Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead (6 page)

He’d been asking himself the same question since this
afternoon: give this to Mom unopened, or rip it open now and find out what words
his father had thought most significant thirty-five years ago?

Troy wouldn’t have even asked himself if his mother had seemed
the slightest bit interested. But he had no doubt if he stopped by in the
morning with the envelope in hand she’d gaze at it in vague puzzlement and then
say, “Oh, you mentioned something about a time capsule, didn’t you?”

To hell with it,
he thought. He
must have made the decision earlier, because he had brought a letter opener with
him when he settled into the recliner. A beer, too. He paused and took a long
swallow then lifted the bottle in a salute. “To you, Dad.”

He slit the top of the envelope, set down the opener and
reached inside. Something in him tightened when he realized there was only one
page there, typed single-spaced with narrow margins. Perturbed, he peered in.
Nope, that was it.

What the hell...?

No
To Whom It May Concern
or
Dear Older Self.
Dad had jumped right into it.

I’ve kept a secret that I probably shouldn’t have. By writing this
down, I think I’m trying to absolve myself of responsibility. After all, if I
put this in the time capsule, then it will all be exposed someday, won’t it? I
keep thinking I should go to the police now—it’s only been a few months, which
isn’t too late, and they often keep witnesses’ names confidential, don’t they?
But I suppose having my name come out isn’t really what’s bothering me. I don’t
want to make trouble for a friend. And I keep telling myself what I’m thinking
is all in my head. Guy of all people wouldn’t do something like this—

Stunned, Troy reread that first paragraph. His father, the most
upright man on earth, had withheld information from the police? About what?

But Troy knew. He knew.

Here’s what happened. It was first semester finals week. Guy
Laclaire is one of my best friends. I live in a senior apartment, Guy in a house
off campus. The two of us arranged to meet at two a.m. for a game of
racquetball. Not like either of us would be sleeping, given that we both had two
big exams on Thursday and Friday. I was coming from the library where I’d been
studying when I saw somebody rush out of McKenna and tear by me. Guy. I caught
one good glimpse of his face. He had something in his hand like...I don’t know.
Not a book or a towel or a gym bag like I had. Something solid. It didn’t
fit
and I kind of thought
what’s
that?
I called out his name, but he didn’t hear me. So I figured he’d
forgotten something and would be back. I sat down on the rim of the fountain and
waited for at least fifteen minutes. He never came back. I froze my ass off and
was pissed and went back to my apartment and to bed.

By morning, the campus was buzzing. Mitch King had been found
dead, bludgeoned to death, in the sauna in McKenna Center. The police think the
crime happened between 1:30 and 2:15 a.m., when Steve Kaplan found him. A few
other students had shot baskets in the gym or used the pool during that time,
but Steve was the first to go into the sauna. Nobody admitted seeing an outsider
or a fellow student who seemed agitated or was covered with blood or anything.
It sounds like there was a lot of blood. Police were asking for help.

And I’m thinking, oh man, I did see someone who was agitated.
Someone running away from the gym, carrying a length of wood or a bat or—I don’t
know, but something that could have been used to beat a person’s skull in. And I
know that someone really (underlined twice) didn’t like Mitch King.

But I don’t want to get Guy in deep shit he doesn’t deserve
either. I don’t think he had blood on him, although I didn’t get that good a
look at him either. Mostly his face under the light. So I ran him down and
complained because he didn’t show last night. He said he was sorry, he guessed
he’d fallen asleep. He hoped I hadn’t waited long for him.

He lied.

But Guy wouldn’t do something like that. I really believe
that. So I’m keeping my mouth shut, but part of me is howling “No-o, that’s
wrong!”

I figure this is something, right?

Okay, it’s going into the envelope.

But I’m thinking, now that I read it all here in
black-and-white, that I will talk to whoever is investigating.

Troy read the page several times. The close-packed words kept
blurring. He wished his father had double-spaced. He wished Dad had been more
matter-of-fact, hadn’t put so much of his personality and panic into this.

He wished his father hadn’t kept a secret of this
magnitude.

“Goddamn it,” he said aloud, to his silent house.

Most of all, he wished the fellow student Dad had fingered
wasn’t Madison Laclaire’s father.

Eventually he slipped the shocking revelation back in its
envelope and put it in the small locked safe where he kept his service weapon.
He went to bed and really tried to sleep, even though he knew before his head
touched the pillow that it would be a no-go.

* * *

W
ELL
.

Madison slipped the pages of the short story back in the
envelope. She’d mail it to her father. He might find it amusing. More likely,
he’d barely glance at it then toss it in the recycling bin.

It wasn’t a
bad
story. In fact, Dad
had written exceptionally well. No surprise there. All the same...when Guy
Laclaire decided to go for his MBA instead of trying for the Great American
Novel, the literary world had not lost a great talent. Presumably this was the
writing he considered his best at the time. He’d been striving for dark, moody
and world-weary, and ended up sounding pretentious and derivative.

His professors must have known that, but he’d never received
anything lower than an A in a class within his major. Most, of course, required
analysis of great literature, not original creative writing.

Smiling, Madison wondered if Dad had ever had visions of
himself as the next Norman Mailer: eccentric, brilliant and admired. Probably
not, or if he had he’d given up those aspirations before he placed this story in
the capsule. After all, by then he’d have already applied to Harvard and maybe
even have been accepted into the MBA program.

No deep revelations about her father here, she thought, setting
the envelope aside and reveling in the cool flow from the air conditioner on her
body. Although she did sort of like knowing Dad
wasn’t
brilliant at everything he tried. After reading his smugly self-satisfied
writing, she could laugh knowing how full of himself he’d been at that age.

Go figure. It turned out Guy Laclaire had been normal after
all. Madison found she rather liked that idea. The father she knew was arrogant,
all right, but with reason.
She’d
never caught him
in a mistake, never seen him fail. He was morally unbending, impatient of other
people’s follies, indecision and screwups. He was still a handsome man with a
full head of hair barely touched with gray. A daily run or game of racquetball
or tennis kept him in excellent physical condition. He never seemed to need more
than about six hours of sleep a night, and had no understanding for why other
people—including his daughter—did.

Madison had the funny thought that maybe Dad never failed
because he wasn’t willing to try anything he
might
fail at. She’d never seen him in the water, for example. Was that because he
didn’t swim very well? He certainly didn’t sing, not even to join in “Happy
Birthday” or “Auld Lang Syne.” He’d perfected the art of appearing faintly
contemptuous while other people indulged in anything he deemed a waste of time.
Maybe, she thought, bemused, Dad couldn’t carry a tune. She’d presumably
inherited her own tin ear from one of her parents, after all.

The knowledge flooded her. Dad wouldn’t like knowing she’d read
his short story, because if
he
troubled to read it
he’d see that it wasn’t very good. Most of the alumni on the field this
afternoon had been having a really good time laughing at their youthful
selves.

Dad wouldn’t have been able to do that. So of course he hadn’t
attended.

She felt...odd. And, strangely, a little bit mad. The weight of
her father’s disapproval was with her even when he wasn’t. Because she
had always worried about whether she should stick to
doing the things she wasn’t great at. She’d felt the pressure when she was a kid
and wanted to play soccer, for example, or join the swim team or stick with band
even though, okay, the sounds that came out of her trombone were more like the
cry of a wounded walrus than music. But mostly, once it became apparent she
would never excel at whatever it was, she would quietly give it up and
concentrate on her schoolwork, where she did excel.

“Why waste your time?” was one of Dad’s favorite lines, always
accompanied by a supercilious flick of one eyebrow.

But I
wanted
to swim on the high school team,
she thought now, still defiant.
So what if I wasn’t the best?

“So what if I wasn’t?” she said aloud, slowly.

What was wrong with doing something just because it was
fun?

Dumb question—it wasn’t the Laclaire way.

Of course, the Laclaire way meant she was a perfectionist. It
made her good at her job. This weekend’s event had gone without a hitch because
she’d worked so damn hard to foresee every possible pitfall. And no, that wasn’t
a bad thing.

Suddenly, though, Madison wanted to sing. Sing so loudly her
neighbors couldn’t miss hearing her and flinching at every discordant note.

Damn it, I
like
to sing.

Well, all right, she’d sing in the shower, she decided. Maybe
someday she’d sing in the shower even if she was sharing it with someone
else.

Carrying her strappy evening shoes in one hand, she padded into
the bedroom, where she shimmied out of her snug black dress. The
someone
she envisioned in the shower with her was John
Troyer. She had a feeling he wouldn’t mind at all that she couldn’t carry a tune
as long as she was happy singing.

But then, singing probably wasn’t what she’d be doing if Troy
joined her in the shower, Madison thought with a private smile.

As she reached in to turn on the water, she wondered again
whether he’d read whatever his father had left in the time capsule. And if
so...was he feeling sad?

She wished he’d called her. She was a little startled to
realize how much she would like to be the person he did call when he felt
distress or triumph or anything at all he needed to share.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
ROY
CONTEMPLATED
HIS
face in the mirror.
After a sleepless night, what he saw wasn’t pretty. He’d expected shaving would
help, but if anything he looked worse now. The stubble had drawn the eye from
the deepened lines and creases that were now so apparent. The fact that he’d
nicked himself meant his jaw was decorated with a couple of tiny wads of toilet
paper. And yeah, the bags and shadows beneath his eyes were almost as bad as the
time a punk who didn’t want to be arrested had planted a fist in Troy’s
nose.

Making a sound in his throat, he scrubbed a hand over his face
and turned away.

Goddamn it.
He didn’t see that he
had any choice but to take what he now knew to the department, however much he
hated to expose his father’s lousy judgment. No, worse than that. His father’s
stunning, damn near criminal, ethical failing. It stung, remembering how proud
Dad had been when Troy made the decision to become a cop. He’d been there to see
the badge pinned on. He’d rejoiced to see his son come home to Frenchman Lake to
enforce the law.

And all that time, he’d been hiding the knowledge that he had
shielded a murderer because they were
friends
.

Troy’s mind still boggled at what he’d read last night. He
would have sworn he knew his father inside and out. He’d looked up to him,
measured his own decisions and accomplishments and rectitude by his father’s.
What would Dad do?
he would ask himself.
What would Dad say?

Goddamn it,
he thought again, as he
took his first swallow of coffee, desperately needing the caffeine hit.
Dad, how could you?

So, okay, a lot of twenty-one-year-olds weren’t very mature.
Dad believed in loyalty. It was apparent in what he’d written that he had
desperately wanted to believe in Guy Laclaire’s innocence. He’d tried hard to
dismiss his suspicions.

It was also apparent he hadn’t succeeded. If he had, what he
saw that night wouldn’t have weighed so heavily on his mind months later, when
he typed that single, stark page and chose to insert it in the time capsule.

But I’m thinking, now that I read it all
here in black-and-white, that I will talk to whoever is
investigating.

So why hadn’t he?

Hell, maybe writing the confession and knowing it would be read
someday had given him some sense of absolution.

Everything in Troy rebelled at the idea that his father had
sighed in relief and gone on with a clean conscience.

He found himself wondering what had happened between Guy and
Joe Troyer the last semester of their senior year, after Guy had lied about
being at McKenna Sports Center the night of the murder. Had they stayed buddies,
same as always, Dad pretending to Guy—and maybe even to himself—that he’d never
seen a thing? Had they ever had it out? Or maybe they just drifted apart? And if
so, had Guy ever wondered why Joe had changed toward him?

All questions, Troy realized, that only Guy Laclaire could
answer.

What Troy did know was that the two men hadn’t stayed friends
after graduation. Troy had never heard Guy’s name until Madison mentioned it.
After his mother’s complete collapse, Troy had been the one to take
responsibility for calling, emailing or writing everyone in Dad’s address book.
Some friends from college who Dad hadn’t seen in years were in there. Guy
wasn’t.

“Shit,” Troy said, thinking about his mother. She wouldn’t like
the idea of any wrong Dad had committed being exposed to the eyes of the
world.

Or was he misjudging her? Troy frowned. As he was growing up,
Mom had been as firm as Dad was about what was right and what was wrong. What if
he talked to her about this?

His every instinct said,
No.
There
might have been a time when Mom was capable of placing an abstract concept of
justice and ethics ahead of her love for her husband, but that time wasn’t now.
It was almost a year since Dad died, and as far as Troy could tell, all she did
was cling more tenaciously to his memory. God forbid Troy criticize Dad. He was
beginning to think she regretted not climbing into the coffin with him and
holding tight to his lifeless body as the soil thudded down and buried them
together. She sure as hell had no interest in life.

This decision is mine,
he realized,
and knew it wasn’t a decision at all. He was an officer of the law. He’d loved
his father, but there was only one choice he could make.

There was no urgency, though, and he had to talk to Madison
first.

His belly felt hollow, and it wasn’t all because of his
conflict about his father, his disappointment in the man he’d admired above all
others. No, what scared the shit out of him was the fear that this would kill
any chance he had with Madison, who, while obviously having some ambivalent
feelings about her own father, also clearly loved him.

Yeah, arresting her dad for murder probably wasn’t the way to
get the girl.

He groaned and reached for the phone.

* * *

W
E
HAVE
TO
TALK
,
Troy had
said
.

Talk about what? As she waited for him to arrive, Madison
restlessly paced her living room and fretted. He’d sounded strange, and when she
wanted to know what was wrong, he only asked if he could come over.

What could he have to say that would impact her? The visiting
alumni had all departed this morning to drive home or catch flights. And
wouldn’t he have said something at the formal dinner last night if he’d learned
anything worrisome?

Did he think she’d been too manipulative in bringing everyone
back to the campus, with a goal of extracting money from them?

Damn it, I was doing my job. No more and
no less.

Everyone had fun. She knew many
had
written checks, but she had yet to hear the total.

No, that was silly anyway—she’d been up front from the
beginning about her goals and Troy had seemed okay with them. He knew how
important fund-raising was for a private college.

So what did he want to talk about?

She growled in frustration, then stiffened at the sound of a
vehicle pulling up outside. Whirling, she raced for the bathroom. Her ponytail
was still smooth. Take it down or leave it up...? The doorbell rang, and she
jumped.

Losing interest in her hairstyle, she hurried to open the front
door. On the other side of it, Troy was imposing, as always, his tall, solid
body dwarfing hers. But her heart bumped in alarm at her first sight of his
face, haggard and grim.

“Something
is
wrong.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” He raised his eyebrows. “Can I come
in?”

“Oh. Sure.” She backed up. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry to be mysterious with you.” Having followed her
in, he glanced around her living room.

She felt a little self-conscious, since the home she’d created
for herself was bound to give away facets of her personality she hadn’t yet
shared. He could probably tell right off that, while she wouldn’t describe
herself as a slob, she had rebelled in her modest way after moving out on her
own by refusing to be fixated on perfect order either. A couple of magazines lay
on a sofa cushion; books and the Sunday newspaper littered the coffee table.
Books were jammed into the pair of bookcases flanking the fireplace, too, not
arranged with restraint or even—her father would shudder—alphabetically. But the
house was basically clean, and she liked the paintings she’d hung, the
combination of bright colors that, to her eyes, worked. She’d done classic decor
in her office at the college. Here at home, she’d suited herself.

Funny—more than once she’d had the thought that Dad wouldn’t
like it. But then, he never visited her here. She always went to Seattle to see
him.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, scooping the magazines off the
sofa and adding them to the heap on the table. “Would you like a cup of
coffee?”

“Maybe in a little bit.” His grimness hadn’t abated. “I have
something I need to tell you.”

She sank onto one end of the sofa, a leg curled under her, and
he chose a chair facing her. For the first time, she saw that he had a manila
envelope clenched in his hand.

“Is that your father’s...?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yeah.” His gray eyes held hers. “It’s a shocker, Madison. I
want you to read what he wrote.”

Her heart was hammering. He sounded so serious. Not only as if
he’d had a shock, but also as if whatever was in that envelope would affect
her
. The only reason it could was if it had to
do with her father.

“All right.” She was proud of her steady voice.

He opened the envelope and half rose to hand her a single sheet
of paper. His storm-cloud eyes held something powerful—she had the odd sense
that it might be grief. Then he sat down and watched her, impassive but for the
spasm of a muscle in his jaw.

Stiff with apprehension, she bent her head and began to
read.

I’ve kept a secret that I probably
shouldn’t have.

* * *

“T
HIS
IS
A
LIE
!
”
Madison threw the piece of paper away. It fluttered to the surface of the coffee
table. “It can’t possibly be Dad he saw. If he saw anybody. Has it occurred to
you this could be fiction? Some kind of practical joke on my dad?”

She saw nothing but pity on his face.

“No. That’s—” Troy nodded at the paper “—my father’s voice.
There’s nothing self-conscious about what he wrote. He’s too miserable, too
obviously battling his conscience. If that was a successful joke, it was written
by a master, not a college kid.”

Frantic as she was, Madison heard the truth in what he
said.

I don’t want to make trouble for a friend.
And I keep telling myself what I’m thinking is all in my head. Guy of all
people wouldn’t do something like this—

There was nothing slyly humorous about his language, nothing
that said sardonically,
Gotcha!

She pressed on. “He admits he barely caught a glimpse of Dad’s
face. He mistook him for someone else. That has to be it.”

“Of course it’s possible. Dad could have been wrong and your
father really did fall asleep and never showed up.” Troy paused, that disturbing
gaze never leaving her face. “It’s also possible your father was there and had
nothing to do with the murder but had some other reason for lying. By morning,
he might have found out about King’s death and was afraid he’d be suspected,
especially if it was commonly known he didn’t like the guy.”

Madison absorbed what he said. His voice, low, resonant and
soothing, had calmed her somewhat. At least he wasn’t automatically accusing Dad
of murder. He was saying,
I acknowledge there are
alternative explanations.
Thank God.

“But if that’s the case,” she heard herself say reluctantly,
“and it really was Dad, why would he have ‘rushed away’ and then not come back
to meet your father, the way he’d promised?”

“I don’t know.”

The pity wasn’t soft. Instead it glinted, she thought in alarm,
like the steel barrel of a gun.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“How can I?” Troy’s face had never looked harder. “I wear a
badge every day, Madison. Today, for the first time in my life, I’m ashamed of
my father. But at least he was a private citizen. I’m not. My job is to catch
killers.”

She shot to her feet. “My father is not a killer! He’s... You
don’t know him, or you wouldn’t even say that!”

He rose, too, more slowly. “Somebody murdered Mitchell King.
Bludgeoned him to death.” He paused to give emphasis to the brutal reality. “And
odds are, it was somebody who knew him. Who wasn’t even noticed in the gym
because he belonged there by rights. He damn near
had
to be a member of the college community, Madison.” His head cocked
slightly to one side. “Of course you don’t want to think your father could have
done something like that. Nobody would want to.”

Her legs gave out and she collapsed back onto the sofa. She was
trying to be furious on her father’s behalf, but mostly she felt scared. She
understood Troy’s point, but somehow, she had to make him understand that Dad,
of all men,
couldn’t
have done this. It was simply
impossible.

“Dad doesn’t cheat on his taxes,” she said. “If a restaurant
bill leaves an item off, he draws the waiter’s attention to it. Dad is
unrelentingly honest. He held me to standards as high as his own. If I tried to
lie even to myself, he called me on it. As a businessman, he has a tough
reputation because he can be ruthless and maybe hard, but he’s also known to
live up to his promises. I have spent my entire life...” Her voice caught. She
couldn’t finish.

“Trying to live up to his standards?” Troy circled the coffee
table and sat down on the cushion beside her, taking her hand in a warm grip.
“I’ve tried to live up to my dad’s, too. And I’ve just discovered he made one
hell of a mistake. He didn’t live up to his own standards.”

“Murder is a much bigger mistake.” If her father had committed
murder, her entire world was undercut. “No,” she said aloud, strongly. “Not
Dad.”

Troy shook his head. “I can’t ignore this, Madison. That’s all
I came to tell you. I have to go to my police chief.”

She pulled her hand from his. “Do you know what this would do
to my father’s reputation?”

He grunted. “It won’t do much for my father’s either.”

“That’s not the same!” she cried.

His jaw tightened and he shook his head. “I have no
choice.”