Shand asked, “When she left your office, what was her state of mind?”
I stopped in my mental tracks as it occurred to me what had just happened. Unbelievable. I was finding it hard to believe that I taught this stuff for a living. It’s like a spider showing other spiders how to hunt for prey, but then he goes for a short eight-legged run and gets gobbled up by a bird.
Damn, I liked these guys!
They got me to lower my guard with subtle grins and by giving me some facts about the case. Just a small demonstration of how I was being trusted with information because I had an alibi. They implicitly acknowledged our bond of the badge and then they serve up a question like that. Beautiful work.
If I said that I have no idea what her state of mind was, then I would have appeared evasive, indicating that I’m probably hiding something. After all, what kind of former cop can’t read a twenty-two-year-old girl who’s infatuated with him? If I claimed that I knew her state of mind, then it could appear that I either knew her very well; or perhaps I had talked to her about the meeting later that evening and thus knew exactly what she was thinking at the time. Clever, clever. It was a no-win question, and the detective wanted to see how I would handle it.
I took a breath and addressed both of them.
“Detectives, all I can tell you is that I made it abundantly clear that there was no relationship between us and never would be. I can’t be certain of what was going through her mind, partly because after she had started asking me about the possibility of a relationship, she noticed Steven in the room. At that point, she looked more surprised, and probably embarrassed, than anything else. Then she said she would talk to me later and simply left the room. I never saw her again.”
My frustration was back now. Not at the detectives, but the fact that I had let my guard down. These guys played me beautifully and I had fallen for it. Hell, the T.O.D. may not have even been real. They may have gotten me focusing on a particular time frame only to see if I would get lazy with the rest of the timeline for my personal alibi. I was tired. I was cold. I was mad at myself. Truth be told, I was probably mad at Lindsay for putting me in this position. And then I was getting mad for letting myself get mad at a poor dead girl who probably had a very bright future ahead of her.
“You said Steven was about twenty-five years old.” Hartz’s words jarred me back from my internal version of corporal mortification.
“I did.”
“Did he know the victim?” Hartz prodded.
“A little, I guess. He helps out with the Victimology class, so he knows her from that.”
“Did he know her outside of class?” Hartz had something on his mind and took control of the questioning.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What are you getting at, Detective?”
“Twenty-five is older than twenty-two.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. They weren’t romantically involved.”
“Thacker is a faculty member since he’s a graduate assistant, right? I would guess that he teaches some low-level classes?”
“Technically . . . I suppose he is. And he does. What difference does that make?”
“The roommate also mentioned that she thought the victim’s boyfriend worked for the university,” Hartz said, with some added emphasis on the word boyfriend.
As angry as I felt, I still hadn’t really raised my voice, but the knob on my volume control was definitely beginning to turn.
“Look. I wasn’t seeing her. Steven wasn’t seeing her. If she was seeing somebody who was a faculty member, then I sure don’t know who it was!”
Shand calmly turned the page of his notepad, raised his eyes and interjected with, “If Mr. Thacker was seeing her, and he thought that you wouldn’t approve of a relationship between them, then it makes perfect sense that he would hide that fact from you, doesn’t it?”
“No. He wasn’t seeing her. I’m certain.”
Hartz shot back, “You can’t know everything about everyone. You were a cop. You know that.”
“You’re off base here.”
Shand added, “Maybe he was afraid you would turn him in if he told you. Maybe Ms. Behram was actually there to talk to you about her relationship with him.”
“No.”
The voice from Hartz’s direction exclaimed, “That’s true! You said she was taken aback when she saw him in the room. Then she left without argument.”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
Volume knob turned a millimeter more.
The two voices battering me were indistinguishable now.
“Dr. Keller, does Steven have a girlfriend?”
“No!”
“Well, there you go. Maybe she was his girlfriend.”
“No!”
“They may have been seeing each other right under your nose. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. People hide all sorts of things, Doc.”
“It’s Cyprus.”
“Maybe she actually used you to make Steven jealous. Maybe he got really jealous.”
“No!”
I was colder. More tired. More frustrated. Getting hungry. My head was starting to hurt and my shoulders ached. Too many thoughts raced through my head. This had to stop.
The rapid fire continued and I heard, “You have to admit, her sleeping with some twenty-five-year-old grad student makes more sense. And she was a hottie! I’m sure Steven would have jumped at that.”
“He didn’t!”
Volume knob a half-inch louder.
“You can’t know that.”
“He was probably seeing her for a while. You couldn’t have known.”
Shaking my head, “He wasn’t!”
An excited voice, “You can’t be sure. How could you know?”
“BECAUSE STEVEN THACKER IS GAY!”
Volume knob broken off—lying on the floor.
The sudden silence after the detective’s machine-gun repartee was jolting. I couldn’t hear a sound around me. Then it slowly came back into focus. Traffic in the distance. The harsh breeze scraping off the corner of the recreation building behind me.
Then the soft mumbling.
The footsteps behind me resuming.
The pairs and trios of students walking into and out of the building.
The pace of the steps picking up. They had important things to do now.
They had to go tell the story about how a professor at this small school where everybody seems to know each other, just “outed” a closet homosexual by screaming it at the top of his lungs in the middle of campus.
If there was a vat of molten steel around to dive into, I would have been putting on my best swim trunks.
Mile 5
A sharp burst of noise breaks the cadenced sounds of shuffling feet and measured breaths. My shoulders and arms involuntarily tense up and the muscles contracting in my neck wage a battle with my reflexive compulsion to look in the direction of the shot. In milliseconds, the sound waves ricochet off the surrounding residences, the statues and monuments in the park, sending countless panicked pigeons skyward. Torsos attempt to twist left while legs do their best to maintain an unswerving path. My throat closes and my legs lose some strength as the audible shockwave penetrates my chest. If I didn’t know any better I would swear that I can feel my pupils expanding into giant pools of tar. Anybody here who is wearing a heart rate monitor will surely notice a spike in an otherwise dependable pattern.
More loud bangs follow with the sound of clashing metal. A pattern of beats emerge and then I scold myself for my nervousness. A high school band in heavy blue uniforms is lined up on the left side of the road. The abrupt outburst of snare drums and symbol crashes serve the dual purpose of scaring the hell out of me and pulling off a razor sharp introduction to “Eye of the Tiger.” My edginess has made me hypersensitive to stimuli that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t alarm me. As my body’s adrenaline production subsides to respectable levels, I reorient myself to my location and its significance.
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br /> I see a crowd gathering about 200 yards past the water and first aid stations on the right. A young girl, about twelve years old, hands me a paper cup of cold water when it’s my turn to pass. The waxed surface of the cup feels slick against my sweaty fingers and my hand still trembles from the stun of noise. This has to be the first time in my life that I wished a band would have been playing a Rick Astley tune. The water station girl was trying to be nice by filling the cup to the rim, but the predictable result is that most of the water spills out as soon as I take it from her hand. I try to slow down to stop the spillage and to focus my eyes on the circle of concerned faces in the approaching distance. Somebody nudges me in the back. A silent request to speed up and drift toward the middle of the road, or get out of the way. I take a couple of sips of water, toss the cup to my right into a cemetery of its relatives, increase my momentum and merge back into the flow of foot traffic.
I see medical personnel up ahead carrying large red nylon bags. The EMTs are trotting over to the anxious group. The uniformed responders struggle to navigate the throng of onlookers, and when I pull even with them, I can easily decipher the frustration on their faces. It’s taking them way too long to reach somebody. They aren’t far off the road, so everyone has become a motorist rubbernecking at the scene of an accident. A few runners bump into each other in front of me and exchange apologies. I pass by just as the EMTs arrive, and the downward-looking crowd parts just enough to allow them access and to afford me a view. The man in his forties is red-faced, breathing heavily and sitting up. His green New Balance tank top heaves rapidly along with his chest, and his eyes are glassy and unfocused.
I can feel the curtain of strain being pulled back. I know it’s just temporary and there is a lot more road ahead of me. The man being treated on the sidewalk wasn’t targeted by another person. He was simply victimized by exhaustion. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s lucky in comparison.
“You okay there, kiddo?” Randy asked, and insulted, when I walked into the locker room.
They all had showered and were in the process of getting dressed in the steamy air. Randy stood shirtless in the corner, finger probing the inside of a belly button that, for a distance runner, was surrounded by an impressive amount of pale blubber. Jacob was pulling on a sock while sitting on the bench that bisected the white tile floor. He wore a look of genuine concern. He was probably wondering if the police visit had something to do with Kaitlyn and thoughts of him losing his own wife had to have flashed in front of him. Aaron stood on a scale and nodded with satisfaction as it rattled out a number.
“I’m fine,” I answered. “I’m afraid a student in one of my classes was killed last night.”
Randy never looked up as he nonchalantly withdrew his index finger, gave the digit a visual inspection and said, “Oh, yeah. Who?”
“Lindsay Behram.”
Randy’s eyes sharply shot my way as the name seemed to register.
“She took several Criminology classes. You probably knew her,” I added sadly.
Turning his attention to finding a shirt in his locker, “The name is familiar, but I can’t put a face with it.”
“I think I remember her. Real pretty girl?” asked Aaron, stepping down and releasing the scale from its duty.
Having no reason to downplay her looks, I answered, “The guys in class were always mesmerized by her. She was memorable.”
“Damn. I think she was in my Marketing 100 class last semester. That’s a real shame.” Aaron paused respectfully, and then reached up to the top shelf of his assigned locker for his fake Rolex.
Jacob, finished with his socks, stood and pulled on a crisp white Brooks Brothers shirt. “How was she killed? Car accident?”
“No. The police said she was murdered. Her body was found somewhere in the Hill district. She’d been strangled.”
Jacob shook his head in disgust. “Been a while since we’ve lost one that way. Murdered, I mean. It’s probably been ten years or so. If memory serves, that was some kind of stabbing over at Station Square. Some boy got jealous over his girlfriend dancing with someone else; and the next thing you know, the jealous boyfriend was on his way to jail and the other kid was off to the morgue. Very sad.”
Randy moved to the large wall mirror at the end of the row, threw on a fifteen-dollar, paper thin cream-collared shirt, and pawed at the buttons while asking, “Was she in any of your Psych classes?”
“No. At least not that I remember. And I don’t forget many of my students,” Jacob responded as he smoothly adjusted the cuff links on his shirt. After a moment of contemplation, he turned to me. “Why are the police talking to you about it?”
“She came by my office yesterday. They were just following her movements throughout the day. Looking for leads. I’m sure they’ll talk to a lot of people.”
I sure hoped that was true. The detectives had ended the interview by getting all of my contact information and asking if I would be available if they needed anything cleared up. Truth be told, I think they were sharing some of my discomfort after I bellowed out a student’s personal secret for all to hear. Their automatic reflex was to distance themselves from the leper—and at that moment I had declared myself the king of the leper colony.
“Are you alibied?” Randy snickered as he struggled to button the top button on his shirt, eventually giving up. “Are we going to be interviewed on the news and saying things like ‘He was such a nice man. We never imagined he could be violent!’—or one of those catch phrases the neighbors of serial killers always say?” The mock interview continued with, “ ‘ We had no idea he was choking out college hussies and—’ ”
“Nice,” Aaron broke in, bringing Randy to a record-scratching halt. “Very classy, Dr. Walker. What if she was your daughter? Try to show an ounce of respect. Don’t mind him, Cyprus.” Aaron’s eyes showed signs of real anger.
I made a note to myself that if Aaron Caferty, the area’s most proficient propagator of slumlords and crooked insurance salesmen, ever became my moral compass, then I should use a shotgun cartridge as a piece of chewing gum.
“Oh, the kid knows I’m just playing around. And I’m sorry the girl is dead,” Randy strung out the word “sorry” with his hands held up in mock surrender.
Randy had been studying Criminology and the criminal justice system for his entire adult life. In fact, teaching and researching the subject was the only job he’d ever had. From the beginning, he never really hid the fact that he looked down on me due to me cutting my teeth in the “real world.” Academia has to be the only line of work where you get looked down upon for having actually performed the tasks that the profession teaches. How much sense does that make?
Not wanting to appear as if I was avoiding Randy’s original question, I finally replied, “Yes, I have an alibi. The detectives said that she was killed around nine thirty. I was at the assembly hall attending a lecture. Besides, I’m sure I’m not a suspect. They were just covering their bases. I would have done the same thing in their position.”
“Pffttt,” Randy half-snarled and half-spat, “the cops will go around chasing shadows and taking coffee breaks until some dirtbag brags to some other dirtbag, and the case gets handed to them on a silver platter. They would have better odds of actually solving the case if they just let things play out. They should just go write some tickets, work on their G.E.D.s, and wait for the killer to screw up.”
Why this man chose this profession is beyond me.
“Ohhh, I don’t know ’bout that, Randy.” I threw out my best West Virginia accent. I had lost it years ago, but I could still summon it on occasion. “I was talk’n to those two boys out ’er and they seemed the right sort to clean up dis mess. Some cops got some smarts these days, ya know. I hear that some of ’em can even talk on that CB radio thang and drive at da same time! Yesiree.”
Aaron laughed as Randy’s face became a cherry lollipop. Jacob stood expressionless, facing his locker. Without moving his head, his eyes moved slightly a
s he looked sideways toward Dr. Dickhead to gauge his reaction.
“I . . . I don’t mean you, Cyprus. Or any of the Criminology students here for that matter. I was just making a generalization,” Randy grumbled as he resumed his battle with the top button on his shirt. Either he’d gained weight over the winter or bought a shirt that was far too small.
I said nothing and stripped off my sweatshirt which was now soaked from both my sweat and the steam lingering in the locker room. At this rate, I was going to catch pneumonia.
Randy fumbled his way back toward his locker and away from the mirror, as Aaron took his place in order to put a tie on. The sides of the mirror were clearly visible on each side of Aaron’s tall, thin body. In his moderately fashionable beige-colored suit and brown Kenneth Cole shoes, he looked every bit the reputable college professor. However, when put under a tad more scrutiny, the overabundance of hair gel and potato chip thin mustache muttered “used car salesman.” You couldn’t help but like Aaron’s personality and you wouldn’t hesitate to take his hand in friendship, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that when you gave him one hand, your other one should be on your wallet.
Randy once again gave up on the button and haphazardly wound a tie decorated with miniscule horses around his neck. He didn’t bother to check his progress in the mirror. He hastily stuffed his dirty clothes into a plastic bag, which he then put into another, thicker plastic bag—which he tied off with the utmost care. Then, satisfied that his sweat-soaked laundry was subdued, he threw the entire crinkly bundle into his gym bag. It was the same routine every time. How a man could be such a slob and yet display such obvious obsessive-compulsive tendencies is beyond me.
Jacob, almost completely dressed and looking very Charlton Heston-ish, started organizing items in his locker. Each of us had one assigned locker plus an additional one we all shared. Technically, we weren’t supposed to get an extra one; but Aaron had thrown out his best sales pitch to someone on the recreation building staff, and secured us an extra locker that we would use for storing our gel packs, Pop-Tarts, extra shoelaces, running belts, hats, and other supplies. The four of us managed to completely pack the two small shelves of the locker in no time.
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