A Function of Murder

by Ada Madison

  “I’m sure you have,” Bruce said, trying hard to pay attention, but not fully engaged.

  I switched topics and brought up the tension over the performance of charter schools and the way they’re funded. “Some of the families were accusing Mayor Graves of neglecting the charters,” I reported.

  “The charter setup is made for disaster,” Bruce said, coming to life again. “You know what I mean from working at Zeeman, but the problem is system-wide. I remember when my niece was in a charter school in Boston. My sister was on the board and went nuts trying to keep it together, with more reporting and paperwork than teaching going on, and no one seemed to care about discipline or standards. It was always a question of ‘Who’s in charge?’ You’ve got a school that is and isn’t under supervision of the district and the superintendent of schools.”

  “I wouldn’t want Pat Collins’s job,” I said, remembering the superintendent’s glowering visage on the stage today.

  “He goes home to a cushy residence on the Cape, remember. During my pilot-to-the-stars days, I picked him up now and then to take him to a meeting here, but I guess now he has a home in Henley, also.”

  “It’s hard to say who’s right in all this. It’s probably not all the superintendent’s fault. Not the principals’ either,” I said.

  “Nothing works if there’s no clear line of authority.”

  Thus spoke a retired air force man.

  By ten fifteen, according to the old chimes from Franklin Hall, we decided it was time to leave. We stood and brushed off particles of dust and leaves deposited by the breeze, ready for the walk to Bruce’s car, marveling at how still and lovely the campus was. The graduation hubbub and the squealing from one of the last all-female graduating classes were over. Who knew what kind of celebratory sounds the male grads would make in a couple of years? Perhaps they’d simply say, “Good job, bro,” and knock knuckles.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, we heard clumping noises—dragging sounds on the lawn and then shuffled footsteps on the pathway, coming from the direction of the dorms and the east end of the Administration Building.

  “Help!” a low, pained voice cried. “Help me!”

  We turned and saw a man in a light business suit staggering toward us, as if he would topple over on the next step. He looked a lot like the mayor, with auburn highlights showing up under the campus security lamps.

  On closer inspection—it was the mayor.

  I could hardly believe it. He teetered and swayed till he got to the edge of the fountain, where we’d been sitting, then fell in, headfirst. His commencement speech wasn’t that bad, I thought, that he had to get himself wasted. How embarrassing. What was he thinking? He should be grateful that it was Bruce and me who were here and not someone from his opponent’s campaign or parents with a decidedly negative opinion of him to begin with.

  Bruce didn’t stop to judge or make a guess about what had happened or why. He snapped to it, on full alert, as if he were back in the air force in Saudi Arabia, or at the MAstar helipad rushing to get to an accident scene. He made it to the fountain in three long steps and lifted the mayor out by the shoulders. He laid him facedown on the grass.

  I was confused—why didn’t he put him on his back? That’s what television emergency crews did when they gave CPR. Faceup.

  Then I saw the blade sticking up in the air.

  I drew in my breath. What had happened?

  “Your sweater.” Bruce addressed me more calmly than I would have thought possible. “And nine-one-one. Make sure you give the address.”

  Bruce was on autopilot, so to speak, issuing commands. I was grateful for his reminder that the emergency dispatcher might not be able to trace the exact location of my cell.

  I dug in my purse for my phone, shrugging off my cotton sweater at the same time. I stuck the phone under my chin talking to dispatch, hopping around the fountain, trying to free my sweater from my arms, as if I’d been hired to do a frantic, comic dance.

  I handed my sweater to Bruce, who promptly wrapped it around the shiny silver blade, close to the wound in the mayor’s back, and applied pressure to the surrounding area. At first the blade looked to me like a knife, then a screwdriver or some other tool, and finally I recognized it as a letter opener. One of the special Henley College letter openers, in fact. The same letter opener that the Mathematics Department and every other department handed out to its majors on graduation day. My eyes were locked on my sweater, steadily soaking up the mayor’s blood. Finally, I turned away from the unlikely, gruesome sight at our beautiful fountain.

  I thought I heard low cries of help and indecipherable words from the mayor as he lay on the ground, but it might have been the rustling of the nearby trees, or my mind in trauma.

  At one point, Bruce stood for a moment and twisted his body in all directions, taking in the campus. Stretching, I assumed. I had always thought I’d like to see Bruce in action, at his job. And although Bruce simply piloted a helicopter, he assured me, and left the medical ministrations to the flight nurses, I saw now that he was ready to fill in wherever he was needed. I had a new appreciation for my boyfriend and his grace under pressure and knew I’d never again need an up close demonstration of his skills.

  By the time the emergency workers arrived, I felt I’d been holding my breath all evening.

  The noise and lights from the vehicles and crew turned the campus inside out, from its serene late-night ambience to a loud and busy scene. I hadn’t noticed the small crowd gathering, approaching as near as they could get to the fountain without interfering with the workers or battling with the police.

  I stepped back and surveyed the groups. I saw students in various sleepwear outfits huddled together, most of them texting or speaking on cell phones and snapping pictures. Some of the students waved at me, but I kept my head down and pretended not to see them. It didn’t seem the right occasion for meeting and greeting, and they did have the good sense not to make their way over to me. I couldn’t tell whether it was clear to any of the spectators that the body sprawled out on their campus lawn was that of the mayor, the man who’d addressed them from a stage only a few hours ago. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if the scene had already gone viral, no matter who they thought the victim was.

  My lovely white sweater was now in an evidence bag, as was other detritus of the mayor’s plunge. After conferring with the police and dispatched crew, Bruce had jogged across the campus to my office, unsolicited, to pick up a jacket for me. There was no reason for my chill other than the rupture of my quiet campus, but I was grateful as he wrapped me in my own hooded sweatshirt. It wasn’t the freshest item of clothing I owned, the garment of choice after my occasional bout of exercise, but at least it wasn’t bloody.

  “Did the mayor say anything while you were…down there with him?” I asked Bruce.

  Bruce shrugged. “He said, ‘Sophie, something something.’”

  I took a quick step back, recoiling from Bruce’s response, nearly tripping on an uneven patch of grass, and almost ending up sprawled on the ground. “What? What something something?”

  Bruce shrugged. “I couldn’t get anything else.”

  “Was he asking for me? Do you think he wanted to talk to me? Or was he just pointing me out? What did he mean?”

  Bruce took my hand to steady me. “I don’t think he meant anything by it, Soph. Just, maybe, you were in his field of vision.”

  “But you were the one rushing to help him.”

  “He doesn’t know my name; he knows yours.” Bruce took a breath and, I was sure, called up the protocols for distraught witnesses in his MAstar handbook. “You know, he was mumbling. He might not even have said your name, Soph. I don’t know why I sounded so sure. Now that I think about it, he might have said, ‘Off me,’ like ‘Get this knife off me.’” Bruce made off me sound uncannily like Sophie, but I wasn’t buying it.

  “You said—”

  Bruce patted my hand before he let it go. “I’d better run back
and see if I can be of any help to those guys. You’ll be okay for a little while?”

  I nodded, as much as I hated for him to leave. I glanced up at the back of Admin and saw that whatever offices had been lit up a few minutes ago had gone dark. Probably whoever was working over there realized there was more excitement down here. No kidding.

  I took a deep breath and turned from Admin, which now looked like an enormous haunted house.

  I didn’t believe Bruce’s off me theory for a minute. Did the mayor think I was the one who’d stabbed him? I felt a new chill. I zipped my jacket all the way to my neck and threw the hood over my head. Had the mayor been on his way to see me when someone put a pseudo-knife in his back? Why would he want to see me? Why would someone stop him by stabbing him?

  I wanted answers, but I’d have to wait until he was recovered enough to ask him.

  It seemed the mayor was still in my life for a while longer.

  The weeks after graduation, before the start of summer school, were supposed to be the most relaxing for the faculty. Sure, there was research to get back to, and prep for the interim classes and the fall term, but there was also time to bid the campus good-bye for a while and hit the beaches or the mountains, both of which were plentiful along the eastern seaboard.

  The presence of homicide detective Virgil Mitchell, Bruce’s best friend since college, pushed that dream away. Virgil had arrived about the same time as the ambulance, patrol cars, and fire truck. Though I’d seen a letter opener sticking out of the mayor’s back, I hadn’t fully processed the idea that someone had deliberately stabbed him or that he might not survive the attack. Even now I held on to the possibility that he’d fallen on the letter opener, never mind the shaky physics involved, or that a party game had gone bad. Virgil would figure it all out and declare it an accident; the mayor would end up good as new after a brief recovery period; and we could all go back to normal.

  Someone in uniform thought it was a good idea for Bruce to ride in the ambulance, so off they went, leaving me with my imagination. I was free to run rampant over the idea that a city official who might be dead might have said my name as one of his last words, and might have been trying to ask me something. Or tell me something. Or…

  I needed to calm down, to do a statistical analysis of the theories. I chose one of Bruce’s several interpretations, the least worrisome, as the most likely: I happened to be the person the mayor saw as he stumbled toward the fountain looking for help. It made sense—Bruce was wearing a black polo shirt; I was wearing a white sweater. I knew enough physics to do a little riff on the pattern of reflection from the lamp near the fountain.

  When Virgil approached, I collapsed for a moment on his hulking chest. Virgil was large in size and in heart, and this wasn’t the first time his presence had provided comfort. Just seeing someone who was like family, who’d shared many a meal in my home, brought a measure of relief. He gave me a brief hug and walked me away from the scene (why hadn’t I thought of that?), toward the back of the looming redbrick Administration Building.

  We sat on a bench looking away from the fountain. My mind wandered to irrelevant details like whether I should call Ariana, who was combining bead shop business with a vacation in San Diego, and how convenient that a hazmat team had arrived to rid the water of the mayor’s blood.

  “Tough night, huh?” Virgil said.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

  He handed me Bruce’s car keys. “Bruce said your car isn’t here, so you’ll need these. He’ll get a ride to your house a little later.”

  “I thought he was just drunk—the mayor, I mean—but the wound…” I closed my eyes as if the image of blood spurting everywhere was in front of me and not in my head. “Did someone do that to him?”

  Nice going, Sophie. It’s a good thing it was Virgil and he was used to hearing dumb things escape my lips.

  “You were here at graduation, when the mayor gave his speech?” Virgil asked. He bent over, leaning his forearms on his wide thighs, bringing himself down to my level.

  It would have been hard to find two more physically different men than Bruce and Virgil, except that they both had widow’s peaks of dark hair. There was my fitness freak, ice-climbing boyfriend on the one hand, and his somewhat lumbering, oversize buddy on the other. But in temperament the men were so much alike, both able to respond to crises with professionalism and compassion.

  Thanks to his bent-over posture on the bench, I was able to meet Virgil’s eyes. “It was a beautiful night. All the graduation craziness was over. Bruce and I got ice cream and thought we’d stroll around for a while.” I felt my throat choke up. “I’m sorry to be such a flake right now.”

  “Take your time, Sophie.” Virgil gave me a minute. “You heard the mayor’s speech?”

  I finally became aware that I hadn’t answered Virgil’s question. “Yes, pretty much all of the faculty were here. The mayor gave the keynote address.”

  I didn’t mention how I now regretted all the criticism I’d levied against the poor man, how Fran and I had gossiped like schoolgirls during his talk. I found myself hoping Mayor Graves would be well enough to address us again next year. I swore that I’d pay attention and clap the loudest, and whatever it took, I’d strong-arm the whole rest of the faculty into doing the same.

  “Do you have any idea what time the mayor left the campus?” Virgil asked.

  “His speech was over at three fifteen. I don’t know if he left the campus right away, but he left the stage with his wife at that time.”

  Virgil grinned. “Looked at your watch a lot, huh?”

  At last, I felt a smile creep onto my face. “Nothing personal.”

  “I’ve been to a few ceremonies like that. I get it. Bruce indicated that the mayor mentioned your name before he fell? Any idea why?”

  “Bruce said that?” What happened to “get this knife off me” instead of “Sophie”? “No. I can’t imagine why he would have said my name. I don’t think I ever heard the mayor call me by my first name.”

  “But you had conversations with him in the past?”

  Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

  The old-fashioned sound from my smartphone, the unlikely ringtone suggested by my new age friend Ariana, the one with multiple body piercings and rainbow-colored hair. To look at our fashion choices, you’d never know we’d been best friends since our days at the same schools, from K to twelve. I wished she herself were here now and not just her selection of ringtone.

  I snuck a look at my phone’s screen, in case there was an even more important person than a homicide detective wanting to talk to me. I was surprised to see Monty Sizemore’s name. If the mayor’s fall had already made the Internet news, Monty would want details right away. I hoped he and his sister weren’t gloating at the fate of his nemesis.

  I wasn’t sure why, but Monty had always struck me as somewhat shallow, a wheeler-dealer who liked to be on the inside of things, always checking to see if he had the attention of the highest-ranking person in the room. Fran said it was just my perception, because I had misgivings about anyone who wasn’t an academic, and Monty was definitely a businessman first, an instructor second.

  “It’s one of the faculty. I’ll call him back later,” I told Virgil. Before I could switch my phone to off, I noticed another incoming call, this one from Fran. Their calls were more blows of reality. There was no way Monty or Fran would be trying to reach me at this hour unless they’d heard the news. Or seen it on YouTube. I clicked off. I’d call Fran later. And maybe Monty.

  “We were talking about how you’ve had interactions with the mayor on a personal level in the past,” Virgil said.

  A big leap. This was Virgil in action as an interrogator, never minding the fact that his interviewee this time was a woman who provided a comfortable den for him to hang out with his buddy, and all the pizza they could eat.

  “I wouldn’t call our interactions personal. You know I volunteer at the Zeeman Academy, a charter
school that seems to be a focus of his lately. His son, Cody, was a student there through the eighth grade. He’ll be a high school senior in the fall.”

  “But the mayor is still involved in the Zeeman school?”

  I nodded. “Whether as the mayor, or as an alumni parent, I don’t know. He’s dropped by my class a few times. But it’s always ‘Professor Knowles’ or ‘Dr. Knowles’ and ‘Mayor Graves.’ We’re not on a first-name basis.”

  “When was the last time you saw him at that school?”

  An easy one. “Friday. I guess that was just yesterday.” I blew out a breath, as if it were my first in a while. “It was the last day for the eighth graders. The school is K through eight. We had a little send-off with cake and punch and kind of crafty diplomas, even though there’s still one more week of school for the other grades. I personally don’t like it when kids have five graduations on the way to college, but”—I stopped—“why am I telling you that?”

  “No problem,” Virgil said, taking a stretch break himself, giving me time. “The mayor was at the party?”

  “He’d been at the school and he was on his way out, I think, and stepped into the lounge for a minute.”

  “He have any cake? Say anything to you?”

  I thought a few seconds. “He had cake, said hello to me. He shook my hand, the way politicians do, and said something like ‘good job,’ nothing specific. He never called me ‘Sophie.’ He left within seven minutes.”

  Virgil smiled, though I wasn’t sure why.

  An emergency worker called Virgil away and I was left with my thoughts. I became aware of many more uniformed officers now, spread over the campus, speaking to the students and some parents. As ugly as the temporary stage had been, I’d have given anything to have it in my view now, rather than the unmistakable lights, vehicle rumbles, and chatter that signaled calamity.