The Secret History - Donna Tartt [182]
He glanced over at Davenport. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to these people, son,” he said. “I don’t know what the police are going to find, and it’s going to be their decision, you understand, but I don’t think they’ll rule it a suicide.”
“Why?”
He blinked at us placidly, his eyes balled and heavy-lidded like a tortoise’s. “There’s no indication of it,” he said. “That I’m aware. The sheriff thinks maybe he was out there, he wasn’t dressed warm enough, the weather got bad and maybe he was just in too big of a hurry to get home.…”
“And they don’t know for sure,” said Davenport, “but it looks like he might’ve been drinking.”
Sciola made a weary, Italianate gesture of resignation. “Even if he wasn’t,” he said. “The ground was muddy. It was raining. It could’ve been dark for all we know.”
Nobody said anything for several long moments.
“Look, son,” said Sciola, not unkindly. “It’s just my opinion, but if you ask me, your friend didn’t kill himself. I saw the place he went over. The brush at the edge was all, you know—” he made a feeble, flicking gesture at the air.
“Torn up,” said Davenport brusquely. “Dirt under his nails. When that kid went down he was grabbing at anything he could get a hold of.”
“Nobody’s trying to say how it happened,” said Sciola. “I’m just saying, don’t believe everything you hear. That’s a dangerous place up there, they ought to fence it off or something.… Maybe you’d better sit down a minute, you think, honey?” he said to Camilla, who was looking a bit green.
“The college is going to get stuck either way,” said Davenport. “From the way that lady in Student Services was talking I can already see them trying to dodge liability. If he got drunk at that college party.… There was a suit like this up in Nashua, where I’m from, about two years ago. A kid got drunk at some fraternity party, passed out in a snowbank, they didn’t find him till the plows came through. I guess it all depends on how drunk they were and where they got their last drink but even if he wasn’t drunk it looks pretty bad for the college, doesn’t it? Kid’s off at school, he has an accident like this right on the campus? All due respect to the parents, but I’ve met them, and they’re the type’s gonna sue.”
“How do you think it happened?” said Henry to Sciola.
This line of questioning did not seem to me to be a wise one, especially here, now, but Sciola grinned, a gaunt, toothy expanse, like an old dog or an opossum—too many teeth, discolored, stained. “Me?” he said.
“Yes.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, just took a drag of his cigarette and nodded. “It doesn’t make any difference what I think, son,” he said after a pause. “This isn’t a federal case.”
“What?”
“He means it’s not a federal case,” Davenport said sharply. “There’s no federal offense committed here. It’s for the local cops to decide. The reason they called us up here in the first place was because of that nut, you know, from the gas station, and he didn’t have anything to do with it. D.C. faxed us a lot of information on him before we came. You want to know what kind of a nut he is? He used to send all this crank mail to Anwar Sadat in the 1970s. Ex-Lax, dog turds, mail order catalogues with pictures of nude Oriental women in them. Nobody paid much attention to him, but when Mr. Sadat was assassinated in, when was it, ’82, the CIA ran a check on Hundy and it was the Agency made available the files we saw. Never been arrested or anything but what a nut. Runs up thousand-dollar phone bills making prank calls to the Middle East. I saw this letter he wrote to Golda Meir where he called her his kissing cousin.… I mean, you have to be suspicious when somebody like him steps forward. Seemed harmless enough, wasn’t even after the reward—we had an undercover approach him with a phony check, he wouldn’t touch it. But it’s the ones like him that you’ve really got to wonder. I remember Morris Lee Harden back in ’78, seemed like the sweetest thing going, repairing all those clocks and watches and giving them to the poor kids, but I’ll never forget the day