I thanked her, we shook hands, and I was on my way. En route to the Jeep, I passed through the quad outside of the building and noticed the same guy with the easel and paints set up facing away from the apartments. He looked to be working furiously to beat the setting sun and the accompanying colder temperatures. As I passed behind him, my eyes traced a path over his work and I could see what he was painting. Less than a quarter of a mile away, the Cathedral of Learning projected itself into the dimming sky, while a miniature version of the same tower stood twelve inches from the artist’s face. I told myself that I would have to remember to use that building as a landmark in a few weeks.
Mile 16
Victorian houses and one hundred-year-old trees change into brick apartment buildings when we turn onto Highland Avenue. These apartments are much different than those around the colleges. These look to be more upscale. Maybe some students can afford these, but they are more likely filled by recent graduates who hop on a bus to exciting new jobs downtown or over in Squirrel Hill. Some of them probably ride bikes to nearby companies in Shadyside when the weather is nice.
Eventually, I’ll have to get a bike. Cycling is supposed to be easier on your joints. If my knees start failing me after a few thousand miles, I’ll be one of those guys you see in the fancy shirts that zip up in the front. They wear spandex shorts and fly down narrow roads, just daring a truck to pancake them. The thrill of the speed must be irresistible. I can see myself weaving in and out of other cyclists as the road flies by beneath me. Or, I’ll learn to play golf.
It’s probably similar.
I once read that Lance Armstrong had a resting heart rate of something like thirty-five beats per minute whereas a normal person’s is seventy or seventy-five. I measured mine once and I was thrilled when I calculated it to be fifty-eight. A low heart rate means less strain on the body. You take fewer breaths, expend less energy, and you operate more efficiently.
To run efficiently you have to maintain proper form by not leaning over too far, but not leaning too far back. You keep your stride length comfortable, run heel to toe, swing your arms, and let inertia help you along. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. That’s the rule. There are always going to be times when you find yourself being brought to a violent halt. You just have to get started again, even after you bounce off a wall or two.
That night, I slept better than I had since the day I’d found out about the murder. My shoulder seemed to feel better, Kaitlyn was relaxed, and even Sigmund snored a touch louder. The best thing about carrying around a burden is the feeling you have when it gets unloaded.
Yes, a student of mine was dead. Yes, my graduate assistant had been the murdering wacko who killed her. Yes, my running group had been a collection of morally corrupt and mentally unstable hypocrites. Yes, the Dean of Academic Affairs was an embezzler. But hey . . . welcome to Three Rivers University. Let me show you some brochures.
I woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to tackle the day. Of course, I still had nothing to tackle and I think the Home Depot had me listed as a stalker, so I went for a run. It was cool and overcast with temperatures in the high forties. An hour into my run a light drizzle floated in and the tiny dabs of water felt great on my skin. I cranked out fifteen miles and felt good while doing it. There were just four weeks until the race and, other than my shoulder, I was doing fine. I told myself that I would work my way up to running twenty miles, and then taper off the final two weeks so my legs would be ready for action. Confidence: regained.
Kaitlyn had gotten up before dawn and had gone to Philadelphia for a three-day conference and to visit a college friend through the weekend, so Sigmund and I had the place to ourselves for a few days. When I returned from my run, Sigmund greeted me like I had been gone for a week. That’s one of the great things about dogs. Whether it’s five minutes or five weeks, they are always happy to see you when you come home.
After a long stretching session, I got in the shower and planned the rest of my day. I decided that I would have one last lazy day before rededicating myself to work. I was going to meet with Brent the next morning. Being reinstated was a foregone conclusion after he submitted my statement. This day was going to be completely about watching some movies I had on DVD, but never had time to watch, and finishing that book about the Unabomber. No stress.
Determined to take this mini-rebellion all the way, I threw on some sweat pants and a fleece shirt after getting out of the shower. I was going to stay in total bum-gear all day long and nobody could do a thing about it. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee and turned on the TV. Walking to the stack of unwatched DVDs next to the TV, I picked out a feel-good movie about some kid who went from poverty to making millions in pro football. I was about to change the TV from its normal setting to the DVD mode, when the local news interrupted some game show with a breaking story. I heard only the first few bits and pieces as I struggled to unwrap the plastic that was keeping me from opening the case that contained my movie.
Tragedy . . . Oakland . . . students shocked . . . dead . . . KDKA Newsforce on the scene . . . getting reaction of owner . . . nearby business . . . Ernie’s Art Supplies . . .
I dropped the movie and grabbed the remote. I turned up the volume and hoped for a recap. The desk reporter didn’t disappoint me. She pasted on a look as if her own child was in danger and used her best dramatic voice. She described how the details were sketchy, but a young female had been found dead in the early morning hours. The police were not releasing any further information, but students who lived in the building said the occupant of apartment 301 was a sweet girl who never bothered anybody.
A neighbor who knew her had noticed her door standing open around six in the morning and decided to check up on her. She said there was no way that the victim would have left the door open since her roommate had been murdered just a couple of weeks before. The neighbor found the body next to a blood covered fireplace poker.
The neighbor, a girl who looked to be about eighteen years old, said she was in total shock because she had never seen so much blood. She described all sorts of bruises on the face and neck. She hadn’t heard anything during the night, but some guys had a loud party in 307. They always threw parties that were off the hook. She said they were great guys. She mentioned again that she was totally in shock. Of course, that didn’t stop her from excitedly describing the scene while looking into the camera.
The press was salivating over the story’s potential. Two roommates murdered. Was there a connection? Did the police miss something? Was this a terrible coincidence? The Newsforce team would be following the story all day. They promised.
The police weren’t releasing the name of the victim, pending notification of the family. To my amazement, the news crew refused to release the name as well. Probably out of fear of getting shutout by the police. They wouldn’t say the name, but I knew the name.
The police had missed something. They had missed what I had held in my hand yesterday afternoon. They had missed what I had failed to give them. Somebody knew what V had and they decided to kill her for it. I had to assume the flash drive was gone. The bruises on her face told that story. V had some fight in her, but she was basically a kid. If somebody decided to beat the information out of her with a fireplace poker, they got what they wanted.
I turned off the television and looked out a window into the woods. The light drizzle had turned into a steady rain. I gripped the window frame and closed my eyes. My head pounded.
I wasn’t fully responsible for Lindsay’s death. I couldn’t bear that cross. I wasn’t fully responsible for Steven’s death. He came at me. I wouldn’t bear that cross. But I was responsible for this.
I could have gone to the police. I should have gone to the police. I could have told V that I was taking the files to the police—to hell with Lindsay’s reputation. Lindsay’s minister father and saint of a mother would have just had to deal with it. That’s what I should have done.
I
didn’t do any of that. And now a death was squarely on my shoulders. That was unacceptable. Killing V was unacceptable. She was a bystander by circumstance; and somebody had attacked that petite little girl, who barely created a dent in a beanbag chair, and had beaten her to death.
No. Unacceptable.
Chase the ideal? I wanted to chase the ideal? This was not the ideal.
I opened my eyes again. At that moment, watching the raindrops cry down the window, that’s when I decided that detectives Shand and Hartz were not going to hear from me. I was not going to call the police. I was not going to trust the system. I was not going to rely on statutes and procedures. I was not going to let one goddamn lawyer get near any of this. I was not going to chase the ideal. I was going to chase something else. Someone else.
I was going to find the man who killed that tiny girl with the purple hair, who missed her best friend more than anything. I was going to deliver an imperative reckoning. I was going to watch that man die. I was going to become a murderer and it didn’t bother me in the least.
Now that drastic measures were going to be taken, I had to stop functioning on assumptions. Taking a man’s life should never be based on any level of uncertainty. My first move had to be to confirm that the flash drive was taken when V was killed and that meant going into her apartment. Walking into a recent crime scene is a risky proposition, but I had to know if that data was still there. Even if the police found the small presidential figure and recognized it for what it was, which was unlikely, they probably wouldn’t have taken it. They had no reason. Students always have flash drives lying around and rarely do they contain anything more than schoolwork.
Sometimes people think that crime scenes stay guarded twenty-four hours a day. They don’t. Generally, urban police departments don’t have the manpower to post a guy at the door for very long. Besides, once the photos have been taken, the forensic teams have processed the scene, and the body has been removed, the room ceases to be of real evidentiary value. There isn’t any reason to guard it anymore. The cops put a piece of crime scene tape across the door and hope for the best. That’s it.
Since a murder had been committed in a building full of college kids and parents would be frantic, I could easily see the Pittsburgh PD or one of the nearby universities maintaining a heavy presence in the neighborhood. If the city cops decided to handle it, they would make sure to drive by the building as often as possible and maintain high visibility. That’s what I was hoping for. If some university cops caught the assignment, then a couple of other problems presented themselves.
First, the university cops had a smaller area to patrol, and I was afraid they might post an officer in a stationary car outside of the building. That officer would stay there until another call came over the radio. I thought the campus cops might even offer to pay overtime to one of their off-duty officers, who would therefore have no patrol responsibilities, and keep him posted there all night long. The other problem with the university cops would be vigilance. City cops are used to dealing with bloodshed and high-profile homicides while the campus cops aren’t. A city cop might be more complacent about watching a useless crime scene, where a university officer might think that the assignment is his fifteen minutes of fame. I wanted complacence.
Timing was important too. I needed to wait until the crime scene had been cleared and sealed up. That would take several hours, probably into the night. I would have to wait a while. A rookie mistake would be for me to head down there at four o’clock in the morning and try to get into the building. It would be just as bad if I made the attempt at eight o’clock. If I tried to sneak in when the streets were completely empty and everyone was asleep, I would stick out like a sore thumb. If I went too early, like at eight in the evening, the area would be busy and attentive eyes would be roaming the streets. But if I made the attempt around midnight, I might be able to blend in with the last of the day’s foot traffic and still avoid watchful crowds of people.
My appearance was another factor to consider. Even at my age, I could possibly pass for a graduate student, but a trained officer might raise an eyebrow and decide to ask questions. Creating some sort of disguise wasn’t an option either. If I went and bought some coveralls to transform into a maintenance man or janitor, or if I dirtied myself up like a homeless man, I would only be asking for trouble. A student had just been killed, and some of the first people the police focus on would be people who work in the building or members of the local transient population.
I thought about my limited options and decided to go in a totally different direction—hiding in plain sight. It would be risky, but I felt certain I could pull it off. As I continued to hash out the plan, my confidence grew with every passing moment. The best part was, I had everything I needed right there in my own home.
When I left the department in Baltimore, some friends of mine had given me a Baltimore PD badge encased in Lucite. It was supposed to be great for displaying the badge on a desk or shelf and evoking fond memories of locking up bad guys. I found the badge in a box in the garage marked MEMORABILIA and dug out the badge. It didn’t take me long to figure out why Lucite was used instead of glass. Even with the use of a hammer, it took me several minutes of chipping away at the shatterproof plastic compound before I could free the badge.
I headed upstairs to the master bedroom, walked into the connecting bathroom, reached into a cabinet beneath the sink, and started untangling a cord. Sigmund stood at the bathroom door with judgmental curiosity. The buzzing sound made his head tilt and the growing pile of debris on the floor was a major point of fascination with him. I hadn’t used the set of clippers in a long time, but the vibrating teeth seemed to remember the shape of my head. In minutes, I was able to look up and see a man that part of me had missed. Most of me did not.
Next, I stood in my bedroom closet and picked out a pair of slacks and a jacket that seemed appropriate to the mission. The Goldilocks rule. Not too nice, not too rough. Just right. Shoes were important. I found a black pair that had scuff marks and worn soles and threw them next to the bed where I had laid out the rest of the outfit. Then I grabbed a belt that had some broken stitching showing, as if it had previously carried more than just the occasional cell phone.
I undressed and redressed in my new outfit. The last thing missing was the one thing I absolutely didn’t want to carry. I went to my nightstand and grabbed the item from the back of the drawer. It was in its holster and I knew it was loaded and ready to go, but I checked it anyway. Taking it out of the holster, I extracted the magazine and racked the slide back, ejecting a round from the chamber. The .357 round traveled end over end and made a dull thud on the carpet. I thought of Steven’s semi-conscious body rotating toward its fate.
I picked up the cold, shiny bullet from the floor and looked at the bronze-colored end. The hollow-point would expand rapidly upon entering a body and commence to do the maximum amount of damage possible. If the shot landed center mass, pieces of hot shrapnel would scatter throughout a person’s chest cavity and cause considerable internal bleeding. If one shot was placed right, death was possible. If more shots followed, death was probable.
I stared at this tiny instrument of destruction and marveled at the amount of energy we put into developing more effective ways of killing people. I remembered back to a class I took at the University of Maryland. A student was arguing with a professor about how modern times were no worse than the mafia-infested decades of the 1920s and 1930s. The student proudly sat up and stated that the similar homicide rates proved his point. The professor of the course did well to not show any satisfaction in disappointing the undergrad when he pointed out that if you got shot in the arm in 1930, you were much more likely to die than in modern times. Medical advances had tried to keep up with the development of killing devices. Tried.
I put the magazine back into the Sig Sauer P229 handgun and racked a round into the chamber. I de-cocked the weapon, took the magazine back out, and pushed the previously ejecte
d round into the top of the magazine. Then I reinserted the magazine with a telling click. Thirteen rounds. A jury of twelve in the magazine, one alternate in the chamber. The weapon didn’t have a safety. You just point and shoot. The first trigger pull would take about twelve pounds of pressure. Every pull after that would take only four. When all the bullets were expended, the slide would lock back and the open mouth of the gun would smoke and beg to be reloaded. Hungry for more brass.
Carrying the weapon would be necessary. Using the weapon would be tantamount to suicide. With forensic technology, a bullet from my gun could be matched in no time. Gun powder residue, gun oil, fingerprints, epithelial DNA—they all could send me to prison with minimal effort. Cops and former cops don’t do well in prison. So I couldn’t use the gun, but I needed it for show. I thought about carrying it unloaded, but the voice of my old training officer kept ringing in my head. Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six. I put the gun in the holster and clipped it on my right hip. I took my recently freed badge and clipped it on the left side, slightly toward the front. The small metal clip on the back of the badge wasn’t really meant to hold it on a belt, but it would have to do.
The badge could be a problem. It was different from a Pittsburgh detective’s badge. My badge was silver, with some traces of color in the middle. And while Pittsburgh detectives’ badges were silver, they could be distinguished by a small bronze plate reading DETECTIVE across the front. My old badge would have to do. I would just have to hope that in the dark, behind a flapping sport coat, nobody would notice.
I walked over to a long mirror hanging on the bedroom wall and looked myself over. Dr. Keller wasn’t there. Cyprus wasn’t there. A detective was there. The outfit was right. The equipment was close enough. The hair was perfect. My demeanor would be the determining factor. I had to believe. I had to know who I was. I knew if I looked like I belonged—if I sold it right—then I could pull this off. I glanced at the clock and realized it was time for the hardest part. The ticking announced each second as if the previous was a forgotten nuisance. I waited for night to fall.
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