Authors: Howard Engel
“Well,” she said. “What’s the verdict?”
“This is the real Sheila Kerzon. The imposter was Heather Nesbitt, her roommate. And, in a minute, without a net, I’m going to see if I can guess my own name.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Some seconds after the crack of dawn, my phone started ringing. I cursed the dark for a minute before picking up the instrument to silence it. (There’s a lot to be said for cursing the dark, in spite of the optimists out there.)
“Hello?” I tried to say in a pleasant voice, but failed miserably.
“Mr. Cooperman? Is that you? This is Abul Moussuf, from the university.”
“Boolie! What’s happening?”
“We talked about Steve?”
“Yes, Boolie. I remember our conversation.” This was only half true. Conversations seemed to disappear into limbo these days. But I remembered the man well enough; his face jumped out of my memory file and I could imagine him at his end of the wire. The burden of Boolie’s message was that he and a few of the old professors wanted to visit me and shower me with chocolates and university gossip.
While he was still on the phone, a plan was beginning to form in my pointed head. What about gathering together the people concerned in my current inquiries and bring them to the hospital? It would be easier than my
trying to get out of here. It would be like an old-fashioned mystery novel, with the detective pointing the guilty finger on the last page. It was worth a try, I thought, and immediately enlisted Boolie to round up some of the people from the university. From my Memory Book, I read the names and numbers of people he might miss. Before he left the line, he sounded as excited about this conspiracy as I felt.
I was touched that friends of such recent acquisition should have taken any interest in my situation. So moved and honoured was I, in fact, that I called up all of the other people whose numbers were known to me and invited them to a party on the fifth floor at the Rose of Sharon at eight that evening. While I was at it, I called Sykes and his pal, and asked if they might urge everybody involved to attend. I told Sykes what I was up to, after he promised to bring some booze. I didn’t check with my nurses. I’m sure they had rules about entertaining suspects without a prescription. If anybody asked, I’d say, “The alexia made me do it.” And to hell with critics.
“You’re waving a red flag at a bull, Benny. I’ll see you around eight this evening and I’ll bring a van of well-wishers with me,” Sykes said. I could hear the sound of his teeth gnashing as he disconnected.
With company coming at 8:00 P.M., I was hard pressed to know what to do for the mob. I asked my nurse, Rhymes With. She was amazed that I was even thinking of entertaining here on the fifth floor. But having expressed her shock and outrage for the record, she began
making plans. She had an accurate notion of what party goods were available on the floor and where others might be found nearby. She wouldn’t go along with bringing in a few bottles, but she said that she would underwrite the ginger ale and soda personally. Anna, when she heard, volunteered to get some sandwiches from a university caterer, and I was surprised to hear, as the day began slipping by, that Barberian’s Steak House had agreed to send over some fancy Hungarian pastries for dessert. I suspected the untainted fingers of the local homicide squad in this, but I never found out for sure. Maybe it was a bribe to make sure the restaurant was used in the movie they’d heard about somehow. Who knows?
It wasn’t hard to put in the time between the moment I’d been fool enough to issue all those invitations and eight o’clock. There were all of the usual hospital routines to get through. I gave both blood and urine. I was thumped on the chest by one doctor and banged on the back by his associate. I was wheeled across the street to see about a sleep test for some night later that week. Even the daily march of the doctors through the corridors, like swallows returning to Capistrano, became a sort of charade, with all the patients encouraged to put up a brave front and minimize complaint.
Dinner was uneventful.
Around five minutes after eight the guests began to arrive. Professor Angus Kelvin and his friends from coffee time unloaded their contributions of food and drink on a table in the centre of a middle-sized reception room off
the main corridor, a room for quiet family gatherings. The stranger with Angus, one of the retired professors, I assumed was Morgan Bett, the man who had given me an important piece of the puzzle. My tricky mind tried to remember whether we had ever met or had merely spoken on the telephone. Standing shyly at the door until I pulled him into the room, was A.K. Moussuf. Soon he was beaming at everybody and passing a bottle of bubbly grapefruit juice.
Dr. Parker Samson came in looking somewhat surprised, but he joined in talking to colleagues he knew. It was his height that gave him away, even before he came over to shake my hand. He was a big man: not just tall, but solidly made, on the cusp of corpulence. To add to the party, my three therapists from gym, speech, and OT joined the merry throng. I could now remember their subjects even though their names still hovered above my head just beyond the grasp of my memory.
The fancy cakes from Barberian’s Steak House were a great hit, along with some sweetmeats that Boolie had brought. “I tried to find something from the subcontinent, but I had to buy these from a little Turkish place.”
Toward the back of the room, my friends from the forces of law and order had insinuated themselves. There was an out-of-doors-ish look to them, as though they had been taken from their rural setting and banished to the city’s streets. Jim caught my eye and winked.
Gradually, I realized that it was time for me to say something. The number of people facing me made me
wish that a stretcher team might come in and carry me off to a place where my lines were written for me and where I had no doubts.
“Thank you for coming,” I heard myself say. I tuned in more closely to hear more, but nothing came.
I had reached the end of the prepared portion of my pitch. The silence shouted my cue to action and I jumped into the abyss of the unknown. “It was more than three months ago that Dr. Steven Mapesbury disappeared from the university. When I tried to find him, at the urging of his devoted student, Rose Moss, I was waylaid, hit on the head, and left bleeding in a Dumpster almost under the suspended O at Wessex and Spadina. Luckily, I was found and, eventually, brought here to get my wits back or learn to live without them. A professor, a woman named Flora McAlpine, was found in the Dumpster, too. Only she was dead.
“Was Steve Mapesbury kidnapped? If so, it wasn’t for ransom. He is a poor professor, not a millionaire, and the kidnappers haven’t communicated with his family. What other reason might there be to pull a man out of his everyday life and either kill him or hold him against his will? The kidnapper wants to ensure that Steve doesn’t reveal some incriminating information.”
“Where is Steve? Why aren’t the police looking for him? That’s their job.” It was one of the retired professors.
“More to the point,” another voice chimed in, “where do you expect this exercise to lead? Do you think you can
turn him up with this hackneyed, paperback sort of game? Besides, this sort of deductive reasoning is like moving a dozen beans around on a plate: however you arrange them, they still add up to twelve.” This was from someone I didn’t know. From the back of the room, Staff-Sergeant Sykes mouthed the name “Nesbitt.” I noted Nesbitt’s rudeness to the old professor who had spoken just before him. Nesbitt’s was not a subtle personality.
“The collecting of facts, Professor Nesbitt, is an orderly, scientific process. When assembled, they sometimes yield new information that wasn’t visible before.”
Nesbitt screwed himself deeper into his chair, but said nothing.
“Where was I?”
“You were leading us through possible reasons for Steve Mapesbury’s disappearance.”
“Thank you, Professor Samson. Yes, now what is happening on the campus that Steve is likely to have known about? The selling of essays? Advance copies of examinations? I gather that trade in such items can be brisk. But Steve isn’t well connected outside his own department. What else is there?” I paused long enough to run my tongue along my dry lips, then started in again:
“Drug trafficking around Simcoe College has been a problem for some time now. It is serious and threatens to spread to other parts of the university.”
“That might be hard to prove,” said Nesbitt. “The university has its own watchdogs. We don’t need outsiders on our campus.”
“I’m not presenting a paper, Professor Nesbitt. I’m drawing pictures in the sand with a pointed stick. So bear with me. For a moment, let’s assume that Steve was mixed up in the making of illegal drugs. He had the science background; he had a pressing need for money. His students have mumbled about a subtle disintegration in his preparation of lectures, at processing assignments, and marking papers. He was preoccupied and careless, something he’d never been before. He was being well paid for his part in the drug business. His wife told me there’d been money for jam lately. So what was his worry? I suggest to you that he’d had enough. He wanted out. The fact that about this time he lost an expensive false front tooth suggests to me that his partner in crime didn’t appreciate Steve’s sudden scruples. They had a fight and Steve got the worst of it. He was now a liability to his boss, the organizer of this illegal trade, and so it was this person who took Steve out.
“When a student, Rose Moss, began asking questions, our criminal would have been wise to get rid of her as well. But her mother got her out of the way instead. I suspect that she’s visiting an aunt in Florida until all this blows over.
“We know that someone murdered Flora McAlpine and tried to kill me. He went to my office in Grantham and removed notes from my desk, making it look like a random burglary. So, our heavy deals in damage control. He is dangerous and capable of doing what he thinks is
necessary.” I needed a drink of water, but there wasn’t anything near me.
“Now, drug dealers are not the most savoury of people. They battle for territory and are always knocking one another off. Was Steve a dealer in this sense? I don’t think so. Steve was the scientific brains of the outfit. Why would the street pushers kill the source of their supply? The goose that lays the golden eggs.
“So, this was an internal dispute. Steve wanted out, he wanted a bigger share of the profits, he wanted billing? Who knows? Our heavy gets rid of him and then later he gets rid of me and Professor McAlpine.” I paused, not just to catch my breath, but to try to remember the thread of my argument. I recalled that mental activity was not my strongest suit any more. I kept seeing the steps ahead and then losing my way. I was also forgetting the names of the people involved. Without my Memory Book with its notes, and lists of names, and even diagrams, I’d have been dead and buried. It gave me the courage to stand there, spouting. I took another breath, but didn’t get to the thought I was clinging to before I was interrupted.
“This is all very interesting, Mr. Cooperman, but what does it tell us that we didn’t know already?”
“Well, it’s closed some avenues that we don’t have to look down any more, and it has sharpened the focus on what and whom we are looking for. Does that help, Professor Nesbitt?”
Nesbitt grumbled. I wasn’t going to turn him into a fan in a hurry.
“What sort of master criminal are you looking for, Mr. Cooperman?” This from Staff-Sergeant Sykes, with his back to the window and his mouth half full of cake.
“Well, you told me that from the evidence of the driver’s seat in my car, our suspect is a tall man, over six feet in height.”
“That’s a start,” said Boyd.
“True. We also know almost certainly that the man who hit me on the head must have been left-handed. The blow hit me from behind and injured the left side of my head. It would be hard to hit someone that way with the right hand.” I turned to show the people where I had been hit.
“Unlike the investigations I’ve done in the past, where I could get around more and interview the witnesses and suspects myself, I have had to rely on my friends, mostly Dr. Anna Abraham, for my information. But I did use the telephone to talk to most of you here this afternoon. I remember talking to Steve Mapesbury’s young daughter on the telephone. She was hoping for a call from her father because it was her birthday.”
“Very touching, I’m sure, but what does it tell us?” Nesbitt fairly tripped over his heavy sarcasm.
“Actually, it tells us quite a lot. When I was talking to Dr. Samson about Steve, he said that he had been worried about getting his daughter something special for this important day. Isn’t that right, Dr. Samson?”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t seem to me to be strange at the time, but it has been gnawing away at me. Does the father of two little girls worry about a birthday present months before the event? No doubt a few such daddies exist, but in general? I doubt it. A week before the event, maybe, but months? That seemed like a long time to me. But then, I’m unmarried and without children.” Various members of the group in front of me conferred on this point, nodding and shaking their heads.
“Admittedly, this is a weak string. But there are others: his height and his left-handedness. Not enough here to weave a rope.”
“Since you have used my name, Mr. Cooperman, and since you have made some serious allegations, I think that this has gone far enough. Is there any reason why I cannot leave, Officer?” This from Professor Samson.
“None whatsoever,” Sykes said, making a broad gesture with his hands.
“Well, then, I’ll take my leave. You may be assured, Mr. Cooperman, that my lawyer will be in touch with you.”
He gathered himself importantly and stormed out of the room.
TWENTY-SIX
There is no other word for it: Parker Samson’s exit was
dramatic.
It was done with panache, with breathtaking effect, and just enough bravado. Those of us remaining in the room were left feeling as though we’d been watered down by a firehose. It was like the TV went dead in the last minute of a cliff-hanger ball game. The shock was perfect, like a musical note held beyond probability. The gesture lacked only one element: durability.