Do or Die (6 page)

He knew there was no further reason to stay. Not with a
dozen leads to follow up and his report to Weiss already two hours overdue. He was reluctantly closing his notebook when the bedroom door yanked open and Sullivan emerged, tight-lipped and grim.

“Mike, you're not going to believe this. Another problem. No one in the rescue crew remembers even seeing a kid in a red plaid shirt!”

“I talked to
the paramedics, the firemen and the rookie patrolman who took the call,” Sullivan reported. “No one remembers a student coming to meet them.”

Green leaned against the wall outside Carrie MacDonald's apartment, shaking his head. The warm flush of a moment ago had vanished. “I don't believe this is happening. A potential eyewitness, maybe even a suspect, and he slips through our fingers. Didn't you seal off the building?”

Sullivan inspected a spot on the far wall, and for a moment Green thought he wasn't going to answer. When he did, his voice was tight. “Of course we sealed off the building. But the student would have been long gone before that, in the madhouse created by the fire alarm.”

“Which is why he pulled it in the first place, Dummkopf! This is probably our guy!”

On the way back to the police station, Green suffered through ten minutes of stony silence and screeching tires before he finally sighed.

“Brian, I'm sorry I called you a Dummkopf. We can't let this case get to us. We've got to pull together.”

“You also humiliated me in front of a witness.”

“I know. I was wrong.”

Sullivan stopped at a red light, and Green saw him gradually deflate. “Yeah, but you were also right. I should have
followed up on that student right away.”

“You should have. But then you would have just had one more failure to report to me.” They exchanged glances and laughed. “It's good we can joke about it. Let's hope the other guys are luckier.”

Back at the station they dodged cameramen and crime reporters as they made their way to the second floor. The death of Jonathan Blair was no longer a secret; it had become front page news. Shutting the door to his little alcove office, Green seized his radio even before he sat down.

“Now to get the reports from the troops,” he muttered as he called. Two minutes later, Detective Jackson responded to his page. Traffic roared in the background.

“Have you come across a guy with thick black hair and a big mustache?” Green asked.

“Mustache? No.”

“Keep looking, it's important. How about a gorgeous dark-haired woman?”

“Not yet. But I'll be glad to start looking for her.”

“Ask Blair's friends if they know her. Arab-looking, wavy hair, big eyes. If you find her, call me.”

“Will do.”

“Got anything useful yet?”

In the background, Green heard a car engine roar, and Jackson raised his voice over it. “Lots of background, no leads. Everybody's in shock, can't believe somebody would do that to such a nice kid, that sort of stuff. Nobody knows any enemies.”

“Seen the ex-girlfriend?” “Vanessa Weeks? She wasn't at her office. Do you want us to go out to her home?”

“No,” Green said impulsively. “Give the address to me.”

When he hung up, he swung on Sullivan. “Passion—that's what I'm betting on. A handsome guy and too many women. I've got to check this one out myself.”

Sullivan was halfway out of his seat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay put so you can field the calls. Get a media plea out on the dark-haired student in the red shirt. Then man the radio and get progress reports from everyone. I'll be back in an hour.”

*    *    *

The young woman who answered the door after almost three minutes was neither dark-haired nor gorgeous, at least in her present state. Vanessa Weeks' face was puffed and blotchy, her eyes webbed in red. Oily blonde hair straggled across her forehead and down her neck. She clutched a cotton dressing gown around her with one hand and pressed a kleenex to her eyes with the other.

Oh God, Green thought. Tears.

He followed her into a small studio apartment strewn with papers, dirty dishes and cast-off clothing. The building was not air-conditioned, and the steamy air smelled faintly of sweat. Beyond the mess, the room was sparse, with no pictures or other personal mementos to warm it up. No portraits of doting parents or goofy siblings. A girl without a past, or at least without one she cared about.

“I thought you'd probably come,” she managed as she folded her tall, willowy frame amid the sofa cushions with a sob. “None of his friends has even called me. It's as if I don't exist any more. As if, just because we broke up, I don't have feelings any more.”

Green debated how to proceed. The woman clearly needed
to talk, and he had no idea what might be important. Experience had taught him that letting witnesses ramble often yielded unexpected dividends. He set his tape recorder on the table and eased back casually into an armchair opposite her.

“Tell me about you and him.”

Her eyes filled again. With a grimace, she leaned over and made a half-hearted attempt to pick some papers from the floor. “I wish I could. I don't know what happened to Jonathan and me. I thought he loved me—he said he did—but then he started giving all these excuses about working late and being busy. Usually I helped him with his work, but this time he wouldn't tell me what he was working on. Then a couple of times when he'd said he was working, I saw him with another woman.”

“When was that?”

“It started about a month ago. Jonathan and I had a big fight over it, and he said I had to trust him. But I'm not a fool. I can't compete with a woman like that.”

“Do you know who she was?”

Her mouth quivered. “Raquel Haddad.”

Haddad, he thought. Lebanese name. “Jet black wavy hair, olive skin?”

She glanced up in surprise. “You've seen her?”

He shrugged, non-committal. “Who is she?”

She lowered her eyes and twisted the kleenex around her finger like a noose. “An undergraduate troller. She hung around our floor, looking for prey. She started with another guy but quickly moved on to more promising prospects. At first Jonathan denied she was even in the picture. Then he said she was just a research assistant. Yeah, right.”

“You didn't believe him?” “She was all over him.” The noose tightened, then she
released it with a small gasp. “I…I don't mean he lied.” She pressed her hand to her forehead and took deep breaths, striving for composure. “It was just his way of letting me down easy. Jonathan hates to hurt anybody. But sometimes being wishy-washy hurts more than an honest yes.”

“How did he seem recently? Anything different? Was he troubled?”

“He felt bad about me, I could tell. He avoided me at the university. He'd leave the room if I came in or pretend he was engrossed in a book. Jonathan was never very extroverted, but he seemed quieter than before.”

“Sad?”

She put the shredded kleenex aside and smoothed her bathrobe, in control again. “You know—” She raised her eyes thoughtfully “—sometimes he did look a little sad. I thought maybe she was giving him a rocky ride. She looked a little too…hot-blooded for his temperament.”

“Did you notice anything different between him and his friends or classmates?”

“He didn't hang out with them as much as before. He seemed buried in his work. They made snide little comments like ‘Blair thinks he's going to find a way to make cats talk'.”

“That sounds jealous. Were others jealous of him?” “Jonathan had no airs. He was handsome and brilliant, but he was also modest and unassuming. I think some guys were even jealous of that. They'd like him to be an arrogant creep, so they could put him down without feeling guilty.”

“Are you saying jealousy was a major problem?”

“Jealousy is always a problem in the academic world, Detective. That's one of the first things my father warned me about.” She smiled wryly. “But then, my father would say jealousy makes a good incentive.”

Or a good motive for murder, he thought to himself, but did not say it. He wanted to keep her soft and pliable. “Any particular person more jealous than the rest?”

Suddenly, she unfolded herself from the sofa and drew herself up to her full height, careful to arrange her dressing gown. “I'm sorry, do you want a cold drink? I didn't realize this would take so long. I should fix myself up a bit.”

Gone was the moment for pliability. She glided into the kitchen, head high and back straight. Unlike the living room, the kitchen was spare but spotless, every pot neatly stacked on the shelf. She plucked some items from the fridge, tossed them into the blender, and disappeared, giving Green a chance to snoop. He could tell a lot about a person by the way they arranged their kitchen. In his own home, three half-empty boxes of Cheerios and a lidless ketchup bottle were likely to fall on your head when you opened a cupboard door, but there was no such danger here. There certainly wasn't much money either, but the neat, organized inhabitant was making the most of it. The kitchen table doubled as a desk, and a painted bookshelf held cans and boxes neatly arranged by type. The food was simple and utilitarian—no spices or exotic grains.

Green revised his initial impression of Jonathan's ex-girlfriend. The mess in the living room was superficial, created in a day of shock and grief. Marianne Blair was right; Vanessa Weeks was very much her own woman, practical, organized and used to being in control. True to this insight, she returned a minute later dressed in shorts and a pink T-shirt over a lean, muscular body. Her hair was combed back into a pony tail and her face was freshly scrubbed. He could see now that she was pretty in a wholesome way. She flipped off the blender.

“Joe Difalco,” she replied as if the conversation hadn't been interrupted. “Joe hates his guts, and it's pure, simple jealousy.
Joe thinks he's God's gift to women, but he's just a swaggering Latin pig. He's supposed to be Professor Halton's golden boy, but people went to Jonathan when they needed brains. Joe grew up in a sixteen-room mansion in Cedarhill, and his daddy owns five cars, including a Lamborghini, but Jonathan gets invited to 24 Sussex Drive. Joe thinks the world is at his feet because his parents always told him it was, but it was really at Jonathan's feet.”

“You don't like this guy much, do you?”

To her credit, she managed a laugh. “When you hold Joe and Jonathan up together, there's no comparison. If someone had to die…” Her voice trailed off as she busied herself setting out glasses. He tried to imagine mentally how yogurt, carrots, club soda and wheat germ would taste.

“Did you ever hear Joe threaten Jonathan or act as if he wanted to harm him?”

“No. Joe's strategy was to pretend Jonathan didn't exist. Joe is a doctoral student in the final stages of his dissertation. He's one of Halton's most senior students. Jonathan's a lowly Masters student. Final year, so higher than me, who's just beginning, but I'm not sure Professor Halton would even have noticed him if his mother wasn't made of money. Jonathan presented a threat, but more for his potential than his present status.”

“Does Joe have a temper? Ever seen him angry?”

“I'm sure he does. He can be very intense. Wound up like a spring, impatient, restless.” She poured a yellow sludge into each glass. “It suggests inadequate cortical control of the limbic system.”

He skirted the editorializing deftly as he took his glass from her. “What does this guy look like?”

“Good-looking, I suppose, if you like the Mediterranean look. Dark, curly hair, big brown eyes. Compact but muscular.
I'd say he does weights.”

“Mustache?”

She shuddered. “No, at least not that.”

“Do you think he is capable of murder?”

“Absolutely.”

They returned to the living room and, as casually as he could, he set his drink on the floor by his side, out of sight. Over the next half hour, he probed her knowledge of the routine details of Jonathan Blair's life. Blair enjoyed cycling, boating and skiing, but in recent months had done little but his research.

“Did he enjoy a good read?” Green asked casually. “The classics, for example?”

Her brow furrowed in confusion.

“He was in the literature section.”

“Oh.” Her brow cleared. “He read constantly, yes, and he did enjoy mysteries as an escape.”

Mysteries were hardly Shakespeare, Green observed privately, but he left the topic to probe her views closer to the case, unearthing little of interest. She could think of no one else with the remotest reason for wanting him dead and no situation that might put him in danger.

“He studied the brains of cats, for heaven's sake!” she exclaimed. “Most of his days were spent in the animal room, the EEG lab, or at his computer. He didn't even help to teach a course. So there isn't even the motive of a student driven berserk by a poor mark.”

“What did he do with the cats?”

“You don't really want to know.” She eyed him balefully. “He drilled holes in their heads and inserted probes to stimulate electrical activity in the hippocampal region. Which is part of the limbic system and crucial for new memory.” Seeing his
blank look, she waved an impatient hand. “He trains his cats on different listening tasks and measures brain responses.”

Green winced. “I get the picture. What about the anti-vivisectionists? That's a pretty fanatical bunch. Did he receive any threats or complaints from them?”

She rolled her eyes. “That's clutching at straws, I'd say. He never mentioned complaints.”

“Well, I am clutching at straws,” he replied, allowing a plaintive edge in his voice. Appeal to her maternal side; he'd often found that worked with women. “I don't have any real motives for murder here, and everyone I talk to describes him as Mr. Perfect.”