Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Alexandru
“This is a really cute area,” Ms. Renfield says as we stroll down a street overlooking the river. She points to three vine-covered stone buildings. “The Ashwood musical conservatory is in those buildings. Lots of students and artsy types live and work in these old buildings all around here.”
The buildings are older and statelier than the quaint shops down by the river, the “downtown.”
What is bedeviling about this place is the music assaulting me from all angles. Violins sawing away to my left, a saxophone braying to my right, and what sounds like an electronic clavichord from a window above.
I’ve had centuries of practice filtering out human noise, but this is overmuch even for me. “The cacophony.”
“Look! Your house.” Ms. Renfield points east.
And there it is. Kingston Manor, perched on the ridge not a half mile distant, its spire rising up like a dark finger against the sky.
We set down the sidewalk towards Jerome’s building.
“Is Jerome some manner of artsy type?”
“Journalism is kind of artsy-adjacent. His Substack really is excellent. I’m thinking that’s why he was visiting Dooley all those times—he was working on some sort of story.”
“Why would Dooley lie about it?”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation.” Ms. Renfield stops in front of an old brick building with rows of windows marking its three stories. Nervousness radiates from her. A little bit of dread. She is loath to question her high school friend.
“Well?” I ask impatiently.
“I just hate showing up unannounced like this. I don’t want him to put us off, and it’s not like we can do this in text. I want you to be able to get a read on him.”
“That I will do,” I say to her.
She turns to me with a pleading look. “Just don’t antagonize him. Let me run this question-and-answer session.”
I shrug wearily. “I will allow it. For now.”
She takes a breath and pushes a button mounted next to the door. A corresponding buzz sounds from one of the second-floor windows. There is movement. An indistinct figure appears in front of gossamer curtains, there and gone.
We wait.
She tries again. “What if he’s not home?”
“He’s home. He just looked at us from the window.”
“You saw him in a window?”
“He came to see who was calling.”
“How do you know which apartment he lives in?”
“I heard the buzzer. Second window to the far right.”
“Come on, Jerome, just answer,” Ms. Renfield says under her breath.
“He is at the window again,” I inform her. “Wave at him as though you see him.”
“I feel like such a jerk.” But she waves at him nevertheless. A moment later there’s a crackling sound from the buttons console. A voice: “Hello?”
“Hey, Jerome,” Ms. Renfield says. “It’s Harriet! So sorry to drop by so weirdly without texting, but Alexandru and I were in the neighborhood, and we have a really important quick question for you.”
“Ummm, can’t it wait? I’ve got a million things happening right now.”
“Just a quick sec? It’s kind of important!” she says brightly.
“I mean, okay, If it’s quick.”
A buzzer sounds, and Harriet pulls open the heavy door. We climb a short flight of stairs with treads covered in faded patterned carpet. An old chandelier hangs overhead, and numbered doors line the second-floor hallway.
“I am expending so much social capital,” Ms. Renfield says.
“Social capital?”
She lowers her voice. “It’s like, how much leeway you have to push your friends. How much they’ll roll with it.”
We reach the door marked 207.
She spins around and whispers, “Remember: I’m doing the talking.”
Behind her the door is flung open, and there is Jerome, looking haggard. His short dark hair is not formed in the uniform shape that it was when we first met him, he carries the faint salt of recent exertion.
“Hey, uh—what’s up?” he asks, fairly vibrating with tension.
“Thanks for seeing us,” Ms. Renfield says. “You remember Alexandru.”
I extract a calling card from the gold case. “Miramonte.”
Jerome stares down at the card and up at me. I enjoy the moment of outrage pulsing through Ms. Renfield.
Ms. Renfield says, “I know you’re busy, but we’ve been looking into this whole Razor Johnny killing just because… well, reasons.”
Guilt and fear pour off of Jerome. “What does that have to do with me? I didn’t see anything that day.”
“Right, but as you know, Dooley Brogan is a lead suspect, and I had taken the liberty of requesting some of the prison visitor logs. You know me, always there with the FOIA stuff, and it turns out that you had visited him a bunch of times and you had also had a number of phone calls with him.”
His fear spikes. “Th-the visitor logs?”
“Well, yeah, and I thought maybe you might know something that could potentially cast some light on the whole situation since you were talking with him.” She smiles, seeming to want to put him at ease, Lord knows why. Certainly not for the purposes of an effective interrogation.
Jerome tries for a smile. “So you two are conducting an investigation of some kind?”
“Yes,” Ms. Renfield begins, forgetting that she is not the subject of this interrogation. “You know me—”
I break in. “Why did you visit him so many times?”
“Um… Alexandru…” Ms. Renfield says.
“It is what we wish to know,” I point out.
Fear tightens its grip on Jerome. “Okay, okay, but I don’t have much time.” He gestures us into a small, spartan apartment. Papers and laptops litter a table; a threadbare couch sits against one wall. He closes the door behind us. “Look, here’s the situation—just between us—I’ve got a book deal—”
“What? Jerome!” Ms. Renfield hugs him. “Oh my gosh, that’s amazing!”
“Well… thank you. It’s about prison life, like tales from the inside and how people adjust psychologically. The social groups. I signed an NDA with my publisher, and Dooley signed one, too, so… you can’t tell anybody, Harriet. I don’t want to screw up this deal.”
Ms. Renfield gives me a triumphant look.
“An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. It means that you’re not supposed to tell anybody about the book.
” She turns back to Jerome. “The police are going to find out about your visits sooner or later. They’ll take a look at those logs soon if they haven’t already. ”
“So… they’re that sure it’s Dooley?”
“I don’t know. Dooley has no alibi and it is his MO. You’re a reporter. You know how this works.”
Jerome sinks onto his couch and puts his face in his hands. “This is such a mess.”
“Why is it a mess? You signed an NDA. I’m sure there are exceptions to that sort of thing, like police making you tell. Surely your publisher would understand.”
“I know, I know,” Jerome says morosely. “The idea he could do such a thing. It’s shocking, is all.”
I detect something sharper. His heart rate has climbed, and his cortisol levels are spiking. This man is panicking.
The wail of police sirens rises in the distance, mingling with the instruments. The two of them don’t seem to notice. These humans have such paltry senses; it never ceases to amaze me.
“Jerome,” I say. “Did Dooley Brogan know Razor Johnny?”
Jerome looks up. “I don’t know. I don’t think he did.”
“Have you spoken with Dooley recently?” Ms. Renfield asks.
“Not since all this…” Jerome waves a vague hand. “I can’t imagine…I just…hate that it would be Dooley Brogan.”
“You’ve formed a bond,” Ms. Renfield puts in on his behalf.
“I suppose.”
Ms. Renfield gives him a sympathetic look.
Does she not see what is happening? Jerome is hiding something. Feeling guilty about something, and it is connected to Dooley Brogan.
“Dooley Brogan was just my second subject,” Jerome says. “If you look, you’ll see that I paid a similar number of visits to a guy named Mason Hamlin.”
“And you were giving Dooley money for his commissary?” she asks.
“You’re really thorough,” Jerome says. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.”
A twinge of guilt rolls off Ms. Renfield now. There is a familiar flavor to it… it comes to me that she’s thinking about the high school newspaper incident again. “You know me. Triple-checking everything.”
“No—I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Jerome says. “I wasn’t talking about the swim team scoop. You were doing your best back then. You made the best call you could.”
“No, I was wrong. We didn’t need that extra week of checking things,” Ms. Renfield says. “Sloane has a right to be mad.”
“But holding a grudge sixteen years later? It’s not like you were maliciously trying to squash her story.”
They discuss Sloane a bit more—Sloane, the peasant who runs the fancy paper shop. Ms. Renfield’s “frenemy.”
Jerome is feeling more comfortable now that he has moved the conversation off of Dooley Brogan.
Which only serves to put his previous panic and guilt into stark relief.