At first, the campus cop didn't want to look for the stuff. It was in a room he didn't have a key for. And the guy with the key was on his break. I asked where the break was taking place, and I tracked the officer down in a cafeteria. He couldn't give me the key, of course-even though I was Gregory Stiver's Uncle Donald-but he said he'd be returning to the office in ten minutes. I sat down and watched him read the New York Post.
"Yanks are for shit this year."
"Looks that way."
In the office, I was required to sign something certifying I was a Stiver family member. I did so and walked off with Greg Stiver's backpack. I checked to see if the cell phone was in it. It was, along with books and other items.
I had a number of chargers in the car and found one that fit Stiver's five-year-old Verizon phone. It was just a telephone, no aromatherapy apps or IMAX. I charged the phone while I drove downtown.
Back in the hotel room, I checked the phone first. There were eighteen stored numbers and I made a note of each.
The only ones that rang a bell were Jenny, Prof P, and KL. I guessed KL was not Kuala Lumpur but Kenyon Louderbush.
Moreover, the last number called from this phone five years earlier was the one listed for KL.
Otherwise the backpack yielded nothing useful. It contained a copy of Stiver's thesis, two books on economic theory, a copy of the National Review and a half-full bottle of drinking water. There was no notebook or other more personal item. The Albany cops had undoubtedly been through the bag, so it was possible some of its contents had been removed.
I phoned Timmy, who answered this time. I asked him if everyone in his office was frantic, what with the state budget many weeks overdue and the state coming close to running on empty.
"Very funny."
"Right. It is Friday afternoon."
"Myron's on his way into the city, and the rest of us are sitting around figuring out ways to add some generous new perks to our pension plans."
This was a joke, for Timmy's boss, Assemblyman Lipschutz, had led countless fights to reform both the nonsensically overstuffed state budget and the way the Legislature was a mere plaything for the corporate and union lobbyists who underwrote election campaigns. None of these reform efforts had come close to succeeding, and Shy McCloskey had pledged his support for another reform go-round. He may even have been sincere.
I brought Timmy up to date on my visit with Hugh Cutler, who had been surprised that his estranged brother had killed himself, and on my meeting with Millicent Blessing, who believed she had seen two people on the roof of Quad Four just before Greg Stiver plunged to his death.
"So is it looking as if Stiver's death wasn't actually suicide?
That's unnerving."
"I don't know. As it adds up, the evidence keeps coming back to that possibility. It's hard to imagine, though, that anybody-Louderbush or anybody else-would have pushed Stiver off a building in broad daylight. It's true that it all happened while classes were in session, and you know how deserted a college campus can become while everybody is indoors taking notes and trying hard not to look at their watches more than once every five minutes. But there are always a few people out and about, so any kind of rooftop confrontation would be tremendously risky for anybody intent on foul play."
"Of course, foul play isn't often intended. Sometimes it just happens."
"There's that, yes. Maybe especially among people with a history of violent behavior between them."
"Also, how tall is the building?"
"Eight stories."
"So anything happening on the roof wouldn't be visible from down below unless it was happening at the very edge.
Witnesses would have to be some distance from the building to have a view of any activity on the roof. And that distance would make it hard to make out what was going on."
"Hence Millicent Blessing's uncertainty over what she saw."
"But," Timmy said, "if it wasn't suicide, how at this late date-or anytime-would anybody know what the truth was without having been there at the time? Only the other person on the roof-if there was another person-would know what really happened. So, are you feeling kind of at a dead end in this?"
"My assignment is to find out if Kenyon Louderbush really did have an abusive relationship with Greg Stiver, and if so, might it have contributed to his death? Figuring that out still seems doable, even though the only two witnesses so far, Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman, are far from perfect as credible moral finger pointers, and Janie is unlikely to go public at all. I'm convinced, though, that Louderbush did do something very, very bad-so bad that the Serbians keep trying to scare me off the case. So I have to keep slogging.
This guy has to be stopped."
"Louderbush plus his Balkan gangsters."
"Well, whoever the bastards were who beat me up and wrecked my tires and ransacked my room."
Now he was paying even closer attention. "What do you mean, ransacked your room?"
"Oh, didn't I mention that? While I was in Massachusetts this morning. They got into my room at the hotel."
"God, how did they do that? Those rooms are supposed to be secure."
"They're supposed to be."
Timmy fussed for a few minutes over my physical vulnerability, and then asked, "Do you have your gun with you?"
"I do."
"I don't know why that makes me feel worse, not better.
Well, I do know why. As I have pointed out previously, it's the statistics."
"It's true that statistically handguns are far more of a risk to their owners than to the average violent criminal. But you know me. Remember, in college I got a C in statistics."
"Oh, well, then. So was anything taken from your room?"
"No, the break-in was just more mau-mau-style waving of bones and feathers in my face. They want me off the case, and this was part of their instant-message booga-booga routine."
"They must be wondering what it would take to actually get you to throw in the towel. Or, maybe they aren't wondering that at all. Maybe their aim in threatening and harassing you is entirely different."
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
"These guys do seem to be holding back. But they let me know constantly that they're on top of my every move. Clean-Tech is going to check the car for a tracking device, and they'll go over my laptop, too."
"How's your ear? And your big hickey?"
"The ear hurts. The hickey is sexy as all get out."
"Will you stay at the hotel tonight? If the Louderbush gang knows your every move, why not just come home? We can keep a cauldron of boiling XVOO at a second floor window in case the Croatians start marching up Crow Street."
"Serbians. No, let's keep you and the house out of this. I'll let you know where I end up."
"Be careful."
"Yep."
It was nearly five, and I grabbed my laptop and took the elevator down to the hotel parking garage. A white Clean-Tech van was waiting near the entrance, and out stepped Tom Dunphy and two stringy gimlet-eyed men in sports jackets. A fourth man drove the van as I led them all down one level to where my Toyota was parked. I handed the computer over to one of the solemn guys, who climbed into the back of the van with it. The other man had a black box with a wire and a wand, and he began waving it around my car. The van's driver got out, and he opened all the doors on the Toyota and popped both the hood and the trunk.
While these guys worked, I stepped into the shadows of the garage with Dunphy. I watched other cars come and go while we talked. Nobody looked our way or stopped. No Serbians appeared, or Croatians or Roma.
Dunphy told me the McCloskey campaign was creeping ahead but was having trouble raising money because Louderbush was draining off a good bit of cash in the Buffalo area. And even downstate around heavily Democratic New York City, donations were down. Too many Dems assumed Louderbush would win the primary and Ostwind the general, and a dank fatalism had set in. Big givers were already looking ahead to other electoral races two years down the road. It was becoming more and more critical, Dunphy said, that Louderbush be forced to drop out of the gubernatorial contest soon. Otherwise, just around the bend lay colossal ruin.
I gave Dunphy an update on my findings, including the report from Millicent Blessing that Louderbush's office had made inquiries about the Stiver suicide soon after it happened, even though Stiver was not Louderbush's constituent and his district was over 200 miles from Stiver's Albany residence.
Dunphy said, "That's evidence of something, it sounds like."
"It seems to be. Why were his staff people asking? I'd love to find out. You don't happen to have a mole working in Louderbush's office, do you?"
"No, we don't. A dirty trick like that would be wrong."
Why did he talk like this? "Tom, you aren't wearing a wire, are you?"
"Of course not. Why would you ask that?"
"It's my Walmart training."
"You worked for Walmart?"
The guys checking my car out came over and said they couldn't find any tracking or listening device. They said a more thorough search in their shop could be arranged but was unlikely to yield a different result. They were certain no electronic transmissions were being broadcast from anywhere in my car.
This was a relief in the sense that I could now drive my own car and not have to worry about leading Louderbush operatives to my every encounter. But it was disappointing in that I still had no idea how these people always seemed to know exactly where I was at any given moment.
The computer man returned my laptop and said it didn't seem infected in any way, and my files had not been accessed except via my own password.
"There is some gay porn in there," the guy said. "I have to mention that in case you didn't know it was there. College wrestlers in sexual activity with teammates?"
"I'm aware of that material."
"That's up to you. It's not uncommon. And this is your own PC, not a government apparatus, so it's your business."
"True enough."
Dunphy said, "Gay college wrestlers. Holy jeez. I'm sure that wasn't the case at Williams."
The Clean-Tech crew departed, and Dunphy said he would make his own way back down the hill to his office. I walked with him out to State Street, and he asked me what was next according to my plan of attack.
I said I wasn't sure, but I knew I needed to chase down any additional witnesses I could find to the Stiver-Louderbush abusive relationship. I said I also wanted to talk to Stiver's parents, if possible, and anybody else who might offer insights into Stiver's intentions and his state of mind in the weeks and days before his death. I planned, too, on checking out the college where Stiver's thesis advisor said he'd been offered a job after he supposedly told others that he had been rejected twice for teaching positions.
"That all sounds," Dunphy said, "as if it might take a while.
I'm getting nervous as hell that by the time you nail this guy to the cross-and eventually I'm sure you will nail him-by that time Merle Ostwind will be up there at the top of State Street hill with her pretty little white-lady right hand raised up in the chill January air being sworn in as New York State's next governor. Can you speed this up just a wee bit, Don?
God, tempus is fucking fugiting. Can you understand the position we're in here? Well, of course you can. And I know you can do this job for us. I've heard that about you. That and all kinds of other good things. Mister-Get-the-Job-Done-One-Way-or-Another. Just do it faster, please, if you don't mind my saying so. I'm putting pressure on you, and pressure is good. Grace under pressure. That's all I'm insisting on. Grace and, more importantly, speed. Can I make it any plainer?"
I said, "Dunphy, I think you need to walk across the street to Jack's for happy hour and take a load off. You're unraveling and that's not helping. In the meantime, either keep me on the payroll to finish this job as fast as I can humanly do it, or fire my ass and bring Pinkerton in, or Rudy Giuliani, or Captain Marvel. Think it over. I'll be in touch."
I left him on the sidewalk looking alone and dejected, and I felt pretty rotten myself. In fact, I had no idea what exactly to do next. I rode back up to my room, popped more Tylenol-the earache had seemed to spread deep into my brain-and stuffed my meager belongings into my bag and prepared to head off to-where?
My cell phone rang.
"This is Strachey."
A long pause. I noted the number calling me, and I saw that it was the same number that was stored in Greg Stiver's phone as belonging to KL.
I said, "Take your time. I know who you are."
More static. Then, weakly, "How could you know who I am?"
"Your number was stored in Greg Stiver's cell. I saw it there."
More static. Where was he calling from? Finland?
He said, "I need to talk to you."
"Sure. That could be helpful."
"No. I just need to explain. You don't understand any of this."
"Okay."
"Can we meet? Privately?"
"Yes, we can. My house on Crow Street?"
His voice was the one I'd heard countless times on television going on about horrible big government and out-of-control taxes, but now the voice was wobbly and a bit hard to make out. He said, "No, outside of Albany somewhere. Where we can talk and I won't run into anybody."
"There's a Motel 6 on Route 7 just east of Troy. I'll get a room."
Another pause. "I suppose that would work."
"Seven o'clock?"
"No, it's better after dark. Ten is better. Ten o'clock."
"My car will be parked in front of my room. I'll tape a note to the door that says Don." I described my car and gave Louderbush the license number.
"I've got that. Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Will you be coming alone, Assemblyman?"
"Absolutely. That's the whole point."
"Right. See you at ten."
He rang off and I wondered how I was going to sit still for the next three and a half hours.