Medieval Murders (20 page)

46

By early evening Elkins was napping on a couch in the living room. When he heard Stephanie calling, he tried to push the sleep away. When he finally opened his eyes, Stephanie was standing over him with a bottle of champagne in one hand and glasses in the other. Jane Arden was in tow. “Time to get up, Elkins.” She popped open the bottle and started filling glasses.

“Stephanie,” he protested, “No caffeine or alcohol. Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re not having alcohol, you’re having champagne. Did he say anything about champagne? Of course he didn’t. This is medicinal, it gets your gastric juices going. I’ve made a wonderful dinner to celebrate your release, or shall I say escape, from the hospital.

The three of them settled around the kitchen table. Stephanie gave Elkins a half glass of champagne, filling her and Jane’s glasses. When she had polished off her glass, she excused herself, saying she had to put the finishing touches on dinner. “Dinner is in thirty minutes. I expect you to be there on time.”

After Stephanie left, Jane asked, “Given your last experience, do you feel comfortable sitting at the same table with me?”

“I was just thinking about that. How did you know?”

“Just had a feeling. Of course, you wouldn’t have to be overly sagacious to make that leap. And,” she laughed, “for all you know, I may be having the same feelings. The only time people ever shoot at me is when I’m with you.”

“How much did Pascoe tell you about Merchant?” Elkins asked.

Jane could read his face. He was back in an investigative mode. “She gave me a thorough briefing. I understand why Merchant isn’t a strong suspect. She also questioned me very extensively. I don’t think I was able to help much.”

“Anything occur to you since you talked with her? If Merchant wasn’t the shooter, we’re not left with much.”

She sipped the rest of her champagne, refilled her glass and held the bottle toward Elkins’s glass. He shook his head and covered the glass with his hand.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she said. “I thought about old boy friends, former students. I don’t remember anyone being really angry with me. People don’t react that way toward me. I just can’t think of anyone. Could it have been a random event?”

“Well,” Elkins twisted in his chair trying to find a more comfortable position, but his discomfort was intellectual as well as physical, “that’s always a possibility, but an unlikely one.”

“Maybe they shot at the wrong house,” she offered.

“Again, a possibility.”

“But your tone suggests that it’s fairly improbable.”

“Let me ask you this, is there any possibility that you might have told someone else about the Merchant letter?”

Jane shook her head. “I told you, I told Stephanie, Zeigler at the prison. That’s it.”

“There’s no chance that you might have mentioned it to anyone else. You must have talked to people about the deaths of your colleagues. Perhaps you just alluded to it in passing?”

“I talked to lots of people about those deaths. Let me think. Stephanie, Chesterton, Gus, and Father Bob....”

“Tell me about Father Bob. How do you know Father Bob?” asked Ray, suddenly alert and totally focused on their conversation.“I’m pretty much a fallen-away Catholic, but I do make it to mass a couple of times a year. And when my mother died, he was very helpful.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s a very skilled counselor, very empathic. Among other things, he does grief counseling. And he was the appropriate person for me to talk to. I had mixed feelings toward my mother, especially when I was a teenager. After she died there were things I felt guilty about, conflicts that we had never resolved.

She was a devout Catholic, and I think much of my proclaimed agnosticism, especially when I was a teenager, was a way of getting at her. Father Bob was able to help me work through my feelings.”

“How long were you in this, ah, counseling relationship?”

“About six months.”

“During that time, was there,” Elkins paused, trying to find a subtle way to phrase the question, “any behavior by Father Bob that was different than you expected?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did Father Bob ever show any interest in you as a woman, interest that exceeded what’s usually appropriate in a client, counselor relationship?”

Jane didn’t answer immediately. She sipped her champagne, carefully set the glass back on the table, and gave Elkins a long look. “What are you trying to find out?”

“Let me be blunt. Did he ever make a pass at you?”

“Yes.”

“Was that the end of it?”

“No.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

She picked up the glass and took another sip. “He asked me over for dinner one night. I don’t know exactly how it happened. We probably had too much wine. We ended up in bed.”

“You only had one encounter?”

“No, we had a brief affair, very bittersweet. I knew it was wrong for him, I knew it was wrong for me to ask him to continue. He was stronger than I was. He was able to break it off. I hope you won’t talk about this. I wouldn’t want to hurt him.”

“When did this all happen?”

“Two years ago. My mother died in July. I started seeing him sometime after classes started in the fall. The affair was over by winter break.”

“And you think that you might have recently mentioned Merchant to Father Bob?”

“I had coffee with him last week. We mostly talked about Bensen and Hendrickson. Since my mother died I’ve been,” she paused, “that’s not what I want to say. My father died when I was in high school, but I don’t think that really registered. Since my mother died, I’ve really thought about death. And starting with Bensen’s death, I’ve been obsessed with it. That’s what I was talking with Father Bob about. I’m not sure I mentioned Merchant, but I may have.”

“But you don’t remember that, specifically.”

“No, but I was pretty upset. I remember crying a lot. He makes me feel safe, I can let my feelings out.” She looked at Elkins. “Even if I told him, that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Elkins nodded in agreement. He didn’t want to say anything, but tomorrow morning he was going to focus on learning more about Father Bob.

“We better get going. Stephanie is probably ready to serve. She says it’s one of your favorites.”

“What is it?”

“Can’t tell you, it’s Stephanie’s surprise. I can tell you she has some excellent Stilton on the cheese board.”

As they crossed the lawn, she slipped her arm through his. Even though the sun was setting, the air was still warm.

47

T
he next morning, Wednesday, Elkins and Pascoe arrived at the Interfaith Religion Center at 9:30 in the morning. They parked in the back and hurried through a light drizzle to the main entrance and took the stairway down to Father Bob’s office at the back corner of the building. They stood at the closed door and looked at the schedule.

“Looks like he’s not supposed to be in until 11:00,” said Ray. After knocking, he tried the handle; the door was locked. They noted that across from his office was the entrance to the building’s mechanical room. Pascoe unlocked the door of the mechanical room and ran her hand over the interior wall until she found the light switch. After Ray was in the room, she carefully closed the door behind them. The walls were covered with electrical panels, phone and cable boxes, controls for the heating and cooling system, and plumbing shut-off valves.

At the back of the room was a steel door. Pascoe slid a master key into the lock. Then, grasping the handle near the end with a folded handkerchief, she pulled the door open and they peered into the tunnel.

“Very convenient,” said Pascoe. “Let me quickly dust these for prints. Maybe he wasn’t as thorough at this end.”

“Now if we just had a motive or some hard evidence,” said Ray. “We can’t ask for a search warrant just to do some fishing. Maybe we should look around his office.”

Pascoe raised her eyebrows. “This doesn’t sound quite kosher.”

“Oh, but it is. As the acting head of campus security, I’m also the titular head of the fire department, the fire marshall, if you will. I’m just making a routine inspection of a campus-owned building to make sure there are no potential fire hazards.”

“Well, I’m not sure that...,” Pascoe’s rebuttal was interrupted by the chirp of her phone. She listened for a long moment and turned to Ray, “There’s been a shooting at the medical center, one of the staff psychiatrists.”

“You get a name?”

“Margrave.”

“Dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Did they apprehend....”

“No, the assailant got away.”

Pascoe double-parked in front of the Professional Arts Building, joining a long line of emergency vehicles. The corridor outside Margrave’s office was blocked off, and Bill Baker, the head of security at the medical center was waiting for them.

“What do you know?” asked Pascoe.

“Not much. The security man at the staff entrance to this wing remembers Margrave arriving before 8:00. He says he commented to Margrave that he was the first one in.”

“Any response,” asked Pascoe.

“Just a greeting, nothing special that he remembers. This area doesn’t really get busy until close to 9:00. That’s when most of the clinics open.”

“Who found Margrave?”

“The young women who delivers mail and records.” Baker looked at his notes. “Her name is Amanda Bliss, said she had just pulled her cart off the elevator, this is the second office she stopped at. She said the door was ajar, and she saw Margrave on the floor.”

“Did she see anyone in the hall or getting on the elevator?”

“Says she doesn’t remember anyone specifically. I have her waiting at our office. I knew you would want to talk with her.”

“How about Margrave?” asked Elkins

“Two shots to the chest. He was unconscious when he was found. He’s in surgery. I don’t think they’re optimistic.”

“Anything else?” Elkins asked.

“I have a short list of all the people who were in the area at the time. No one remembers seeing anything out of the ordinary. The receptionist in the clinic down the hall said she heard a couple of loud pops, but she didn’t think anything about it. They’re erecting steel for the new addition just beyond that wall,” Baker pointed. “She just assumed the noise was from the construction.”

Ray looked at the dark stain on the gray carpeting. The door to Margrave’s inner office was ajar. He swung the door wider and went in; he was looking for an appointment book. Margrave’s computer was on. Ray hit the space bar. The screen-saver, the medical center logo, disappeared.

Elkins looked at Pascoe. “He logged into his calendar. The first appointment was at 8:00 A.M.”

“Who’s the patient?”

“FB,” he responded.

48

Father Bob was just coming out of the Interfaith Religious Center as Pascoe pulled into the circular drive next to the building. When he saw the police car, he ducked back into the door. Pascoe reached under her jacket, pulled out a 9mm automatic. “You call for backup,” she ordered as she left the car. Ray phoned for help and followed her in.

The door of the mechanical room was just swinging shut as Pascoe reached the lower level. She unlocked the door and slowly swung it open. The lights were on, the room was empty, but the door into the tunnel stood open. She carefully approached the opening to the tunnel; in the distance she could see Father Bob moving from light to dark to light as he passed the evenly spaced bulbs. She cautiously pursued him, sprinting from one protected area to the next. Then he disappeared.

Pascoe assumed he must have reached the corner near the Engineering Building. As she peered from behind a cement pillar looking for the next area that would provide cover, Pascoe saw the muzzle flash and heard the bullet ricocheting off concrete walls as it passed her. She waited, looking and listening. No sound, no motion. She darted forward again, staying low and moving cautiously, scurrying from one protected area to the next. When she reached the point where the tunnel made a ninety-degree turn, she carefully looked around the corner, then dashed across the tunnel, using some equipment cabinets for cover.

Now she could see the figure again, this time at a greater distance. She pursued again, but suddenly he disappeared into the gloom. As she crouched in the darkness, she remembered the entrance to the carillon. She moved forward carefully, trying to find cover as she went.

She reached the alcove for the carillon entrance and searched the opening for any sign of movement. All she could hear was the sound of her breathing and the steady mechanical hum of distant equipment. She stepped back and jammed the barrel of her gun through the wire light cage, breaking the bulb. She slid into the alcove, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.

Pascoe holstered her gun and slowly climbed the steel rungs of the ladder. When her hands grasped the final rung, she peered through the open trap door and waited—no sound, no movement. She lifted her head through the opening; then she carefully pulled herself into the carillon, retrieving her gun.

She paused for a moment. She didn’t have to go any farther. He was cornered. They could wait him out. There was no reason to pursue Father Bob. Then she thought about him standing with a gun above the diag, crowded with students. She cautiously started up the stairs. Pascoe was less than half way when she heard a shot, slightly muffled. No bullets ricocheted off the granite walls around her.

She stood for a long moment and waited, then slowly climbed toward the tower, gun at the ready, alert for any sudden movement above. Pascoe crept up the final few stairs. First she saw the bottoms of his shoes, heels on the floor, toes splayed at odd angles, then the legs, and finally the rest of the body. A pistol lay on the worn oak floor near Father Bob’s head in an expanding pool of blood.

Pascoe stood there looking at the body. She heard Elkins climbing the stairs. He stood at her side for a long moment, breathing hard, and then he broke the silence. “We have the killer, now we need the motive.”