Bitter Instinct

FOURTEEN

Dr. Garrison Burrwith's hand, when shaken, felt like a dead mackerel, but his forthright voice and his penetrating eyes gave both Jessica and Kim the impression of a man who had nothing whatever to hide. It gave Jessica pause to think that the woman in the office a few doors down feared for her life because of this man, and that the dean had come to this conclusion based solely on the man's poetry. Burrwith struck Jessica as a charming man, all pleasantness and helpfulness, handsome and thin, with perfect posture and perfect skin. When told why they were in his office, Burrwith's crystal blue eyes registered complete shock. He swore, “I know nothing of the murders save what I've overheard about the halls.”

“We're not here to accuse you, sir,” began Jessica.

“No, I mean I absolutely know nothing of these murders. I'd heard not the least word on them until only this morning. Some colleagues of mine were discussing them in the hallway. The dean broke it up when I came along, but not before Peter Werner told me the news. Dreadful, altogether a dreadful thing, indeed.”

“Yes, we think so, too, but living in Philadelphia, how could you not have heard something of the news?”

“You see, I take little notice these days of goings-on out in the world beyond academia,” he said, adding, “no TV, no interest in news anymore. 'Fraid I've botched it so far as my colleagues are concerned. They all come up with such interesting tidbits at the faculty meetings and the occasional party, but I have little to say. Puts people off, I know, but I have this dread of dealing with people in social settings, save for the classroom, you see, where I can confine myself to topics I know something about-poetry and literature and how to unlock the secrets of the masters. I know all their brushstrokes and techniques, you see. All quite cozy, you see. For me, that is; makes my students sweat, I fear.”

Jessica could see that Kim had been silently sizing up the man. He appeared to Jessica as harmless as a caterpillar, the one in Alice in Wonderland. No threat in the least, but rather a being completely engrossed in his little corner of the academic world, complete with glasses and bow tie. He looked like a man out of time, a man who had wandered in from the eighteenth century. Even his khaki clothing and vest appeared somehow turn-of-the-previous-century.

“I know I write some rather depressing and somber poetry, but I'm hardly an Edgar Allan Poe,” he told them. “But even then, Edgar was never accused of murder, only writing about the act.”

“Repeatedly and in novel ways,” replied Jessica, “and he had a fascination with death.”

Kim added, “ 'The Pit and the Pendulum,”Masque of the Red Death.' “

“ 'The Premature Burial,' “ added a grinning Burrwith, his eyes alight now behind the thick lenses.

“ 'Telltale Heart,' “ Jessica said. “Poe, like your poetic voice, seems fixated on death at a young age, premature death, burials in vaults and walls-being buried alive.” There is no writer worth his weight who has not explored death as a theme in his or her work, including the ostensibly staid recluse Emily Dickinson. Kafka's work is all about death or a living death. Would you have him or Miss Emily drawn and quartered for their work?”

“Of course not. We can't confuse the author with his characters, can we?” said Kim.

“Perhaps, most assuredly in fact, Poe lived with a death wish, born of a broken heart; he was, after all, a man born into a world he loathed, and it took from him the one ray of love and life he asked for, his little cousin whom he worshiped. It's a cruel world to any who are sensitive, and for Poe, this realm proved a world he could not embrace or long abide, and one which did not embrace or abide him- at least not in his own time. Although he's been all the rage for well over a century now, in his own lifetime he was regarded as a lunatic. Tragic fellow all around, I'm afraid, a kind of dark angel himself.”

Kim asked, “What are you saying, Dr. Burrwith? That… Edgar Allan Poe ought to've been put out of his misery by someone?”

“Do you have any idea of how literary America rejected the man? Perhaps suicide was in order, as apparently no one would do it for him. So he turned to alcohol for the answer.”

“I know he courted death, given his lifestyle,” countered Kim, but Burrwith cut her off immediately.

“The man was clinically depressed and was likely a manic-depressive, all ailments that his time had no cure for, save the poppy-seed sensation and alcohol. Regardless of his dark tales and poems, he was a hopeless romantic. And neither you nor I can begin to conceive the torture he must have endured.”

Jessica leaped in, asking, “What about our killer? Do you think he may have a Poe complex? ”I would have to study the poems, which I understand he left somehow on the bodies?”

“You've not seen them?”

“No, sorry, but I have not. I've heard a rumor that the dean has copies of them, but she hasn't seen fit to share.”

“I see.”

“The dean and I have not been on the best of terms, ever. She might share them with someone else in the department but certainly not with me.”

“What does she have against you?”

“Oh, I can't say, but it has always felt like professional jealousy of a sort. I routinely publish, while she can't seem to find a place for her own poetry. And I once made the mistake of becoming emotionally involved with her. Foolish move for me, really.”

“Does every professor and administrator here write poetry?” Jessica asked.

“Not all, but many are wannabe writers, yes.”

“Here's some of the killer's work, sir,” said Kim, pulling forth copies of the poems she had first seen in Quantico. “Would you read them, appraise them, tell us what your sense as a professional poet and scholar tells you about the author?”

Burrwith bit his lower lip, frowned, and considered this for a moment. “Before I answer that, would you two care for a cup of tea? I have jasmine, mint, and green tea here.”

It seemed a peace offering. The two detectives took it, and soon the trio were sitting in the semi dark of Burrwith's office sipping at tea, steam curling from each cup. Having read the poems with interest, Burrwith finally cleared his throat, began to pace, and said, “Certainly brooding, but the poems you've shown me, the poems are… well, remarkable in their depth and passion.”

“Remarkable in depth and passion. Can you be more specific?” asked Jessica. “Why, they're beautiful, evocative jewels, in my opinion.”

Jessica thought the thin, pale, and sensitive man before them sincere; he appeared more ordinary and appealing than the misguided Byronic hero of these writings, who, she believed, thought himself to be releasing his victims from the suffering and agonies of this life. That being the killer's motive, the man before them simply could not be the author of this work. Burrwith, for all his brooding poetry, came off as a man who was on the side of life, not death.

“Despite my scribblings,” he began, pointing to the book Jessica had borrowed from Dean Plummer, “the idea that I could conceive of such murders and carry them out-it's laughable.”

“No one has said-”

“I suspect that Dean Blowhard Harriet Plummer put you onto me; I suspect she thinks I could be this horrid killer.” He laughed a hollow laugh, then apologized. “Look, as an expert in romantic poetry, I, too, received a copy of the FBI packet Dr. Plummer has in her possession, but I have simply been too busy, you see, to look into it. Had I done so, perhaps I could have headed Harriet off at the pass, knowing how flighty and downright susceptible she is to suggestion.”

“And exactly what did you do with our serious request for help, sir? Our tax dollars at work,” said Jessica, frowning.

“I wish for the life of me that I hadn't put the packet aside. It's just as well. In any case, I know it has led to your coming directly to me, and I also know the mailing from the FBI was enormous. For Plummer to assume I was not on the FBI's list of experts tells me a good deal about my future here, or lack of one.”

“Dr. Plummer thought you might be of help to us.”

“Nice try. For Plummer or anyone to think me the killer, well, it's preposterous, but ludicrous or not, it makes me uneasy all the same. I must wonder what she's told the rest of the faculty.”

“Makes you uneasy because of the gossip it no doubt will cause?” asked Kim.

“Oh, and why is that?” he asked. “Many an innocent man has been sent to prison or the gas chamber on preposterous evidence.” A timid knock at the door interrupted them. “Look, ladies-do I call you ladies or officers, agents or doctors? Look, I have a student conference scheduled. My young man is likely in the hallway now, waiting. Allow me a moment to reschedule, please.” He then stepped outside, leaving the two FBI agents alone.

Kim began investigating the items on the professor's shelves, from books to knickknacks, a stuffed armadillo to a puppet raven, a dartboard to a calendar of Waterhouse prints. “Remind you of anyone?” she asked, pointing to the calendar.

“Maurice's place was decorated with Waterhouse prints, but they're in vogue nowadays among the young and the romantic.”

“Perceptive fellow; knows the dean's out to get him.”

“You think she just hates him so much she'd sic us on him for no other reason?”

Kim whispered, “He hardly seems a madman. Maybe she's the sick one?”

“But the power of the sociopath is to blend in, and he certainly blends in here.”

“And at the pubs and coffeehouses frequented by the various victims?”

“Reminds me of a mad priest I once put away, a man who had been civilized and charming to a fault.” As criminal profilers, both Kim and Jessica knew that the greatest skill of the sociopath was his gift for disguise and guile. The charming mad priest put me under his spell, even as he put people to excruciating deaths. Strange, isn't it, how Bunwith looks and acts the very antithesis of the self he created in his artistic work.” Again Jessica wondered about the dean's dark suspicions of the man. “Setting aside what he looks and sounds like, to your psychic sense, what does he feel like to you, Kim?”

“Feels as harmless as he looks to me.” Still, she shook her head. “But then, perhaps his dark side, the Poe within, is channeled into his art, his poetry, and so he shows only his light side to the universe.”

“According to him, he's not even a part of the universe outside these hallowed walls. Are you suggesting that he has it in him to murder people, that he's perhaps a dual personality?”

“I don't believe our killer sees his acts as murder,” said Kim, brushing hair from her eyes. “And neither do you. This guy we're after kills allegedly for the sake of the victim, you see-any means to the end. Murder, no; assisting them to reach another world, assisting them over-¦”

“Like poetic euthanasia?”

Kim frowned. “Perhaps, but I didn't get a whiff of it on 'reading' him when I shook his hand.”

“Yeah, some handshake, huh?”

“If you can call it that.”

“Dead fish…”

Bunwith returned, all obviously insincere apologies. A tone of contempt and annoyance filtered through each word he spoke now, as if he were angry that he'd had to send a student off merely to bother with the two FBI detectives. “All right, now that I'm free, I can give you the rest of the day. Fire away with your questions. Would you like me to go downtown with you? Take a lie-detector exam, what?”

“No need for a lie detector, Dr. Burrwith,” said Kim. “I'm a walking, talking he detector.”

Burrwith stared into Kim's beautiful Creole features, his face scrunched in confusion as he asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I'm a psychic, Dr. Burrwith, a psychometrist to be exact. When you and I shook hands, I got a reading on you.”

“Really… really?”

“A sure reading…”

Kim's face remained impassive while Burrwith squirmed in the seat into which he had fallen, the air escaping the cushioned seat as if to mock his own loss of breath. “So, have I passed your litmus test? How presumptuous of you-both of you-to come in here and… and attempt to… what would a lawyer call it? Entrap me? I think our interview is over. It's really too bad. I may have been able to help you, but not so long as I'm being treated as a suspect.”

“You're hardly being treated as a suspect, sir,” Jessica assured him.

“No matter what sort of spin you put on it, I am being treated shabbily. Now good day.”

He had done a sudden about-face since speaking to the student outside, and Jessica thought perhaps he was something of a manic-depressive himself. “Yes, well, I think we're done here, Dr. Burrwith. Thank you for your time.” With that, she guided Kim out the door.

“What was that all about?” she asked when they had gotten out of earshot of the man. “Do you think telling him you're a psychic at this stage was a smart thing to do?”

“I wanted to see his response, see if it elicited a reaction.”

“That kind of information always elicits a reaction.”

“Yeah, I know, and I wanted to see his. See if I could get some sense of him from it. I think he may be hiding something, that he's very practiced at being duplicitous.”

“Wanted him to sweat it out, huh?”

“Whoever our killer is, I suspect he believes quite strongly in psychic powers, is heavily into the afterlife and New Age thinking, and if he knows we have a psychic on his tail, he might give something away. But I fear it didn't work with Burrwith. I got nothing beyond the feeling that he's hiding something. I just don't know what that thing might be.”

“Believe me, I've had the same reaction to some of the sociopaths I've run across. Do you have antennae strong enough to pick up the unfeeling, unemotional psychos among us?”

“I know when a soul is ugly, and I don't get that off Burrwith.”

“But then perhaps our killer's soul is not ugly. We're not dealing with the usual maniac here.”

“Touche. You're right, of course.”

As they exited the dark vaulted-ceilinged corridors of the neo-Gothic building, Dean Harriet Plummer again located them, a young woman in tow. She said, “You might wish to talk to Johnnie.”

“Johnnie?”

“My student assistant here. She knew your last victim.”

“Please allow me to buy you coffee at the commissary,” said the dean, pointing to a cafe-front window across the way. “Sit down with Johnnie. Hear what she has to say about Burrwith and this business.”

Taking a deep breath, Jessica said, “AJ1 right.”

Young Johnnie Haley told them that a lot of students around the campus thought Dr. Burrwith might possibly be the pen-wielding poisoner.

“Why is that, Johnnie?” asked Kim, seated across from her. “He's just weird. All the poems and stories we study in class are about gruesome stuff, child abuse, molestation, incest, death, disease, horror… you name it. Lotsa kids call him Dr. Death.”

'Tell us what you know about his habits. Ever see him at nightclubs or bars or the coffeehouses down on Second Street, or anywhere else for that matter?”

“Only once, the time he had a fight with Dean Plummer.”

Plummer had left them alone with the student. “The dean was at a local nightclub?”

“The Brick Teacup, checking out the action with Dr. Locke-”

“Locke?”

“Another professor. He's won awards for his poetry and stuff, I hear. Anyway, the three of them got into some sorta shouting match, but no one could make it out since the place is so-”

“Loud, we know,” said Kim.

'Tell us what you knew about Maurice Deneau,” asked Jessica.

“Not much, really. Just saw him around, you know. He was just a kid, you know, a big kid. They were just kids, like me. Kids nowadays, we just wanna have fun, you know. Nothing about any of this makes any sense to me.” Despite more digging, they got very little else from Johnnie; clearly, using the girl to incriminate Burrwith was a desperate measure on Plummer's part. They learned that she had once slept over at Maurice Deneau's house, and that she knew Thomas Ainsworth, Deneau's friend. “Both the boys were nice, sensitive young men,” she told them, tears welling up now. “Just sweet, sensitive guys, you know. Could use more of their type in the world, you know?”

The coffee left a bitter taste in Jessica's mouth, as did Plummer's overly helpful coaching of the girl to point the finger at Burrwith. After fifteen minutes of listening to basically useless and superficial information, they sent the student on her way.

As they were about to leave the English department building, where they had walked with Johnnie, once again the chairman of the English department clung to them as if she were afraid to be left so close to Burrwith. “You should speak to a Dr. Donatella Leare, also an expert in literature here.”

“But let me guess, she's also had some run-ins with Burrwith?” Jessica said.

“She has, but she's never confided the details. She has excellent insight into poetic expression, far more than anyone on my staff. I have given over the information I received from the FBI to her, and she has shown a great deal of interest in the case. You may find her at home late tonight or early tomorrow. Here is her card.” She had escorted them to the parking lot now.

“Thank you. Dr. Plummer. You have been a great help,” replied Jessica, tiring of the woman's overbearing manner.

“We wish to cooperate as much as possible. This is a horrible blot on our community, these awful killings.”

Jessica's police instincts made her suspect Dr. Plummer herself, perhaps not of the murders per se but of some connection to them. She was too eager to be of help, going out of her way, so far as to dig up a student who'd done little more than sit in a classroom with one of the victims, and who'd been in Burrwith's class. She also showed them registration forms indicating that another of the victims had taken Burrwith's class. This overzealousness was a sure sign that she was hiding something. Jessica wondered if the dean's secrets had anything whatever to do with the case; much more likely they had to do with the angry scene the student had referred to, the argument involving Plummer, Burrwith, and the third English professor, Locke, at the Brick Teapot.

“Dr. Donatella Leare may be able to give you some additional insights, as I said.” Plummer continued talking as they made their way to the car. “Meanwhile, I can continue to delve into such things as student records.”

“Thank you, Dr. Plummer.” Jessica attempted a smile. “You've been most helpful, indeed.”

“And perhaps you should talk to Dr. Locke, Lucian Locke. We call him Lucky.”

“Lucky?” asked Kim. “How is he lucky?”

“In the vernacular of some of our students, 'He de man,' “ replied Plummer, standing now under a brilliant blue sky and a blinding, fiery setting sun from which she guarded her eyes. “Sir Lucky. Just won the well-funded if less than history-making R. J. Reynolds teaching fellowship. 'Lucky' Strikes, you see.”

“A fellowship to teach, but isn't he teaching now?”

“This will afford him the opportunity to teach and write in Japan.”

“I see.”

“That makes him number one on this campus. Reflects well on the entire university, you see. Makes my department shine. It's called professional development. We don't like our faculty to stagnate, you see.”

“Publish or perish?” asked Kim.

Jessica replied, “In the case of our killer, it's publish and perish.”

“Guess I'll be packing my bags soon, hey, Dr. Plummer?” It was Dr. Burrwith. He'd exited the building from a basement door, a door that led out to the parking lot; as he stood at the top of the flight of stairs, his body was silhouetted against the light. He'd come up from behind them, but none of them had noticed, so quiet was his footfall.

“There's no need to deride your own work here, Dr. Burrwith. No one knows the classics like you. We all know that.”

“Lucky Lucian, ladies,” said Burrwith, unmistakable anguish in his voice. “L-U-C-K-Y with a capital dollar sign. The tobacco industry's latest weapon in their public relations war-fund literature and literacy so they can point to their investment in people's ability to read the surgeon general's warning label on their products. Thereby further excusing themselves for selling addiction and genocide.”

“Let's not minimize the fact that our colleague has just won one of the biggest fellowships in all of academia, Dr. Burrwith,” Plummer soothed. “Queerly enough, everyone in the department has taken Locke's victory personally, as if it means a professional blow to others. Why is that, Detectives? You know human nature better than most. Why does one man's or woman's success have to be viewed as another's failure?”

“I'm sure I can't say,” replied Jessica, surprised by the question. She now sensed there was far more rancor in the relationship between the dean and her colleague than she at first realized.

“Insecurity on the part of the second party,” said Kim Desinor. “Textbook psychiatry, chapter one.”

“Usually Dr. Lucky is in by now, but he hasn't bothered showing up for his office hours since the big windfall,” said Burrwith. “Fortunately for him, the dean here is, in his case, lenient about such matters.” The implication that Dr. Lucian Locke was either figuratively or literally in bed with Dean Plummer was far from subtle. “His office is next to mine. It's the one office from which I haven't yet been displaced.”

Jessica wondered momentarily if such professional jealousy and bickering could spill over into murder and an attempt to frame someone.

Burrwith swung out with his briefcase and strode off, his head held high. If he had at one time been infatuated with Plummer, he appeared well over it now.

“Pay him no mind,” said Plummer. “The students have all flocked to Dr. Leare and Dr. Locke, you see, and Garrison has been left with lecture classes the size of tutorials. I fear Dr. Burrwith has lost his touch with the young. His communication skills, while always questionable, are now definitely on the wane.”

“The other instructors are more in tune with the students?”

“The students persist in calling them a team, Locke and Leare, they say. If you've had Locke and Leare, you know you've covered the territory.”

“Then Locke… he's a good teacher as well as an award-winning poet?”

“Good? Good? He brings literature to startling life, and the man's forgotten more about the classics than I ever learned. Good man, fantastic teacher, really, and I think he, like myself, enjoys the work tremendously, and the rewards cannot be weighed. He loves his students.”

“As do you?”

“To keep my hand in, I continue to teach one course per semester, and yes, I do-love my students, that is. That's what makes this sordid business all the more shocking, to lean that two-no, three-of the victims were enrolled here. I found it rather astonishing, absolutely astonishing”-Jessica thought, Yeah, public-relations-wise-”to learn of the connection, while that smug Garrison Burrwith pretends he never had the least inkling this kind of thing was going on, which made me suspicious of him, you see. How can someone claim to know not the slightest about these horrible incidents? It's a bold-faced lie.”

“There has to be more reason for your suspicions of Burrwith. What are they really, Dr. Plummer?” pressed Kim. He… he and I once had a thing, a romantic thing, you see, and well, as I mentioned before, he liked using a pen on me.”

“Using a pen on you?”

'To excite me; he would use a pen… down there… pretend to write in the area of my thighs, the lip of-well, you get the picture. At first it struck me as odd, but so is Burrwith. After we broke it off, he withdrew into himself, and when I learned how these young people, some our students, had died, he just naturally leaped into my mind. You will keep this private, won't you?”

“As much as possible, yes, of course,” said Jessica.

Kim bit her lip, saying nothing.

“You will be discreet, won't you?” pressed the dean.

“Of course.”

“You never know around here if your job is secure, and should my superiors learn of… Well, they wouldn't be, how shall I put it, liberal in their thinking.”

“We may have to speak with you again, Dr. Plummer. You don't have any plans for leaving the city, do you?”

“Oh, gracious no. Are you suggesting, I mean, does this mean that I am… a suspect?”

“No, not really.”

But she wasn't listening. “How unusual. Wonder how one adds being a suspect in a murder investigation to one's curriculum vitae?” She half smiled at her own little joke and added, “Imagine, questioned in relation to a homicide investigation. What will the trustees think?”

“We'll keep this as businesslike and as discreet as possible, I assure you, Dr. Plummer.”

“Thank you. Truth be known, Locke and I, we've visited some of the coffeehouses on Second Street, to 'plug in,' as he says.”

“To plug in?”

'To the youth thinking-the 'scene,' as they call it. We may well have been seated next to the victims, and then one night Garrison showed up. It's horrible to think of.”

“Did you ever notice anyone there who struck you as out of the ordinary, unusual in any way?”

“Only him-Burrwith. He made a scene one night at the Brick Teacup. Confronted me before Locke. It was most unpleasant.”

“Did he in any way threaten you?”

“He stalked me for several weeks after our breakup. That was threat enough. That night, I made it clear that in no uncertain terms… that whatever we had at one time was dead, absolutely and completely dead and over with. He got the message, believe me.”

“He felt replaced by Dr. Lucian Locke?” asked Jessica.

'To say the least, yes.”

“And you think him capable of poisoning young people in order to… to get back at you and the university for feelings of having been wronged?” asked Kim.

“Poison would be just like him, don't you see? You saw how he sneaks up on you. Beneath that calm exterior lies a volcano waiting to erupt.”

“We'll keep an eye on him for you.”

“Thank you… thank you. And I wanted to tell you out of Dr. Burrwith's hearing that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the moment-an academic conference in Houston.”

“When do you expect them back?” Jessica asked.

'Tomorrow, for their classes. They'll likely return sometime late today or tonight.”

Jessica took down the addresses of the two professors. The three women shook hands and Dr. Plummer made her way back up the stairs and into the airless castle where she worked, a fortress no architect would construct outside a university campus. She was not a beautiful woman in any sense of the word; her legs looked like stuffed sausages, her waist had lost the battle to differentiate itself from her hips, and her hair was from another generation, down to the bangs and flip. She dominated these men through her power in the department, Jessica imagined, but now, with Locke's having won a lucrative if not prestigious award, he likely no longer needed her or the university.

“Whole lotta shakin' goin' on here, wouldn't you say?” Kim asked, picking up on Jessica's mood. She had also picked up on the same vibes about Plummer. “That woman appears to rule here.”

“Soon, I imagine, she will be repaid in kind by the men she uses.”

“Some piece of work she is,” Kim agreed, the sun reflecting a glint in her eye just before it sank below the horizon.

“Yeah, let's get out of here before she comes back with another bogus eyewitness.”

“What about Leare and Locke? Do you think we should talk to them sometime soon?”

“Academics are scary, aren't they?”

“Yeah, you got that right.”

“Imagine, this woman has concocted this fantastic modus operandi and motive for the killer, and it all revolves around her love life, her scorned lover. She believes herself the center of the universe?”

“Yeah, it all revolves around me, me, me.”

“How're we going to write up this report?”

“Get in the car, and let's get out of here, shall we? We'll worry about the particulars later.”