Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  Up came a chart with words and figures concerning some kind of scientific data. None of them had the least idea what it really was, except confusing. Obviously they would have to call in the experts – there was a department downtown that dealt solely with computer concerns. It had become necessary because office break-ins, computer fraud and other cyberspace crimes had increased so dramatically. The rest of the force viewed them with some dismay and not a little wariness, but the officer-technicians had already proved their worth many times over.

  Stryker looked at the books above the computer and on the other shelves. Mostly scientific, predominantly to do with archaeology, anatomy, history and biology, with a small section of detective paperbacks at one end of a bottom shelf. ‘First guess – the husband was working here,’ he said. ‘Maybe she started nagging him, interrupting his work. An argument blew up, he decided to move out, she followed him into the bedroom, maybe threatened him with the gun not to leave, he lost his temper, grabbed the gun and turned it on her.’

  ‘Or maybe he just went in there, got the gun and shot her cold when she followed him in,’ Tos suggested.

  They moved into the kitchen. Nothing there was out of place. It was an almost antiseptic room, all white and gleaming. The refrigerator held ample supplies of food. ‘They ate well,’ Stryker commented, fumbling his way through packets of meat, fresh vegetables, full-fat milk, butter. ‘Neither one on a diet from the looks of things.’ He straightened up. ‘Plenty of cookbooks, too. Very domestic.’ The dishwasher was loaded and had run – obviously from a meal the evening before. Two plates, cutlery, a couple of saucepans and a grill pan. Plus lots and lots of coffee mugs.

  ‘Either she had a coffee morning with her friends or she drinks coffee all day long and likes a fresh mug each time,’ Pinsky said. ‘Pat does that – our dishwasher looks just like this at the end of the day.’

  They looked around the rest of the house: one other bedroom, obviously a guest room, rather sterile and sparely decorated. ‘So they slept together, anyway,’ Neilson said.

  ‘Yeah, but they had separate bathrooms,’ Pinsky called out. ‘This one is all his stuff – she must use the one off the master bedroom.’

  ‘Interesting. She didn’t look like she used it much,’ Tos said. ‘Did you see the state of her feet?’

  ‘Maybe she likes to walk in the yard,’ Pinsky responded, coming back into the hall.

  There was a big family room, with further well-filled bookshelves – novels, more detective fiction and quite a few general science titles. There was also a stereo unit and a shelf of CDs – a mixture of jazz and classical. The furniture was ultra-simple – a couple of huge recliners with small tables beside them and one of those cinema-screen television sets.

  ‘Everything for the leisure life,’ Neilson observed. He liked the room. He would have enjoyed having one just like it. Unfortunately, his apartment was too small for such spacious luxury and self-indulgence.

  ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Pinsky finally grumbled. ‘Let’s talk to the neighbours for crying out loud.’

  They stopped at the bedroom door on their way through. ‘Find a weapon?’ Stryker asked the SOC team.

  ‘Yeah, under the bed,’ one said, holding up a plastic bag. ‘Saturday night special, fired once.’

  ‘Fingermarks?’

  ‘No – wiped clean.’

  They looked at one another. ‘Interesting,’ Stryker said.

  ‘TV has a lot to answer for,’ Neilson said.

  ‘Yeah, and Ed McBain, too,’ Stryker replied. ‘Come on.’

  Mr and Mrs Koslewski, the couple who had called the police, were both fascinated and horrified to learn that their neighbour had been murdered. ‘My, my,’ said the woman, a large, comfortable personage in a flowered muu-muu. ‘Poor Professor Mayhew.’

  ‘What’s he a professor of?’ Neilson asked, with a glance at Pinsky. This would settle the question of the data on the computer screen.

  ‘Oh, he’s not the professor, she is,’ Mr Koslewski said. He was a round man with a bald head and the combination reminded Pinsky of a billiard ball balanced on a beach ball. Koslewski wore a large moustache as if to make up for the emptiness of his pate. What little hair he had left was dark, but his moustache was rusty red. ‘He’s just some sort of travelling salesman. She teaches at the university – but I don’t know what she teaches. Some kind of “ology” – or it could be chemistry or something like that. Some kind of science thing. But lately this summer she’s been working real hard on something.’

  ‘A book,’ the wife put in. ‘And she’s an anthropologist.’

  ‘My goodness,’ the husband said sarcastically. ‘How do you spell that?’

  ‘With difficulty,’ she responded. They didn’t look at one another, their sparring obviously automatic and of long standing. The living room was filled with large furniture, with every piece upholstered in a different pattern. The carpet and the curtains were also differently patterned, and combined with the design on Mrs Koslewski’s muu-muu the effect was both kaleidoscopic and headache inducing. Tos wanted very much to close his eyes, but managed not to. It was the red moustache that kept him alert – it wobbled and fluttered when Mr Koslewski spoke, and Tos had a fleeting thought that it might be a false one. But why, he wondered to himself, why?

  ‘Would you say they got on together?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mr Koslewski. The moustache blew out like a small flag.

  ‘No,’ said his wife. ‘Not at the moment. He was away a lot of the time and she was all wrapped up in her work. She had someone in every day to clean and make the meals while she was working on this book, hardly stopped for anything lately. We used to have chats but during the last few months she’s kept her head down on this theory of hers. She told me what it was, but I didn’t understand a word of it.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Mr Koslewski said, rolling his eyes. ‘I was afraid you were going to tell us.’

  ‘So the fact that he’s gone could mean he’s just on one of his selling trips?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘Maybe. Why – you think he killed her?’ Mr Koslewski sounded eager. ‘He sure doesn’t look the type.’

  ‘Why not?’ Neilson wanted to know.

  ‘No bigger than a fly,’ Mr Koslewski said.

  ‘He’s a shortish, slender kind of man,’ Mrs Koslewski put in. ‘But very good-looking. Very,’ she repeated for emphasis.

  Mr Koslewski turned to view her with surprise. ‘I didn’t know you went for little men,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t,’ she told him, ‘normally. But he’s cute as a bug’s ear.’

  Mr Koslewski scowled. ‘You ever seen a bug’s ear? Ugliest thing you can imagine.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Mrs Koslewski said complacently. ‘She wasn’t a real big woman, either, but she was taller than him. When they first moved here, about two years ago, they were real cute together. But lately . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Stryker prompted.

  Mrs Koslewski spread her hands apologetically. She had short fat fingers, festooned with large rings. ‘She’s kind of let herself go, what with all the studying and all. I told her she should do something about her hair, but she just looked at me like she didn’t see me. Well, maybe she didn’t, she was real near-sighted. Wore big glasses for a while, then got them contacts finally. Changed her whole appearance, made her look almost nice. She wasn’t real pretty, but without the glasses and if she’d done something with herself instead of just . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘So we have a man who is away a lot of the time and a woman, an educated woman, who is wrapped up in her work,’ Tos summed up.

  ‘That’s them all right,’ Mr Koslewski confirmed. ‘You got it.’

  ‘And no kids?’

  ‘She couldn’t have them,’ Mrs Koslewski said sadly. ‘Real shame. I think it was on
e of the reasons she worked so hard at her stuff, her science stuff. And I think she worked with students a lot. Filled up the gap.’

  ‘So, would you say they were happily married?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘No,’ Mr Koslewski said this time.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Koslewski countered. ‘Just . . . not lately is all. It was temporary. As soon as she finished that work she was doing, I think everything would have been fine again. She was just – real tired.’

  ‘Too late now,’ Mr Koslewski said with a kind of triumph. ‘All done now.’

  Mrs Koslewski looked as if she were going to cry. ‘I can’t believe he would shoot her,’ she said plaintively. ‘We thought it was an intruder, some druggie or something. So many guns everywhere – you don’t know who to trust.’

  ‘You think you know everything but you don’t know everything,’ Mr Koslewski told his wife with a degree of satisfaction, his moustache flapping for emphasis. ‘No matter how hard you try, Eva, some people in this neighbourhood still got secrets from you.’

  ‘Including you?’ she snapped.

  He literally backed off. ‘Now, I didn’t say that.’

  FOUR

  Kate Trevorne and Liz Olson had been friends from adolescence. Although Liz had gone straight through to her professorship, BA, MA, Ph.D., tenure, Kate had taken a side turning into advertising, making a very good living as a copywriter but not finding satisfaction in her work. Her old professor, Dan Stark, now head of the English department at Grantham State University, had persuaded her to come back and pick up the threads, which she had done and found, to her delight, that the scholarly life suited her beautifully. She was only an associate professor and did not have tenure yet, but was hopeful it would come along in due course, fingers crossed. Perhaps not a very intellectual attitude, but one she was stuck with. She needed to publish more.

  She and Liz had shared a duplex house until Stryker had entered Kate’s life, whereupon she had decamped to his house, leaving Liz on her own. Liz understood and cheerfully tolerated the various graduate students to whom Kate rented out her old upstairs apartment from time to time. Liz’s life was steady, but Kate’s had recently suffered a further upheaval. The English department had just moved into a brand-new building near the old Science Hall, and the shifting of books, files and attitudes had been exhausting. As had been the case throughout their friendship, Kate depended on Liz to provide a well-grounded centre.

  The two friends regularly met for lunch to maintain their friendship, keep up on campus gossip and exchange pleasantries or gripes about their respective men.

  To give themselves some perspective, they usually met at nearby restaurants rather than face university cuisine. Today it was Joe’s Diner and they were indulging in a little cholesterol binge. It was a chilly day, they reassured one another, and one needed fuel to stay warm.

  Kate eyed her Eggs Benedict with anticipation . . . just looking at all those calories was a pleasure in itself.

  Liz, who had been a little more abstemious, eyed her with amusement. ‘Are you going to eat that or have it bronzed?’ she asked her friend.

  Kate sighed and picked up her fork. ‘Every bite I take leaves less to enjoy,’ she said, digging in. ‘It’s like reading a really good book – you hate to come to the end.’

  ‘There’s always ice cream afterwards.’

  ‘True.’ They ate companionably for a while, ignoring the hustle around them. Joe’s was a very popular place and even here they couldn’t totally escape the students of GSU – a group of them were crowded into a rear booth, hilariously enjoying their break from routine too.

  ‘Anybody we know?’ Liz asked, when a particularly loud burst of laughter emanated from behind her.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said, peering around her friend’s shoulder. ‘They look like engineers.’

  ‘Ah.’ Liz nodded. ‘That explains everything.’

  After another pause, Kate looked at her friend. ‘Have you been getting any strange phone calls lately?’

  Liz seemed startled. ‘I’m sorry to say, no. My phone calls are universally dull. Why, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’ Liz’s blue eyes widened. ‘At work or at home?’

  ‘At work.’ Kate pushed a bit of English muffin around her plate.

  ‘Well, let’s hear it,’ Liz said impatiently.

  ‘I think I have a problem.’ Kate told Liz what the caller had said and threatened. They both loved a mystery, but this was too unpleasant, Liz decided. Mysteries were best enjoyed in books.

  ‘And you think it’s someone in the university?’

  ‘He told me to stop poaching students.’

  ‘Did he give you names?’

  ‘Just Michael’s. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I don’t “poach” students. They switch majors all the time.’ Kate blinked. ‘I hung up; he called back. I hung up again and he called back again. I’ve shouted at him, begged him to stop, become outraged . . .’

  ‘That’s just what they want.’

  ‘I know, I know . . . so this morning on the way to work I bought myself a great big whistle. I plan to eventually deafen the little bastard.’

  ‘Now, see, you’re defining him already. How do you know he’s little?’

  ‘I don’t. I just like to think of him as a little bug.’

  ‘Be serious. This isn’t just a dirty phone call. This is something a lot more. I don’t think needing a new eardrum is going to stop him, frankly.’ Liz finished her omelette and pushed the plate away, retrieving a few chips to nibble on. ‘Listen, it could be a student. Could be Michael himself, after more money.’

  ‘No, he sounds older.’

  ‘Old older, or just older? Could it be some pathetic little old man, for instance?’

  ‘No, not that old, just . . . mature.’ Kate finished her meal and put down her knife and fork. ‘And he called me Katie,’ she said reluctantly.

  Liz frowned. ‘Nobody calls you Katie.’

  ‘My dad does.’

  ‘Oh – that’s nasty.’ Liz frowned.

  ‘Yes – especially since most of my contact with my parents is by phone these days, what with them living out in Arizona or gadding about the world the way they do. We only see them a couple of times a year, if that. This guy’s voice isn’t the same as my father’s, but even so, I don’t like it.’ Suddenly Kate shivered.

  ‘I don’t see why you should,’ Liz commiserated. ‘Has he e-mailed you at all?’

  ‘No.’ Kate looked surprised for a moment. ‘I guess it’s the voice thing he’s after. That gasp of shock . . . isn’t that what they like?’

  ‘I think so. At least, ordinary dirty phone callers do. This is a little different, don’t you think?’ Liz reached for the menu and tugged it out of its holder, opening it to the desserts. She regarded her friend over the top of the menu and pitched her voice gently. ‘Has he got a case?’

  ‘No!’ Kate said, more loudly than she had intended.

  ‘Then tell Jack about it,’ Liz said firmly. There was a silence. ‘Kate?’

  Kate flushed. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Then there is something to it,’ Liz said without judgement. ‘Come on. Tell.’

  ‘It’s just. . .’ Kate picked up her fork and laid it alongside her knife on the empty plate, very, very carefully aligning them just so. ‘I might have unconsciously encouraged Michael,’ she went on slowly. ‘He might have assumed that as I made an exception and took him in . . . he might have thought . . .’

  ‘Did you think of it?’ Liz asked.

  Kate ran her fingers through her hair, making the curls stand up in disarray. ‘No. At least, I don’t think so.’ She leaned forward. ‘But I might have, subconsciously. He is a very handsome boy. Tall, beautifully put together, dark hair, blue eyes . . . navy-blue eyes . . .’
<
br />   ‘Well, navy-blue . . . makes all the difference.’ Liz smiled.

  ‘And Jack and I . . . I’ve been very edgy lately, for some reason. Restless. Could I have flirted with Michael without realizing it?’ Kate asked plaintively. ‘He was a wow with the girls, any number of them would have given him houseroom. But he came to me . . .’

  ‘Ah,’ Liz said. ‘Flattery got him somewhere, then.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I guess so. It was a pretty stupid thing to do, but I was afraid he would drop out . . .’

  ‘And he did.’

  ‘Yes. But was that because of me or . . . ?’

  ‘What’s the difference? The point is, at some time this creep who is calling you got it out of him. Or got something out of him that sounds bad enough to threaten you with. You say the boy was sorry, or said he was, when he left.’

  ‘Yes, he was sweet about it. Very contrite.’

  Liz cleared her throat. ‘How much money did you give him?’

  ‘Well, he would have needed a deposit . . .’

  ‘How much, Kate?’

  ‘Five hundred dollars.’

  ‘My God . . . you keep that much cash around the house?’

  ‘No . . . I . . . I wrote him a cheque.’

  Liz sank back into the leather seat. ‘You absolute fool.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ Kate whispered. ‘But how could I know he would tell lies about me?’

  ‘Oh, Kate . . . you used to be in advertising. You ought to know all about lies, damn lies and spin. My guess is he was trying to get money out of this guy who called you and told a sob story to strengthen his position. The real point here is not what is truth and what are lies, but whom he talked to and who called you. And what is more, why? If you heard a story like this about another faculty member, would you use it to threaten them?’

  ‘No, of course not. There’s always gossip . . .’

  ‘Sure. Always. And for the most part the Dean listens but does not hear – or he couldn’t run the place. But an official accusation is quite another thing. You’ve got to find out who this bastard is. If you won’t tell Jack, then tell the phone company. Jack doesn’t have to know about it . . .’