Murderer's Diary

The Perfect Murder-3

“What do you mean?” the cop asked.

“He fiddled with the lamp cord and the phone and he was rooting around in her bureau drawer a minute ago.”

Larry turned around and gaped at Bill. “f**k you,” he mouthed.

The cop said to Bill that they’d better not touch anything, that Bill shouldn’t even be using Violet’s phone. “Step outside the apartment and wait for us. The premises are a crime scene. It’s a crime to interfere with it.”

Bill was annoyed at being told he shouldn’t use Violet’s phone—what other phone could he use when he had to keep an eye on Larry? And he hadn’t touched anything else—Larry was the one interfering with the crime scene. After he hung up, he immediately thought of letting Dana know what had happened. Screw the cops, he decided, he would call her right now. He picked up the receiver again and dialed her work number.

3

Friday Jan. 10, 1964

I must take care to remain unknown to the associates of my Beautiful One. Lawrence can’t be helped, but I must act cautiously so as to avoid encountering the other graduate students and faculty members of the philosophy department. It would be too great a risk to walk the upper hallway past the office of L and V two days in succession. Today I chose to lie in wait, so to speak, near the door of the building. I was certain She would use the door to the mall and not the one at the other end of the hallway, leading to the street. Surely She would prefer the snow-covered lawn surrounded by old, imposing buildings to the street with its traffic noise and fumes from the city buses. I was also certain I would recognize Her by her hair. How could I forget it? But the weather was cold; she might cover her head with a little knitted cap or a scarf. Even then, I knew I would see wisps of light brown hair peek out from beneath. But what if it lay protected under her coat?

I observed every young girl who exited the building onto the mall. I longed for the sight of V. At last, as the sky began to darken, I saw Her! She was wearing red earmuffs! A child’s earmuffs. A scarf with many different-colored stripes was wrapped about her neck, but the top of her head was uncovered, exposed to the bitter wind. I knew her hair even though all but the top of it was confined within her coat. Below her long, bulky coat—yes! I recognized it as the imitation fur coat that hung on the back of her chair when I observed Her at her desk—I could see She wore blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up. I would have to wait for a Tuesday or Thursday when She would be teaching in order to see Her wearing nylon stockings and a skirt. O, her face looked fresh and innocent, as innocent as a child’s, and I could see that She was the quiet sort of girl who could keep a secret.

Dared I follow this vision of youthfulness? Or should I put off discovering where She lives? I chose to follow Her because it was far too dangerous to rely upon seeing Her again in the vicinity of Ford Hall, where I was likely to encounter Lawrence.

She walked at a brisk pace toward Northrop Auditorium at the opposite end of the mall, turned left and walked straight across to Johnston Hall and entered it. I followed Her as far as the steps at the end of the mall and climbed them after I watched Her enter the building. But joy! I almost bumped into Her as she exited by a second door. Ah, she had passed through in order to avoid the steps! And perhaps to warm herself for a moment. She was still mine to observe at leisure. I slowed my pace so as to follow Her from a distance.

I followed V—Virginia? Victoria? Valerie?—across Pleasant Street to the sidewalk that led diagonally to the corner of University and Fourteenth Avenue, where She crossed University and continued on. I kept well back from Her and even lingered near the corner of Fourth and Fourteenth for a time, pretending to look at the displays in the gift shop window, but turning my head every two or three seconds to glance in her direction. The street was almost empty of people, so I easily followed Her with my glances until I saw Her step into a doorway. Then I hastened down the street, keeping my eyes upon the spot where She had disappeared from view. The door She had entered was just to the right of the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a dismal, lowlife coffeehouse. O, my V lives in a dismal, rundown neighborhood. I’ve heard it referred to as Dinkytown but it should be Dingytown.

On Monday I shall return to Dingytown at an hour when V will likely be absent. Then I shall open the door through which She entered. Undoubtedly there will be mailboxes inside and I shall discover her name. O, the anticipation thrills me.

***

After the last of the nine o’clock clients had gone in for his session at the Loring Park Clinic of Counseling, Dana took a moment to relax at her desk. She tore open a new pack of Raleighs, took out the coupon and put it in her purse, then lit up a cigarette. As she took a long drag, a tune started playing in her head. “I want to hold your hand...” It was a Beatles song! She had seen those cute British guys on Ed Sullivan Sunday night, with the girls in the audience screaming their heads off as they sang, and everybody on the TV news shows had been talking about them all week. She smiled, realizing that the Beatles’ music had wiped away her earlier worries about her husband’s job interview.

The phone rang, interrupting her musings. It was Bill, who almost never called her at work. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. That sounded ominous.

“What else would a receptionist be doing?” she said. Jeez, she sounded just like him. Bill always reacted to small talk as if it were the ramblings of a schizophrenic. Dana set her cigarette down in the ashtray.

“Something’s happened to Violet,” Bill said in his calm voice.

A chill went through Dana. “Oh, Bill. What is it? What happened?”

“She’s dead,” Bill said. “I’m sorry, hon.”

“Do you always have to be so blunt?” she asked. She felt a lump in her throat, and her eyes filled with tears.

Bill didn’t say anything.

Dana pictured Violet watching Ed Sullivan Sunday night. She’d looked as young as the girls in the TV audience, but had sat there looking at them with disdain showing all over her face, as if she were too old for such nonsense. How could she be dead? “Was it an accident?”

“No,” Bill said.

“Oh. Did she have a medical condition we didn’t know about?” Dana asked. Where were all these questions coming from?

“It wasn’t natural causes,” Bill said. “Look, it’s not something to discuss on the phone.”

One of the depressed patients at the clinic had tried to kill herself just the month before. Violet sometimes looked depressed, but not so much lately. “Surely it wasn’t suicide,” she said. Going through the possibilities was a way to keep Bill’s attention.

“No,” he said. “If you must know, it looks like somebody killed her. I’m at her place right now.”

“Oh, God.” Tears started running down her face, and she heard a plaintive moan, which she recognized was coming from herself. She knew she had to say something rational to keep Bill on the phone, so she stifled the moan. Through her tears, she asked, “How did he—?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. The cops should be here any minute,” Bill said impatiently. “And I’ve got Larry to deal with. He’s here with me, and he’s been acting juvenile as usual.”

Dana didn’t want Bill to hang up and leave her all alone with her grief. “I’ll come right over,” she said. “I can handle Larry. And there must be something I can do to help. Take care of the cat or—”

“No, you can’t come over now! I told you—the cops’ll be here.”

“Could you pick me up right now, honey? Or should I get a bus? I can’t stay here.” Dana wiped her eyes and blew her nose with a Kleenex from the box on her desk.

“I can’t pick you up. Take the bus home. Oh! I hear the cops coming up the stairs. Gotta go.” The phone went dead.

Dana wondered how Bill could hang up on her like that. Then it occurred to her that she shouldn’t have said she could handle Larry. God knew what Bill would read into that remark. She noticed her cigarette in the glass ashtray was about to fall to the desk. She picked it up and flicked off the ashes. Then she buzzed her boss’s office, interrupting his session with a client.

“What is it?” Dr. Gross said gruffly.

“I just found out that a close friend of mine was murdered and I’m a wreck over it. I have to leave right away,” Dana blurted out. Her boss’s quick intake of breath told her she’d guessed right that circumstances permitted such an interruption.

“My God,” Dr. Gross said. “Go right ahead, Dana. I understand completely.”

Within minutes, she was on Hennepin Avenue waiting for the number 6 bus. She pulled her knitted cap down and fastened the top button of her coat. She was wearing nylons, so her legs stung with each blast of the wind. At least she had left her high heels at the office and changed into warm boots to protect her feet from the February cold, as well as from ice and snow. It felt like ten degrees below zero.

On the bus, Dana sat near the back and thought about Violet until she got off at Thirteenth Avenue and hurried down to Fourteenth, where she dashed across Fourth Street on a yellow light. Her house was another block away, across from Marshall High School, but she wanted to stop by Violet’s place on her way there. She passed the gift shop on the corner where she liked to look at all the beautiful things for sale. Nothing in the window looked appealing to her today. When she passed Vescio’s restaurant, where they served Italian food Minnesota style—heavy on the cheese, but with no visible tomato sauce—it occurred to her that Violet would never eat there with her and Bill again.

As she approached the entrance to Violet’s hallway, Dana saw a police car and several other vehicles parked slantwise on the street, ignoring the parking meters, and two uniformed policemen shooing people from the sidewalk. A van from Channel Five was parked there, too, and she could see a cameraman and a reporter. No way did Dana want to be on TV at a time like this, so she quickly crossed the street and entered the Tub Laundromat, where a crowd was gathering to watch what was going on. Like most Laundromats, the Tub had a glass front through which there was a clear view of what was taking place in front of Violet’s. She looked for Bill and Larry, but the only person she recognized in the crowd was Howie Steinberg, whom everyone referred to as the mayor of Dinkytown. He was short and squat and always wore a hat which made him look more like a rabbi than a mayor.

Dana went up to Howie and asked, “Have you seen Bill? You know, my husband?” Howie shook his head.

“How long have you been standing here?” she asked.

“Just a few seconds,” Howie said. “Just stopped in to say hello to a pal of mine.” Dana thought he must feel that gawking was too undignified for a mayor.

“Oh. Well, Bill and Larry were upstairs over there and found Violet.” It didn’t occur to Dana at that moment that Howie probably didn’t know who Violet was or that she was dead, and he probably didn’t know Larry either. “Bill called me from her place. I was at work.”

Dana noticed some people stepping close to her and listening intently to what she was saying, so she paused. One woman was writing in a notebook. God. Dana thought she was probably a newspaper reporter. She looked back at Howie and asked, “Do you think they’re still up there?”

A young girl who looked like an undergraduate said, “I saw three guys come out. Two of ’em got into a police car and took off, and the other one was carrying a cat and went that way.” She pointed to the left towards Fifth Street.