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said, his elbow resting on one knee, "she really did have a phobia that Ivan
would finish her off. She was awfully prescient, Detective, wasn't she?"
"So you think that whoever killed Lola was working for Ivan?"
"As opposed to doing the job for Sylvia Foote, Ms. Cooper?" Shreve chuckled.
"That's an idea I hadn't thought of until this moment. A King's College cabal?
Possible, I guess, but most unlikely. You'd have to give me a pretty good
reason."
"Anything else?" I said to Mike.
"I'm not going to let you go without asking a few things about Petra,
Professor. D'you mind?"
Shreve rose to his feet and stretched. "If you know of it, I can only tell you
that it's as spectacular as everything you've ever heard." He spoke directly
to me, quoting the Burgon poem. "A rose-red city half as old as time.' Have
you ever been?"
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
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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.
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"That's not what your colleagues tell me."
"What, Shreve? I suppose he told you that he and Lola were just friends, also. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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