I tapped lightly on the open door.
“Lainie? Hi, I’m Dr. Murphy. May I come in?”
Lainie removed the glasses she was wearing and nodded her consent. The other bed in the room was neatly made up, but there was no sign of another person.
“Your roommate out for the evening?”
“Gone for a few days. She’s staying with her boyfriend. He has an apartment downtown. She wasn’t real happy about my cold. She left so she wouldn’t catch it.” I thought about this statement and what it revealed about the roommates’ relationship. Not good, I concluded. Everyone had a cold this time of the year, it seemed. Her roommate was as likely to catch it from someone in class or her boyfriend as she was from Lainie.
“I can get a lot of studying done,” Lainie said, as if to confirm that her roommate’s absence was to her liking anyway.
“Would you mind if we closed the door?”
Lainie nodded. I closed the door, sat down on the roommate’s bed, and took in the small room. There was little evidence that anyone other than Lainie lived here. She picked up on my examination of the room.
“She’s really not here a lot. She likes to be with her boyfriend most.” Lainie shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “So what do you want to talk with me about? I already told everything to the police.”
“I know. I work with Detective Pasquis, and this case really puzzles us. I just wanted to review everything with you again. You were her best friend, right?”
“I guess so. We met during summer orientation here and liked each other immediately. If we could have arranged it, we would have roomed together this semester, but we already were assigned roommates by the college. She didn’t have a lot of friends, not that people didn’t like her. She was like me, I guess. She took school seriously and studied a lot. We had some classes together so we studied together for tests for those. Otherwise, I like to be here working, and she liked the library. It’s funny but we hit it off immediately even though we’re both real shy.” She hesitated to regain her composure. “I mean, she was shy and I am shy.”
“What about her roommate? Were they pretty good friends?”
“These are smoke-free residence halls, you know, but her roommate was always sneaking cigarettes in the room. It drove Marie crazy. She couldn’t stand the smell.”
“So I guess they didn’t see eye-to-eye on that one, right?”
“They didn’t see eye-to-eye on much. We were talking about getting a room together this coming semester, maybe, but…”
“Something happen? I mean, did you decide not to for some reason?”
“She seemed to want to for a while, and then she said she’d prefer to have a single. She said she was worried about her grades. That she needed to spend more time studying, and if we shared a room, she might be distracted.”
“But you don’t think that was the reason, do you?”
“I don’t know. Her grades were great. She really never had any problems in her classes. I guess she decided she didn’t want me around or something.” Lainie looked hurt and confused. “I thought she really liked me.”
“I’m sure she did. Maybe she thought rooming together would ruin your friendship. That’s a lot of strain, living in the same room.”
Lainie seemed to brighten at this suggestion. “Yeah, maybe. Anyway it’s kind of selfish of me to be worrying about myself. Marie is gone.” Tears welled in her eyes and she grabbed a handful of tissues.
I left the bed and crossed the room to put my arm around her.
“Marie had a wonderful friend in you. You must miss her very much. Maybe you’d like to tell me a little about her.” I handed Lainie several more tissues.
“Well, she was a good student like I said. She was quiet and thoughtful. She gave me this stuffed bunny for my birthday.” Lainie picked up a pink-and-white rabbit from her bed and wrapped her arm around it, cuddling it to her like a baby. “And I gave her a tiny stuffed teddy bear on a key chain, for her car, you know. She was always giving me and others rides somewhere. She was so considerate, never forgot appointments, called if she was going to be late, but then…”
“Then what?”
“Only a short while into the semester, she started forgetting study dates with me. When I called her to remind her, she said she was working on several papers and she just forgot about our arrangements. That didn’t sound like her. I thought she seemed distracted. That’s when I began to wonder if she didn’t like me anymore, so I brought up our rooming together in the spring. She said it might not be a good idea, that she needed to get a single. It bothered me a lot. I decided to try and talk with her again. She told her roommate she was going to the library to study as usual, so I went looking for her there. I couldn’t find her that night, or any of the other nights I went to the library to look for her. I guess she found someplace else to study.”
“You told Detective Pasquis she didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“She said the guys here were not serious enough about the future for her. All they wanted to do was party and drink. She was right about a lot of them.”
“And she wasn’t seeing anyone recently?”
“Not that I know of, but, you know, when I couldn’t find her at the library those nights I began to wonder. The next week she was back at the library as usual. When I asked about her absence, she said she was working in the language lab that last week, but I was at the lab several times and never saw her. She was lying to me, but I didn’t think it was any of my business. I kind of forgot about the whole thing because we started studying together again off and on, just not as often as before.”
“She never mentioned any guy?”
“No, and I think she would have told me. I thought we got pretty close even though we hadn’t known each other very long.”
“Where did she spend her freshman year?”
“Some private college over on the Hudson River. I can’t remember the name of it.”
I considered all of this for a moment and then said, “Well, thanks for the information. I may get back to you again if you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s okay, and thanks for being so understanding.” She again reached for a tissue only to find the box empty. I reached into my purse and extracted a pocket-size tissue packet and handed it to her.
“Plenty of liquids and sleep for that cold.” On my way to the door, I paused to look more closely at a photo I noticed on the desk near the door. It showed two young women, arms around each other, broad grins on their faces. One was obviously Lainie. Without the cold and in robust health, her skin was flawless and her brown eyes twinkled. The other woman had an abundance of dark hair and startlingly blue eyes.
“That was taken the beginning of this semester at the all-college picnic. Marie was really beautiful.”
“You’re both beautiful,” I said. “And it’s clear from the picture that you were really close. Good times. It’s important to remember good times.” Lainie nodded in agreement as I walked out the door and into the hallway.
I punched the Down button and waited for the groaning elevator to make its way back up from the ground floor to the fourth floor, and then finally deposit me with a bang in the lobby. Next time I visited a residence hall, I would take the stairs. Those elevators were not only slow, but the noises emanating from them made me worry I needed to lose weight or risk a plunge to the basement.
I walked out into the cold night, sadness over the loss of such a beautiful and bright young woman once again enveloping me. The wind picked up, and I could see no stars or moon. We were in for another storm. As I headed for the SUV, a small car without its lights on turned into the lot and headed toward me. Damn idiot. He had his lights off. How could he see anything with the wind blowing all this piled up snow all over the place? The car appeared to speed up as it neared. I yelled, but knew there was little chance the driver would hear me. Momentarily frozen to the spot, I realized that the car was not going to slow down or swerve to miss me. I threw myself out of the
way just as the front bumper impacted with my left ankle. The car kept going. I lay on the frozen ground watching the taillights retreat down the row of parked cars.
Chapter 15
At the end of the line of parked cars, the car that had just missed me stopped. The driver got out and ran back toward me.
“Get an ambulance, you damn fool. I think you broke my ankle.”
I looked up into a face covered with a ski mask, the eyes merely dark holes in the dim light of the parking lot.
“You’d better hope that it’s only your ankle that’s broken. In the future, it might be your neck. Stop snooping around, Dr. Murphy. As you can see, it’s not very healthy for you.” With that, the man ran to his car and sped off. Stunned by his words, and my ankle throbbing with pain, I lay there for a few moments, hoping that the physical damage to my foot was not as extreme as the emotional impact of the man’s warning.
Car lights from a vehicle turning into the lot shined into my eyes. Oh no. He’s come back for me. I began to drag myself into the space between the parked cars. This time he had his lights on to get a better shot at me. The car came to a halt at the point I entered the row of cars. I saw a booted foot step from the driver’s side. A flashlight searched the ground, its beam fixing on me as I attempted to roll under the nearest car.
“You drunk, ma’am?” said the individual behind the light.
“Get that light out of my eyes.” I recognized the distinctively southern drawl of Officer Rawlins, Campus Security’s newest hire and one of my former students.
“Dr. Murphy, ma’am.” The officer tipped his hat to me. “What are you doing here?”
“Someone just ran me down, then threatened my life.”
“Don’t you mean ‘someone ran me down threatening my life’?”
“I do not. I mean someone ran me down, then threatened my life. Could you call the EMTs? I think there’s something seriously wrong with my ankle, broken maybe.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am. Can I help you get up first, ma’am? Would you like to sit in the car, ma’am?”
“Rawlins, I could die here by the time you finish with all those ma’ams. Call the EMTs and then call Detective Pasquis with the local police. And please don’t say ‘yes, ma’am’.”
“Yes, mmmmmm, ah, Dr. Murphy. Let me help you up first and get you into the warmth of the car.”
As I listened to Rawlins summoning aid, I examined my ankle in the dim light of the car. No bones were poking out anywhere they weren’t supposed to, but the ankle was taking on a rainbow of colors and its size was growing to proportions larger than the top of my leg. The EMTs arrived and announced that the ankle appeared to be only badly bruised, but that I had better be transported to the hospital.
“Tell Detective Pasquis where they’re taking me,” I said to Officer Rawlins as they loaded me into the ambulance.
Several hours later when a doctor at the hospital finally saw me, I was poked, prodded, X-rayed several times and referred to with the usual hospital “we.” I was told “we” were going home. The doctor confirmed the EMTs’ diagnosis. The ankle was badly bruised, but not broken. I was to ice it—I could stick it outside in a snow bank I thought and save the ice cubes in my freezer for a drink—and stay off of it for a few days.
“Some diagnosis, doc,” I said. “The EMTs already told me all that. What do I need you for?”
He ignored my surly question. “Don’t drink on those painkillers I gave you.” Despite his warning, I could tell by the look on his face he didn’t believe there was much hope I would follow his instructions. Der walked in on the end of my conference with the doctor.
An orderly arrived and wheeled me out of the hospital.
“Well, ‘we’ certainly have enjoyed our stay here. Thanks.” I struggled out of the chair curbside. “And where have you been all night?” I said to Der.
“Now do you want a ride home or do you want to take this wheelchair?”
“Fine. I’ll be good now, for a while, at least.” I proceeded to tell him about my escapade with the hit-and-run driver. I finished with, “Let’s stop at my office. There’s something on my answering machine you’ll want to hear.”
After I played Ryan’s message, Der gave me a ride to my car still parked in the residence hall parking lot.
“We’ve got a lot of footwork to do now, no pun intended.” He eyed my swollen ankle. “The search warrant for the frat office, tracking down the English Department member who wrote the stories, finding Ryan’s friend, and…”
“And,” I said, “finding Marie Becca’s ex-boyfriend.”
“She didn’t have a boyfriend. I explored that with both her roommate and her friend, Lainie. There’s nothing there.”
“Oh, but I think there is. The reason I was in this parking lot being run over was because I paid a visit to Lainie, and we had a long talk. One week earlier this semester, Marie was not where she said she would be. She broke her routine, and she told her best friend she was going to get a single for next semester. It sounded to me as if she was off seeing someone and that she planned to go on seeing someone but didn’t want anyone to know who. She was hiding something.”
“Why didn’t Lainie mention any of this to me when I talked with her?” Der just hated it when I got more information out a source than he did. But then that was why he had me help him on campus, wasn’t it?
“There was no boyfriend Lainie could identify, just a lot of suspicion, which was later forgotten when their friendship got back to normal.” I paused as we rolled this one around in our heads. “Did you know Marie transferred here from another college?” I said.
“You think that’s important somehow. Right?”
“Maybe. Whoever she was seeing for that brief time, she wanted to keep his identity a secret, and she also didn’t want her roommate and best friend to know she was seeing anyone. Maybe it was an old boyfriend from the other college. I’ll find out what college it was and see if I have any contacts there. I can also snoop around for the ghostwriter in the English Department and find out who Ryan left his stuff with. What are you going to do?”
“You’re supposed to stay off that foot. So any snooping will be by phone. Describe the guy who hit you tonight again.”
“There’s nothing to describe. I never saw his face, and I didn’t get a good look at the car. The lights weren’t on, and, when he braked, he was too far away for me to read his license plate.” I shivered a little despite the warmth from the car’s heater.
“I should just tell you to back off this case given that threat,” Der said.
“You can’t do that. You need me.”
“No one needs you, Murph. You’re like the plague, spreading death and destruction wherever you go.” Der then seemed to notice that I was looking quite hurt by his words.
“I’m sorry.” He patted my hand to take the sting out of his words. “I was just kidding about you being like the plague. You’re more like a bad case of the measles.”
“Well, you’re not getting rid of me by insulting me. I have a thick skin. I’m tough, as I proved tonight. But I do need to get home and ice this ankle, and some kind of painkiller is in order. Boy, it’s really beginning to throb.”
“I’ll follow you home. Sure you’re up to driving?”
“It’s my left ankle and I only need my right foot to drive this thing. And you don’t need to follow me home. I’m fine.”
“Don’t be foolish. Someone tried to run you down tonight and then very pointedly delivered what amounts to as a death threat. I’ll follow you home, and there’ll be a cruiser driving by your house every hour or so until we track this guy down.”
“You think it’s the killer, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes, and I think his attack on me tonight means we’re getting too close to the truth and to him.” I got out of the car and limped over to the SUV.
“Oh, shit!” I said. I pulled a sheet of paper off my windshield.
“A parking ticket, compliments of Officer Rawlins.” My additional comments, of which there were many, were unfit for the human ear.
*
The ankle was too painful to walk on, so I was forced to spend time at home, icing it, and sometimes taking a shot of scotch and elevating my foot, measures that took down the swelling and reduced the pain just as the emergency room doctor with the attitude and the adolescent skin assured me would happen. I threw out the painkillers preferring to keep my head clear for working on my manuscript, now long overdue as usual, and making phone calls for the case. My students could struggle along without me for several days. I needed only to call in reading assignments for the secretary to give to the classes.
Two concerns dominated my thinking. Foremost was tracking down the leads in the case. The other, almost equally important to me, was whether I would be able to drive to Canada any time soon to see Guy as we planned before the ankle was damaged. Driving on short runs to town and back encouraged the ankle to swell, producing significant pain. A long trip of several hours was out of the question. I was scheduled for an appointment with the doctor Friday morning and would know then when I could resume normal activity. Meantime, I focused on making progress on the case.
Calls to the Registrar’s Office gave me the name of the college Marie Becca attended in her freshman year, Barnett College, south of Beacon on the Hudson River. I knew a member of the faculty there and immediately put in a call to her. Emily Dobbs, a professor in anthropology at Barnett, and I served for several years on a statewide committee set up by the governor to address women’s issues in higher education. Our contact had been sporadic since then.
Failure is Fatal Page 13
