Murder 101 (12 page)

Moriarty looked up in surprise. “They’ll be here in twenty, Detective.” He bid Dottie good-bye and came lumbering back toward my office.

Simons returned with a large, black camera with a big flash panel across the top. He handed it to Crawford and put the bag outside the office. “Here you go, Detective.”

Crawford nodded and put the camera to his face, starting with the desk. He seemed particularly interested in the “X” on it. To my thinking, it was just the vandal being an even bigger asshole than he or she already was. But Crawford seemed to think it had some significance. He took several pictures of it from different angles. He then turned his attention to the bookshelves and took several pictures of them and the books on the floor. He moved around the small office, gingerly stepping over the contents, and snapped pictures. He turned around at one point, and asked, “How’s that list coming?” more to be a pain in the ass than out of genuine concern.

I gave him a double thumbs-up. “Excellent!” I was on the third year and sure that I had missed a bunch of things already. I was beyond caring, though.

Wyatt arrived just as Crawford was reviewing some of the pictures he had taken with the camera. He was dressed as casually as Crawford in jeans, T-shirt, and giant basketball sneakers. He nodded at me in greeting when he arrived, but I still got the feeling that he didn’t trust me completely. Or maybe he knew what was going on between me and Crawford and didn’t approve. For the third time that day, I felt guilty. I was ahead of schedule in the daily guilt allotment. I returned to my blue book and the list of office contents.

Crawford brought Wyatt up to speed. Crawford’s back was to me, and Wyatt faced me, looking at me over Crawford’s shoulder while he recounted the events of the morning. I stared right back at him, my pen poised above the paper. When Crawford finished, Wyatt came over and sat down. “Tell me what happened.”

“Didn’t Crawford just tell you?” I asked. I saw Crawford wince a bit at my tone.

Wyatt let out a breath. “Tell me again.”

I was getting tired of telling the same old stories again and again. “I got to work, opened my door, saw that the office was trashed, and closed the door.”

“Was there anyone on the floor at the time?”

“Just Dottie, Denis, and Father Kevin,” I said, hooking a thumb in Kevin’s direction. Kevin, who was slumped in a chair playing with a paper clip, perked up a bit at the mention of his name.

“Padre,” Wyatt said, acknowledging Kevin’s presence.

“Detective,” Kevin said, and held out his hand.

The phone rang at Dottie’s desk, and she picked it up. “Professor? Sister Mary.” She held the receiver out to me, even though I was too far away to reach it.

I rolled my eyes at Kevin and went over to Dottie’s desk. “Yes, Sister?” She read me the riot act about closing the office floor, and when she took a breath, I was able to explain the situation to her. She asked me when they would open the floor again. “No idea,” I said. “But as soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.”

We hung up. Moriarty had arrived back at Dottie’s desk to take her statement. He pulled up a chair next to her desk and began questioning her. The way she described her job made it sound way more important and complex than it really was.

Wyatt was sitting across from Kevin, getting information from him. I walked over to Crawford, who put an arm across the opening of the office to keep me out. He looked down at me. “Fred?” he called. “I’m going to take Professor Bergeron’s statement. Crime Scene should be here any minute.”

Wyatt nodded and turned back to Kevin. Crawford looked at me. “Is there an empty office?” he asked.

I shook my head but led him to Denis’s office, around the corner. I tapped on the glass of his office door slightly and heard one of the desk drawers slam shut. Probably hiding the contraband. “Denis? Can we borrow your office?” I asked in French.

The door opened and Denis appeared, the usual cloud of smoke hanging heavily in the air. He looked terrified when he saw Crawford, but he nodded and exited as quickly as he could.

Crawford and I went into the office; I sat at Denis’s desk, Crawford in the chair between the desk and the door. Denis’s office was more long than wide, with the desk, visitor chair, and bookshelf all crammed against one wall. Unlike mine, the window opened onto a brick wall so nobody could see in. I looked at Crawford, and he looked back at me—not with the sad face, but with the really bad-news face. I fought the urge to burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

“For being such a snot. I’m mentally and physically exhausted. It’s all getting to me,” I admitted.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize.”

“Why is this happening?” I asked.

He leaned in close, and whispered, “You’ve obviously got something that someone wants. Think. What could that be?” he asked, looking deep into my eyes.

I folded and unfolded my hands in my lap. “I don’t know.” I thought for a moment and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

He nodded, resigned. I wasn’t going to be any help. “Think. What could you have that someone wants? Is it something of Ray’s, maybe?” He pulled back a bit. “If you think of anything . . .”

“I know, I know. We’ve been through this a hundred times. Call you. Anytime. Day or night,” I intoned.

He stood. “Let’s go back out. I want to see if Crime Scene has come so we can finish this up and open the office again.”

“That’s a cool T-shirt,” I said, as he opened the door. I fingered the sleeve. “Can I get one when this is over?”

He looked back at me and smirked. “You can have anything you want when this is over.”

I had a feeling he wasn’t referring to police-issue clothing, and my stomach fluttered slightly.

Fifteen

The investigation progressed for most of the day. I sat at the table, watching the Crime Scene detectives do what they do best: put stuff in little baggies. I watched seven pencils and four markers be bagged as evidence, along with my fake Rangers’ hockey puck and my framed photograph of Mark Messier, the greatest Ranger of all time, in my opinion, which I hoped I would get back. I couldn’t fantasize about being Mrs. Mark Messier if I couldn’t stare at his picture for hours on end. At two-forty, I grabbed Crawford. “Can I go to class?” I asked. “I have Shakespeare in a few minutes.”

He nodded. “I’ll walk you.”

Sister Mary ambushed Crawford on the landing outside the office floor. “This is very disruptive, Detective,” she said. She stood six feet two inches in stocking feet and probably had twenty pounds on him. She had the bearing of an army drill sergeant and the monochromatic wardrobe to match. I might have imagined it, but he looked cowed.

“We’ll be done shortly, Sister,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, so I’ll give you an update.” Crawford slunk away, with me at his side. We went up a flight of stairs to the fourth floor and down the hall to the class where I taught the Shakespeare course. The hallway was empty and the door was closed. We stood in front of the door, me clutching my briefcase like a football, and him with hands plunged deep into his jeans pockets.

“You haven’t talked to Ray, have you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not since yesterday.” I told him about our phone call at the beach while he was sleeping.

He looked at me intently. “Did you tell him where you were?”

“No.”

“If you talk to him again, you need to call me. Or if he shows up at the house. Any contact at all.”

I nodded to show him I understood.

“I would feel better if you spent the weekend with Max. I’ll drive you if you want to go.” He stood for a moment and thought, looking at me intently. “You’re not going to go, are you?”

I shook my head.

“You are stubborn,” he said. “I’ll be over later,” he said, and walked away before I had a chance to respond. “And I’m not sleeping in my car, so let’s figure something out,” he called back over his shoulder.

“I’ll be grading papers!” I yelled. His rubber sandals made a squeaking noise as he walked down the hall; he didn’t respond. “So, don’t expect anything exciting!” He disappeared through the door; I heard it slam shut.

Several students made their way down the hall a few moments later. I opened the door to the classroom and let the five students out of eight who had shown up—John Costigan, Mercedes Rivas, Fiona Martin, Jake Carlyle, and Deb McCarthy—into the room. I went over to the desk and put my briefcase down and decided to answer the question before it was asked. “Before you ask, no, I have not graded your papers yet.” I held my hand up as the groans, complaints, and accusations began. “However, I promise that I will have them back to you by Monday.” I stopped and waited until they were silent. “Promise,” I emphasized.

Fiona Martin raised her hand, and I nodded to her. The students were in two rows, Fiona at the front of the row to my left. “What’s going on in the office area?” she asked.

Word gets around fast. I picked up a piece of chalk from the ledge on the blackboard behind me and rolled it between my fingers. I was still a bit off-kilter from what had happened this morning and was having a hard time focusing on the class and the lesson plan. “Just a little problem with one of the offices,” I said, and turned to write on the board, trying to keep the focus on
Macbeth
and off the crime that had taken place in my office.

“What kind of problem?”

I stopped writing, the chalk in midair. I thought the subject was closed, but apparently she didn’t agree. I turned around. “Fiona?”

She looked at me blankly. “What kind of problem?” she repeated.

I put the chalk down on the ledge. “Someone broke into my office.”

A couple of the students gasped. Fiona looked down at her books and then up again at me. “Why?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know,” I said shortly, and turned back around to the board. “Now, who can address this issue?” I asked, writing “Compare and contrast the ways that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth deal with their guilt.”

There were some murmurs, but none of the students could come up with anything even vaguely resembling an answer. Mercedes Rivas, the star of our softball team and a decent student, finally raised her hand. “Macbeth continues to do other wrong things and goes insane and Lady Macbeth kind of goes crazy, too?” she said.

I resisted the urge to shudder at the lack of grammatical structure in her response and focused on what was correct. “That’s a start. What else?”

Fiona raised her hand. “Lady Macbeth’s guilt, even though she didn’t physically commit the act, gets the best of her.” She shot a look at her classmates to see if anybody would back her up, but there were no takers. It seemed they understood the concept of “aiding and abetting.”

I nodded slowly. “But what about her complicity in helping Macbeth bring the plan to fruition?”

They stared at me blankly so I decided to rephrase. “Doesn’t she really push Macbeth to kill Duncan, thereby making herself part of the plot and just as guilty?”

A few heads went up and down. They were finally getting it. John Costigan raised his hand, and I noticed that he had a bandage across the palm of his right hand. He quickly put it down when I pointed to him. “I’m not sure she’s just as guilty, but she thinks she is.”

I nodded. “Right.” I turned back to the board and began writing some of their responses, creating a cluster map on the board with the word “guilt” in the middle. After discussing it until there were only five minutes to go, I felt that we had covered the topic of guilt in as much detail as we were going to, and I bid them a good weekend, sending them on their way. I figured letting them go early might make them forget that I still had their papers. When Fiona approached my desk after the others had left, I knew that I was wrong. I looked up from my position behind the desk and waited for her question.

“Are we really getting the papers back on Monday?” she asked, her gaze steely and unwavering.

I held up two fingers like I had seen Crawford do. “Scout’s honor,” I said, laughing slightly.

She stood for a few more minutes, staring at me in silence. Finally, she picked up her backpack, which rested at her feet, and left the classroom without saying good-bye.

To her back, I called, “Have a good weekend!” but in my head, I said something else about her which didn’t make me proud. I packed my briefcase, making sure I had the papers, and closed the door to the classroom behind me.

There was a small lounge outside the classroom and a crowd of students—Fiona and Vince among them—were lounging in the overstuffed chairs, chatting and laughing. I took a good look at Vince, thinking that he had recovered very well from his girlfriend’s murder. He stared back at me, holding my gaze, almost as if he knew what I was thinking. After a few minutes of the staring match, I turned and walked down the hall, noticing that the group behind me had fallen silent.

Sixteen

Rather than return to my office, which was now a crime scene, I left the campus immediately upon the completion of my last class and went to the train station. It was a gorgeous day—sunny, mild, with a few fluffy clouds in the sky. I had no idea what time the next train happened by, but I thought I would take my chances and wait on the platform. If I had a long wait, I would stare at the river until the train came. After the day that I had had, I thought that might be a nice thing to do.

As I descended the hill, I heard the train approaching the station. I took off running. Who was I kidding? I didn’t want to stare at the river. I wanted to go home. I reached the parking lot as the train pulled into the station. I saw the conductor hanging out the window of the engine car and yelled to get his attention. He acknowledged me and yelled that I should hurry if I wanted to make the train.

Once on board, I rested my head against the headrest of my seat and closed my eyes. I dreamed of sand, waves, the ocean, and Seaside Heights. Thoughts of my senior prom and my seafoam-green-polyester dress floated into my head. Had it only been a day since I walked along the sand with not a thought in my head? So much had happened. Seconds later, or so it seemed, the conductor screamed out “Dobbs Ferry” and I awoke with a start. I exited the train and began my walk up the hill.

I arrived at the house and headed up the driveway to the back door. My neighbor, Terri, peeked out from the row of hedges that separated our two driveways. She called out to me.

“Alison! Hi!” she called.

I stopped in the middle of the driveway. “Oh, hi, Terri.”

She was a petite blonde who was often in either workout or tennis attire. Today, she had on a little sundress and looked perfect. I felt like a giant, sweaty behemoth standing across from her. She seemed to want to chat.

She ran a hand over her blond ponytail. Her pink scrunchie matched her sundress, which, for some reason, really annoyed me. Maybe because I was wearing black and yellow and looked like an oversized bumblebee. “I heard about what happened with your . . . with your car and all.” She paused. “It was terrible.” Another pause, this one of the pregnant variety. “The dead girl went to your school, didn’t she?”

I nodded.

“That was terrible.”

I thought we had already established that.

“Did they find out who killed her?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you know her?”

I nodded again.

She looked at me questioningly. “There was something in the paper today that said the police had Ray in for questioning. Is that true?”

I was surprised. I had stopped reading the paper, so I had no idea that Ray’s name had been mentioned in connection with this. It made sense. “Yes, it’s true. But they let him go. They didn’t have enough to keep him.”

“Does he have good representation?” she asked.

I was sick of talking about Ray already. “I think so. I think Mitch Klein has taken the case.”

She gasped. “The lawyer who . . .”

I knew it by heart. “. . . defended the guy who shot the kid on the subway,” I repeated in a monotone.

“Well that makes me feel better,” she said, a little too concerned with Ray’s well-being for my comfort. She wrapped her arms around her little body. “Is Ray OK?”

“I guess,” I said, trying not to let on how little I actually cared. Why did she care so much?

“If you talk to him, tell him that I was asking about him,” she said, not able to look at me.

That’s when it hit me. I took a step back. “You . . .”

She looked at me, all doe-eyed and perky. “What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.” But I knew. Terri had been one of Ray’s affairs. I was surer of it than I had ever been of anything. And I was furious, all over again. “Good . . . then . . .”I said, picking up my briefcase. “I’ll see you later. Say hi to Jackson. Your husband,” I said pointedly as I went inside. That was mature, I thought as I stood in the hallway. I closed the door and closed my eyes, banging my head against the doorframe, murmuring “stupid, stupid, stupid . . .”

When the shock of this new revelation wore off, I took my shoes off and left them inside the front door, along with my briefcase. I padded up the stairs and sat on the edge of my bed, looking around. Magda wasn’t coming for another four days, and my house needed a cleaning desperately, and not just because there was fingerprint dust everywhere; there was your regular garden-variety dust as well. I guess I knew what I’d be doing over the weekend. I didn’t know if Crawford had been serious about coming over, but if he was, I figured I had a few hours before he showed up, so I decided to take a nap before I broke out the vacuum and the rubber gloves.

The room was dark when I awoke. A soft wind was blowing through the window of the bedroom, and I heard rain hitting the pavement outside. I sat up with a start and squinted to see the clock next to my bed. It was seven, three hours after I had arrived home. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and rested a moment before getting up.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, the person coming up treading so lightly that they hardly made any noise. I tensed. The room was pitch-dark, except for the glow of the clock-radio numbers. I heard my name being whispered and before I could find anything to defend myself against the intruder besides a paperback copy of the latest Harry Potter book that was on my nightstand, the doorframe was filled with an outline of a body. I grabbed the book and hurled it with every ounce of strength that I had.

As my eyes adjusted, I could see that the shape was unmistakably Crawford’s, but the book was already out of my hands and flying through the air. Tall and lanky, yet broad-shouldered, the detective stood in the doorway. He was dressed as he had been earlier, sans the gun and shield. He let out a shout as the book hit him in the gut. “What the hell?” he yelled.

“Sorry.”

He kicked the book back into the room but stayed in the doorway.

“You can come in, you know. It’s not the inner sanctum or anything.”

He came in and walked over to the bed, bending over me.

“No kissing,” I reminded him as his face got close. Had my teeth been brushed, I might have broken the rules, but the taste in my mouth told me that this kiss might be my last.

He stood up. “I was going to take your pulse,” he lied.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” I said, not fully awake. “If I knew you were coming, I would have baked a Bundt,” I said, referencing a commercial from my childhood.

“I wasn’t sure I was coming either,” he admitted. “What’s a Bundt?”

I stifled a yawn. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

“I’m off duty,” he said. “Besides, I’ve already run the Sister Mary gauntlet today. What else could happen?”

“How did you get in?” I asked.

His tone got serious. “Through the front door. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to lock it, considering the events of the last few weeks?”

He had a point. “You smell like garlic,” I said, getting a whiff.

“There’s pizza downstairs. I’m just glad you’ll be alive to enjoy it,” he said, and turned to go downstairs.

“ ‘I’m just glad you’ll be alive to enjoy it,’” I mimicked, and got up off the bed.

My jeans and a clean shirt were hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. I pulled off the khakis and put on the jeans, which were noticeably looser than they had been a few weeks earlier. I tried to recall when I ate last and flashed on the Devil Dogs, bottled coffee, and chocolate donut. Hours ago. My brush was still on the dresser, along with a thin sheen of fingerprint powder; I brushed my hair, flipping my head over and giving myself an instant head rush. I stood up straight, let the dizziness pass, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I slipped on my trusty clogs.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth. There was nothing I could do about the dark circles under my eyes, so I went with clean over glamorous and left off the makeup. Crawford had seen me in all states, and clean would be an improvement over many of them. I went downstairs.

“What did you come up with from my office?” I asked, not really in the mood for small talk.

He really didn’t have too much to tell although he was still fixated on the “X” that had been etched in my desk. “Someone with an unoriginal Zorro complex is looking for something and leaving their mark,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It was on the dash of the car, too, but nobody’s supposed to know that.”

I guess he really did trust me. “That’s one of those things you keep from the public, right?”

“Yeah, we don’t want that getting out because every lunatic in the Bronx will come out of the woodwork to confess.” He opened a box of pizza—there were two on my countertop—and the smell hit me in the nose, making my mouth water. “I’m off duty, though. Remember? No shop talk.” Next to the pizza boxes was a bag from the store around the corner, from which he pulled out paper plates, napkins, forks and knives, and a bottle of wine. He had found two wineglasses in my cupboards and had taken those out as well. “I’ve got one plain and one extra garlic and sausage. You looked like an extra-garlic woman.” He looked at me, waiting for my answer.

“You were right,” I said, and got up to get a piece of pizza. He pulled a slice from the pie and handed it to me on a paper plate.

He also gave me a stack of napkins. “You also look like an extra-napkins woman,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. I shot him a look, but took the stack of napkins anyway. He was right about that, too.

He pulled a Swiss army knife from his pants pocket and got out the corkscrew to uncork the wine. “Do you want a glass of wine or a big can of Foster’s?” he asked.

“Funny,” I said.

He had the bottle open in a few seconds and poured two glasses, one of which he handed to me. He took his glass and tipped it toward me. “A toast?”

I thought for a moment. “To solving this case?”

“You can do better than that,” he said, his glass raised and still tipped toward me, a smile on his lips.

“I don’t think I can,” I said.

He thought for a moment. “Then I’ll try,” he said. “To you,” he said softly, and clinked his glass against mine. I averted his gaze and took a sip, my face flushing. “You blush a lot,” he remarked.

I blushed a deeper red. “It’s kind of like your sad face. It only comes out sometimes.”

“Sad face?”

I pulled my mouth down into my imitation of his face, drawing my lips thin. He laughed heartily, spraying wine into a napkin. On a roll, I continued, “Then, you’ve got the really bad-news face,” I said, and did my impression of that expression.

His laugh was a deep bellow, punctuated by snorts. I generally wasn’t a fan of the snort—the only component of Max’s belly laugh and one that I was accustomed to—but because it was him, I accepted it. I actually found it attractive.

“Do they teach you that in cop school?” I asked.

“It’s called the Academy, and no, they don’t teach us to make faces,” he said.

“Do they teach you how to deal with suspects who vomit?”

“I’m down one pair of shoes, remember?”

“What do they teach you, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How to deal with criminals, shoot guns, how to drive a
cruiser,
” he said pointedly and looked at me, “. . . eat donuts . . . you know, the regular stuff.”

“I think they should add Vomit 101.”

“I’ll mention that at the next cop-school meeting.”

I sat at the table and he joined me with his wine. I dove into my pizza like it was my last meal. I don’t know where he got it, but it was better than any pizza that I had tasted in my life. Or I was just starving, and it was just the same crappy pizza from the crappy pizza place around the corner. He watched me for a minute. “You were hungry. When was the last time you had a meal?”

“If you count three Devil Dogs, a bottle of coffee, and a chocolate donut as a meal, this morning around eight.” I finished my pizza in three more bites and got up to get another slice. “You ready?” I asked, opening the box.

He was still on his first piece and shook his head. I found it hard to believe that you could be as big as he was and eat pizza as slowly as he did, but apparently, it was true.

I returned to the table with another slice. I chewed on my thumb for a minute. “I thought we weren’t going to see each other in a social capacity anymore.”

“This isn’t a social call. I’m guarding you,” he said, unconvincingly.

“I don’t think that’s going to hold up in front of a police review board.”

He focused on a piece of sausage on his pizza and didn’t respond.

“Besides, if you have me under surveillance, shouldn’t you be asleep?” I asked.

“There is a difference between guarding and surveillance.” He ate the sausage. “We cover that in cop school, too.”

I ate my pizza in silence. When I was done, I got up and got another slice and the bottle of wine. “One more?” I asked. He handed me his plate, and I gave him another slice; I poured more wine in both of our glasses. “How’s your stomach?”

He rubbed his midsection. “Harry Potter?”

I bowed my head solemnly. “There are many life lessons to be learned from Master Potter.”

“Like?”

“Like love thy neighbor.” I paused. “Something my ex-husband apparently took to heart.” He looked at me, puzzled. “I’m pretty sure that Ray had an affair with Terri, next door.”

The look on his face told me that he wasn’t going to comment. I didn’t feel the need to elaborate, either.

He changed the subject. “Save some room,” he said. “I brought cannolis from Arthur Avenue.” He motioned to a box on the counter and when I opened it, there were four beautiful cannolis wrapped in wax paper; the ends were sprinkled with chocolate chips. Arthur Avenue was a street in the Bronx noted for its spectacular Italian restaurants and decades-old bakeries, which specialized in pastries like cannolis, napoleons, and eclairs. I stopped myself from falling instantly in love with him; my love of the cannoli was greater than even my love of God and country. “I hope you like cannolis,” he said.

“Just a little bit,” I said, putting my index finger and thumb together. I was disappointed that he brought only four; I had been known to eat at least that many by myself. I sat down again and got to work on the third piece of pizza, confident that I would have room for dessert. When I finished that slice, I drank the rest of my wine, and poured more into my glass. I was feeling pretty good now, full and more than a little drunk.