by Mike Markel
He nodded, hooked his cane over the back of his chair, and headed off toward the chief’s office.
I went to the university site and got the number for Mary Dawson, the dean of students. She had helped us a few months ago on a case involving the murder of an exchange student. I decided not to tell her Austin Sulenka was dead. She wasn’t close enough to the victim or high enough in the university to merit an early heads-up. I punched in her number.
“This is Mary,” the cheerful voice on the phone said. I remembered from our last case that she was the approachable dean.
“Dean Dawson? This is Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department,” I said. “Don’t know if you remember me, from the Maricel Salizar case, earlier this year?”
“Oh, yes, Detective, I do remember you,” she said. It started out friendly, then she must have figured out I probably wasn’t calling to catch up on old times. “I hope you’re not calling with another case.”
“Unfortunately, I am calling in relation to a case, but I can’t really tell you about it at this point.”
She sighed into the phone. It wasn’t that she wanted to dish about students. It was that she really took it hard when one of them got in trouble. She was genuinely busted up about that other case we worked on. I could tell it, from her face when we talked. “How can I help?”
“Here’s what I need,” I said. “We were just talking with Jonathan Van Vleet in English. He said you could fill us in on a situation earlier this year about an inappropriate relationship between an English teaching assistant and a freshman woman.”
“Ugh,” she said.
“Ugh?”
“Yes, that was a nasty episode. What do you need to know?”
“Well, I need the name of the woman, and how it turned out.”
“Hang on a sec,” Mary Dawson said. “Let me get that file.” She was back in twenty seconds. “The TA was Austin Sulenka, the student was Tiffany Rhodes. She was in his English 101.”
“And she claimed he had an inappropriate relationship with her?”
“That’s right. She claimed it, and he admitted it.”
“How’d it turn out?”
“The committee voted to reprimand Mr. Sulenka and put an official letter in his file.”
“Any penalty for the girl?” I looked up when I heard Ryan coming back from the chief’s office. I hit Speaker on my phone.
“The way these things work, there’s almost never a penalty for the student.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said.
“But in this case, it took all we had not to discipline her.”
“Why’s that?”
“The TA argued—and we believed him—that she was fully complicit in the relationship, that she admitted she initiated it to improve her grade, and that the only reason she came forward is that she got a lower grade than she thought she deserved in the course.”
“She actually said that?”
“You’d be surprised at some of the things students say. They have no idea how they sound. Her attitude was that she was working really hard on the course—”
“By sleeping with the teacher?”
“And therefore, when he didn’t live up to his end of the bargain—which involved the B she thought she deserved … well, you get the idea.”
“Do you have contact information on this sweet young thing?”
“Yes,” she said. She read me Tiffany Rhodes’ address, spelling out all the names. I looked over at Ryan, who was writing it down. “And there’s one other thing you might want to follow up on.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Tiffany had a boyfriend, don’t know whether he’s still in the picture. His name is Brian Hawser.” She spelled it out. “You need to look him up in your own system.”
“What’d Brian do?”
“Brian vandalized some of Mr. Sulenka’s property, and I think he threatened him. The judge issued a restraining order on him. He was to stay at least one-hundred feet away from Mr. Sulenka.”
“Very interesting,” I said. “Any more chapters in this story?”
“I’m hoping not.” Mary Dawson sounded weary. “I’ve told you everything I know from the university’s perspective. Just between the two of us, nothing would make me happier than to learn that Mr. Sulenka has decided that grad school just isn’t for him and that Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Hawser have transferred to another university.”
“Well, Dean Dawson, I’m afraid that’s not what you’re going to learn. But I appreciate you giving me that information.”
“Goodbye, Detective.”
I hung up and looked over at Ryan. “Can you punch in Brian Hawser and get an address?”
He hit some keys, looked at the screen, and then looked at his notebook. “He and Tiffany are roommates.”
“She’s living with this guy and sleeping with her professor?”
“Don’t look at me,” Ryan said cheerfully. “That wasn’t how I did extra-credit assignments. Besides,” he said, “we don’t know she and Brian were living together at the time.”
“You’re saying she starts doing her professor, Brian Hawser rides up on his white horse, defends her honor by keying Austin’s car or whatever, they fall in love, sign a lease, live happily ever after?”
Ryan smiled. “No, I bet she was doing both the guys at once. I’m just saying we don’t know the facts yet.”
I shook my head. “You’re not as much fun as you used to be.”
“I got shot, you know.” He smiled.
“Heard you got a commendation for that.”
“I did. It was totally worth it.”
“That’s what I assumed.”
Ryan looked down at this notebook. “Okay, now we have Austin’s girlfriend, May Eberlein, who we’ve already interviewed; plus his adviser, Suzannah Montgomery; his student, Tiffany Rhodes; and her boyfriend, Brian Hawser. Anyone else?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Let me call Robin and see how she’s coming with the forensics.” I speed-dialed her cell.
She picked up. “Yeah, Karen.”
“Robin, just wanted to see what you’ve got.”
“I’m still at Austin’s. I did a quick survey of the apartment. I’ve pulled a few dozen prints. There’re some good ones on the wine glasses and the bottles. The sheet on his bed has some ejaculate, as well as quite a bit of what looks like vaginal fluid. There’s vaginal fluid on his dick, and some more on the dildo. But I’m not seeing what he was strangled with.”
“When’ll you be able to start typing that stuff?”
“I’m gonna need a couple more hours here. I’ll be back after lunch. You want to authorize DNA on the biologicals?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We gotta know who was nailing who. Plus, run the prints. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Okay,” Robin said.
“Talk to you later. Thanks.”
“No, no,” she said. “Thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this much sticky stuff at one address.”
I ended the call. “Did the chief okay getting Austin’s phones?”
“We should have them later today,” Ryan said.
“Okay, good. Why don’t we see what we’ve got on Tiffany and Brian?”
Ryan tapped away at the computer for a few moments. “Tiffany Rhodes has a couple of traffic misdemeanors and a DUI.”
“What’d she get on the DUI?”
“Her BAC was only .09, so she was able to plead down to a wet reckless. One day in jail, points, five-hundred bucks.”
“Did we take her DNA?”
“No,” Ryan said. “Just prints.”
“Any other charges on her?”
“No.”
“Brian?”
“Brian has the usual misdemeanors plus the restraining order on Austin. It was December 19.” Ryan was reading off the screen. “He drove over to Austin’s place, took a baseball bat to all the glass on his car. Austin wasn’t home at the time, but the neighbor—hey, it’s your
waitress friend in Unit 4—she heard it and called it in. Couple of uniforms pulled him over, gave him a BAC. It came back .17. He admitted to the vandalism.”
“What’d he get?”
“It was his first felony. Two weeks. Points. A thousand dollars. Plus,” Ryan said, looking up at me, smiling, “we took his prints and DNA.”
“Very good,” I said. “Can you make a note to get that to Robin?”
Ryan nodded. “Done.”
“That RO, was it civil or criminal?”
Ryan looked back at the screen. “It was criminal. Austin was okay with a civil Order of Protection, but the DA insisted on a criminal RO because of the DUI. Brian pled to criminal mischief, with fourteen-hundred dollars in restitution to Austin.”
“Did the criminal mischief carry any additional time?”
“One week extra. Brian said he’s already paid tuition for this semester, and the judge kept the sentence light in exchange for the plea.”
“Is the RO still in effect?” I said.
Ryan looked at the screen again. “It’s indefinite. So if we find Brian’s prints over at Austin’s apartment, we’ll be able to push him pretty hard on it.”
“Let’s stop by the chief’s office and tell him we’re gonna look at Brian and Tiffany, then we go stop by their place, okay?”
He looked puzzled. “Think he’d have a problem with that?”
“It’ll just take a minute,” I said. I knew we didn’t need to inform the chief about every interview or lead. The real reason I was checking everything with him was that he gave me my job back a year ago. I wasn’t officially on probation, but I wanted to show him I could do the job. Really, show myself I could still be a good cop.
We walked over to the chief’s office. “Quick question for the chief,” I said to Margaret. “Thirty seconds?”
She picked up the phone, pushed a button, and relayed the message. The chief stepped out of his office and raised his eyebrows.
“The grad student case?” I said.
The chief nodded.
“The vic was screwing one of his students. She complained officially. Her boyfriend got liquored up and vandalized the vic’s car. The judge issued an RO and gave him some jail time. We want to interview the girl and the boyfriend. You okay with that?”
“We have the boyfriend’s DNA, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s what I would do,” the chief said. He nodded and waved his hand, meaning go ahead.
Which I took to mean, Thanks for checking with me, but relax. Run the case. I’ll tell you if I’ve got a problem.
Chapter 6
It was about five hours since we discovered Austin Sulenka’s body. I’ve always liked to finish as many of the initial interviews as I can within eight hours, or at least before the local TV newsboys and girls start looking all pouty about the murder. My thinking is that by five-thirty or six, word’s gotten out, and it’s a lot tougher to tell who already knew about it because they saw it on TV—or because they did it.
But maybe I’m just fooling myself about getting better info before the murder goes public. After all, the more I think about May Eberlein rushing off to class, I really have no idea whether all her boo-hooing about Austin was real. I’m not all that bright, but I think I’m a pretty good liar. And if I killed someone, I’d be sure to have my response all worked out—right down to the props, such as the mascara brush in my hand—for when the cops stopped by to chat.
“You want to talk about a strategy for questioning them?” Ryan said. We were driving out toward the solidly lower-middle-class neighborhood near campus where Brian Hawser and Tiffany Rhodes lived.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if only one of them is there? Both of them?”
I thought about it for a second. “I think I’d just play it by ear. Let’s tell them it’s about a legal formality. Something about Brian’s RO.”
“We just want to know if he’s still in compliance. That sort of thing?”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine.”
We parked at 2400 Christopher Place, a two-story apartment complex, maybe five or eight years old. Each unit on the ground floor had an ugly cement pad patio. On the second floor, each had a tiny balcony, mostly crammed with oversized barbeques and bikes chained to the chipped painted-aluminum railing. The unpainted wooden stockade fence that bordered the property had grey crescents where the sprinklers had weathered it. The lawn was spotty and full of weeds.
“What’s the number?” I said.
“204.”
As we climbed the concrete and steel steps, I glanced over at Ryan, who was carrying his cane but not putting any weight on it. That was good.
We made our way down the exterior hallway on a dirty indoor-outdoor carpet with a checkerboard pattern. I knocked on the door and hung my shield around my neck. The door opened.
“Brian Hawser?” I said. He nodded. “Detective Karen Seagate and Detective Ryan Miner, Rawlings Police Department. You got a minute to talk with us?”
He scratched at his cheek. I’d put the beard at three or four days. Medium brown, like his hair. The hair was cut short on the sides, just long enough to comb on the top. He had a ski-slope nose, the curse of the formerly cute little boy. His brown eyes looked alert, wary more than intelligent. He wasn’t hiding his scowl.
He ignored my question about whether he had a minute to speak with us, but he moved back a little to let us in. He was a big guy: six-two, two-thirty. I’d say high-school lineman, not quite beefy enough for the college team. His washed-out grey tee shirt said Property of Central Montana State University, which meant it wasn’t. He had on old gym shorts, no shoes or socks.
“What’s this about?” he said.
“Just following up on the restraining order,” I said. “It’s four months now. We want to talk with you, see if everything’s going okay.”
He looked at me, expressionless. “Yeah, everything’s going okay. I don’t go near that prick.” He paused. “Anything else?” Like he was running the interview.
“We have to write up a report, Brian. We’re gonna need to talk with you a little bit more about it. You think we could sit down?”
He paused, then stepped back. Ryan and I walked into the living room. It had a fake-leather brown couch, the kind where the back cushion in the middle folded down and you put your drinks in round cup holders. He had been playing a computer game on his TV. He walked over to the couch, turned off the game, picked up the can of Coke from the cushion, and flipped it back into place. I took that to mean we were to sit there. Brian walked over to a red cloth upholstered chair next to the TV set and sat down. He sat there, still, his big forearms on the arms of the chair.
“Since my partner and I weren’t involved in the case that led to the restraining order, we just wanna make sure we understand what happened.”
He didn’t say anything, just sat there. Having had some experience with cops and judges, he knew we were going to do what we were going to do, so there was no sense trying to stop us. On the other hand, there was no need to help us or pretend we were friends.
“You were charged with malicious mischief for vandalizing Austin Sulenka’s car, is that right?”
He nodded, just a little.
“And you got a DUI that night, too?” I had a notebook in my lap. I looked up at him. This time he didn’t bother to nod. “Our records say you’re keeping up with the restitution payments to him.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“When we write up our report, we get to recommend to the court whether the restraining order stays in place. You know, whether we think there’s still a danger that you might come after Mr. Sulenka …” I let it hang there.
“Not gonna go after him.” The words were clear, but he wasn’t giving me and Ryan any reason to believe them.
I nodded and made some doodle marks in my notebook. “What the judge likes to see is that you understand how you got into trouble.” I looked at Brian
Hawser.
“Busting up the asshole’s car,” he said.
Ryan said, “I think what my partner means is that we want to be able to write that you understand that what you did was wrong and that you’re not going to do it again.”
Brian Hawser looked at Ryan. “So I’m not supposed to think he’s an asshole.”
“We understand you’ve got some resentment against Mr. Sulenka,” I said, “but from a legal point of view, it was all you. You’re the one took the baseball bat to his car.”
“I didn’t take him apart.” Brian Hawser shifted in his seat. “Which he deserved.”
He was working it over in his mind, getting himself more pissed off. Which we like to see. It helps us understand how hard to look at him for killing Austin.
I said, “Brian, I think we need to keep the situation with Tiffany separate from the situation with the vandalism of Mr. Sulenka’s car. I mean, for the purpose of this interview with you.”
He looked at me, a mean look on his face. “The way he treated Tiffany? You expect me to say he wasn’t an asshole?”
“Why don’t we talk about Tiffany for a little bit, get that out of the way. Then we can get back to the restraining order so we get a statement we can put in our report.” I paused. “By the way, Tiffany’s not here, right?”
“That’s right. She’s on her way back from Billings. Visiting her parents.”
“Okay,” I said. “I understand why you think the guy’s an asshole. Tell us what happened.”
“I’m not gonna tell you.” He shook his head. “Except to say that he took advantage of her. Slept with her, then gave her the C anyway.” He held his jaw high, like that was all I needed to know to conclude Austin was an asshole.
“Gave her a C anyway?”
“Fuckin’ right. Tiffany’s not one of those rich girls gets everything handed to her. She’s had to work for everything she’s ever gotten. She’s taking fifteen credits, working twenty-nine hours a week as a collection agent for a bank—the twenty-nine is so she’s officially part-time and doesn’t get benefits. We don’t have enough money as it is to get by without loans. She knew she wasn’t gonna do better than a C in the class. She told me how he was sniffing around all the girls. All the ones who weren’t real pigs, I mean. Tiffany could tell it. She made a decision.”
