Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

‘Is that what got him killed?’ she asked, her voice hardening a little.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ned said miserably. ‘He said the person wasn’t dangerous, that he was all talk . . .’

  ‘But now Ricky is dead.’

  Ned sighed. ‘Yes.’

  She closed her eyes again and when she spoke they remained closed. ‘That was his biggest fault . . . doing things his own way. No matter what, doing things his own way.’ She paused, still with her eyes closed. ‘He misjudged this person.’ Her eyes opened suddenly, piercing him. ‘You misjudged this person.’

  ‘I knew nothing about the man. Not even if he was in the hospital where Ricky worked or at the university – nothing,’ Ned said, knowing he sounded defensive. ‘But if he is responsible for Ricky’s death, we will find him. He will be punished.’

  She shrugged again. ‘We are all being punished.’

  Ned frowned. ‘By his death, you mean.’

  ‘No. For our neglect.’

  ‘But I—’

  She raised a graceful hand. ‘No, you misunderstand. When my husband died I turned to Ricky. He was a strong boy and he felt the weight of his responsibility. I could have stopped work then. I should have. The three of them needed a stable home, a responsible parent always available as they grew up. But I kept working to ease the loneliness, let Ricky take the weight of making sure the younger two were looked after in those ways. Yes, I made sure they were fed and clothed . . . but I wasn’t there for them—’ She almost smiled. ‘Isn’t that the phrase, “there for them”? Most importantly, I wasn’t there for Ricky. I assumed he was fine, could handle it all. But he was just a boy. Still just a boy. With a boy’s ego, a boy’s conviction that he was invincible, a boy’s love of adventure.’

  ‘He reached out to me,’ Ned whispered. ‘I wasn’t there for him either.’

  ‘No,’ she said and, while it was obvious she agreed with him, her voice held no accusation. ‘They are so hard to judge, these ones of eighteen, nineteen, twenty. They see so much, know so much, and yet underneath they are . . . still so vulnerable. We forget that. We forget they are still children because they walk like men and talk like men, but they are boys. Just boys.’

  ‘I could have done more.’

  ‘Yes and so could I. But we didn’t – and now the opportunity is gone.’ She drank more of her coffee and whatever else was in that mug. ‘But I have two more and you have Denise, and we can do more for them. I have decided, Ned, to take early retirement. I will be here for them. You will be there for Denise. That much we can do.’

  ‘You’re a very forgiving woman, Maria,’ Ned said humbly.

  ‘Not to myself,’ she said. ‘Not to myself.’

  They sat there in silence for a moment, then Maria stood up. ‘When you phoned you said you wanted to see Ricky’s room.’

  Startled out of his reverie, Ned nodded and stood up. ‘If I may, please. There could be something there . . . I should have come sooner, but there is another case . . .’

  ‘The lady professor?’ She gestured towards the newspapers. ‘I read about it. I think Ricky knew her.’

  Ned’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

  ‘I think so. Her name was familiar somehow.’ She turned, putting her empty mug on a nearby small table, and went out into the hall. ‘His room is down this way.’

  Ricky Sanchez had not been an ordinary boy. Ned had known that, but it was verified when he saw his room. There were no posters of pop groups or sports heroes. There were books – literally hundreds of books on tall shelves that reached the ceiling. There was a narrow bed, tightly made. There was a desk with a computer and neatly stacked notebooks. There was a comfortable chair with a reading lamp beside it, a footstool and, now for ever lonely, a cat curled up in the comfortable chair.

  ‘You’ve cleaned the room,’ Pinsky said, disappointed.

  ‘Not at all,’ Maria said. ‘I have not been in here at all.’ She turned suddenly. ‘I cannot be in there now,’ came her voice as she retreated quickly down the hall.

  Ned went over and stroked the cat. Tiger-striped and plump, it looked up expectantly, then sank back down. Wrong loving hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ned whispered.

  He went to the desk, pulled out the chair and began to go through the notebooks, the drawers and, eventually, the computer. ‘Tell me, Ricky,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me who it was.’

  ‘Well, that’s the last of them,’ Kate said, putting down the phone and switching off the recording equipment. She stretched and rubbed her temples. ‘Went more quickly than I thought, thank God.’

  ‘Did you recognize any of the voices?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Not really. A couple were . . . close, but didn’t sound exactly right. So either we’re on the wrong track, or the guy has been disguising his voice when he talks to me.’

  Liz looked at the recording equipment, the malevolent little red and green eyes, the dials, the switches. ‘Well, he won’t be able to disguise it from these little monsters – assuming you caught up with the right one. What if there are no matches?’

  ‘I’ll be really disappointed,’ Kate said. ‘Because then we only have the rest of the world to consider.’

  ‘Well, you can start with the rest of the faculty, other departments and so on,’ Liz pointed out. ‘You don’t have to take on the whole world just yet.’ She got up and went to the window to look out on the street. The long line of trees shed shadows and leaves on the cars below, which were parked like colourful beetles along the kerbs. She was very worried about Kate.

  As if reading her friend’s thoughts, Kate spoke reflectively. ‘You know, in a way I wish I’d never started all this. I’ve been neglecting my class work. The kids are getting away with murder – I haven’t assigned a paper in almost two weeks. And then there’s Jack.’

  Liz turned to look at her. ‘What about Jack? Have you finally told him?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding him, which hasn’t been difficult as he’s caught up in this case of his. And when we do see one another I seem to have developed a terrific ability to turn the simplest statement into an argument. I know I’m behaving irrationally, but I can’t seem to help myself. I know he’s confused, poor guy.’ She straightened up. ‘But he’s on edge, too. Something more is bothering him than the death of that professor.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘We’re quite a pair at the moment.’

  ‘This whole thing is not very healthy, Kate. You have a gleam in your eye I haven’t seen there before.’

  ‘I want this man on the phone dealt with,’ Kate said with a vicious edge to her voice. ‘He’s very sick, he should be put away.’

  ‘But you do realize that by not dealing with it directly you may be contributing to his sickness, don’t you?’ Liz asked.

  ‘The damage is done. Having got myself into this mess, it is up to me to get myself out of it,’ Kate insisted.

  ‘Just so long as you remember that cornered animals fight harder and have nothing to lose,’ Liz said worriedly.

  ‘He’s out there, Liz. He’s driving me nuts. He’s ruining my relationship with Jack.’

  ‘I think you’re doing a lot of that all by yourself,’ Liz said.

  Kate ignored that. ‘He needs to be reached and stopped before phoning me isn’t enough. He’s enjoying what he’s doing to me. In fact, I think that’s become his whole raison d’être. But eventually he’ll tire of my gasps, and anger and pleading. Eventually he’ll act. And then—’

  ‘I think you need a drink and a plate of something fattening,’ Liz said in a practical voice, as she saw Kate drifting off into a worried reverie, her hands working convulsively. ‘Too much theory, not enough action. Come on . . . Rico’s. We definitely need Rico’s and his best calories.’

  ‘OK.’ Kate seemed to awake to the present and looked around at the stacks of tape cassettes, each label
led with the name of the person recorded. ‘But we have to get all this to David Waxman so he can start analysing it.’

  ‘Later on will be fine. When you’ve had a little ravioli.’

  Kate laughed. ‘You sound like Tos.’

  Liz seemed pleased. ‘Do I? Good. Tos is very sane.’

  ‘And I am not?’

  ‘And you are not,’ Liz agreed. ‘And what’s more, I’m beginning to worry about myself. I think we need to go into another line of business. I hear there’s good money in digging swimming pools.’

  Lois McKittrick was, as Jerry Hauck had said, a mouse: small, bird-boned and big-eyed, her hair hanging round her face in straight strands under an equally straight fringe. She seemed, behind her large glasses, to be peering out at the world very cautiously. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said in a surprisingly deep voice for someone her size. But there was a wheeze there, too. Her breathing was a little laboured. She seemed very nervous. They had caught her between classes in New State Hall. ‘I saw her on Sunday, she seemed just the same as always.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Stryker asked. ‘The same as always.’

  ‘Well, nice. She was wonderful to us; she listened to all of us, she was interested in us, she cared about us. So if we got upset – and Chan got upset – she would be upset, too. On Sunday, though, I think she was more worried about her own thesis than Chan’s, but anyway, she gave Chan a hug. We were supposed to discuss my paper, then, but she said there wasn’t time and she was tired. So I didn’t get a hug. But I wasn’t upset,’ she said rather defensively.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Tos seemed interested.

  ‘No. I don’t let myself get upset because it sets off my asthma and I can’t breathe. I have to be very careful. That Jerry Hauck insists on smoking when he knows how it affects me and she told him to stop it on Sunday.’ The big eyes blinked behind straight, stiff lashes. The other students flowed around them in the wide hallway, and lockers banged open and shut. She flinched at a particularly loud one near them. It seemed to worry her. Everything seemed to worry her.

  ‘Did she show favouritism towards anyone?’

  ‘She was very nice to Chan, but then Chan was making a fuss.’

  ‘Do you mind telling us where you were on Sunday night?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Sunday night,’ Stryker repeated patiently. ‘The whole evening and night.’ Suddenly the hall was dead quiet, as the doors to the various rooms closed and classes within began. They were left alone in the middle of the hall, with only a few students in the distance, walking away. The abrupt silence was eerie and for a moment their voices were over-loud.

  ‘Oh. Of course. I went to a movie. It started about eight, I think. I went with a friend, Nan Prescott. Then I went back to her place for a coffee and I think I got home about eleven or maybe a bit later. Then I went to bed.’

  ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘No, I share a house with three other girls, but they were all away for the weekend and I don’t know if they were in when I got home or not. I just went straight to bed. We each have our own rooms, share the kitchen and so on. The usual thing.’ She looked up the hall, down at her feet, anywhere but at them.

  ‘Can you give us Miss Prescott’s number or address? Will she verify this?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course she will. Why wouldn’t she?’ she asked, her voice sliding towards shrill. The bony little hands were white-knuckled, as she clutched her books to her chest. She looked around as if seeking support.

  ‘And can you think of anything else that might help us to find the person who killed Professor Mayhew?’

  ‘But . . . didn’t her husband kill her?’

  ‘We don’t know who killed her.’

  ‘Oh, I thought . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought Jerry said it was her husband who killed her.’

  ‘You’ve talked to Mr Hauck?’

  ‘Well, sure. When we heard we all got together in the library on Monday afternoon.’

  Stryker and Tos exchanged a glance. Hauck hadn’t mentioned this little gathering.

  ‘Why?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘Why?’ She seemed surprised he should ask. ‘Well, to decide what we should do. I mean, we wanted to go to her funeral, whenever it was, and to send flowers from all of us. And we were worried about getting a new faculty sponsor . . . but mostly we just wanted to be together. You know. Like a family should be.’

  ‘You think of yourselves as a family?’

  She seemed embarrassed, now, and gave a bizarre little giggle, half laugh, half sob. ‘Well, we are, in a way. Elise’s family. Well, weren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stryker said. ‘I was never a grad student, I don’t know how these things work. I thought she tutored you individually.’

  ‘Yes, but also together in seminars. We were . . . special to her. Not like her regular students. She worked closely with us. Very closely.’ She drew a long, wavering breath. ‘And now she’s gone and we don’t have anybody.’ The eyes behind the glasses were suddenly larger, magnified by tears that didn’t fall.

  ‘But you’ll be assigned another faculty tutor, surely?’

  ‘Oh yes. But it won’t be the same. Not the same at all.’ She glanced at her watch, blinking fast. ‘I’m late for my next class. Is that all?’

  ‘Yes, for the moment. Thank you.’ Stryker and Tos watched her walk away, a small figure in the wide hall, a little stiff-legged.

  ‘What do you make of her?’ Stryker asked.

  Tos shrugged. ‘I see what Jerry Hauck meant. Intense and a little silly with it. Hard to imagine her studying something as heavy as anthropology, though. She seems more the type for poetry or art.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stryker agreed. ‘Still, from what I understand, it isn’t all digging up bones in the desert. Mayhew herself wasn’t the type for fieldwork, Winchester said. Maybe little Lois modelled herself on her mentor – all paper research.’ In the distance the outer door banged shut and in a moment they could see Lois McKittrick running across the Mall towards the library.

  ‘They have classes in the library?’ Tos asked, surprised.

  ‘Oh yeah, sometimes,’ Stryker said. ‘Space is valuable in a university. They have seminar rooms over there.’

  Tos sighed. ‘This is like visiting a foreign country any time we have to come here. These people . . . they’re all strangers. Not like the perps we usually deal with.’

  ‘But you know Liz,’ Stryker said, as they began to walk towards the front of the building, their footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. ‘You know Kate. She’s not a stranger.’

  ‘Oh, well, Kate is different,’ Tos said expansively.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself.’ Stryker grinned. ‘To us they’re regular people, but down here, they’re laws unto themselves.’

  FOURTEEN

  Dr Dan Waxman was not enjoying the life of a private detective. For one thing, he had little time to spare from the ER, so it was a hit-and-miss operation. He knew there could be many other reasons why Ricky had been killed – something to do with the university, a love rival, even a straightforward mugging, which was apparently the official version. Pinsky would have to deal with anything else. He had been impressed with Pinsky and had felt great sympathy for his obvious guilt. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for Pinsky he would not have thought further about Ricky’s death, other than to mourn his loss. But the hospital was his beat and he was doing his best, because he was beginning to feel guilty too. Not specifically about Ricky, but about all the people who died and were ignored because there was no time, no money, no inclination to question their deaths other than attributing them to the obvious.

  He felt guilty about snooping on his colleagues. But the lure of adventure was strong and, as he was secretly addicted to detec
tive fiction, he pressed on with the search. Mostly he was appalled at the clear evidence of sloppy practice and careless management he encountered. He knew an overstretched and underfunded city hospital was not in a position to maintain standards of perfection, but some of the things he saw were upsetting. Particularly the loneliness of the isolated patient. In the ER he patched them up and sent them on to the various departments above, or patched them up and released them. There were so many that it was next to impossible to follow up most of the cases. But he wished there were time, because if he did his best, he expected his colleagues to do the same. Some did not. There was also a shortage of doctors, nurses and ancillary staff.

  What he had not found was outright wrongdoing. Most of what he saw was the result of poor funding, overwork and bad housekeeping. The only place he worried about – and he could not say why – was pathology. There were a number of research fellows in there doing things they played close to their chests. He found he was unable to summon up the ingenuous appearance of innocent enquiry to find out what they were researching. They viewed any questions with suspicion, fearing someone else might steal their results and publish first. It was the only really closed door he’d found and for that reason it piqued his interest. Other surgeons and physicians in other departments had their pet research projects, but they were quite open about them – soliciting information of all kinds to help them discover everything from a cure for the common cold to a new kind of suture technique.

  When he met his brother for lunch, he mentioned what he was doing – or trying to do – over a meal in their favourite small family-run Mexican restaurant. ‘So now, in addition to diagnosing broken legs and measles, I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘You and me both,’ David said.

  ‘What – don’t tell me somebody stole your metronome?’

  ‘No, no . . . a woman at the university is being harassed by phone. Blackmailed, really. She’s gathering samples and I’m going to be comparing voices electronically. We figure to nail the guy.’

  ‘You can do that?’ Dan asked, intrigued.