Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 20 - Compound Murder (5 page)

“You report,” Rhodes said. “They decide.”

“Hey,” Jennifer said, “that’s pretty catchy.”

“It just came to me,” Rhodes said. “Feel free to use it. Right now, though, I need to get inside and talk to some people.”

“Can I come along?”

“Not a good idea. You don’t want to interfere with a police investigation.”

“No, I don’t want to do that,” Jennifer said. “I’ll just go visit Lonnie and work on the Beauty Shack story. That nobody will be interested in.”

“I’d better get back on patrol,” Ruth said. “Crime never rests.”

Rhodes knew she was half joking, but only half. If there were just a burglary or a murder to work on, life would be simple enough, but there was always something else going on. Small things, usually, but plenty of them, and they all took time away from the main investigation. Which was why he didn’t often get a day off.

He went into the building and was chilled by the air-conditioning. It wasn’t a bad feeling after standing in the hot parking lot. The concealed fluorescent lights overhead reflected off the polished floors. The doors to the classrooms were closed, but Rhodes could hear the low hum of voices. He looked up to see if there were any security cameras in the hallway. There were, but there hadn’t been any outside. The college had been planning to install some for a while because of the battery thefts, but Rhodes had put a stop to those, and the cameras hadn’t been installed, as far as Rhodes knew. Saving money was always a consideration in the academic world, or so Seepy Benton had told Rhodes on several occasions when his salary was mentioned.

Rhodes’s first stop was the dean’s office. The administrative assistant told him that the dean was on the telephone but that she wanted to see Rhodes. He said he’d be back later and went on up to the second floor to see Seepy Benton.

Benton’s office always looked as if a tornado had blown through it. Papers and books were piled on the desk, on the chairs, on the floor. The shelves might once have looked orderly, but that had been long ago. A guitar case leaned against the desk, with a guitar beside it. Benton was at the desk, tapping away on his computer keyboard. A new addition was a white dry-erase board. It was covered with equations that looked like something from a cartoon drawing. They were meaningless to Rhodes.

“Uploading a new song video to YouTube?” Rhodes asked Benton from the doorway.

Benton thought of himself as the greatest singing and songwriting math teacher to come along since Tom Lehrer, a major difference being that Lehrer played piano and Benton allegedly played guitar.

“No,” Benton said.

He’d taken off his straw hat, and Rhodes noticed that he’d had a haircut recently. That and the neatly trimmed beard indicated that dating Ruth was having a good effect on him.

“I can show you a video of my latest composition if you’d like to see it,” Benton said. “It’s a surreal country-western song called ‘Drowning in a Stream of Consciousness.’”

Seeing it wasn’t the bad part. Hearing it was, so Rhodes said, “Not now. We have more important things to do.”

“I’ve been doing some of them already,” Benton said.

“Like what?”

“Wellington and I are Facebook friends. I’ve been looking at his Facebook page.”

“I got the impression that you didn’t care much for him.”

“Being friends on Facebook doesn’t have anything to do with being real friends. It’s completely different. But sort of the same.”

“Thanks for clearing that up. Did you find anything?”

“No. Most teachers have learned to be discreet on Facebook, or not to have pages at all. Or to have one under a fake name.”

“You think Wellington did that?” Rhodes asked. “Used a fake name?”

“I can’t say. If he did, we won’t be likely to find it. His Facebook page is useless anyway. He never posted anything.”

“What about a Twitter account?”

Benton looked at Rhodes with feigned surprise. “Wow. You’re learning about this computer stuff, aren’t you.”

“Slowly,” Rhodes said. “Very slowly.”

“In this case, it doesn’t matter if you’re slow. I can’t find a Twitter account for him.”

“Unless he used an assumed name,” Rhodes said.

“It’s always a possibility, but it’s doubtful. I can’t really see Earl as a fan of social media.”

“Why didn’t you like him?”

Benton changed the subject. “Have you searched his office?”

“Not yet. The dean was on the phone when I went by, and I didn’t get the key.”

“I’ll call and see if she’s off the phone,” Benton said. “I’m sure she’d like to talk to you.”

Benton didn’t wait for Rhodes to respond. He picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. He talked to the administrative assistant for a few seconds and then hung up.

“She can see you now,” Benton said. “I think you should talk to her about the students. She’s worried about keeping them here. A lot of them have jobs. They can’t just stay on campus all day.”

“I’ll go see her,” Rhodes said, wondering why Benton was so eager to get rid of him. “You wait for me here.”

“I wouldn’t think of leaving,” Benton said.

*   *   *

Dean King was agitated and animated. She waved her hands and spoke a little too loudly for the small office, which was much neater than Benton’s. She was obviously one of the clean-desk crowd.

“I’ve been on the phone all morning,” she said, “trying to find a replacement for Mr. Wellington. English teachers are usually a dime a dozen, but just try to find one in the middle of the semester. It’s not easy, let me tell you.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Rhodes said.

“That’s not all,” the dean said. “We have to let the students leave. We can’t have classes as usual, not with what’s happened. It’s not respectful, and they’re not paying attention to the instructors. Besides, there’s no way you could question all of them.”

“I know,” Rhodes said. He’d thought about it on the way back to town, and he knew the situation was impossible. “How about this. You make an announcement and say that I need to talk to anybody who might have some helpful information. That includes the faculty members. Everyone else can go.”

It wasn’t a good solution. Rhodes knew it was likely that the person having the most information would leave with the rest.

The dean leaned back in her chair, her relief obvious. “Thank you. That will help me get things back on track. I’ll announce it right now. I’ll dismiss classes for the rest of today and tomorrow. I can have anybody with information meet you here. I can give you some privacy.”

“That’ll be fine,” Rhodes said. “I’d like the key to Wellington’s office, too, if I have your permission to search it.”

“Of course.” The dean opened a desk drawer and got out a key. She handed it to Rhodes and said, “This is a passkey. I’ll need it back.”

“I’ll bring it by,” Rhodes said. “When I do, I have some questions for you.”

“Me? What have I done?”

“Not a thing, but I need to find out about Wellington.”

“I’m not sure what I can tell you.”

“Me either,” Rhodes said, “but we’ll find out. I do have your permission to search Wellington’s office, right?”

“Certainly.”

“Good. I’m going to talk to Benton now. Be sure to make that announcement.”

“I will,” the dean said.

She was quick about it, too. Rhodes heard it over the speaker system as he went up the stairs to Benton’s office, and he wondered who would come by to talk to him, or if anyone would.

*   *   *

By the time Rhodes arrived at Benton’s office, the dean had finished the announcement, and almost immediately there was the rumbling noise of chairs being shoved back, followed by doors opening and students rushing into the hallways and chattering away on their cell phones. Most of the classrooms were on the first floor, so Rhodes was able to get Benton’s door closed before any of the students saw him.

Benton had cleaned off a chair by his desk, where he sat clicking a computer mouse.

“Take a look at this,” Benton said.

Rhodes sat down and looked at the computer screen.

“All right,” he said. The screen was a little blurry. “I’m looking. Now tell me what I’m supposed to see.”

“It’s a Web site called ProfessoRater. Students can rank their instructors on a scale of one to five and make comments about them. This is a page of my rankings.”

“So?” Rhodes said.

“In the comments you’ll notice several occurrences of words like ‘awesome’ and ‘great’ and ‘best.’”

“I don’t see ‘modest,’” Rhodes said.

“That’s strange,” Benton said. “Modesty is one of my most outstanding qualities.”

“Right. And you’re showing me this because?”

“Because I want you to see Wellington’s rankings.” Benton made a couple of clicks with the mouse and wound up on a new page. “What words do you see there?”

“I get the feeling you have them memorized.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Benton said. “‘Worst.’ ‘Terrible.’ ‘Avoid at all costs.’ If I were the dean, I wouldn’t worry about lining up any grief counselors.”

“People can grieve even for someone they didn’t like, especially when he’s killed outside their school.”

“That’s true,” Benton said. “I wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t well liked, though.”

“Okay, I can see that the students didn’t think he was a very good teacher, but can you rely on what students think?”

“You saw what they said about me.” Benton clicked back to his own rankings. “Absolutely correct. Case closed.”

“If you say so. Is there supposed to be a motive for killing him hidden in his rankings somewhere?”

“Let’s take another look,” Benton said. He clicked the mouse and moved the cursor to a comment. “How about this one.”

Rhodes had to unbutton his shirt pocket and get out his reading glasses. He leaned forward and read the sentence that Benton held the cursor on. It said, “He is not only the worst teacher but he’s picky. Picky, picky, picky.”

“I’m guessing that being picky isn’t good,” Rhodes said, taking off his reading glasses and returning them to the shirt pocket.

“Your guess is correct,” Benton said. “Wellington was a little too strict. He was hard to like because of it.”

“These postings are anonymous, I take it.”

“That’s right. People might not be honest if they had to give their names.”

“Did the dean know about Wellington’s bad habits?”

“Everybody knew. Wellington didn’t have many friends on the faculty. You might want to ask the dean about it.”

“You can count on it. You said that Wellington didn’t have many friends. He must have had one or two.”

“The chair of the English Department is Harold Harris. He was as good a friend as Wellington had, but that wouldn’t mean they did more than speak in the halls. I think they had their problems.”

Rhodes stood up. “Let’s go have a look at Wellington’s office.”

“There’s one more thing I want to show you. Well, I’d better not. You’re just a civilian when it comes to the college, and I can’t deputize you. I’m not a civilian, though, so I can look at a student’s class schedule. I checked out Ike Terrell’s.”

“And?”

“And he was in one of Wellington’s classes.” Benton smiled. “Am I deputized again?”

“I’m not so sure it’s legal,” Rhodes said.

“Oh, come on. Do you watch TV?”

“I hardly ever have time.”

Rhodes could remember the days when he had time to slip home and watch an old movie now and then. An old, bad movie, his favorite kind. It had been too long since he’d done that.

“TV is very educational. If you watched, you’d know that Steven Seagal gets made a special deputy all the time. That sheriff in Arizona had him working in the danger zone, and I’m a lot better qualified than Steven Seagal.”

“He’s an accomplished martial artist.”

“So am I,” Benton said. “I’ve told you before that I studied with Professor Lansdale and learned his system.”

Benton had indeed told Rhodes that before, more than once. Anybody could study martial arts. That didn’t mean he’d learned anything.

“Want me to bust a few moves?” Benton asked as if sensing Rhodes’s skepticism.

“Not right now,” Rhodes said.

“I’ve been through your Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy. Can Steven Seagal say that?”

“He might have been through some other county’s academy.”

“I don’t think so. How about it? Can I be a deputy again?”

“Temporarily,” Rhodes said.

“But no badge?”

“No badge,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

Wellington’s office was much neater than Benton’s, if not as immaculate as the dean’s. Rhodes had brought Benton so he could have a go at the computer. It belonged to the college, not to Wellington, but Wellington might have used it for personal things.

While Benton was on the computer, Rhodes looked around the office. He didn’t see anything that looked unusual. The bookshelves were crammed with things like
The Norton Anthology of American Literature,
several editions of different grammar handbooks, and novels by mostly American writers. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald were prominent. The only surprising thing was a copy of a brand-new hardback with the snappy title of
Piney Woods Terror Attack
. Rhodes pulled it off the shelf.

“The latest Sage Barton thriller,” Benton said. “Even English teachers love them.”

A few years earlier, two women named Jan and Claudia had been in a writing workshop in Obert, a little town not far from Clearview. There’d been a murder, and in the course of solving it, Rhodes had met the women. They’d eventually written a novel about a heroic Texas sheriff, a retired Navy SEAL who went about his job while armed with twin Colt Peacemaker revolvers. Barton fought terrorists, captured serial killers, and outran explosions that left craters the size of small lakes. Everyone in Blacklin County liked to claim that Rhodes was the model for Sage Barton, though Rhodes and Barton weren’t alike in the least. The claim had made the books hot sellers in the county; in fact, they sold well all over the country.

“I didn’t think English teachers read stuff like this,” Rhodes said, putting the book back on the shelf.

“You think they sit around reading Shakespeare all day?” Benton asked.