"Oh, you will, you will, at least figuratively speaking. But make it later in the month."
He pressed his lips against my uninjured, unbandaged ear and said into it, "Have a safe, productive day, Detective Strachey."
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"That's what I aim to do, if at all possible."
* * * *
Bud's e-mail arrived just after nine. I had dragged out of bed, showered, pulled on some jeans painfully, and made it down to the kitchen table and my laptop. Timmy had made coffee for me—his own preference was for South Asian milky sweet tea—and he left one of his favorite mugs at my place, a battered relic of his Peace Corps days in India. The mug bore the image of Ganesh, the elephant god, helper of scribes and remover of obstacles. While I ate some yogurt and a banana, I looked to see what Bud the remover of privacy walls had sent along.
Greg Stiver's undergraduate academic record was solid but otherwise unrevealing. He had been a steady B-plus, A-minus student from the beginning of his SUNY career. He did consistently well in history and the social sciences and faltered only in a freshman geology course, where he got a C.
In grad school, Stiver also did well, earning good grades and commendations from professors in economics courses ranging from statistics to "Birth Pangs of Capitalism" to "Marx Interred: Collectivism Dribbles Out." His master's thesis, called A Trabant of an Economic System, seemed from its introductory section to be about the collapse of the work ethic in East Germany during forty-five years of Marxist economics and political domination by the Soviet Union. I noted that Stiver's thesis adviser was a Dr. Paul Podolski. I checked the current roster of SUNY faculty; Professor Podolski was listed, 68
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and I noted his phone number, office location, and e-mail address.
The university's report on Stiver's suicide—digitalized images of typed or handwritten pages—had been compiled by campus police and was stiff with copspeak—"the subject" this,
"the subject" that, and multiple references to "the deceased."
No one actually witnessed Stiver's April 17 mid-morning plunge; he had jumped while classes were in session and there were no pedestrians in the immediate vicinity beside the Quad Four tower. His body was discovered adjacent to a walkway by janitorial staff on a break, apparently some minutes after Stiver had jumped. The janitors notified campus cops, who immediately called APD. The city cops responded within ten minutes and got there just before an ambulance arrived. The ambulance was pro forma; the head of the SUNY
security detail had noted it was plain that Stiver's neck was broken, and his skull had cracked and brain matter had spattered across the sidewalk.
A follow-up report, dated the next day, noted that preliminarily police believed the death to be a suicide. Stiver had gained access to the roof of the building by way of an unlocked door at the top of a stairwell. His backpack with books and "personal items" was found near the spot from which he had jumped. There was no evidence anyone else had been with Stiver on the roof.
A third report, a day later, said APD reported to SUNY that detectives had been given a suicide note by the landlady of the deceased. Also, unnamed "friends"—Insinger and Jackman?—had told APD detectives that Stiver had been 69
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despondent in recent weeks. So the conclusion was that Stiver had taken his own life.
No reference was made in any of this to Stiver's sexuality or to his personal life at all, and Assemblyman Louderbush's name never came up. There was, however, a note appended to page three of the report. It read "call from Leg. Blessing responding."
Leg. was Legislature? And who or what was Blessing?
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
70
Red White and Black and Blue
by Richard Stevenson
Chapter Eight
Jennifer Stiver's Facebook page contained not a lot of useful information, but I could see that she was no wounded hermit. She was pretty, open-faced, and smiling in her photo, maybe a little flirtatious, with subtly applied makeup and an unsubtle head of wild honey-colored hair. She had designated herself single. Her interests, she noted, were music, dancing, and spelunking. Spelunking? In her photo, Stiver had no mud on her face and she wasn't wearing a headlamp. Her birth date made her thirty-four years old. She didn't list an astrological sign, as some Facebook users did, or any other colorations of personality. Her occupation was teacher.
Otherwise she was unforthcoming.
I rang Bud again.
"Strachey, you got the stuff I sent?"
"You bet. One more item before you bill me. Is there a Jennifer Stiver teaching in any of the schools, public or private, in or around Schenectady?"
"Half an hour."
"I'm here."
While I waited, I called a woman I knew at APD, and she gave me the names of the three insurance guys who saw me get beat up by the Serbians. I phoned each one in turn on their cells, and they had little to add to what Hanratty had told me. They all apologized for not getting the tag number of the Lincoln, and they all said they were surprised I was out of the hospital so soon. They said I looked terrible lying there in 71
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my own blood, and at first they weren't sure I wasn't dead.
One of the three, a man named Servan Singh, said he noticed that the Navigator had a green sticker on a rear side window that looked like some kind of landfill permit. I wondered, for dumping trash or bodies?
Bud called me back. "Jennifer Stiver teaches sixth grade at Burton Hendricks Elementary School in Rotterdam. She's been there for eight years. Her personnel file contains excellent evaluations overall. Should I send them along?"
"No, no need."
"There was one negative thing five years ago, not coincidentally I suppose, around the time of her brother's death. Her principal notes that she missed two weeks of school, which was a week longer than the bereavement policy allowed. She was docked a week's pay and warned not to miss any more days that were unauthorized."
"I wonder why she didn't just say she was sick that second week. She must have had sick leave accumulated."
"Maybe she recognized that that would have been dishonest."
"I'm glad to have you of all people point that out to me, Bud."
"Thinking you might need to know, I also learned that Ms.
Stiver is now winding up her teaching duties for the school year. The last day of classes at Burton Hendricks is a week from tomorrow."
"What time does school let out today? Surely you looked into that also."
"Three-fifteen."
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Bud gave me the address for the school, and I asked him to stand by and not leave town. I said I was working on something both fascinating and disturbing, and he would learn about it soon enough and it would leave him disgusted.
"Cool."
I finished getting clothes on and took another Tylenol. I still ached all over and my ripped ear was throbbing. I retrieved and loaded the Smith & Wesson. The Weather Channel called for a high of eighty-three, so there was no way I was going to wear anything that would conceal the weapon.