Separate from the World Page 14

  Newhouse argued, “Amish are a cult, Mike. Everybody gives them a pass because they’re ‘Christian.’ Well, they’re not Christians. Not proper ones, anyway. They’re judgmental. They’re homophobes and sexists. My God, the plight of the women alone ought to be enough to convince anyone.”

  “You’re wrong, Aidan. And you’re slipping. What’s going on?”

  Newhouse flushed crimson. He stared at Branden over his desk. His mind raced as he tried to gauge the level of his exposure. Of course one never read the entire thesis of every student. Not the better ones, anyway. It just took too much time. A thesis like Eddie Hunt-Myers’s was a gift on a silver platter. He’d been one of the best. Sound research, well documented. Good writing, unusually expressive. Thorough treatment, referenced throughout. It had been nominated for the Walton Prize. Wait, stop, he thought. Perhaps that was a bit more exposure than was convenient. Thinking of other seniors who’d gotten an easy pass from him, Newhouse said, “Mike, you can’t throw a flag on a thesis like Eddie’s. Of course I’ve read it. It’s been nominated for the Walton.”

  “I know, Aidan,” Branden said wearily. “I think that’s gonna be a problem for us.”

  “Why?” Newhouse demanded.

  “Again, Aidan, I think Eddie made it up.”

  “Made up what, precisely? What part?”

  “The interviews he conducted with the Amish people, Aidan. I think his research is all a fabrication.”

  Newhouse groaned. “I’ve got all his recordings, Mike. They’re on DVDs. I can’t be expected to listen to all of them. You have any idea how many hours of conversation it takes to get usable research?”

  Branden asked, “Did you really listen to any of them, Aidan?”

  “A few. At first.”

  Branden waited.

  Newhouse got to his feet and said, “I can’t do this again, Mike. You understand? I went through this with my son.”

  “I know, Aidan,” Branden said. “Maybe you’d better start checking those disks.”

  Newhouse’s expression grew vacant, and Branden said, “Aidan, please check the research. I think Eddie made it all up.”

  Slowly, Professor Newhouse brought his gaze back into focus. He looked at Branden and said, “I can’t do this again.”

  Branden made it to the registrar’s office just as it was closing. The secretary showed him back to Laura Pope, and Branden found her standing at a west-facing window. He said, “Hi, Laura,” as he entered, and she turned to him and said, “This is our big breather, Mike. Two days after commencement, and then it all starts up again.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Branden said.

  “None at all.”

  “Listen, Laura, I read Eddie’s thesis. Could you pull his folder?”

  “Don’t have to,” Pope said. “That one I know by heart.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “When he first got here, Arne Laughton told me he was special.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mike, he has fifteen more transfer credits than the Statute of Instruction allows.”

  “You still cleared him for graduation?”

  “I didn’t. Arne did.”

  “OK, but why do you know his folder so well?”

  “He’s used every excuse, angle, and fudge factor there is. Got a D changed to a B-. Turned in tardy work to cover ‘Incompletes.’ Took medical withdrawals for any class he was failing, and brought us signed documentation for credit-bearing internships that I don’t believe he actually finished. He’s the biggest excuse maker I’ve ever known. He wants exceptions and special handling for everything. I’ve tried to pin him down a time or two, but it’s like nailing Jell-O to the ceiling.”

  Branden stroked his beard and thought about Eddie’s thesis. “He takes shortcuts a lot, Laura?”

  “In the extreme, Mike.”

  “We accepted his thesis?”

  “On Aidan Newhouse’s word. Because Arne Laughton backed him up.”

  “And you don’t like this kid.”

  “I don’t like it, Mike, when people think they’re so special that they don’t have to follow the rules.”

  29

  Tuesday, May 15 5:20 P.M.

  BRANDEN FOUND Dr. Nina Lobrelli still in her tattered white lab coat, standing beside her bookshelves, reading a biochemistry monograph. He cleared his throat, and she looked up.

  “Nina, I need to see your chart,” Branden said without preamble.

  Lobrelli asked, “Which one? Our isoxazolidine activators?”

  “Not the science, Nina. The genealogy.”

  Lobrelli seemed disappointed not to be able to talk about her research. “It’s in the teaching lab,” she said and led him across the hall.

  A wide sheet of professional poster paper, three feet by six feet, had been taped to the brick wall and most of a chalkboard. It had been printed on a large format printer, using several colors of ink, and it showed the genealogy of at least six generations of Amish families related to the Erbs. Mostly, there were Erbs, Weavers, Klines, and Hershbergers. Clearly, in some cases, cousins had married each other, and these names were printed in green ink. Then, among their descendants, any genetic disorder was noted parenthetically in red. Because of close-relative marriages, the clan was afflicted by a marked predominance of a rare and aggressive form of psoriasis. There also were more than the usual number of cases of Parkinson’s. And there were the dwarves Benny and Enos, plus one of Enos’s children, a dwarf boy of seventeen years, plus one dwarf grandparent of Enos and two dwarves among distant relatives.

  “When was this printed?” Branden asked.

  Lobrelli checked a small number in the lower right corner. “May IIth. Friday.”

  “How often do you revise it?”

  “The students do that. Every month or so, I guess. Whenever there’s a birth.”

  “Do you think it’s complete, Nina? Is this the whole clan?”

  “It’s all the people who trace back to Joshua and Annie Weaver.”

  “Does it show family members who’ve moved out of the county?”

  “I think so. The students put this together using their interviews, so they got it all directly from the Amish people out there.”

  “And you got started with Benny? He was your first contact in this family?”

  “Yes. Benny Erb. I met him in Aidan’s office on the second floor. Maybe a year ago. Aidan suggested a genealogy chart might be interesting, and I put Cathy Billett on it.”

  “Do you have this on disk?” Branden asked, tapping the paper.

  “I don’t, but I’m sure one of the students does.”

  “Any of them staying here for the summer?”

  “No, just my research students.”

  Branden fished out his phone and asked, “Can I take a picture of part of this?”

  “Shoot the whole thing if you like, Mike.”

  The professor started taking pictures, saying, “I just need this corner.”

  Back home, Branden printed the photos he’d taken and taped the several pages together to make a layout on the kitchen table of one corner of Lobrelli’s genealogy chart.

  Caroline asked, “What’s that?” and the professor explained, “It’s part of a genealogy chart. I got it from Nina. Here’s Benny and Enos Erb, the dwarf sons of Annie and Samuel Erb. Enos told me about some of this when he first came to see me. This is a chart of his whole family.”

  “Does he know Lobrelli has everything charted out like this?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Benny Erb is the connection. Benny the chatterbox.”

  That evening, the professor read Eddie’s interview data out loud from Eddie’s thesis, and Caroline circled each name on the genealogy chart that seemed to correspond with a description in the thesis. They were guessing at first about the names, but became more sure of their identifications with each instance of overlap. Eddie had been careful to state in his thesis that he had cha
nged the names to protect the anonymity of the people he had interviewed. He insisted, though, that the people were real, and the Brandens found that there was a clear and direct correspondence between case subjects in Eddie’s interviews and the descriptions or physical ailments of the real people on Lobrelli’s genealogy chart. The dwarf brothers Enos and Benjamin were not named, but they were clearly suggested by Eddie’s description of the families living across the road from one another. And in the results section of his thesis, Eddie had included transcriptions of the interviews he had recorded with each subject in the district, which he purported to be a word-for-word record of what was said to him about the pending split in the congregation.

  Eddie claimed that the people at Calmoutier had described the alarming anger and discord that had bloomed in their congregation over the use of modern medicines. Eddie reported case after case of brothers who were no longer speaking, children who could no longer visit their parents, cousins who would not correspond with one another, businesses ruined because of a shunning, and discord over increasingly minor matters, until the congregation had split, half following the old bishop, an Anti, and the other half following a Modern. It was a persuasive collection of evidence, and Branden knew it was all a profane lie.

  Nothing so severe as this had happened in Benny’s church. Nothing of the kind ever would. The people were all very real, but not one of them could have talked with Eddie Hunt-Myers. Not one of them could have behaved in such an angry and bitter way. The stories of anger, bordering on rage and spitefulness, could not be true. The discord perhaps existed, but not the extreme level of hostility that Eddie described.

  Caroline listened to the professor’s explanation and said, “Get Cal to listen to this. Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong,” Branden said.

  “Talk to Cal, Michael. He knows that whole family.”

  “I’m right, Caroline. All the circles you put on that chart are a match to someone in Eddie’s thesis. They all match.”

  “Then how did Eddie have this kind of personal detail about all of them? How’d he know so much?”

  “My guess is he had a phone pal.”

  “Benny?”

  “Benny Erb was a chatterbox, by everybody’s description. He was a very sociable chatterbox, who gave Eddie Hunt-Myers a ready-made thesis, without any actual work.”

  “Then it’s all made up, Michael.”

  “Right. Benny gave Eddie accurate descriptions of all the people, and then Eddie made up the interviews to suit his needs. To satisfy Aidan’s biases and portray the Amish as haters.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m gonna catch Eddie Hunt-Myers before he leaves town.”

  “What are you going to do about Newhouse?”

  “That I haven’t decided.”

  30

  Tuesday, May 15 8:30 P.M.

  THE PRESIDENT’S mansion was a sprawling brick structure with a dozen angled rooflines, an assortment of spires and crests, wrought-iron trellises, and two large chimneys at either end. It sat on elaborately landscaped grounds at the edge of the athletic fields, on the north side of campus. Flower gardens, brick walkways, flagstone patios, and large expanses of lawn surrounded the house. The oval driveway was lighted at night by powerful halogen bulbs on tall aluminum poles, and the front face of the house was washed with floodlights mounted on concrete pads on the ground.

  When Branden rang the doorbell, lights were burning in nearly every window of the house, and cars were parked both in the semicircular drive and out at the curb. A pudgy gentleman in a tuxedo answered the door with a smile. He held the door open and said, “Come in, Professor,” in an affected, supercilious tone.

  Branden laughed. When the president entertained, the head of food services at the college always worked the door with an accent and an attitude so far removed from the real, down-home Bill Taylor that people who knew him just laughed.

  Past a smile that was stretching his cheeks, Branden said, “Bill, I need to talk to Arne.”

  “He’s in the study.”

  “Please ask him to come out, Bill. It’s important.”

  With a conspirator’s smile, Bill asked, “May I bring you a drink?”

  “Just the president, please. Tell him it’s about Eddie Hunt-Myers. I’ll wait outside.”

  Bill gave a curt nod and a stage bow and disappeared into the house. When Arne Laughton came out, he was carrying two glasses of red wine. He handed one to Branden and complained, “I’m working on the endowment, Mike. Can’t this wait?”

  Branden took the stemmed glass, saying, “I’m afraid it can’t, Arne. Time is critical.” Laughton grumbled but allowed Branden to lead him down the lighted drive and into a small rose garden in front of the house, where the lights of the driveway did not shine.

  “Arne, I need you to keep the Hunt-Myers family in town for another day.”

  Laughton sipped some wine and said, “Too late, Mike. They all left after dinner.”

  Branden pulled the president farther into the rose garden. “Arne, Eddie Hunt-Myers didn’t do his own research. He made up most of it. Maybe all of it.”

  Skeptical, Laughton asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Eddie’s thesis is about the split in the Amish community out at Calmoutier. I think he used an Amish fellow to get the details for all the people he described in his thesis. And for all the genealogical background on the families, where he says he conducted deep interviews.”

  “I saw that thesis, Mike. It’s two hundred pages long.”

  “And one hundred and seventy-five pages of it are clever fabrications, Arne.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Arne. Maybe he’s lazy. Maybe he likes the thrill. But the thesis is a fabrication. The interviews are fake. I think I can prove it.”

  “These are big donors, Mike—the Hunt-Myerses. You can’t accuse their son of something like this. We just handed him a diploma, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Are the Billetts still in town, Arne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are they big donors, too, Arne?”

  “Not really. They’re threatening to sue us.”

  “Because the tower wasn’t locked?”

  “It was locked, Mike.”

  “They’re going to argue it wasn’t, Arne, you’ve got to be able to see that. How do you think Eddie and Cathy got up there?”

  “Did you talk to the Billetts, Mike? Did the Billetts tell you they were going to sue us?”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “Neither. Look, Arne, I think Eddie’s responsible for Cathy’s death.”

  “Mike! You’ve got to stop this!”

  “Do you know about the two little Amish kids who were kidnapped Saturday?”

  “A little. I’ve been busy. You know how commencement weekend is. It’s the last chance I’ll have to get a donation from some of those families.”

  “I think the Amish are the key to Cathy’s murder, Arne.”

  “Stop! Just stop, Mike. You can’t be serious.”

  “Eddie’s thesis is a fraud, Arne. That’s the linchpin.”

  “Wait just a minute. I took the Billetts down to see Missy, myself. I was there.”

  A guest at the party stepped out onto the driveway and lit a cigarette. Laughton drew Branden around the corner of the mansion and finished in a whisper. “Missy says there’s no way to prove Cathy Billett’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  “I know some of the people who were supposedly interviewed for Eddie’s thesis, Arne. They’re real people, but there’s no way they can have said those things. Eddie made up something that’d satisfy Aidan Newhouse, and he turned it in for his thesis. But he never conducted a single interview.”

  Laughton stared hard in the dark at Branden, shook his head, and said, “You can’t be serious. What proof do you have?”

  “I don’t really have any, Arne. But the
two children who were kidnapped can’t speak yet, and their uncle Benny conveniently fell off a ladder three weeks ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Benny Erb, Arne. He’s dead, too.”

  “Really, Mike. You need to take a couple of months to relax and settle your nerves. This is preposterous. You’re just plain nuts if you think I’m going to confront the Hunt-Myerses over something like this. For crying out loud, Mike, we just graduated their kid!”

  While walking home in the dark, the professor called Missy Taggert’s number and said, “Sorry about the late call.”

  Missy called over her shoulder, “Bruce, it’s Mike. I’ll be outside.” Then she said, “It’s fine, Mike. We were just reading.”

  “Missy, I need to know if there’s any way Benny Erb and Cathy Billett can have been murdered.”

  “You think they were?” Missy asked.

  “Maybe. Can we tell for sure, one way or the other?”

  “There’s no way to know, Mike. I told you that. They both looked like falls. But are you thinking they were pushed? Why, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. Did you find anything on the clothes from Albert Erb? Any evidence of the kidnapper?”

  “No. Is Albert OK?”

  “Not really. Maybe, I’m not sure. Caroline spoke to him. She thinks he’s got a chance.”

  “The clothes gave us nothing, Mike. And I tried everything I could think of.”

  “No hair? Oils? Nothing like that?”

  “It doesn’t work like TV, Mike. How about little Mattie?”

  “No change, Missy. Look, what if we went back out to the woods? What if we missed something there?”