Murder Misread

by P. M. Carlson

  She didn’t understand about the girls, that was the problem. Stupidly assumed that Deanna and Melanie had been hurt, when they’d been so happy to have such a special relationship. Women were bitches, if you trusted them they left you in the lurch, alone, out of control. Mother. Aunt Babs. Lorraine. Now Maggie. Charlie said, “Look, if you frame me for this, don’t think you’re keeping the kids out of court! I’ll tell about the girls! Name names, everything!”

  Anne Chandler stood up abruptly, trembling with anger. “You do that, Charlie Fielding, and I’ll explain something else that happens to be true. Tal suspected that something very wrong was going on in his department. He was worried about the Hammond boy. About Jill’s story. Told me about it. Didn’t know who, of course, so he couldn’t tell me that. But he knew something was deeply wrong, and if he’d found out—”

  “A jury will think that’s another reason that you killed him,” Maggie explained gently. “Really, Charlie, it’s to your advantage not to mention the girls.”

  Charlie sat back down. It was true, people would be eager to believe that someone who liked little girls was a killer. People didn’t understand. It would make things worse in a trial if he told.

  Nick said softly, “You know what happens to child molesters in prison, Charlie? You know about Short-Eyes?”

  Short-Eyes. God, that’s what they’d think, the other prisoners! They were now filming that horrible play, based on the real-life tortures that other prisoners inflict on molesters. He hated molesters too, had thought of it as a sort of rough justice. But if these academic people didn’t understand that he wasn’t a molester, how could he expect criminals to understand? He did not want to go to prison as Short-Eyes.

  “Okay,” he said desperately. “I’ll leave the kids out of it. But you can’t get away with this! I’ll tell them you framed me!”

  “Go right ahead,” said Maggie. “Tell them that the wife of the victim, the departmental secretary, and a New York statistician you’d never met before all got together to frame you.”

  “Well, it’s true—” Charlie faltered.

  “It’s also true that a man in a slicker told Jill Baker to take off her things and yell magic words to fend off sharks,” Maggie snapped. “But who believed her?” Then she combed her fingers through her black curls and spoke more softly. “I’m sorry, Charlie. But I don’t know how else to stop you.”

  Charlie stared down at his shoes. He was trapped. She was right, no one would believe him, it was too insane. If those three stuck to this story…. And it was true, telling about the girls would make things worse for him. Much, much worse. If he told the truth, if he said Maggie had made it up to keep him away from the children, the lawyers would just turn it around and say that Tal had found out and Charlie had killed him to keep him quiet. It would make him look even guiltier. And then in prison…. Or suppose he somehow got released. If people knew about the girls, no one would hire him. And worse yet, he would be watched. It would be even more difficult to find the next little Deanna or Melanie.

  He came back to the present to discover that Anne Chandler and Cindy had left for home. They didn’t want the police to find them all here together. It would look less like a conspiracy if they were interviewed separately. “I’ll see you soon, Sergeant Hines,” Maggie was saying. She replaced the telephone receiver.

  Hines. He mustn’t let Hines find out about the girls. He mustn’t let anyone find out.

  God, Hines would search his house.

  If Hines found his secret collection, he’d find out. He might even destroy the collection, destroy the precious memories. Charlie had to get his collection to a safe place. How?

  Salvation rapped on the door, then unlocked it.

  “Fielding?” said Walensky, then paused, taking in the scene.

  Thank God it wasn’t Hines.

  Walensky stepped in, closing the door behind him carefully. “What’s going on? Fielding, why are you tied up?”

  “They did it,” Charlie confessed, thrusting his wrists toward Walensky. Walensky untied them.

  “Wait!” Maggie said. “Professor Fielding is the one who killed Tal Chandler!”

  “No! No, I didn’t!” Charlie rubbed his wrists.

  Walensky look neutrally at Maggie. “How could he? You’re the one who said he was with you almost the whole time.”

  “I thought he was. But now that I’ve thought things over, I’ve decided that I must have been in the post office longer than I said at first. See, I stopped to read something. So it was fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “I see.”

  “And Cindy Phelps thinks the gun was in his jacket pocket Thursday morning.”

  Charlie shook his head. “It’s not true! None of it is true!”

  “That’s for the court to decide,” said Nick.

  Walensky glanced at Charlie and unsnapped his holster. “I hate to say this, Professor Fielding, but he’s right.” His voice was hard.

  “My God, you don’t believe them, do you? But you’ve known me for years!”

  “Look, what can I do? Nora Peterson says she saw you take the damn gun, Fielding. Bickford’s been saying you did it from the beginning. And now your alibi disappears.” He looked at Charlie thoughtfully. “Of course the jury will probably sympathize. You’ve never even assaulted anyone before. Nice young man, worried about his job, overstressed, no danger to society.” There was a flash of hatred in his face as he added, “No doubt you thought you had a good reason to kill that old man! And never thought of the consequences!”

  Charlie was shocked. Walensky believed her, so easily!

  Maggie said hastily, “It was a professional reason! His research was threatened by Tal Chandler’s work. I’m the project statistician and I’ve seen his results. And of course, you could check with Anne Chandler.”

  “A professional reason. I see.” Walensky squinted at the bookcase. “Fielding, you told me your results are on videotape, right? Maybe we’d better impound those.”

  Nick said, “Isn’t it more important to get Professor Fielding’s statement?”

  “It’s all important,” Walensky bristled. He pulled the plastic lining bag from Charlie’s metal wastebasket and began to pitch videotapes into it.

  Walensky had given him an opening, Charlie realized suddenly. Should he make a break for it? But then he remembered that his car keys were in Nick’s pocket. And Nick had moved away from the bookcase and was watching him alertly.

  Maggie’s eyes were on Walensky. “Here, I’ll help,” she offered, and scooped some experimental tapes from Charlie’s shelves.

  “No, thanks, Miss Ryan. This is police business.” Walensky moved toward the boxes that hid the films.

  “Well, at least let me stack them for you!” Maggie didn’t want the films in police custody, Charlie realized. She was still trying to shield the children. She pulled the incriminating boxes out and began to straighten the experimental tapes left in the bag.

  Charlie saw Walensky register the way she had sorted them. She looked up from her task, met the captain’s narrowed eyes, and recognition sparked between them. “The man in the slicker!” she gasped. “So it’s not just that you’re blackmailing Charlie. You’re in this personally!”

  “I’m sorry you force me to do this the messy way,” Walensky said regretfully. His automatic was suddenly in his hand. “Over against the window wall. All of you.” The gun was steady on Maggie, and she promptly obeyed, backing toward the window, almost stumbling over her briefcase. Nick joined her at the opposite side of the window.

  But Charlie hesitated. “Look, I’m on your side!”

  “Yeah? Then how did she see the film?”

  “She found it herself! And anyway, it doesn’t matter, because she’s not going to say anything about the kids or the films. She doesn’t want them to have to testify in court.”

  A hard little smile tensed Walensky’s face. “Right, Miss Ryan. You were cross-examined in a sex crime once yourself, weren’t yo
u?”

  “Wasn’t much fun,” Maggie said neutrally. “Nothing I’d wish on a little kid. It’s like abusing them all over again.”

  “So you want to keep them out of court. Fine,” Walensky mused. “Maybe we can come to an agreement. Fielding, I don’t know why you haven’t left.”

  “Nick has my car keys!”

  Walensky sighed regretfully, like Coach Wilhelm when Charlie had muffed a play. “Toss them over.” He waved the gun and Nick complied. Charlie scrambled to pick them up. Walensky said, “You’ll get one more chance to break out of custody. But since you’re still here, you might as well get the right films into that bag. We need to have a little bonfire. That’s why I came tonight, you know. All my copies got incinerated the moment you told me someone had sent you that Screw with my ad circled. But then I got to thinking, you’re such a pack rat, you wouldn’t have the brains to destroy the masters. So let’s do it now.”

  “Okay.” Walensky was right, they had to go. Charlie glanced nervously at Nick and Maggie but they were standing quietly by the window, watching. He sorted the plastic cases of films into the bag and knotted the top. “So much work,” he said sadly.

  “Gotta cut your losses,” Walensky said.

  “Yeah. Oh, she’s got another one of them in her briefcase,” Charlie remembered. He started toward Maggie.

  “Stop!” barked Walensky. “Don’t get between them and me!”

  “Oh.” Charlie jumped back.

  “Miss Ryan, throw your briefcase over to Fielding.”

  “Okay,” said Maggie agreeably. She picked up the briefcase, obediently sighted at Charlie, and swung her arm back to toss it to him. Instead it smashed through the windowpane behind her and disappeared outside.

  “Oh, God! Sorry!” Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth in apparent shock.

  “Damn!” Volcanic anger seethed in Walensky’s eyes but he stayed in control. “Well, we’ll get it on the way out. Fielding, is there anything else in this office? Any records?”

  “Oh. Yes, I’ve got an inventory.” Charlie scrabbled in his file cabinet and found an old data set. The inventory was nestled among the other sheets. “Here it is. There’s nothing else in the office.”

  “Okay.” With his left hand, Walensky pulled a lighter from his pocket and tossed it onto Charlie’s desk, startling him. He controlled his twanging nerves and dropped the inventory into the wastebasket before lighting it. It took four tries before the paper caught and flared into black ash.

  Charlie nodded at Nick and Maggie. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Depends on how cooperative they are,” Walensky said. “If worse comes to worst, well, we all know accidents happen to little children sometimes.”

  Charlie shivered. He didn’t want any more children hurt. He said urgently, “Please, listen to him! He means it! The little Hammond boy didn’t like the ketchup and when we started home he kept looking back saying, ‘Bad place.’ We were afraid his parents would get suspicious, and Walensky said if he’d been hit by a car, of course he’d say ‘bad place.’ And he took the kid out and ran over his legs very carefully.”

  Maggie’s eyes dilated, but she said calmly, “Tell us what you want us to do.” Why was she so calm? Charlie himself felt jumpy as a silent movie.

  “For now you know nothing. Just stay with the status quo,” said Walensky. “If you implicate us in any way your kids will suffer. But I’m sure we’ll find a way to work together.”

  The sound of a far-off siren drifted through the broken window. “Listen!” Charlie exclaimed. “She called Hines, you know. Just before you arrived.”

  “Jesus, Fielding!” Walensky exploded. “When are you going to start giving me the facts I need to know? Pitch those films out the window and let’s get out.” When Charlie had complied he added, “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

  Nick spoke for the first time. “What about your secret collection, Charlie?”

  “Oh, God, that’s right! I’ve got to move my private collection from home to a safer place. Hines might search my house.”

  “No problem there.” Walensky was backing toward the door. “I took care of everything. When I couldn’t get you on the phone this afternoon I figured I’d better make sure Hines couldn’t find anything. So I let myself into your house and broke open the filing cabinet you showed me. Don’t worry. Your collection got incinerated along with my stuff. Come on, let’s go.”

  For a moment Charlie couldn’t understand. He stood rooted where he was, staring at Walensky. Then he gasped, “Incinerated? You burned it?”

  “Yeah, right. You got nothing to worry about. Let’s go, now.”

  “You burned my collection? All of it?”

  “Not the movie stuff in your living room, no. That’s harmless. I just burned that one drawer you showed me.”

  Black rage welled up in Charlie. All the sacred relics of those lost, golden afternoons with little Melanie, little Janine. Gone, forever gone, like the pure unclouded children now grown into gross adulthood. “You burned it?” Charlie screamed. “Burned it?” He lunged at Walensky. A haze of red veiled everything but the gun and the man who had destroyed his life’s work, his life’s love. He saw his own hands wrenching at Walensky’s, saw the surprise on Walensky’s face, heard the crack as the gun fired, felt the hard steel recoiling in his own hand. He fired again and again until the gun made nothing but clicking sounds that could barely be heard through the screaming in his head.

  Someone was tugging him backward. Nick. The red haze was retreating. Maggie was scrambling from behind the big steel desk as though she’d been hiding there. She knelt by Walensky. The captain was on the floor, his head and chest rawboned with tatters of red like Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, like Bonnie and Clyde. He was making ugly wheezing sounds.

  Someone else was holding Charlie now. Officer Porter, that’s who it was, handcuffing him.

  Paramedics burst into the room and surrounded Walensky. Maggie backed toward the broken window.

  Sergeant Hines was looking at Walensky, shaking his head. “What the hell happened here?”

  “I—I shot him,” Charlie said, explaining to himself as much as to Hines.

  “Why?”

  “He burned—”

  Maggie broke loudly into his sentence. “We were explaining to Captain Walensky that Charlie Fielding killed Tal Chandler.”

  “Chandler too?” Hines looked at him, but this time Charlie didn’t answer because he was remembering now. Short-Eyes. He mustn’t tell. And Walensky’s words, The jury will sympathize…. You’ve never even assaulted anyone before.

  Now they’d think he’d assaulted two. Killed two. Or tried to. The paramedics were carrying Walensky out.

  Hines asked, “Think he’ll make it?”

  The paramedic holding the door open said, “With brain injuries like this? If he’s lucky he’ll die. But his vital signs are strong, poor bastard, so we’ll have to put him on the machines. Just don’t be expecting him to testify.”

  Charlie stared at the floor, trying not to see the spattered blood, listening to Maggie explain how he had shot Walensky, and shot Tal Chandler. Hines was careful, checking each point she made, and by the time they were ready to lead Charlie to the squad car he knew her story was almost impossible to refute. Walensky might live, so that would be a lesser charge. Even so, her story meant that Charlie would be locked away a long, long time for killing Tal.

  But one tiny cheering thought occurred to him at last. Maybe they wouldn’t charge him with Tal’s murder after all. There was still Bart’s pipe. The prosecution would say Charlie had left it to frame Bart. But it was still a loose end of sorts. And Hines was a professional, a plodding, thorough kind of detective. Hines would keep looking.

  And if he kept looking, he might find the one thing Maggie couldn’t explain away. He might find the real killer.

  Whoever it was.

  20

  After Sergeant Hines and the man from the dist
rict attorney’s office left, Anne checked her watch. Plenty of time to start a grocery list. She had the refrigerator open, counting eggs, when the doorbell rang again.

  “Hi,” she said to Nick and Maggie and the children. “I hoped you folks would stop by.”

  “Your daughter’s coming tonight, right?” Maggie asked.

  “In about an hour. I’ll meet her at the airport and bring her home. Meanwhile, if certain bright-eyed little persons would like to swing some more….”

  Sarah’s delighted smile was answer enough. They went out to sit in the late afternoon sun. The children ran from the terrace to the swing set.

  As soon as they were out of earshot Anne lit a cigarette and said, “I heard that Charlie shot Walensky.”

  “It was terrifying,” Maggie said soberly. “Walensky was his partner. The man in the slicker. And Charlie said he was the one who hit the Hammond kid.”

  “God, no wonder Tal couldn’t get him to investigate!”

  “Right. When he told Charlie he’d burned the photos and mementos of his little girlfriends, Charlie went berserk. Blindsided Walensky, got the gun from him, emptied it out before Nick could reach them.”

  “God. And I was worried that no one would believe Charlie would shoot someone!”

  “Yes. It pretty much guarantees that he’ll get a long sentence, and we won’t have to bring the girls into it. They threw the films into the bushes, but Nick got them out before the police noticed them.”

  Anne shook her head. “Hines said Walensky wasn’t dead.”

  “No. I guess in Charlie’s state he wasn’t shooting straight. Slight wounds in the shoulder and hip, but two wounds high in the forehead….”

  “The forehead. So he’ll probably end up a vegetable.” Anne shuddered. “Time was I was ready to hang whoever hit the Hammond kid. But this… Tal used to say that the worst fate would be to damage your mind and have your body stay alive. He said he’d rather be shot in the brain stem.”