Political Poison Read online

  Turner waited for the technical people to finish. The medical examiner came in fifteen minutes after the crime lab people started. He scrutinized the body. He spoke as he worked the room at large. “Wasn’t stabbed or shot.” A gray-haired man whom Turner didn’t like, the medical examiner mumbled to himself as he unbuttoned, prodded, and pushed at the body. He examined the neck carefully. “Wasn’t strangled.”

  Turner resisted the impulse to give his opinion of what killed Giles. He knew from experience that if he spoke, he’d get an officious lecture.

  The ME mumbled. “Probably poison.”

  Turner had seen enough murders to have made this guess forty-five minutes ago, but he kept quiet. The ME had to earn his paycheck too.

  Turner had examined the small refrigerator in the corner of the room nearest the window. He used his pen wedged around the handle to open the door. Inside he’d found six bottles. Three were filled with health-food juices with safety seals intact. The other three had no labels and no safety seals. Green liquid with orange flecks in it filled two of these to the brim. One was half full. He called Sam Franklin over. With exquisite care, the two of them pulled the half full bottle out of the refrigerator and removed its cap.

  “Smells vile,” Franklin said.

  “Better take special care of everything in the refrigerator,” Turner said.

  Franklin agreed. “You see the juicer on the table by the door?”

  “Take it with you,” Turner said.

  Turner followed the medical examiner out of the room. Fenwick stood at the open doorway talking to the commander of Area Ten. He was a tall black man with snow-white hair. The commander hadn’t tried to enter the room, and Tuner knew he wouldn’t. He saw the other brass out in the hallway.

  Fenwick caught Turner’s look. “I was lucky to keep them out. I almost had to tackle the guy from the superintendent’s office.”

  “Do it if you have to,” the commander said. “This is going to be tough enough as it is. What have you got?”

  “ME said poison,” Turner said. “I agree. No food in evidence, but we’ve got a cup on the desk with residue in it. Could have come from the juice container in the refrigerator. Probably in the drink. We’ve got to figure out how the killer put it there. He or she had to risk being recognized, if it was administered here. Depends on the kind of poison.”

  “Could it have been suicide?” the commander asked.

  “Possible,” Turner said, “but I haven’t seen a note. We’ll be checking it.”

  “Anything else yet?” the commander asked.

  “Just starting to question the locals. Going to take a while,” Turner told him.

  “Lots of press and public attention on this one,” the commander said.

  “Usual with this kind of thing,” Turner said.

  The commander sighed. “More than usual. I can’t believe how many calls I’ve gotten from aldermen worried about their sacred persons.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “I’ll try to keep the pressure off you guys as best I can, but it would sure as hell help if you came up with a killer as soon as possible.”

  He didn’t comment further on their investigation or try to make suggestions. He trusted Turner and Fenwick to do what was right. They had a 95 percent conviction rate; they knew how to make an arrest and knew what to do to make it stick. The commander wished them luck and strolled over to the cops from downtown. Fenwick and Turner returned to the outer office.

  Turner examined the massive oak desk itself, then shifted carefully through the papers on top. No suicide note. An appointment calendar lay on the upper right-hand corner of the desk. Giles had had a university committee meeting later that day but nothing else. With the tip of his pen Turner turned over the leaf to Monday. The previous evening Giles had met with a group called Friends of the Furred and Finny. Turner checked the past weeks and the next few. He wrote down the names of all the groups and people. The most appointments he’d had in a day was six. A few days had nothing. He found several phone messages and took down the names and numbers on them.

  Sam Franklin brought in two mugs encased in large plastic bags. Turner glanced in both of them.

  “These are all we found in the room,” Franklin said. He pointed to a dark-blue one. “Found this on the floor behind the desk. We’ll find traces on the inside. Got to be poison in it.”

  “That’s my guess,” Turner said.

  He got Sanchez to bring in each of the witnesses from the hall one by one. They started with the person who sounded the alarm. They talked in the outer office. The witness in one of the chairs, Fenwick leaning on the table in the back, Turner sitting on the edge of the desk.

  Clark Burke was a student at the university. Five-foot-six , maybe all of 120 pounds, blond hair standing out straight from the top of his head an inch, cut short on the sides. He wore a button-down white shirt, black Z. Cavaricci pants with the label at the zipper, and black athletic shoes. Turner noted Burke’s fingertips were red, and the nails chewed down. Burke spoke in a surprisingly deep and mellow voice. Most of the time his hands hung nearly motionless on the chair arms, except for occasional forays to his mouth, where a fingernail got chewed.

  They found out he was a student temp who substituted for different departments when secretaries called in sick or were out on vacation. He answered phones, took messages, and did some typing. He was a sophomore at the university, majoring in English.

  Turner observed that Burke’s eyes made surreptitious glances at Turner’s crotch.

  Turner asked, “Could you tell us what happened?”

  “I’m a little shook up. I don’t know what you want me to say.” Burke chewed on a nail.

  “Start at the beginning,” Turner suggested. “Tell us what you did today.”

  “I’ve worked in this department a couple times before, never for Mr. Giles until this week. His regular secretary is on vacation. The head of the department, Mr. Sorenson, always asks for me when one of the secretaries is out. I know most of the members of the department.”

  “How well did you know Mr. Giles?” Turner asked.

  “A little. I knew who he was by sight. Did somebody really poison him?”

  Fenwick asked, “How did you know he was poisoned?”

  “That’s what people in the hall said. I thought he was having a heart attack.”

  “How was he to work for the past two days?” Turner asked.

  “Yesterday, Monday, I only saw him for a few minutes. He gave me a bunch of stuff to type. This morning he came in and asked how I was doing on the typing. I still had ten pages to do. He didn’t say much else.”

  “It would help if you could give us as many details about today as possible,” Turner said. “Anything you could remember might be important.”

  Burke chewed on a nail for a minute, then noticed he was doing it. “Nervous habit,” he muttered. He held one hand with the other in his lap. He said, “I got here at nine. That’s the usual starting time. For the first couple hours I was here by myself. I just answered the phone and typed.”

  “How many calls were there?” Fenwick asked.

  “Only a few. I don’t remember the messages. I put them on his desk.”

  “Did people from other offices come in?”

  Burke thought. “A few people put their heads in the door and asked for Gwendolen, the regular secretary, but nobody came in for Giles. He came in about eleven-thirty. I told him about the messages. He gave me a couple more things to type. I can only do fifty words a minute so it takes me quite a while to get anything done. The biggest thing was a manuscript for an article.”

  “What was the manuscript about?” Fenwick asked.

  “‘Mythos in Chaucer’s Troilus: A Post-Structural Analysis.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Fenwick asked.

  Burke shrugged.

  “Did you see him after he gave you the work?”

  Burke said, “He came out once near noon and told me I could go to lunch and not wo
rry about how long I took. He did the same thing yesterday. I think he was trying to be nice. I took an hour. We usually take only half that.”

  Turner noted Burke’s demeanor and mannerisms while the nineteen-year-old talked. Burke looked him in the eye when he answered; he seemed to be thinking carefully about his answers rather than cautiously. Burke told them that no one came in to see Giles after the professor showed up for work.

  “You leave anytime during the morning?” Turner asked.

  “Just for a break around ten. I was gone maybe fifteen minutes. Then a few minutes after Giles got here, I went down to go to the john.”

  “How long were you gone then?” Turner asked.

  “Maybe five minutes. I had to use the washroom on the second floor. I couldn’t find the key to the one on this floor.”

  Turner asked, “What happened when you got back from lunch?”

  “I finished typing some letters and took them in to him.”

  “What were they about?” Turner asked.

  “Mostly to magazines about articles he planned to write. I think he was a little surprised to see me.”

  “Did you notice what he was drinking?” Turner asked.

  “I saw his mug. I don’t know what was in it. Don’t know where he got it.”

  “Why do you think he was surprised that you came back?” Turner asked.

  “Some of the temps try to take advantage. Most of them, if they got told to take as long as they want, they’d take advantage and not show up for a couple hours. If the temp agency caught them, they could be in trouble. I don’t want to risk losing this job.”

  “How did he seem when you talked to him?” Fenwick asked.

  “Well, I can’t compare it to how he was normally, because I’d never talked to him until this week, but he seemed kind of rattled and busy.”

  Turner watched the blues eyes searching his. He saw that Burke rubbed his hands on his pants legs, probably sweating. Did Burke realize he was a suspect in a murder case? Nervous at being questioned by the police, probably for the first time in his life? Certainly scared at what had happened.

  “What made you think he was rattled and busy?” Fenwick asked.

  “Well, he was polite mostly, but gruff, like, thank you and get out I’m busy. We temps are used to that. Most people think we’re dirt, but it’s a good way to make money to get through college.”

  “Did anyone come in after you left?” Turner asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then what happened?” Fenwick asked.

  “Well, I sat down here at the computer. I was several pages into a manuscript, the Chaucer article, when I heard a thump from the room next door. I didn’t pay much attention, but then I heard horrible gasping and more thumps.”

  Burke stood up, jammed his hands in his pants pockets, and walked to the doorway to the hall. He glanced left and right then turned back to the two cops, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder against the door jamb. He spoke softly but without hesitation. “I rushed into the room. I saw him on the floor. I ran to him. He gasped a few more times. I ran to the drinking fountain down the hall to get him some water. I ran back in. He was still breathing. I shouted for help. He started to throw up and have some sort of convulsions. It was awful.” He drew several deep breaths. “People came running. I’m not sure who or how many. I was pretty shook up. I do remember dialing nine-one-one.”

  Burke slowly walked back to the chair and sat down gingerly. He gulped. “I’ve never watched somebody die.”

  His eyes found Turner’s. The cop returned the gaze, saw a misty-eyed confusion and something else in the lingering look he wasn’t sure of. Burke couldn’t tell them any more. They’d check into his background and story later.

  At this moment two paramedics carried the body bag out. Turner watched Burke turn stark white. Turner told the kid he could go. Burke, his color still bad, managed to gasp, “Are my parents going to find out about this?”

  Turner said, “At the moment we don’t plan on calling them. Are they a problem? Should we call them?”

  “My parents are going to be worried,” he said. “My dad especially didn’t want me to come to Chicago.”

  “How’s that?” Turner asked.

  “I’m from Chatsworth, Iowa. A town near the left end of nowhere. They still think the people in Chicago carry machine guns and shoot each other like in Prohibition times. I was glad to get away.”

  “Trouble at home?” Turner asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Burke said, “I love my mom and dad. It’s just they aren’t used to the big city. I’d never been able to go here if I hadn’t gotten a big scholarship. I still have to work. Farming is tough in the part of Iowa I’m from. If they hear I’m involved in a murder, they could get real upset. I don’t want to go back.”

  Turner tried to be reassuring while making no commitments about who he would or wouldn’t tell.

  The next person to be interviewed was Atherton Sorenson, head of the English department. Sorenson had a fringe of white hair around a bald scalp. He wore a Ban-Lon shirt on a sloped shouldered frame and khaki pants with a belt pulled to the last loop on a slightly thickened waist. He stepped a foot inside the door and stopped.

  Sorenson spoke in a mellifluous baritone. With his hands he made wide solemn gestures. Turner could see him pontificating in front of groups of graduate students, staring back with glazed expressions. Sorenson didn’t wait to be asked a question, but began orating at them unbidden. “Politics. This is the result of getting involved in the muck. I told Giles again and again, it was not seemly for him to be involved with that filth. I wanted him to take a leave of absence, and then when he won that battle, I wanted him to quit, but the higher-ups in the university wouldn’t listen. They should have.”

  Turner could easily imagine the man, at a later, more seemly time, trying to score points with his peers about how right he’d been about that Gideon Giles.

  Fenwick said, “Tell us where you were from noon to one-thirty today.”

  Sorenson looked startled at Fenwick’s tone. Turner had worked with his partner long enough to distinguish between his normal abruptness and his genuine dislike for someone. This was the latter. Turner didn’t care for Sorenson either, but he didn’t want to turn off these people now, but he also didn’t mind Fenwick’s gruffness. It might shake something loose from a guilty person.

  “We need everyone’s movements on this floor,” Turner said. “Someone might have seen the killer.”

  Sorenson took this a little better. He swept to the chair and settled his expansive rear end onto its wood. He placed a finger against the right side of his head and stared at the ceiling. He said, “I lunched at the Quadrangle Club as I always do. I remember today’s discussion was about the relation between sunlight on hawthorn leaves in Proust and darkness and light in Timon of Athens. I always try to have a topic for my colleagues to discuss at the table.” He lowered his head to look at them. “I don’t suppose you read Proust?”

  Fenwick growled. Sorenson raised an eyebrow at him. Turner asked, “Who did you have lunch with?”

  “A young instructor, James Everly, the head of the Philosophy department, Bertram Elston, and one or two visitors from the Sorbonne. I don’t remember their names. They aren’t important, are they?”

  “Was Giles there?”

  “No. He didn’t join us today.”

  “Did he usually?” Turner asked.

  “Not often. I’d say a quarter of the time. When he became alderman, he took part in far fewer activities connected to the University.”

  “What time did you finish?” Turner asked.

  “Around one. I returned to my office and stayed there the whole time. You can ask my secretary. She’ll vouch for me.”

  Turner asked about relationships between faculty members.

  “You mean did he have any enemies?” Sorenson asked.

  “Anything you can tell us about how he got along with his colleagues.”

&nbs
p; Sorenson settled himself back in the chair this time, leaning a finger of his left hand against his head and staring at the ceiling. “Well, he didn’t really get along with us at all. Not in the sense that he had enemies, but he was above us all. He had that more-committed-than-thou attitude, which I thought disappeared with the sixties. You’ve seen the posters in his office. He didn’t meet a cause he didn’t embrace.” Sorenson explained that in terms of departmental politics, Giles was not an important factor, and that Giles stayed on at the university so he’d have a political base. “It looked good on his credentials. A legitimate profession as opposed to alderman in this city.” Turner thought Sorenson made the job of alderman sound worse than that of a rat collector.

  “Did he seem depressed to you lately?” Turner asked.

  “You mean was he suicidal? Definitely not. Man had an ego to match Lear in Act I.”

  They asked about Giles’s background.

  He’d had excellent credentials. Graduated from the University, did post-graduate work there and at Stanford. He’d become a full professor the year before he’d branched out into politics. This was about ten years ago.

  “Did he always do causes?” Turner asked.

  “No. When he got here, he was quite the subservient young man. Minded his manners. Made a good impression on everyone. Careful in his opinions on academic matters. He rarely took a chance in the research he published, but it was always solidly reasoned.” Giles had gotten heavily into causes the year after he got tenure, had become quite obnoxious, insisting the department take absurd positions. “He wanted to declare the department a nuclear-free zone. I thought he might be losing his mind. Nobody was going to build a nuclear power plant on this university campus. Some professors become eccentric in their old age, but Giles went balmy on us early.”

  “Could you get rid of him?” Fenwick asked.

  Sorenson gaped at him, pointed a finger, breathed deeply and said, “Tenure laws are inviolate. I’m sure you’re not suggesting we make the life of a professor subject to the whims of fortune.”