An Educated Death (31 page)

Rocky, who had returned during my ablutions, stared and whistled. "I can't believe it. Yesterday you almost died and today you look like a million dollars."

"It just goes to show that you can't keep a good woman down, Chief."

"I guess not. Dorrie's gone on ahead. I'll drive you out to Bucksport when you're ready. We've got someone coming to fix your car window. Should be ready by noon."

"I'll drive her," Suzanne said. I could have hugged her. I far preferred her company to Rocky's.

Fortified by a breakfast that only slightly defied the advice of my caring doctor—Rocky and Dorrie having recognized, though I had not, that my stomach wasn't ready for serious eating—I went back to Bucksport to go to work. I should have gone home to bed but my poisoning and Carol Frank's disappearance had changed everything. I felt a sense of urgency I hadn't felt before, when my main goal had been the competent completion of a professional task.

I didn't go without trepidation. Not to a place where someone had gone to great lengths to kill me in a terrible way. I tried to tell myself that it was like getting back on a horse after being thrown, but as I walked down the long, echoing corridor from the front door to Dorrie's office, I was trembling.

Lori was hunched over her desk, staring intently at her screen. She jumped up when I came in. "Oh, God! Thea, I'm so sorry. I mean, it was me that brought you the sandwich but you know I wouldn't... I mean, never in a million years would I do something to hurt you... I had no idea... I found it on my desk and just assumed food services had sent it...." Her voice trailed off and she just stood there, looking ashamed. "You do believe me, don't you?"

I tried to reassure her but she was feeling too guilty to accept reassurance, guilty and shocked. Everyone's foundations had been rocked by the past week. She followed me into Dorrie's office. It was the same cast of characters who had been there on Sunday. Dave Holdorf, looking pale and subdued, Curt Sawyer, peevish behind his red face and redder nose, Peter Van Deusen, and Rocky and Dorrie, as well as a new face, a balding, rounded man whose feet didn't reach the floor who sat with his hands clasped over his stomach and smiled at us all anxiously. Lori hovered in the background, too restless to keep still, looking terrified. Everyone else accepted her offer of coffee, but much as I wanted it, I knew my stomach wasn't ready for an acid infusion, so I asked for tea. "Just water and a tea bag, no foreign substances," I said, trying to lighten things up. My jest fell flat.

"Okay," Dorrie said, "everyone knows what has happened. Yesterday someone tried to poison Thea by putting water hemlock in her sandwich. Luckily, she only ate a few bites, otherwise she wouldn't be with us today. Also, Carol Frank is missing. Yesterday, in her interview with Thea, Carol admitted she had some potentially important information concerning Laney Taggert's relationships. She wanted to consult Peter before she revealed them. They were interrupted by a student crisis and now both Carol and her records concerning Laney have disappeared."

She indicated the quiet stranger. "This is Dr. Tuff from our science department. He is with us in case anyone has questions about water hemlock. And this is Suzanne Merritt, Thea's partner, who is here to advise us on public relations issues."

"The PR is simple," Curt Sawyer said, "we just keep Chip Barrett off the campus. As for what happened to Thea, why the heck does anyone need to know about that anyway? If I'd been sick all over the police chief's office, I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone to know about it."

"Thank you, Curt," Dorrie said. "I'm sure we can rely on you to keep Barrett away. In fact, you'd better go and attend to that now."

"Maybe we should just give him a little of that... what did you call it... water hemlock?"

Dorrie ignored the comment. "Also, we need a lock for Thea's door and a new lock on Carol's office, and you'd better send someone over there to do some clearing up. Jeannie Duncan is over there trying to make sense of the records but drawers have been pulled out and cabinets overturned."

"None of my guys are file clerks, Dorrie. You know that."

She folded her arms and gave him a look that would have wilted a more sensitive person. "Just for the heavy lifting. Real guy stuff," she said sarcastically. "Maybe you haven't realized it, Curt, but we're in the middle of a tough situation here. The way we're going to get through it is cooperation. Working together. This isn't a question of whether something is guy stuff or girl stuff or in someone's job description. There are things that need to be done." Her voice was calm and level but I could hear the anger shimmering behind it.

Curt got up and stomped to the door. "Oh, spare me the touchy-feely stuff," he said. "And," he pointed at Rocky, "tell your boyfriend to stop nosing around my people. It makes 'em nervous."

We all stared in astonishment at the closed door. "Peter," Dorrie said decisively. "I've had it with him. Figure out how we can fire him without bringing the MCAD, EEOC, ADEA, or any other tenderhearted cluster of initials down on us. Now, Rocky... you and Dave and Thea figure out how you want to proceed today. Peter and I are going to meet with Suzanne." She rubbed her forehead wearily. "I just have to hope we're going to find Carol Frank alive." Everyone nodded. We all wanted that to happen. No one was optimistic though no one seemed as sure as I that she was dead.

"Before we go, I have a question for Peter," I said. "I understand Carol Frank consulted you about the appropriateness of discussing Laney Taggert with me?" He nodded. "How did you communicate?" He looked puzzled. "I mean, did you speak on the phone? In person? Was there any written communication?"

"She phoned me. We spoke briefly and then I did some research and faxed a letter stating my opinion that it was all right for her to reveal her conversations with Laney to you."

"Did you send the fax to Carol?"

"No. To Dorrie. Why?"

"I'm trying to figure out what triggered the killer to go after Carol and the counseling office records almost a week later instead of right away. Lori, do you remember when it came in?"

"Sometime yesterday morning. I went over to the dining hall to deliver some things for Dorrie and when I came back it was on my desk. I don't know who took it off the machine but we're pretty informal around here. If something needs to be done, anyone might do it."

"How long was it sitting on your desk?"

She shrugged. "Maybe half an hour, maybe a little less. I'm not sure."

"I took it off the machine," Dave said, "and put it on Lori's desk."

"So even though it was a sensitive communication from your attorney, you didn't put it in a folder or cover it in some way? You just left it there for everyone to see?"

"This is a school," he said, "I'm not used to living like someone is looking over my shoulder." His hurt look said much more than his words.

"I'm sorry, Dave. It was a natural mistake. I'm just trying to find out who might have seen it. Something happened that got the killer worried—about me and about Carol."

The phone rang. Lori answered it quietly and then looked at Rocky. "It's your office," she said.

"I'll take it at your desk," he said. We waited in silence, one shared, unspoken thought filling the room. When he came back, we watched him as expectantly as hungry pets watch the food dish. "I've got some more bad news, I'm afraid," he said. We waited for him to tell us that Carol Frank had been found. Instead, he said, "We finished running the check on Curt Sawyer's people... that list you gave me yesterday, Thea. I'm not surprised that Chris Fuller, the guy who threatened you, didn't want anyone looking at him too closely. He's got a criminal record."

"That damned Curt Sawyer!" Dorrie said. "What did this guy Fuller do?"

"Rape of a minor under fourteen. Indecent assault. Assault and battery. He got the job because he's Uncle Curtie's nephew."

"Just the sort of person you want to have access to a whole campus full of teenage girls," Peter Van Deusen said.

The pencil Dorrie was holding between her fingers snapped, the two pieces dropping unnoticed onto the desk. "If Chip Barrett gets his hands on this, we might as well all slit out throats," she said. "There's not enough damage control in the entire world."

We all sat in stunned silence as a day that had begun bleak and terrible got worse. "There's more," Rocky said. "My guys went out to his house to talk to him. He's disappeared."

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

Dave and Rocky and I adjourned to Dave's office to plan my day. Now that we knew more about Chris Fuller, there were a lot of specific questions I wanted to ask about him. I also wanted to get to the bottom of Bill and Kathy Donahue's strange behavior, talk with Josh one more time, and see if there weren't some things Chas Drucker wasn't telling me, since Russ Hamlin had told me he was Laney's confidant. I told Dave who I wanted to see and he shook his head.

"But these are people you've already talked to."

"That's why I need to talk to them again, Dave. They're the ones who knew her best. You might as well put Russ Hamlin on the list, too."

"They aren't going to like it, especially Bill and Kathy. She's really taken a dislike to you."

"Good thing this isn't a popularity contest, Dave."

Dave hadn't looked well since I arrived and today he looked terrible. There were ugly dark circles under his eyes and he'd cut himself shaving more than once. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound so harsh. I don't want to upset people any more than you do, but we've got a crisis on our hands."

"I know. Believe me, I know," he said, and went to confer with Lori about setting up appointments, leaving me alone with Rocky. Rocky had a lot of questions of his own for each of them but we agreed that questioning them together would not be a good idea.

As soon as Dave was gone, Rocky started to talk. I guess my determination to go on after such a close call had convinced him, in a way that nothing else could, that I was tough enough to handle the job. "You sure you're okay? Sure you can handle this?" he asked.

"You sound like my father, you know that? You also know the answer to your own questions. No, I'm not okay and no, I'm not sure I can handle this, but what choice do I have? This isn't optional, like a lunch date, this is life and death. Including my own. What am I going to do, go home and crawl into bed and let someone else handle this? Somebody wants me dead, too, remember. How do I know they won't try again? Maybe the murderer makes house calls." I said it lightly but it reminded me, as I said it, of a midnight intruder who not so long ago had dropped a gruesome hunting knife on my back deck. Bad guys do make house calls. And car calls. And hospital visits. In my experience, the safest place to be was at work.

"Very funny. Now, I'll have a uniformed officer watching your door at all times. Not right outside. That would spook people. And if you go anywhere, even to the ladies' room, you let him know. I will personally check your lunch and I guarantee there will be no exotic additives."

"Soup would be nice."

"Soup it is, then. Straight from the can." He hesitated. "Thea... you know this is dangerous—" I started to say something but he held up a hand. "No. Wait. Let me finish. I know you're brave or you wouldn't have come back here today. I also know you're stubborn, or you wouldn't have let Andre go. Just listen to Uncle Rocky for a few minutes, okay? We're letting you go on asking questions because that's what Dorrie wants and because we hope it may smoke out the bad guys. That doesn't mean I like it or that I've changed my mind that this is police business. So please, do your job without doing anything foolish. I don't want you wandering off somewhere to play Thea Kozak, girl detective, do you hear me? No wild goose chases. No heroics. None. Nada. You hear me? If the murderer shows up or calls you and invites you to tea, or to a stroll by the pond, or to a private viewing of Carol Frank's body, call us. Let the police handle it. I don't want to have to explain to Detective Andre Lemieux how I let something happen to you—"

"He
said
he didn't want to know," I interrupted.

"In a pig's eye. You two were made for each other. Forty, fifty years from now you're still going to be having cataclysmic fights. He'll be back or"—he shrugged—"or you'll go after him. Meanwhile, I've gotta see that nothing happens to you."

"Right," I agreed. "Very important thing, protecting another cop's woman. Something you'd better take very seriously." Andre would have found me very cute.

"Oh, don't get your dander up. You know what I mean."

"Sure. I know what you mean." I changed the subject to another of my peeves. "You didn't even believe Laney Taggert was murdered."

"Not at first, no. Now I'm just trying to keep more people from getting killed. Look, I've gotta go to work." Rocky's face was red but he was keeping his temper. "The guy who's watching you this morning is Joe Hennessey. Officer Joe Hennessey. He's a nice guy. Don't give him a hard time just 'cuz you're peeved with me, okay? You might even want to talk with him. He was the first officer on the scene when they found Laney Taggert's body. I'm going to go look for Carol, or at least her car. And we're checking the pond for that duffle bag. See if you can get someone to tell you where Laney went Columbus Day weekend. If we can find the place, maybe we can find the guy."