“Get out of my office.”
Whit stepped inside and showed her his badge. “You want to continue this discussion at the police station?”
“You can’t arrest me.”
“You ever been strip searched?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No, ma’am, I wouldn’t. I’m too much of a gentleman. Bobcat would do that.”
Jollo’s eyes widened. “Bobcat?”
“That’s the nickname the officers hung on the jail matron ’cause her butch haircut is dyed yellow and black. Lots of muscle for a woman. Lifts weights. Be good-looking if she lost about fifty pounds.”
She glowered at us for thirty seconds. “I’m listening.”
I said, “You knew Hockley’s fingerprints were on those straws. You brought them back here and rubbed the other end of the straws on a note Ximena Sifuentes had sneezed on.”
“Then you mailed them to us,” said Fletcher. “You tried to frame Hockley for Ximena’s murder.”
“Why would I do that?”
My turn. “Because you want to teach painting and can’t do that unless he’s out of the picture.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
His turn. “We know Hockley didn’t do it. Ximena was not suffocated. She was poisoned. The straws you dug out of the Dumpster had no trace of poison on them. I can arrest you for interfering with a police investigation and falsifying evidence.”
My turn. “Don’t arrest her. Maybe she can help.”
She looked at me. “How can I help?”
“On the day Ximena was killed, Shorter turned off the security camera in the gallery so that Ximena could cover her naked body with alginate and then gauze. He was supposed to turn it on again after the plaster was in place, but he forgot.”
“So?”
“So there was a gap. Sometime after the plaster was applied and before the first guests arrived to view the removal of the plaster cast, someone entered the gallery and poisoned Ximena. We don’t know who it was because the camera was off.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Shorter says you’re the reason he forgot.”
She looked confused. “How did I make him forget?”
“You were in his office shortly after he turned off the camera. You tried to convince him that you should be teaching painting instead of Hockley. By the time you left, it was almost time for the removal of the cast.”
Her anger and fear gave way to confusion. “Yes. That was so strange. Usually, he can’t wait for me to leave. Like he’s already made up his mind before I give him the reasons why I should be the painting instructor, and he just wants to get rid of me. But on that day, it all changed. For the first time, he allowed me to state my case completely. It was like he had all day and nothing better to do than listen to me. At one point, someone came into his office. I asked if he needed me to leave. He said hearing why I should be the painting instructor was more important than his other meetings, so she’d just have to wait. He listened so long that she just left. I guess she got tired of waiting.”
“Then what?”
She sighed. “Then nothing. That was weeks ago, and Hockley is listed again next semester on all the painting sections. It doesn’t make sense. Why did he listen so intently and show such interest if he wasn’t going to change anything?”
I had an answer. Instead of giving it to her, I said, “There’s one more thing you could do to be helpful.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell Lieutenant Fletcher about the note Ximena gave you concerning Hockley.”
She continued looking at me. “I don’t have to tell him about it. I gave it to him.”
“No. You gave him part of it. The part he didn’t get must have started something like ‘Hockley really wanted me in his painting course.’ Then the part you gave the police says, ‘Hockley’s been after me since I was a freshman. I fended him off. But last semester, I gave in.’ You altered that note to make it sound like an affair. It wasn’t about having an affair with Hockley. It was about being caught up by a demanding teacher who expected more commitment to painting than she was willing to give. She came to you for help, and you tried to sully her reputation.”
“What does it matter? She’s dead.”
I resisted the temptation to slap her. “It matters to her parents.”
Her shrug was cruel. “Okay. You’re right.”
She pulled a piece of paper out of her desk drawer and handed it to Fletcher.
“It’s Prather’s fault,” she said. “He’s the one who killed her. And it’s obvious he tried to frame you by giving that straw to the police that he took out of your tea. That’s what gave me the idea to get Hockley’s straws. But Hockley’s off the hook now because of the poison thing. So I didn’t really do any harm.” She looked at Fletcher. “I’m cooperating. There’s no reason to arrest me.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
60
I asked Whit why Bakkie would keep the torn-off part of the note.
His explanation was simple. “Criminals are stupid. That’s why we catch them. She also lied about her meeting with Shorter. You told me he tried to shoo her out of his office. She says he listened patiently.”
We were walking down the hallway. Empty classrooms and studios on each side because the semester was over.
I said, “Maybe Bakkie was telling the truth and it was Shorter who lied.”
“Why would Shorter lie to you about his talk with Bakkie?”
I gave him the answer I had not given to Jollo. “He wanted her to stay so he’d have an alibi.”
“An alibi for what?”
“I’m not sure. Try this. Shorter was afraid Prather might kill Ximena and he wanted an alibi to keep from being dragged into it.”
“You’d make a lousy cop, Hubert. In the first place, if he wants an alibi, all he’s got to do is go to a bar and make sure the barman and the customers see him there. It’s a better alibi for two reasons. First, his office is less than a hundred feet from the gallery. He coulda slipped down there, poisoned her and been back behind his desk in less than five minutes. Sure, he can say he was with Bakkie all afternoon, but what about if he went to take a leak but didn’t? The bar gets him totally away. And on top of that, he don’t have to put up with that wacky dame all afternoon.”
He was right about my making a lousy cop. Which didn’t bother me because it’s about the last thing I’d want to be. I lack both the stature and the nerve.
We reached Prather’s office.
I made my solo entry and got the same response from Junior that I got from Jollo.
“What are you doing here?”
“You took the straw from the cup of tea you served me at the departmental meeting and inserted it into one of Ximena’s nostrils. Then you gave it to the police in an attempt to frame me for her murder.”
It almost seemed he and Bakkie had coordinated their responses because he also said, “Get out of my office.”
Whit stepped inside and showed his badge. “You want to continue this discussion at the police station?”
“You can’t arrest me.”
“You ever been strip searched?”
Junior was a lot less stoic in the face of that question than Bakkie had been. He swallowed audibly. His voice broke as he said, “I was just trying to help. I figured he must have killed her, so I was trying to point the police in the right direction.”
“Why would I kill her?”
“You were having a lot of problems with your students.”
Whit and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
Whit said, “I’m impounding the body cast.” He nodded to me. I picked up one of the two halves of the cast. He picked up the other one. “Also, I’m going to prepare a statement. You’re going to si
gn it. If you don’t, you go to jail and get to meet Bulldog.”
“Bulldog?”
“He’s the guy does the strip searches.”
“Two more things,” I said. “Why did you decide to do the casting and why did you decide to use Ximena as the model?”
“Helen Shorter offered me a stipend to do a body cast of a deaf student for use as a display in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services lobby. I didn’t know any deaf students, so she arranged for one. Also I thought doing something edgy might help me get promoted.” He looked up at me. “I wish I hadn’t attacked you.”
I started to accept what I thought was his apology, but he kept talking. “Now I’ll never be promoted,” he said.
I guess he figured his lost promotion opportunity was my fault.
Whit and I carried the two parts of the cast to my office. Even with them jammed into a corner, the door wouldn’t close. My mind drifted back to the first day I was in the office, and Helga Ólafsdóttir caught me trying to pose like a Duane Hanson sculpture. What would she think if she saw the plaster mold?
I snapped back to the present and said to Whit, “Bobcat? Bulldog?”
“Funny what a simple nickname can do. Made ’em up of course. But they fit, don’t they? Speaking of fit, let’s check this out.” He held up the note Bakkie had given the police weeks ago and the piece she had given him fifteen minutes ago. “Perfect fit.”
As I suspected, the first part of the note made it clear that what Ximena wanted out of was not an affair with Hockley. What she wanted out of was his demanding painting course.
“You were right about the straws. Clearing that up gets rid of a distraction. But we’re back at square one. I don’t buy Prather as the killer and Bakkie’s not a suspect. Hockley’s off the hook.”
“That’s good. It exonerates Ximena from the alleged affair.”
Not many people knew about the allegation, but that didn’t matter. Even one would be too many. I felt happy for her. For her parents. For Alfred, her partner or friend or whatever. She was special to him. It would break his heart if he thought she had an affair with Hockley.
And that was when I thought about another note. The one Ximena wrote to Alfred about agreeing to be the model for the body cast.
I knew who killed Ximena. It was in that note. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course. I didn’t even know who it referred to then. It was an irrelevant detail. Or so I thought.
Maybe you remember that note. Maybe you paid more attention than I did. If so, you remember that it read, “I’m willing to be the model because I need the money. And because that stupid Helen S. asked me to. Even though we don’t get along, she seems to think I owe it to her. But I don’t want Prather touching me. I don’t want him wrapping gauze on me. I want you to do that. And I want you to make sure there’s no monkey business.”
Helen S.
Helen Shorter.
I told Whit about the note.
“So you think the Shorter woman conned Prather into putting the Sifuentes girl into plaster so that she could kill her by spraying poison up the straws?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the motive?”
“A clash of cultures.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Helen Shorter is an activist for deafness being a culture and sign language being their native language. She thinks lip reading is a form of colonialism. The dominant culture—the people who can hear—are forcing the subjugated minority—deaf people—to adopt the culture of the hearing people. Like Europeans did when they conquered the Americas and forced all the native peoples to learn English.”
He shook his head. “That sounds like some egghead theory, not a reason to kill anyone.”
“Look at the Middle East. Sunnis and Shiites kill each other. Turks and Kurds kill each other.”
“This is Albuquerque, Hubert. Murders here are motivated by jealousy or money.”
“Most of the time. But this is a unique situation. Ximena learned to read lips so well that she got along fine in the hearing world. I had her in class and didn’t even know she was deaf. She was an honor student. She was popular. But from Helen Shorter’s point of view, Ximena was a turncoat. Her success in a world she could not hear undermined Helen Shorter’s political thesis that deaf people are a repressed minority.”
“Too deep for me. You got something more practical? Like someone heard her threaten to kill Ximena? Or she bought some cyanide? ’Cause otherwise, I got nowhere to start.”
“How about you ask Milton Shorter about his sister?”
“What would I ask him?”
“Ask him why he scheduled me to teach a course. Ask him why he put Ximena in it. Ask him if he knew his sister arranged for Ximena to be the model.”
61
We waited in the hall until a student left Shorter’s office.
“Come in, Hubie. Sorry for the wait. The poor girl just got her academic suspension notice for next semester. I couldn’t reinstate her. Only the dean has authority to do that. But I can listen.”
“Art therapy, right?”
He smiled that soft smile of his. “Sometimes I don’t have to pull out the brushes. Just listening is enough. Who’s your friend?”
“This is Detective Whit Fletcher from the Albuquerque Police Department.”
Milton shook Whit’s hand then looked at me. “You in trouble again, Hubie?”
“Not that I know of.”
Whit said, “Hubert and I just talked to Junior Prather.”
Milton smiled and said, “So he’s talking to you now?”
“Helps if the guy with you has a badge and a gun,” I replied.
Whit rolled his eyes at me then looked at Milton. “Why did you ask Hubert to teach a class?”
“Actually, my sister suggested it. She said one of her student clients needed a pottery course.”
“Ximena Sifuentes.”
“Right.”
“But why ask Hubert to teach it? You already got two pottery teachers.”
“Helen is very protective of her student clients. She said Ximena would not be comfortable with Prather or Armstrong.”
“So how do you explain her agreeing to be the model for Prather’s body cast project?”
“That does seem odd, doesn’t it? Maybe she needed the money.”
“Did you know your sister selected Ximena as the model?”
“Heavens no. I didn’t even know she and Prather knew each other.”
“Seems like she would know your faculty.”
He shook his head. “She works across campus. She comes here only when a deaf student needs her services. She, uh, doesn’t interact much with the hearing community.”
“She went to the trouble to get you to offer a new course so Ximena wouldn’t have to take a pottery class from Prather? Then she arranges for Ximena to be Prather’s model? That make sense to you?”
Milton bit his lower lip. “I’m a therapist, Lieutenant. What makes sense is not an objective fact.”
“You told Hubert the reason you forgot to turn the security camera back on was because Jollo Bakkie was in your office.”
“Yes, making her usual plea to teach a painting course.”
“You told Hubie you tried to shoo her out. She says you listened patiently.”
“Diplomacy. I tried to shoo her out gently. Evidently, too gently.”
I asked Milton if he knew his sister had kicked me out of the new-faculty orientation session.
“I had no idea. Why did she kick you out?”
“The written version of her presentation claimed signing is the natural language of deaf people. During the ensuing discussion, I said signing is not a language any more than typing is a language. It’s just another way of conveying a language.”
“Ouch. No wo
nder she kicked you out. You belittled her most basic belief.”
“I did not belittle anything. I said I appreciated the importance of signing and the skill it takes to master it. But the same can be said of Morse code. It’s not a language.”
“I agree with Helen on that point. I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree.”
“Fair enough. But why would she ask you to create a course with me as the teacher and put Ximena in that course if I had undermined her most basic belief about deaf people?”
He shrugged. “Therapy trains us not to make assumptions about motivations. Oftentimes they are unknown even to the person who has them. Perhaps she saw a nurturing side of you. After all, you weren’t going to teach Ximena about deaf culture. You were going to teach pottery. Ximena needed a nurturing pottery teacher. From what I’ve heard from the students, Helen’s judgment seems to have proved correct. They loved your class.”
Whit and I walked to his car. I noted aloud that he was illegally parked.
“You think the campus cops are gonna ticket an APD car?”
“Guess not. Is Helen Shorter a suspect?”
“You think she should be?”
“Of course. Ximena didn’t want to be the model, but Helen Shorter talked her into it. That left Ximena defenseless. And she put Ximena in my class even though she thinks I’m anti-deaf. If I got blamed for the murder, she kills two birds with one stone.”
“You’re forgetting one little detail, Hubert. It was Prather who tried to frame you, not the Shorter woman. Or do you think they were working together?”
“Maybe.”
“And as far as putting Ximena in your class, I think what Milton said makes sense. You were the right teacher for her. It ain’t important that you disagree with Helen Shorter about all that sign-language crap. What’s important is you were a good teacher. You should feel good about what Milton said about the students liking your class.”
“I guess you’re right. But I still think you should check her out.”
The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey Page 24
