Robert Stone - Death of the Black-Haired Girl

But the grossest thing was not the mocking tone of the article. The grossest part was the color photographs of abnormal births that abortions, Maud Stack believed, were meant to prevent. The pictures weren’t in the paper, but apparently she had meant them to be and they’d gone out online. The worst one Salmone saw was the baby with Meckel-Gruber syndrome. The big-headed one. It was really fucking ridiculous: church people, anti-church people, marching around with monster pictures to make each other sick.

At ten o’clock the next morning, he got a call from Polhemus telling him that Dean Spofford would appreciate his stopping by College Hall.

“I always have time for the dean,” Salmone told him.

It was a nasty, sleety day, the kind of day that aroused in Salmone vague fantasies of retirement in Puerto Rico, a place he had visited once with some gambling friends who liked to stay at places like the Isla Verde Sands and the El San Juan and lose their money. It was all very sleek and brassy and sunsplashed, quite unlike coastal New England, where, he was fairly certain, he was going to spend his remaining years.

Polhemus was waiting for him under the white-painted arch at the College Hall steps. The dean’s office, on the third floor, could be reached by a winding stairway lined with the portraits of collegiate notables past or, more practically, by the mandatory elevator, which was said to have entrapped a few of those notables. The former park policeman headed for the stairs but checked himself and rode up with Salmone.

“It’s a tragic thing when a young person dies,” Salmone said.

“Family to us,” said Dean Spofford, which was what he’d said the last time.

John Spofford was slight and actor handsome, though not in the least epicene. His physically unruffled appearance was a concession to his job; he would actually have been more at ease with his hair less barbered and combed, in a less well-measured and expensive suit. He would not have insisted on looking younger than fifty-one, which was his age.

“Yes sir,” said Salmone.

Everyone shook hands on it. The dean offered them chairs and said nothing, then, about the street that was supposed to have been closed.

“I understand that Maud was leaving the Brookman house,” Spofford said.

Polhemus let Salmone answer.

“She never went in the house, Mr. Spofford. They stood outside and allegedly caused a disturbance. That’s our understanding.”

“So Professor Brookman came out.”

“Correct. And his wife — Mrs. Brookman — followed him out just before the car.”

“Nothing on the car?”

“Not as yet, as far as we know.”

“The state troopers are hard at it, close on it,” Polhemus said. “We understand the governor called.”

“An alumnus,” Spofford said. “Think it was an anti-abortion fanatic?”

Salmone gave him a small shrug.

“Certainly possible. The snowstorm, the way everything happened, that’s made it very hard for us with the car.”

“An unexpected car,” said the dean. Polhemus began to answer, but Spofford interrupted him and addressed Salmone.

“So tell us about the Brookman business.”

Salmone had brought his notes.

“Approximately eleven p.m., just before the game gets out. It’s snowing. Miss Stack appears outside Mr. Brookman’s house. She yells his name. Maybe throws snow at the window. Gets him out there. He comes out. They argue in an agitated manner. Finally they’re in maybe a shoving match. She’s yelling. He’s maybe trying to calm her but he’s been drinking too. They both were intoxicated.”

“But not drinking together?” Spofford asked.

“Not at that time, because she didn’t go in the house.”

“Sounds like a lovers’ quarrel, though,” Spofford said.

Salmone said nothing.

“I mean,” said Spofford, “I guess there’s no reason to assume that. Do you think a crime might have been committed in this melee?”

“We’re pursuing the circumstances of the incident, Mr. Spofford. All the surrounding factors.”

“Going to talk to students?”

“We would normally do that. Students and faculty and staff.”

Everyone sat in silence for a moment.

“So, Mr. Polhemus,” the dean said, “you’ll help him out?”

“We’ve set up some interviews,” Polhemus told him.

“Experience shows — I believe — that they’re more comfortable if we go to them.”

“To dorms?”

“To dorms and college locations.”

“If possible,” Salmone said.

Later that day, Polhemus accompanied him to a student lounge where they could talk privately with Shelby Magoffin. Dean Spofford went off to deal with the media effects of Maud’s death, which everyone knew would complexify as the hours passed. Salmone was grateful that the media fallout would devolve, for a while, on the Staties, who handled road accidents as a matter of routine.

Salmone’s encounters with Dean Spofford always refreshed his current understanding of how things stood in Amesbury. The city force had endured a few embarrassing scandals over the years and did not enjoy total confidence in the high places with which most college students connected. There were also some confusions of history, different perspectives on the class struggle. Many people thought the issues dated from some violent incidents in the sixties, but in fact the hostility went much further back. Nearly a century before Vietnam, students in Brooks Brothers tweed had gathered to throw snowballs at the cops marching in Amesbury’s St. Patrick’s Day parade or some other celebration. Pranks the rich kids thought droll roused ancient hatreds in the immigrant-descended police. The town-and-gown business in the city had always been bitter, and was more so when the factories closed.

The city obliged the college beyond the limits of necessity, but the old pols who could not learn the diction of enlightenment disappeared from public life. The college was the only thing in town left standing and was increasingly less polite about having its way. Distinctions of class and identity persisted. Lieutenant Salmone had grown up in a police family and understood all this well.

The public had the impression that screwy things did not happen around the college end of town, but any officer knew better. You could ask the campus cops about the weirdness they dealt with. There were bomb threats and threats of other kinds. Bad fistfights, duels, accusations and denials of date rape, unquestioned rape, thefts. Occasionally grand larcenies like the priceless Persian carpet removed from the dean’s office, a particular embarrassment. The museum once lost an oil by a fairly well-known follower of the Hudson River school.

Most of the campus cops’ reports, however, were the stuff of amusing stories. The unamusing ones were conveyed to parents through Dean Spofford, who was assigned to deliver grim tidings. The substance of these were along the lines of: Your son was on acid; he thought he could fly. Or: Your daughter OD’ed on smack, pills, vodka. Sometimes the news would be too bizarre or tragically ludicrous to be explained over the phone, in which case Spofford would find a way to duck it.

When a student was murdered, an event that occurred once or twice a decade, the perpetrator was often what the thoughtful referred to as a young community male. The police referred to such people as dirtbags. A dirtbag might be a crackhead from one of the dead mill towns up the valley, or a ghetto kid from the far side of any street that took you anywhere. He might even be from one of the old neighborhoods like Salmone’s. The new century was short on promise for townies. Some dirtbags were solitaries but most of them ran in packs. They tended to get loaded and talk too much, whereupon the dime, as the old expression had it, would drop. Salmone would get the call and usually the state would get a conviction. The less said about that, the better.