The Dark Side Of Justice

Chapter 4-1

The wind was blowing off the Little Brown as Frank and I walked briskly across the campus toward Carlson Hall. The three storied, red brick building had a steeply pitched green tile roof, with round turrets at either end of the building"s main wings. Wide based elms flanked the sharp base of the exterior stairs, sweeping up from the sidewalk to the main entrance of the building. To me it looked like a building from a Victorian Gothic novel. As we approached, hands shoved in our coat pockets and heads down in coats from the frigid wind, I wasn"t too eager to enter the building. We had an appointment to interview Dr. Marvin Sloan, the school"s president. It was not an interview set up by us.

We went up two flights of stairs and down a long hall of thick burgundy red plush carpet, with giant paintings of several of the more illustrious alumni who had made their way through this institution glaring down silently at us as we walked past. Frank and I finally found a large room filled with potted green plants and a wizened, gray haired old woman looking up at us from behind ancient eyes. “Detectives Hahn and Morales to see Dr. Sloan.”

“He is expecting the both of you. Please go in.”

She spoke in a harsh, tobacco-infested whisper with a distinct German accent to it. As we walked past her Frank looked at me, grinned, clicked his heels in a smart, Prussian-like gesture and gave a quick nod of the head. I grinned but noticed that the old woman was turning slowly in her chair to watch us. Watch us with eyes as black as anthracite coal.

We entered the large, dark-oak paneled office of the school"s president and I felt as if we had walked into the main Mormon tabernacle. The ceilings were eighteen feet above our heads and braced with large wooden beams blackened with age. Baroque furniture, heavy and massive in deep, burgundy-red leather, lined the walls. The floors were old oak, polished to a deep luster, with an expensive Afghan rug covering the center of the room in deep burgundies and old gold colors. Sloan’s desk sat on the Afghan. It was a big desk, dark in color, and littered with papers and file folders. On one corner of the desk was a huge brass lamp with a glass Tiffany shade. It was on, flooding the rather dark room with a warm, glowing ball of light. Sloan was sitting behind the desk with most of his body, except for his face, within that inviting ball of light. He was dressed in a light gray suit. He looked tall, with gray hair of what little hair that was left and sitting on his nose was a pair of half-mooned shaped reading glasses.

“Ah, good afternoon, gentlemen. So good of you to come by.”

He came to his feet, and he was considerably taller than either Frank or me. I"m tall, but he stood about three inches taller. Coming around the big desk we each shook hands and then he waved us to the big leather chairs in front of his desk as he resumed his position on his personal throne.

We sat down in the chairs on the other side of the desk and for several seconds the three of us eyed each other. From somewhere behind us we heard the seconds ticking away from the large grandfather clock. The air seemed heavy and abstract in this room, and with the man sitting on the far side of the paper cluttered desk, sitting back in his large office chair with one leg crossed across the other and with the reading glasses still riding low on his nose, I had this uncomfortable feeling it was Frank and me who were in trouble.

“This is a terrible shock to us all, gentlemen. A terrible shock. Dr. Holdridge was a brilliant teacher and a cornerstone to this institution.”

“And one with an attitude problem, from what we hear,” Frank grunted, smiling inanely as he reached into his coat for his small notebook and a pen. “I mean, he got everyone pissed off at him in a fairly regular fashion, didn"t he?”

“Hmm, well … I wouldn"t say often. No, not often, Detective …”

“Morales. Frank Morales. This is my partner, Turner Hahn. Sergeant Turner Hahn. He"s in charge of this investigation.”

Sloan"s light-gray colored eyes were troubled as he looked at Frank"s head of unruly carrot-colored hair atop a face scarred and battered yet filled with raw curiosity and blunt honesty. He looked as if he were about to become nauseous. But he slid his eyes over to where I was sitting. A look of relief drifted into his craggy face as he quickly sized me up.

“Tell me, Dr. Sloan,” Frank broke in again, and again making Dr. Sloan’s face cloud over with ill-concealed pain. “If Dr. Holdridge was so good at making both students and faculty so pissed off at him, why wasn"t he told to pack his tote bag and get the hell out?”

Had anyone ever talked to Marvin Sloan like this before? Apparently not. Frank"s blunt, no-nonsense, and non-sophisticated way of being direct rattled Marvin Sloan’s quiet little world. It had been on his insistence we come to his office the moment we came back on duty. Summoned to the eagle"s nest for an ass-chewing, as the way Frank described it, when he handed me the note left on his desk telling us to report here.

It might have been Sloan was going to interrogate us on our efforts in this investigation, and maybe intimidate us with his high station in life, but he hadn"t figured on meeting a buzz saw personality like Frank"s.

The only thing I could do was grin, cross my legs as I sat back in the comfortable chair, and join in on the fun.

“Dr. Sloan, my partner has made an interesting point. So far, we"ve interviewed several people, all suspects in the case I might add, and every one of them say the same thing. The deceased was a scintillating intellect who took an almost puerile joy in provoking others. The question which obviously comes to mind is this. If Dr. Holdridge was like this to everyone, why was he retained?”

“Scintillating?” Frank asked, turning to look at me, puzzled.

“Very smart. Extremely clear in his intellect,” I said, defining the word and keeping a straight face.

“Oh. I thought so,” my partner grunted, nodding, and turning his attention back to Sloan.

Marvin Sloan took off his reading glasses and was now sitting back in his chair, gnawing quietly on one earpiece as he kept looking at the two of us with an expression of near disbelief etched into his eyes. Obviously, his plan to dictate to us was not going to work, and as I watched him running the plastic earpiece of one bow across the white enamel of his teeth, I could almost hear his brain"s little cogs trying to adjust their machinations and address us in a different tone.

“Err, Sergeant Hahn … how long have you been in the police department?”

It was a soft voice, a friendly voice, dripping with a large portion of intellectual smugness. Just the thing to activate Frank’s unique attitude.

“Do you mean is my partner smart enough to get your killer?” Frank barked, pulling a handkerchief out and blowing his nose. Loudly. “Worried about that, huh?”

“No, no, not worried!” Sloan almost shouted, throwing up one hand in an apologetic fashion and coming forward in his chair, leaping out of if almost in a defensive fashion. “I"m not questioning your professional abilities, gentlemen. Not in the least! But … but I have … my board of directors have … concerns on how this case should proceed. We want this affair brought to a quiet conclusion as rapidly as possible. And with as little publicity as possible!”

“Worried you won"t get that hundred-million-dollar grant, huh?” Frank said, smiling sweetly. That is if you can imagine a white-skinned cement block for a head, filled with bright carrot-colored red hair, with apparently nose and ears glued on, capable of grinning. “We"ve heard about the pending grant Dr. Murphy has applied for. The Feds gonna make a decision soon?”

Sloan blinked incredulously a few times at Frank and then looked at me with an exasperated, almost helpless facial expression, and then in sheer frustration threw up his hands and stalked over to the window. For a moment or two he glared out the window and visibly tried to rake in his anger and keep it under control. Turning back to us he stalked back to his desk and quickly sat down on the corner nearest to me.

“Sergeant, do you know what we are talking about here? It"s not just the money, although the sum we are discussing is enormous. We are talking about transformation! That grant is going to turn Anderson University into one of the premiere research institutions in the country. With Dr. Murphy"s work we are going to transform this small school into one of the few institutions who are on the cutting edge of nuclear research. Gentlemen, we are talking about a twenty percent increase in faculty, five new buildings and one of the most well-equipped research labs in the world!”

He came off his desk and looked at Frank as he circled around the desk to resume his seat.

“So, to answer your question, Officer Morales … yes. Yes, I am worried what a raucous, publicity-fueled murder investigation which could drag on for weeks on end, disrupting both students and faculty in the process, will do to this institution.”

I nodded. Frank nodded. We both heard the man"s words and the man"s driving ambition. Would such driving ambition be a strong enough reason for murder? I found that an interesting thought. I wondered if we could tie it in.

“Doctor Sloan, I understand your concern,” I began, trying to sound conciliatory but firm at the same time. “And I assure you we want to solve this case as rapidly as possible. But I"m afraid we have no control over the press, nor on whom we might have to label as a suspect. Until we find the culprit, everyone is automatically under suspicion.”

“Including Dr. Murphy?”

“Sure,” Frank grunted, lifting a wiry eyebrow, wrinkling his forehead in a formation of heavy wrinkles in the process. “Why not? She and the deceased were not friends. He even accused her of having an affair with a student. He"d made no bones about wanting her job. Don’t that sound to you like enough motive to clean someone"s slate?”

I smiled then wiped if off my lips quickly. Again, Frank was trying to sound like the tough, but dumb, cop. He knew the difference in usage between the singular and plural verbs. And probably more than the man in front of us. But the point was he didn"t look smart. His rectangular head, crowned with a mass of unruly red hair, and his broken nose which ambled off in several directions, along with the scars around his lips and chin, suggested Frank was straight off the streets and as dumb as a lamp post. He looked tough, mean, but not too bright. And because of his looks we tripped a lot of criminals into revealing something they shouldn"t have when Frank started asking questions

On the other hand, with my black mustache and my thick black hair pulled straight back, and dressed in decent clothes, I make people believe I am a far more sympathetic figure to appeal to. My looks, as I"ve mentioned before, make people think of an ancient matinee idol. The innocent, and the victims, opened to me and talked to me more readily than they do to my hoodlum-looking friend. For the innocent and the victimized, I projected an image of concern, of someone who they can trust. So, Frank and I make a good pair. We get people to talk, and sometimes we get them to say things they didn"t want to say. Or even more interestingly, to say things and give out facts they didn"t know they knew.