“Crosstown.” She smiled. “The enemy?”
“I got my doctorate here so it’s more of a case of split allegiance.”
“How do you cope at football games?”
“I ignore them.”
She laughed. “Me, too. Gerry—my husband—has become a football fanatic since we arrived. We used to be at the University of Chicago, which believe me is no great seat of athletic achievement. Anyway, I’m glad the police are still looking into Hope’s murder. I’d assumed they’d given up.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because after the first week or so there was nothing in the news. Isn’t it true that the longer a case goes unsolved the less chance there is of success?”
“Generally.”
“What’s the name of the new detective?”
I told her and she wrote it down.
“Does the fact that he’s chosen not to come himself mean anything?”
“It’s a combination of time pressure and strategy,” I said. “He’s working the case alone and he hasn’t fared well with the faculty people he’s interviewed so far.”
“In what way?”
“They treat him as if he’s a Neanderthal.”
“Is he?”
“Not at all.”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose as a group, we tend to be intolerant—not that we’re really a group. Most of us have nothing in common beyond the patience to endure twenty-plus years of schooling. Hope and I are prime examples of that, so I don’t think I’ll be of much help.”
“She knew you well enough to ask you to be on the Interpersonal Conduct Committee.”
She placed her pen on the desk. “The committee. I figured it had to be that. In terms of our relationship, we’d spoken a few times before she asked me to serve but we were far from friends. How much do the police know about the committee?”
“They know its history and the fact that it was disbanded. There are also transcripts of the three cases that were heard. I noticed you didn’t participate in the third.”
“That’s because I resigned,” she said. “It’s obvious now that the whole thing was a mistake but it took me a while to realize it.”
“Mistake in what way?”
“I think Hope’s motives were pure but they led her somewhat . . . far afield. I thought it would be an attempt to heal, not create more conflict.”
“Did you voice your concerns to her?”
She tightened her lips and gazed up at the ceiling. “No. Hope was a complex person.”
“She wouldn’t have listened?”
“I don’t really know. It was just . . . I don’t want to demean the dead. Let’s just say she was strong-willed.”
“Obsessive?”
“About the mistreatment of women, definitely. Which is fine with me.”
Lifting the pen, she tapped one knee. “Sometimes passion blocks out contradictory information. So much so—and this is more your area than mine—that I found myself wondering if she had a personal history of abuse that directed her scholarship.”
The quiet one.
“Because of the extent of her passion?” I said.
She shifted in her chair, bit her lip, and nodded. Placed an index finger alongside one smooth cheek.
“I must say I feel uncomfortable suggesting that, because I don’t want to trivialize Hope’s commitment—to bring it down to the level of personal vindication. I’m a physical chemist, which is about as far as you get from psychoanalysis.”
She wheeled back, so her head was inches from the bookshelves. A brownish rag doll’s legs extended past her right ear. She pulled it down, sat it in her lap, and played with its black string hair.
“I want you to know that I thought highly of her. She was brilliant, and committed to her ideals. Which is rarer than it should be—maybe I should explain how I got involved with the committee. Because clearly it’s not going to just go away.”
“Please,” I said. “I’d appreciate that.”
Taking a deep breath, she stroked the doll. “I began college as a premed and in my sophomore year I volunteered at a battered-women’s shelter on the South Side of Chicago. To get brownie points for med school and because both my parents are physicians and old-style liberals and they taught me it was noble to help people. I thought I’d heard everything around the dinner table, but the shelter opened my eyes to a whole new, terrible world. Putting it simply, I was terrified. It was one of the reasons I changed my mind about medicine.”