Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1)

by Charlotte Raine

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to see how you capitalize on emotions,” I say. “For God’s sake, you wrote about two of your students. Have you ever thought that maybe they didn’t want their lives written about?”

  “They told me they were fine with it.”

  “After you did it!” I snap. “And of course they’re going to say that. Everyone adores you. They all want your approval. They’re little, lost, hungry puppies that you give a little bit of kibble to. Then you’ve got their loyalty until the end of time. Or, in these cases, until they’re dead. Maybe you became attached to this devotion. Maybe Victoria and Everett found out that you wrote about both of them and they got angry. Maybe they vented at you and you decided to kill them, so they wouldn’t go to The Noise, talking about how you used their lives to make stories. So they couldn’t tell people that you can’t write fiction to save your life—you just steal from other people’s lives.”

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions,” he says, “and they’re all untrue. Many of my students read my books. I always knew there was a good chance Victoria and Everett would find out about the books that were written about them. Yes, I should have mentioned the fact that they were heavily influenced, but I would never kill them over this.”

  “Over this?” I ask. “Is there a different reason you would kill them?”

  He slams his fist on the table, standing up. “I didn’t kill either of them! These students—especially those two—are like my own children. They’re not supposed to be and I try to distance myself…but these are the kinds of students that I will remember decades from now.”

  His eyes move above my shoulder. I turn around. Detective Stolz and Macmillan are stepping through the office door frame. Stolz raises her eyebrow at me.

  “Mira. I didn’t expect you to be here,” she says.

  “I was just telling Dr. Zimmer that I was no longer on this case,” I say, looking over at him. “Because I no longer work for the police.”

  I can see the surprise pass over his face, but he keeps his emotions in check enough that I hope the police won’t question my motive for being here. This may be another one of my bad choices, but I don’t want them to focus on Dr. Zimmer because of an eyewitness statement from a drug dealer. I don’t trust him, but I don’t think he’s the killer, either. I’d rather they put their efforts into finding the person who really did this.

  “That’s nice,” she says. “But we’re going to need to talk to Dr. Zimmer and we’d like him to come down to the station.”

  “Look, I’m not the killer,” he says. “Seriously. You can ask as many questions as you want, I didn’t do it. I don’t know what you want from me, but—”

  “We know it’s not you,” she interrupts. “Or, at least, if you are the killer, you’re doing a superb job at not being around when the person dies."

  She turns to me. "Can I talk to Dr. Zimmer alone? Since you no longer work with the police you shouldn't be here."

  "I want her to be here," John says. "Anything you tell me, I'll just tell her later. She's been helpful and I know she's concerned about what's been happening, so she has a right to know everything."

  Stolz sighs, shaking her head. "There’s been another student who just dropped dead about two hours ago," she tells John. "And since we had patrolmen watching you, we know you weren’t there.”

  “How can you be sure on a campus?” I ask. “He could have snuck away while the officers weren’t watching. Not every building has windows that they could see into.”

  She stares at me for a couple of seconds, deciding if she wants to tell me anything.

  “We know because the murder was committed in Vermont,” she says. “He couldn’t find a way up there and back down to New York within the time he’s had classes, plus the fact that the victim died in the middle of teaching a class of her own.”

  “What makes you so certain this one isn’t a natural death like you assumed for Victoria?” I ask.

  “Because,” she says. “I received a call from the local police since they had heard similar murders had been committed here…and the victim’s name is Iris Knight.”

  “What?” John breathes. “No. No way.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Who’s Iris Knight?”

  “She was one of my students,” he says. “She was so…so bright, so funny, so kind…she was so great. I thought she could have become an amazing author, but it makes sense that she would teach people, too. That’s the kind of person she is…she was.”

  “So that’s why we want you to come down to the station,” Detective Stolz says. “That’s three victims that are connected to you and one of them isn’t even within the area.”

  “I…I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I have no idea why they’re dying.”

  “We might,” she says, pulling a notebook out of her jacket pocket. “The killer left another quote. You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. It’s a quote from Oscar Wilde from his book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Now, if all these murders weren’t connected to you, I’d think that this quote was some reflection of Ms. Knight, but since all these students are connected to you, I’m thinking maybe these messages are meant for you.”

  “All of the students that have been killed…” I say. “They were all your favorite students. Somebody is killing off your favorite students.”

  John stares at the two of us. “I think I know how the killer is choosing them.”

  “How?” Stolz asks.

  “When they went missing, I didn’t think much about it,” he says. “I thought I had misplaced them or accidentally thrown them out. I don’t know. But—”

  “How is the killer choosing the victims?” I interrupt.

  He turns to me. “You remember when my office was broken into?” When I nod, he says, “Since that happened, I haven’t been able to find the copies of recommendation letters I’ve written. I keep a copy of some of the letters I’ve written, just as a way to remember some of my students and also have a template to write future letters. I realized they were gone a couple days after the break-in, but I didn’t make the connection. Why would I think someone who ransacked my office would want some old letters? But they’re gone and I had written letters for all three students.”

  Stolz rubs her temple. “How many letters went missing?”

  “All of them,” he says. “There were nine total.”

  “Which means six more potential victims,” she says. “You’re going to have to give me their names and we’ll go find them.”

  He nods, grabbing a sticky pad and a pen. “Of course. Definitely. Anything to protect them. I can also email you copies of some of the recommendation letters since they’re saved on my laptop.”

  As he jots down names, I shake my head. “Is that really going to help when we don’t know how they’re dying? That’s two victims who have died right in front of people. I don’t see how having police hang around our potential victims will help.”

  “We have to do something,” Stolz says. “We can’t just wait for them to die.”

  “We have to figure out how they’re dying.”

  “No, Mira, we don’t.” She indicates to herself and Macmillan. “The two of us and our forensic team do.”

  John hands her a paper with names scrawled on it.

  “Thank you,” she says. “We’re still going to need you to come down to the station.”

  “Can you give me a minute?” he asks. “I have a class in half an hour. I need to type up an email to tell them to not come.”

  “Fine.” She hands him her card. “I’m fairly certain I already gave you one of these, but here’s another one. It has my email address on it. We’ll be in the parking lot behind the building. Make it fast.”

  She and Macmillan leave.

  “I’m sorry you lost your job,” John says.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  He sits down at his desk. “No, it’s not. Especia
lly if I caused you to lose it.”

  “I make my own choices,” I say. “And I’m making another one now. I want you to give me the same names you just gave the detectives.”

  “What? Why?” he asks. “They’re already going to go check it out.”

  “No, they’re going to have some patrol officer watch over these potential victims, which doesn’t help them when we don’t know how they’re dying,” I say. “Come on. You just felt guilty a few seconds ago. The least you owe me is this.”

  He grabs his pad of paper again and begins jotting down names.

  “You know, since you’re so touchy about it, I should tell you that I began writing about you too.”

  “Are you kidding?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. He takes the sticky note off the pad and sticks it onto a short stack of papers. He picks up the stack and hands it to me. “Clearly, I don’t know much, so a fair amount is fictionalized and it jumps around a bit since it’s a very early draft, but you should read it. If you hate the idea of me writing about an idea of you, then just tell me to fuck off.”

  “I thought I had been telling you to fuck off this whole time.”

  “I’ll actually listen this time,” he says. “Promise. If you don't like it, you could always write your own story. That's the best way to process your emotions. Write everything down until it doesn't hurt anymore.”

  "I'm not a pour-my-heart-out kind of girl."

  "Practice makes perfect," he says.

  I keep a tight hold of the stack of paper as I leave. I wonder for a second if I trust him or not. Then I realize that there’s no middle ground and no hesitation in trust. If there is even a flicker of doubt, there is no trust.

  Chapter Five

  The Killer—one year ago

  They say God gave us free will because He loved us enough to give us choices and He wanted us to love him enough to choose to love Him. But this didn’t seem right to me when you add hell to the mythology--was it free will if you were punished for all eternity for the decisions you made, while there were so many other religions, all claiming to be the right one?

  Long story short, it seemed to me that God gave us a .22 revolver that held nine rounds. Then He put only eight bullets in it and forced us to pull the trigger. God's free will was Russian roulette and since man was made in His image, everyone else seemed to like to force others to play too.

  "Mom, I've been really busy," I said into the phone. I leaned next to an abstract painting that made me think of bleeding butterflies. I was supposed to be getting to class, but my mother never could understand the concept that life continued to unfold outside of her sphere of influence. "I've applied to six jobs this semester, but all of the other students are vying for the same jobs. They're giving it to the perky, happy people who have connections--"

  "You could act perky and happy," she interrupted. "You're not trying. You always do this. You resign yourself to only do half of what you're capable of, and then you consider yourself a hard worker. You should try."

  "I am trying," I hissed. "Why can't you understand that? You've never even been to college, so I don't know why you feel like--"

  "How dare you--you know what? This conversation is over," she said. "Call me when you can act like an adult."

  She hung up. I rested my head against the wall, staring up at the white ceiling. Come on, God. I'm getting desperate here. Aren't you supposed to come when I'm desperate?

  "You were asking for me?"

  I lowered my head. Dr. Zimmer was standing in front of me.

  "Excuse me?" I asked. "I wasn't...I wasn't asking for you."

  "You weren't?" he asked.

  I stared at him. Could he secretly be God? Could God have entered my life when I most needed Him and just didn't make it as obvious as I thought He would.

  Dr. Zimmer continued, "Dr. Carrigan said you were by my office and you were asking where I was."

  "Oh," I said. "Right. I was. Um. Before the end of the semester, your syllabus said we have to submit a poem or story to a literary magazine. I was wondering if you knew of one that fit my...style of writing."

  "Great writing fits everywhere," he said.

  "Oh, Jesus, thank you," I mumbled. "But I mean--"

  "I know what you meant," he said. "There are a few I could think of that I think would fit your darker style. Is it okay if I just email them to you? It's easier if I have some time to think about it because there are just so many options and my mind is half-filled with Sylvia Plath and half-filled with the fact that I was an idiot and spilled my coffee all over my lap, so I don't have much space for anything else."

  "Of course," I said. "Absolutely. That would be...I'd be really grateful if you’d do that."

  "It's no problem," he said. "Your work is great. You don't speak up much in class, but when you do, everyone pays attention because you're so adept at pointing out exactly what's wrong with a person's work. You do it without being condescending, and you're always tactful. If you don't feel comfortable in class, you know you can always come see me. You have an immense amount of talent, but I think you're burying it under inhibition and uncertainty over what you're capable of."

  "You sound like my mother," I said. "Except less critical."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Well, I don't know your mother, but I don't think your self-consciousness is a flaw. I think it means that you're very aware of yourself. I just think it can also be problematic when you let it dictate whether you speak up or not, or whether or not you choose to go deeper into that part of your writing that you're afraid to write."

  "I'm not afraid to write anything," I said. "Remember? I wrote that World War I story with all of that blood and gore."

  "That's not what I meant," he said. "And I think you know that. There are feelings and scenarios that we consciously or unconsciously avoid writing about because it hits a little too close to home. But I promise you, once you write those words down, get those feelings out, everything around you feels a little bit less heavy."

  I looked down at my hands clasped in front of me. How could he know exactly how I felt? Like the air was too thick and gravity was pushing down on my chest instead of my whole body?

  "Thank you," I murmured.

  "I'll see you later." He patted me on the shoulder as he walked past, continuing on whatever path he had been on before he had seen me. Because that was how all my relationships happened.

  But maybe I wasn’t supposed to be meek, like God proposed. Maybe I was supposed to stride forward and take what I wanted. Maybe I needed to speak up and never let my message be dulled by fear.

  Or, at least, those were my thoughts before I realized that God had handed me another gun--but this one, this one, I wasn't going to use against myself.

  After all, when I spoke, everyone listened the fuck up.

  Chapter Six

  Mira

  “Marie is an exceptional student with a creative mind that, quite frankly, makes me jealous. I am certain in one way or another, she will contribute to the literary world and challenge the minds of everyone who reads her work,” I quote from one of John’s recommendation letters. I hand it to Andre. “Do you think that’s supposed to be a backhanded compliment? It could be that he’s saying her work is too complex, so it’ll be challenging for people to read.”

  “It sounded like a plain old compliment to me,” he says, scanning the letter. “Why? Are you jealous what he wrote about her?”

  “What? No. Why would I be jealous?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel like your relationship with this professor is a lot like mine—you don’t trust him, but you keep finding a reason to be around him. I’ve been thinking maybe there was something going on between the two of you.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, there was something for one night, but—”

  “Okay, too much information.” He hands me back the letter. “I don’t see how reading these will tell you anything about the case. I don’t even know why you insist on trying
to figure it out.”

  “Don’t you?” I challenge.

  “Of course,” he says. “Your sister. But you can’t…you can’t dedicate your whole life to her. It’s been twenty years. I know you miss her and you feel guilty, but there’s nothing you can do about it now.”

  “You don’t believe that,” I say. “That’s why you’re trying to find her killer. We’re honoring her memory.”

  “How is it honoring her memory when you’re obsessing over this idea of justice?” he asks. “There will always be cases where the killer runs free. I just don’t want you to endanger your life because you’re constantly pursuing killers. I love you and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  I rub my face. “You’re really going to use that phrase now?”

  “What? I love you?” he asks. “Yes. I’ll use it all of the time. I’ll use it as a greeting and as a way to say goodbye. And I’ll mean it every time.”

  I pull my hair band off of my wrist and pull my hair up into a ponytail. I avoid looking at him.

  “Did you find anything in the letters that might show a pattern with the letters written for the two previous victims?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “I mean, in those two letters, he seemed more open to showing preference toward them,” he says. “But if we’re going by his level of affection in the letters, most of these people could still be a target. He calls Travis a visionary, he says Jennifer seems like she was born with a pen in her hand, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Lita’s books ended up on the bestseller’s list. It seems to me that this guy had to be overestimating his students’ talents. There’s no way these people were as talented as he made them out to be.”

  “Maybe he just cared enough about them to see them that way,” I say. “Focus. The killer has to be going in some kind of pattern, right?”

  “Yeah. The pattern of a crazy person,” he says. “If the killer is focusing on Dr. Zimmer’s favorites, they probably were choosing by how affectionate he seemed of them. That’s why the killer chose two students he currently still had, and the first one was his T.A.”