Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead (16 page)

He cupped her cheek and lifted her face so he could see her.
His expression disquieted her. “You’re pretty convinced your father was,
too.”

Her stomach took a sickening dip. There was a difference, she
suddenly saw, between having an inflexible standard of conduct and being good.
Good
suggested something more than not doing
wrong—like kindness, understanding and accepting other people’s weaknesses,
caring about them anyway.

She was not at all sure her father really was good. And she had
a very bad feeling Troy knew exactly what she was thinking.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked, in a gentle voice.

She shook her head hard.

He stilled the movement with his big hand. “Okay,” he murmured,
pulling her closer so she could bury her face against his neck. They sat there
for a long time, either not needing to talk or unable to, but soaking in
something from each other.

The entire experience was new to Madison. She’d never known it
was possible to gain strength from someone else’s touch. Anger sparked in her.
Why
didn’t
I know? Why
didn’t Mom or Dad ever hold me this way?

Her nose against his skin, she breathed in Troy’s scent,
distinctive to him even when it was overlaid by coffee or whatever he’d eaten
for dinner, and she thought, with aching need,
I want
this.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

P
LEASE
,
WILL
YOU
TELL
ME
anything you learn about my dad?

As he listened to what Don Mayer had to say, Troy winced at the
recollection of a promise he’d been foolish enough to make to Madison. Mayer had
thought Guy Laclaire was a prick.

He wasn’t the first person to tell Troy that.

Did he have to pass along what he was learning to her?

Now that Troy’s list of potential blackmail victims was
growing, he’d started asking more general questions of each person he talked to,
trying to get a sense of personalities, relationships, tension. Which of these
victims got heated up easily? Buried anger until it exploded? Thought so highly
of himself that he’d do anything to avoid shame or humiliation?

Troy grimaced at the last thought. There was no getting around
the fact that Madison’s dad was still his best suspect.

His impression of Frank Claybo had been confirmed by a couple
of people.

“Frank? Nice guy. Not very competitive.”

“Always broke,” someone else said. “His dad had died, I
remember that, and his mom was a secretary. He had great scholarships at
Wakefield, or he wouldn’t have been able to go. He worried because his mom had
to take on some loans. Most of us got money from home, but all Frank had was
whatever he made.”

Troy had confirmed blackmail victim number two. Randy Pearson
hadn’t even hesitated when Troy reached him.

“Yeah, I paid the son of a bitch for almost a year. I broke
into a professor’s office to take a look at the test he’d prepared the night
before he was going to give it to us. Mitch took a Polaroid of me climbing in
the window. I’d have told him where he could go and then made up some story,
except the professor happened to be my major advisor.” A certain amount of anger
still bubbled just beneath the surface, but also the same rueful self-knowledge
Troy had heard from Claybo. It said,
He was an asshole
squeezing blood from me, but I’m the one who screwed up. Made my own
bed.

The killer, Troy thought, was someone who
didn’t
think whatever he’d done was wrong. Or, if he knew on some
level that it was, he also believed he was justified, that he had a
right
to break whatever rule he’d broken, steal
whatever he’d stolen. His rage would have all been directed at Mitch King, not
at himself.

Troy also doubted the killer was someone who’d been making
monthly payments for that long. Unless...

“Did Mr. King ever try to up your payments?” he asked.

“No.” There was a pause. “I used to worry about that. What
would I do if he suddenly decided to double what I was supposed to give him?
Triple it? But it never happened. The whole thing was surreal. When I stopped to
slip him the money, he’d laugh and joke or complain about a paper he had due
like we were friends.”

He added a couple of other names to Troy’s list, one of whom
was Laclaire.

“Laclaire was so full of himself, I really wanted to know what
he’d done. I’d have liked to tarnish some of his shine. You know?”

“You had classes with him?”

“I roomed with him freshman year. Can you believe it? Even
then, he had his nose in the air. The rest of us were on financial aid, the
great anonymous pool of money for good students whose parents weren’t loaded.
Guy, though, he’d won one of those prestigious
named
scholarships. He’d been valedictorian of his high school class. He made sure
everyone knew he’d been accepted at Stanford, but decided he wanted to attend a
smaller school. I discovered my high school biology class had been grossly
inadequate and got a C first semester at Wakefield. Guy breezed through with a
four point. He played varsity tennis even as a freshman. He was awesome at
debate. The frats all wanted him. The
girls
all
wanted him.”

“You wanted him to stumble.”

Randy Pearson laughed, sounding good humored. “Yeah, who
wouldn’t? But that wasn’t it. You can like a guy even if you envy him. Guy’s
problem was, he was sure he was better than all of us and didn’t bother to hide
it.”

“Great way to make friends.”

“Yeah, but he did, anyway. He could be wickedly funny, and even
when you didn’t like him, you were flattered if he asked you to be on his
intramural rugby team or whatever.”

Troy didn’t get a lot more that was useful out of him.

He met with several employees at the college who’d worked there
at the time of the murder, ending with a professor in the English
department.

Herbert Wilson was a stooped, slightly built man who couldn’t
have been more than five foot seven or eight when he was young and had stood
straight. His scanty gray hair was cut short, doing nothing to hide a bulky
hearing aid.

When Troy stepped into his office and introduced himself,
Wilson bellowed, “Who?” then reached up and fiddled with the hearing aid, which
squawked, making him jump. “Damn thing buzzes,” he muttered. “I turn it off when
I’m alone.” He focused exceedingly intelligent blue eyes on Troy. “What can I do
for you, young man?”

Once he understood the purpose of the visit, he settled quite
happily in for a bout of reminiscence. He hadn’t personally had Mitchell King in
a class, but recalled at least two other professors remarking that they weren’t
impressed with him.

“He was a shallow thinker,” he proclaimed. “His work was geared
to earning good grades. No fire inside.”

Troy had begun to believe that King was actually a rather
creative thinker. How many college students kept up in class while also running
a small business that brought in what Troy was preliminarily estimating to be
one to two thousand dollars a month? He was utterly without conscience, of
course, but that was another matter.

Three of the possible blackmail victims had been English
majors. Dr. Wilson didn’t recall one of them at all. One was only a distant
memory. He brightened at the mention of Guy Laclaire.

“Fine, analytical mind.” He nodded. “I understand he turned it
to business. His daughter works here at Wakefield, you know.”

“Yes, actually I do know. I suppose you’re aware Madison
organized the time capsule opening.”

He chuckled. “So she did, so she did. Pretty young woman, too.
Not surprising—Guy was a good-looking boy. Have you met him?”

“Not yet.”

“If you do, you say hello to him from me.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

Dr. Wilson had not been Guy’s major advisor. No, no, that had
been... “Adams!” he declared in triumph. “Dr. Adams. She left the college, oh,
twenty years ago. She’s considerably younger than I am. I believe she’s at Tufts
in Boston, if I’m not mistaken.”

Troy thanked him cordially and gave him a card, in case he
thought of anything of interest.

“You believe it was another student who killed that boy.”

“I think that’s a possibility.”

He shook his head. “Hard to conceive, but then the suggestion
that the killer was a drifter never held water. When the gymnasium is open, even
in the middle of the night like that, there’s always someone on duty, you know.
Of course, that would have been a student who probably had his head buried in
his books, but I’m betting he still glanced up and made note of everyone who
came and went.”

“The student on duty was an excellent witness at the time,”
Troy agreed. “However, he apparently left the counter a few times to help
students with equipment. There was a shower in the women’s locker room that
wouldn’t turn off, too, and he probably needed to use the john. He either forgot
or missed seeing a number of students who have since been identified as having
been at McKenna Center within the hour or two before the murder.”

Those blue eyes were still bright and curious. “Can’t see how
you’d get anywhere with this after so many years.”

“It may prove impossible, but I’ve already learned quite a bit
that eluded investigators at the time. I’m hopeful. Er, I have one more
question, if you don’t mind, sir.”

Exceptionally bushy eyebrows rose. “Not at all.”

“I’m wondering how likely it is that any employees of the
college would have used the gym in the middle of the night finals week. I assume
many, if not most, professors and probably classified employees did use both the
gym and library.”

“Certainly. I still swim laps in the pool.” His eyes twinkled.
“Slower than I used to, and fewer of ’em, but it’s part of my routine.”

Troy smiled his appreciation. He was rather enjoying Dr.
Wilson.

“Middle of the night, though...” He shook his head. “Unless
someone had insomnia and knew the gym was open longer than usual hours...”

“Everyone would know that, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose they would.” He was speaking slower now, looking
perturbed. He hadn’t liked the idea that a student could have been a murderer,
but obviously liked the possibility of an employee—God forbid a professor—being
one even less. Troy couldn’t say he blamed him. “We’ve always had some
exceptionally
athletic
men and women on the faculty,
I’ll admit. Often the young ones. Perhaps more inclined to be lifting weights or
using the swimming pool at odd hours.”

“Can you think of any who were at Wakefield at the time?”
Seeing the professor’s discomfort, Troy added, “Please understand that at this
point I’m looking primarily for witnesses. I can see why a professor might have
been reluctant to come forward at the time and name students. But perhaps he or
she would be willing to speak with me now.”

The professor’s concerns allayed, he turned to his bookshelves
and produced a college catalog of classes for the relevant year. It appeared
he’d kept the catalogs since arriving at Wakefield in 1969. Troy wanted to
snatch it from his hand. Would Madison be able to find him one? he wondered. Or
could he persuade Dr. Wilson to loan out his copy?

The elderly man paged slowly through the class listings,
mumbling to himself. At last he suggested several names. “Antoinette
Perry—Biology—was quite dedicated to her swimming. She competed at a masters
level. Jay Aldrich—now
he
was an interesting fellow,
he was actually an Olympian, a long distance runner—ran marathons as I recall.
Not sure how much he used the gym, though. Stephen Coleman I remember as being a
dedicated weight lifter. He was a Psychology professor, bearded, quite popular
with the female students. I believe he left Wakefield only a year or two later.
Hadn’t thought of him in years.”

Troy’s patience deteriorated at the slow pace of the
recollections, each page being turned deliberately with a finger moistened by
the tip of Dr. Martin’s tongue. He ended up, however, with a list of seven
faculty members who had been frequent users of the college athletic facilities,
from one who had, according to Dr. Wilson, tended to “hog” the racquetball
courts when he really ought to have given way to students to a female sociology
professor who had had polio as a child and regained surprising mobility by
swimming as much as a couple of hours a day.

The visit might have taken more time than he’d allotted, but
Troy had acquired some new information. He emerged from the basement of Welk
Hall, where the English department had set up their offices until Cheadle was
replaced, a process that was taking longer than expected. It would be at least
the middle of October before it came down, at best estimate. Troy had never
heard of a construction or remodeling timeline that
didn’t
elongate.

He could just see the bell tower of Memorial from here, above a
cluster of maple trees. Without having made a conscious decision, he started
across the lawn toward Mem. He couldn’t be this close and
not
stop to see Madison.

Both outer and inner office doors stood open. He found her
alone at her desk, frowning with intense concentration at her monitor. She’d
dressed up more today, wearing black slacks and a loosely knit, short-sleeved
black cardigan over a red camisole. Remembering the red suit she was wearing
when he first met her, he smiled. He was amused to see her shoes, which had at
least three-inch spike heels, lying on their sides where she’d discarded
them.

“Hey,” he said from the doorway.

Madison jumped six inches. “Troy!” Her hand whisked to the
computer mouse, closing whatever file she’d had open.

As if she didn’t want him to see whatever she’d been looking
at? As he wondered, his mood shifted to disturbed.

“Wow,” Madison said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Sorry.” He ambled in, Mr. Casual. “I happened to be on campus
and decided to drop by.”

“Oh.” Her smile didn’t quite hide how flustered she was. “I’m
glad.” She lifted her face to his when he bent to kiss her lightly.

Despite himself, he was distracted by the plush feel of her
mouth under his, the quiver of her lips and the soft sigh she made.

Even so, as he straightened, his gaze slid sidelong to her
computer monitor, which showed only a college logo. He nodded that way. “Did I
interrupt anything?”

“Heavens, no!” she exclaimed brightly. “I was only...” Her
toffee-brown eyes met his and she faltered. “You can always tell when I’m trying
to hide something, can’t you?”

He propped one hip on the edge of her desk, resting his weight
warily. Those pretty Queen Anne–style legs were kind of spindly. It felt solid,
though, so he relaxed. “You’re not a very good liar,” he told her with a tinge
of humor.

Madison scrunched up her nose. “I know I’m not. I have one of
those faces. I’ll bet
you
could get away with
anything.”

Troy grinned. “I’m a cop. How could I do my job if I couldn’t
hide what I’m thinking?”

No way was he going to ask again what she’d been up to. She was
clearly uncomfortable about it, and he’d pushed her too much already. Whether
what she’d been doing was related or unrelated to his investigation, she was
entitled to some secrets.