The Savage Professor Read online

  “Excuse me. I say, hello there.”

  Something about that back. A line of tiny moles, across the smooth swale of lower back, awoke a memory. Like a map of the Aleutians, curving southwest. The hair, though going gray, was vital and thick, a rich fan of it. Who had hair like that? Who that he had known?

  “Excuse me. I say—I’m going to touch you now.”

  Landau pressed two fingers to the near shoulder. It was warmer than room temperature, but not warm enough. He felt for the carotid pulse. Not there, and therefore: there is a dead woman in my bed. Not one of the Elfridianas, thank God, they were not so large nor so pale. Then Landau knew who it was. Oh God, oh God. Horror, shocked horror, manifested in his thumping heart for a long moment. Oh, why are you here? He turned away as if to shun the unmoving figure. Walked round to the other side of the bed, turned and bent to see the face better. No, obscured by hair. When he had known this person, whose name was Samantha Bernstein Beevors, a scientist of large and intimidating reputation, formerly a colleague, once a lover, she had been vain of her wondrous hair. Not really brown—more classically chestnut, full of glinting red and gold. He knelt upon the bed and swept the hair from her face with a finger, revealing eyes frozen open and a mouth stuffed full of, good God, a pair of boxers. His own striped boxers. He scurried off the bed.

  The buzzing began again. The sound was coming from down there, under the airy comforter. Vaguely aware that he should do no such thing, Landau gently pulled the covers down to her calves. Some odd object protruded from her shapely backside, tubular, flat-ended, pink. The buzzing halted again. Landau now recognized a device that for years had been secreted amongst the socks in his chest of drawers, a vibrator, in a word, a pink plastic vibrator. Not his own, technically. His racing mind sought to explain to some imaginary police investigator how he had come to possess it. Yes, but what for, Dr. Landau? If it’s not yours, if you have no use for it, and you kept it where, in your sock drawer? For how many years?

  The buzzing began again. The sputter-buzzing of batteries giving out. He recalled a scene from ten years ago, fifteen, involving a companion from the blue Jag period, someone who had introduced this comical version of a sex toy into the mix on an evening of now only half-remembered frivolity. Margo. Margo Hollinger, French historian. Professor at Stanford, writer of weighty books, and how did I ever meet her, can I remember? No. Such are the ungovernable vectorings of the mind under stress that Landau considered for an instant how to get in touch with Margo, persuade her to explain to the imaginary detective who it was who had paid $6.95 at most for the most ironic vibrator on sale at Harmonies, the feminist-flavored sex-aid emporium on San Pablo Avenue…Half a minute later, ashamed of himself for worrying about such a thing, he did the decent thing and twisted the plastic shaft to the “OFF” position, then gently settled the covers back over the naked woman in his bed.

  No reading of Wittgenstein tonight. The first to arrive on Landau’s woodsy block was an ambulance playing its siren, although he’d made it clear on the phone that the situation was postmortem, and they need not hurry. Then, Deena and Harold came. Deena lived now with Harold Blodgett, a Berkeley law professor, the Barbra Streisand Chair of Constitutional Law, nice enough guy. When Landau called her for moral support, he half hoped Harold would be home and would interest himself in the situation, since it couldn’t hurt to have a lawyer present. Twenty minutes after the ambulance arrived, after Deena and Harold arrived, a Berkeley police cruiser slid silently into the now dark street, roof lights strobically flashing. Officer Thomas Ng—about thirty-five, five foot five, placid of demeanor—and Officer Frances Hashimoto—a little older, taller—entered Landau’s house.

  “I’m the one who called you. I’m Landau. A woman named Samantha Bernstein Beevors is dead upstairs. I can show her to you if you’d like.”

  “All right. Is she your wife, sir?” asked Officer Ng.

  “No. I know her, though.”

  “Is she your significant other?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Officer Hashimoto, turning away, spoke some phrases into a walkie-talkie.

  Ng: “But you know her, right, sir?”

  “Yes. I knew her rather well once. For a period of time.”

  The officer waited for more.

  “She was my colleague. A person I used to work with. In my professional life.”

  “Okay. And how long has she been staying with you now, sir?”

  “Not staying here. I haven’t seen her in years. This is a complete surprise, her being here. Having been brought here or having come in while I was gone. A complete surprise.”

  Again, the officer waited.

  Landau also knew how to wait. He took a breath and tried to let go in his mind of the need to show innocence. No, you are innocent. Think of that.

  “Has anyone been with the body, sir? Other than you, since you found it?”

  Landau opened his hands, hoisted his shoulders two inches.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “I have, Tom,” piped up one of the young EMTs walking past at that moment, one of three who had arrived with the ambulance. “I wanted to be sure she was a forty-four. I went up there.”

  Officer Ng turned toward the young black man who spoke.

  “And?”

  The young man nodded.

  “Okay. Thank you. Jamal, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I know you. You’re from El Cerrito.”

  Landau hadn’t wanted to get the young fellow in trouble. But it was okay, apparently.

  “Can we sit down somewhere, sir? I have to make a few notes,” said Officer Ng.

  “Let’s go in the den.”

  Ng cleared the newspapers off the loveseat and sat down. “Could you spell your name for me, sir, slowly?”

  “Yes, it’s Landau. L-A-N-D-A-U.”

  “This is Cragmont Avenue, correct?”

  “No, Hopwood Lane, actually. We’re on the corner of Cragmont. My address is seven Hopwood Lane.”

  “The dispatcher said Cragmont.”

  “Yes, that’s what you have to tell people so they can find it. But it’s Hopwood Lane.”

  “Okay.”

  And so on, and so forth. Even I have seen the TV shows, Landau thought. He particularly liked the one where autopsies were shown, where bullets were modeled as they ripped through guts, maggots crawling through wounds. And where is our expert crime scene unit, may I ask? Is this guy even a detective, Officer Ng? Why doesn’t everyone have on rubber gloves at this point, isn’t that standard?

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, as Landau headed upstairs to his bedroom, followed by the two officers, other police personnel were arriving, in other vehicles. In the end maybe there was a CSI unit mucking around, it was hard to tell. He showed Ng and Hashimoto the body of Samantha Beevors. The officers became alert as they entered the room, scanning side to side, looking at the floor, the ceiling. Landau had the idea that his bedroom was being sized up as an infamous torture site, a Ted Bundy’s basement type of place—maybe the plump professor had done in dozens here, grinding their bones, sniffing the dust.

  Now Officer Ng, though not Officer Hashimoto, did put on gloves. He stood at the foot of Landau’s bed looking thoughtful.

  “Would you say that she suffered much, sir?”

  “I wouldn’t know that. I wasn’t here.”

  “Yes, but what’s your opinion? Did it take her long to die? Speaking as a doctor.”

  “Well, I’m not a doctor. I’m an epidemiologist. It’s different. I don’t know if she suffered or not. I sincerely hope not, of course.”

  “So, you heard nothing? No sounds of struggle or screams or anything?”

  “No. It was all over before I arrived as far as I can tell.”

  Th
e officer nodded. Took a half step forward.

  “Except, the buzzing. You said.”

  “Right. There was still some buzzing.”

  “Which you could hear all the way downstairs. Despite these blankets. In the kitchen, you said.”

  “No, in the foyer, not the kitchen.”

  “The foyer. Okay. The front hall.”

  “Right.”

  When Officer Ng pulled back the down coverlet, Landau felt ashamed. This is not my work, he wanted to declare. I never hated her this much, though, true, I did come to hate her. Harridan, fanatic, evil witch. Yet—not to end up like this. He felt ashamed in front of the other woman, Officer Hashimoto, wanted to turn to her and say, “I know it’s my bed, I know she’s wrapped up in my expensive coverlet, head on my pillow, but I stand foursquare against this sort of thing, normally. Savagery toward women, I mean. You have to believe that. I have always deplored that.”

  Hashimoto whispered something into her walkie-talkie.

  “One more question, then. How did you identify her, sir?” asked Officer Ng. “I mean, when you first came in and found her like this.”

  “Well, I just recognized her. I know her.”

  “With her face all pushed down like that?”

  “You get a pretty good look from the other side. If you crouch down.”

  Ng went to the other side of the bed. He crouched. “Okay. But she’s got something in her mouth, I can’t really see. What is it, a gag of some kind?”

  Landau decided not to respond. To argue the fine points of gags, how she had gotten a pair of his underpants in her mouth, could only prove unprofitable.

  “Maybe you turned her over, Doctor? And had a better look? That’s what I would’ve done. I mean, you’re a doctor, so it’s all right, right?”

  “I didn’t turn her over. I left her the way she is. The way you find her now.”

  “Or, looked around for some ID. Is her purse up here, did you find that?”

  “No, I didn’t look for a purse. Like I said, I knew her. I knew who she was.”

  “Okay. So she left it downstairs, the purse. Is that right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It occurred to Landau that Officer Ng had been watching the same TV shows. Maybe that was what police training consisted of these days—an assignment to watch many shows. So you could catch criminals in their pathetic slipups. He, himself, was experiencing this mainly in terms of how it resembled TV episodes, movies seen, the three or four thousand police procedurals he’d read over the years, and the other guy had probably read quite a few, too. It was an over-literary-ified situation. Now just forget all that, he told himself. Pretend you’ve never seen or read anything and stick to your story. Don’t go acting all smarty-pants on him. He won’t like that.

  “That’s what I would’ve done, though,” Officer Ng repeated. “Turned her over. You don’t see that every day, do you, a naked dead woman. Dead and helpless.”

  Landau took another long breath. Wanted to say, just for fun: “Yes, all right, I turned her over. Had a really excellent look, poked around a bit, too. Okay, you got me there, Officer. She was quite a piece of talent in her day, this crazy mind-bending bitch, and she used that, oh God did she. And, to be completely frank, I had a nice suck at one of her titties, for old times’ sake. Probably would’ve plunged in with the old ram but for some residual necro-aversion, a feeling of taboo. Can’t say I’ve ever been into fucking dead women. Although, never say never.”

  Instead Landau said, “I did pull back her hair a little. For a better look.”

  Both Officer Ng and Officer Hashimoto became more alert—not that they hadn’t been alert before.

  “And how did that go for you, Doctor? When you touched her?”

  “I don’t know how it went. I just got up on the bed, on my knees I guess, and pulled back her hair from her face.”

  “Would you like to show us how you did that, sir?”

  “Don’t you need to dust for fingerprints, Officer?”

  “That’s okay. Not too worried about that now. Why don’t you show us how you got up there on the bed with the body.”

  Landau didn’t want to do that, though. Getting up must signify something—that you were so crazed, such a demented criminal sadist, that you’d even do it in front of the cops. Wallow around on the bed with the corpse, giggling, eyeballs rolling, salivating.

  He pantomimed doing it instead, pulling a hank of hair from the side of her face. Using a single finger.

  “Did you touch the body in any other way, sir?”

  “No. I did not.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I was horrified. I was kind of a little out of my normal mind, to be honest.”

  “Out of your mind?”

  “I was shaken. Appalled. I mean, it seemed disrespectful to touch her. Gruesome.”

  “But you’ve handled lots of dead bodies, haven’t you, Doctor? In your line of work?”

  “I’m not a real doctor, like I said. But, yes, I’ve handled a few. I’ve been around people dying.”

  “And how did that go for you, sir?”

  “It went well enough. How do you think it went?”

  The interrogation petered out soon after. They went back downstairs, but the evening wasn’t over yet, not nearly—police personnel continued to pour in, crew after crew of them, medical examiners, uniformed officers, officers out of uniform, forensics techs, first responders. He never got to eat the salmon and have the glass or three of wine he needed. Officer Ng disappeared at some point and Landau found himself answering more questions posed by an actual police detective, someone whose badge identified him as such, a chunky white man named Byrum Johnson. They sat in the kitchen drinking decaf. Deena also at table. Deena patted Landau on the back as he became fatigued. Harold was also in the kitchen, standing alone along the wall, saying nothing, not looking especially interested.

  Samantha Beevors’ body came down on a litter just past midnight. Landau felt more tired than anything as he watched its slow progress down his flagstoned front steps. Never got to say good-bye to you, Samantha, when everything blew up that time. When you tried to ruin me, when you went so savagely whacko, as you always did on everybody, every man who ever jostled you even slightly in the hierarchy. I’m sure you never thought you’d end up dying in my bed, of all places. Detective Johnson seems to think they killed you elsewhere, then brought you here. He’ll know soon following tests. But why did they bring you to my place? Did you say with your last breath, “Go ahead, kill me if you have to, you bastards, but take my body over to Landau’s, leave me in his leafy love-nest so he can get in some trouble. It’s my last gift to him, my final gesture”?

  “Dr. Landau, I’m gonna clear out now,” Detective Johnson said mildly, turning away from the kitchen window. “You’ll stay in town, right? Not planning any international trips soon, are you? All right, now I know this probably rings hollow, but I want to apologize for us tromping through here in such numbers, we don’t get non-drug-related homicides very often in the hill neighborhoods, so the dispatcher probably told everybody to head up here. This is the whole Berkeley criminal investigative apparatus, down to the janitors. We’ll be a little more restrained with the next crime, not that that’s much consolation, but there it is.”

  “It’s okay, Detective. Just as long as nobody ruined my new bidjar.”

  “Whatever a bidjar is.”

  “It’s a kind of rug. So—you consider this a homicide, is that what I’m gathering?”

  “Don’t know. I shouldn’t say anything, but it looks a little funny, don’t you think? What’re the chances that she broke in to your house and died of a heart attack in your bed? On her own?”

  “I see what you’re saying. The maids were here, too. It had to have happened after they left, at about three.”

  “R
ight. I want to find out what the maids saw.”

  Half an hour later, having chewed the evening over with Deena and Harold—Harold, despite his apparent uninterest, having noticed absolutely everything—Landau was once again alone. In his now violated house. Listening to the silence outdoors and in, silence returning like water seeping back into a dry riverbed. Freddy, his neutered tom, appeared out of deep hiding, to peer at his empty feed-bowl on the kitchen floor as if to say, “Well? A lot of excitement, okay, but where the hell’s my dinner, man? Are you feeding me or what?”

  “All right, all right, although it’s a bad idea to eat in the middle of the night,” Landau told his cat. “Where am I going to sleep tonight, Freddy? Somebody just died in my lovely bed. A madwoman, a scourge, at one time, a close friend. I’d rather not go upstairs by myself, silly as that sounds. Well, here’s your can of food. Eat it all, and we’ll talk things over in the morning.”

  chapter 2

  Landau had never planned on becoming a disease-chaser, and the whole career, now mostly over, seemed an accident—a fundamental wrong turning. Should’ve been a lawyer, a journalist, a wordsmith of some kind. A neither-this-nor-that kind of thinker, amoeba-ing forward on the basis of style alone. A modest facility with mathematics had been his downfall. While he pursued the things that actually interested him, poetry and history, he racked up good results in his sciencey subjects, so that at the end of his education he found himself in an absurd position, as a graduate student in statistics. He had come to Berkeley to get out of England—California being the place to go, plus he had a cousin in San Francisco, dear dead old Dad’s only living relation. Then, a pregnancy with the wrong person. Needing to get serious about earning a living, he ploughed on with statistics on the theory that it’s best to dig the ditch you’re in.

  Liked some things about it, mathematical modeling, for one. Whole enterprise horribly bloodless, but diverting for that very reason. Stumbled into a modeling-of-diseases course, statistics plus suffering, that was a little better. The biosciences belonged to the English at that time. Not that the Yanks would ever admit it, but Francis Crick bestrode the sciences as a colossus, a maddeningly protean genius, not just for discovering the structure of DNA but for figuring out how the whole thing worked, protein synthesis, coding, all of it. Landau had seen him in action. A tutor at St. Paul’s took some students to the Cavendish labs at Cambridge one day in October ’56, to hear a talk on some scientific subject. A large, sandy-haired man had been speaking as they came in the conference room—he was not the featured speaker, just somebody in the audience. Yet he continually spoke out loudly, wittily cross-examining the man up front trying to give his paper, tying him in logical knots.