Who’s Killing the Louisville Symphony?
A Crime Story
by
Christopher Guerin
“You better sit down,” said the officer as he followed me into my office.
“What’s this about?” I asked.
“Just sit down.”
He was dressed in police blues, but with a Marine buzzcut. He wore the same glasses that Robert Blake wore in Electra Glide in Blue (not that anyone else would remember that movie from the 60’s). He had blinding teeth and bad acne scars, which is why he seemed to be bullying me. It only came natural to him.
I dutifully sat down and leaned back in my desk chair. As the President of the Louisville Symphony for several years, I’d never been addressed by a police officer in this manner. Usually my interaction with the police was in their capacity of providing off-duty officers as security for our musicians.
“What’s up?”
“Please, sir, this is important.”
“Who said it wasn’t?”
“I just don’t like your attitude.”
I almost said I didn’t like his.
“Please continue, officer,” I said and smiled.
“That’s better.”
“I’m glad.”
He looked at me as if I’d again said something he didn’t like, but he let it go.
“You employ a person named John Simms?”
“Yes, he’s a violinist.”
“In the orchestra?”
“Obviously.”
“He was found dead last night with an arrow in his heart?”
“What?” I shouted, standing up.
“Please sit down. Don’t make me say it again.”
I did as he demanded. What a dick, I thought.
“Where was this?”
“If you’ll just be quiet, I’ll tell you everything.”
I couldn’t speak anyway, that’s how shocked I was.
“Mr. Simms was found in his apartment by his house keeper. We estimate the time of death around 11:30 P.M. An arrow was sticking out of his chest. Obviously, his house keeper,” – he looked at a flip note-book, “a Rebecca Tale is a suspect. She ran out of the apartment with the arrow in her hand shouting “call 911!”
“Why would that make her a suspect?”
“Sir, she had the murder weapon in her hand,” he said, as if I was the idiot.
“What did the arrow look like?”
“Well, like an arrow,” he answered, slightly caught off guard.
“Did it have feathers?”
“No.”
“Did it have a bunch of tiny strings that reached from one end to the other?”
“Yes, I think it did.”
“It wasn’t an arrow.”
“Now, please, I’ve asked you to . . . “
“It was a bow.”
“Sir, I know the difference between a bow and an arrow.”
“It was a violin bow,” I said and played a little air-violin for him.
“Sir, I’ll have to ask you to come with me. You’re under arrest.”
“Arrest!”
“Yes, for obstructing justice.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, sir, you’ve been joking, and I believe it’s been deliberate. I think you’re trying to hide something. I consider you a person of interest.”
I stood up and pointed toward the door, “Get out of my office.”
The officer drew his taser.
“You shoot me with that and . . . .”
Just then another man walked in, dressed in a black suit with perfect creases, a purple tie, and a bulge under his left armpit. He had a full head of curly jet-black hair, bushy eyebrows and lips so red they looked lip-sticked.
“What the fuck are you doing, Harold?” he shouted.
Harold holstered the taser and said, “This person here hasn’t been cooperating.”
“Get out,” the man shouted, pointing at the door and wagging his finger. “Get back into your vehicle and don’t even think of calling in until I come out there.”
Harold gone, the man extended his hand and said, “I’m homicide detective Roger Doderer. I’m sorry about that. Harold’s never handled a homicide before.”
“I’m glad you came when you did.”
“I assume he told you about Mr. Simms.”
“He did.”
“Well, an hour ago a second victim was found.”
I dropped back in my chair.
He looked at his notebook.
“A Charles Depister.”
“He played in the orchestra.”
“May I sit down?” asked the detective.
“Certainly.”
Wiping his brow with his sleeve, he said, “It’s been quite a morning.”
“What happened to Charles?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. The arrow in Mr. Simms and now . . . .”
“Bow,” I said flatly.
“What?”
“It was a violin bow.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. What he described to me was a violin bow.”
“Okay. Good,” he said, making a note. “That’s very helpful.” He paused, then asked, “What’s it do?”
“You play the violin with it,” I said and quickly added, “What happened to Roger?”
“As best we can understand, he was suffocated. We’ll know better when the coroner has looked at him. He was found in his apartment in a rocking chair with some kind of iron maiden stuffed over his head. Only it was brass.”
“You mean a tuba.”
“What? No. It was some kind of torture instrument, with a face protruding from it, so we decided that the old iron maiden was the likeliest . . . .’
“It was a tuba. He was our tuba player.”
“Whatever. It was so far down over his head that the big hole . . . .”
“The bell.”
He nodded
“The bell was bent outward – yes, I get it now,” he said, looking up and nodding. “Whoever did it was very strong, strong enough to cause the metal to bend in the shape of the deceased’s face. It took two of us to get the thing off of him. And there was a breathing tube in his mouth, like what they use when they bury someone alive.”
“That’s the mouth piece. It’s what the tuba player blows through.”
“Okay, fine. A mouth piece.”
He stopped and looked up again.
“So both of your musicians were killed with their own instruments. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“Who in hell would do that?”
“I have no idea.”
For the next half-hour, he questioned me. I explained that we hadn’t had either a rehearsal or performance the night before, so both players were free of any obligations. I explained that as far as I knew neither player had any romantic entanglements in the orchestra, no professional jealousies, and no animosities, except toward the conductor, which, of course, you could say about every musician in every orchestra in the country.
He asked about alibis and I said that would depend on each musician, since they weren’t working the night before.
At the end of our interview, I said, “You need to be looking for someone extremely strong.”
“That’s obvious.”
“Not just because of the tuba, but because it would take tremendous strength to stab someone in the heart with a violin bow.”
“Thanks,” said the detective as he wrote a concluding note and stood up. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You know, two men could probably handle the tuba, but it would be very difficult for them to pierce the ribcage with a bow. You might look into a crossbow.”
“Very funny,” said the detective, laughing as he left my office.
***
That evening, a Monday night, Detective Doderer called and said, “You’d better sit down.”
“Okay,” I said, standing.
“There’s been another murder.”
“You’re kidding!” I shouted.
“I never kid and I resent the imputation,” he growled.
“I apologize” I murmured. “What happened?”
“There’s a Manfred McCork in your orchestra, correct?”
“Yes, there is. He plays . . . .”
“He was found in his townhouse by the association manager, decapitated.”
I’m not often at a loss for words, but this was the second time that day I found myself in that condition.
“Yes, the weapon looks a bit like a pendulum, about two feet in diameter. It’s completely round, and the edges are more than sharp enough to . . . .”
“Cymbal,” I interrupted him.
“Sir, this was no symbol. At least none we can make sense of, unless you think the other two murder weapons were symbols too. Serial killers are known to use symbols to communicate with the police.”
“No, I said cymbal.”
I spelled it out for him.
“It’s a percussion instrument, all brass, pounded flat. Two of them can be crashed together to make a loud noise, or one can be struck with a mallet.”
“You know, sir, you seem to know an awful lot about these murders. I want to see you at the downtown police station for questioning at 9:00 AM.”
“But, I . . . .”
“Nine AM, is that clear?”
“Yes, officer.”
“That’s detective, Mr. President,” he said with syrupy sarcasm and hung up.
***
As directed, I appeared at the reception desk of the downtown police station, where a man with sergeant stripes and a stomach spilling out of his too-short shirt and too-tight pants, asked me my business.
I told him and he had me follow him to a room on the second floor. He ushered me in and closed the door behind him as he left. Curious, I tried the handle and was unnerved by the fact that the door was locked. In the room was a table with iron pipes bolted to the top at both ends, and three chairs. There was one window and all the walls were painted a pebbly taupe. The floor was a sheet of white vinyl with hundreds of scratches, as though a great many fights had been waged here. Fights, I wondered, or tortures?
Convincing myself, with some difficulty, that I had nothing to fear, I sat down and waited. No one came until 10 AM when the sergeant entered and said Detective Doderer was detained and would be back within the hour.
“Can I make a phone call?”
“What for?”
“You have me locked up here. I want to call my lawyer. Either that, or let me out, now.”
“Sir, I have strict orders to keep you in here.”
“Fine, then I want breakfast. Two eggs, hashed browns, bacon, and a cut of coffee.”
The sargent laughed and said, “That’s very funny. Yep, that’s a good one,” he added as he closed the door.
Detective Doderer arrived ninety minutes later, sweating profusely, wiping his forehead with a paper towel.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’d have been here sooner, but there’s been another murder.”
I fainted. Whether from over-excitement or lack of food, I simply experienced a quick draining of blood from my brain and fell to the floor.
I woke on a couch in someone’s office. A young woman with golden hair was sitting next to me in a straight-back chair. In my addled state, she looked like an angel, and if I didn’t already have an angel, my girlfriend Shelly, I might have asked her out.
“Are you better now?”
“What happened?”
“Search me.”
“Can I go home now?”
“Not until Doderer talks to you.”
“Can you get him, please?”
I closed my eyes and waited. The detective arrived a minute later and sat in the same chair next to the couch.
“I’m sorry about this.”
“You should be. You had no right to lock me up and refuse me a phone call.”
“Do you know a Roger Rouse?” he asked, ignoring me.
“Of course, he . . . .”
“He plays in the orchestra,” the detective interjected. “He was found at 10 AM this morning. Death occurred at roughly 5 AM, which means I cannot clear you of any suspicion.”
“I repeat. I was locked up here, and not allowed to even call my lawyer.”
“Why do you need a lawyer. Are you guilty of something?”
“You fucking locked me up!”
Ignoring this, the detective said, “Mr. Rouse was found by his live-in girlfriend in the kitchen with his throat cut with an old-fashioned straight razor.”
“Roger was an oboist. That was a reed knife, not a razor.”
“Look, I saw it myself. It was lying there by him.”
“Detective, listen. An oboe player makes music by blowing through a reed. He makes his own reeds out of bamboo, which require very sharp reed-making tools to shape the reed properly.”
“Let’s skip that for the moment.”
He stepped forward and looked down at me.
“We’ve conducted almost fifty interviews so far and you wanna know something?”
“Whatever.”
“When asked the question who was the most disliked person in the orchestra, two names came up time and again.”
“Mine and Alfred Siccilatoria.”
He stepped back abruptly, shocked.
“And, I should add, I know I’m disliked,” I said. “It’s part of my job, which I can explain. But it doesn’t mean that I dislike the players in return. I’ll bet more players dislike him than me. Or,” I concluded, “dislike him more than they dislike me.”
“We have some clearly strong motives here, don’t we?”
“What are you talking about.”
“You were disliked and were in almost constant disagreement with these musicians. You wanted to shut them up.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m dead serious.”
“And Alfred’s motive?”
“Many players said that as hard as they tried, they could never please the Mister.”
“Maestro.”
“Whatever. He’s killing them to punish them.”
“Please let me out of this nuthouse.”
“Question. Were the four dead players the worse players in the orchestra, the most disruptive, or insulting to you?”
“As a matter of fact, all of those things. They’re an unruly bunch and those four players were the worst of the lot.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. By your description of the worst and nastiest players, who would be next?”
“Next what?”
“To be murdered by you or the Mister.”
“Maestro,” I said, ignoring the accusation.
I laughed and grabbed the detective’s pen and pointed it at his chest.
“Alfred, obviously. He’s a terrible conductor, and the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”
“So he’s your next victim.”
“I need to call my lawyer.”
***
Jack Evans was the pro-bono attorney for the orchestra, helping with labor issues and anything else that came up. He arrived an hour later. By then, Detective Doderer was asleep, snoring in his desk chair. I remained on his couch.
Jack, seeing the detective asleep, crooked his finger to have me follow him out of the room. We then walked quickly out of the building and drove separately to a Denny’s restaurant for lunch.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jack asked.
I proceeded to tell him of the four murders, none of which had yet been reported by the press.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Maybe we should ask for police protection?”
“For 50 people?”
“Well, at least for you and Alfred.”
“Screw Alfred.”
Jack thought about it and said, “Yeah, screw Alfred.”
“Let’s think this through,” I said after we’d ordered. “Four musicians murdered with their own instruments, and, as I said to the detective, probably the four musically worst and most disgruntled of the lot.”
“You think so?”
“Well, Jack, you’ve sat across the table from them. All four have filed grievances; you’ve heard them scream and threaten, curse and insult.”
“That’s true. They’re the worst.”
“And Alfred routinely singles them out during rehearsals; he insults, upbraids, and humiliates them all the time.”
“So you did it, right?”
I laughed and said, “Wanting to isn’t doing.”
“Then it has to be Alfred.”
“There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that.”
“I predict that Alfred will be the next victim.”
Just then two officers walked in and arrested both of us, me for running from an interrogation, and Jack for obstruction of justice. Soon we found ourselves in the locked interrogation room.
Two hours later Doderer walked in and sat down.
“They got your Mister.”
“Maestro,” I corrected him again.
“Whatever. Stabbed him with a knitting needle while he was taking a bath.”
“You mean baton,” said Jack. “It’s called a baton. You know, the stick a conductor waves during a performance?”
“Whatever.”
“So you can let us go, right?”
“Just the opposite, sir,” he said. “You were gone just long enough to have done it yourselves. I think both of you are guilty.”
“Sir,” said Jack sarcastically, “we have witnesses. We were in that Denny’s the whole time. Ever heard the word ‘alibi’?”
The detective got up and, opening the door, said, “Screw you both. Get out of here.”
An hour later, Jack and I were talking in his office when the phone rang.
“Is Mr. President there?”
“Yes, the president of the Louisville Symphony is here, officer.”
“Detective to you, bub. Let me speak to him.”
Jack handed me the phone and stuck his middle finger up.
“Yes, detective?”
“We’ve received a message.”
“What’s it say?”
“It’s in some kind of code. Just a bunch of letters.”
“Read them to me.”
“It’s scrawled on paper with lines on it.”
“Sounds like a staff,” I said.
“What does a piece of lined paper have to do with a staff. My staff is made of people, my friend, not paper.”
“It’s paper that musicians read the notes from that they play.”
“Oh.”
“Please continue,” I said, proud I could keep the contempt out of my voice.
“First there’s this curlicue thing.”
“It sounds like a treble clef.”
“It’s trouble, all right.”
“I said ‘treble.’ It’s a musical term.”
I thought for a second and said, “Forget it. Please go on.”
“The letters are B.A.D, then an equal sign.”
“That sounds like a key signature or it means D sharp.”
“You mean this message is a key to the mystery?”
“No, it’s just a musical notation. Go on.”
“Then D.E.A.D.”
“It’s a song.”
“Stop kidding. This is serious.”
“All those letters correspond to notes on a sheet of music. The message, though, is clear. BAD equals DEAD.”
I sang the song in my head and it seemed vaguely familiar, though I would never figure out what it was.
“In other words,” I continued, “if you’re bad, presumable a bad musician, then you’re going to be dead. And as we know, that’s what’s been happening.”
“And the key signature or sharp?”
“You’re being toyed with, or maybe sharp refers to the murder weapons. I don’t know.”
“Son, you should have been a detective.”
I thought to, but didn’t say, “You too.”
***
When I returned to my apartment mid-afternoon, there were loud blasts coming through the door. I chuckled and got out my keys, but the door was open. I stepped into the foyer and was immediately jabbed hard in my gut, followed by impish laughter.
It was Shelly Crystal, my girlfriend. She was holding her instrument, a bass trombone almost as long as she was tall. She’d jabbed me with the slide, then went on to blast out a few notes from Berlioz’ “Damnation of Faust.”
Shelly was 29 years old, barely five feet tall, and built like a kick-boxer, which allowed her to play such an unwieldy instrument. She had flaming, tightly curled hair, freckles, and black eyebrows. She wore no make-up, which would have been like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo. She was dressed in a red sports bra and boxers. We’d been lovers for almost two years, a poorly kept secret.
“Put that monstrosity down, Shelly, and come to bed,” I said grabbing her arm.
After two exciting performances, we lay in each others arms, having forgotten the tragedies of the day for at least an hour.
“I’m scared,” she said, and started to cry into my neck, which tickled.
“Don’t be,” I whispered, stroking her brawny, but silky shoulders. “It appears that someone is out to improve the quality of the orchestra,” I added, immediately regretting my joke.
She shook her head vigorously, then punched my arm.
“Those people were my colleagues.”
She continued to cry and clutch at my arms.
“The killer is going after all the worst players in the orchestra. That’s what I meant, Shelly.”
I explained the message the killer had sent to the police.
“Even Alfred?”
“Especially Alfred.”
Now she was wailing.
“What’s this? You hated Alfred,” I offered.
“Well, I don’t hate him now,” she whispered. “Do I?” she added sheepishly.
“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. What’s important is to figure out who’s doing this?”
“I have no idea!”
“I don’t either.”
“Do you think the killer is done? Will he come after me? Or you?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, “I’m not a musician.”
Though just saying those words offered little comfort. If “BAD” meant more than musicianship, but behavior as well, I was just as vulnerable as anyone else.
“Shelly, you’re one of the best players in the orchestra. Why would anyone come after you?”
“Everyone says I’m too loud.”
“It’s what makes you such a great player. You drown out all the . . . .”
I shut up. It was really important at that moment to believe that the rest of the orchestra was first rate and the killing was done.
***
While Shelly slept, I got up at seven pm to cook us some omelets with morel mushrooms and bacon. She came in dressed in one of my baseball team shirts, which reached down to her knees.
I poured a nice Chianti and we had a leisurely, silent dinner. After we washed up the dishes, we sat on the couch binging on the Sopranos until eleven, when we went to bed. I fell asleep almost immediately and was dreaming of other women than Shelly and experienced a certain shiver of embarrassment and shame when I awoke. The clock said it was three in the morning. Shelly was gone.
Totally naked, I ran into the living room to find Shelly, still in my baseball shirt, on the floor as a shadowy figure stood over her with her trombone raised like an ax, ready to bring it down on her. She had duct tape on her mouth and the shadow’s foot was on her hair, pressing down in a way to expose her throat.
I lunged at the killer, but he saw me first. He stepped away from Shelly, swung the trombone and caught me on my right ear with the bell. I staggered forward to grab the shadow, but it was gone. And so was I.
***
I woke in a hospital bed later that morning with a huge bandage over my head, Shelly holding my hand. Jack stood at the foot of the bed, smiling.
“What happened?” I asked woozily.
“You saved my life,” said Shelly, squeezing my hand with her warm fingers. “Someone was about to kill me when you roared in and he, I assume it was a man, bonked you on the noggin instead. He dropped my horn and disappeared.”
“How did he get in?”
“We must have left the door unlocked.”
“I never do that,” I said. “In fact, now that it’s coming back to me, I remember checking the door before we went to bed because of all that’s been going on.”
“Well, don’t worry about that,” said Jack soothingly. “The police are there now.”
“Shit, I don’t want them there.”
“Why?” asked Jack.
“Have you ever had your place dusted for fingerprints?”
“No.”
“I have. They leave a terrible mess.”
I must have still been coming to because I immediately started laughing, and Jack and Shelly joined in. She turned away for a moment then turned back holding her trombone, pointing at a large dent in the smooth flared bell. Somehow this made everything seem even funnier, when there was nothing funny about it.
As we calmed down, I said to Shelly, “I’m so glad he didn’t hurt you.”
“I’d call you my hero,” she said, winking, “if it wasn’t so . . . .”
“Untrue?” I offered.
“I was going to say ‘silly sounding.’”
“Hero? I like the sound of that,” I said, as I reached up to kiss Shelly, and noticed a strangeness in her face I’d never seen before – fear – and promptly fainted.
***
If the reader will entertain a brief interruption – it occurs to me that Shelly’s and my behavior seems callous and oblivious to the tragedies that had occurred. Appearances here are deceiving. The simple answer is that neither Shelly nor I knew the musicians well enough to mourn them extravagantly. Going to their respective funerals would be more an obligation than a grieving farewell. The four musicians to succumb to their own instruments at the hands of a killer hadn’t been in the orchestra even a year, and it was likely that none of them would have survived their probationary year and become tenured players. As such, under such stressful circumstances, they were not the pleasantest of people and the four of them tended to keep to themselves. On the other hand, I wondered, if they were destined to be let go, why bother to kill them?
Alfred was a different matter. Shelly didn’t like him for the simple reason that for almost two years, until I was hired, he wouldn’t keep his hands off her. He’d even grabbed her by the …. Well, you can guess.
Against the power and prestige that naturally comes with being the music director of a symphony orchestra, a female musician, if she’s being harassed, has little recourse. She can file a grievance through the union, which tends to make the problem look like a musical disagreement. Alfred could have argued that Shelly was just unprepared and too stubborn to take his direction and constructive criticism. Her other option was to complain to management, which she did only when I came aboard, my predecessor being someone she didn’t trust. She felt he would do nothing, would side with Alfred, and might even try to get rid of her. Once I came aboard, one conversation with Alfred accomplished two things: he pleaded innocent but promised not to go anywhere near Shelly again; and, it permanently destroyed any chance we would ever be anything but enemies.
And the man was such a drag. Fifty, with an enormous shock of white hair and eyebrows, black eyes, a huge nose to make up (but not quite) for his small chin, and the maturity of a five year old.
After every concert not followed by a reception, he demanded I come to his dressing room so that he could critique every minute of the evening’s performance, seek effusions of praise for his genius, and down half a fifth of Wild Turkey. Until I learned to pawn most of these encounters off to my second in command, I often didn’t get home until one in the morning.
I could go on about Albert, but the reader doesn’t need a thorough airing of his failings, his pettiness during rehearsals, his physical vanity and unearned musical and intellectual hauteur, his dreadful choices of repertoire, or his sucking up to the board in order to attack my flank whenever he could. Ask me to mourn the passing of such a Diva? Sorry. Not me.
***
My doctor said I could go home in the morning, so we carried in and Jack snuck in a six pack of beer. Just as he was about to pull things out of the sacks carrying our goodies, Detective Doderer walked in and stood there with his hands on his hips. Jack quickly tucked the beer under the bed.
The detective looked with undisguised desire at Shelly and said, “So this is the young lady who almost got her bell rung.”
“That’s the most inappropriate joke I’ve ever heard,” she responded.
Jack stepped between them and asked, “Can we help you?”
“I need to talk to these two,” said the detective, “but you can leave if you want.”
“Now that my client is no longer under suspicion?”
“Who said that?” asked the cop with a sly grin. He paused for a moment then added, “though, actually, he isn’t.”
“I’ll stick around,” Jack shot back.
“I’m here to interview the victims of someone breaking and entering your apartment and assaulting you.”
“What a surprise,” I said.
“Please, sir, I’ve warned you before about . . . .”
“Can we just get on with it? As you can imagine I have quite a headache.”
“Oh. Yeah,” said Doderer, as though he’d just that moment noticed the cartoonish bandage on my head.
He took out his notebook.
“And this must be Shelly Crystal,” he said, nodding at her, then ogling her when she turned away. “I take it you two cohabitate?”
“We have separate apartments,” she said, “What’s it to you?”
“May I ask why?”
I could tell Shelly was about to blow, so I interjected, “She needs her own place to practice.”
He looked at his notes again.
“The trombone,” he said.
“Bass,” Shelly corrected him.
“You don’t play the bass. I’ve been studying up on this orchestra business and the bass is this huge violin . . . .”
“Bass trombone,” I said, before Shelly could slap him.
Blushing, Doderer asked, “Is it here?”
“I don’t go anywhere without it.”
“Why is that?” he asked suspiciously, taking a few steps too close to my girlfriend.
Again, I interjected, “Show it to him, Shelly.”
Cursing under her breath, she picked up the damaged trombone. Before I could stop her, she lifted the instrument and blew a perfect D sharp in the detective’s face, forcing him to cover his ears and stumble out of the room.
We waited almost three minutes, our guts busting, before he stepped back into the room.
“Can we begin the interview?” he barked, but weakly.
***
We proceeded to tell him everything that had happened in my apartment. Doderer asked again and again what the assailant looked like, but neither Shelly nor I had seen anything but a shadow, as though he was draped in black crepe. He asked why Shelly was in the living room with the lights off. She said she couldn’t sleep and went to the kitchen for some milk, when she heard a noise coming from the living room. That’s when she was knocked down. The assailant taped her mouth. He had found her trombone case in the front closet, and taken out the instrument, and threatened to hit her with it. Then I told him what I knew, as I’ve described already.
“How did he get in?” he asked for the tenth time.
“I have no idea.”
Finally, he threw up his hands and said, “This gives us nothing new.”
I looked at Shelly and hesitated before I said, “The fact that Shelly was attacked is a new development. She’s one of our stars in the orchestra.”
“Yes,” said Doderer with exaggerated patience, “maybe, if she was the real target. Maybe she was just in the wrong place. But you, Mr. President, might well be ‘BAD,’ as you’ve explained already.”
I couldn’t remember having told him that, but he’d have had no trouble getting multiple musicians to make that claim.
“But I don’t play an instrument.”
“What would the killer care? Your not being a musician, any instrument would do, which also means, come to think of it,” he said, scratching his head, “that he must have known Miss Crystal was staying with you that night.”
He’d finally said something that made sense, and it sent a shiver down my spine.
“He was stalking me.”
“Seems so.”
“What’s to keep him from trying again?”
“Well, I’d stay as far away from musical instruments as possible. Other than that, there’s nothing.”
“Police protection?”
“Right. We’re going to provide police protection for you and 50 others? As you so astutely point out, now that Shelly, a fine musician,” he said, looking her over once more, “has been targeted, nobody would seem to be safe. We might as well put you all in jail. That suit you? I understand you have a concert in three nights.”
“Okay. I get it.”
Shelly took my hand again and squeezed it hard.
With a look of triumph, having finally put me in my place, Doderer hitched up his trousers and walked away.
***
I didn’t leave Shelly’s side for the next three days and nights. We stayed at my place. I had the locks changed and a new dead bolt lock added. I attended the rehearsals, sitting behind the orchestra, and during the day we went for walks in public places, attended museum shows and movies, and ate in outdoor cafes.
During that time, no new murders were reported. I called Doderer every day and got the same response: “I got nothing. And if you have anything you haven’t told me, which I think you do, you better cough it up before someone else dies.”
I hung up on him before I said something I’d regret.
The aforementioned concert was a pops concert and took place in an outdoor pavilion. Having left Shelly safely on stage, I took my usual seat on the audience-right side about 10 rows back, which gave me a good view of my “tough cookie,” as I sometimes called her.
There had been much discussion about the appropriateness of going ahead with this event, but finally the consensus view was that if the concert began with an appropriate work in tribute to the fallen musicians, and perhaps a few words from a minister, it would be okay to go on with lighter fare.
The concert would be conducted by the Assistant Conductor, Mo Sun, a fine young musician with a real future with much larger orchestras. He had expressed no trepidation to me about appearing in such an exposed manner and I congratulated him on his courage, though I wouldn’t have done it for a million bucks.
The pastor who’d agreed to speak never showed, so Mo Sun walked out and said, “To begin our concert tonight, we perform Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings’ in honor of those musicians who so tragically lost their lives in the last week.”
With the downbeat, I couldn’t help remembering the scare the orchestra had experienced at the first rehearsal when a percussionist, at the appropriate moment near the end of Johann Strauss Jr.’s “The Hunter’s Polka,” fired a starter’s pistol, which was actually part of the score. Half the orchestra had ducked and many dropped their instruments. The poor percussionist, still standing, held up the pistol and shouted, “It’s just blanks, everyone. Sorry!” In an excess of caution, for all further rehearsals I had our off-duty policeman, who provided backstage security, check the pistol to make sure no one had substituted a real weapon. Detective Doderer, of course, had laughed at my request and called the orchestra a bunch of cowards. With no further incidents in the past three days, he told me, “That’s it. I think we can all relax.” I wanted to call him an idiot, but he probably wouldn’t even know what it means, I thought, chuckling as I hung up.
The concert proceeded as it should. There was much weeping and a thundering applause when the Adagio was over. Unfortunately, none of us had thought to suggest moving “The Hunter’s Polka” later in the concert, or canceling it altogether, so it was performed as planned and there was an audible gasp and more crying and tears after the starter pistol went off. I could see my Shelly sitting like a statue when the piece was over.
We were all lulled into a sense of faux security as the concert progressed. The first half was composed of old waltzes and Leroy Anderson’s pop confections. During the intermission, virtually everyone stayed on stage, evidently feeling safer surrounded by their colleagues. I started to go up to see Shelly, but she waved me back to my seat. She had been very nervous before the concert and seemed so still. I blew her a kiss and she made a small blat on her trombone.
The final work on the program was Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Surprise Symphony.” I had suggested to Doderer that if something bad was going to happen it would be near the beginning of the second movement of this piece. He laughed at me with utter incomprehension. He wasn’t even planning to attend. The one piece of insight I gave him and he ignored it.
The second movement began with Mo Sun pushing the players to play faster than they should, as if just to get past the “surprise.” No way. At the sixteenth measure, after a cute little introduction, the orchestra is supposed to come in tutti fortissimo (everyone playing one note very loudly) and then go on as if nothing had happened. As the surprise arrived, a middle-aged man stood up. He was Grant Grand, our huge brute of a flute player. If Shelly’s diminutive physique seemed mismatched to her instrument, Grant was a grotesque. At almost 300 pounds and six and a half feet tall, bald, with deep wrinkles in his forehead, he was like the cyclops blowing on a silver reed.
“It was me!” he shouted. “I did it! I killed them all! Those bastards!” and began to laugh maniacally. Then he started to eat his flute. He shoved it into his mouth and bit down, the sound of his teeth crunching was immediately drowned out as the orchestra stood up and descended upon him like a rugby scrum. At least half of the orchestra, including the woodwinds, brass, violins and percussionists could reach him. Almost on cue, they brought their instruments down on poor Grant Grand again and again. Someone, I didn’t see who, and no one ever fingered him or her, grabbed the flute and stabbed Grant again and again in his face and throat. The melee went on for at least three minutes until the extra police I’d hired to keep an eye on things outside, arrived to break it up. The audience screamed and ran from the concert hall, with many being trampled, but no one seriously injured.
My sweet Shelly stood up, but only backed away from the maiming of poor Grant Grand.
***
An hour later, Grant was under police protection in the ICU at Louisville General Hospital. It was a miracle he survived, or, you could say that musicians are generally too sensitive to make good killers, even tutti.
Grant was quite a mess, however. One doctor described him as a porcupine with splinters of shattered violins sticking out all over his body. An oboe reed ended up in his left ear and needed to be surgically removed. The two clarinetists did the worst damage, batting him over the head repeatedly with the bells of their instruments, creating a mosaic of semi-circular contusions all over his cranium. But what finally brought the big man down was an old typewriter, the central instrument in Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter.” The percussionist who had performed the work a half an hour earlier crashed it down on Grant’s head and laid him out. Seeing him supine on the floor like the sleeping giant in some fairy tale, the musicians turned away and filed offstage.
***
Three days later Detective Doderer called and said that Grant was awake. He was about to begin his interrogation and wanted me there.
“I think it will go better if someone who knows about the orchestra is there,” he explained, instead of just admitting he was out of his depth.
When I arrived at the hospital I was directed to a room on the fifth floor. Two officers were posted outside Grant’s room. Doderer was inside.
“Why the officers?” I asked, pointing at Grant, “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Just being careful,” he replied, hitching his donut-tight pants. “Ain’t no revenge on my watch.”
I just shook my head and took a seat next to Grant’s bed, wishing I was back in my apartment in Sherry’s powerful arms.
There was maybe a total of three square inches of flesh and only one eye visible on the man. He’d been poked in the other eye by a piccolo but wasn’t blinded. There was a small gap in the bandages over his mouth, so he could talk.
“Why, Grant?” I asked.
Doderer immediately intruded.
“This is my interrogation, Mr. President,” he said, again with sticky patronization. “You talk when I say so.”
“Whatever,” I said.
Doderer took a deep, satisfied breath and said, “Why, Grant?”
“It hurt. It hurt,” he whispered.
“What hurt?”
“My ears. My ears.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My brain! My brain!”
“What. Your brain hurts?”
“I have perfect . . . I am perfect! I wanna die!” he shouted, and fell asleep.
Doderer turned to me and asked, “What’s he mean?”
“He means ‘perfect pitch.’”
“What the hell does all this have to do with baseball!” Doderer hollered.
I stood up and walked out of the room, stifling my laughter until I was safely away from the room. When I went back, the detective was shaking poor Grant rather roughly. I was about to object, when Grant came to.
“We’re not done here yet. Your boss here says you have perfect pitch, whatever that is.”
“Yes, all my life. It’s agonizing hearing the slightest sharp or flat tone. It’s like being shot in the head with a nail gun.”
“And you killed them all because of that? We thought your ‘BAD equals DEAD’ message meant you thought they were bad players.”
“They are. They are.”
“Because of a few bad notes?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a few; it was a barrage. Every rehearsal. Every concert.”
“Grant, I’m sorry. I can’t argue with that. But to kill them?”
“They deserved it.”
“And what about my Shelly?”
“Too loud. Too loud.”
“But in tune, right?” I asked, just to clarify.
“Yes,” he agreed sheepishly.
“Or were you after me?”
“You’d be dead if I had been.”
“You would have killed Shelly?”
“Different kind of headache, but just as bad.”
“And how many more were on your list?” I asked, surprised that the detective was letting me continued.
“No more. No more. That’s why I confessed.”
“And Alfred? Conductors can’t play out of tune, Grant.”
“He was an asshole and he couldn’t beat time.”
“Grant, no one can beat time,” the detective asserted solemnly.
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