6: A Case for McCabe

“You must be dead tired, Boss,” Popcorn told me later that morning after I’d given her a quick summary of the night’s events.

“I’m pretty sure I slept while I was taking a shower. I went home around five o’clock so I could help Lynda with the kids. I’m not sure how much help I was.” I was tempted to ask her to poison me with caffeinated java, but fortunately the moment passed.

“Are our people and Oscar’s people really going to fight about who has jurisdiction in the case?” Popcorn asked.

“Oh, they’ll work it out. They need each other. Ed Decker has the surveillance video.”

“That hasn’t helped much in other cases Mac’s been involved in.”

She had a point, and a good one.

“Killers don’t usually stop and smile at the camera, that’s true. But the video should be of some help narrowing the field to male or female, big or small, that kind of thing. I expect we’ll get the scoop on that later.”

“Speaking of scoops, Hadley Reams from the Spectator called about five minutes before you walked in the door. He wanted to confirm that Burch was murdered.”

“Already? I’m impressed. He beat the Observer and the Associated Press to the news. I wonder how?”

I checked my phone and saw, as expected, that Hadley had tried that number while I was on the road. I turn my phone off when I’m behind the wheel—or behind the handlebars, in this case. The state law against distracted driving is no longer limited to texting, and the fine is $100. Hadley called from the Spectator offices, I noted, and was probably still there.

“Instead of calling back, I’ll drop in on him,” I announced, pocketing the phone. “It’s been months since I’ve been down there.”

The offices of the Spectator, located on the lower level of Muckerheide Center, look a lot different from the early 1990s, when I edited the paper as a student. But then, what doesn’t? Including me. Only the outside of Muckerheide, a horizontal concrete structure designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright echoing his master, hadn’t changed.

Hadley Reams wasn’t as skinny as he’d been when he joined the paper as a junior, and he had ditched the Trilby headgear that made him look like a refugee from The Front Page. He had taken to horn-rimmed glasses, though, so maybe that made up for it. His jeans were either really cheap or really expensive; I can never tell. I caught Hadley in what appeared to be rather agitated discourse with a slightly built young man with longish fair hair, wearing a high-end casual jacket and an attitude. This other student—I assumed he was a student—was taller than the aforementioned Toulouse-Lautrec, but not by a foot.

I didn’t need to exercise my well-honed eaves-dropping skills to determine that they were talking about the death of Warren Burch. I didn’t catch all of it, but his name came through loud and clear, along with well-worn words like “outrage” and “travesty.”

“You called?” I interrupted.

Hadley stopped in mid-sentence, something about “robust reporting,” and gave me his full attention.

“Hey, Jeff. I sure did. What can you tell me about the murder of Professor Burch? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but how did you know? I’m guessing you weren’t up listening to the police scanner this morning.” And, obviously neither was Johanna Rawls at the Observer or Morrie Kindle of the AP.

Hadley looked canny as only a student journalist can. “I have my sources.”

“The important thing is that the brightest star in this institution’s firmament has been snuffed out,” said the other student.

Even for a sophomore that would have been over the top rhetorical overkill, but it turned out that this was a fourth-year student.

“Meet Jason Danvers,” Hadley told me, tossing a thumb in his direction. I knew that name—Burch’s one-man cheering section, author of the opinion piece defending him in the Spectator. “This is Jeff Cody, Jason.”

“Pleasure,” I lied.

Danvers didn’t bother to lie. He barely spared me a reluctant handshake before announcing, “I’m here to get information about the murder of Dr. Burch. I thought the Spectator would be plugged in.”

“So, plug me in,” Hadley said. “What do you know?”

“Not too much, Hadley. Burch was bludgeoned by a heavy object in his office.” Dr. Eppensteiner didn’t want me to give out details to the press, but that seemed vague enough to be harmless. “A campus police officer found the body sometime after eleven last night, close to eleven-thirty. The investigation is ongoing. Chiefs Decker and Hummel, or their assistants, should have more later.” The results of that surveillance video, for example. “I don’t speak for the Erin police, of course.”

I addressed my comments to the Spectator editor, figuring I didn’t need to schmooze Jason Danvers. Maybe I figured wrong.

“Come on, Jeff,” Hadley said. “You know the cops won’t tell me anything they don’t tell the off-campus media. I need the inside dope. A great story could help me get a journalism job when I graduate.” Considering you’re in the sixth year of a four-year program, you need all the help you can get, Hadley. “What does Professor McCabe think?”

“The last time I saw Mac, the victim’s body was barely cold. I don’t think he thinks anything yet, but I never know half of what he’s thinking anyway.” Nice try, though.

“I certainly hope the university administration will devote as much energy to finding Professor Burch’s killer as it did to destroying his reputation,” Danvers said.

No, we used up all our energy on the reputation thing.

I addressed Hadley, who had his fingers eagerly poised on his laptop keyboard. “As you know as well as anyone, the recent spate of unfortunate stories about Dr. Warren Burch wasn’t initiated by the university. However, in the spirit of transparency, we could do no less than acknowledge the facts in the face of robust journalism.” I was rather proud of that, I must admit. Hadley typed.

Then I went into the part I’d worked out in my head on the way to the newspaper office. “Dr. Burch was a distinguished member of the St. Benignus faculty and administration for more than four decades. While his scholarship was notable, his true métier”—Mac loves that word—“was classroom teaching. That was recognized when he won the Monsignor Francis B. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2005.” You don’t need to know that’s what bashed his head in. “The university mourns his loss and looks forward to the capture of his killer.”

I paused to let Hadley catch up to me. When he had, I added, “I’m sure Father Pirelli will want to say something later as well.”

Father Pirelli—holy crap! This was the day he planned to resign because of Burch. Fortunately, that train had not yet left the station.

“But what about Professor Burch’s offensive behavior toward women in his office when he was dean?” Hadley pressed.

“I don’t think I need to say anything more about that.”

And I’d better not.

“What, you don’t want to back up and hit him again?” Danvers said.

Not waiting for an answer, Hadley said, “What about safety on campus? What do you say to students and parents who are afraid this campus has become dangerous?”

Ah, the old “what do you say to...” gambit. A favorite of journalists everywhere. Hadley had come a long way from the days when I had to sit him down and feed him the questions to ask me.

“I say, firstly, there’s no reason to believe this was a random act or that anyone else was ever in danger. This heinous crime was committed in the professor’s office at close quarters. That would seem to indicate that he, and he alone, was the intended victim.”

“He was set up for that by the scurrilous reports of improper activity,” Danvers said. “His name was widely defamed for days, while his accusers remained anonymous.”

“Isn’t the very fact that someone got into his office at midnight or later troubling?” Hadley piled on.

I ignored both comments. “Secondly, if you want to talk seriously about campus safety, look at the numbers. Like every college and university, SBU is required to comply each October with the Clery Act—that’s the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act—as well as the Higher Education Opportunity Act passed by Congress. That means we compile an annual security and fire safety report and post it on our website, as well as sending it to the U.S. Department of Education. It includes crimes committed on campus, on property adjacent to the campus, and on property owned by the university. If you stack up our crime stats with those of any other institution of similar size, I think you’ll find they compare very favorably.” At least, I hope so.

“I’m sure Professor Burch would be glad to know that,” Danvers said acidly.

“Any other questions?” I asked Hadley.

“I’ll call you if I think of any,” he promised.

“Morris Kindle of the Associated Press”—as he always identifies himself—and TV4 Action News both called my smartphone number as I was walking back to my office. In between I had a check-in call from Lynda with her distinctive Boléro ringtone. Maggie Barton made the morning complete just a few minutes after I got back to my office.

“We heard from the cop shop that Warren Burch got done in last night,” she began.

Her voice didn’t sound right.

“Have you been crying?”

“Not about Burch, believe me. Death in the family.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, Maggie.”

“Thanks. But as for Burch, do the cops really have to find the killer?”

I’ll file that under “gallows humor” and chalk it up to grief.

Just at that moment, Sebastian McCabe maneuvered his crutch-reliant way past Popcorn and into my workplace. I waved a greeting, disgusted by the clarity of his wide-awake brown eyes. He nodded. I continued my jousting with Maggie.

“Presuming you didn’t call me out of idle curiosity, how come you’re covering this story instead of Johanna?”

Johanna “Tall” Rawls, Lynda’s leggy protégé and friend, took over the Observer’s crime beat when Bernard J. Silverstein succeeded Lynda as news editor. If news organizations around the country hadn’t been cutting back on staff for a decade or more, she almost surely would have moved up to a bigger newspaper long ago. She was a good reporter and a good writer. Maggie’s virtue, on the other hand, was that she knew everybody in town—and everybody’s parents and sometimes grandparents, too.

“Oh, the dear girl will get top billing on the byline, but I offered to help out since the murder itself was on my turf.” That word again—turf! Maggie lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Frankly, Jeff, I was hoping you could throw me a bone, something nobody else has.”

“I could, but then I would have to kill you.”

Mac raised an eyebrow in response, but Maggie laughed. She always laughs at that one, which is usually followed by me offering her something off the record. That’s often helpful to keep a reporter from leaping to a wrong conclusion about some detail or other, even though he or she can’t use it. It’s also a way for me to bond with journalists, even in unpleasant situations where I wish they would just go away.

“Okay, can we go off the record?” I said. It’s important to set the ground rules first so there can be no quibbling later. This has worked well for me over the years. No reporter has ever printed something we agreed in advance was off the record.

“Sure.” The deal was sealed.

“The coroner doesn’t want this out yet, but Burch was struck multiple times in the back of the head, over his right ear, by a heavy glass award.”

“Award?”

“Yeah, like an Oscar, only for teaching.”

“Wow—that’s delicious! Are you sure I can’t use it?”

“I’m sure! Don’t even ask the coroner about it or I’ll be on her bad side. And I don’t think I want to be on her bad side.”

“What else can you tell me?”

Well, there is the little matter of our president resigning, but not if I can help it.

“Nothing that Joanna won’t already have from Oscar or Gibbons.”

“Is Mac going to tackle this case?”

Being slightly deaf, she was talking loud enough that Mac could hear her. The expression on his face indicated the question was a silly one. I thought so, too. For one thing, he was in no position to tackle anything on those crutches.

“Why would Mac get involved?” I said. “There are already two capable police agencies on this case.”

“Well, let me know when he does. How’s his ankle?”

I held out the phone to him so that he could speak for himself.

“It still hurts like the very devil,” he said. “Thank you for asking, Maggie.”

“Sprains are painful,” she informed him, as if he didn’t know. “I got one skydiving a few years ago.”

While they were engaging in this badinage, the Cody mind got busy. Why had Maggie moved on so quickly from the subject of the death in her family without saying who had died or how? That seemed unnatural. Suppose she really had been crying over Burch and didn’t want to admit it. The man was less than a decade younger than Maggie, who would be called a spinster if anybody used that word anymore. She was on campus a lot, so maybe she knew Burch better than she’d ever let on. Much better. And maybe that’s why she reacted so strongly to his boorish behavior with other women that it seeped into her news coverage.

At this point in the fantasy I diagnosed myself as suffering from sleep deprivation. Why else would I go down that strange path?

After a few more pleasantries, Mac handed the phone back to me and I signed off with promises to give Maggie a break when I could.

“How can you be so wide awake?” I asked the big guy.

“Caffeine, old boy.”

Popcorn popped her head in the office. “Cal Daley asked you to call him back, and Father Pirelli wants you in his office right away.”

“I also have been summoned by the good father,” Mac said. “That is why I paid you this visit. I assumed that you had been as well, and I thought that we might walk up to his office together.”

The times that Father Joe had asked me to come to his office on the double could be counted on one hand with fingers left over. And the last time had been to announce his resignation. Maybe he was going to un-announce it. But then why bring Mac into it?

“I’ll call Cal after I talk to Father,” I told Popcorn on our way out. Keeping her in the loop about matters big and small has become a reflex for me. No wonder Lynda calls her my office wife.

In deference to Mac’s crutches, we took the elevator up one flight.

Father Joe looked like I felt. He must have slept about as much. The bags under his eyes had bags, but that didn’t stop me from making the opening salvo.

“I hope you’ve had second thoughts about resigning,” I said.

His face was one big exclamation mark. “What? Not for a nanosecond. The murder doesn’t change what I did—or rather, what I failed to do.”

“It is about the murder you wish to speak with us, I presume,” Mac rumbled.

Amazing, Holmes! I should have known that’s why Mac was part of this confab.

“That’s right,” Father Joe said. “It doesn’t take a public relations genius like Jeff to figure out that the quicker this crime is solved the better, for the sake of the university. If a professor can be murdered in his own office with impunity, no one will feel safe on this campus. That would be disastrous. I’m just a lame-duck president, but I’m asking you to take on the case, Sebastian. It’s obvious to me that your unique talents are needed.”

Mac feigned surprise. “I am honored that you think so, Joseph. However, as Jefferson rightly pointed out to a veteran member of the Fourth Estate, there are already two police agencies investigating the matter with all their considerable resources.”

“I’m aware of that, of course. But Lesley and I had a briefing by Cal Daley about the matter less than half an hour ago, at which learned there is an extraordinary feature making this a case for Sebastian McCabe.” He didn’t lean across his mahogany desk and look serious, or pause dramatically, but if this were a movie he would have. “I’m sure you know that surveillance cameras cover the building, as they do all the buildings here on campus.”

“Right,” I said. “Cal tried to reach me this morning, and I expected him to tell me what the video showed.”

“Therein lies the problem, Jeff. The video doesn’t show anyone other than Burch and Officer Jackson entering or leaving Mackie Hall at the relevant time.”

“In other words,” Mac said, “the murder of Warren Burch would appear to be an impossible crime.”