23
“I WAS VERY, VERY FOND OF MAUD,” Jo Carr told Lieutenant Salmone. “I can tell you I’m in mourning for her. I was with her the night she died. For God’s sake, find the person in that car.”
He could see that she was very shaky but holding on. Holding on very well.
“You took her to the hospital, I understand.”
“I took her to the hospital. I was told she left right away. I didn’t try hard enough to find her. I let her wander off.”
“Dr. Carr, you shouldn’t feel that way, in my opinion. You did a lot more than your job.”
“I let her wander off in a lot of ways.”
“What could you do you didn’t do?”
“Lieutenant, I like to think I can do a lot of things when I put my mind to it. You ask what I could have done? I don’t know.”
There was a box of tissues on the corner of her desk and he wondered whether she would make use of it herself.
“You know,” she said, “I’d like to have a buck for every parent that ever came in here and said that to me. Myself, I never had any children of my own.”
“I’m very sorry,” Salmone said.
“Oh, it wasn’t done, Lieutenant. I would have been the pregnant nun in the old joke — you get extra points for running her over.”
“I meant I was sorry for your grief, Doctor.”
“Right. Excuse me.”
“Would you say Maud confided in you?”
“I couldn’t exactly say that. For one thing, she wasn’t terribly confiding. In her freshman year it might have been true.”
“Not after that?”
“After that, hardly at all. But I believe I understood her. I felt I knew her well. Just intangibles. I know generally what’s been up with her through other students affected by her life.”
“You mean Shelby Magoffin?”
“Yes. You could talk to Shelby.”
“We did. Anybody else?”
“Shelby, being her roommate, was the student closest to her I know about.”
“She had a bad romance with Professor Brookman?”
“You might say that. Why are you asking me this?”
He told her about the scene on the street.
“They were shoving each other.”
“Wait a minute, Lieutenant. Don’t we suspect murder by an anti-abortion fanatic?”
“That’s our leading possibility.”
“What’s it got to do with Professor Brookman?”
“We have to factor in everything.”
Jo was silent for a moment.
“So she had a bad romance with Brookman. Understand this: Maud did not go in for romances. She was like the unobtainable girl and she broke their hearts. Some of them — in this place I think it was their first rejection. The boys, the alpha boys too, really went for her. And to speak for Brookman — as a married seducer — there were plenty worse. Or better at it. Or more compulsive. Maud was smart as could be. Beautiful, smart as could be…”
She stopped and looked at him. It was all he could do not to slide her the box of tissues. When she came around, he took one and wiped his glasses with it.
“Why are you asking me about Brookman?”
“I have to ask you, ma’am. So she thought maybe he would leave Mrs. Brookman?”
“I don’t know about that. I know she thought it was love. Love love. She thought he adored her. He didn’t talk about his family to her. She didn’t know how married he was. How sort of devoted he was. She was quite young, she was self-absorbed. He’s smart and attractive and traveled, and she thought he was hers.”
“Permanently?”
“Oh,” Jo said, “permanently? This was a kid. Forever and a day. Fairy tale. Vain. Aging, adoring parents. An A student here. Of course the mother passed away.”
“Tell me about Brookman.”
“They used to say about Brookman he was a polished thug. A very decent, likable guy in most ways. A boozy opportunist, not enough thought for the morrow, a very intelligent wife who loved him a whole lot and was from a stand-up-for-your-man tradition.”
“Do you think he would hurt Maud?”
“No! Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Salmone said flatly.
“Frankly, I’d like to know why I’m being asked so much about him.”
“Because of the way it happened. Why do you say Mr. Brookman is a thug?”
“That’s entirely the wrong word,” Jo said. “People used to say that as a joke.”
“Yes?”
Suddenly she thought of El Doliente and her dream of him.
“It’s funny,” she said. “I should mention this priest I used to know in South America. He showed up here during the hassles that followed Maud’s Gazette article. He came to see me. He’s something of an anti-abortion crusader.”
“He came here? To the counseling office?”
“He was called Father Walter. Down there we used noms de guerre. I mean we used just first names. Because it was dangerous.”
Salmone wrote down what she gave him.
“Did he ask about Maud?”
“Yes. Everybody was all about poor Maud.”
“Did he threaten her? Did he seem rational?”
“Frankly, I found him frightening.”
“How so?”
“He was intense. I was frightened of him when I knew him years ago. He was a revolutionary. I guess I was too.”
“South America this was?”
“Yeah. I think he might have been traveling with some Peruvian or Bolivian kids raising money.”
“Father Walter,” Salmone said. “We’ll check him out. Did you say he threatened Maud?”
“No. But he asked about her. The night she died I had a dream about him. A very frightening dream.”
“He scared you?”
“In the dream he did.”
“We’ll check him out if we can.”
“I guess I was always scared of him,” Jo said.
“Yeah, well,” said Salmone, “some priests are like that. I think there were a lot of priests and ministers up here after that piece came out.”
When Salmone was gone, Jo leaned on her desk looking down at its worn surface. Since when, she had to ask herself, do you use the cops as your friends and confidants? Not that she had anything against Salmone, whom she had encountered at least once before. The fixation on Brookman was puzzling and disturbing. She had spoken thoughtlessly and the detective’s reaction was downright predatory. Were they going to scapegoat Brookman to cool the issue? No, she thought, surely that notion was just the ghost of her old activist conditioning. She hoped! But what had Brookman done? What had really happened? She had prattled on so thoughtlessly. It was taking place, and in a vacuum too, because the incident was so strange and shocking that partisan reaction was astonished and unformed. The week’s Gazette had “ASK QUESTIONS!” on its front page as an editorial. Jo felt on her own with Maud’s death.
She had already written and mailed a note of sympathy to Edward Stack. But since she had spoken with Stack the night of Maud’s death, she decided to call him about arrangements.
He answered gruffly, as she expected. She reintroduced herself.
“I wondered how you were, Mr. Stack. If there was any way we could help?”
“They told me she’s coming home,” he said. “I want to put her with her mother.”
“Yes. Well, look, would you please let us know about services? Anything that’s not strictly family where we could say goodbye to her. People here loved and admired her.”
“I heard.”
Jo let that one pass.
“Some of us would like to… maybe say one for her. If there’s a way. We’d like to remember her. Honor her.”
“Yeah. I don’t think she would want any church stuff. Just to be in the church where her mother is now. That would be it.”
She waited for him to say more but he seemed to be finished.