sidewalk and lowered his voice. “Back in the first part of November, he showed up one Tuesday in bad shape. He looked to me like he’d been beaten up—his lip was swollen and split,- one eye was puffy,- he had a bandage on his ear—a real mess, and, well, shocking, seeing that kind of damage, especially to an old man. It wasn’t fresh, probably three or four days old, though he was obviously in some pain, but he was still just carrying on. However, he was in no condition to sleep out, so we got together and put him into a hotel for the next three nights.”
“We?”
“Some of the other professors and I passed the hat. The next week, he was better, but it was raining, so we did it again, and then the third week he seemed to have made other arrangements. It wasn’t until the fourth week that we discovered the dorm had formed a conspiracy and had him sleeping in their rooms the nights he was here.”
“Which nights are those?”
“Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, usually.”
“So you just gave him a room?”
“Not exactly. I mean, we did, but only after a tremendous number of meetings and discussions, and student petitions. The students themselves did it, pointing out gently but firmly that to collect funds for Thanksgiving meals and preach Christmas sermons on the theme ‘no room at the inn’ and then to lock the gates against an individual who by that time was a part of the community was perhaps not operating on Christian principles. They did it very well, too. Not once did they even use the word
He saw the polite disbelief on her face, so he strung the explanation out a bit further. “Yes, it was more complicated than that, insurance and security and all that. But what won them over was Erasmus himself. He has… it’s difficult to explain, but I suppose there’s such an air of sweetness around him, even administrators feel it.”
Kate decided to let it go for the time being. “You said he comes on Tuesdays.”
“Yes. The young man he rides with is an M.Div. student.” (Whatever that is, thought Kate.) “He has an afternoon class at three, I think, or three-thirty—a seminar on pastoral theology, but he may come over earlier and work in the library, I see him there quite a bit. He has a couple of kids, so it’s hard for him to work at home.”
“Did you see him this Tuesday? Or Erasmus?”
“I had meetings pretty much all day. I didn’t see anyone but university bureaucrats.”
“And when does he usually leave Berkeley?”
“Berkeley as a whole, I can’t vouch for, but we rarely see him after Friday morning.”
“You don’t know how he leaves?”
“No.”
“What about friends here? Does he have any particularly close relationships with students or professors, or with any of the street people?”
“Joel, the young man who brings him over on Tuesdays, is probably the student closest to Erasmus. I suppose I’m his best friend among the faculty. I wouldn’t know about the homeless, or anyone out of the GTU area, for that matter. Look, Inspector Martinelli, I have to go.”
“Just one thing. I’d appreciate it if you could write down for me where those quotes he used today come from.”
“Whatever you can remember.”
“Why? Surely you can’t consider them evidence?”
“I don’t know what they are, and I don’t know that I will want them. But I do know that if it turns out I need them in two or three weeks, you won’t remember more than a handful. Right?”
“Probably not. Okay, I’ll do my best. And I’ll be talking to you. Um… can I say good-bye to him?”
Kate opened the back door of the cruiser and Dean Gardner bent down, holding his hand out to Erasmus.
“So long, old friend,” he said. “Sorry you’ll miss dinner tonight, I hope we’ll see you next week. You remember my phone number?” Erasmus just smiled and let go of the hand. “Well, call me if you need anything.” He stepped back and allowed Kate to slam the door, her mind busy with the image of Erasmus in a telephone booth. Why was that so completely incongruous?
She told the dean she would talk with him soon, got in behind the wheel, and drove away from Berkeley’s holy hill.
Kate kept her eyes firmly on the road, for Berkeley had long been a haven for the mad cyclist and the blithe wheelchair-bound, although on this occasion it was a turbaned Sikh climbing out of a BMW convertible who nearly came to grief under her wheels. She did not glance at the passenger behind the wire grid until they were on the freeway, passing the mud-flat sculptures, but when she did, she found him sitting peacefully, displaying none of the signs of the guilty killer apprehended: He was not asleep, he was not aggressive, he was not talking nonstop. He met her eye calmly.
“The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously,” he commented.
“Yeah, well, if you don’t dodge around a bit, you get mowed down.” Glancing over her left shoulder, she slipped over two lanes and then slid back between two trucks and into the turnoff for the Bay Bridge. Once through the toll booths, she looked again at Erasmus, who again met her eyes in the mirror. She had been dreading the drive, fearing the mindless recitations and the inevitable stink of the wine-sozzled unwashed, but he smelled only of warm earth, and his silence was somehow restful. He shifted slightly to ease his cramped position beside the long staff that had barely fit in, and the toy star she had pinned to his chest caught the light.
“How did you know I was a cop?” she asked.
“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.”
“That doesn’t explain how you recognized me.”
He answered only with a small and apologetic shrug. Perhaps, she realized some time later, it was one of those places where exact quotes were unavailable.
“Do you mean you saw my picture somewhere?” she tried.
“The morning stars sang together,” he said gently. Right: the Morningstar case. Really great when even the homeless had your face memorized from papers salvaged out of the trash cans, she reflected bitterly, and wrenched the car’s wheel across to the exit for the Hall of Justice. She drove around to the prisoners’ entrance and let him out, wrestled with his long staff and the small gym bag the dean had fetched from the room Erasmus stayed in, and began to lead him to the doors. Erasmus stopped, a large and immovable object, and looked down at her from his great height. His eyes were worried, but not, Kate thought, because of what might happen in this building. Rather, he searched her face as if for an answer.
“Weeping may endure for a night,” he said finally, “but joy comes in the morning.”
“Thanks for sharing that,- now, in you go.” He pulled his elbow away from her hand and turned as if to seize her shoulders. She took a quick step back, and he did not pursue, but bent his entire upper body toward her.
“It is a good thing to escape death, but it is no great pleasure to bring death to a friend.”
“What are you—”
“Faithful are the wounds of a friend. What is a friend? One soul in two bodies.” The intensity with which he was trying to get his message across was almost painful.
“Are you talking about John?” she asked.
To her dismay, he straightened and with both fists pounded on his head, once, twice in frustration. Two uniformed patrolmen walking toward the building stopped.
“Need some help, Inspector Martinelli?” the older one said, warily eyeing the tall, graying priest in the distinguished black robe with the child’s badge pinned to one shoulder. Erasmus paid him no attention but flung out a hand to her in appeal.
“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,” he repeated, nearly shouting. Then immediately, as if the one arose from the other, exclaimed, “These vile guns. The wounds of a friend.”
Kate felt her face stiffen as the sense of his peculiar method of communication hit home: He was not talking about the man John, he meant Lee. He saw her comprehension, and his face relaxed into the loving concern of a kindly uncle, but there was no way Kate was going to accept his sympathy. She cursed bitterly under her breath and
