Majoring In Murder (15 page)

“Dr. Zelinsky, I’m gratified that you kept an open mind to the possibility of foul play, but please tell me, what makes you think it may have occurred?”

“Carbon.”

“Carbon?”

“Not where you would expect to see it.”

“In the wound, you mean?”

“Yes!” He grinned. “And that’s not all.”

“What else?”

“Would you like to see?”

“All right.”

“You don’t get queasy at the sight of a dead body, do you? Wouldn’t want you fainting on the morgue floor.”

“I think I can control myself.”

We left his office and walked down the hall to the hospital morgue, a tiny, chilly, antiseptic room. Built into the wall at waist height were four refrigerated drawers, their square ends facing out. Zelinsky turned on the overhead light and pushed a stainless-steel gurney out of the way. He grabbed latex gloves from a box on a shelf, drew them on, and unlatched one of the two drawers on the right, pulling it out only far enough to view the head and shoulders of the deceased. He folded back the white sheet and seated himself on a stool he rolled up next to the body. From his pocket, he took out a retractable pointer of the kind used by lecturers. Careful not to touch anything, he explained what the head wound revealed.

“First, notice that the angle of the lesion is not straight. The blow did not come from directly above the victim. The direction of the strike that caused this mark is from lower right to upper left. See? The skin has been pushed to the side.”

That would mean whoever hit him was right-handed,
I said to myself,
and whatever he was hit with was fairly narrow.
I looked around for another stool, but since there was none, I bent down to see the wound, trying not to let my head block the light. “May I play devil’s advocate?” I asked.

“Be my guest.” “What if he were sitting in a chair, leaning over something? Then whatever fell on him could conceivably have provided such a glancing blow.”

“Maybe, but here’s the interesting part. When the ceiling fell in, a great deal of dust from the collapsing wallboard would have come with it. If the avalanche of debris coming from above had caused this wound, there should be a lot of that wallboard dust in it as well.”

“And there isn’t?”

“There’s some, of course, but it’s light and evenly distributed, as if the dust were in the air and settled on everything later.”

“But the body was found beneath a file cabinet. Let’s say he was sitting at an oblique angle and the cabinet fell on top of him in such a way that the comer of it hit him in the head. Wouldn’t the cabinet have shielded the wound from the debris that fell in afterward?”

He looked annoyed. “Whose side are you on?”

“At the risk of being irritating, I’m on the side of the truth. I want to know what really happened.”

“What about the carbon?”

“What about the carbon? You haven’t told me.”

He used the pointer to indicate the crack in the exposed skull. “The bone samples we took from there showed tiny particles of rust and carbon. What does that tell you?”

“It tells me that whatever made that wound is metal, either iron or steel. That supports the filing cabinet argument. But we need to see if the cabinet is rusting, and even more important, if it has any blood along its corner, although, frankly, I can’t see how a loaded file cabinet would tip over on its comer anyway. Plus, if a corner hit him, the wound would be triangular, not flat on the bottom, which is what I see.” My mind was racing.
I wonder if I can get into Kammerer House to examine that cabinet before the
demolition starts. Do we have enough to convince the police to preserve the scene? Maybe
I
can bring my
camera to record any evidence before it’s destroyed.

“Ahem.” Dr. Zelinsky cleared his throat, impatient with my silence. “The filing cabinet doesn’t account for the carbon, unless someone ran a pencil up and down the side. To my way of thinking, the carbon rules out the filing cabinet.”

“Do you know the composition of the carbon?” I asked. “What it might have come from?”

He shook his head, covered up the corpse, and closed the drawer. “Those are the tests that haven’t come back yet,” he said unhappily.

“We’re talking about the aftermath of a tornado. Isn’t it possible the wind could have blown carbon into the wound?”

“Anything’s possible,” he said, locking up the morgue, “but I don’t think so.”

“Have you notified the police yet?” I asked.

“I’m planning to give Bill Parish a call this afternoon.”

We walked back to his office, my mind occupied with what I’d seen and what he’d discovered.

“I thought you’d be delighted,” he said. “Why such a long face?”

“I suspected Wes Newmark was murdered, but the truth of it doesn’t make me happy. We have a job ahead of us to convince the authorities that what you’ve found is significant. Not just the police, but the college administration. And there’s one thing that worries me more than all the others.”

“What’s that?”

“Now we know there’s a killer on campus.”

The yellow police tape surrounding Kammerer House rippled in the breeze as I approached. Keep Out signs every fifteen feet discouraged the curious from trespassing. I stood in front of the damaged building and studied its facade. From this angle, I couldn’t see the extent of the destruction that the tornado had wreaked. Behind the building was quite a different picture. There, an observer could see where the twister had torn down three walls of the top floor, and breached the ceiling of the one below.

In the back, it was obvious where rescuers had removed part of a wall below a window to get to Wes Newmark’s body. But from the front it looked as if I could just climb the stairs to the door and walk right in. Of course, if I tried, it would be in full sight of people lingering on the quadrangle; most afternoon classes had let out.

I had been warned away once. Lieutenant Parish had let me off with only a scolding. He might not be so tolerant this time. Did I dare cross the police line again?

I walked to where the ribbon dipped low to the ground, gingerly stepped over it, and hurried up the walkway to the stairs. How embarrassing it would be if the door were locked and I had to retrace my steps. It wasn’t. The doorknob turned easily and I stepped into Kammerer House’s vestibule.

It was an eerie sight to walk into the front hall, where everything was as it had always been, except for the layer of fine white dust coating the walls, the tops of the furniture, and the floor. I closed the door gently and stood still, absorbing the atmosphere of the old house. The sour smell of dust and mildew assaulted my nose. It hadn’t taken long for mold to set in where the remains of the building were not protected from the elements. I could feel a chilly draft coming from the stairs leading to the now-open second floor. I looked down at my feet. I was not the first to enter this way. Several sets of footprints had trodden across the Oriental rugs, disturbing the even layer of dust.

The door to the parlor was open. I walked carefully, trying not to disturb things as I passed. I could see from the threshold the mass of rubble that had poured through a break in the ceiling, almost filling the room. The supports the firemen had put in place to hold up the wreckage while they pulled Newmark’s body free were still there. I took out my digital camera and began to snap pictures. I particularly wanted a shot of the rug where the corpse had lain.

Just inside the parlor door stood a wooden desk. Fingerprints on the dusty top showed where someone had braced himself on the corner—probably a policeman or fireman—in order to peer under the debris. I photographed the prints, and contemplated my next move. There was no way around it. If I wanted those pictures of the rug, I was going to have to crawl under the debris and trust that the supports were still solid. The only other alternative was to leave by the front door, walk around to the back where the firemen had dragged Newmark out, pry off the plywood the police had used to cover the hole, and hope a patrol car or security guard didn’t show up to chase me away.

I drew a kerchief from the pocket of my running suit, folded it into a triangle, and tied it across my nose like an old-time bandit to avoid breathing in the dust. I looped the camera cord around my neck, took a small flashlight from my handbag, laid it on the floor, and knelt down to plot my course. Too bad I’d forgotten a hat, or better still, a hard hat. Too late for that now. Cautiously I crawled under the heap of broken building materials that had been Newmark’s tomb, being especially careful not to brush against the fragile-looking jacks that held up the closest end of the pile. I was surprised at how dark it was when my body blocked the meager light from the opening. I switched on the flashlight and sat back on my knees. Fortunately, the firemen had been taller than I am, and the space they’d cleared was high enough for me to sit up.

I raised the camera and began shooting, starting from my left and taking a new picture every few feet, automatically triggering the flash.
Here’s where one of those panoramic cameras would have come in handy,
I thought. I moved on all fours toward where the body had been found, stopping to take shots of the rug. Ahead of me was the file cabinet, lying on its side atop another brace, its top drawer hanging open, the files dangerously close to spilling out. I shined the flashlight along its corner. There was no sign of rust and no hint of blood. But I had expected that. I’d just put down the flashlight and had picked up the camera for another shot when I felt a stiff breeze coming from the direction of the parlor door.
That’s odd,
I thought.
I wonder if somebody just came in the front entrance.
Even though I was out of the line of sight for anyone checking under the wreckage, I’d left my handbag by the desk, a sure sign of my presence. I held very still and listened for voices or other sounds of life. Nothing.
Just let me get this picture and I’ll be on my way,
I told myself. I straightened up and snapped a shot of the corner of the file cabinet, hoping the camera’s auto focus was working properly.

A strange noise made me freeze. Were those footsteps upstairs? I heard a creak, and then a shower of dust rained down on me.
Nuts! Someone is up there,
I thought, brushing the dust off my jacket.
Kids never can resist a place they’re forbidden to go.

There wasn’t room for me to turn around, so I began slowly backing out the way I’d come. I paused to shine the flashlight across the narrow confines once more, and a black square behind a wooden joist caught my eye.
What’s that?
I started crawling forward again, the light in my hand flickering up to the square and away as I awkwardly made my way on hands and knees toward this new attraction. It was the hearth. I’d forgotten Kammerer House had a fireplace.
And if it has a fireplace, what else would it have, Jessica?

I reached the fallen rafter, which lay on an angle across the dark cavity. I poked my flashlight over and behind it, and stretched out on the floor so I could see underneath. Lying wedged between the wood and the stone side of the fireplace was a set of three wrought-iron tools, a shovel, a broom, and a poker, all of which had been dislodged from their stand by the avalanche of debris. I pointed the flashlight along the square handles. Could one of these be the murder weapon? It was hard to see if there was any rust, but surely there would be soot, and soot was carbon.

I squinted at the poker. Two hairs caught in the rough edges of the metal three-quarters of the way up the shaft glistened in the beam from my flashlight. I maneuvered to shoot a photograph of the fireplace tools and the fallen stand behind them, but knew that what I really needed was the poker itself. Hopefully the forensic laboratory where the coroner had sent his samples could handle this item as well. He would need to send a sample of hair from the corpse for the lab to seek a match with the hairs on the poker, but that shouldn’t be a problem. And a simple spray of Luminol would show whether there was blood on the iron.

I tugged the kerchief from my face and wrapped it around my hand, hoping not to add my fingerprints to whoever’s might already be there. I was in an awkward position, lying on the floor, left hand over the lumber, holding the flashlight, my head wedged between the bottom of the wood and the flagstone fireplace floor, the camera under my chin, no room to reach my other hand in to grab the poker. I withdrew my hand, laid the flashlight on the floor, aiming its beam beneath the heavy timber, and wriggled backward, setting off another cascade of dust. Fearful of getting it in my eyes, I shielded my face with one hand and groped with the other, hoping the tool I touched first would be the correct one.

A groan from above triggered another rain of dust, this time with chunks of wood and wallboard. I saw the file cabinet quiver. Someone upstairs was causing the debris to move.

“Wait!” I yelled. “I’m down here.”

My fist closed around one of the tools and I yanked it out from under the rafter just as the heavy timber shifted and fell on the floor with a thud. A second earlier and my hand would have been caught beneath its weight.

While my hand had escaped, the rafter had landed on my flashlight, crushing it and leaving me in the dark. But I had my poker—at least I hoped I did. I couldn’t see to verify I’d gotten the right tool.

The sound of more movement mobilized me. Suddenly alert to the possibility that the upstairs maneuvering was not just a student prank, I quickly retreated, praying I wouldn’t knock into one of the props that kept me from being buried alive. I would have to leave this cave rump first; there was no other choice. Near where I believed I had entered, I reached out my leg, probing with my foot to be sure I wasn’t going to hit the jack. All clear. I planted my knee, slid back, and reached out with the other foot.