Veritas

by Anne Laughlin

  “Cora, it’s Beth Ellis. I’d like to see Landscome as soon as I can.”

  “I don’t know where he is, Dean. He was supposed to be here for an eight o’clock conference call and he hasn’t shown up. He isn’t answering at home or on his cell.”

  “Maybe he’s taking the call at home?”

  “Maybe. He never has before,” Cora said.

  “I’m just leaving Lou’s. I’ll swing around and look in on him at home. I can talk to him there.”

  “Are you sure? He doesn’t like surprises.”

  “I think I could have guessed that.”

  Cora snorted, which was as close as she came to a laugh. “When you see him will you tell him to call me? I’ve got a slew of messages for him.”

  Beth circled the campus rather than climb up and over it to get to Landscome’s house. It was another gorgeous April day, no rain in sight, and the idea of a long run later in the afternoon would normally be something she looked forward to. She was tired, though. Everything associated with the college felt enervating. What once defined her life now seemed to be draining the energy right out of her.

  Landscome’s house came into view and she could see that the blinds and curtains were still drawn. His car was in the drive. Maybe he got out of jail last night and got drunk. She rang the doorbell and stepped back a bit, looking idly around. After the second ring and lengthy wait, Beth peered through the etched glass panels on either side of the front door. The panel on the right afforded a full view of the marble foyer and though the view was distorted by the beveling in the etched glass, Beth thought she saw something. On her knees, face plastered against the panel, Beth could clearly see that President Landscome was lying on the marble floor, blood and brain in a wide arc behind him, a pistol a foot or two from his outstretched left hand.

  Beth threw up in the bushes next to the door and then called 911.

  *

  For a second day in a row, police cars arrayed themselves in front of President Landscome’s house, this time joined by an ambulance. The ME was on his way from his office across town and the CSI vans from the state police depot in Center City had been dispatched. Sally arrived within five minutes of Beth’s call and immediately started securing the scene. She sent officers inside to clear the house while she examined the area around the body. Then she took a few minutes to speak with Beth. She found her sitting in the back of the ambulance and talking on the phone, legs swinging. As Sally approached, Beth hung up.

  “That was my mother,” Beth said. “I called her to let her know what happened.”

  “Can we talk about what you saw?” Sally asked.

  “The weird thing is that I don’t even know why I called her. It just seems like something she’d want to know about.”

  Sally took Beth by the elbow and walked her to the side of the house and toward the backyard.

  “Anyway, she said she’d come pick me up. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  The backyard was large and lavishly landscaped. Off the rear of the house was a wood deck, and below that a flagstone patio. Sally steered Beth into a chair on the patio and pulled another up for herself, so they were sitting knee to knee.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Sally asked.

  “Why do you ask, because I called my mother?”

  “I know that seems remarkable to you, but I was actually asking because you just found a dead body.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It really is horrible.”

  Sally got out her notebook and took Beth through everything she saw, heard, smelled, or otherwise noticed as she approached the house and rang the doorbell.

  “I don’t understand why people are being murdered at our college. It doesn’t make any sense,” said Beth.

  “It may be that Landscome’s death is suicide.”

  “But why? I know you found out he lied about where he was when Barrow was murdered, but surely that’s not something to kill oneself over.”

  “Can you think of anything else about this morning that you may have left out?”

  “And it’s a strange place to commit suicide, don’t you think?”

  “You mean the entryway to his house? Yeah, it’s a little strange, but I’ve seen much stranger. How about a doghouse? Or a grocery store? Who knows what’s going on in their heads, unless they tell us in a suicide note.”

  “Was there a note?” Beth asked.

  “We haven’t seen one yet.” Sally flipped open her notebook. “Was Landscome left-handed?”

  Beth thought a moment before answering. “I don’t know. I can’t remember seeing him pick up a pen or sign anything.”

  “His secretary will know, I suppose,” Sally said.

  “Can I go now? I have another crisis to manage on campus, and this time I really am the top dog, at least for a while.”

  Sally walked Beth back out front just as Mae’s Escalade pulled up. The two drove off together toward campus. The medical examiner arrived and she waited for him on the front lawn.

  “Let’s go in the back door, Dr. Rice. We’ll have a cleaner approach from inside the house.”

  Dr. Rice put a hand on Sally’s shoulder as they walked to the back of the house. “One murder in Mount Avery is alarming, but two is going to really frighten people. What do you think is going on?”

  Sally wondered how many people felt that she should know by now. “Let’s see what you think of the scene before we call it another murder.”

  The officer standing on the back deck next to the sliding door was maintaining the log book. Dr. Rice signed in and they proceeded through the kitchen and down the long hallway to the front. The red tape that marked the no-enter zone extended slightly into the hallway. Here they were stopped by another officer and given booties and gloves.

  “Oh, Christ,” Dr. Rice said as they entered the foyer. The room itself was large, the marble floors tiled in a black and white swirling pattern that came to a point exactly in the middle of the room. Above it was a huge and ostentatious chandelier. The fifteen-foot ceiling was trimmed with ornate molding and the walls with picture and chair railing. A few portraits of past presidents of Grafton College hung on the cream-colored walls. On the right side of the room the stairway curved its way up to the next floor, and lying on his back, with his head two feet from the bottom stair, was President Landscome. It appeared that a good deal of his brain had splattered on the carpeted stairway, the finely turned balustrade, the cream walls, and the portrait of President Hiram Hainsworth (1915–42).

  Landscome was wearing pajamas and a silk paisley robe. One leather slipper was perched on his upturned foot, while the other seemed to have been pushed away as he fell. The body lay sprawled, right arm up by his head, left arm down by his side, and two feet away from his left hand lay a Walther PPK with a silencer attached.

  “Have you found any note?” Dr. Rice asked.

  “None so far. I’ve sent some officers up the rear stairs to start a search there. I don’t think we’ll find one, though.”

  “You don’t think it’s suicide?”

  “I’m keeping an open mind,” Sally said. “It looks like we found the weapon that killed Barrow, though. And that silencer explains why no one heard a shot in that quiet neighborhood, or this one, I imagine. But why put a silencer on a gun used in a suicide?”

  Dr. Rice examined the body closely, taking its body temperature directly from the liver, noting the degree of rigor, the areas of lividity. He looked closely at both hands, taking fingernail scrapings before bagging them for transport. Finally he stood and joined Sally at the edge of the red zone.

  “I can do the autopsy this afternoon in Center City. We’ll have our folks transport the body when the CSI team is done.”

  “What can you tell me right now?” Sally asked.

  “Rigor is almost fully established, so the death occurred, most likely, at least ten to twelve hours ago. Lividity is consistent with that time frame and indicates he has not been moved since he died, though that will be confirmed on au
topsy. And his body temperature indicates a similar range.”

  “So probably somewhere between ten and midnight last night?”

  “That’s just a preliminary, but yes. The fact that he’s inside a controlled environment helps with the calculation. Also, I don’t know anything about your investigation into the other murder or what the story is with this man, but a couple of other things do point toward suicide. First off, there’s the obvious—putting the muzzle of a gun in the mouth and blowing out the back of the head—a suicide technique frequently used by men. Next, there is blowback on the man’s left hand, which indicates he had hold of the gun when it fired. There are no signs of a defensive struggle. Lastly, the fact that the weapon is lying away from the body is telling. I don’t have a lot of experience in this, but I do know that the gun is usually thrown from the suicide’s hand by the kickback. It would be more unusual to see them gripping the gun.”

  “In other words, if someone was gripping the gun, it would suggest the real shooter might have placed it in the victim’s hand, thinking that’s where it would be in an actual suicide.”

  “That’s what their logic would be.”

  “I don’t think we’ll find fingerprints other than Landscome’s on the gun,” Sally said.

  “Yes, if it was murder, they’ll know to do that at the very least.”

  Sally arranged with the doctor to meet up with him at the autopsy in Center City and then turned to the arriving CSI team. She grabbed the investigator in charge, and once he was gowned up and the photographer had photographed the Walther and an outline of its placement had been drawn, they got on their hands and knees and took a close look. Sally could see that there was some blood and tissue on the gun and Landscome’s left hand, the blowback that Dr. Rice mentioned. She also saw at the same time as the forensics tech that the serial number had been removed from the body of the gun. The bullet casing was found to the right of the body, by the staircase, indicating the gun was pointed at Landscome as if it were held in the normal position by someone else. Sally urged the tech to have the firearms examiner test the gun and examine the casing as soon as possible. Were the prints on the trigger from a thumb or from a forefinger? The bullet would be extracted at autopsy and delivered later in the afternoon for comparison with the bullet in the Barrow case. She expected that the examination would tie the gun to the two bullets, but that didn’t prove Landscome committed suicide. If he was murdered, Sally had a whole new set of problems.

  *

  The dean’s office was crowded with administrators and faculty department chairs, all of whom looked stunned. Both Cora and Lillian had helped Beth gather them together to announce Landscome’s death in a manner more personal and more secure than campus e-mail.

  Beth addressed the group. “I was told by the chief of police that it will be a day or two before the medical examiner announces whether the death was homicide or suicide, and that ruling can always change based on new evidence. For the time being we are to say only that we heard Landscome died but we don’t know what happened. I imagine some of you will get calls from the press after they become frustrated with me, so it’s important that you toe the party line.”

  “I don’t understand, Dean. Are we hiding something from the press? Can’t we just say we heard he was shot?” This came from the giant dean of admissions, Ed Baker.

  “Think about it,” said Delilah, standing at the front of the crowd. “We’ve just had a murder on campus, and now another violent death. Even if it was suicide, there’s likely to be an exodus of students from campus.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” Beth said. “Let me talk with the board and get their advice on this. Losing students is the very last thing we need now.”

  The group shuffled out the door, with Delilah staying behind. Cora peeked her head in.

  “Chief Sullivan wants to talk to me, so I’ll call her now, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course, Cora,” said Beth. “Take all the time you need.”

  Beth got up from her desk and sat on the sofa in the corner of the office. Delilah closed the door and came to stand over Beth, her arms crossed at her chest.

  “You have to be strong now, Beth. The board will make you acting president.”

  “God help us all.”

  “Come on, now.” Delilah grabbed Beth’s hand and pulled her up. “You know you’ll do a better job than Landscome. Things are only going to get worse if you drop the ball.”

  Beth shook her off and walked back to her desk. “No, you can’t put that on me. I’ll do my best, but there’s no telling what’s going to happen next. If another person on campus is murdered, it might be the end of the college.”

  “You’re exaggerating. We’ll be fine.”

  *

  “Mayor, it’s Chief Sullivan.”

  “Chief. Please tell me that we don’t have a serial killer in our town. Please.”

  Sally was driving back from Center City following Landscome’s autopsy. Her stomach was still unsettled. No amount of experience would allow her to see a face being peeled away from a skull without feeling queasy. Dr. Rice had not seen anything during the postmortem that suggested it was not a suicide. Landscome’s blood alcohol level was .19, which in most people would qualify as roaring drunk, and the preliminary toxicology screen did not reveal any illegal or other toxic substances. The fingerprint lab confirmed that the only prints on the gun were Landscome’s.

  Dr. Rice also examined the scarred area on Landscome’s thigh where the photographs had shown a mole to exist. There was no remaining evidence that a mole had ever existed, but Sally thought it ridiculously unlikely that Landscome would accidently fall on broken glass and slash his skin exactly where an incriminating mole was located on someone else’s thigh, someone who looked astonishingly like Landscome himself. She had no doubt that Landscome was the man in the photos and that the photos were the motive to kill Barrow. He also clearly had the opportunity; Ted had found someone in the Lake McDeere area who noticed the lights on at Landscome’s cottage. That merely confirmed that he was within easy driving distance of Mount Avery at the time of Barrow’s murder. With the appearance of the Walther by Landscome’s body, it appeared that he had access to the murder weapon as well. If Landscome weren’t dead, he’d be convicted.

  And yet there was something that didn’t feel right. The question at the moment was whether to pass along her doubts to the mayor and a worried town and campus.

  “Everything points to Landscome having committed suicide after killing Barrow and being exposed as a pedophile. I have nothing that contradicts that.”

  “Good. I mean, the whole thing is terrible, really unfortunate for the college. But I’m relieved there’s not a murderer still running around.”

  “How do you want to handle the press? They’ve been calling all day and we’ve not told them a thing at this point.” Sally hoped the mayor would volunteer to handle it.

  “Call the local people for now and tell them what you have. They’re going to get wind of it sooner or later, and I want to get the story out right away so that everyone around here knows we have the matter resolved. There’s no point telling them anything but the truth. And, Chief, I’d be ready for some national coverage too. It’s a pretty sensational story.”

  They rang off and Sally made a call to a reporter she knew at the Center City Times.

  “Sam, it’s Chief Sally Sullivan in Mount Avery.”

  “How are you, Chief? You have something for me on the bloodbath taking place in your little town?”

  Sam Toshima was the most like the big-city reporters that Sally was used to dealing with. He was unflappable, efficient, professional, and nastily sarcastic.

  “I have an exclusive for you, but I want you to act as a sort of pool reporter on this. We won’t have a press conference until tomorrow at the earliest, but I’d like word to go out today.”

  “Done. What do you have?”

  “The official ruling on President Landscome’s death
is suicide, and based on evidence obtained in our investigation, it is also our determination that Landscome killed John Barrow.”

  “No shit? Why did he kill him? They were lovers, right?”

  “No, Sam. They were not lovers. Evidence shows that Barrow had something on Landscome and was blackmailing him.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  Sally considered her response. If she told Sam no more than she already had, she and everyone at the college would be hounded by the press. If she told them everything she knew, they’d still be hounded by the press.

  “This is the extent of what we are releasing at this time, and you now know more than anyone else does. It isn’t going to do you any good to talk to anyone at the college. They won’t know anything about it.”

  “Wait a second. If Landscome murdered Barrow to end the blackmail, why did he commit suicide? It’s got to be because you now have the evidence he was being blackmailed over and it’s incriminating.”

  “You said it, not me. And I’ve said all I’m going to say.”

  “Thanks, Chief, and let me know when that press conference is. I’ll issue what you’ve told me to the other media here.”

  Sally hung up and drove to the station to grab her files before heading home. Her dogs needed some attention and she hoped to spend some time with Beth. By seven o’clock, she was starting to give up on the idea of seeing Beth. A call to her home was picked up by Mae, who said Beth was still at the office. Repeated calls to Beth’s office and cell phones went right into voicemail. She was about to try both numbers one more time when her own cell phone rang. It was Beth.

  “Hi. You should know you’re programmed into my phone too,” Sally said. She was trying to sound flirtatious, but didn’t think it was coming off very well.