Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  Clank!

  I turned to see one of my tote bags knocked over, my metal T-square hitting the pavement. Small white atoms rolled out of the bag and into the gutter. I worried momentarily about the storm drain, but figured the tiny balls wouldn’t be the worst of the contaminants headed that way on an average day.

  “Let me help you with that.” A deep, unfamiliar voice. I started at the sound, seeming to come from nowhere, yet so close that I bumped into him—a man I didn’t know—when I turned around. I gasped, a wave of fear coursing through my body. I looked around at the street, not exactly deserted, but no one within range of my voice, either. He leaned into me. An unwashed smell attacked my nostrils. Perspiration, cigarette smoke, foul breath. A homeless person? No. In the next moment I knew who he was, though I’d never met him.

  Wayne Gallen.

  He’d used surprise to his advantage and taken my keys from me, knocking over more of my bags in the process. He pressed himself against me, so that my back was arched against the hood of the Cadillac, my knees unnaturally bent. Pain shot through my lower body.

  “Nice wheels, Aunt G,” he said. My eyes widened. “Oh, yes, MC and I used to talk a lot, back in Houston. She sure is crazy about you.”

  I’d always thought a Southern drawl would sound soothing, even sweet. Not this one, however. His voice was strident, threatening, on the edge of malice. I tried to breathe, to sound normal. Not easy with my hips and knees at the wrong angle to each other. But even through the pain, I thought, Just what he did with MC—this man has no imagination.

  “Mr … . Gallen, is it?”

  He eased his upper torso away, pinning me, knees to knees, and tipped his filthy cap. “Yes, ma’am. Wayne Gallen himself. Listen, I need to talk to you, but let’s get inside where it’s private.”

  What is this? I wondered. A new kind of stalker? The Unwanted Passenger Stalker? I also wondered why a certain inappropriate flipness always accompanied the moments of crisis in my life.

  “My husband is a policeman,” I said, “and he’s expecting—”

  Wayne smiled, a crooked grin, but not at a pleasant angle as Matt’s skewed smile was. Wayne’s was more like a sneer. He shook his finger at me in mock reprimand. “You are not married, Aunt G. Don’t go lying now, or neither me nor MC will be able to trust you.”

  Well, we’re practically married, I thought. Maybe we should tie the knot, just for situations like this.

  A few cars passed us, but I was parked on the left side of a one-way street, with the driver’s side next to the sidewalk, unable to signal anyone. Besides, our relative positions against the car probably led people to think they were witnessing a romantic interlude. No help needed.

  Wayne held me with one hand, inserted the key in the door with the other. I made no attempt to get away, knowing he was stronger and faster than I. Most people were. He must have realized I wasn’t about to bolt, because he relaxed his hold a bit. He ushered me into the backseat of my car, not pushing hard, almost as if he were my chauffeur having a bad night.

  “I need you to talk to MC,” he said, settling himself into the backseat beside me. “I know she trusts you. You need to explain, A, that she’s in a lot of danger here, and B, that she needs to come away with me. It’s the only solution.”

  Half of me was scared to death, trying to plot a getaway. The other half was happy to have located Wayne Gallen, or vice versa. I wished I had a copy of the PFA the police couldn’t seem to issue in the last forty-eight hours. It was small consolation that the order was in effect whether the respondent, in legalese, knew it or not.

  He didn’t really hurt MC, I reminded myself. Maybe I can get some information out of him.

  “What kind of danger is MC in?” I asked him, just an interested Aunt G.

  Wayne lit a cigarette from a new package. Evidently the surgeon general’s message hadn’t reached Texas. He carefully removed the red cellophane strip from around the top and tucked it into his jacket pocket. A neat, environmentally conscious captor, despite his lack of grooming. I thought about bolting while he focused on keeping his thin, handlebar mustache from going up in flames from his lighter. “My boss won’t like it if I tell you, believe me.”

  Some magic links connected in my brain, and I thought of my session with MC and her emails. I tried to remember the sender. Sampson? No, that was Carol Sampson, an editor I knew at BUL in Berkeley. Stinson? No, that was the beach in Northern California. Swanson? Early TV dinners. Then it came.

  “You mean Dr. Simpson?” I asked. Wayne squinted and thrust his chin forward. I knew I’d hit it right.

  “Maybe,” Wayne said, drawing on his cigarette. I coughed, unused to being so close to a smoker.

  “What is it that Dr. Simpson thinks MC knows, Wayne? May I call you Wayne?” Get cozy, something I learned from the few times I’d watched crime dramas on television. Matt outlawed them in his presence, however, and I hadn’t really missed them.

  I’d calmed myself considerably now that Wayne had distanced himself from me physically and mentally. I couldn’t help thinking of how MC had been in this same situation not long ago. Wayne was no longer touching me, and his concentration seemed to be on his cigarette, and on how or whether to answer me. He breathed heavily. More secondhand smoke for me and my Cadillac, a first in its lifetime.

  “She got an email with some information that no one except me was supposed to get. See, there’s stuff going on with the money and all. Some creative diverting of funds, you might say.”

  Never mind escaping; I couldn’t miss this. “Diverting of research funds? So Lorna Frederick’s annual reports don’t tell the whole story?”

  Wayne checked me out again, with the same squint and chin thrust. I’d hit it again, apparently, by guessing that Lorna was involved, and that some clues might be in the reports Andrea had dug out for me. I wished I’d gotten to read them, but they were still in my briefcase, my retirement being a lot busier than my regular full-time working life had been. I wondered if Lorna could be reinterviewed based on Wayne’s weird expression.

  Wayne opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, his eyes widening as he looked over my right shoulder toward the street. I turned to see what caught his attention. A car had pulled up next to mine. The young male driver casually glanced our way. In fact, his sedan was the last of a whole line of cars piled up for a red light. My captor and I were suddenly in the middle of a traffic jam. I’d heard bells chime five o’clock a few minutes before, possibly from the nearby Immaculate Conception Church, and guessed that we were seeing a brief local tie-up from retail businesses or offices closing for the day.

  This new opportunity for me to summon help dawned on both of us at the same time. Wayne’s response was to grab the door handle and move his feet to leave the car. Mine, strangely, was to reach out, as if to hold him back, my need for information dwarfing my initial fears for my safety.

  “Let’s talk this out, Wayne,” I said. “If I know more about what MC should be worried about, I might be able to—”

  He shook his head and spoke around his cigarette. “I don’t think so. Just talk some sense into her,” he said. He slammed the door and ran in the direction of the bushes that lined the sidewalk.

  I scrambled across the seat and opened the door again, annoyed that he’d rushed off without giving me any satisfying information. What’s wrong with me? I wondered. I should have been happy to be alive, needing only a painkiller for my backache and air freshener for my car. Maybe I was a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, bonding with my hostage-taker.

  I got out of my car, switched on my flashlight, and started toward the bushes Wayne had ducked into. On the other side was a small, dirt parking lot with a clear view to a building on the next street, but Wayne was nowhere in sight. I let out a heavy sigh and returned to my car to gather up the spilled contents of my totes. I felt I’d been close to something important, something that would have shed light on MC’s predicament.

  Diversion of researc
h funds. Something missing from the annual reports. That was the phrase Wayne had responded to. I needed to commit it to memory, to keep in mind for when I was safe at home examining the reports Andrea had given me.

  With the next traffic signal cycle, the street became nearly deserted again. I thought I should leave in case Wayne came back, but I continued to pick up my faux atoms, as if three dollars’ worth of Styrofoam were important enough to risk being manhandled again.

  Between two pretend carbon atoms I saw something wrinkled and shiny enough to catch the headlights of a passing car. I picked it up, gingerly, the way Jean had fingered the soap in the guest room. An empty cigarette package, most likely Wayne’s, since he’d opened a new one after he entered my car. I spread open the crumpled package. Camels. Who smoked Camels these days?

  While I was bent over, I played the light around the area. Maybe Wayne left a trail of butts and I could find out where he’s staying. Fairy-tale reasoning. I thought of Hansel and Gretel, though I’d never liked such stories as a child. Like the Bible stories Sister Pauline told us, they all failed my logic test. “Why didn’t the glass slipper disappear at midnight, too, like her beautiful new clothes?” I’d asked the lady in the library at the Saturday morning reading session.

  I went back to the edge of the bushes, this time looking at the ground. A few steps in I found a cigarette butt, a Camel, next to tire tracks that were too narrow for a motorcycle and too wide for the kind of bike I had as a kid. Some in-between off-road bike, I figured. The on-and-off rainy weather made the perfect mold for the tracks and I could make out the design in some detail.

  I followed the bike tracks to the back of the lot, which ended at the asphalt driveway of an office building. Along the way, wherever the indentation seemed deeper, there were one or two Camel butts alongside it, as if Wayne had made his way across the lot riding, lighting up, waiting, then repeating the cycle. I shuddered at the image of Wayne Gallen sitting on his bike, enjoying a smoke while lying in wait for me. I shuddered again thinking of MC as the object of his stakeout. I realized the whole episode in my car had lasted fewer than ten minutes, but that’s long enough when you know you’ve lost control of your life.

  I made my way back to my car, beaming my flashlight back and forth in front of me, collecting cigarette butts. Overkill, probably, but why not? I gathered three butts into a tissue and put them in my pocket. I foresaw more midnight activity at our washer/dryer.

  At least now I knew how Wayne was getting around. No rental car or local taxis, all of which had been checked by the police. Wayne was riding a bike. Now the police could carry Wayne’s photo to bike shops and possibly get an address or phone number. The idea that I’d come away from my frightening ambush with some information excited me. This time I didn’t rule out the possibility that Matt had come up with it already, as with the Lorna Frederick connection. As long as we got that man off the street.

  I felt a drop. Rain would be nice, I thought, to wash away the presence of Wayne Gallen around my car. Then I looked at the bike track at my feet and got it in my head that the tire treads might also be helpful, though I didn’t have time to figure out why. I realized they would soon be washed away if I didn’t preserve them. Not that I carry plaster of Paris around in my trunk. But I did have some supplies. Think, I told myself as the raindrops came faster.

  I went back to my totes and pulled out some extra clear transparencies that I’d brought to class, to use in real time with the overhead projector. I peeled one off the stack, grabbed a marker, and went to the nearest track with good definition. I made a little pile of rocks and propped my flashlight on it. By now my knit suit was wet and dirty, my shoes caked with mud. Police work could ruin a good wardrobe, I thought, and it was a good thing I didn’t have one to begin with.

  It was pouring now, water filling the grooves of the track as well as the space between my collar and my neck. I rushed to make a trace of the pattern on the clear, stiff plastic, using a blue marker to follow the design. Straight line, zigzag, reverse zigzag, straight, curvy, reverse curvy, straight, and back to the zigzags. I lifted the transparency from the ground and held it near my flashlight. Nothing that would stand up in court, but I had the dimensions correct, and a good representation of the angles of the zigzags and the wavelengths of the curves.

  I held the transparency between my shirt and my jacket, both soaking wet, but some protection from the now-pelting rain as I walked back to my car. I found my keys on the floor of the backseat where Wayne had thrown them. I held them out the window to wash him off.

  If the remote got scrambled from the rain, I’d resort to Matt’s old-fashioned method of unlocking doors.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MC fished a couple of clean mugs and silverware out of the dishwasher. The smells of fresh coffee and the peppery Tex-Mex frittata brought back old memories, the good ones. She carried the mugs and forks to the small dining table between the kitchen and the living room, pleased she’d been able to find her favorite pale blue and white mats in her still mostly unpacked boxes of household goods.

  “Smells terrific,” Jake said, pouring coffee for them. He ran his finger down the side of a small ceramic vase holding the purple and white icicle pansies MC had picked from her mother’s yard yesterday. “I miss all your nice little touches.”

  MC smiled and sat across from him. He’d come by last evening, low-key and attentive, showing her his new, reformed self. He’d looked so great in a light denim shirt and the leather jacket she’d bought him last year—a cross between brown and red, a rusty, cowboy color, she thought. They’d laughed over the style, how it had no “Texas fringes.”

  “I haven’t even had a beer since Sunday,” he’d told her last night.

  He’d learned his lesson, he’d said. He’d go to therapy with her as she’d asked him to do in Houston. He’d do whatever it took to have her back in his life. Looking into his brown eyes, she really believed him.

  But this morning Jake seemed different, jumpy and preoccupied. He’d gone to the window and peeked out several times while he prepared the frittata. At one point he’d carried the mixing bowl with chilies, red peppers, and cheese to the window, stirring as he walked.

  She looked at him across the table, breathed the smell of warm tortillas. His face was tense. He’d drawn in his lower lip, ready to break some news. But what? After all this, was he dumping her? Not after last night, she thought. Maybe his talk at the expo didn’t go well. She decided not to ask, in case it was a sore spot.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him instead.

  He flexed his fingers, a tension-relieving gesture she’d seen often. “Nah, I’m just rehashing that Liverpool jump I didn’t make a couple of weeks ago.”

  The stadium jump over a small pool of water, she remembered. MC knew Jake was evading the truth, but she wasn’t going to push him. “You got a second-place ribbon though, right?”

  “Yeah. That has to do.”

  MC knew how important winning was to Jake Powers, the only son of L. Edward Powers of big oil fame. The limos in MC’s childhood carried grieving families to and from Holy Family Cemetery; the limos in Jake’s young life were his regular transportation to school and riding lessons, to the airport for trips to Paris and London. He’d told MC how hard it was for his father to accept Jake’s decision to be “just a scientist.” He was still on Jake’s case, nagging him to use his science simply as a stepping stone to taking over the company one day.

  “Want to hear a horse story?” Jake asked.

  “Sure,” MC said. She loved watching Jake and Spartan Q perform, and had often videotaped the shows, but she’d made a personal vow never to get up on a horse. Too scary.

  “Remember that old guy you met—Andy Hunter?”

  “The one who owns all those European horses?”

  “Right. He owns, maybe, ten Hannoverians. Well, he killed one of them for the insurance money. The horse was not performing to expectations, and these guys are ruthless. He
gave the horse an electric shock, which looks like a heart attack.” Jack used his butter knife to mime a stab in the heart. “Awful. The guy’s in jail, which is where people who hurt animals belong.”

  “How did they find out about it?”

  “Some kid who works for him was rolling around in the hay with his girlfriend and saw the whole thing.”

  Jake’s eyes darted to the window all during the story, and he’d hardly touched his frittata.

  “Jake, these horse stories are fascinating, but tell me what’s making you nervous.”

  He breathed heavily. “I’m not sure. But something’s up, MC, something illegal or immoral or … something. I have to do a little more investigating before I start pointing fingers.”

  MC put down her fork, which was filled with what would have been her first bite of potato and sour cream. “You must know more than that, Jake. And why do you keep looking out the window?”

  MC hadn’t told Jake about either of the Wayne Gallen incidents, not the knocking on her basement window and certainly not the near-attack in the parking lot. She figured Wayne had been served the restraining order by now, and it was likely that he’d have headed back to Texas rather than be embarrassed by police action again.

  Now she wondered if Jake’s nervousness had anything to do with whatever Wayne had warned her about. She thought about showing Jake the email from Alex Simpson.

  “I’ve had this creepy feeling that someone’s following me ever since I started looking into this,” Jake said.

  Now MC’s eyes darted toward the window. Was this all part of Wayne’s campaign of fear? Was he now harassing her boyfriend? “Have you by any chance seen Wayne Gallen around?” she asked.

  Jake started, frowned. “Don’t tell me Gallen followed you to Revere?” He banged the table with his fist, startling MC. “He implied as much to me a week or so ago, you know. Said he’d heard a certain Massachusetts girl was now single again.” He pounded the table again, setting the plates rattling, and MC worried that the old Jake Powers was making a comeback.