Tunnel Vision (6 page)

“When we get in there, interview the officers who responded to the initial call and find out what they observed. I don’t care how trivial the information seems to be. Write it all down. You got a notebook?”

Maggie pulled a small black notebook from her jacket pocket. Brodie nodded at her and they proceeded down the hallway. It was easy to find the crime scene. A small cluster of students and older adults, who looked like graduate instructors, stood at one end of the hall, craning their necks to see what all the excitement was about. A uniformed officer was guarding a set of double doors with opaque windows. He moved the curiosity seekers out of the way when he saw the detectives approaching. Brodie motioned to Nicholls, who began politely dispersing the onlookers.

“Okay, folks. Go on about your business. There’s nothing for you to see here,” he said without smiling. A young woman in the group spoke up. “We have a class in that lab,” she said.

He looked at her and said with a slight smile,

“Class has been canceled for today, ma’am. You might want to call your TA later to find out when it will meet again. Now go on home.”

The students began shuffling away, looking back over their shoulders and wondering what was going on. When most of them had dispersed, Brodie and Nicholls pushed open the frosted glass double doors. Before Maggie could follow them, a uniformed officer stopped her. Pausing, Brodie walked back to the door.

“She’s with us, Ted.”

“Sorry, Brodie. Trainee?” the officer asked. She nodded as she held the door open for Maggie.

“You’ve got a shield, Weston. Use the damn thing,”

she snapped. Maggie stiffened slightly and gave Brodie a curt nod.

The room was a standard biology lab with long black Formica-topped tables in rows. Spaced along the tables were what Brodie assumed were dissection trays with cheap scalpels, boxes of latex gloves, plastic goggles, and an assortment of other metal instruments. The air in the room was heavy with formaldehyde and reminded her of the ME’s autopsy room. Aquariums filled with formaldehyde and specimens lined one wall. There were five sinks at various locations around the room. The remains of a dissected frog covered with liquid sat on the lab table at the front of the room. The frog had been cut open and there were pins inserted into its major organs with a small colored flag attached to each pin. She wondered if she should salute the little critter that had given its life to educate future scientists. A young man with thick glasses and curly black hair sat at a lab table and looked as gray-green as the preserved frog. She estimated his age at no more than twenty-two or -three. Nicholls was squatting next to the man, asking him questions slowly and writing down his responses as she walked over to them and sat on one of the lab tables.

“He found the victim,” Nicholls said as he wrote in his notebook. “This is Kevin Larson, biology TA.”

“When did you find the victim, Kevin?” she asked.

When the young man finally looked up at her, his eyes seemed to be in constant motion. “This morning. I came in early to get the lab set up for today’s dissection. Jellyfish.”

“What time did you get here?” she continued.

“About six-thirty, I think. Class starts at eightthirty.”

“How long were you here before you found it?”

Nicholls inquired.

The lab assistant shrugged, “I don’t know for sure. Maybe ten minutes. We don’t need much equipment for jellyfish so I just threw it all on the tables and went to make sure there were enough jellyfish.”

“Were there?” Brodie asked.

The man looked sharply at her. “I don’t fucking know! My count was interrupted. It’s not like I thought ‘Oh goodie, we have twenty jellyfish and one human head’.”

Nicholls patted the lab assistant on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Kevin, just try to take it easy.”

“How can I take it easy, man? Another forty-five minutes and there would’ve been twenty kids in here. Do you know what would have happened if one of them had found...it.”

“They’re lucky you got here first, Kevin,” Nicholls said to comfort him. His hands were still shaking and he held them clasped tightly together, hoping no one would notice.

“Did you recognize the victim, Kevin?” Brodie asked.

“To tell you the truth, ma’am, I didn’t look at him long enough to know.”

“But you know it’s a man,” Nicholls said.

“Well...I mean...I guess I just supposed it. I can’t imagine anyone doing something like that to a woman,” Kevin said with an incredulous look on his face.Brodie gave her partner a ‘you wouldn’t believe what people can do to each other’ look and he smiled. She hopped off the lab table and spoke quietly to Nicholls. “Make sure you have his name and address. As soon as they get his prints for comparison let him go on home to lie down.”

Nicholls began taking down information about Kevin Larson while Brodie walked across the room to where her trainee was interviewing a police officer. Maggie finished speaking to the officer just as she got there. The officer nodded to Brodie as he turned to leave.

“What’s his story?” Brodie asked.

“He and his partner took the call at six-fifty. When they arrived, the kid over there was semi-hysterical.”

Brodie smiled at Maggie’s reference to the lab assistant as “kid”. She had been about the same age when Brodie first met her and it wasn’t a word she would have used to describe the young woman.

“Officer Corcoran inspected the tank and

determined there was indeed a head in it, but says they didn’t touch the tank or anything else in the room, with the exception of the doors,” she continued. “He remained here while his partner called it in. The crime scene people haven’t arrived yet, but should be here any minute.”

“Good. Have you inspected the tank yet?”

“No. I didn’t think I should touch it until the lab techs finish their thing.”

“That’s right, Weston. Cedar Springs may not be as sophisticated as Austin, but the same rules apply.”

“I’m aware of that, Royce,” Maggie frowned.

“That’s
Lieutenant Brodie
to you, Detective,” she stated, shifting a cold glare toward her. Other than her family, she had never allowed anyone to use her first name…except Maggie. That had been in a different lifetime and a familiarity she wouldn’t tolerate now.

Maggie looked at the woman glaring at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll remember that, Lieutenant.” Her former lover wasn’t going to make her training period easy and Maggie wasn’t sure she could blame her. Brodie walked away from her and went to the aquarium. Nicholls joined her and the two detectives bent down slightly to look into the mass of jellyfish.

“What do you think, RB?” he asked.

“Well, this obviously isn’t where the guy was killed. No discernible blood in the tank. No mess in the lab anywhere, and to decapitate someone would have made one helluva mess.”

“It doesn’t seem likely the killer would have stuck around and cleaned up after himself either. Where do you think we’ll find the rest of him?”

“I’m sure it will turn up in the worst possible place,” she said as she stood again and stretched her back.

The doors to the lab opened as three lab

technicians, a photo tech, and two paramedics with a gurney entered the room. A man in his mid-thirties with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail walked toward the detectives. He was wearing bright yellow coveralls and worked at pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

“Sorry we’re a little late,
chica
. Car trouble. The city council better get off its dead ass and vote us a new van soon. Where’s the body?” the technician asked, looking around.

“Can’t tell you that, Frank. But part of him is in there,” she said pointing at the aquarium.

“You won’t be needing that gurney either,”

Nicholls added. “A bowling bag should do it.”

The technician’s eyes widened, “No shit! Cool.”

“We’ll be downstairs while you work. Let us know what you find. Enjoy,” she said as she and Nicholls turned to leave the room.

Maggie was waiting in the hallway. Brodie

stopped and seemed to be thinking. Then she turned to her.

“Take a couple of uniforms and go through the rest of the building. Make sure there aren’t more body parts waiting around for some unsuspecting coed in any of the other labs. Grab a walkie-talkie from the car in case you come across something. Nicholls, you and I will take a few officers and canvass the area around the building. Before we split up, tell Gus the Ghoul in there that I want a preliminary report on my desk this afternoon. And none of that bullshit about the victim was decapitated. I want something more concrete than that this time.”

Nicholls re-entered the lab while Brodie and Maggie went to the car for the walkie-talkies. As they retrieved them from the trunk and checked them, Maggie leaned against the vehicle. The sun was out in full force, driving the humidity to an uncomfortably sticky level. Brodie watched Maggie slip on a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. She silently chastised herself for thinking Maggie couldn’t look any sexier than she did at that moment. What did she expect? That Maggie would have turned into the same kind of bitter woman Brodie had become inside?

“Do you think it could be a random act?” Maggie asked.

“Nope,” said Brodie, startled from her thoughts.

“I don’t believe in random acts. I’ve never seen a single case where there wasn’t some kind of motive involved.”

“What could be the motive for decapitating someone? Seems a little over the top.”

“Who knows? Maybe the vic made a smart ass remark to the killer’s girlfriend or bumped into him in the hallway the wrong way. I didn’t say it had to be a good motive, or even a logical one,” Brodie said, looking at her. “People do irrational and unexpected things when you least expect it all the time. You should know something about that, Detective,” she added, the words falling unbidden from her mouth before she could stop them.

Maggie removed her sunglasses and looked at her, revealing fiery hazel eyes. “Why am I getting the distinct impression you’re not thrilled to have me here,
Lieutenant Brodie
?” she asked with a touch of irritation in her voice.

“Probably because you’ve always been very

perceptive,” Brodie answered flatly. “But whether or not I’m excited about it is irrelevant. If you want another training officer, I won’t oppose the request.”

Taking a step closer to Maggie, her eyes hard, she lowered her voice, “Why the fuck are you here? Tim could have gotten you on in Austin and we both know it.” “Leave him out of this. He doesn’t make decisions for me,” Maggie said, raising her voice a notch.

“Well, he sure as shit did eight years ago,” Brodie seethed, immediately regretting reopening the old wound, but unable to stop.

“And you let yourself get out of control,” Maggie said, her voice becoming less confrontational. “Just let it go. It’s already cost us both too much.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Brodie

demanded, her closeness to Maggie suddenly becoming uncomfortable.

Maggie knew she had been at least partially responsible for Brodie’s resignation from the Austin PD. Now fate had put her on a collision course with her former lover. She didn’t doubt her own abilities to become a good investigator. She just had to convince everyone else, and she couldn’t do it without going through the woman now standing in front of her. Pushing away from the car, she cleared her throat, unable to look into Brodie’s eyes any longer.

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Should I meet you and Detective Nicholls back here?”

“In an hour,” Brodie snapped, stepping away from her. “We’ll contact you if we find anything and you do the same.”

Maggie walked away from the car and pointed at two officers standing near the steps leading into the building. “You two, come with me,” she ordered in a firm voice.

As she watched Maggie and the two officers reenter the building, Brodie saw self-confidence and assertiveness she hadn’t seen in a younger Maggie Weston.

THE DETECTIVES, ACCOMPANIED by a dozen

uniformed officers, combed the grounds around the Biology Building, as well as the other buildings in the Science Quadrangle for the better part of an hour. Nothing seemed out of place. Brodie spoke to a number of students, none of whom seemed aware of anything unusual happening over the weekend. The campus was spread out over a large area, giving the appearance of spaciousness. None of the buildings, other than the dormitories, was over four stories. The grass and gardens around each of the Spanish-style buildings were immaculate and she figured that it must take a battalion of groundskeepers to keep everything mowed and trimmed. The university had been in Cedar Springs for more than fifty years, but hadn’t caught on with people outside the county until ten years earlier. Then, like everything else in Cedar Springs, it experienced a sudden rapid growth cycle. She looked at the buildings around her, and everything looked perfect. She had taken a few graduate classes in American Lit in a building across the long grassy mall from the Science Quad. There didn’t seem to be as many students around as usual, but the university was preparing for its spring break.

“Find anything?” she asked when they met

Maggie and her team making their way down the front steps of the Biology Building.

“Nothing,” she answered. “We’ve been through every lab, storage closet, toilet, and office in there and didn’t find a thing.”

“Looks like our forensic friends have finished up,” Brodie said, nodding toward the building. As the lab team exited the building, the man in yellow coveralls stopped and spoke to the other members of the team and then bounced down the steps to speak to the detectives. He smiled as he reached them.

“Who’s the fox, Brodie?” he asked, looking over his glasses appreciatively at Maggie.

“Maggie Weston, trainee,” Brodie answered.

“Detective Weston, meet Frank Cardona, head ghoul. What’d you find, Frank?”

“About what you’d expect for a classroom. Got fingerprints from every damn person in the state. So, needless to say, it will take a month, minimum, to match them all up to their owners.”