A Function of Murder

by Ada Madison

  Unlike me, most faculty and administrators had called it a day hours ago. Except for whoever had been working on the ground floor of Admin while Bruce and I ate our ice cream. I wondered now if whoever it was had seen anything useful. That person would have had a good vantage point. I made a note to mention it to Virgil, though I figured that one of the swarm of officers would make the discovery as they continued to interview everyone.

  A news crew had also arrived, with enough lights to give the area around the fountain a garish look. I wondered if they knew more than I did about the incident, and how they would spin it.

  “Zeeman Academy is way over on the west side of town, right?”

  I started, unaware that Virgil was back.

  “On Brier Road, yes. It’s a new facility, whereas the other two charters in the county took over older buildings. They were traditional schools that either closed from a decline in population or were converted by a bona fide charter.”

  “Again, do you know what his interest was in that particular school?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe because his son had been a student there, but, as I said, Cody left Zeeman three years ago.”

  “How often would you say the mayor comes around now?”

  I strained to remember the occasions when the mayor had shown up at Zeeman on days that I was present. “Almost every week lately. He spent most of the time looking over papers, I’m not sure what kind, in the principal’s office.”

  “Who’s the principal there?”

  “His name is Douglas Richardson.”

  “You like him?”

  I paused. “I guess so, yes. He’s kind of mid-career, ambitious. I know he’s grateful for a college presence at the school. Joan Bradley from Henley’s English Department has set up a program there, also. She got the kids interested in putting out a newsletter.”

  An enormous wave of tiredness came over me. I pinched my eyelids and took a deep breath to help me wake up.

  “We’re almost done,” Virgil said. “It’s important for me to get all this down as soon as possible.”

  “I understand.”

  “The papers you mentioned the mayor was looking at, were they like ledgers? Bank statements? Was the mayor tracking some financial problem?”

  “I don’t think so. From what I overheard in the lunchroom, he was checking the records for applications to the school, acceptances, test scores, that kind of thing.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t pay that much attention. I’m not sure exactly, but with special schools like Zeeman Academy, there are always issues around numbers. They need a certain number of applications and acceptances to stay in business. And their test scores are always scrutinized. Some schools inflate grades to look better on paper. I’m not saying that happens at Zeeman, just that it’s a general problem throughout the system and in any city.”

  “But it could be happening at Zeeman?”

  “Sure. It’s possible but I really can’t say.”

  I felt a chill and stuck my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt. I doubted the temperature had changed. Another wave of exhaustion came over me. It seemed I’d been sitting on the bench, struggling to remember things, to answer Virgil’s questions, for hours. Never mind that probably less than fifteen minutes had passed.

  “And Mayor Graves would be on which side of that?”

  “Of what?”

  “Would it be to his advantage to inflate the grades or not inflate the grades?”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “Hard to say. It would depend on the rest of his agenda for education.” I gave Virgil a pleading look. “Do you think we could continue this tomorrow?”

  “I know you’re tired and this is tough.” He patted my hand. “Just a little bit more, Sophie, I promise. Can you give me your impression of where the mayor stood on this issue of inflating the grades?”

  I took a deep breath, trying for a second wind. “Not really. I try to stay out of school politics when I’m not actually on the faculty.”

  “I suppose there’s enough of that here.” Virgil swept his arm in a large arc, taking in the Administration Building in front of us. “A lot of politics?”

  “You said it,” I replied, thinking of the debate over whether we should have invited the mayor to speak at commencement in the first place.

  A flash of panic shot through me. “No, it couldn’t be.”

  “You think of something?”

  I regretted my outburst, but there was no going back. I had to tell Virgil about the mayor’s being at the center of conflicting opinions among the faculty. I gave as casual a description as I could, but Virgil wanted names.

  “You seriously think someone on the Henley faculty would stab the mayor because he or she didn’t get to choose who would be the graduation speaker?” I asked.

  “You’d be surprised at the motives I’ve come across.”

  “But he’s already given the speech, so what would be the point?” I asked, fully awake now.

  “As I said, you’d be surprised. I have to cover all bases, rule people out, Sophie. You know that.”

  “If we attacked someone every time we lost a vote at faculty senate meetings, you’d be setting up camp here full-time.” Now I was heating up, defending my colleagues.

  “You were on the losing side of that vote?”

  I thought Virgil might be joking. Then I saw his serious expression in the light from the floods on the Administration Building in front of us.

  After a few stuttering sounds, I admitted, “I lost, yes, but it was no big deal.”

  “Why didn’t you want the mayor to speak?”

  “It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want the mayor to speak. I wanted someone else to speak. Some of us thought that an academic or a researcher would have been a more appropriate keynoter at a baccalaureate ceremony.”

  “Who was the other candidate?”

  “It wasn’t that kind of vote, with one guy against another. Our speaker cancelled. They’re scheduled way in advance. In fact, we’ll already be looking at candidates for next year at our summer faculty meeting.”

  If I’d been in a joking mood, I’d have asked Virgil if he wanted his name on the short list of potential candidates.

  “Who was the scheduled speaker?” he asked.

  “Dr. Muriel James from Harvard Med was supposed to give the address, but she had to have surgery last week, so we needed a replacement.”

  “Besides you, who else was against the mayor?” Virgil flipped his notebook to a new page and held his pen over the clean sheet. I imagined many a guilty person being intimidated by the gesture. So was I. I cleared my throat.

  “No one was against the mayor.” I thought I’d made that clear, but apparently not. Was my friend Virgil taking advantage of my weakened state?

  Virgil tapped his pen. “Who voted ‘no’ then?”

  “Is this legal? Don’t you need a warrant for this?” I asked, about 75 percent kidding and the rest serious.

  Virgil was 100 percent serious. “Names, Sophie.”

  As uncomfortable as I was exposing colleagues, I saw no other choice. I did my best to remember the faculty members, besides me, who’d argued for a different speaker.

  Henley was less than an hour away from more than a hundred colleges, universities, art schools, law schools, med schools, and divinity schools in the greater Boston area. There was no question that among the Henley faculty, we had enough contacts to talk a professor at one of them into collecting a fee for a fifteen-minute commencement address.

  In a way, we were all against the mayor. The aye votes were really votes to cooperate with our president and deans who saw money coming to the school in the form of a new building.

  I gave Virgil ten names from the losing side, as he wanted to put it. Four representing science and mathematics—Fran’s and mine included—and six from assorted humanities departments.

  “Anyone stand out as more determined than the others?”

/>   “More determined to do what? All these questions, Virgil. Has the mayor died? Was he…murdered?”

  Virgil slapped his notebook lightly against the palm of his hand. “Anyone react more strongly than others at the meeting? Make threats. Anything like that?”

  I took a deep breath. The kind just before you might lie to the police.

  I thought of Chris Sizemore, who’d stormed out of the meeting after the vote to invite the mayor. She’d thrown the paper with the single-item agenda into the trash and said something like, “This is a big mistake.” I never figured out why Chris’s reaction was over-the-top, but she was quick-tempered at the best of times. She was also young and idealistic, which accounted for a lot in my book.

  I analyzed Virgil’s questions. Did anyone react strongly? he’d asked. Now that I thought about it, Chris may have simply rushed out of the room, which was different from storming out. Maybe she was late for another meeting. Or maybe she had a bathroom emergency.

  Virgil had also asked if anyone had made threats. I wouldn’t have called This is a big mistake a threat, just an opinion. It wasn’t as if Chris had wielded a gun while she said it. Or a letter opener.

  In any case, Chris’s name was on the list I’d already rattled off to Virgil. If there was anything more to her outburst, he’d rout it out.

  Hadn’t I heard that the wife was always a prime suspect? Nora Graves had probably had to put up with a lot as Henley’s First Lady, while her husband had his eyes on a senate seat, and perhaps an eye where it shouldn’t be. I tried to imagine the beautifully put-together Nora Graves coming down on her husband’s back with enough force to kill him. I couldn’t see it, especially when I inserted their teenager, Cody, into the picture. I wondered if the Henley PD ruled out wives with children.

  While I was thinking of names I should give to Virgil, Kira Gilmore came to mind, but Virgil was asking about volatile behavior against the mayor, not in defense of him. No need to bring her into this right now. I was sure Virgil and his team would interview all the students present, if they hadn’t already. Kira was the last person I could think of who’d be able to hurt someone.

  “Sophie?” Virgil asked. “Anyone stand out?”

  “No,” I told him. “No one in particular.” I took a breath. “Do you think I could go home now?”

  This time he nodded, but he gave me a look that said he’d be back with that question and more.

  I felt I’d done my duty, or close enough, by Virgil. Maybe he would return the favor.

  “What do the doctors say? Can you tell me anything about the mayor’s condition?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “You can’t tell me at the moment or you don’t know?”

  Virgil smiled. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  I shook my head. I knew when to call it quits. For now.

  I looked toward the crowd, still milling around the fountain, just outside the crime scene tape. The news crew hadn’t packed it in yet. A stiff young man was being recorded for his fifteen minutes of fame. How much more could there be to say about the incident? Enough to fill a whole news hour, I supposed.

  I didn’t want to walk close to the gathering by myself, especially since I’d spotted a few students I knew. I was in no mood to chat, and even less inclined to be interviewed by a woman with so much hair spray the breezes were redirected when they hit her “do.”

  “Would you walk me to Bruce’s car?” I asked Virgil.

  Virgil rose and extended his arm. I guessed I looked like I needed help.

  I pulled up to my house and parked Bruce’s car in front. My little blue cottage was dark except for the small floodlight that clicked on when I walked toward the door. I’d hoped to find candles burning in the window and Bruce waiting with a cold drink. Or a hot drink. Anything to welcome me. You’d think I’d been the needy one lying in a hospital bed, or called to duty on my evening off.

  I could almost smell a little bruschetta snack. It had been a long time since my stuffed scrod dinner, and the clerks at Jimmie’s didn’t make milk shakes as generously as they used to.

  Inside, I was tempted to walk past the blinking number eleven on my answering machine and head straight for the shower. I was sure my cell phone, now turned back on, also was bursting with voice mails and texts. I didn’t think I could handle them, especially after the grueling interview with Virgil. I’d get to them later. Right now I had to clean up. Though I knew it was physically impossible, I felt I had poor Mayor Graves’s blood splatter all over my clothes.

  Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

  But even at a few minutes before midnight, I couldn’t ignore a summons in the present, especially when I saw that it was Bruce calling from his landline. Uh-oh, he’d gone home. There’d be no shared drinks tonight.

  “Hey, Sophie. I’ve been leaving messages everywhere. You okay?”

  “I just got in. I had my phone off while I was being grilled by Detective Mitchell.” I hoped I sounded lighter and breezier than I felt.

  Bruce chuckled. “I left the hospital just as Virge was coming in.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d been whining about going home when Virgil still had a long night ahead of him.

  “Is the mayor…?” I held my breath.

  “Gone.” One word, in a voice that was soft and low.

  I carried my phone to the den, flicking lights on all the way, and fell onto the couch. My body seemed to sag another six inches, from the inside out. “How awful, Bruce.”

  “Yeah, everyone did their best, though it didn’t look good from the start. He suffered an intrathoracic hemorrhage when his right lung was penetrated.”

  “By the letter opener?” I couldn’t imagine a benign instrument like the Henley College letter opener being the cause of a mortal wound. It never seemed that sharp when I used it for its intended purpose. “How could a simple letter opener do all that damage?”

  “Anything can do a lot of damage in the right hands. Or the wrong hands. Guys in prison use whittled down soap, remember. It’s a matter of the amount of force, in the right spot, with the right…” Bruce paused. “You don’t need to know this right now, do you?”

  No, I didn’t. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing for his family.” I felt I should also offer condolences to Bruce, who’d lost two people in one day, first a little boy’s father in a car accident and now the mayor. I couldn’t imagine the letdown if your job description was to keep people alive and you failed. “You must be beat.”

  “Uh-huh. I came straight home. One of the EMTs was coming my way and drove me. Hope that’s okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay. I wish I could do something for you. I can swing by with your car anytime tomorrow,” I offered.

  “Nuh-uh. That won’t work. Larry’s going to pick me up in a few hours. We all have to be boots-to-the-ground first thing. There’s no telling how people will react when they wake up to this news. It’s all over the Internet already, but most Henley citizens are sleeping.”

  “They’re not expecting riots in the streets, are they?”

  “You never know what backlash there might be. The murder of a city official is not your everyday crime.”

  There it was. Murder. The official word from a more or less official person, though I’d already lost all hope of a freak accident as Virgil was questioning me.

  “The more tension, the more potential for accidents,” Bruce continued. “Plus, until they know why this happened, security will be beefed up for everyone on the mayor’s staff and family and the whole city council. Every kind of emergency vehicle is going to be on standby.”

  “Medevac helicopters included,” I said.

  “This is me, saluting.”

  I could hear Bruce’s voice fading. And though I had many more questions—How is the city’s First Lady holding up? Who is the mayor’s successor? Do the police have any leads on who killed him or why? Were there fingerprints on the letter opener?—Bruce didn’t need my particular
version of grilling, even if he might know more than I did.

  I told myself it was good that Bruce wasn’t worried about me. Why should he be? It wasn’t as if a good friend of mine had died. As I’d told Virgil, the mayor and I weren’t even on a first-name basis. And as long as wishing he would disappear from the stage during his speech didn’t count as inflicting bodily harm, I should be able to get on with the weekend without a debilitating reaction.

  The self-to-self pep talk didn’t take. An unexpected wave of guilt washed over me. True, I’d had nothing to do with the mayor’s stabbing, but had I done everything I could to help him? At least Bruce and the team of medical workers could say that they had.

  I had to ask. “Did he regain consciousness?”

  “No, he never…” Bruce paused and I knew he’d figured out my predicament. “Sophie, I know what you’re thinking. There was nothing you could have done to save the man. Less than nothing.”

  Instead of a small lecture on what less than nothing meant, mathematically speaking, it was my distress that came rushing out. “I should have gone to the hospital with you, or at least when I was finished with Virgil. Maybe I’d have been able to talk to him, find out why he said my name.”

  “Sophie, about your name—”

  “You can’t deny it, Bruce. If you told Virgil about it, you must have been pretty sure that’s what he said. What if he wanted something from me? Something that could simply have made his last moments peaceful, or even helped ID his killer?” I paused, entertaining a flash of a thought. “In fact, why didn’t he say his killer’s name instead of mine?”

  “I’m coming over,” Bruce said.

  That’s all I needed to hear. “No, no. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m exhausted myself and I’d be asleep before you got here,” I lied. “And anyway, you don’t have a car.”

  “I could take the helicopter.”

  No wonder I loved him. Who else could have had me laughing at the end of this conversation?

  “Good night, Bruce,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  I hardly heard his “Thanks. I love you” before the dial tone.