“But-you know Dr. Vishnikov is already doing that. Didn’t you speak to him this afternoon?” Harriet said.
“Oh, yes. And maybe he’s already done what he needs to do-barring results from the tox screens. But if he hasn’t, it’s up to you, whether you want to give your brother’s body back to the DuPage County ME. If you don’t, keep them away until Vishnikov is done: he’s such an eminent pathologist, even the FBI will accept his findings. Also, since you’re paying Vishnikov, he’ll have to tell you what he discovers. If you send your brother back to DuPage, they’ll do the work for free-free for you, I mean-but they may not share their results with you.”
Couched in those terms, the decision to keep Vishnikov on the job seemed the only sensible way to go. Of course, I had an agenda, too: I wanted the autopsy results, and no one in DuPage was likely to tell me whether they’d drunk coffee for breakfast, let alone what Marcus Whitby had inside him. Harriet didn’t think she would be verytgood at holding off the DuPage County sheriff’s office; I told her she could refer them to me as her legal representative. “I’m used to them being annoyed with me. It won’t bother me to have them add one more count to their list.”
“I’ll stay with you tomorrow, Harry,” Amy promised. “Unless there’s something Vic needs me to do?”
I slumped back against the thick upholstery, my eyes shut. It was hard for me to imagine the next day, but I guessed I’d be starting it at the hospital where Catherine Bayard was recovering from her surgery. With an effort, I remembered what Amy had been working on-was it only yesterday?
and asked if she’d found anything useful about the Committee for Social Thought and Justice.
She grinned. “I thought we’d never get around to that. That meeting in Eagle River, the one Olin Taverner was interrogating Bayard about, well, Kylie Ballantine was there-“
I sat up again. “What? You found it in the Congressional Record?” She shook her head. “The University of Chicago archives.”
She leaned over to pull a sheaf of papers from her briefcase and laid them on the table. Harriet and I bent over them, trying to read them by the flickering bar lights, but couldn’t make out them out.
I signaled to the waitress for the check, but Harriet took it from me. “You’ve run yourself ragged for me and my family; the least I can do is buy you a glass of Scotch.”
She signed the bill to her room and the three of us went out to the lobby, where we looked at the documents Amy had photocopied. One was a photograph, blurry in reproduction, that showed a group of African tribal dancers. You couldn’t tell sex, let alone identity, because of the masks everyone was wearing. But stapled to the picture was a letter on Olin Taverner’s stationery, dated May 1957, to the president of the university.
This photograph was taken on June 14, 1948. It shows Kylie Ballantine and her Ballet Noir de Chicago performing at a benefit for the Legal Defense Fund of the Committee for Social Thought and Justice. This committee is a major supporter of known Communists in the arts and letters. A number of university trustees are my clients. They are deeply disturbed to find that Ballantine is actually teaching at the university. I don’t know what students are learning in her classes, but if parents saw this photograph, and knew that their children were being taught by someone who not only supports Communism but engages in sexually explicit dancing, I doubt they would want them studying at the university-even one with the University of Chicago’s leftist leanings.
Handwritten at the bottom of the letter was the phrase, “Get someone to deal with this.”
“So Taverner got Kylie fired,” Amy said. “That’s probably why Marc went out to see him.”
“Is there any evidence that Marc saw this letter?” I asked.
She grinned again. “Yes, because you have to sign into the rare books and archives room-not like the rest of the library, where you go in and out on your ID. Marc had been there about three days before he met Olin Taverner.”
“But this doesn’t prove anything,” Harriet objected. “You can’t tell where this was taken, or who was in it. How could they fire her just because of that?”
“America in 1956, baby,” Amy said. “Communist? Black? You only needed to whisper it once.”
CHAPTER 36
Bedside Manner
Catherine, you’re lucky to be alive. The sheriff’s police may have been reckless-we agree they were way out of line, and we’ll take appropriate action-but don’t try to hide behind that with me. I know you’re in pain, but I also know you’re lying.”
Whoever was speaking had a penetrating baritone; it carried easily through the hospital door, which wasn’t quite shut. The volunteer looked dubiously from a vase of flowers in her hand to the door.
“I’ll take those in for you,” I offered.