“Yes, Professor Gallagher loves to help the students.” If Ansel Benedict were trying to hide his dislike of the business professor, he was failing miserably. “He especially likes to help after class. He likely could, and would, and will.” He sighed in great dramatic form. “Just not here and not now.” He picked up the handset and pressed four numbers in rapid succession. “It’s Ansel. Eliza Doolittle is here to see you. Where shall I send her?” He paused for an answer. “I’ll relay the message.” He hung up. “William just left for the day. If you scurry away like a good little flower girl, you might catch him in the parking structure.”
It took a moment to realize in Ansel’s world, everyone was a character. I thanked the aspiring actor and left him to his pipe cleaning or his pistol firing or whatever scene he was about to work on next. As I retraced my steps to the front office, I glanced behind the desk. Eric was gone, and the door behind the office was ajar.
“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here?” There was no answer. For as active as the quad was in the afternoon, after six Canfield had all the hallmarks of a building evacuated for demolition.
I left the building. The blondes were where they’d been yesterday morning. I smiled in their direction, and two smiled back. I walked to the lot where I’d parked my car. It was parked next to a small, gray Fiat, and Professor Gallagher stood between them.
“Professor,” I called out as I approached. “I was just looking for you.”
“Not now,” he snapped. He put his hands on the roof of the car and leaned down, staring into the back. He yanked on the driver’s side door, but it was locked. He cursed. He straightened up and walked around the back of the Fiat to the passenger side. Whatever he saw there made him curse again.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“My car was broken into.” He pulled out his phone and called the campus police. After giving his name and number, he described the situation. “This is Professor Gallagher. I’m parked in Lot B. Yep. Same method. Sure. I’ll wait.” He hung up. “Third time this month.”
As I got closer, I could see inside the Fiat. The backseat was filled with notebooks, and loose papers were scattered about. “Did you lock it?” I asked.
“Of course, I locked it.” He gestured for me to join him outside the passenger-side door. I circled the back of the car and noticed a four-inch gap between the top of the door and the frame of the car. It was just about wide enough to feed a narrow hand through.
“How did that happen?”
“It was done with an entry airbag. Locksmiths carry them. It looks like a heavy duty balloon. You feed it, deflated, into the gap between the door and the car and pump it up. The pressure from the airbag forces the door to bend away from the car far enough so someone can reach in and unlock the door by hand.”
“But it doesn’t go back to normal after the airbag is deflated,” I guessed.
“Right. The damage is minimal if the airbag is used correctly, because as soon as the door is away from the frame, the car can be unlocked. This,” he pointed to his car, “was not used correctly. Now the door won’t close properly.”
My natural curiosity kicked in. I peered closer at the car. “Does insurance cover something like this?”
“I have a five-hundred-dollar deductible, and the part costs twelve hundred. The mechanic bent it back with his hands in under five minutes.”
“Then it’s an easy fix.”
“Not quite. Every time he bends it, the hinges weaken. Pretty soon they’ll break.”
A campus police officer arrived via golf cart. He was late twenties, dressed in a uniform of gray short-sleeved shirt, black pants, and baseball hat. The shirt had a patch on the sleeve that said Campus Security above Van Doren College. The same two lines of text were embossed on his shirt directly above the left breast pocket. His ID was clipped to the right. I didn’t know much about the qualifications required to become a campus police officer, but he didn’t appear to be armed.
The officer parked the golf cart several feet away from us and climbed out. He nodded at me and then approached the professor. The men discussed the situation: same MO as before, nothing seemed to be missing, an inconvenience at best. There was no reason to stay, but after months of having little of interest in my life, I felt a thrill at being this close to something eventful. I hovered and eavesdropped.
“Is anything missing?” the CP asked.
“Hard to say,” the professor answered. “I had the course files for night school back there along with last semester’s final projects and some case studies.”
“Looks to me like vandalism. Somebody wanted to mess with a professor, and your car was the target.” The CP looked at me. “Did your car get broken into too?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you still think this was random?” the professor asked the CP. “Three separate times?”
“We’ve seen things like this before.” The campus policeman didn’t seem overly concerned by the vandalism. “Could be someone wasn’t happy with his grade. Or could be a prank. Either way, you might want to start locking your files in your trunk.”
Professor Gallagher seemed unsatisfied by the theory. The campus policeman climbed back into his golf cart and drove off. It didn’t feel like the right time to engage the professor in a discussion of business, but it didn’t feel like the right time to hop in my car and drive off either.
“Can I give you a ride someplace?”
He was half inside the car, corralling errant papers together. He shoved a pile into a cardboard box, lifted it out, and set it on the macadam. “Help me move the files,” he said. He pulled his remote out and unlocked the trunk. I joined him, and we made swift work of the task. When we were done, he slammed the trunk closed. He rested one hand on the roof of the car and appeared to be out of breath.
A moment later, he got into the car. The engine started easily. He put the car in reverse and backed slowly out of his space. The passenger-side door swung open and knocked into my Alfa Romeo.
I tapped the roof of his Fiat and bent down. The door swung open. Gallagher reached across the car and pulled it shut from the inside. It failed to latch. I tried to slam it from the outside, and it just bounced against the frame. “You’ll have to secure it from the inside.”
“With what?”
I pulled the daisy-printed scarf from the handle of my backpack. “Use this,” I said. At his initial protest, I added, “I have more vintage scarves than you could possibly imagine.”
He took the scarf. I couldn’t help noticing that for all the assistance I provided, he hadn’t once said thank you. What at first had appeared to be his direct teaching style seemed less welcome now that we were out of the classroom.
I stepped away from our cars and checked the time on my phone. I might miss rush-hour traffic, but I was still going to be late. I turned my back on the professor and called my dinner companion.
“Allen,” Tex answered.
“It’s Madison,” I said.
Tex Allen was the captain of the Lakewood Police Department. We’d met under unusual circumstances, danced around an unexpected attraction for a few years, and eventually started up an unpublicized romance.
Growing anti-cop sentiment was his reason for keeping things quiet. Negative publicity from the lawsuit was mine. There was also the reality of starting a relationship in your fifties to contend with; two people, set in their ways, made for a questionable union.
After a particularly murky homicide investigation four months ago, Tex indicated he was ready to go public with the kind of grand gesture you found in romantic comedies. The ball was in my court. I was 100 percent interested and 85 percent emotionally available, though I kept that last part to myself. Once I figured out my business, I figured the final 15 percent would get on board.
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
“Is it an emergency?”
“No, just an inconvenience. I stayed behind to talk to a professor.” It didn’t seem
prudent to gossip about the vandalism while the professor was mere feet away, so I added, “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Can’t wait. It has to be more interesting than sensitivity training.”
I chuckled. At fifty years old, Tex and I were both being schooled.
I hung up the phone and turned back to check on the professor. His Fiat was directly behind my car, and the engine was running. I bent down to see if the scarf trick had worked, but what I saw instead was the professor slumped against the dash.
4
I ran to the driver’s side and yanked on the door handle. The door was locked. I knocked repeatedly, but Professor Gallagher didn’t respond. I ran around to the passenger-side door. My scarf trick had worked too well; the door didn’t budge.
I turned around in a full circle looking for help. “Is anyone here?” I called. My voice echoed off the cavernous parking structure. “Anyone?”
I tried the doors again and pounded my fists on the window. The professor slumped further, his head slipping to the side of the steering wheel. I had the number for campus police in my orientation package, but I’d left it sitting on my dining room table.
Not knowing the extent of the professor’s unconsciousness, I took immediate actions and called 911. After providing my name and contact information, I described the situation to the dispatch officer. “I’m in parking structure B next to the Canfield Building. One of the professors is locked inside his car, and he’s unconscious. He was fine a few minutes ago. I don’t know what happened.”
“I’ll dispatch officers. Stay on the line. Can you see inside the vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any evidence of drugs or a weapon?”
I bent down and peered into the passenger window. The center console was empty, and the glove box was closed.
“No,” I said. “Nothing. He’s slumped against the steering wheel. He backed the car out of his space and must have passed out. The car is still running but—”
She cut me off. “Have you checked the tailpipe?”
I moved to the back of the car. It was curious; the car was running, but no exhaust came out of the tailpipe. I bent at the waist and checked the pipe. Something had been jammed inside.
“The tailpipe is blocked,” I said. I reached in. The metal was hot, and I recoiled.
“The EMTs are on their way.”
In the distance, the sound of sirens approached. I understood the importance of leaving the car as it was. A rag in the professor’s tailpipe suggested violence, not vandalism. It would be evidence.
I nervously paced behind the cars, too anxious to sit inside mine. A police car sped into the parking structure. An emergency vehicle followed. The sirens were deafening. I flagged the vehicles toward me. The ambulance parked nearest to where we stood, and two men jumped out.
I watched as they tried to open the doors the same way I had. An officer in uniform got out of his car. He took a tire iron from his trunk and approached the professor’s car. He fed the end into the gap between the car and the door and leveraged it with his weight. The door bent away from the frame in the manner Professor Gallagher had described the balloon being used on the passenger-side door. The officer held the bar while an EMT reached in and unlocked the door from the inside. He then reached across the professor’s body to unclip the seatbelt.
I stood several feet away. Professor Gallagher fell to the side. The EMT pulled him out. A second EMT had set up a gurney on the ground, and the two of them laid him onto it.
The uniformed officer joined me. His name, Young, was clipped to the breast pocket of his uniform, and it fit his boyish features. “Ma’am? Are you”—he checked his phone—“Madison Night?”
“Yes. I made the call.”
He introduced himself. “Please step over here so I can get your statement.”
I wanted to call Tex and ask what to do, but this wasn’t his precinct, and I’d been through enough emergency calls to know the basic drill. I followed the officer.
“Please state your name and then tell me what happened.” He held out his phone.
“Madison Night. I’m a student at the college.” A flicker of surprise crossed the officer’s face, but he didn’t interrupt me. “My car was—is parked next to the professor’s. I wanted to talk to him about our class earlier today, but he was distracted.”
“The professor was conscious when you got here?”
“Yes. His car had been broken into. He said it was the third time this month. He called campus police and reported the incident. I helped him move his files to the trunk, and then he backed away to leave.”
“When did he pass out?”
“I don’t know, but it had to have happened in minutes. I gave him my scarf to secure the vandalized door and turned away from him to make a phone call. When I finished my conversation, I turned back and saw the car behind mine. The car was running, but the professor’s body language indicated something was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“With all due respect, can’t I give my statement later? The professor probably requires immediate medical attention.”
One of the EMTs approached us. “Notify the medical examiner,” he said to the officer. “That man isn’t unconscious. He’s dead.”
“He can’t be dead,” I said. “He was alive a few minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Was he your husband?”
“No, he was my professor. How did he die?”
“Cause of death is up to the medical examiner to determine.” He walked away.
I turned back to Officer Young. His partner finished up a phone call and approached us. “The ME is on his way. So’s homicide.”
“Homicide?” The word never lost its impact.
Officer Young said, “Until we know the details of this man’s death, this is all routine. You can wait in your car if you like, but I can’t let you leave just yet.”
“Can I make a phone call?”
“Sure.”
The temperature was close to eighty, and coupled with the random heat flashes that came with my age and the swelling in my previously-injured knee, I had to sit. The path of least resistance was the passenger seat of my car, so that was where I went. I closed the door and called Tex again.
“I’m going to be late,” I said when he answered. “Later.”
“Me too. I just sent the two Sues on a call, and I’m not going to leave until I hear how bad it is.”
“Was this call to the college?” I asked to confirm what I already knew.
“Night, are you okay?” Tex’s voice was tight.
I’d lost count of how many times Tex and I had navigated situations like this. Our relationship complicated everything about his job. “My professor is the victim. He was alive when I called you. There’s a patrol cop here with EMTs. The medical examiner is on his way.”
“Is there anything you need to tell me before I see the report?”
“My scarf is inside the car.”
Tex didn’t respond at first. “You were in the car with the professor?” he asked. His voice was still strained, and I pictured him keeping his emotions in check. At a recent physical, the doctors had warned him about the dangers of high blood pressure, but he wrote it off as a side effect of his job. He’d picked up hours at the shooting range, which seemed a volatile way to blow off steam, but in his line of work was probably more common than I knew.
“No. His car was broken into, and the passenger-side door wouldn’t stay closed. I gave him my scarf to secure it from the inside. I called you, and when I turned back to him, he was slumped over. I called 911, they told me to check the tailpipe, and that was when I saw something had been jammed inside of it.”
“This doesn’t sound good.”
“It sounds like murder, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t sound like an accident.” His voice relaxed. “Stay put. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“No. You have officers on the w
ay. I’ll tell you everything tonight.”
“Keep a level head and cooperate.”
“I gave my statement to Officer Young,” I said. “Do you know him?”
“He’s Dallas County. Part-time officer. He picked up some of our extra shifts this week.”
I temporarily forgot the drama in the parking structure. Recent budget cuts in the police department had forced Tex to cut all full-time positions and run his department on a skeleton staff. He’d hoped to secure funding from some of Dallas’s wealthier residents, but they put their money where their police stations were, namely, Park Cities. The divisive budget cuts left many of the smaller community-serving stations in the same predicament as Tex’s, and part-time officers started stacking shifts from multiple precincts to make a full-time wage.
“Here comes another police car,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Call me when you’re done.”
The police car was followed by a sunset beige SUV. Ling Tsu and Sue Niedermeyer got out of the police car. They were the two female homicide officers at the LPD. At first, they’d each been assigned to different partners, but it turned out their effectiveness went through the roof when they were paired together. They boasted a 99 percent rating on suspect confessions, which the rest of the officers turned into a meme: “You’ve been Sued.” I’d suggested they teach a class.
The driver of the second car was Lloyd. He was the medical examiner for Dallas County. I’d met him for the first time a few months ago and had hoped for purely selfish reasons not to encounter him again for a long time. Longer than four months, for sure.
Lloyd parked his SUV across three parking spaces and got out. He was a lanky man with a shaved head and a goatee that was somewhere between soul patch and Satan. He nodded at the two Sues and completely ignored the patrol cops, but when he saw me, he paused. Lloyd was relatively new to Dallas and wasn’t aware of my familiarity with dead bodies. It was possible he was trying to place where he’d seen me before. Cocktail party? Nope. Karaoke bar? Not that either. Coroner’s office? Check.
Lloyd and the EMT exchanged brief words. Ling joined them. The EMT gestured to the body resting on the gurney. Lloyd removed the blanket and conducted a quick inspection of Professor Gallagher. His body had been covered by a thick wool blanket. If I didn’t already know he was off to a cooler plane, I might have suggested a more seasonable coverup.
Teacher's Threat Page 3
