Paullina Simons - Red Leaves

‘Name one.’

She thought for a moment. ‘I’m compulsively neat,’ she said.

‘Really? I’m compulsively sloppy.’

‘I really like to win at basketball,’ she said.

‘I really like to close my cases.’

‘I never wear enough clothing outside and always catch colds.’ As if to prove that, she sneezed.

‘Oh, yeah? I always bundle up too much and sweat profusely.’

‘I constantly do things to make my life really complicated.’

‘I constantly do things to make my life as simple as possible.’

She paused. ‘Sometimes I drink.’

He paused too. ‘Huh! Would that I only drank sometimes.’

And then they smiled at each other.

‘Are you twenty-one, Kristina?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, inexplicably excited. ‘Finally.’

‘I see. You didn’t tell me you drink, okay?’

‘Drink? I meant drink coffee.’

‘Good. We won’t mention it again.’ He paused. ‘So you’re happy to be turning twenty-one? For all the usual reasons?’

She nodded. ‘And then some,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. But she didn’t offer to explain and he didn’t pursue it.

They drank their hot chocolates and nibbled on the Portuguese muffins - a sort of English muffin but bigger, thicker, and sweeter.

‘So Detective O’Malley, have you had any interesting cases? I have to write this article on the death penalty for the Review. I’m thinking of writing something about the criminal.’

‘Well, that would be pretty revolutionary of you,’ Spencer said. ‘In today’s day and age.’ He was getting a good feeling about her.

‘Can you tell me anything about the criminal?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like why do people kill other people?’

Spencer thought about it. She was confusing him. She was too pretty. ‘Power,’ he said at last. ‘Power and intimidation. That’s all it’s about.’

‘Power and intimidation, huh? Serial killers, abusive husbands, rapists, all of them?’

‘Yes. All of them.’

Kristina smiled. ‘That’s really good. I like that.’

‘Enough about the death penalty. Tell me something about yourself.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like anything. What year are you in?’

‘I’m a senior.’

‘What’s your major?’

‘Philosophy and religion.’

‘That’s interesting. So what can philosophy tell us about why men kill other men?’

‘How do I know? I don’t study anything as concrete as that. Nietzsche tells us we shouldn’t be upset at evil, and we shouldn’t punish the deviant.’

‘Why is that?’

‘He says because the criminal is only exercising his free will, which society gave him, and for which it now wants to punish him, punish for the very thing it told him made him a human being and not an animal.’

‘This Nietzsche, he’s obviously never lived in New York,’ said Spencer.

Kristina laughed.

‘You know, I don’t know if I agree with that,’ said Spencer. ‘Society didn’t give man free will. God did. Society just reins in the excesses of free will in those who can’t rein it in themselves.’

‘You may be right,’ said Kristina. ‘But Nietzsche doesn’t believe in God.’

‘Well, I,’ said Spencer quietly, ‘don’t believe in Nietzsche.’

Kristina was looking at him with an expression of great amusement.

‘What?’ he asked her.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘Where are you from, Spencer?’

‘Born and bred on Long Island,’ Spencer said.

‘Oh, yeah? My best friend is from Cold Spring Harbor.’

‘Cold Spring Harbor? I’ve read about that place in books. I don’t think mere mortals like me are allowed there.’

‘Don’t be silly. Where are you from?’

‘Farmingville.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘No one has. Anyway, I’m from there’

‘So what brings you here, Spencer?’

‘I don’t know. Got tired of chasing after speeders on the Long Island Expressway. So I got into my car and drove north.’

‘And stopped in Hanover?’

‘And stopped in Hanover.

I liked Dartmouth Hall. I spent my first night here in the completely unaffordable Hanover Inn, and heard the clock tower out of my window playing songs. My first day they played a slow version of “Seasons in the Sun."’

Kristina laughed. ‘You stayed in Hanover because the Baker tower played “Seasons in the Sun"?’

‘I stayed in Hanover so I could give all you posh Dartmouth girls and boys parking tickets.’ Spencer said it seriously, but he was kidding, and Kristina laughed again. Spencer liked that Kristina could tell when he was kidding.

‘Now I live in Hanover so that I can feel like I’m going to Dartmouth without actually spending twenty-five thousand a year on my education.’

‘Without actually getting an education either.’

‘Touché,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Good. You think I don’t get an education watching all you people?’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘You like your job then?’

Spencer nodded. ‘Very much.’

‘What don’t you like about it?’

‘The worst part is every time there’s a big case, they bring on the gang from Concord -’ He saw her quizzical expression and explained. ‘The assistant district attorneys, their own investigators, and sometimes even the state police guys from Haverhill. It really pisses me off. Like I can’t do my job or something. I tell them, I can issue parking tickets with the best of them, give me a chance.’

Kristina laughed. ‘What was your biggest case?’

‘That Ethiopian premed student hacking his girlfriend and her roommate with an ax.’

Kristina widened her eyes. ‘Oh, that was horrible.’

‘Yes, it was. I was the first officer on the scene.’

Kristina made a disgusted face. ‘You found the bodies?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yuck. Was it awful?’

‘As awful as you can imagine.’

‘I can’t even imagine.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’ve never even seen a dead body.’

‘Really? Never?’ Spencer found that hard to believe. He’d been going to funerals of his parents’ relatives since he was two.

‘Never.’ She cleared her throat. ‘My grandmother - she died just a few months ago, but I didn’t go to the funeral.’

‘Why not?’

Shrugging, Kristina said, ‘I wasn’t invited.’

‘You weren’t invited to your grandmother’s funeral?’ It was Spencer’s turn to widen his eyes. ‘What kind of family do you have?’

‘Not a very close one,’ she admitted, changing the subject. ‘The Ethiopian, do you think that was power and intimidation?’

‘That’s all it was,’ said Spencer. ‘The girl didn’t want to marry him, and he wanted to let her know how he felt about it.’

‘I see. What’s happened to the guy now?’

‘He’s behind bars for life.’

‘Ahh. Just punishment.’

‘Just? I don’t know. He killed two people in cold blood. Maybe he should have died himself.’

‘Do you think he should have, Spencer?’

‘For premeditated murder? Yes.’

They were done drinking their hot cocoa and eating, but Spencer definitely did not want to get up and go.

Kristina asked him if he was the boss at work.

‘I wish. No, there’s the chief above me. Ken Gallagher.’

‘Irish, like you.’

He nodded.

She seemed thoughtful. ‘I didn’t know policemen made enough money to live in Hanover.’

‘I know - you kids drove the price of this town way up. Three-bedroom houses start at two hundred and sixty thousand. Two-bedroom apartments rent for nine hundred.’

‘You must be making good money.’