Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead (11 page)

But...
hate?

She couldn’t escape the terrifying realization that her father
had been telling her he understood why somebody would want to murder Mitch King.
No, not only murder—the savagery of the attack hadn’t been any secret. Whoever
had hit him over and over again until his face was unrecognizable had wanted to
wipe him out of existence.

Had hated him.

Not you, Dad. Please, please, don’t let it
have been you.

CHAPTER EIGHT

M
AYBE
A
CHANGE
of
tactic was in order.

Brooding and oblivious to the noise and activity around him at
the station, Troy sat with his chair tilted back precariously and his feet
propped on his desk.

Starting with the original witnesses was a waste of his time,
if the ones he’d already spoken to were representative. Unless he hit on one of
them who was flat-out lying, they’d already said their piece.

No, what he needed were witnesses who hadn’t been identified at
the time.

Back to the original murder book. He took his feet off the desk
and put them back on the floor, in the same motion reaching for the binder that
held the sum total of what investigators had learned thirty-five years ago.
Opening it, he tried to remember whether those investigators put out a general
appeal on campus for witnesses, or focused on King’s classmates as Troy’s first
impulse had been.

It took him a while to figure out that a general appeal
had
been issued—but not until students had come back
after Christmas break for second semester. In other words, weeks later.
Big mistake,
he thought clinically. Two or three weeks
was long enough for memories to blur or, maybe worse yet, get corrupted after
too much chitchat with friends who’d heard
this,
or
knew for a
fact
that so-and-so had been there that
night. He could imagine panic spreading along with rumors that police were
looking at anyone who admitted being at McKenna Center that night as a
suspect.

In fact, when he contemplated the list of students interviewed,
he discovered the vast majority were seniors. Was that because seniors took
finals most seriously and were therefore more likely to be awake in the middle
of the night—or because investigators had looked with immediate suspicion on
classmates?

Troy was torn. He could learn more about Mitchell King by
talking to people who’d known him best. On the other hand, his best chance of
locating a witness nobody had talked to back then was to start with the freshmen
on up.

Maybe some of each, he mused, flipping through the list he’d
gotten from Madison. A number of the alumni on the list lived in eastern
Washington. He’d set up appointments.

He filled his afternoon with local appointments, and, left with
an hour or so before he had to set out, he started calling graduates he was
unlikely to ever get a chance to interview in person.

He left a lot of messages, but also spoke to three people. All
remembered the excitement around the murder, but hadn’t even known who Mitchell
King was until they read about him in the local newspaper and heard the talk. He
thanked them politely, shut down his computer and left for the first
appointment.

During the short drive, he called Madison at work and suggested
dinner. She sounded guarded, which made him suspect she wasn’t alone, but
agreed. He’d pick her up at seven.

His first two appointments proved to be as disappointing as the
morning’s phone calls. Because they lived in Frenchman Lake, both women recalled
details of the murder better than the more far-flung alumni did. The
Frenchman Lake
Herald
occasionally ran a retrospective on the most
lurid crime ever seen in the small town. But neither had ever so much as met
King, and at the time of the murder they’d apparently been tucked in their
narrow beds in their dorm rooms sleeping the peaceful sleep of the student too
well prepared to need to pull an all-nighter.

The third appointment was different. He hit on something—okay,
not a nugget of gold, but a flake. A glimmer of hope.

Ben Gossett, a partner in a real estate brokerage, had betrayed
himself with a few twitches as he listened to Troy explaining why he was asking
questions about a crime committed so long ago.

“Yeah, I had a class with the guy, although I can’t say I
really knew him.” He eyed Troy. “I heard things, though.”

“If you’d be frank with me, it would be very helpful.”

Gossett hesitated, running a hand over his thinning pate. “I
only heard rumors,” he said cautiously. “It may all be BS.”

“That’s okay, too.” Troy smiled. “I’ll be talking to a lot of
people. Right now, I’m trying to build a picture of the guy. The original
investigators got hints that Mr. King wasn’t well liked, but they didn’t learn
anything that would suggest a motive for his murder. I’m hoping I can.”

“Yeah, okay.” The multi-line phone on his desk rang, but
Gossett ignored it. “What I heard is that he was blackmailing some people. ‘You
pay me off, I keep my mouth shut.’ That kind of shit.”

Troy hid his elation. “Can you give me any names?”

Gossett shook his head. “If it would help, I can tell you who
told me.”

“That would help.”

Gossett told him; Troy jotted down the name.

After further questions, the guy admitted that he’d heard there
was at least one student who had been at the gym that night and hadn’t wanted to
talk to police.

“He was a stoner. He didn’t like police.”

“What about now?” Troy asked.

“Don’t know.” Gossett shrugged. “He wasn’t a friend of mine. I
don’t know what happened to him after he left Wakefield.”

He seemed to have less compunction about giving Troy this
second name. Troy thanked him cordially and they shook hands. Leaving a card,
Troy walked out past a couple of desks staffed by agents who were all on the
phone. He gathered from the photos and property descriptions covering one wall
in the reception area that Gossett & Armstrong specialized in farms and
acreage. With the growing wine grape business, arable land in the county was
probably a hot commodity.

The minute he was behind the wheel of his Tahoe, Troy grabbed
the file that lay on the passenger seat and searched for the two names. It took
him a minute, but the stoner was there with address and phone number. He had
been a sophomore that year. The second, the kid who might know who had been
blackmailed, was there, too, but with no contact info. He’d been a junior, like
Ben Gossett.

Unfortunately, the stoner lived in Maryland. Troy didn’t
recognize the name of the town. After thinking it over, he placed the call. It
would be almost 8:00 p.m. on the east coast, which increased the odds of
catching the guy at home.

A woman answered. When he asked for Curtis Tucker, she said,
“Just a moment, please,” and he heard her yell, “Curt! It’s for you.”

Troy waited a good minute before a man came on. “Yeah?”

“This is Detective John Troyer. I’m calling from Frenchman
Lake, Washington. We’ve reopened the Mitchell King homicide and I’m contacting
alumni all across the country in hopes of finding witnesses who didn’t come
forward then. I’m interested in talking to anyone who knew King well, too.”

The silence had that bottomless feel that only happened during
phone calls.

“So you just got to my name?” Tucker finally asked.

“Actually, I was steered to call you by someone who’d heard
secondhand that you might have been at the gym that night but chose not to talk
to police at the time.”

“Who...?” He broke off. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, I
was there. If I’d seen someone kill the guy, I’d have come forward, but I
didn’t.”

“I’m interested in what and who you did see,” Troy explained
patiently. “If you give me a new name who gives me a new name, eventually I may
be able to learn something useful.”

“Okay, I get that. The thing is, I’d been smoking weed that
night.” He half laughed. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you that.”

“It’s of interest to me only if it affected your ability to
remember what you saw.”

“Yeah, well, I was relaxed, mostly. I spent some time in one of
the small weight rooms lifting. After that I meant to take a sauna, but when I
opened the door there were these two dudes in there, see. One of them was
sitting, wearing only a towel. He was sweating like he’d been in there awhile.
The other guy hadn’t stripped down, which was weird. I mean, he even had street
shoes and socks on. I could tell I was interrupting something intense. The dude
in the towel glared at me and said, ‘Do you mind?’ so I backed out. I showered
and left.”

Troy questioned him further, and he remembered there was a
second towel in a heap on the bench next to him, like maybe he’d been lying down
and had his head on it.

“Did you know either of the two guys in the sauna?” Troy
asked.

“Not then. I mean, they were familiar because, hey, Wakefield
isn’t that big. You know?”

“Later?”

“The dude wearing the towel was Mitchell King. His picture was
everywhere the next few days. Freaked me out, I can tell you.”

Troy knew that, in fact, King had been nude when he was
murdered. A blood-soaked white towel had fallen to the floor below his body,
found on one of the slatted-wood benches in the sauna. One towel, not two. The
killer had to have taken the second one, likely to have bundled some of his own
clothes. He couldn’t have inflicted that much damage without getting blood on
himself. He’d avoided stepping in it, though; luminol had turned up no blood
traces outside the sauna.

He worked hard to make his voice nonjudgmental. “And the other
guy?”

“You’re not going to think he killed King just because he was
there talking to him, are you?”

“Did he have anything with him that could have been a
weapon?”

Troy could have been wrong, but he thought this silence was a
thoughtful one.

“He had his wallet in his hand, which I thought was weird. I
don’t think he had anything else with him. Not even a gym bag. I figured he knew
King was in the sauna and stuck his head in to talk to him. You know?”

“That’s a natural assumption. And chances are, that’s exactly
what was going on. But he might be another witness. He could have passed another
person going in as he was leaving, for example.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Pause. “I recognized him the next
year. We had a class together. His name made me think of politics. That’s the
only reason I remember it. It was Govern. Like government, or McGovern. Roy or
Ray or something like that.”

Troy flipped through his lists. There it was. Rafe Govern had
been a junior the year of the murder.

“Did you hear any part of what Mitch King and this Govern were
talking about?” he asked.

“Nah, they cut off what they were saying the minute I pushed
the door open. I could tell they didn’t want me to hear.”

Upon further inquiry, Troy learned that Govern hadn’t been
wearing a jacket, only a T-shirt, jeans and athletic shoes.

“Do you know what time it was when you went into the
sauna?”

Tucker was vague on that and admitted he’d been vague even back
then. He hadn’t paid attention. His best guess was around one o’clock to
one-thirty. Which was as much as a half hour before the murder, although of
course they couldn’t be sure.

Troy talked him through the rest of his visit to the gym. The
only other people he’d seen had given statements at the time. Finally Troy
thanked him for his honesty and ended the call. The elation was huge. He had a
witness who’d not only seen King, he could identify someone else who’d been in
the sauna room talking to King—and by all indications, the two had been set on
keeping their discussion private. There might even have been the suggestion of
tension between King and this Rafe Govern.

Starting the engine, he was conscious of a fierce grin pulling
his lips back from his teeth. If he were fanciful, he’d think he had caught a
whiff of the acrid scent of blood.

He knew this much: he was already a giant step ahead of the
investigators who had failed to find a murderer.

* * *

M
ADISON
HAD
BARELY
gotten as far as fastening the seat belt in Troy’s SUV when she asked
if he’d found out anything. She did not feel patient.

He slanted a glance at her. “Let’s wait until we’re sitting
down for dinner. I have quite a bit to tell you.”

What could she do but agree? During the five-minute drive, he
made polite conversation by inquiring about the past couple of days, and as if
by rote she found herself telling him the same things she’d told her dad. Troy
made appropriate noises, but she could tell he was listening with only part of
his attention.

He’d suggested a bistro on the main street in downtown, and
they were seated at a wrought iron table outside. A few potted plants and
checked tablecloths gave the patio some atmosphere. The evening was still sunny
and warm, but she enjoyed the breeze playing over her skin. There were only a
couple of other parties seated out here, and neither was nearby.

The minute the waiter took their orders, she leaned forward.
“Tell all.”

He smiled with what she took for cold satisfaction. “I talked
to someone who heard that King was running a blackmail business. Apparently it
paid better than waiting tables in the dining hall.”

She heard a huff of air and knew it came from her. It was as if
a passing car had jumped the curb and hit her, compressing her chest. As if he
was standing behind her, Madison heard her father’s bitter voice.

Other students’ screwups were his wine and
song.

And bank balance, too.

Oh, God—Dad had
known
. And if he
knew...wasn’t it likely he’d been paying blackmail himself?

Troy was watching her strangely. Madison had no idea what her
expression was giving away.

“The person who told you.” She licked dry lips. “Was he being
blackmailed?”

“No, or if he was he didn’t admit it.” Troy rolled his
shoulders while apparently mulling over the idea. “No, I don’t think so. He’d
heard it secondhand, and I believe him. He was too casual about the whole thing.
He did remember who told him, but I have no contact info for this guy. I’m
hoping you can find something.”