"I'd really like to talk to him," Beckley said, "your friend, the Chinaman. I'd like to keep it nice and friendly, too. Subpoenas are such a pain in the ass."
"I understand," Stratton said. "When I talk to him, I'll be sure to have him call you."
"Right away." Beckley tugged at his chin. "And you've got no idea about the dead girl?"
"No," Stratton replied. "I'm sorry."
I am sorry.
Beckley led him back through a maze of dingy halls in the police station. As he reached the front desk, Beckley realized he was walking alone. He backtracked and found Stratton at the door to the property room. Staring.
"It was in the car," Beckley explained. "Wrapped up in the trunk. Didn't even get singed."
Rigidly Stratton approached the Chinese soldier who stood noble and poised, an unlikely centerpiece amid the flotsam of crime-pistols, blackjacks, bags of grass and pills, helmets, stereo speakers, radios, jewelry, shotguns, crowbars.
Each item, Stratton noted, was carefully marked.
The ancient Chinese warrior, too, wore a blue tag around its neck, an incongruous paper medallion.
"What do you think?" Beckley said.
Stratton was overwhelmed. He couldn't take his eyes off the imperial soldier.
"Well, I'll tell you what I think," the cop said after a few moments. "I think it's the damnedest-looking lawn jockey I ever saw."
CHAPTER 26
Stratton spent the night in Wheeling. He slept turbulently, racked by old dreams and new grief.
First David, and now Linda.
He tried to convince himself that it wasn't his fault. They had argued under the oaks at Arlington: Stratton for vengeance, Linda for patience. Wang Bin was worth more alive than dead, she had said. "He's an encyclopedia, Tom. Do you know what he could do for us?"
"Do you know," Stratton had countered, "what he's already done?"
But she had been determined, and Stratton had underestimated her.
Now she was dead, and Wang Bin was dust in the wind, a clever phantom. Stratton was sure he'd already grabbed the money, and with the money came boundless freedom-comfort, respectability, anonymity. That's the way it worked in America.
That's what the deputy minister had counted on. In his mind's eye, Stratton pictured the cagey old fellow in his new life-where? San Francisco, maybe, or even New York; an investor, perhaps, or the owner of a small neighborhood business. Maybe something more ambitious: his own museum.
Stratton was desolate in his failure. Without clues, without even a scent of the trail, he had nowhere to go.
Nowhere but home, back to doing what he should have been doing all along. And before that, a detour. A couple of hours was all he needed, a moment really. A chance to say goodbye to the man who had meant so much to him, and whose murder he had been unable to prevent. A taste of better times, something enduring and warm for a lifetime of cold dreams.
Stratton got an early start and reached Pittsville by noon. The moment he passed the city limit sign he pulled his foot from the accelerator, a vestigial reflex from his days as a student. Speed trap or not, the town was still gorgeous.
It was green and cool and hilly, a sleepy old friend. Stratton wished he had never left.
He stopped for lunch at the village sundry, not far from St. Edward's campus.
The counter lady, a grand old bird with snowy hair and antique glasses, remembered him instantly and lectured him on his lousy eating habits. Stratton cheered up.
The campus had changed little, and why should it have? The enrollment stayed constant, the endowments generous but not extravagant. Ivy still climbed the red-brick bell tower, and the bells still rang off key. The narrow roads were as pocked as ever, and the college gymnasium-now called an Amphidome-still looked like a B-52 hangar.
Stratton discovered he was in no hurry. He was home. He allowed himself to be led by sights and sounds. On the steps of the cafeteria, a shaggy folksinger strummed a twelve-string and sang-Stratton couldn't believe it-Dylan. Stratton dropped a dollar into the kid's guitar case and strolled to the post office to read the campus bulletin board. It was another St. Edward's tradition.
"Roommate wanted: Any sex, any size. Must have money."
"Need Melville term paper within ten days. Will pay big bucks, plus bonus for bibliography. Reply confidential."
"I want my Yamaha handlebars back. $200 firm. No questions."
Stratton shook his head. Nothing had changed.
"You lookin' for work, young man?" came a gruff voice from behind. " 'Cause we sure don't need any more liberal agitators on this campus!"
Stratton immediately recognized the voice. "Jeff!"
"Mr. Crocker, to you." Crocker beamed and threw an arm around Stratton's shoulders. "How are you, Tom? You look like hell."
"You too."
"Editors are supposed to look like hell. It's in their contract."
"Yeah, well, I've been driving all day and I'm beat."
They walked the campus, making small talk. Crocker had been a reporter for the local newspaper when Stratton had been a student at St. Edward's. Now he was executive editor.
"They even let me teach a journalism class out here."
"God help us," Stratton said with a ghost of a smile. "The National Star comes to Pittsville."
They gravitated to the beer cellar in the basement of the cafeteria. It was five o'clock, still early for the campus drinkers, so Stratton and Crocker had no trouble finding a quiet booth.
Halfway through his first beer Crocker said, "I kind of expected to see you at the funeral."
"I couldn't come, Jeff. I was in China."
"With David? When it happened?"
Stratton told him what he could.
"It was such a shock," Crocker said. "The irony. After all those years, to return-only to die."
"He told me he was writing new lectures."
"Yes," Crocker said. "We did a feature story before he left. David always felt there was a thirty-year gap in history, at least for him. By going back he hoped to fill that empty space so he could bring his students up to date. The way he talked, the trip was purely a scholar's survey… hell, we all knew better, Tom.
You should have seen how excited he was." Crocker polished off the beer. "He was packed two weeks before the plane left. Isn't that the David Wang we knew?"
"Orderly, to the extreme," Stratton said fondly.
"Yup. It was so sad. The service was very lovely."
"I would like to have been here, Jeff. You know that."
"Have you been up there yet?" Crocker motioned with his head. Stratton knew where he meant.
"No, not yet. I'll walk up in a little while. Is the house still open?"
"They decided to lock it up after David died. To protect his library as much as anything." Crocker winked. "The key's in a flowerpot on the porch."
"Thanks."
"On my way back to town I'll tell Gulley you're up there, so he won't get all worked up and send a squad car when he sees the lights."
Stratton said, "I'll only stay a little while."
"Stay as long as you want," Crocker said. "Don't cheat yourself."
Outside, darkness had gathered swiftly under a purple quilt of threatening clouds. Stratton set out for the Arbor with a quick stride, freshened by the cool stirrings of the birch and pine. All around him students lugging books hurried to beat the rain. Past the biology building, which looked and smelled like a morgue, the campus ended and the old trees gave way to a sloping, blue-green valley. All this had once been pasture, part of the old dairy David Wang had purchased after his arrival at St. Edward's. The valley was narrow and sharply defined, and halfway up the far slope Stratton could see the trees, David's trees, a lush wall of maple and pine and oak. At the top of that hill was the old farmhouse. Beyond that, on the downslope past another tall grove, was the bluff where David's coffin lay, near a lone oak. Stratton had no desire to visit the gravesite. An empty place, it mocked him in his nightmares.
The house was something else again-all the hours they had spent together there, the student and his teacher. It was there Stratton had shared his private agony-Man-ling-and tried to explain it over and over until David had gently touched his arm and said, "I understand, Tom. War."