by Glen Ebisch
“She looked very dead,” he said, hoping the comment wouldn’t be considered as absurd as it sounded.
“The preliminary medical examination estimates that she had been dead eighteen to twenty-four hours before you found her.”
“She died yesterday afternoon. Why didn’t anyone find her body sooner than that?”
“Apparently no one used the lab in that period of time. The lights were out and security doesn’t go through each room. They just go up and down the halls.”
“How did she die?”
“Shot through the heart, just like Sylvia Underwood.”
“So probably the same killer.”
“Like I’ve said before Charles, I think it’s unlikely that we have multiple murderers using the same method in a place the size of Opalsville. What were you doing in the lab?”
“I went there to talk to Gould because I thought she was holding back the last time I questioned her.” The bland look the Lieutenant gave him provoked him to add. “You thought the same thing after questioning her.”
“Yes, I did. You should have mentioned your doubts to me the last time we talked, and I would have spoken to her again. I’d have been more likely to get more information out of her than you would have.”
“I only thought of it this morning. By then she was already dead.”
Charles sat there, knowing he looked sullen. But he didn’t think he deserved to be accused of doing something wrong, and he was disappointed that once again the killer had been a step ahead of him.
The Lieutenant’s face brightened. “I can actually think of a way your interest in this investigation can help me. I have Jessica Rhyser in a room down the hall. It might be helpful if you could talk to her with me.”
“You want me to sit in on an interview?” Charles said, feeling his interest rise.
“You know her and have generally the same work background. You also found the body. She may be more open to talking to you. You can take the lead.”
Charles agreed and the Lieutenant led him down the hall. When he entered the interview room, he immediately noticed that Jessica’s face was swollen and her eyes red as if she had been crying.
“I’m sorry about Deborah’s death. I know the two of you were good friends,” Charles said.
Jessica nodded. “I just don’t understand why anyone would do this to her.”
Charles cleared his throat and said slowly, “We think it may have something to do with Garrison Underwood’s death.”
“Deborah hardly knew Underwood. She had him for a semester of English, but that’s all the contact they had. I knew more about him than she did.” She paused and her eyes widened. “Do you think the same killer is after me?”
“We don’t know,” the Lieutenant said. “We’ll assign a police officer to keep an eye on you just in case. When I talked to Deborah, I got the impression that she might have known more about Underwood than she was telling me. Do you think that’s possible?”
The woman shook her head. “I’m certain she told me everything about him that she knew. We used to talk about it a lot and laugh over it. We would even play a game where we would try to guess what male faculty member at Opal College was most likely to get into the same kind of trouble.”
“I hope my name never came up,” Charles said.
Jessica smiled faintly. “It was never mentioned.”
Charles didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.
“Was there anything unusual or mysterious that she said to you recently?” Charles asked.
Jessica paused, then she slowly nodded. “The other day, right after Underwood was killed, we had lunch together. We were speculating over who might have wanted to murder him.” She looked directly at Charles. “Your name did come up then.”
“I’m sure.”
“Not that we really thought you’d done it.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Anyway, Deborah got real quiet, and then she said that there was one person who might have had more reason than most.”
“Did she tell you who it was?” asked the Lieutenant.
Jessica shook her head. “I asked, but she said she’d promised the person that she wouldn’t tell. All she would say is that it was someone she had met at Yale.”
“Is it someone who teaches here?” Charles asked.
“I asked her that, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“Was there anything she said that might have given you a hint as to the person’s identity?” the Lieutenant pressed.
“When Deborah told me that she had promised this person not to tell, she said, ‘She’d be very disappointed in me if I broke my promise.’ So I figured it was a woman.”
When it was clear that Jessica Rhyser knew nothing more, the Lieutenant thanked her and let her go. Then she sat back down at the interview table and stared at Charles.
“Any new ideas?” she asked.
“Just that the list is narrowing down. Even if they didn’t have solid alibis, which they do, we can eliminate Ernest Ritter and Greg Wasserman.”
“More importantly, we can also eliminate Nora Chapman. It sounds like this mystery person was someone Deborah had known for a while, and I doubt she ever even met Nora.”
“So we have no suspects left except for this mystery woman.”
“Who appears to go back to Underwood’s days at Yale like you suspected all along. That was a good hunch.”
Pleased by Thorndike’s compliment, Charles tried to look modest.
“I could easily have been wrong,” he said.
“Now all we have to do is discover her identity. I take it you haven’t heard anything from your friend down at Yale.”
“He’s still working on it.”
“Maybe I should contact the New Haven police department and see if one of their detectives would accompany me to Yale. If I interviewed their English faculty myself, I might be able to find out something sooner.”
“Possibly. But it’s summer. Probably their faculty is spread all over the world, either relaxing or doing scholarly things. You might only get to interview a small fraction of them.”
“It only takes the right one. How many female members do you have in the English Department at Opal?”
“If you count the part-timers probably five or six.”
“And how many of them are the right age to have been at Yale a decade ago.”
Charles thought for a long moment. “Probably four.”
“And as far as you know, none of them went to Yale.”
He shook his head.
“If Yale doesn’t pan out, I’ll start by interviewing them. Four is a manageable number.”
“But it could be someone from another department. I doubt that Underwood confined his attentions to women in one discipline.”
The Lieutenant frowned. “We have to begin somewhere. If those four don’t work out, we’ll expand our parameters to include the whole female faculty of the right age. This person went to Yale for a while, and you can’t hide your academic background forever.”
Charles nodded, but he was thinking about the Ukrainian physics professor who had hidden his lack of a PhD for over ten years. The College had only checked his credentials after someone at a conference remarked to another member of the Opal physics department that Georg had never finished his dissertation. Georg had quickly been banished back to the Ukraine. Charles had always felt sorry for him because the man had a reputation as an excellent teacher.
The Lieutenant stood up. “Keep after your contact at Yale. That may be our big break. And be careful, especially if you notice any women acting strangely around you.”
“Women don’t usually pay much attention to me.”
“What about Karen Melrose?” Thorndike said with a grin.
Charles smiled back. “She’s not young enough to be the killer, and I doubt she’s been to Yale.”
“Did you ever ask her about her education?”
Charles realized with surprise that h
e never had. He wondered if it was due to an assumption that she had never been to college or at least not to a very good one. She had never mentioned anything about her past aside from being a widow and being the mother of two. And he had never tried to go beyond that. Had he been fooling himself all these years into thinking that he was a great democrat, able to relate to people from all walks of life, while in reality he was as much of an elitist as his father? Did he only pay real attention to people who had a similar education to his own?
He promised himself that if he ever went out again, he’d ask the woman more questions about herself.
“So we’ll leave it at that for now, Charles,” the Lieutenant said, stepping aside to let him precede her out the door. When they reached the lobby she put her hand on his arm. The warmth of her hand felt soothing and intimate. “Stay in touch, Charles.”
He remembered that it was a direct reversal of their conversation the last time they had parted.
“Don’t worry, I will,” he promised.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After driving home, Charles had supper, and then went to sit in his study. He sat behind his desk where he had spent so much time remembering the past and imagining what the future might have been in the years since Barbara’s death. He tried to slip back into that frame of mind, so comfortable in its darkness and despondency, like a worn shoe where every rub and pinch had a sort of fond familiarity. But he found that his mind wouldn’t go there. It stubbornly kept returning to the question of who had killed Underwood. Would it remain unsolved just like the other great mystery of his life? What had put Barbara on the road so late on that snowy night? Would these two unanswered questions nag him into his old age, preoccupying his thoughts whenever he wasn’t caught up in the mundane decisions of life?
He made an effort to pull himself back from the brink of hopelessness. The mystery of who killed Underwood was still likely to be solved. Since it was probably someone at the College, it would be a person he knew. Charles reviewed in his mind all the female faculty of the proper age, but couldn’t see any of them as being capable of killing three people. Of course, he reminded himself, the Lieutenant would doubtlessly warn him that appearances sometimes tell you nothing. Still, he wondered, perhaps the woman was someone Deborah had known from off campus. Even in Opalsville, the division between town and gown wasn’t a hermetic seal. And it was always possible that someone who had gone to Yale had located in the town and never had any direct connection with the College. Especially in these days of Internet access, a bright ivy-league grad might live in Opalsville and be able to work on a challenging job somewhere else in the world.
Frustrated by his inability to gain any traction in solving this mystery, Charles picked up his landline phone and called Adam Sussman, intending to urge him to get all the information possible at his dinner tonight. Both Adam’s office phone and cell took Charles to voice mail. He chose not to leave a message, not wanting to take on the role of the retired professor who expected others to devote all their time to his hobbyhorse.
He could imagine Adam, even now, free of the telephone, beavering away on some project that would bring him academic fame and tenure. Charles reflected on that time in his life. All the energy he had devoted to his work while young had provided his family with a comfortable, satisfying life, and he freely admitted to having enjoyed the fame he had gained even if it was in a rather circumscribed arena. He could still understand Adam’s motivation, but it was no longer there for him, at least not in the world of scholarship. The most alive he had felt since his wife’s death had been in the days since the murder of Underwood. Perhaps it was shucking off the old job that had long ago outlived its ability to inspire, but perhaps more importantly had been the desire to solve a new mystery—one that involved life and death rather than scholarly details.
Deciding that he had engaged in enough introspection for one afternoon, he got up from his desk and went into the living room. He sat in his easy chair and picked up the latest novel he was working on. But in a few moments, he was asleep.
The next morning, after his run and breakfast, he spent an hour cleaning the downstairs of the house. He usually did the downstairs twice a week and the upstairs once a week on a schedule that he had adhered to since Barbara’s death. But since his sudden retirement, he hadn’t touched the place. The recent changes in his life seemed to have shattered all the old routines. He wondered whether, if the Underwood murder were solved, he would quickly return to his previous patterns. He rather hoped not. His old way of life simply would not be enough to sustain him now that he was no longer working, and he would need more than the soup kitchen to keep him busy.
Thinking of the soup kitchen, he realized that he had promised Nancy that he would work every day. With more than a little dread, he recalled the almost public shunning he had experienced the last time he was there. He could only hope that as Karen recovered and her return to good health became known, her friends would be a bit less harsh in their judgment of him.
Finishing up his chores, he got in the car and drove his now normal secured route to the soup kitchen. When he got out of his car, a woman whose name he didn’t remember was carrying garbage out to the dumpster. Not expecting any recognition, he looked away and was surprised when she called out his name and waved.
Once he was down in the cellar, several other women unexpectedly smiled at him. Those who’d had nothing but frowns for him yesterday seemed happy to see him. It wasn’t long before he found out why. Sitting in the middle of the work area in a large chair that looked like a small throne, sat Karen. Although her injured arm was still in a sling, she used her other arm to gesture enthusiastically to those who were gathered around her. Charles glanced across the room looking for John, so they could get started setting up the tables, but he was nowhere in sight. Before he could search for him, he heard Karen call his name. As he walked toward her the other women disappeared, returning to their jobs, as if to give them a moment of privacy.
“It’s good to see you looking so well,” Charles said.
“I’m on pain medication up to the gills,” Karen whispered. “But don’t worry it’s only over-the-counter stuff,” she said, seeing Charles’ worried expression. “And I think it hurts a little less every day.”
“But should you be here?”
Karen nodded firmly. “I talked to Rachel last night, and I finally got her to understand that what happened to me really wasn’t your fault. Then she told me how the other people had been treating you, and I realized that the only way to set things right was for me to come here and talk to them personally. I think things will be all right for you here now.”
“Thanks, Karen, I really appreciate it. If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“I’ll be just fine between my family and my friends, and I meant what I said yesterday about our relationship,” she said, giving Charles a stern look. “Nothing more than friends.”
Putting a disappointed expression on his face, he nodded.
“But once I’m my feet so to speak, we can get back to working next to each other again.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“There you are,” a voice said, and John clapped him on the back like they were old friends. “No more time for talking. We have to get these tables set up.”
A bit stunned by the turnaround in things, Charles went about doing his tasks, wondering how Karen could possibly have changed people’s minds so quickly. It wasn’t until he went into the kitchen towards the end of the meal where Rachel, as usual, was working on a giant pot, that he understood.
Rachel motioned him over.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Karen is telling people that you tried to throw yourself between her and the bullet the other night. That what you did probably saved her life.”
“That isn’t true.”
“I know that. I was there. But Karen has built up this whole romantic version of events where you had tears in your eyes as you gently
placed her down on the ground and told her that you loved her.”
“That didn’t exactly happen either.”
Rachel let out a disgusted puff of air to blow some hair off of her forehead.
“Of course it didn’t. But the least you can do is go along with it. Karen needs to remember things this way in order to carry on, so we aren’t going to disabuse her. Got it?”
Charles looked down at the diminutive woman who was staring up at him so fiercely.
“Got it,” he replied.
“Good. Things will go easier on you this way, too. But remember I know the truth, and I think you were a heel.”
Charles still thought that judgment was a bit harsh, but decided not to argue the point. He nodded, then turned and left the kitchen.
When he got back to the serving area a crowd of women were following Karen outside as she slowly walked across the parking lot to a waiting car. Charles joined them, and quickly found himself at the front of the procession next to Karen. As they reached the car, he saw that her son was on the driver’s side. He gave Charles a look that said he would still like to have his day in court. Ignoring him, Charles gallantly opened the passenger door for Karen, and fussed rather ineffectually as she managed to get into the seat with the use of only one arm. She leaned out the window and addressed those gathered.
“I should be back to working with you all in a couple of weeks if the healing goes as expected. Please come to visit me if you get a chance, I’d like to know what’s going on.” She gave the crowd a final gracious wave as her son slowly pulled away.
After the meal was served, Charles walked back to his car thinking about how stories were always subject to a variety of interpretations. There were some theorists that would even argue that there were only interpretations and no such thing as truth. Charles had always felt that view was wrong and that there was a standard of truth by which various versions could be measured. He was sure that Karen’s story was quite far from the facts, even though it made her happy. He also thought, partially for his own peace of mind, that Rachel’s understanding of what happened was also not quite accurate. But where did you turn for the truth, then? Was he simply going to say by fiat that his account of events was true for him and so should be true for everyone? With all these thoughts whirling around in his head, he got in his car and drove toward the College.
