Murderer's Diary

The Perfect Murder-2

He straightened up and, without thinking, rushed out the door, leaving it unlocked. He ran down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, where he almost bumped into Bill Schilling, of all people. Well, it wasn’t exactly surprising, since Bill lived in the next block.

Bill wore a ski jacket and gloves, but no hat, leaving his hair exposed to the February wind, which lifted it from his brow. Obviously a native-born Minnesotan, unlike Larry, who grew up in the Bronx.

“Bill!” Larry said. “Something’s happened up there! She’s dead!”

Bill looked annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

“Violet!” Larry shouted in his face. “She’s dead! Looks like somebody’s strangled her. We gotta call the cops.”

“Hunh?”

Larry calmed himself, a trick he’d learned in order to make himself understandable to all those tense, introverted philosophers. “I was thinking we could use your phone.”

He hadn’t been thinking at all, but now that he was calm, Larry remembered he needed to go back upstairs and retrieve his notebook and his gloves. God, his notebook! The universals paper was in there. What the f**k could he do with it now that Violet was dead?

Bill pointed to the Laundromat across the street. “Use the pay phone in the Tub.”

“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care what’s happened to Violet?”

“This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?” Bill said.

“NO!!!”

“Then I have to see it for myself.” Bill turned toward the door. Damn, Larry had hoped he would volunteer to go make the call. He needed to hide that damn paper, but how could he do it with Bill looking over his shoulder?

Larry motioned for Bill to go in the door ahead of him. He followed Bill up the stairs.

“Door’s unlocked,” Larry said.

***

When Bill stepped inside the room, he stood there for several seconds staring at Violet lying there unmoving. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “You weren’t kidding!”

He felt Larry brush past him and watched him bend to pick something up from the floor. “Don’t touch anything! We’ve got to go call the police right now,” Bill said.

“I need my notebook and gloves,” Larry said. “When I saw her face all distorted, I lost control of myself and I dropped everything. I almost threw up.”

“Don’t pick those up!!” Bill insisted. If Larry was enough of an i***t to leave his notebook and gloves at a murder scene, he was going to have to take the consequences. Bill hurried to the right into Violet’s bedroom, where she had a wall phone next to her ancient iron-framed single bed, just outside the kitchen doorway. He was about to call the police when he noticed that the phone receiver was hung upside down on its cradle. The curly tan cord hung from the top rather than dangling at the bottom. He hesitated.

He thought about walking over to the Tub to make the call, but didn’t want to leave Larry alone in the apartment. No telling what Larry was up to. He might even be the killer. Now there was a thought.

2

Wednesday Jan. 8, 1964

I know where to find her! I followed Lawrence when he left class today. He took the elevator, but I correctly divined that he intended to go to the third floor, where the philosophy department office is located. I had looked it up in the campus telephone directory. As I waited for the elevator door to close upon Lawrence, I merged into the crowd of students heading down the steps to the doors that open onto the Northrop mall. He did not see me! I waited for the elevator’s return to take me up to the higher regions where She was to be found. The department office was at the front of the building overlooking Northrop mall, the only beautiful area of the campus. In the center of the hallway were rooms used for seminars and colloquia and suchlike, while around the edges were offices for faculty and teaching assistants. On the wall next to each office door were some slots containing nameplates. Alas! I did not know Lawrence’s last name. Nor had I yet learned Her first or last name. But all was not lost. There was an initial before each surname and L is not a particularly common initial. The second office from that of the department was occupied by L. Benjamin, which I surmised was Lawrence, and V. Alexander. How perfect! Her name might be Virginia! O, my heart rejoiced!

***

Thursday Jan. 9, 1964

I have seen Her! I made my way up to the third floor of Ford Hall, the building in which my heart now lives, after I noticed Lawrence standing at the head of a classroom full of young undergraduates. Unobtrusively, I approached the office inhabited by L and V. The door stood open! I allowed myself to glance inside, where I saw the back of a girl’s head bent over a desk that faced the window. She has long, luxurious light-brown hair. Next to her desk, facing the wall to the left, was a second desk that was unoccupied. It had to be that of Lawrence. O, how I envied him! My heart fluttered a little at the thought of seeing Her turn her face to me. But I did not lag, I did not linger. I wanted to save the remainder of the vision for later. O, how I look forward to tomorrow’s delights.

***

In the living room, Larry retrieved his notebook and gloves, then walked to the window overlooking the street so he wouldn’t see the horrifying face again, or smell the body. He hadn’t been consciously aware of the dead-body smell when he’d come in the first time. Cold, but welcome, fresh air crept beneath the sill of the large front window, which had stained glass at the top. A radiator sat below it, hissing.

How was he going to solve his problem with June Becker now that Violet was dead? He opened his notebook to peek at the paper he’d intended to hand over to Violet today. Where could he leave it so the cops wouldn’t see it? He hoped to pretend to find it later or ask someone else to look for it where he’d left it. Where might Violet have hidden it if he’d really given it to her to type in December?

God, it was gonna be tough without Violet. Nobody to help with his philosophy papers when time was tight. Nobody at the office to laugh at his jokes either. He had loved it when Violet’s cheeks dimpled up at his Groucho Marx routines.

Then an idea occurred to him. He could play Groucho searching the apartment for clues. He could drop the paper into Violet’s underwear drawer while making it look as if he were searching the drawer. Bill would never figure it out. And so what if Bill thought he was being disrespectful to the dead. Violet wouldn’t care. Hell, if she were looking on from the beyond, she’d get a laugh out of it. She’d get a kick out of it that she could help him without having to face Becker’s wrath.

Bill walked up behind Larry and said, “Look at that lamp cord pulled out of the wall. He must have strangled her with that.”

Directing his gaze so he’d avoid seeing Violet’s face, Larry peered at the mattress, which was covered with a patchwork quilt. The cord lay there, unplugged, on the pastel pink and blue squares, the end of it just on the other side of Violet’s discarded clothing. Lying neatly folded next to the body were a ratty old dark gray wool sweater of her brother’s which had gray cloth patches on the elbows, and a pair of Lee jeans that Violet always wore with the bottoms rolled up.

Still averting his eyes from Violet’s face, he said, “Well, I dunno if he strangled her with that. Maybe he just likes to do it in the dark.”

“What are you talking about?” Bill asked, stepping to Larry’s side. “Don’t you think it was r**e?”

Larry said, “No. Her clothes would be torn and thrown around if she was r***d. I can’t imagine her handing them over to some stranger, or even to her boyfriend. Unless he had a weapon, maybe, but she wasn’t stabbed or shot. God, I used to tease her about wearing that boy’s sweater.” He turned around and started walking toward the bedroom.

“Her blouse looks a little torn,” Bill said. “See the thread hanging where there should be a button?”

“Oh, that,” Larry said, stopping in his tracks and looking over his shoulder at Bill. “It’s an old blouse she only wore around the house. The bottom button was missing already. The blouse is a little tight on her down there, so I guess that’s why it popped off.”

“How do you know all that?” Bill asked.

Larry said, “I come over here all the time. Violet types my papers.”

“Oh,” Bill said. “So you think it all looks neat and tidy? Well, what if the guy folded the clothes after she was dead? You didn’t think of that, did you?”

“No,” Larry admitted.

Why did Bill have to be so uncharacteristically observant today? Larry was getting anxious to carry out his little mission with the paper he’d brought along. He opened the notebook he was holding and pretended to write something in it with his index finger. “I’d say it’s a case of murder in the first degree,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. He bent down and pointed to a torn cigar band on the mattress. “The evidence shows the murderer smokes cheap cigars. Antony y Cleopatra. I wouldn’t be caught dead smoking one of those. Come to think of it, maybe the dead girl was smoking it.” He wiggled his eyebrows again.

“You’re trying to get a rise out of me, aren’t you?” Bill said. “Larry, no matter what you do to distract me, I’m telling the cops that notebook was there and you picked it up.”

Bill’s face was red with anger. Larry couldn’t help laughing inside at how easy it was to get an unemotional philosopher all hot under the collar. “Go right ahead,” Larry said. “There’s nothing incriminating in here. Just my notes from Existentialism.”

“Why didn’t you pick up your stuff before you left?” Bill asked in an irritated tone of voice.

“Hey! I’m not a walking robot like you. This whole scene was eating at me so much, I hadda get the f**k outta here. I forgot to pick up my shit.”

“Fair enough,” Bill said. “Now let’s get going. I’d call the cops from here, but they may want to get fingerprints off the phone. Somebody hung it up kind of strange.”

To continue infuriating Bill, Larry opened his notebook again and pretended to make another note. Then he walked to the phone, bent his head so the curly cord was at eye level, and said, “You could strangle a girl with a phone cord, but not when the cord’s in the wrong room.” God, Bill was gonna piss his pants watching this. Violet would be smiling if she could see it.

Now he had Bill where he wanted him—too shook up to notice exactly what was going on. Larry walked to the bureau across from the bed and opened the top drawer. He held up a pair of panties. “No clues under here. No love note, no lock of hair.”

He kept an eye on Bill, who impatiently put on his gloves and picked up the phone receiver, holding it gingerly, maybe being careful not to destroy any fingerprints that might be on it. He must have decided the call couldn’t wait.

As Bill dialed 0, Larry set his notebook down in the drawer, slipped the universals paper out of it, and held up a bra. “Nothing under here either. Come to think of it, there wasn’t anything under it when she was wearing it.” He wiggled his eyebrows exactly like Groucho.

“Operator, get me the police,” Bill said. “It’s urgent.”

Larry pushed the paper to the bottom of the pile of underwear, then gathered up his notebook and closed the drawer. No sweat. “I got myself out of this one, Violet,” he whispered. “Sorry I hadda mess with your underwear to do it.”

***

When the operator got through to the police, Bill said, “I’m calling from Fourteenth Avenue Southeast in Dinkytown, I don’t remember the exact address. We just found a friend dead here. She’s been strangled or something. The second-floor apartment. Right above the Scholar. The entrance is right between the Scholar and the Dirty Grocery.” He hoped the cop wouldn’t ask for the real name of the store, because he didn’t know it. Everybody in the neighborhood called it the Dirty Grocery.

The cop asked for his name and address, which Bill rattled off. “And the guy with me is Larry Benjamin,” he added. “You better get over here right away because Larry’s messing around with stuff.”