The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey

by Orenduff, J. Michael;

  62

  Nine days after Whit’s visit to the campus, I lowered myself into one of Dos Hermanas’s gaily decorated ladder-back chairs and told Susannah that Helen Shorter had just been arrested for the murder of Ximena Sifuentes.

  She said, “I just heard the five o’clock news. They didn’t mention it.”

  “That’s because they don’t know about it yet. Whit called right before I started over here.”

  “Why would he call you so fast? You offering a reward?”

  “Funny. He called me because I was the one who cracked the case.”

  “‘Cracked the case’? Since when do you talk like that?”

  “Like Whit said, it comes from hanging around with you.”

  “The last time you said you solved the mystery, all you solved was one clue and even that depended on some hag of a fish.”

  “Hagfish.”

  “Whatever. What did he tell you?”

  “First, she was uncooperative when he questioned her, and that made him suspicious.”

  “Being uncooperative is not a sign of guilt. And it may be hard to appear cooperative if you’re a deaf mute.”

  “It’s not like they’re going to use that in court. It’s just what made him probe a little deeper.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Emails on her home computer. She called Ximena names and threatened her.”

  “She put a murder threat in an email?”

  “No. Threats to ‘out’ her to the deaf community as a traitor. To turn the other deaf students against her. To withhold letters of recommendation from the Office of Hard of Hearing and Deaf Services, things like that.”

  “Doesn’t sound like evidence of a murder.”

  “How about a spray bulb with cyanide traces on the inside and Ximena’s nasal mucus on the outside.”

  “Wow. Even better than a straw. But why would she keep that?”

  I told her that when I asked Whit why Jollo Bakkie kept the torn-off part of Ximena’s note, he said, “Criminals are stupid. That’s why we catch them.” Then I said, “My hunch is she was afraid that no matter how she tried to get rid of it, someone would find it.”

  “She could have buried it out in the desert.”

  “And a police dog could have sniffed it out.”

  “Why would a police dog be out in the desert?”

  “Maybe his handler collected cactuses. How would I know? The point is that if you’ve got something that could get you convicted of murder, you might think the best place to hide it is a place you control. So you bury it in your backyard.”

  “Because the guy who handles the police dogs can’t go there to collect cactus.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is that what she did with it—bury it in her backyard?”

  “No.”

  “What did she do with it?” As I’ve told you before, Susannah loves murder mysteries.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I do know. But Whit told me not to tell anyone. The police want to keep all the details secret.”

  “Oh, come on. When he said don’t tell anyone, he didn’t mean me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Did he mention me by name?”

  “No.”

  “So, there you go. He knows we’re friends and you tell me everything.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I leaned close to her and whispered, “Helen has one of those wide dog bowls with a sort of inner tube-shaped rim that stops it from sliding around. She glued the bulb under the rim. Clever, right? You pick up the bowl to look under it, and nothing’s there.”

  “Very funny,” she commented on my whispering. “But what if someone turns the bowl over?”

  “All the food spills out. Who would do that?”

  “The police, obviously. They found it.”

  “They did not. The dog found it.”

  “So it was sniffed out by a police dog.”

  “No. It was sniffed out by Helen Shorter’s dog. He evidently didn’t like the smell next to his food. So when the cops picked up the bowl and then sat it down again thinking there was nothing under it, he grabbed it in his jaw and turned it over. Smart dog with a weird name—Bram. I guess she liked Dracula.”

  “I’ll bet he wasn’t named after Bram Stoker. He was named after another dog named Bram who’s deaf.”

  “There are deaf dogs?”

  “Yeah. They used to put them down because they thought they couldn’t be trained. And some people thought they were aggressive because they couldn’t hear someone approaching, which is ridiculous because they can smell people. But there’s a dog named Bram who learned to understand sign language. And he even makes a few signs.”

  “So why didn’t he just sign to the police that there was something poisonous-smelling under his bowl?”

  She ignored that. “Now that I think about Bram, I’m beginning to think maybe signing is a language.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve always bought your argument that signing is just a way to convey a spoken language like English or Spanish. But dogs can’t speak. So signing doesn’t depend on language.”

  “Dogs have always been taught how to respond to signs. You spin your finger and they roll over. You extend your hand and they shake it. But I don’t think you can say dogs know languages just because they can respond to visual signals.”

  “Yeah, I guess. The horse called Clever Hans could add any two numbers his trainer gave him by tapping his hoof to the correct sum, but only if the trainer was in sight. Hans was reading the trainer’s body language and realized when to stop tapping.”

  I pointed to my mouth, and she handed me a chip.

  “Good doggie,” I said.

  She took one for herself and ate it. “So the police have the motive and the weapon. What about opportunity?”

  “She was seen in the Art Building during the period when Ximena was in the body cast and the security camera was off.”

  “Too bad the security camera was off. That would have cinched it.”

  “I’d say finding the murder weapon in her houses cinches it.”

  “Maybe not. She can just say someone planted the squeeze bulb there to incriminate her.”

  “I don’t think Whit would buy that.”

  “Forget about Whit. Think about a jury. Her lawyer will point out that there was an attempt to frame you. And then an attempt to frame Hockley. So why wouldn’t a jury see this as just one more frame attempt?”

  I had to admit that made sense. Which worried me for a moment. Then I realized it was pointless to worry. The police would still be gathering information. It would be weeks, maybe months, before they turned it over to the DA’s Office. And who knows how long before it went to trial. If it did. Maybe there would be a plea bargain as there had been in Blass’s case. As far as I was concerned, it was over. I didn’t need to waste time worrying about what came next.

  63

  Sharice and I were in bed, her head on my chest. Benz was on my stomach, curled up under Sharice’s chin. Geronimo was stretched across my legs at the foot of the bed.

  One big happy family.

  I was probably the happiest one. Benz and Geronimo had just returned from exile on the balcony.

  Sharice said she was glad they caught Helen Shorter. “She must be deranged. Going to all that trouble. Getting her brother to schedule a course. Getting Prather to do a body cast. Spraying poison into it after it hardened. Why not just get a pistol and shoot the poor girl?”

  I tried to shrug but couldn’t. Too much weight on me. “Maybe she was afraid the gunshot would damage her hearing.”

  She laughed and bit at my ribs. Then she turned serious. “How about you? You had a roller-coaster semester.”

&nb
sp; “Nothing compared to what you have faced. With courage and aplomb.”

  “And your love and support.”

  I would have kissed her but I still couldn’t move.

  “My class got off to a rocky start, but by the end, I liked all nine of them. Wish it would have still been ten.”

  “The scholarship is a nice memorial.”

  “I wonder if she would have wanted it.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Before Edward Abbey died, he made his friends agree that there would be no undertaker. No embalming. No coffin. The day he died, they put him in an old sleeping bag and transported him in the bed of a pickup out into the desert, where he was buried in an unmarked grave.”

  “He didn’t need a marker. His books are his legacy. The scholarship is Ximena’s legacy.”

  “A memorial maybe. But not a legacy. It’s not something she did.”

  “It’s something her fellow students did because of the person she was.”

  “True.”

  64

  I drove to campus to retrieve the body cast from my office.

  In case Whit asked for it as evidence, I wanted to be able to say truthfully, “I already destroyed it.”

  Getting rid of the cast would close the chapter. I hauled it out to the Bronco in two trips. I climbed in and started the engine.

  Then I turned it off.

  I couldn’t leave in good conscience without saying goodbye to Milton Shorter. He had treated a lowly adjunct well, even become a sort of friend. Normally, I would have looked forward to chatting with him.

  But his sister had just been arrested for murder. And he may have guessed from the visit I made to his office with Whit Fletcher that I had a hand in the case.

  One shouldn’t have to apologize for unmasking a killer. But still.

  I felt less awkward when he smiled at me and rose to shake my hand. He motioned to his guest chair and I sat. He offered me a bottle of water. He handed me a coaster. I put it on the silver coffee table before putting the bottle down.

  Might as well get it out, I thought. “Sorry about your sister.”

  He took in a deep breath then slowly exhaled. “Thanks, Hubie.” He was silent for a few moments, looking down. “As a therapist, I should know how to handle guilt.” He looked up and smiled. “I’m a better therapist than patient. I felt guilty about not turning the security camera back on. Now I feel guilty about not being a better brother to Helen.”

  I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.

  “My parents adopted her when I was fifteen. She was six. I thought it was cool that they were adopting a deaf child. It made them seem even more special as parents. And it seemed like a sort of adventure for me. We all learned to sign.”

  So that’s why they didn’t look alike. “Sounds like a good way to create a bond with a new family member.”

  “It was. But we never became really close because of the age difference. Three years after she arrived, I went away to college. I thought when she got a job here at UNM, we might find that brother-sister thing, but it didn’t happen. My signing skills had declined. She was wrapped up in her clients. I was immersed in my job. We … I would say grew apart, but that’s not it. We were never close to begin with. And now … I still can’t believe she murdered Ximena.”

  “Maybe the police made a mistake.”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could believe that. But they found a squeeze bulb with cyanide on it under her dog bowl.”

  I hoped Milton didn’t notice me shudder. Or feel the icy air that wafted across me.

  The floodgates opened and everything I missed rushed in.

  Susannah telling me that Ms. Nose—now known to me as Helen Shorter—had made snide remarks about the guest lecturer on Raymond Jonson, calling him a spoiled brat. Wiezga telling me Milton dabbled in art history specializing in Jonson. How would Helen know the lecturer was a spoiled brat if it weren’t her brother?

  And the coffee table was art because it had designs etched into it. A process using cyanide.

  And Jollo saying he kept her in his office even though another woman was waiting to see him. Helen, no doubt. He wanted Jollo to see her there. She was probably the one who had placed Helen in the building while Ximena was in the body cast unseen by the security camera. And Helga telling me he was obsessive, yet he forgot to turn the camera back on.

  And the final nail—more like a railroad spike—he could know where the squeeze bulb was found only if he had planted it there.

  I looked up to see his countenance change from friend to menace. He had silently reasoned along with me.

  “Guess I slipped up,” he said.

  Then his smile returned. He relaxed. After all, he had nothing to worry about.

  Except me going to the police.

  Which he didn’t think was going to happen because he had pulled a pistol out of his desk drawer.

  He laughed. “This is perfect. The story everyone will believe is the obvious. You attacked me because of the negative evaluation I gave you, and I had to shoot you in self-defense.”

  I was surprised I could talk, given how much I was shaking. “What negative evaluation?”

  “The one I’m going to write after you’re dead.”

  “No one will believe that. Fletcher heard you give me a positive evaluation.”

  “I’ll figure something out. Can’t have you setting Helen free.”

  “She’s your sister!”

  “She’s a usurper. My parents left everything to her because they figured she needed it more than me. Me! Their natural child! Why should Helen get it all just because she’s a deaf-mute?”

  He aimed the pistol at me.

  I dived off my chair just as it fired. I heard the bullet shatter the glass. I had to move before he came around the desk for a second shot at me.

  I bolted up, but he had disappeared.

  I froze. My first thought was he was hiding behind the desk. My second thought was more coherent. He’s the one with the gun. Why would he hide?

  Then I saw the blood splatters on the wall behind the desk. I tried to lean across the desk and look down. But the thing was too big. So I tiptoed around it and saw him crumpled on the floor, blood pooled around his head.

  He had committed suicide. At the last moment, he had turned the gun on himself. He couldn’t face taking another life. He had realized what a terrible person he was and decided to end it all.

  Wrong.

  I turned to leave and saw Helen Shorter standing in the hall with a gun in her hand. I made a sign everyone knows. I raised my hands above my head in surrender.

  She bent down and placed the gun on the floor. Then she made the only ASL sign I know. She interlocked her index fingers, creating a V. Then she separated them and did it again.

  Friend.

  65

  Helen sat on the floor across the hall from her pistol.

  I didn’t know whether to call the campus police or the APD, so I let the phone decide. I lifted Milton’s desk phone and punched in 911. After I told the dispatcher there had been a shooting in the art department office, I called Susannah.

  She got there first. I told her what had happened. She crossed the hall and signed to Helen. Helen signed back. Susannah sat next to her. A conversation began.

  The 911 call must have gone to the campus police, because Burke the campus cop arrived. I told him where Milton Shorter’s body was. He looked at it then spoke into a microphone attached to his epaulette.

  He went to the gun he’d spotted on the hall floor. He took a snapshot of it. He slid his right hand into a plastic glove. He picked up the gun, sniffed the muzzle then turned to me. “You teaching next semester?”

  I told him I wasn’t.

  “Good.”

  His sidekick, Wes, arrived with
an oddly shaped briefcase. He retrieved a plastic bag from it. Burke dropped the gun into the bag. He went back to Shorter’s body and snapped some pictures.

  He and Wes took more pictures and bagged all sorts of things, including my bottle of water and the coaster it sat on.

  After I told him everything that happened from the time I arrived in Milton’s office, he looked at the two women on the floor. “Which one is the deceased’s sister?”

  “The one with the prominent nose.”

  I felt bad describing her that way, but it was the most obvious difference between them.

  “Who’s the woman with her?”

  “Susannah Inchaustigui. I-n-c—”

  “I know how to spell Inchaustigui.”

  When I raised my eyebrows, he said, “We have lots of Basque students. What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s a friend of mine. I asked her to come here after the shooting.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You invited a friend to a murder scene?”

  “Ms. Shorter is a deaf-mute. Susannah knows sign language.”

  His only reply was “Hmm.”

  I introduce Burke and Susannah. They spoke for a moment. Burke briefly questioned Helen, with Susannah translating.

  Helen admitted to shooting her brother. She claimed to have done so to save my life. I verified that. She refused to answer any other questions.

  The field deputy medical investigator finally arrived with two guys and a gurney. The FDMI took a look at Milton Shorter and pronounced him dead.

  A good guess, since a large portion of his head was missing and he hadn’t taken a breath in over an hour.

  The two guys with the FDMI put Milton in a body bag and lifted him onto the gurney.

  Burke told Susannah and me to leave. He was going to secure the area.

  Wes led Helen away.

  Susannah judged me unfit to drive and took me to the condo, saying I could retrieve the Bronco later.

  Milton’s pistol aimed at me. His blood on the wall. His blown-open head on the floor. Helen standing there with a gun. The body being put in a bag. I wondered how I was ever going to get those images out of my consciousness.