An Educated Death (42 page)

I figured as soon as I got him off the phone I'd call Rocky and sic him onto McTeague but the bastard read my mind. Or maybe I was just so influenced by his sleaziness that I was beginning to think like him. "Won't do you any good to call the chief, either. I won't tell him anything. Not even if they pistolwhip me or stick my ass in jail. I've been wondering what it's like to be pistol-whipped or night-sticked or hit with a blackjack. It's not the kind of experience a law-abiding citizen gets to have. And I've always wanted to be in jail. The hard mattresses, uncivilized company, exposed toilets, leering guards—"

"Has anyone ever told you that you need professional help McTeague?"

But Rick McTeague wasn't receiving messages. The man was a one-way street. "I'm trying to get professional help," he said. "Yours. I'll be at the beginning of the path in forty-five minutes. That should give you enough time. Wear rubber boots if you have 'em. That path is a real mess. And if you don't show, well, that's your choice, but I thought you wanted to solve the case."

"That's Chief Miller," I began, "he's the one—" McTeague just laughed and hung up on me.

Anyone who has lived through more than one New England winter doesn't leave home without foul-weather gear in their car. I had my Bean boots. I had a hat and gloves. I had a heavy sweater. And I had time to get there. I checked to see that I still had the Mace and the alarm. I didn't expect I'd need them, but it was reassuring to have them along. McTeague didn't seem dangerous, unless I was at risk of being talked to death, but once I'd learned what he had to share, I might give him a blast of Mace just so he could have the experience.

Just to be safe, as I'd promised Andre, I called Rocky to tell him what I was doing, but no one knew where to find him. Time was short, so I called Curt Sawyer, who could be found, and told him what was going on. After a bit of bluster, he agreed that maybe someone could keep watch and stay out of sight. Someone to watch over me. I weaved my way down 128 through four lanes of sluggish traffic, wondering, idly, whether promises made to a guy who's deserted you are still in force.

McTeague was waiting for me, wearing his idea of what a detective wears to revisit the scene of the crime—a belted tan raincoat, faded brown fedora, and a plaid Burberry scarf. The oversized raincoat ballooned out around his thin frame like a 1950's shirtdress and the hat was too big for his head. The ensemble was finished with green Wellington boots and a sturdy walking stick. I half expected him to produce a pipe and make me wait while he lighted it, but he didn't. I reminded myself to be grateful for little things. We were almost at the shortest day of the year and I had no desire to be trudging through the woods in the dark.

"You made good time," he said. "I was afraid you'd be late and I have another appointment."

"With whom?"

"Josh Meyer. I called him after I spoke to you. Professor Hamlin said the poor kid was feeling a little down so I said I'd pick him up and take him out for dinner. His dad's coming tomorrow, you know. They don't get along."

"Are you going to tell Josh your big secret, too?"

He shrugged. "I might. He has an interest in this case, too, you know. He loved that girl even though she was seeing Drucker."

I stopped dead, staring at him. "You knew about Drucker? And you didn't tell anyone?"

He shrugged again, trying to be elaborately casual, but his delight in putting one over on us was too obvious. "No one asked."

If there hadn't already been enough death on the campus, I would have strangled him on the spot. "How did you know about Drucker?"

He gave me that infuriating smile again. "Something I heard. After you," he said, waving toward the path. I set off, trying to ignore my anxiety about setting off into the woods with a crazy man who was carrying a big stick. Our feet were incredibly noisy on the path, especially his. The rubber made thick squelching sounds as he stomped through the mud. It had been a warm day and the warm air on the cold snow had created a rising mist. It looked as though we were setting off into a bowl of dry ice. Too much like my dream for comfort. All around us little waves of mist floated up among the black tree trunks. We might have been in one of Tolkien's living forests.

"Well, we're off," he said cheerfully. "So tell me about the poisoning."

"That wasn't part of the deal."

"Well, I'm changing the deal."

There was no sense in arguing with him. He wasn't susceptible to reason and he was as thick-skinned as an armadillo. I gave him a brief description of my ordeal and waited for the questions that were bound to follow. He wanted to know everything about the symptoms, my reactions, the reactions of people around me, and all the while we were tramping deeper and deeper into the woods and it was getting darker and foggier and colder. My skin was beginning to crawl.

Finally I'd had enough. It was stupid of me to have come out here at all and I was ending the stupidity right now. I swung around and confronted him. "I don't believe you have anything to tell me. This is just a trick to pump me for details and I'll bet you don't have the faintest idea how unpleasant it is for me to have to face that experience again. This isn't simply something you can make happen to a character in your book! It really happened. I was poisoned. If I'd eaten much more of that sandwich, I would have died. And Laney Taggert and Carol Frank did die. It's not just a matter of turning the pages, McTeague. It happened."

A look of something like panic swept over his face and he raised his walking stick. It looked like he was going to hit me. I covered my head with my hands, dashed past him, and started running. "Wait!" he yelled, charging after me. "We're almost there. Come back. I'll tell you. I promise I will."

I stopped a safe distance away and looked back, not knowing whether to believe him or not. Why hadn't Sawyer's carefully placed man hadn't jumped out of the bushes by now? McTeague was standing in the center of the path, shoulders slumped, and hat pulled low, the picture of dejection. Little patches of mist obscured his feet. "I mean it," he said. "No more games. This is no time to quit; we're almost there."

"Okay," I called, my voice distorted by the damp air, "but you have to promise no more questions about the poison."

We turned and retraced our steps. This time I stayed farther away from him. "It's just around that bend," he said, hurrying so that he was beside me. He was panting a little, which seemed odd for a regular jogger, but maybe it was an effort to keep the boots on his feet or his hat on his head. He looked ridiculous, but given his overall lack of self-awareness, he probably had a magic mirror at home that told him he was the reincarnation of Dash Hammett. He grabbed my arm and steered me to a little rise looking down toward the pond.

"Picture the scene," he whispered. "Early morning, the first light just filtering into the sky with the promise of a clear, bright day. Temperature around thirty. A few inches of fresh snow on the ground. I was pounding along, feeling the physical rush from my exertion, exhilarated that I was fifty-four and my body still ran like a finely tuned machine." His voice rose as he spoke.

"I was all alone in the world, the only tracks disturbing the snow were my own. I was free to imagine that I was the only inhabitant." The trail before us dipped down to a spot where the brush at the edge of the pond had been cleared away, then rose again and disappeared into the trees.

"I was coming from that direction," he said, pointing toward the other rise. "I broke out of the trees and suddenly there were other footprints. Naturally I noticed them." He grabbed my arm again and tried to pull me down the slope.

"I don't like being grabbed," I said, shaking him off.

"I'm interested in footprints," he said as we walked toward the edge of the ice, "aren't you?" I just shrugged. "Okay, let me set the scene for you." He pointed back the way we'd come. "Two sets of footprints coming from that way, down to the edge of the ice here, where we're standing. They paused here—I could tell from the way the area was trampled—and then went out onto the ice together, out to about here." Once again he grabbed my arm and tugged me forward. Once again I shook him off.

The ice between my feet gave an ominous crack and I made an involuntary startled sound. "It's okay," he said, "you're perfectly safe. The ice is plenty thick now. It's been below freezing for more than a week, until yesterday. Ice just makes those sounds as it expands and contracts."

I felt a little foolish. I knew lakes did that. I was just a bit shaky, given the circumstances.

"Now, about here," he drew a line in the snow with his foot, "the footprints showed signs of a struggle."

The pond around us showed all sorts of signs of a struggle, no doubt the product of yesterday's search for the missing duffle bag. In fact just ahead of us was a large black patch of thin, snow-free ice. He stared at it for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. "Yeah," he said, "the single set of staggering footprints led to a hole just like that... well, not exactly like that. It was smaller. And I could see a pink glove under the ice." He leaned forward, peering at the ice as though expecting to see another pink glove. "Looks like someone made a new hole. I wonder why."

"The police made a new hole. Yesterday," I said.

"Why?" he asked eagerly.

"I know but I'm not telling," I said, feeling as if I were eight years old and arguing with my brother Michael, "until you tell me something."

"You're learning," he said, nodding approvingly. "Okay, I guess I've played around long enough. Now, the footprints came out to about here and then, as I said, the one set went staggering on alone, like this—" He gave me a tremendous shove that sent me staggering forward toward the thin black ice. To avoid it, I hurled myself sideways, landing with a bone-jarring crash on the ice.

I was up and after him before he'd stopped laughing, fueled by fury at my stupidity for coming out here with him and his mean-spirited craziness. I still didn't think he was the killer but he could have just accidentally killed me by his stupid playacting and it probably wouldn't have bothered him a bit. I wrenched his walking stick away from him and whacked him with it. He fell back, cringing, and I whacked him again.

Where in hell was my protection? "Okay, McTeague," I said, "the game's over. Now tell me what you brought me out here for and then get the hell out of here before I hit you again."

"Go ahead and hit me," he said, a shaky defiance in his voice. "I've never been beaten up by a woman."

"Well, don't flatter yourself that this counts for anything," I said. "If I really wanted to do some harm, I'd aim for your head, wouldn't I?" I swung the stick again, this time landing it on his thigh. He whined and clutched at his leg. "Now tell."

"It's about the footprints," he said quickly. "What was unusual about them."

Playing games was so natural for him that he couldn't resist. He stopped there and grinned up at me. "You want to guess what it was?"

I swung the stick so it passed within inches of his head. "I said no more games."

"Okay, okay, control yourself," he said. "What was unusual about the footprints was that they were both small. Unless the person who met Laney Taggert and brought her out here was a man with tiny feet, Laney Taggert was killed by a woman."

I threw McTeague's stick out onto the patch of thin ice where it broke a hole and fell through. "You bitch!" he roared, getting to his feet and charging toward me. "That was my special stick."

I'd had enough of boys and their special sticks growing up with Michael. McTeague had made the mistake of confusing me with a character from his book. Probably the transsexual police officer in love with her former partner. Poor guy. He was in for a rude surprise.

I pulled out my Mace and gave Rick McTeague a generous opportunity to savor a new experience. I left him on his knees on the ice, groaning and wailing, pawing at his face like a bear fighting off bees, and walked back to my car.

On my way back, I saw no sign of Sawyer's man. By the time I reached my car, I was shaking with the realization that probably, Sawyer being the arrogant, slipshod asshole that he was, there hadn't been anyone there and I'd just been the biggest damned fool on the planet.

 

 

 

Chapter 23

 

There was a Sedgwick police car parked beside mine, the light flashing, and, as always happens when there's a police car, curiosity had drawn a small crowd of students to see what was going on. As I emerged from the woods, Joe Hennessey detached himself from the crowd and hurried down the path toward me. When I was in range, he greeted me with a blast that made it clear he'd been too long under the influence of Chief Rocky Miller. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" were the first words out of a mouth that not so long ago had been trying to be intimately attached to mine.

The curious students trailed behind him like a gaggle of baby ducks. "Not here, Joe," I said, furious with him for showing so little discretion in front of them. "At my office."

He tried to block my way. "Not so fast, Thea," he said. "First tell me what you're doing out here?"