone call.” He stepped out of the room. Molly surged toward Pierre, hugging him. “What the hell’s going on?” she said.

“I went by Joan Dawson’s house this morning. She’d been murdered—”

“Murdered!” Molly’s eyes were wide.

Pierre nodded.

“Murdered…” repeated Molly, as if the word were as foreign as the occasional French phrases that passed Pierre’s lips. “And they suspect you? That’s crazy.”

“I know, but…” Pierre shrugged.

“What were you doing at Joan’s place, anyway?”

He told her the story.

“God, that’s horrible,” said Molly. “She was—”

Just then, Munroe reentered the room. “Okay,” he said. “Good thing you got that accent, Mr. Tardivel.
Everybody
at Chez Panisse remembered you. You’re free to go, but…”

Pierre made an exasperated sound. “But what? If I’m free—”

Munroe held up his beefy hand. “No, no. You’re cleared. But, well, I was going to say watch your back. Maybe it is all coincidence, but…”

Pierre nodded grimly. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Molly and Pierre left the station; Molly had taken a taxi over. They got into Pierre’s Toyota, which was stiflingly hot, having sat for two hours now in direct sunlight in the police parking lot. As they drove back to the university, Pierre asked her which of the campus’s libraries might have
People
or
Time
.

“Doe, probably — on the fourth floor. Why?”

“You’ll see.”

They headed there. Pierre refused to tell Molly what he was looking for, and he was careful to keep thinking in French, lest she pluck it from his mind. A librarian got the back issues Pierre wanted. He quickly leafed through them, nodded at what he found, then spread a copy of
People
out on a worktable and took some pieces of paper — flyers about the library’s overdue-fines policy — and used them to mask everything except a small photograph: a 1942 picture of John Demjanjuk.

“All right,” said Pierre, pointing at the table. “Go have a look at that photo and tell me if you recognize the person in it.”

Molly leaned in and stared at the photo. “I don’t—”

“It’s an old photo, from 1942. Is it anyone you know?”

“That’s a long time ago, and— oh, I see. Sure, it’s Burian Klimus, isn’t it?

Gee, he must have had his ears fixed.”

Pierre sighed. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s something we have to talk about.”

“Shouldn’t you go tell them at the lab about Joan’s murder?”

“Later. This can’t wait.”

“That photo wasn’t of Burian Klimus,” said Pierre as they walked out of Doe Library and headed south. It was a beautiful early autumn afternoon, the sun sliding down toward the horizon. “It’s of a man called John Demjanjuk.”

They passed by a group of students heading the other way. “That name’s vaguely familiar,” said Molly.

Pierre nodded. “He’s been in the news a fair bit over the years. The Israelis tried him for being Ivan the Terrible, the gas chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in Poland.”

“Right, right. But he was innocent, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. It was a case of mistaken identity. Someone else who looked a lot like Demjanjuk was the real Ivan the Terrible. And he’s still at large.”

“Oh,” said Molly. And then, “
Oh
.”

“Exactly: Burian Klimus looks like Demjanjuk — at least somewhat.”

“Still, that’s hardly reason enough to suspect him of being a war criminal.”

Pierre looked up. An airplane contrail had split the cloudless sky into two equal halves. “Remember I told you a federal agent came to see me after Chuck Hanratty attacked me? Well, I found out today that he’s with the part of the Department of Justice that’s devoted to tracking down Nazis.”