Medieval Murders (14 page)

31

W
ithin minutes of Elkins’ 911 call, a squad car arrived at Jane Arden’s townhouse in University Gardens. The first officer on the scene, a June graduate of the criminal justice program, adrenalin coursing through his system as he responded for the first time ever to a
shooting
, secured the area and tried to calm Arden. Two more campus police officers, two sheriff deputies, and Charlene Pascoe followed moments later. Arden told them about creeping to the side of the patio door after Elkins rushed out. She explained how she watched Ray pursue the black-clad shooter across the lawn to the hedge, their trajectory illuminated by strobe-like flashes of lightening. Arden said she could hear the pounding of the passing locomotives and something that might have been a shot.

Pascoe led the way through the heavy rain with four other officers in her wake. Once beyond the hedge, the powerful beam from the locomotive lit the area as it crept back toward the scene. The engine ground to a halt as the officers moved across the track. Pascoe spotted Elkins as soon as she got to the center of the second set of tracks. He was face down in a pile of old railroad ties, chunks of concrete, and other debris below the railroad embankment. As she knelt at his side and felt for a carotid pulse, she could hear someone shouting for EMTs. Then she saw a nylon jacket dropped over his back.

When the EMTs were at her side, she moved out of their way. She retrieved Elkins’ weapon, checking the safety, then zipping it into a jacket pocket. Charlene paused for a moment to gather herself, then climbed the next embankment. With the exception of automobile lights on distant roads, the terrain was cloaked in darkness. Then the lights started to flicker on, and she was able to gain her orientation. In the distance were the football stadium and basketball arena. Other buildings and facilities dotted the square mile area, connected by roads and paved parking lots. Acres of open land, used only on football Saturdays for parking, stretched from where she stood to the brightly lit buildings and lots.“If anyone had a car up here, they’re long gone,” one of the two officers who had joined her observed.

“I want this area closed off,” she said. “No use rummaging through here in the dark, but tomorrow morning we need to see if the shooter left anything behind. Also, I want to see if we can recover any brass.” The rain was still falling, no longer the heavy showers, now just a steady drizzle.

Pascoe moved back to the top of the embankment and watched as Elkins, now secured to a backboard, was carried up the opposite bank toward a waiting ambulance; she could see the unit’s flashers just beyond the wall of shrubbery. Then she carefully negotiated her way down the slippery bank to talk to the railroad engineer, who had been watching the scene for several minutes from the tracks near the front of his idling locomotive. She was quickly able to determine that while the engineer was frantically trying to warn the runners away from his locomotives, he didn’t see either man clearly. Pascoe wrote down his name and phone number and said that she would need to talk to him again.

When she returned to Arden’s apartment, the campus police shift commander, a senior department member—had arrived and taken control of the scene. Jane Arden was just being loaded into a van to be taken to the medical center for attention to a cut on her hand. Charlene discussed with him the areas that needed to be protected until she could process them in the morning, and then she walked to her car and slid behind the steering wheel.

Charlene sat for several minutes in the quiet. She thought about the first time she met Professor Ray Elkins. She was a sophomore in college, nineteen, in a class with twenty men and three women taking the first course in the curriculum, Criminology and Criminal Justice. Early in the semester one of the men, a burly football player, made a crack about women in police work. Elkins stopped the discussion and said, “Gentlemen, in my time working as a police officer, I have never found anything that a man could do better than a woman.”

“How about physical strength?” the guy asked. She remembered the smug look on his face.

“First, women can be trained to use their physical strength to their advantage. Given the appropriate training, a woman can be just as effective as a man. Second, women tend to use their intelligence, rather than relying on brute strength to get them through difficult situations. If extreme force is necessary, a ninety pound woman is just as deadly as a two hundred pound man.”

She tried to hold back the tears and then let them flow. She knew Elkins wouldn’t call that weakness; he’d call it strength. More than once she had seen his eyes mist over. He was a very sensitive man. That’s what she remembered and admired so much. Charlene also thought about how he seemed different now than when she was first introduced to him more than a decade before, laconic, sometimes taciturn. She knew he was still struggling with a great loss in his life.

Her thoughts flipped back to her encounter with Elkins as a teacher. He was constantly challenging conventional wisdom, forcing his students to confront their beliefs, values, and prejudices. He was persistently pushing them to expand their understanding of the rest of humanity.

She remembered his favorite phrase. “The key to successful investigations is to be open to all the possibilities. If your understanding of humanity is limited, if you are controlled by prejudices and stereotypes, your ability to conduct intelligent investigations will be limited. The more you know, the greater the width of your vision, the more effective you’re going to be.”

Pascoe reflected on how pleased she had been earlier this spring when Elkins called trying to recruit here for a management job in a troubled department. She was flattered that he would think of her, given his many students over the years. And he had reached out to her at a time when she was starting to look for new challenges.

Pascoe turned the ignition key, took a few deep breaths, and headed for the medical center.

32

It had been a long night of waiting for Charlene Pascoe. Sometime after 2:00 A.M. one of the trauma physicians, a tall imposing woman, ebony skinned with a rich operatic voice, explained that Elkins had regained consciousness, but that he had apparently suffered a severe concussion and was in the process of getting a CT scan. Exhausted, Pascoe went to her apartment, but she had trouble falling asleep, the adrenalin from the evening’s events still coursing through her system.

Before 9:00 A.M. she was back at the hospital, first checking on Ray’s condition and then finding Jane Arden’s room. Pascoe knocked on the jam of the open door before entering. Arden was sitting in bed, her left hand wrapped in a gauze bandage. An untouched breakfast tray with toast and anemic looking scrambled eggs rested on a stand across the bed.

Pascoe identified herself.

“Were you there last night?” asked Arden.

“Yes. You were quite shaken and had a nasty cut or two. I saw an EMT attending to you.”

“It’s all a blur. There were lots of people. I was so frightened.”

“How is the hand?” asked Pascoe.

“Sore, now that local anesthesia has worn off. The surgeon said it was a long, deep gash, but he didn’t find any damage to tendons or ligaments. Guess I was lucky. I don’t even remember getting hurt. One of your people pointed out that I was bleeding.”

“Are you up to answering some questions?”

“No problem. I don’t even know why I’m still here,” said Arden. “I need you to tell me everything that happened from the time Elkins got to your house until the time the police arrived on the scene.” As she was saying this Pascoe was preparing to take a statement. She pulled a chair close, placed a small recorder on the bed, opened a steno pad to a clean page, and tested a ballpoint on the margin of the page, moving the pen in swirls until it produced a thick black line.

Pascoe began, “To the best of your memory, exactly what happened.”

“Where do I start?”

“Start at the beginning. It’s helpful if you can keep things in chronological order. I know that’s not always easy to do.”

Arden closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. She opened them again and looked over at Pascoe. “It was about 9:00, perhaps a few minutes before. Elkins said he’d come over about 6:00 to check the locks; he called about 8:00 and said he was running late. I asked if he had eaten. He hadn’t, so I invited him to have dinner.” She paused briefly, then asked. “You know why he was checking the locks?”

“He showed me the letter, and I’ve done some research on Arlin Merchant.” Pascoe waited for Arden to continue.

“It was getting dark about that time. It hadn’t started to storm yet, but it was close. You could see the lightening on the horizon. Elkins inspected the locks on the windows and doors and told me what needed to be done. He offered to help get the university housing office to replace the locks. As I threw together a quick dinner, pasta and salad, the storm was intensifying. We sat down to eat and the lights went out. They came back on again, then went out a second time. I already had candles burning, and we started to eat. Then there was breaking glass. Elkins pushed me to the floor and told me to stay there. He made a call on his cell and went out the patio door. I was absolutely petrified. I wish he had stayed with me. I crawled over to the door and watched him run along the hedge at the back of the property. A minute or two later I heard the sirens. The first officer stayed with me. I could hear a lot of voices, but I didn’t know what was happening. I remember the EMT coming, and then I think I saw you. That’s about all I remember.” She paused, and then asked, “Can you feel a bullet?”

“What do you mean?” asked Pascoe.

“I remember when the window exploded I felt something go by me, like wind. It was really close. I was wondering if that could have been the bullet?”

“I don’t know. I think that’s possible.”

“My imagination is probably going wild.” She paused, “I remember someone bandaging me up. They put me in an ambulance. After my hand was stitched someone gave me a hypo. I just woke up 30 minutes ago. So what happened, did you catch Merchant?”

“I will be talking to him today. We haven’t established that he was involved.”

“Elkins didn’t catch the person?”

“No”

“Will he be coming by?”

Pascoe took a deep breath and considered her response. “Actually, he was injured last night. He’s going to be okay, but he’s going to be out of commission for a few days.”

“What happened…?”

“It appears that he had a bad fall. He has a concussion.”

“Oh, how awful.” They sat in silence. “What happens now?”

“I need to ask you a few more questions. As I told you, I’ll be talking to Merchant this morning. And he has clearly threatened you. What I need to know… are there other people who…you know…like old love interests, former spouses…people who might want to harm you?”

Arden absorbed the question and was slow in responding. “I was briefly married in graduate school. We’ve been divorced for years. He’s got a new wife and two small children, lives in Vermont. There was never any hostility in our parting, just sadness. And I don’t have any recent boyfriends lurking about. Nothing like that.”

“And other than Merchant, you have received no threats?”

“None.”

“You haven’t seen or felt anything that’s made you uncomfortable in recent weeks or months?”

“Me personally, no. That said, the deaths in the department have been shocking. I don’t remember anything like that, never. But one was a suicide and the other a tragic accident. I don’t know about Constance Dalton, I heard she had medical problems.”

“How well did you know the three women?”

“They were colleagues. We’d see one another at meetings, I’d pass one or another in the halls or the department office occasionally.”

“So you weren’t close?”

“No. I didn’t really know any of them well. We didn’t do anything socially. But what does their deaths have to do with my situation?”

“Probably nothing, I’m just playing with possibilities.” Pascoe closed her notebook and retrieved her recorder.

“My understanding is that you can be released later this morning. I don’t want you to leave here until we find a safe place for you to stay for a few days.”

“What’s happening with my condo?”

“It’s part of the crime scene. And then some repairs will be needed before you can return.”

“I could probably stay with the Chestertons,” Arden said.

“Let me think on that. I’ll call you later this morning, and we’ll get something in place.”

“So before you go, tell me about Elkins again.”

“He’s being held for observation. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days.”

“So he goes way beyond what’s expected, and he get’s hurt.”

“It could have been so much worse,” said Pascoe. “It could have been so much worse,” she repeated softly.

33

A
fter visiting the medical center, Pascoe called the Sheriff of Branch County to request that Merchant be brought in for questioning. Then she drove over to University Gardens to work with the crime-scene team. They were already assembled and waiting for her, one regular member of the department, Bill Baker, and ten cadets—dressed in blue coveralls. Her greatest concern was to control the eagerness of the cadets so evidence wouldn’t be overlooked or trampled.

Pascoe started the process by entering the condo and locating the bullet hole in the side of the island that separated the kitchen from the living room. She looked at the position of the chairs and the patio door and visualized the path of the bullet. She gathered the interns around her in the back yard and gave them specific instructions about how the search would be conducted. With Baker’s assistance, she had the interns line up and separate themselves by fully extending their arms. “This is what I want you to do. We will move as a group slowly across the lawn until we get to the hedge. If you see anything unusual, call out and either Sergeant Baker or I will come to you. Don’t touch anything. We need your eyes. Questions?”

“What are we looking for?” asked a tall, gangly kid whose long legs gave a high-water effect to his coveralls. “We’re looking for anything that the shooter might have dropped that would help us ID him. When we get to the hedge and beyond we’re especially looking for brass—shell casings.”

“Maintain your distances and stay in line. We’re going to move forward very slowly,” instructed Sergeant Baker.The cadets carefully covered the expanse of lawn, stopping at the hedge. Pascoe had them move through the few openings in the thick brush. By the time they had lined up again, she was standing on the railroad embankment with a bullhorn in hand. “Let’s close it up, guys. One arm’s length between you. Be careful, it’s steep. Let’s go real slow.” Other than plastic grocery bags, beer cans, and filters from degrading cigarette butts, nothing was found. She divided the teams and had them move down the tracks to the area where Elkins had been found. Then she brought the whole team to the left side of the tracks and they swept forward for a hundred yards, covering the area from the tracks to the top of the embankment. Eventually they moved along the outside of the embankment and into the field on the other side, an area used for parking. Roadways had already been marked out on the rough turf with chalk for the football season. Again, other than empty beverage cans, yellowing newspapers, fading fast food containers, and the ubiquitous plastic bags caught in the stunted bushes on the edge of the field, nothing was found. The trash barrels near the entrances to the parking lot were empty, also. Pascoe look across the expanse of rough grass that extended for almost a half of a mile to the concrete and brick monolith, brightly colored flags now fluttering from tall poles on the exterior of the stadium. In a few days thousands of cars would jam into these fields, and tens of thousands would walk across them.

She slowly scanned the area a second time. She was hoping for that one substantial clue that could connect a shooter and a place. None materialized. She had the interns cover the area around the hedge a second time, the searchers now divided into teams and using metal detectors. Three crushed beer cans, a rusty railroad spike, a large bolt, and several nails were found before the single shell casing showed up. The brass casing was carefully removed from the tall grass and dropped into an evidence bag. Pascoe looked at the casing, 7mm. Using this as a teaching opportunity, she showed how to record where it was found on a map and how to label each piece of evidence. A second sweep of the area yielded several more metal objects, but no more brass.

Eventually Pascoe put Baker in charge of the interns as they began to sweep the left side of the railroad embankment with the metal detectors. She returned to Arden’s condo and carefully extracted the bullet from the wall, dropped it into an evidence bag, adding a label to the bag’s exterior. She locked the bags in the trunk of her car before starting the trek to Branch County.