City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(83)
Nothing in my head had changed but moving around relieved unwelcome focus.
Robin stopped her work and kissed me. When we broke, she said, “What’s wrong, honey?”
“Who says anything is?”
She laughed.
I told her.
As my theory unfolded, her eyes got huge. When I finished, she said, “That would be beyond strange.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“I’m not saying that, baby. Nothing doesn’t usually preoccupy you.”
“I should tell Milo?”
“Maybe do more research and see what comes up?”
“The case has stalled. Last thing he needs is another dead end.”
“You’ll know what to do,” she said. “You’ve always been a perceptive boy.”
* * *
—
Back at my computer, I began as deep a dive as possible into the life and times of Conrad Deeb, found a birth record forty-one years ago and an article in The Harvard Crimson he’d published while a doctoral student.
Review of Jean Genet’s The Maids. Genet was a career criminal who’d morphed into a literary darling. I knew the play and like much of Genet’s work it wallowed in sadomasochistic violence. Deeb’s review was airy and irrelevant and his final line made me wonder if he’d ever actually seen it.
“As the millennium rears its dystopic head, symbolism may evolve as the authentic realism.”
Searching the Boston Globe archive during that same period pulled up nothing. But a Boston Herald piece revved up my pulse rate.
Beyond strange.
I read, re-read. Printed. Then I kept hunting.
When I’d found enough and my brain had settled, I called Milo.
He was just about to leave the office, sounded exhausted.
I said, “You’re not going to believe this, but…”
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later, he was in my office, sharp-eyed and antsy as a stag during hunting season as he studied the page I’d just handed him.
“The guy stabbed someone and became a professor.”
I said, “Bar brawl, self-defense, initial consideration of an ADW charge but the Boston D.A. decided not to file.”
“Self-defense,” he said. “Or Harvard dude versus Southie plumber is no contest…Jesus, sounds like he carved the poor guy up.” Touching the side of his neck, then his abdomen.
I said, “Knife-wielding Harvard dude.”
He put the clipping on the couch. “You checked him out because he gave you a feeling?”
“Not when I met him. He came across mild and accommodating, made a big thing about being nonconfrontational. I wasn’t necessarily buying it because once a case gets to me there’s been serious conflict. But no reason to think he was anything other than a bit of a suck-up. Then this morning I met his wife and recognized her from Cordi’s crime scene. You met her. She was one of the women trying to get Moe to speed things up so she could get out of there. She told you Cordi had been flirting with her husband.”
He nodded. “Coupla blondes getting pushy. Didn’t notice any resemblance.”
“Your mind was on other things and at that point Cordi’s face was covered in blood.”
“You recognized Cordi that way.”
“I had prior dealings with her.”
He waved that away. “You notice things other people don’t, fine. I’m used to it. Though sometimes I wish I could wear your eyes. Go on.”
I said, “The time Toni—the wife—complained about was when Deeb had already moved out. He came by to pick up his daughter but instead detoured to Cordi’s house. When Toni confronted him about it, he admitted being inside for an ‘academic discussion.’?”
“You show me your doctorate, I show you mine,” he said. “So he’d know the layout.”
“And if there’d been a prolonged affair, he might have a key. Or lifted one.”
He thought about that. Nodded. “But not sure how that leads to evil.”
“I’m not, either, but the physical resemblance between Cordi and Toni isn’t casual. It’s striking. And that got me thinking about Deeb’s academic work—signs, symbols, analogies, metaphors. Displacements of reality. I still figured I was being over-imaginative but kept digging and came up with the Boston stabbing, then this.”
Page number two nearly lifted him off the couch.
“Bloomington…who’s Randi Walenska?”
“Someone who looked an awful like this woman.” I handed over an image I’d found.
He said, “Judith Deeb, registered dietitian in Indianapolis…the first wife?”
“Second. This is his third divorce, each marriage lasted around three years. He and Toni had an affair while he was married to Judith and Toni got pregnant.”
His eyes moved back and forth between the headshots. “Judy Deeb, Randi Walenska…shit, they could be sisters. Do you have a shot of Toni?”
“No.”
He fooled with his phone, retrieved a DMV photo. Sat back and said, “She and Cordi are more like twins—oh, man, you’ve just taken me to crazy-town.”
I said, “There’s more. Just before you got here, I found the date of the second divorce. Randi Walenska was stabbed to death in her apartment six weeks before Deeb and Judith finalized their divorce.”