Robert Stone - Death of the Black-Haired Girl

When the suspect, usually the killer, was a student, circumstances differed. The college maintained a pretty professional security service that often knew a surprising amount of what was going on around campus. Normally the officers made use of less than they knew. Most of the problems they had to deal with were trivial kid stuff. Sometimes things got serious, as in the theft of the carpet — a prank theft by nihilist art students but nevertheless grand larceny of an object worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Intramural murder was something else. Law enforcement had to tread carefully, and rarely even in the bad old days did a city cop take the end of a telephone book to a student suspect. And no more rubber hoses, even for dirtbags.

The Common was no longer under snow as Salmone and Polhemus walked across it. They followed the path that was being cleaned by men in Day-Glo vests, chiefly offenders performing their community service. The sleet had given way to a pale blue sky edged with cirrus clouds; the lower storm clouds were heading inland for the hills. It was getting noticeably colder again.

They talked about the weather most of the way across. Polhemus, it turned out, knew about all sorts of weather — tropic, arctic, subtropic, subarctic. The park service had kept him on the move, having to relocate his family almost every two years, and there were parks in every climate zone. He told Salmone he had started out as a ranger but transferred early to the park police to keep his job.

“They want us to quit,” he told Salmone. “They want to do away with the parks. Wait and see, Sal. Not one national park in America will ever be two hundred years old. The Congress thinks they were a terrible idea.”

“People get hurt in the parks,” Salmone said.

WHEN THEY GOT TO CROSS INN, Salmone put a hand on Polhemus’s shoulder to make him pause.

“Brookman seems like a guy who might have a lot of girlfriends.”

“That’s what I hear,” Polhemus said. “It’s not allowed but nobody snitched on him.”

As they went inside, Polhemus told him a little about Shelby Magoffin, that she was a professional film actress and a little older than she looked.

“She has a bad-ass husband down south she has a restraining order on. Which I don’t even know is enforceable in this state outside our property. She has a few overenthusiastic fans. She’s semi-famous. We haven’t had any real trouble.”

They talked to Shelby in a small paneled room, cleared and curtained for the purpose. Polhemus stayed but left all the questions to Salmone.

“Can I call you Shelby?”

“Of course,” she said. “Yes, sir.”

“You weren’t with Maud when she died?”

“No, I sure wasn’t.”

“Where were you?”

“Where was I? I was right here. I was sleeping, I believe.”

“Was Maud having an affair with Mr. Brookman?”

“You know,” Shelby said, “it’s hard for me to talk about her personal affairs so soon.” She let it rest there, and Salmone wondered if she would talk at all. Finally, she asked, “Is that relevant?”

“We think it might be.”

She took off the white scarf she had been wearing and wrapped it so as to cradle her elbows. She was elfin-faced, big-eyed, looking guileless.

“I don’t get it,” Shelby said. “Why?”

“If we knew, it would help us. We’re working for her now.”

She looked at him with patient contempt, a waif no longer.

“Yes, sir. It seemed like she was in love with Mr. Brookman because he had seduced her last year.”

“When you last saw her the other night, she was on her way to his house?”

“I guess so.”

“Could you tell us her mood at that time?”

“Real upset,” Shelby told him and, to his surprise, started to cry.

It put him on more familiar ground. He moved toward her a little and let her see his eyes.

“Was she angry?”

Shelby took the scarf from around her arms and touched a tear with it.

“Yeah. Angry, hurt, left… All those things. His wife had come back. Coming home pregnant like the best of all possible wives, bearing him kiddies. So he was ditching Maud. He was breaking up with her. Like cutting her loose, goodbye, like that.”

“Would you say she was intoxicated?”

“Yeah. Intoxicated.”

“How angry was she? Angry enough to be violent if she was intoxicated?”

“Nothing violent about Maud. Drunk or sober.” Shelby slid into a posture vaguely based on Maud’s. “She was demonstrative in her own space. She was verbal.”

“What did you think about Brookman?”

“Oh, everybody likes Brookman, sort of. Big lovable rogue of a guy. Incredibly hot. I liked him at first. Then I thought about it and I had to feel bad for Maud. Married guy, kids, big talker.”

“Did she ever come back injured? With a bruise?”

“Huh? No!”

“He have a lot of girlfriends besides Maud?”

“Over time I guess he did. I think he was the kind of guy who took ’em one at a time.”

“But like you say,” Salmone said, getting a little intrigued with her, “he was married.”

“Sure, there had to be the wife. Then he had to go out and be adored. He wasn’t that promiscuous, not by the standards of this place.”

Salmone, faintly surprised, glanced at Polhemus. Polhemus shrugged.

“So you don’t think there was another young woman somewhere?”

“I’m sure there wasn’t.”

“How about Maud? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she break up with another student over Brookman?”

“Not while I knew her.”

Salmone thanked her courteously for her time. She was very fidgety by then, her big innocent eyes blinking and looking for corners.

“Who should we talk to next?” Salmone asked her.

“I don’t know,” Shelby said. “Maybe Jo Carr at counseling. Maud was gonna see her after she left here.”

“What time was that?”

“A little before ten, maybe.”

“Late for counseling.”

“Miss Carr wanted to see her. Well, I think Jo Carr knew about the situation. She had an interest in Maud.”

“An interest how?”

“Miss Carr had counseled Maud in her first two years. Might have been Maud took her problems there sometimes.”

Polhemus and Salmone thanked her again and she walked quickly toward the main lounge.

“Hey,” Shelby called over her shoulder, “think maybe Mrs. Brookman ran Maud over?”

Salmone made a note to visit Jo Carr in counseling.

“I SAW THIS COMING.”

Brookman stopped pacing and clenched his fists in pain.

“Please, sweetheart.”

“No, I’m sorry, we have to live this out. I saw it.”

“I ought not to be in this house at all,” Brookman said.

“It’s your house. And I’m your wife. Did you love her?”

“Did I love her?”

Can it be, he wondered, that I don’t know what love is? But the fact was he had thought about it before. He had no answers, as was often the case. So he stood there in the room that had been contaminated for them by his treachery and tried to figure it out.

He had loved Maud as a woman, for her woman’s body, as a person, for her human body. For her spirit, for her intelligence and courage. Person, body, intellect and will. He had even nourished a certain affection for her lack of judgment. Say it was for her youth and courage. She was not a child but in a way he had loved her as a child, as a daughter, a younger sister. He had loved her in all the ways that were supposed to be right and in ways that were wrong. He had not loved her in the all-consuming way in which he loved his wife or in the way he would love his children.