Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘But a man can dream?’

  ‘Ah, so,’ agreed Neilson. ‘Ah, so.’

  Morrie Garrison was the last of Professor Mayhew’s graduate students to be interviewed and he was a complete contrast to the other three: both huge and muscular, his hair was short, he didn’t wear glasses and when they found him he was training with the wrestling squad in the university gymnasium. The GSU gym was ancient and shabby, and the boys twisting and tumbling on the various mats were young and sweaty. The sound of thudding and grunting filled the air, along with the odd crashes and cracks that resound within any large enclosed space. Thin light came through the high, dirty windows and dust motes danced among the beams. Neilson and Muller settled on the bottom rank of the bleachers and waited.

  Sweaty and a little dazed with being repeatedly slammed on the mat, Garrison finally sat down beside them and wiped his face with the towel round his neck. ‘What can I do for you guys?’ he wanted to know. His face was red with his recent exertions and his voice was gravelly. He resembled a wet bear, but his smile was gentle.

  They showed him their warrant cards and he ducked his head a little mockingly. ‘I didn’t do it – whatever it is,’ he said.

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of Professor Mayhew,’ Neilson said.

  His face changed immediately. ‘Oh, sorry – I didn’t think. I was only joking. Bad habit of mine.’

  ‘We understand you were at her home last Sunday with her other graduate students,’ Neilson continued.

  ‘Yeah, I was there.’ He wiped his face again with the towel. ‘They were all attacking poor Chan. It was ugly.’

  ‘Ugly?’

  Garrison shrugged. ‘It seemed all right to me, what she was saying. Kind of interesting, but not my field. I’m the only one of Professor Mayhew’s graduate students who’s doing physical anthropology for my Master’s. The others are cultural or material.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘Um, well . . . cultural is about how people act towards one another, what kind of rules they live by, morals, ethics, that kind of thing. That’s Chan. Also Jerry, who is into tribes.’

  ‘Yes, he told us that.’

  ‘Right. Well, material is artefacts – the things that civilizations produce that show how they lived. Pots, fabrics, scrolls . . . more like archaeology, really. But it works with modern groups, too, like totems and baskets and weapons . . . all stuff like that. Me, I am a bone man.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A gravedigger. I study bones and the stories they tell. That was Professor Mayhew’s speciality, too. I mean, she taught all kinds of anthropology to undergraduates, obviously, but bones were her thing. She was writing a book – a really great book – it was going to be called “Diseases of the Dead”.’

  ‘How can the dead have diseases?’ Muller wondered.

  ‘Had, not have,’ Garrison said. He leaned forward, his big hands expressively mobile. ‘You can see by looking at bones whether they suffered from rickets, say, or had healed fractures or arthritis – that kind of thing. Also nutrition – Harris lines in the bones show famine, periods of no growth, which we can equate with historical facts. TB, anaemia, leprosy – all those show up in the bones. We also can get height, weight, reach, cranial capacity, deformities and cause of death, either neonate or . . .’

  ‘Whoa,’ said Neilson. ‘There’s only one death we’re interested in here.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Sorry.’ Garrison sighed. ‘I don’t like to think about it. About her, I mean. Being dead, I mean. She was going to do great stuff, really interesting work . . . she was actually arranging for me to go on a dig in Ohio – an early Quaker pioneer settlement. We think the colony was overcome by plague or something viral, but it could have been simple starvation due to a meagre harvest, and the cemetery . . .’ He stopped. ‘Sorry, off again. I don’t suppose I’ll go, now. Unless someone else can get me in.’

  ‘How did Professor Mayhew seem on Sunday?’

  ‘Seem?’

  ‘Happy? Sad? Worried?’

  ‘No, just . . . the way she’s always been lately. Not all there. Nice and kind and interested and supportive – but she was thinking about the book. In the back of her mind, all the time, thinking about the book. She told me it was nearly done. I was going to do reference checking for her. There’s nobody else on the faculty who specializes in forensic anthropology now. Nobody else who gets excited about bones in the way she did. I suppose you think that’s crazy?’

  ‘Everybody to their own thing,’ Muller said.

  ‘Of course, it might have been the phone call that distracted her,’ Garrison said musingly. ‘Before that she was pretty OK, but after . . .’ Garrison’s breathing was back to normal and he was beginning to relax.

  ‘What phone call?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘Oh, she got a phone call about four o’clock.’ His voice was somewhat muffled as he wiped down his face and head with a towel.

  ‘Nobody else mentioned a phone call.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they did. They were all too busy arguing with one another. I was watching Elise.’

  ‘Tell us about the phone call,’ Muller suggested.

  ‘It kind of made her angry – she listened for a minute or two, then slammed the phone down and swore. She didn’t usually swear, but she said something about a “damn bastard”. Somebody made her mad, but she didn’t explain. Just got back to Chan’s thesis. But I could tell there was something kind of niggling at her. She looked tired, suddenly, and said she had a headache a little while later, so we broke up the session.’ All at once his eyes filled with tears. ‘She was so great. It kind of upset me to see her looking like that. And now . . . we’re gonna miss her like crazy, you know. It really hurts not to have her there to go to, to talk to. I could kill . . .’ He paused, looked down at the towel he was wringing like someone’s neck, then shook himself and gave a half-choked laugh. ‘Bad choice of words.’

  ‘You seem angrier than the others,’ Neilson observed.

  ‘Do I?’ Garrison considered that. ‘Probably testosterone,’ he said. ‘I’m still hyped from my workout.’

  ‘Would that show in your bones when you were dead?’ Muller asked out of left field.

  Garrison smiled. ‘Yeah, it would. Well, muscle development would; they could tell I was a big guy who worked out. No rickets, though.’ The tears were still there, but stayed unshed. ‘She used to say we were dealing with ghosts . . . the whispers that the bones gave out, telling us about who they had been and how they had lived. And died. She was shot, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ Neilson said. ‘In the head.’

  Garrison nodded. ‘Where it would hurt our memory most – in her brain. Her brain was what made her different. Her brain and her heart.’

  ‘They’re what make us all different,’ said Neilson.

  ‘I guess,’ Garrison said, standing up. ‘I’m getting morbid and I’m getting cold. Anything else I can tell you guys?’

  ‘Where were you on Sunday night and Monday morning?’ Muller asked.

  I left with the rest of the wrestling team for a meet in Atlanta. We flew out about eight o’clock. Is that when she was killed? Sunday night?’

  ‘Yes.’ Neilson looked up at him. ‘So you didn’t meet with the other grad students in the library on Monday afternoon?’

  ‘Did they? No, I didn’t get back until Tuesday. That’s when I heard about the professor. I called the others right away, and they told me what they had decided, about flowers and going to the funeral and stuff like that. It was fine with me, all of what they decided. Anything else?’

  ‘What did you think of Professor Mayhew’s husband?’ Neilson asked.

  Garrison grinned. ‘The mouse that roars? He was OK. Just jealous, that’s all. Kind of a pain in the ass, but OK. Why? Do yo
u think he did it?’ His face darkened as he realized what they were implying. ‘Do you?’

  ‘He was out of town, like you were.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘We’re checking on it,’ Neilson said.

  ‘Good. Good. Because if it was him . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Garrison stood there, flexing his muscles as he clenched and unclenched his hands. Then he slowly let go. ‘Oh, hell . . . the point is, it’s done. I hope you find who did it, but it doesn’t matter to me. Not now. She’s gone . . . end of story.’

  ‘Don’t you think the murderer should be caught?’

  Garrison drew a deep breath and exhaled strongly enough to fell several trees. ‘Sure, of course. But it won’t change anything, will it?’

  ‘We like to think it makes a difference,’ Muller said.

  ‘Do you?’ Garrison looked down at them, considering. ‘Yeah, I can see where you would. It’s your job, right?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s more than a job,’ Neilson said, thinking about Ned Pinsky. ‘Sometimes it’s personal.’

  ‘Thanks for your time, Mr Garrison,’ Muller contributed. ‘Is your coach around? Just to confirm your trip to Atlanta?’

  ‘Sure. Come on – his office is over here.’

  Muller started after Garrison, then looked back. Neilson was still sitting on the bench, staring into space.

  ‘Coming?’ Muller asked.

  Neilson looked up. ‘Coming,’ he said and slowly stood to follow.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘There!’ said Kate, plunking down the many tapes she and the others had recorded. David Waxman eyed them with no little trepidation. His dog, Milo, sniffed them with interest, then went to lie down in his bed in the corner, thoroughly disgusted that they were not edible. The cat, lying along the top of the sofa, continued to gaze out of the window. What humans got up to was too perplexing to bother turning to look.

  ‘I hope I can do it justice,’ David said cautiously. ‘This is a new thing for me.’

  ‘The best you can do will be just great,’ Kate assured him. ‘I’m already fed up with the whole thing and just want to nail this guy. If he realized how angry I am with him, he might just stop because I can be very mean when I want to be.’

  David looked at her and grinned. Kate Trevorne was not very big and although her curly hair was full of electricity she was definitely not a frightening person. He found it difficult to believe in her protestations of malice. Liz Olson, on the other hand, could have been intimidating under the right circumstances, but her mild expression made him question her efficacy as a threat.

  ‘And’, Kate went on, ‘Liz could give him The Look.’

  ‘The Look?’ David asked, puzzled.

  ‘Show him,’ Kate ordered.

  Liz gave him The Look. He felt something give way inside him and had a sudden urge to confess all the sins of his childhood.

  ‘I have seen her knock an entire lecture hall into stunned silence with The Look,’ Kate said. ‘She is my secret weapon.’

  ‘Jeesh,’ David said to Liz in some admiration. ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘It’s a gift.’ Liz grinned. ‘I think it has to do with the size of my pupils in relation to my eyeballs. I can lift my eyelids very high . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It just happens.’

  David looked from the tall figure of Liz to the small but feisty figure of Kate. Then he looked at the stack of tapes. ‘Why do I suddenly feel sorry for this guy?’ he enquired.

  ‘Aha!’ said Kate.

  Pinsky had the list of Ricky Sanchez’s classes and teachers, taken from his computer. He had started working through them, one by one. Because he knew Stryker and the others might also be on campus dealing with the Mayhew homicide, he had to move around furtively. It was almost funny, he thought to himself. Ned Pinsky, the Sneaky Detective.

  But his troll of the teachers revealed the general consensus that Ricky was a bright, hard-working student and showed great promise for medicine, which had been his chosen profession. It wasn’t all that helpful that everybody had loved Ricky. He almost wished he could find someone who disliked him, just for contrast.

  Professor Greer said Ricky’s chemistry was sound. Professor Jolyon said his grounding in physics was good, but his maths was a little weak. He had suggested extra tutoring and thought Ricky had been considering it. Mr Roberts, who taught him English literature, said he had no difficulty in communicating verbally, but his written work was inconsistent. Still, he was a trier, Roberts said. He was willing to rewrite and improve his work. Dr Conelly said he was an outstanding student of physiology, showed remarkable promise and was particularly interested in bones for some reason.

  Professor Torrance was most enthusiastic and very saddened. ‘A remarkable student,’ he said. He was a small man, very wrinkled for his age, with thinning hair and a large mole on his left cheek. He had a habit of cracking his knuckles that made Pinsky want to slap his hands away. ‘His death is a disaster. He would have made an excellent physician, although he was more interested in pathology lately. We talked often about his ambitions and he was wavering. He had a lively curiosity – everything interested him. He was spreading himself too thinly. I would like to think I helped steer him back in the right direction.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Torrance scowled. ‘It is getting more and more difficult to keep science students, you know. They give up when the work gets too hard. Science is rather unbending, you see. Departments like art and English are easier to please. Children today do not want to work, they want everything handed to them on a platter. It is most discouraging.’

  ‘But Ricky was different?’ Pinsky asked.

  ‘Oh yes. As I said. A natural.’ Crack went the knuckles and Pinsky winced. The knuckle-cracking seemed to be an unconscious habit. Torrance was gazing into the middle distance as he continued, ‘Many of them would be fine if they were willing to work. But they are lazy. And I will not lower my standards, no matter what the Chairman says.’ Torrance was rather fierce, like a small dog facing his own reflection in a mirror and snarling at it. He seemed full of suppressed energy. ‘Other students were jealous, I believe. He had some bullying.’

  ‘Bullying?’ Pinsky asked, suddenly alert.

  Torrance shrugged. ‘You know the kind of thing, teasing him about his high marks, chiding him for working so hard and making the rest of them look bad.’

  ‘Anyone in particular you can remember?’

  ‘One. A boy who was completely out of his depth in science. A physical education major – on a football scholarship – they are required to take a certain number of science courses. What was his name?’ He wrinkled his forehead in thought. Pinsky had found him in a small lecture hall and had waited for his class to leave before talking to him. ‘Fred,’ Torrance said, after a while. ‘That was it, Fred Boynton. I believe his nickname was Boomer or something like that. He used to give Ricky a very hard time, as I recall. You might want to talk to him. He’s rather a strange boy.’ He sighed. ‘He failed my class, and I got rather an earful from him and from the coach. It’s so difficult with these footballers and basketball players and so on. The school wants them, because the alumni love winners, you see. And when our teams win, which is rarely, they give money. We are always needing money, Sergeant. Sad fact of life. And all we want to do is educate their minds. If they have them.’ Torrance gave a dry cackle and had another go at his knobbly fingers. ‘If they have them.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Professor Torrance,’ Pinsky said. The knuckle-cracking was getting on his nerves. ‘Do you know where I might find . . .’ He consulted his notebook. ‘A Professor Bulstrode?’

  Torrance looked at his watch. ‘I imagine you will find him in the nearest bar,’ he said nastily. ‘Bulstrode is on his way out.’

  Pinsky actually located Professor Bulstrode in his office and he did not seem on h
is way out at all. Rather firmly fixed in his chair, in fact, for he was a very fat man with a very red face. The office seemed to be the scene of a recent tornado, but Pinsky was willing to bet Bulstrode knew exactly where everything was and could put his hand on it instantly. Actually, it was very like his own office at home and he felt quite comfortable in the cluttered surroundings. The fat man gestured him to a chair and regarded him benignly. ‘Who’ve you been talking to?’ he wanted to know, as Pinsky moved some books on to the floor and sat down.

  Pinsky told him and he chuckled. ‘Greer is sound, Jolyon is a little dotty, I don’t know Roberts and I imagine Torrance told you I was a drunk,’ he said genially. ‘He is convinced of it ever since I went a little over the top at the Christmas party.’

  ‘I’m interested in a student called Ricky Sanchez,’ Pinsky said.

  Bulstrode nodded. ‘I thought that might be it. I read about his murder in the papers. Terrible thing. He was a nice boy, I enjoyed teaching him. How can I help you?’ ‘Were you aware of any difficulty he might have been having in school? Any problems with teachers or students?’

  Bulstrode considered. ‘Bright kids always have trouble. Fact of life. You’re either top of the class or one of the boys . . . you have to make a choice. Ricky chose top of the class. He was full of questions and full of answers, too. Some others resented that. I don’t know what the current term of derision is for bright students, but he heard it often, I’m sure. Outside class he didn’t seem to have many friends. I believe he had a steady girlfriend, so no trouble in that direction.’

  ‘We understood that there was one particular boy, a Fred Boynton, who gave him trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Fred.’ Bulstrode grinned. ‘He did seem to have it in for Ricky, now that you mention it. Nothing serious, you understand. Just a lot of teasing, a bit of pushing about, that sort of thing.’ He leaned forward earnestly. ‘They are still children, you know. I don’t care whether they are old enough to borrow money or vote or whatever . . . they are still children when they come here. Full of hormones, full of conflicts, oversensitive, vulnerable. We hit them broadside with facts, facts, facts, and expect them to receive and absorb them with no trouble. It’s a lot to ask of a child.’