anything to do with it. I thought, frankly, that it was cruel to encourage a man who had working-class manners, a family to feed, and no brilliance to think of himself as top academic material.
“Well. By the autumn of 1983, he had been in the program for five years. The first of the men and women he had entered with began to finish their programs, but he hadn’t even had the topic for his dissertation approved, much less written it. Now, that’s not all that unusual—a Ph.D. varies tremendously in how long it takes—but for him it was becoming a real problem, because in his own eyes he was brilliant.
“Then in early December, one of the assistant professors announced that he was leaving, and Kyle went to David and said that he wanted the job. It was utterly impossible, of course. He might just have qualified as a candidate if he’d had the thesis in its final stages, but when he had not even begun to write it? There were at least forty others who would be completely qualified, so why lower the standards in order to get Kyle Roberts?
“It all happened so quickly. Looking back, that’s the most baffling thing, that there was no time for clouds to form on the horizon, no warning. Kyle confronted David, and David finally told him the truth about his academic future. Politely at first and then, when Kyle just refused to understand, David became harder, until he finally lost his temper and said that Kyle was deluding himself if he thought he’d ever reach higher than assistant professor, and that he, David, would be hard put to write a letter of recommendation even for that.
“Kyle had never had anyone he respected tell him that, and it simply shattered him. I saw him when he left David’s office—the whole building heard the argument—and he was just white. Stunned. I will never forget how he looked. And I know, I knew then, that any one of us could have rescued him, just by putting a hand out… But we didn’t. He’d become too much of a leech to risk making contact. I let him walk past me.
“He went home. But on his way, he stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a shotgun, and when he walked through his back door, he loaded it and shot his wife, his eight-year-old son, and his three-year-old daughter. The police later decided that he must have sat there for nearly an hour, and during that time he must have found his anger again, because instead of killing himself, he went to find David. It was dark. He went to David’s home. David was not back yet, but his wife and son were there, and so Kyle shot them both and then finally turned the gun on himself. Jonny died. He was nineteen. Charlotte, David’s wife, had a collapsed lung, but they saved her. She got out of the hospital just in time for Christmas.
“David was utterly devastated, empty—an automaton. He wouldn’t go out, except to buy food for Charlotte and pick up her prescriptions. He wouldn’t talk to me,- when I went to his house, he would not even look at me. The administration arranged for a leave of absence, of course, but he didn’t even sign the papers they sent him until the chair of the department went and stood over him.
“Finally at the end of January, Charlotte was well enough to travel, and she went home to her parents’ house on Long Island. He drove her to New York and then went back to their house, just long enough to type out his letter of resignation, arrange a power of attorney for his lawyer so that all his personal assets could be transferred immediately to Charlotte, and make three phone calls to friends. I was one of them. All he said…” She swallowed, blinking furiously. “This is very difficult. All he said was that his vanity had… had killed five people and that he— Oh God,” she whispered as the tears broke free. “He said he loved me and wished me all good things, and would very probably not see me again. And he asked me to take care of Charlotte… Thank you.” She seized the box of tissues Hawkin had put in front of her and buried her face in a handful of pink paper. “Ten years ago last month,” she said, and blew her nose a final time, “and it seems like yesterday.”
She got up and walked into the kitchen, where she stood on the stool to splash water onto her face, then dried it with a kitchen towel and came back to the table.
“We all assumed that he had gone somewhere and killed himself. He was very nearly dead already. And then today I see David Sawyer looking like an old derelict and acting the Fool for tourists, and he runs at the sight of my face. And,” she added a minute later, “he is somehow involved in a murder. Yet another murder. Oh, poor, poor David.”
Holding her threadbare dignity around her, she stumbled down from the tall chair and walked away down the hallway. A door opened and closed. Kate blew a stream of air through her pursed lips and looked at Hawkin.
“I could understand if someone had bashed
“John was a blackmailer,” said Hawkin quietly.
“And he found out about Kyle and threatened to tell the other street people, so Erasmus bashed him to keep him quiet? I can’t see it, Al. Sorry.”
“He ran.”
“From her, not from me.”
“She knows who he is. She’d give you the motive and ID him. Maybe if you hadn’t been there he would have lured her off to a quiet corner and whacked her one, too.”
She leaned over the table to study his face, but it told her nothing.
“Are you serious, Al? Or are you just playing with this?”
I’m mostly trying it out for size, but I will say that I’m not too happy he made a run for it. I don’t like the idea of him skipping town.“
“Okay, you’re the boss. Do you want to put a call out for him tonight or wait and see if he shows up in the park tomorrow?”
“We can wait. Meanwhile, see what you can find out about this Kyle Roberts thing. Where’s Sawyer’s wife now,- was it really an open-and-shut murder/suicide,- did Roberts have family that might want to even things up a bit?”
“Such as a five-foot-eleven white male with a Texas accent who called himself John?”
“Such as. You know anyone in Chicago?”
“ ‘Anyone’ meaning anyone on the police department? No.”
“I don’t, either. Well, I met someone at a conference once, but he and I had differing views on such things as search-and-seizure and putting down riots. He wouldn’t give you the time of day. What about Kenning down in Vice? He had a brother, didn’t he?”
How, wondered Kate, could I have forgotten either Haw-kin’s phenomenal memory or his personal-touch method of getting information? When they had worked together before, she had tended to turn to the computer,- Al depended on someone’s cousin Marty who had been mentioned at the last departmental ball game.
“I’ll ask,” she said. Computers didn’t have it all.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know that we can do anything else here. You want to start the background search on him? I’d do it, but I’m testifying in that Brancusi case Monday and I need to go over it carefully. It’s going to be a bitch.”
“No problem, I’ll get it going. Except—how about you call Kenning and ask for his brother’s name? He’s probably home watching the game, and you’re more likely to know when it’s over than I am.” She grinned at him and he, unembarrassed, grinned back.
“Paperwork, you know?” he said. “I only turn on the tube for the noise.”
“Sure, Al. Have a beer for me, okay?”
“Talk to you later. Thank the professor for the tea.” He let himself out, and a minute later Kate heard a car door slam and an engine start up. She picked up Sawyer’s book on fools and began to leaf through it, waiting for Professor Whitlaw to emerge, but she had barely started the introduction before the door opened and the professor came down the hall.
“I apologize,” she said. “As I said, it was a shock. Now, please tell me what I may do to help my old friend.”
“Er, I don’t really know.”
“I must see him again.”
“I’ll let you know when we find him.” They owed her at least that much, Kate figured, but something in her voice alerted the professor.
“You sound as if you have some doubts about it.”
“He may go to ground for a few days,” she said evasively.
“You don’t think it’ll be more than that, do you? He won’t run away completely, surely.”
Kate always hated this sort of thing. With a suspect, you knew where you stood: Never answer questions,- don’t even act as if you heard them. With a witness, just evade politely. But with an important, intelligent, and
