Cold and Pure and Very Dead (5 page)

By 9:16 I’d become so paralyzed by the thought of Number One that my pen hovered over the half-page-long list of other obligations for two and three-quarters minutes without settling on Number Two. A light breeze nudged a whiff of late-rose fragrance through my open window, and an evanescent memory of Miles’s rose garden wafted through my mind.
Where was Jake Fenton?
I wondered idly. Aside from our encounter in the cafe, I hadn’t heard from the novelist, and, surprisingly in this small town, I hadn’t seen him around. He was probably doing research for his latest literary adventure, I thought, most likely somewhere in deepest, darkest, most primitive Montana. Then I brought my errant mind up short:
My God! Why was I thinking about Jake? I had a book to write!

When the phone rang, I all too willingly dropped the pen. Given my experiences of the past couple of weeks, I half-expected yet another request for an interview about
Oblivion Falls
. In no way was I prepared for the grim inflections that awaited me on the other end of the line.

“Doctor.” Only one person in the world called me
Doctor
in that particular way, as if it were my given name.

“Lieutenant Piotrowski?” The lieutenant was with the Massachusetts State Police Bureau of Criminal
Investigation. I hadn’t heard from the big cop since the completion of the homicide investigation that had brought him to the quiet Enfield campus last fall. At that time, my matchmaking friends Earlene Johnson and Jill Greenberg had gleefully predicted some amorous move on the part of Charlie Piotrowski, but if he was, indeed, interested, he had never followed through. It was just as well I hadn’t heard from him, I’d told myself. After I’d broken up with Tony, my long-lost, long-time love three years earlier, I’d vowed never, ever again, to get involved with another police officer. Living with a cop makes for a difficult life. Okay—living with a cop is hell.

And by the somber tone of his voice, Piotrowski didn’t seem to be calling about Chinese and a flick.

“I understand, Doctor,” the lieutenant said without social preamble, “that you are acquainted with a New York City journalist by the name of … ah … Martin Katz.”

“Yes?”
Martin Katz?
What possible connection could this New England-based homicide detective have with the
New York Times
reporter? “Yes, Lieutenant, I’ve met Mr. Katz.”

“Well, Doctor …” Piotrowski sighed: he’s a big man; he has large-capacity lungs; it was a long, slow sigh. “I just this minute got an official inquiry about you from the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It seems, Dr. Pelletier, that Mr. Katz has been murdered—and in circumstances that link him quite directly to you. I’ll probably get in deep shit for telling you this, but I wanted to prepare you: Doctor, you’re in for a visit from a couple of New York State Police homicide cops.”

P
rofessor Pelletier
, you must wonder what we’re doing here, so far from our jurisdiction,” said the tall, thin New York lieutenant, oh-so-politely concerned with my peace of mind. And rightly so. Piotrowski’s call had rendered me confused and apprehensive about what these out-of-state cops wanted from me.

This homicide team was a walking advertisement for Empire State diversity. The senior investigator, a blond woman in her late thirties with pale skin, pink-tinged ears, and virtually transparent eyebrows, stood so ramrod straight she looked uncomfortable. Her partner was much more laid back. A young sergeant, he was a medium-height, pudgy man of some mixed lineage, African-Latino-Caucasian, brewed in the ethnic cauldron of the Bronx.

Although Lieutenant Paula Syverson wore a plain gray pants suit over a peach silk shirt, she might as well have been in uniform. Her shoulders were so square, her demeanor so stiff, I half-consciously checked for the state-police shoulder patch. From the moment they entered my office, Sergeant Rudolpho
—call me Rudy—
Williams was the tactical charmer of the pair, elaborately agog at the beautiful Enfield College campus, ostentatiously impressed at talking to
—conversing with
, he corrected himself—a real English professor.
Give me a break!
I thought, as I settled them in my
student chairs and retreated strategically behind the desk, welcoming even the most tenuous barrier between me and these minions of the law.

The news of Marty Katz’s murder was a shock, but I couldn’t imagine what “circumstances” could possibly link his demise to me. Piotrowski had declined to give me any details other than the basics: The journalist was victim of a homicide—somewhere in rural New York State, I assumed, since the staties were handling it rather than city cops—and the investigators wanted to interview me. But why me? My only contact with Mr. Katz had been the
Times
interview, and that was an open book—an open newspaper—for all the world to see.

“I’m a SUNY-Albany grad, myself,” the voluble Sergeant Williams continued, “but I never saw anything at all like this on my campus.” He gestured around my office at the polished hardwood floors, the green needlepoint area rug, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the tall bay window with its plush window seat. “It was all strictly concrete and cinder-blocks. This is impressive.”

The lieutenant gave him a pale glance:
Enough. The wheels are greased; let’s roll
. “Well, Professor?” she asked.
“Don’t
you wonder what a couple of New York State Police officers are doing all the way out here in western Massachusetts?”

I hesitated for less than a second: No way was I going to con this cool intelligence into thinking I was surprised by the news she was getting ready to spring on me; I’d better come clean about Piotrowski’s call. “Actually, Lieutenant, I know why you’re here.”

Syverson’s jaw tightened. “You do?” The thin lieutenant leaned toward me, elbows on her knees, hands clasped at her chin. The studied informality did not come naturally to her; she must have taken a course:
Interrogation Strategies 101
. “Tell me all about it, Professor,”
she said, in a compassionate manner borrowed from the confessional. I could almost hear the implied interrogational cliche:
You’ll feel a lot better if you do
.

I laughed incredulously; did she think I was about to confess to murder? “Wait a minute, Lieutenant. Just wait a minute here—I didn’t kill him.”

Syverson jerked upright. Rudy Williams’s hand flew to his belt:
Get out the handcuffs, baby, we’ve caught us a killer
.

The lieutenant’s pale eyes narrowed. “Who?” she asked, in a voice like a razor.
“Who
didn’t you kill?”

“Marty Katz, of course,” I replied. “I didn’t kill him.” She should have said
whom
. Whom
didn’t you kill?
But this did not seem to be precisely the right moment for a lesson in grammar.

Rudy Williams, alert as a feral cat, seemed ready to spring out of his chair. “Professor, nobody said nothing … anything … about the shooting death of an individual named Martin Katz.”

Lieutenant Syverson threw him a
stuff-it
look.

I repressed a groan. “I seem to be getting off on the wrong foot here.”

“Oh, yeah?” Syverson said. “Professor Pelletier, look at this from our point of view. We walk in here cold, giving you no information about the purpose of our visit, and right off you deny committing a homicide we didn’t, until this very second, have any reason to suspect you of. And, then, you identify the victim—whose name we never mentioned. That sounds a lot like the
right
foot to me—at least from an investigative point of view. Professor,” she ran the tips of her fingers back and forth over the arm of the green vinyl chair, “have you done something you need to tell us about?”

“No, Lieutenant, of course not.” I straightened up in my desk chair, and shifted a vase of purple iris I’d
bought from the florist on my way in to work that morning. Then I clasped my hands together—tightly. “Look, the only thing I’ve got to confess is that I received a phone call a couple of hours ago from an acquaintance with the Massachusetts Staties … ah, State Police. He told me you were coming—and why.”

For a brief moment she had absolutely no lips. “He did, huh? And who, may I ask, was that?”

I told her. Looked like Piotrowski
was
about to get into deep shit. But, then, any good cop knows what he’s letting himself in for when he breaks regulations, and Piotrowski is nothing if not a good cop. He could handle it.

“Lieutenant Piotrowski didn’t tell me anything specific about the case, other than the name of the victim,” I continued, attempting to smooth things over for him, “but he did say that the circumstances of Mr. Katz’s death link it directly to me. Could you please tell me why?”

The investigators exchanged a long, silent look—their favorite means of communication, it seemed—then Syverson shrugged. “Professor, do you know a woman named Milly Finch?”

“Milly Finch?” I sped through a tabulation of friends, colleagues, and students, former friends, colleagues, and students, former employers as far back as the truck stop in North Adams where I’d first entered the work world as a single mother with a three-year-old daughter to support. Then I went back even further, to girls I’d known in high school, junior high, elementary school. “No. No, I don’t think I’ve ever run across anyone named Milly Finch. Who is she?”

“She’s a goat farmer.”

“A
goat farmer?”

“Yes. Mrs. Finch is an old … ah … elderly
woman from a small town called Nelson Corners, over in Columbia County. Just across the New York State line from Massachusetts. She’s kind of a recluse—raises goats and sells the milk. Goes to church once in a while. That’s just about all anyone in that area ever thought there was to her life: raising goats and going to church.”

“Oh?” Obviously there was more to this story—and to Milly Finch’s life. I waited.

“On Friday afternoon, Martin Katz was found shot to death with a thirty-thirty Winchester in Mrs. Finch’s driveway.”

“Re-e-e-ally?” This was strange, even tragic, but so far I couldn’t see any “circumstances” that linked the killing to me. “That’s too bad,” I said, then added, inanely, “he wrote so well.”

“Did he?” the pale lieutenant asked, and exchanged another significant look with her subordinate. “Well, so did she, obviously. Write well, I mean. We haven’t released this information to the general public yet, Professor, but a long, long time ago Milly Finch was a famous novelist. She published under the name of Mildred Deakin.”