Murder Misread (33 page)

Anne Chandler stood up
abruptly, trembling with anger. “You do that, Charlie Fielding, and
I’ll explain something else that happens to be true. Tal suspected
that something very wrong was going on in his department. He was
worried about the Hammond boy. About Jill’s story. Told me about
it. Didn’t know who, of course, so he couldn’t tell me that. But he
knew something was deeply wrong, and if he’d found out—”

“
A jury will think that’s
another reason that you killed him,” Maggie explained gently.
“Really, Charlie, it’s to your advantage not to mention the
girls.”

Charlie sat back down. It
was true, people would be eager to believe that someone who liked
little girls was a killer. People didn’t understand. It would make
things worse in a trial if he told.

Nick said softly, “You
know what happens to child molesters in prison, Charlie? You know
about Short-Eyes?”

Short-Eyes. God, that’s
what they’d think, the other prisoners! They were now filming that
horrible play, based on the real-life tortures that other prisoners
inflict on molesters. He hated molesters too, had thought of it as
a sort of rough justice. But if these academic people didn’t
understand that he wasn’t a molester, how could he expect criminals
to understand? He did not want to go to prison as
Short-Eyes.

“
Okay,” he said
desperately. “I’ll leave the kids out of it. But you can’t get away
with this! I’ll tell them you framed me!”

“
Go right ahead,” said
Maggie. “Tell them that the wife of the victim, the departmental
secretary, and a New York statistician you’d never met before all
got together to frame you.”

“
Well, it’s true—” Charlie
faltered.

“
It’s also true that a man
in a slicker told Jill Baker to take off her things and yell magic
words to fend off sharks,” Maggie snapped. “But who believed her?”
Then she combed her fingers through her black curls and spoke more
softly. “I’m sorry, Charlie. But I don’t know how else to stop
you.”

Charlie stared down at his
shoes. He was trapped. She was right, no one would believe him, it
was too insane. If those three stuck to this story…. And it was
true, telling about the girls would make things worse for him.
Much, much worse. If he told the truth, if he said Maggie had made
it up to keep him away from the children, the lawyers would just
turn it around and say that Tal had found out and Charlie had
killed him to keep him quiet. It would make him look even guiltier.
And then in prison…. Or suppose he somehow got released. If people
knew about the girls, no one would hire him. And worse yet, he
would be watched. It would be even more difficult to find the next
little Deanna or Melanie.

He came back to the
present to discover that Anne Chandler and Cindy had left for home.
They didn’t want the police to find them all here together. It
would look less like a conspiracy if they were interviewed
separately. “I’ll see you soon, Sergeant Hines,” Maggie was saying.
She replaced the telephone receiver.

Hines. He mustn’t let
Hines find out about the girls. He mustn’t let anyone find
out.

God, Hines would search
his house.

If Hines found his secret
collection, he’d find out. He might even destroy the collection,
destroy the precious memories. Charlie had to get his collection to
a safe place. How?

Salvation rapped on the
door, then unlocked it.

“
Fielding?” said Walensky,
then paused, taking in the scene.

Thank God it wasn’t
Hines.

Walensky stepped in,
closing the door behind him carefully. “What’s going on? Fielding,
why are you tied up?”

“
They did it,” Charlie
confessed, thrusting his wrists toward Walensky. Walensky untied
them.

“
Wait!” Maggie said.
“Professor Fielding is the one who killed Tal Chandler!”

“
No! No, I didn’t!”
Charlie rubbed his wrists.

Walensky look neutrally at
Maggie. “How could he? You’re the one who said he was with you
almost the whole time.”

“
I thought he was. But now
that I’ve thought things over, I’ve decided that I must have been
in the post office longer than I said at first. See, I stopped to
read something. So it was fifteen, maybe twenty
minutes.”

“
I see.”

“
And Cindy Phelps thinks
the gun was in his jacket pocket Thursday morning.”

Charlie shook his head.
“It’s not true! None of it is true!”

“
That’s for the court to
decide,” said Nick.

Walensky glanced at
Charlie and unsnapped his holster. “I hate to say this, Professor
Fielding, but he’s right.” His voice was hard.

“
My God, you don’t believe
them, do you? But you’ve known me for years!”

“
Look, what can I do? Nora
Peterson says she saw you take the damn gun, Fielding. Bickford’s
been saying you did it from the beginning. And now your alibi
disappears.” He looked at Charlie thoughtfully. “Of course the jury
will probably sympathize. You’ve never even assaulted anyone
before. Nice young man, worried about his job, overstressed, no
danger to society.” There was a flash of hatred in his face as he
added, “No doubt you thought you had a good reason to kill that old
man! And never thought of the consequences!”

Charlie was shocked.
Walensky believed her, so easily!

Maggie said hastily, “It
was a professional reason! His research was threatened by Tal
Chandler’s work. I’m the project statistician and I’ve seen his
results. And of course, you could check with Anne
Chandler.”

“
A professional reason. I
see.” Walensky squinted at the bookcase. “Fielding, you told me
your results are on videotape, right? Maybe we’d better impound
those.”

Nick said, “Isn’t it more
important to get Professor Fielding’s statement?”

“
It’s all important,”
Walensky bristled. He pulled the plastic lining bag from Charlie’s
metal wastebasket and began to pitch videotapes into it.

Walensky had given him an
opening, Charlie realized suddenly. Should he make a break for it?
But then he remembered that his car keys were in Nick’s pocket. And
Nick had moved away from the bookcase and was watching him
alertly.

Maggie’s eyes were on
Walensky. “Here, I’ll help,” she offered, and scooped some
experimental tapes from Charlie’s shelves.

“
No, thanks, Miss Ryan.
This is police business.” Walensky moved toward the boxes that hid
the films.

“
Well, at least let me
stack them for you!” Maggie didn’t want the films in police
custody, Charlie realized. She was still trying to shield the
children. She pulled the incriminating boxes out and began to
straighten the experimental tapes left in the bag.

Charlie saw Walensky
register the way she had sorted them. She looked up from her task,
met the captain’s narrowed eyes, and recognition sparked between
them. “The man in the slicker!” she gasped. “So it’s not just that
you’re blackmailing Charlie. You’re in this personally!”

“
I’m sorry you force me to
do this the messy way,” Walensky said regretfully. His automatic
was suddenly in his hand. “Over against the window wall. All of
you.” The gun was steady on Maggie, and she promptly obeyed,
backing toward the window, almost stumbling over her briefcase.
Nick joined her at the opposite side of the window.

But Charlie hesitated.
“Look, I’m on your side!”

“
Yeah? Then how did she
see the film?”

“
She found it herself! And
anyway, it doesn’t matter, because she’s not going to say anything
about the kids or the films. She doesn’t want them to have to
testify in court.”

A hard little smile tensed
Walensky’s face. “Right, Miss Ryan. You were cross-examined in a
sex crime once yourself, weren’t you?”

“
Wasn’t much fun,” Maggie
said neutrally. “Nothing I’d wish on a little kid. It’s like
abusing them all over again.”

“
So you want to keep them
out of court. Fine,” Walensky mused. “Maybe we can come to an
agreement. Fielding, I don’t know why you haven’t left.”

“
Nick has my car
keys!”

Walensky sighed
regretfully, like Coach Wilhelm when Charlie had muffed a play.
“Toss them over.” He waved the gun and Nick complied. Charlie
scrambled to pick them up. Walensky said, “You’ll get one more
chance to break out of custody. But since you’re still here, you
might as well get the right films into that bag. We need to have a
little bonfire. That’s why I came tonight, you know. All my copies
got incinerated the moment you told me someone had sent you
that
Screw
with
my ad circled. But then I got to thinking, you’re such a pack rat,
you wouldn’t have the brains to destroy the masters. So let’s do it
now.”

“
Okay.” Walensky was
right, they had to go. Charlie glanced nervously at Nick and Maggie
but they were standing quietly by the window, watching. He sorted
the plastic cases of films into the bag and knotted the top. “So
much work,” he said sadly.

“
Gotta cut your losses,”
Walensky said.

“
Yeah. Oh, she’s got
another one of them in her briefcase,” Charlie remembered. He
started toward Maggie.

“
Stop!” barked Walensky.
“Don’t get between them and me!”

“
Oh.” Charlie jumped
back.

“
Miss Ryan, throw your
briefcase over to Fielding.”

“
Okay,” said Maggie
agreeably. She picked up the briefcase, obediently sighted at
Charlie, and swung her arm back to toss it to him. Instead it
smashed through the windowpane behind her and disappeared
outside.

“
Oh, God! Sorry!” Maggie’s
hand flew to her mouth in apparent shock.

“
Damn!” Volcanic anger
seethed in Walensky’s eyes but he stayed in control. “Well, we’ll
get it on the way out. Fielding, is there anything else in this
office? Any records?”

“
Oh. Yes, I’ve got an
inventory.” Charlie scrabbled in his file cabinet and found an old
data set. The inventory was nestled among the other sheets. “Here
it is. There’s nothing else in the office.”

“
Okay.” With his left
hand, Walensky pulled a lighter from his pocket and tossed it onto
Charlie’s desk, startling him. He controlled his twanging nerves
and dropped the inventory into the wastebasket before lighting it.
It took four tries before the paper caught and flared into black
ash.

Charlie nodded at Nick and
Maggie. “What are you going to do with them?”

“
Depends on how
cooperative they are,” Walensky said. “If worse comes to worst,
well, we all know accidents happen to little children
sometimes.”

Charlie shivered. He
didn’t want any more children hurt. He said urgently, “Please,
listen to him! He means it! The little Hammond boy didn’t like the
ketchup and when we started home he kept looking back saying, ‘Bad
place.’ We were afraid his parents would get suspicious, and
Walensky said if he’d been hit by a car, of course he’d say ‘bad
place.’ And he took the kid out and ran over his legs very
carefully.”

Maggie’s eyes dilated, but
she said calmly, “Tell us what you want us to do.” Why was she so
calm? Charlie himself felt jumpy as a silent movie.

“
For now you know nothing.
Just stay with the status quo,” said Walensky. “If you implicate us
in any way your kids will suffer. But I’m sure we’ll find a way to
work together.”

The sound of a far-off
siren drifted through the broken window. “Listen!” Charlie
exclaimed. “She called Hines, you know. Just before you
arrived.”

“
Jesus, Fielding!”
Walensky exploded. “When are you going to start giving me the facts
I need to know? Pitch those films out the window and let’s get
out.” When Charlie had complied he added, “Is there anything else
you haven’t told me?”

Nick spoke for the first
time. “What about your secret collection, Charlie?”

“
Oh, God, that’s right!
I’ve got to move my private collection from home to a safer place.
Hines might search my house.”

“
No problem there.”
Walensky was backing toward the door. “I took care of everything.
When I couldn’t get you on the phone this afternoon I figured I’d
better make sure Hines couldn’t find anything. So I let myself into
your house and broke open the filing cabinet you showed me. Don’t
worry. Your collection got incinerated along with my stuff. Come
on, let’s go.”

For a moment Charlie
couldn’t understand. He stood rooted where he was, staring at
Walensky. Then he gasped, “Incinerated? You burned it?”

“
Yeah, right. You got
nothing to worry about. Let’s go, now.”

“
You burned my collection?
All of it?”

“
Not the movie stuff in
your living room, no. That’s harmless. I just burned that one
drawer you showed me.”

Black rage welled up in
Charlie. All the sacred relics of those lost, golden afternoons
with little Melanie, little Janine. Gone, forever gone, like the
pure unclouded children now grown into gross adulthood. “You burned
it?” Charlie screamed. “Burned it?” He lunged at Walensky. A haze
of red veiled everything but the gun and the man who had destroyed
his life’s work, his life’s love. He saw his own hands wrenching at
Walensky’s, saw the surprise on Walensky’s face, heard the crack as
the gun fired, felt the hard steel recoiling in his own hand. He
fired again and again until the gun made nothing but clicking
sounds that could barely be heard through the screaming in his
head.