Chapman answered in place of me. "I’ll get there before the princess ever will. Can you still see the citadel?"
"Not much of it left. Seven centuries older than these local ruins of ours."
"Built during the Crusades. Part of Jordan now," Mike explained to me, turning to walk Shreve out toward the exit. "You still have to go into the plains over that narrow pass, on horseback? I'm definitely gonna do that someday."
As Shreve nodded his head, Mike shook his hand, continued to chat, and then took the empty coffee cup from the professor. "Thanks for coming in. I'll throw that in the trash for you."
He walked back to his desk after ushering Shreve out. "How come everyone figures right off the bat that you're so couth and cultured, and they all make me out to be such a frigging Philippine?"
"Philistine?"
"Philistine. Whatever. I know more about the Crusaders and the sack of Zara than that egghead anthropologist will figure out in six lifetimes.
"And what he was also too stupid to know was that I generously provided them with these coffee cups so that he could leave me just a little bit of saliva on the rim, in order for Bob Thaler to tell me all the unique things in his double helix that make him such a special guy." Mike was holding Shreve's container in the air, spinning it around in his hand. "Put his initials on the bottom, Coop, and stick it in this paper bag. Attila can take them down to the lab when we're done."
Pleased with his coup, he went back into the waiting area and returned with Paolo Recantati. The timid-looking historian was still clutching his cup, so Mike refilled it from the hot plate in the squad room and gave me a thumbs-up.
"Sit down and relax, sir. Might not be as bad as you think."
"I can't imagine it can get much worse, Mr. Chapman. I left Princeton to come into this nest of vipers. Whatever for? I'm an academic, you understand. Never really been involved in administrative work. The last thing I needed to end my first semester here was a murdered colleague. It's the coldest day of the year and I'm sweating as though it were the middle of July."
It always interested me how people close to murder victims put their own woes ahead of concerns about the deceased. Somehow, I expected each of these interviews to begin with some expression of solicitude about the departed soul of the late Lola Dakota.
"Had you known Ms. Dakota very long?"
"I didn't meet her until I came to the college in September. She has-had, I guess-a wonderful reputation in her field, and I was well aware of her scholarship in twentieth-century New York City government affairs long before we met. I was counting on her to continue to be one of our more productive faculty members. She didn't disappoint in that regard. Lola's next book was scheduled for publication in the spring, with a small university press. And she had already placed several articles about Blackwells, both in academic and commercial journals."
"Published and perished? These times are cruel."
Chapman's humor wasn't for everyone. I made a note to try to get a manuscript of Dakota's forthcoming work. Perhaps there was something in her research that would relate to the investigation. "Was she ever accused of plagiarism, or stealing another professor's intellectual property?"
"I think everyone would agree that Lola was an original. That wasn't one of her problems."
"What were they, Mr. Recantati? What were her problems?"
He stammered a bit. "Well-well, certainly, you could start with the marriage. With that crazy husband of hers. That was an issue for all of us at the college."
"How do you mean?"
"Lola brought the marriage to campus with her every day. I don't mean physically, of course. But she was always terrified that Ivan would appear at school, following an argument or after a meeting with their matrimonial attorneys. She was just as frightened for her students and for us as she was about herself. Talked about it to Sylvia and to me quite often. Afraid that Ivan would show up-or worse still, send some hired gun to the school who would kill anyone that got in the way when he targeted Lola. Thank goodness she was alone when it happened."
I winced at the man's selfishness. What must her last moments have been like? Confronted by her killer at the portal of her own home. Had he been in the apartment with her? Had he waited outside, knowing she planned to go somewhere? Or was it a chance encounter with a stranger, and were Chapman and I wasting our time talking to her cronies while a rapist or robber-an opportunist-was at large in the neighborhood?
Recantati rubbed his forefinger back and forth across his lower lip. "That sounds kind of cold, doesn't it?" His speech halted again. "And, and I-uh-we're just assuming she was alone when she was killed, I guess. Do you know anything else about it yet? How she died, I mean?"
Mike ignored the questions. He wanted answers to his own first. "You're a historian, right? Give us your background before getting to King's."
"My credentials? I did my undergraduate work at Princeton. Master's and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. I'd been in charge of the history department at Princeton, until I came here to take the position as acting president while the search committee is finding someone for the permanent position. I'm, uh-I'll be fifty years old in March. I live just outside of Princeton, although King's has given me an apartment on campus while I'm here."
"Married?"
"Yes. My wife teaches math at a private school near our home. We've got four young-"
"She know anything about your relationship-your sexual relationship-with Lola?"
Recantati rubbed his lip furiously now. "I didn't-we didn't have any such thing."
He had hesitated a few moments too many to be credible. I had the sense that he was trying to figure out whether there was anyone who could possibly know the truth before he had to commit himself to an honest answer.
"That's not what your colleagues tell me."
"What, Shreve? I suppose he told you that he and Lola were just friends, also. That's a laugh. Do you have any idea what it's like in a closed community like a small college? You have dinner at the faculty club with someone who's not in your department and therefore you must be in bed with her. A student stays fifteen minutes too long in your office, and you're making a pass at her. If it's a male student, you must not be out of the closet yet.
"I'll help with your investigation in any way that I can, but I won't sit here and be insulted."
Chapman leaned back and opened his desk drawer. He placed a box of Q-Tips on top of the blotter and pointed to it. "How about giving me a buccal swab, Professor?"
"What? I've never been in a station house before. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with your language, your question."
"I didn't learn the word from J. Edgar Hoover. It's science, not police lingo." Mike slowly drew open the sliding lid from the box and removed one of the cotton-tipped wooden applicators. "That's buccal-from the Latin bucca. Your mouth, in the old country.
"If you'd be kind enough to just run this down the inside of your cheek, then Cooper's heartthrobs, those serologists over at the lab who solve all her rape cases and make her look so damn good, they'll tell me if it matches any of the DNA we found on things in Ms. Dakota's little apartment."
"B-but you need blood, surely, or s-s-s-"
He couldn't bring himself to say the word "semen."
"I need a buccal swab, is all. The same little bit of spit that's kind of frothing on your lips, sir."
Recantati repeated his nervous habit of stroking his mouth. He stood up. "This is not what I came in here to discuss with you today. You can't make me do that."
"I got a four-year-old nephew who says that to me, too. Stamps his foot at the same time. You should add that touch, for more emphasis. / can't make you do it, today, is a fact. But watch out for blondie, here. She's hell with a grand jury."