Nemesis Read online

  Among the adult residents of Forest Park too there was little sympathy for Brendan Bauer. Those who had not believed him guilty of the Christensen murder, or who had been undecided, now conceded that, yes, he must be the one, a very sick and dangerous young man, a psychopath in disguise as an intelligent, mild-mannered young man with a gift for music. It seemed unjust to even the most liberal-minded that, within twenty-four hours of his arrest, he was free on bail; granted, the bail was crushingly high—$175,000. But wasn’t there danger of his disappearing? Of murdering a third victim?

  Brendan’s account of having been summoned to Christensen’s house by Nicholas Reickmann struck most observers as absurdly contrived—concocted. It was the alibi of a desperate man, an episode stolen from a Hollywood film. Friends of Reickmann’s who were, except for his murderer, the last people to see him alive, Rory Carter and Dabney Sloane, told police that Nicholas had said nothing to them about inviting anyone over after they left; if the name Brendan Bauer had come up during their visit, they did not remember it. (Rory Carter and Dabney Sloane, from New York City, were questioned and cleared by police on the day following the murder: they had been dining in a popular Forest Park restaurant at the estimated time of Nicholas Reickmann’s death and had been sighted by a number of people.)

  Among Maggie’s colleagues there were dismayingly few who shared her faith in Brendan. For some time—a week, ten days—they discussed Nicholas Reickmann’s death obsessively, sharing memories of him, bringing fresh news or mild scandal (it seemed that Nicholas of all people had once been married: in his early twenties, to a woman now thirty-three years old, living now in Sacramento and involved in public television production), often working themselves up to tears. For Nicholas with his funky designer clothes and bold-dyed hair, his insincere but beautiful smile, his sloe eyes, had been a sort of golden boy: the kind we delight in imagining invulnerable even to physical decline and decay.

  These parties were unwilling to acknowledge, or impatient with acknowledging, the meanings of several mitigating factors reported in the more responsible of the news articles, in The New York Times: the testimony of the Forest Park taxi driver who delivered Brendan Bauer to the Christensen house no sooner than 11:45 P.M.—by which time, according to the county coroner’s estimate, the victim was almost certainly dead: the laboratory report that Nicholas Reickmann’s blood had tested positive for marijuana and alcohol, while Brendan Bauer’s blood had tested negatively for both; the fact that Brendan had apparently collapsed from shock while dialing the telephone … if he’d just killed Nicholas Reickmann, wouldn’t it have been in his interest to flee? And why had he taken time to write FAGS DIE on the wall and to play The Rite of Spring at so tauntingly high a volume? Christensen’s music room had clearly been searched, for things were tossed about, and there were several emptied files and at least two boxes with only part of their contents intact; yet, unless Brendan Bauer had had an accomplice who’d carried such items off the premises, he could hardly have had a hand in the theft. True, the only fingerprints discovered by police (some of them were bloody prints—on the plastic telephone, on the coffee table, on the hardwood floor) matched those of Brendan Bauer; but the handle of the steak knife had been wiped scrupulously clean, and whatever was used to wipe it with, cloth or tissue, had not been found. And the object that was apparently used to momentarily stun Nicholas Reickmann with a blow to the head, so that he could be tied up—a heavy clay ashtray—showed no fingerprints either.

  When Maggie pointed these factors out, arguing that they made a genuine case against Brendan unlikely, her listeners nodded thoughtfully yet seemed not to hear. “He has a look about him, his face, his eyes, the intensity of a fanatic,” Portia insisted. “You’ll see, Maggie; suddenly he’ll confess and leave you looking very foolish.” When it became known that Maggie had helped post bond for the accused man and was going to pay his legal fees, a number of friends telephoned to express their concern. Was she being coerced into this, somehow? Did she know what she was doing? And could she afford it, on her salary?

  With her close-cropped hair and rapt, urgent, but abstract manner, it was Maggie herself who suggested, to some, the singlemindedness of fanaticism. “Maggie is beginning to resemble,” Fritzie Krill wittily observed, “a Romantic portrait of Joan of Arc: all she needs is a sword.”

  Maggie waited, and dreaded, a telephone call from Calvin Gould; but he did not call. Only at a hastily organized early memorial service for Nicholas Reickmann in the chapel did she and Calvin exchange words; Calvin strode to her, took both her hands in his, murmured, “Maggie—isn’t it tragic!” but did not seem at all disapproving of her involvement, or disappointed. Perhaps he did not remember warning her against Brendan? In the exigency of the situation, with numerous media reporters on the Conservatory campus, and the provost’s office very much exposed, and Calvin called upon repeatedly for public comment, he had not time, perhaps, for worrying about Maggie; it was noted, begrudgingly, by Calvin’s detractors, that he was handling the scandalous national publicity with surprising skill and tact, just when everyone expected him to go to pieces.

  Maggie, looking after him as he left her, at the memorial service, in order to climb to the pulpit to say a few words in memory of Nicholas Reickmann—and very warm, eloquent, sincere words of friendship they were—recalled their meeting in the art museum as if it had happened long ago. Had she misunderstood him? Had she misread the emotion in his face, the pressure of his fingers? She had heard nothing further about Mrs. Gould and the mysterious surgical operation; thus she supposed things had gone well. She thought, At least there is one person among us who couldn’t possibly have killed Nicholas Reickmann that night: Naomi Gould.

  Said Brendan Bauer with studied casualness, on the evening of the windy day Maggie Blackburn helped him move from the Highgate Arms in Waldrop to the Park Garden Apartments in Bridgeport, about eight miles south of Forest Park, on Route 1, “I … never told anyone, last fall, but that was how he’d t-tied me: with electrical cord. Christensen, I mean. Jesus! it looked like the same c-c-cord.”

  Maggie stared uncomprehendingly at Brendan until, in a quick shuddering gesture, he crossed his wrists at chest level in mimicry of being bound.

  Maggie whispered, “Oh, Brendan.”

  He said, “He used it on me, and whoever k-killed Nicholas used it on him. But how did he know? The k-k-killer, I mean.”

  “But why didn’t you tell anyone, Brendan? You could have told me,” Maggie said. She touched his arm gently and added, “You did start to tell me, in my house. But then you denied it.”

  “I was so … ashamed.”

  “So you didn’t tell anyone about being tied up? By Christensen? You didn’t tell the committee?”

  “I couldn’t! I couldn’t find the w-w-words,” Brendan said with a look of distaste. “Because I … he overpowered me just by … commanding me. I couldn’t fight him, I … couldn’t get away … it was like I was mesmerized. This cord he got from somewhere, out of a drawer or somewhere close by, he wrapped it tight around me, tied my wrists, wound it around my throat … pretending he was going to choke me. Don’t provoke me, Bren dan. Don’t make me angry, Bren dan. I was terrified he was going to kill me and … I don’t really remember what happened, or how long it went on. He got me on my feet, my ankles weren’t tied, he pulled me into the bedroom, and … and so forth. I wasn’t tied up tight all the time, it was just part of the … technique. What he did. Was in the habit of doing. And whoever killed Nicholas … for some reason he tied him up too. And killed him. But it wasn’t me who did it.”

  It seemed to Maggie that Brendan spoke with far less diffidence now, since his arrest, the arraignment, the ugly publicity. There was a new, perverse strength about him—unless it was desperation. He had told her that, at police headquarters, in the detention cell they’d kept him in when they weren’t questioning him, he’d controlled his agitation by doing strenuous exercises: sit-ups, chin-ups, running in place until his body wa
s drenched in sweat and his heart pounded at the point of bursting.

  Released on bail, the first thing he’d done was discard the clothes he had been wearing for those approximately twenty-four hours. He’d stood under the shower, he told Maggie, for twenty minutes, wild to get himself clean.

  Now he was saying, looking at his hands, his long lanky fingers, as if trying to convince himself, “It wasn’t me who did it. I could never touch another human being with the intention of doing h-h-harm.”

  There was a harsh eloquence to his voice but the last word gave him trouble: he had to spit it out.

  Maggie was thinking how melancholy, how delimited, the world of the accused: everything scaled down small, dimensions cramped, confining. As if a gifted musician were forced to expend his spirit in the ceaseless reiteration of primary exercises. Over and over again, trying to get the sequence of notes perfect. Trying to placate witnesses, a judge, God.

  She said, gently, “Let me get this clear, Brendan: in September, when you came to speak with me, then when you gave your testimony to the committee at school, you didn’t tell anyone about the cord, about being tied up? And when Rolfe Christensen was killed, and the police questioned you—”

  “I didn’t tell them,” Brendan said. “I didn’t want to give them any more ammunition to use against me.”

  “But this time, you did tell them? I mean, that there was a connection—”

  “No, Maggie. I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t? But—”

  “I could have forgotten, couldn’t I? How would they ever know, unless you told them? I mean, you’re the only person who knows … about the other. About me being tied too.”

  “Shouldn’t you have told them, Brendan? This David Miles, he does seem—”

  “He isn’t. He thinks I’m the killer, he thinks I’m a psychopath, he thinks he’s got me. If I told him that Christensen had tied me up like that, with that same … that same cord … he’d know he had me. One more bit of evidence.”

  Maggie said doubtfully, “Do you think so, Brendan?”

  “I know so.”

  He was breathing hard; his eyes glared out at her from behind his glasses. Earlier that day, before packing for his move, he’d shaved with a shaky hand and there were several stippled nicks on the underside of his jaw, like tiny infuriated pimples. And are you a psychopath, Brendan? Maggie wondered suddenly.

  She asked, “Is there anything else that has happened to you, or because of you, that you haven’t told me—or the police—that might have some bearing on this situation?”

  Brendan ran both his hands through his hair in a vague, despairing gesture. “Christ. I don’t know.”

  “You said you thought Nicholas Reickmann was under duress, when he called you.”

  “Not really. Only in retrospect.”

  “But he sounded strained, tense—”

  “He did. I suppose. But I didn’t pick up on it, really, at the time. I was telling the detective, Miles, trying to make him believe me—it’s pathetic, isn’t it, how we go through our lives trying to make people believe us, especially when we’re telling the truth?—I was telling him that, afterward, yes, sure, afterward I could hear the terror in the poor guy’s voice; it was perfectly clear to me what was going on: a maniac, but a maniac he’d probably considered a friend of his, was crouched over him holding a knife to his throat. Right up against the carotid artery, as the coroner said. I can hear this in retrospect but I couldn’t hear it at the time. If I had, I might have saved his life. And my own.”

  Maggie let this pass. “Nicholas was friendly to you, you’ve said? Took you out to dinner a few times?”

  “Three times. In town.”

  “But there wasn’t anything he happened to mention to you, about Rolfe Christensen, for instance, or Christensen’s enemies, that might be helpful?”

  “Miles has asked me all these things, and I don’t even remember what I said. It’s like my brain is filled with holes. Memory is really what it is said to be … wholly unreliable. I seem to recall that Nicholas joked about Christensen having so many people who would have liked him dead, it would be impossible to do a catalogue of them, impossible to do a thorough investigation; even in Forest Park, there were people, men, who had secret connections with him. Secret connections. I told Miles that, and he’s imperturbable, all the police are, or seem that way, turning professional faces on you … you understand that when they look at you you’re a specimen; you aren’t you. They assume you’re lying. And when I’m being questioned closely, by the police, or by you—back in the seminary, certainly—I hear myself saying things that approximate the truth, or sound truthful; I’ve long ago forgotten what the truth is.”

  Maggie was staring at Brendan with a disquieting intentness. “May I ask you, Brendan—why exactly did you leave the seminary?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I … lost faith.”

  “But was there anything specific? Were there any … incidents?”

  Brendan blinked at her, the very emblem of innocence. “Incidents?”

  “Was there any reason for the seminary authorities to ask you to leave, apart from your wanting to leave?”

  “I don’t believe anyone asked me to leave.”

  “There was nothing specific? Nothing that happened?”

  Brendan’s face crinkled in disdain; it was clear that he had had quite enough of interrogation. He said, “I lost my faith, Maggie, that’s all. I b-broke the thread of it. It seemed that maybe there was God … but He, or It, is on the far side of an abyss and has nothing to do with me. All that had to do with me was music: trying to write it. I would try, and I might fail, but at least it would be me. All that other”—he made a comically despairing gesture—“was just something people told me about, to shore up their own belief, so the hell with it. The hell with God! One night after I’d been in the seminary about four months I woke up scared stiff seeing there was n-nothing, just—n-n-nothing. I had to get out before something terrible happened.”

  “And did … something terrible happen?”

  “What do you mean, terrible?”

  Maggie chose her words carefully. “Were there any … incidents? Accidents?”

  “Accidents?”

  She saw that Brendan was genuinely puzzled and on the edge of being hurt, or offended; so she dropped the subject. She found it difficult to believe that Brendan was lying to her—at least at this moment; but she could hardly believe that Calvin had lied to her previously.

  Brendan said, “Can I ask you something, Maggie?”

  His tone was both shy and presumptuous.

  “Why did you cut your hair?”

  Unprepared for such a question, Maggie laughed uneasily and ran a quick self-conscious hand through her hair. The curious thing about having cut it so severely was that, though she’d always worn her hair up, in recent years at least, its absence seemed to leave her neck provocatively exposed.

  “Oh, I thought it was time—time for a change.”

  “But why? What kind of a change?”

  Maggie had no idea. She said with an evasiveness meant to be charming, and not at all evasive, “Do you think it’s too—ugly? Disfiguring? Everyone winces, when they first see it.”

  Brendan said gravely, “No. It’s beautiful.”

  There was an awkward, almost painful pause, and then they returned to the task at hand, settling Brendan in his new apartment—a single-room efficiency, minimally furnished, on the third floor of an elevatorless apartment building in the commercial section of Bridgeport. Jets from Kennedy Airport passed overhead with dispiriting frequency. (But Brendan had had no choice in moving from Waldrop: not only was his face known to neighborhood residents, from lurid articles printed in the Hartford Star and elsewhere, but his fellow tenants in the Highgate Arms had signed a petition, delivered to the building superintendent, insisting he leave. The word FAG in red spray paint appeared on his door, and the lock on his mailbox was broken and items stuffed inside of a nature so o
ffensive he declined to tell Maggie what they were. When at Ajax Car Wash Brendan told the manager he thought it would be best for him to quit, the man had said, embarrassed, not meeting Brendan’s eye, “Yes. Right.”)

  In this lonely place, a place surely inhospitable to music, let alone to the imaginative creation of music, Brendan Bauer meant to be brave; the face he showed Maggie Blackburn was brave and invited no pity. As she prepared to leave (for it was late, after six: she had a rehearsal scheduled for seven with the elusive Bill Queller), Maggie thought, If I were a truly generous woman, I would offer Brendan the guest room in my own house. As Brendan chattered, his eyes lighting upon her, his movements boyishly eager, hopeful, self-effacing, defeated, she wondered if he had had the thought too.

  Brendan walked Maggie down the several flights of stairs, out to the curb, and to her car. He seemed to have something further to tell her even after they had said good night and shaken hands. Did he hope that Maggie might impulsively suggest, as she had sometimes in the past, that they have dinner together; was he frightened, for all he’d already endured, of yet another night alone? Reluctantly, with a look of distaste, he said, “There is something more, Maggie. About that night. With Christensen. He … forced me to say things to him: ‘I love you’ … ‘I want you’ … things like that.” Brendan bared his teeth in a sudden mocking smile. His eyes shone bright with tears. “That disgusts you, doesn’t it? To save my sk-skin … I was willing to say anything.”

  Maggie was perhaps not quite so surprised at this late revelation, or so disturbed by it, as Brendan seemed to expect. She was thinking of the feminist declaration of Simone de Beauvoir, One is not born a woman, one becomes one, transmogrified more plausibly to One is not born a victim, one becomes one.

  She said quietly, “It might be better to forget, Brendan, if you can. After all, the man is dead.”