Medieval Murders

by Aaron Stander

  Pascoe reflected on how pleased she had been earlier this spring when Elkins called trying to recruit here for a management job in a troubled department. She was flattered that he would think of her, given his many students over the years. And he had reached out to her at a time when she was starting to look for new challenges.

  Pascoe turned the ignition key, took a few deep breaths, and headed for the medical center.

  32

  It had been a long night of waiting for Charlene Pascoe. Sometime after 2:00 A.M. one of the trauma physicians, a tall imposing woman, ebony skinned with a rich operatic voice, explained that Elkins had regained consciousness, but that he had apparently suffered a severe concussion and was in the process of getting a CT scan. Exhausted, Pascoe went to her apartment, but she had trouble falling asleep, the adrenalin from the evening’s events still coursing through her system.

  Before 9:00 A.M. she was back at the hospital, first checking on Ray’s condition and then finding Jane Arden’s room. Pascoe knocked on the jam of the open door before entering. Arden was sitting in bed, her left hand wrapped in a gauze bandage. An untouched breakfast tray with toast and anemic looking scrambled eggs rested on a stand across the bed.

  Pascoe identified herself.

  “Were you there last night?” asked Arden.

  “Yes. You were quite shaken and had a nasty cut or two. I saw an EMT attending to you.”

  “It’s all a blur. There were lots of people. I was so frightened.”

  “How is the hand?” asked Pascoe.

  “Sore, now that local anesthesia has worn off. The surgeon said it was a long, deep gash, but he didn’t find any damage to tendons or ligaments. Guess I was lucky. I don’t even remember getting hurt. One of your people pointed out that I was bleeding.”

  “Are you up to answering some questions?”

  “No problem. I don’t even know why I’m still here,” said Arden. “I need you to tell me everything that happened from the time Elkins got to your house until the time the police arrived on the scene.” As she was saying this Pascoe was preparing to take a statement. She pulled a chair close, placed a small recorder on the bed, opened a steno pad to a clean page, and tested a ballpoint on the margin of the page, moving the pen in swirls until it produced a thick black line.

  Pascoe began, “To the best of your memory, exactly what happened.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Start at the beginning. It’s helpful if you can keep things in chronological order. I know that’s not always easy to do.”

  Arden closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. She opened them again and looked over at Pascoe. “It was about 9:00, perhaps a few minutes before. Elkins said he’d come over about 6:00 to check the locks; he called about 8:00 and said he was running late. I asked if he had eaten. He hadn’t, so I invited him to have dinner.” She paused briefly, then asked. “You know why he was checking the locks?”

  “He showed me the letter, and I’ve done some research on Arlin Merchant.” Pascoe waited for Arden to continue.

  “It was getting dark about that time. It hadn’t started to storm yet, but it was close. You could see the lightening on the horizon. Elkins inspected the locks on the windows and doors and told me what needed to be done. He offered to help get the university housing office to replace the locks. As I threw together a quick dinner, pasta and salad, the storm was intensifying. We sat down to eat and the lights went out. They came back on again, then went out a second time. I already had candles burning, and we started to eat. Then there was breaking glass. Elkins pushed me to the floor and told me to stay there. He made a call on his cell and went out the patio door. I was absolutely petrified. I wish he had stayed with me. I crawled over to the door and watched him run along the hedge at the back of the property. A minute or two later I heard the sirens. The first officer stayed with me. I could hear a lot of voices, but I didn’t know what was happening. I remember the EMT coming, and then I think I saw you. That’s about all I remember.” She paused, and then asked, “Can you feel a bullet?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pascoe.

  “I remember when the window exploded I felt something go by me, like wind. It was really close. I was wondering if that could have been the bullet?”

  “I don’t know. I think that’s possible.”

  “My imagination is probably going wild.” She paused, “I remember someone bandaging me up. They put me in an ambulance. After my hand was stitched someone gave me a hypo. I just woke up 30 minutes ago. So what happened, did you catch Merchant?”

  “I will be talking to him today. We haven’t established that he was involved.”

  “Elkins didn’t catch the person?”

  “No”

  “Will he be coming by?”

  Pascoe took a deep breath and considered her response. “Actually, he was injured last night. He’s going to be okay, but he’s going to be out of commission for a few days.”

  “What happened…?”

  “It appears that he had a bad fall. He has a concussion.”

  “Oh, how awful.” They sat in silence. “What happens now?”

  “I need to ask you a few more questions. As I told you, I’ll be talking to Merchant this morning. And he has clearly threatened you. What I need to know… are there other people who…you know…like old love interests, former spouses…people who might want to harm you?”

  Arden absorbed the question and was slow in responding. “I was briefly married in graduate school. We’ve been divorced for years. He’s got a new wife and two small children, lives in Vermont. There was never any hostility in our parting, just sadness. And I don’t have any recent boyfriends lurking about. Nothing like that.”

  “And other than Merchant, you have received no threats?”

  “None.”

  “You haven’t seen or felt anything that’s made you uncomfortable in recent weeks or months?”

  “Me personally, no. That said, the deaths in the department have been shocking. I don’t remember anything like that, never. But one was a suicide and the other a tragic accident. I don’t know about Constance Dalton, I heard she had medical problems.”

  “How well did you know the three women?”

  “They were colleagues. We’d see one another at meetings, I’d pass one or another in the halls or the department office occasionally.”

  “So you weren’t close?”

  “No. I didn’t really know any of them well. We didn’t do anything socially. But what does their deaths have to do with my situation?”

  “Probably nothing, I’m just playing with possibilities.” Pascoe closed her notebook and retrieved her recorder.

  “My understanding is that you can be released later this morning. I don’t want you to leave here until we find a safe place for you to stay for a few days.”

  “What’s happening with my condo?”

  “It’s part of the crime scene. And then some repairs will be needed before you can return.”

  “I could probably stay with the Chestertons,” Arden said.

  “Let me think on that. I’ll call you later this morning, and we’ll get something in place.”

  “So before you go, tell me about Elkins again.”

  “He’s being held for observation. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “So he goes way beyond what’s expected, and he get’s hurt.”

  “It could have been so much worse,” said Pascoe. “It could have been so much worse,” she repeated softly.

  33

  After visiting the medical center, Pascoe called the Sheriff of Branch County to request that Merchant be brought in for questioning. Then she drove over to University Gardens to work with the crime-scene team. They were already assembled and waiting for her, one regular member of the department, Bill Baker, and ten cadets—dressed in blue coveralls. Her greatest concern was to control the eagerness of the cadets so evidence wouldn’t be overlooked or trampled.

  Pasc
oe started the process by entering the condo and locating the bullet hole in the side of the island that separated the kitchen from the living room. She looked at the position of the chairs and the patio door and visualized the path of the bullet. She gathered the interns around her in the back yard and gave them specific instructions about how the search would be conducted. With Baker’s assistance, she had the interns line up and separate themselves by fully extending their arms. “This is what I want you to do. We will move as a group slowly across the lawn until we get to the hedge. If you see anything unusual, call out and either Sergeant Baker or I will come to you. Don’t touch anything. We need your eyes. Questions?”

  “What are we looking for?” asked a tall, gangly kid whose long legs gave a high-water effect to his coveralls. “We’re looking for anything that the shooter might have dropped that would help us ID him. When we get to the hedge and beyond we’re especially looking for brass—shell casings.”

  “Maintain your distances and stay in line. We’re going to move forward very slowly,” instructed Sergeant Baker.The cadets carefully covered the expanse of lawn, stopping at the hedge. Pascoe had them move through the few openings in the thick brush. By the time they had lined up again, she was standing on the railroad embankment with a bullhorn in hand. “Let’s close it up, guys. One arm’s length between you. Be careful, it’s steep. Let’s go real slow.” Other than plastic grocery bags, beer cans, and filters from degrading cigarette butts, nothing was found. She divided the teams and had them move down the tracks to the area where Elkins had been found. Then she brought the whole team to the left side of the tracks and they swept forward for a hundred yards, covering the area from the tracks to the top of the embankment. Eventually they moved along the outside of the embankment and into the field on the other side, an area used for parking. Roadways had already been marked out on the rough turf with chalk for the football season. Again, other than empty beverage cans, yellowing newspapers, fading fast food containers, and the ubiquitous plastic bags caught in the stunted bushes on the edge of the field, nothing was found. The trash barrels near the entrances to the parking lot were empty, also. Pascoe look across the expanse of rough grass that extended for almost a half of a mile to the concrete and brick monolith, brightly colored flags now fluttering from tall poles on the exterior of the stadium. In a few days thousands of cars would jam into these fields, and tens of thousands would walk across them.

  She slowly scanned the area a second time. She was hoping for that one substantial clue that could connect a shooter and a place. None materialized. She had the interns cover the area around the hedge a second time, the searchers now divided into teams and using metal detectors. Three crushed beer cans, a rusty railroad spike, a large bolt, and several nails were found before the single shell casing showed up. The brass casing was carefully removed from the tall grass and dropped into an evidence bag. Pascoe looked at the casing, 7mm. Using this as a teaching opportunity, she showed how to record where it was found on a map and how to label each piece of evidence. A second sweep of the area yielded several more metal objects, but no more brass.

  Eventually Pascoe put Baker in charge of the interns as they began to sweep the left side of the railroad embankment with the metal detectors. She returned to Arden’s condo and carefully extracted the bullet from the wall, dropped it into an evidence bag, adding a label to the bag’s exterior. She locked the bags in the trunk of her car before starting the trek to Branch County.

  34

  On her way to Branch County, Pascoe stopped at the home of Elmer Jayson, the engineer who had witnessed the shooting and stopped the train. Jayson’s house was just off the highway, its shape suggesting a style of farmhouse built in the early years of the century, but extensive additions and modernizations had been appended to the original footprint. Jayson saw Pascoe pull off the road and met her in the circular drive at the side of the house. He escorted her through a back entrance into the kitchen, a bright, airy room that occupied the addition that had been tacked onto the back of the house. Jayson’s wife, a tall, pretty woman in her late fifties, served them coffee and then disappeared.

  Pascoe pulled a recorder and note pad from her brief case. She placed the recorder on the table, keyed it on, and opened a pad to a new page.

  Jayson pulled his glasses off and laid them on the table. He rubbed his eyes and put his glasses back on. He, like Pascoe, had been up most of the night.

  After a few minutes of small talk, Pascoe began the interview. “I’ll be going over the things you told me last night. This time I’d like to go slowly and make careful notes. It’s most useful if you talk about what you saw in sequence.”

  He nodded his understanding as he started, “We bring the train down to limits before we get to the edge of town and then speed up when we get to the other side. I’m always extra careful when I run through the university. Seems like the train draws them. We’ve had suicides, drunks, even doped-up kids stumble onto the tracks. I’ve never hit anyone, and I don’t want to.”

  “Last night I was just beginning to add power when I saw someone in the headlight. He’s running toward me. I lay on the horn. Then I see a second person. It looks like he’s following the first guy.”

  “Can you describe him, the first person?”

  “Well, he was running fast, and I was speeding up. I don’t know what you know about trains, but it takes a long time to get’em going and a long time to stop’em. I let go of the throttle and got ready to apply the brakes. I was mostly watching, hoping they’d stay off the tracks.” He paused and stretched, arms back, then yawned. “The first guy was in black, all black.”

  “How about his face?”

  “Face too. He had some kind of mask on. You know, like one of the knit things.”

  “Was it open around his eyes, nose, and mouth like a balaclava, or just holes like a ski mask?”

  “I think it was more like the second, I couldn’t see his face.”

  “Could you tell his color or race? Was he white, black…?

  “No, I don’t think there was much skin exposed. And everything happened so fast, the distances closing so quickly. He was carrying something. I could see it was a gun.”

  “What kind of a gun?”

  “It wasn’t a pistol. It was a long gun. You know, a shotgun or a hunting rifle.”

  “Can you remember anything specific about the gun?”

  “Like?”

  “Did it have a wood stock or one of those wire, folding kind of things. Did you see a scope?”

  “I saw a gun, I can’t tell you about that other stuff. I think it just looked like a normal kinda rifle, if you know what I mean. I was watching the guys, hoping they wouldn’t try to cross the tracks at the last minute.”

  “How far apart were they?”

  “Hard for me to judge, but I’d say a pretty good distance, fifty, sixty yards. Maybe more.” Jayson yawned again, stretched and ran his hands over his gray brush-cut. He got up, got the coffee pot and refilled both their cups.

  “Then what happened?”

  “The first guy disappeared off to the side and I was looking at the second guy. I couldn’t tell what he did. I had the brakes locked up by then. I was pretty sure I missed him.

  After I got stopped, I slowly reversed back, hoping not to see his body on the tracks. And then I came down off the engine to look around. That’s where I met you.”

  “Anything else you remember?”

  “No, that’s about all. I tried to stay out of the way, went back and stood by the locomotive. After I talked to you, I finished my run. Most nights are pretty boring, but occasionally you have something like this. Just never know what’s going to happen.”

  Pascoe slid her card across the table. “If anything else occurs to you, please call.”

  “Sure will, Miss. Hope that guy’s going to be all right.”

  “I hope so, too,” she responded, giving him a weak smile as they shook hands.

  35

&n
bsp; Elkins was dreaming. He was falling backwards into a deep cave, out of control, spinning slowly. He stopped with a start and gazed into a heavy mist. He blinked, blinked again. The mist cleared, and he could see Dr. Kristin Gutiérrez leaning over the bed.

  He heard her say, “I think we have someone waking up.”

  She was smiling and squeezing his right hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too good. Worst hangover of my life.” He gave her a weak smile. “I thought you practiced painless medicine.”

  “I do. You’re not my patient, yet. Unfortunately, you are still breathing. I don’t get to peel your face back and find out what makes you tick, not this time anyway. This is Dr. Savage,” she lifted her head to indicate the other side of the bed. Elkins looked up at the tall, balding man in blue surgical scrubs. Gutiérrez continued. “He’s a neurologist, he spent most of the night monitoring your condition.”

  “Do you remember talking to me last night?” Savage asked.

  “Sort of. Everything is a bit of a blur. I remember the bright lights and lots of people around me. How am I doing?” Ray asked, trying to pull the man into focus.

  “Your CT scan is unremarkable. There’s no skull fracture or evidence of bleeding. That said, sometimes things change, so we will want to hold on to you for the next 24 to 48 hours just to be on the safe side,” said Savage looking down at him. “Before you were injured, what’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I remember running and a train, it’s all sort of confused, like a dream after you wake up. You know, you’re not sure what really happened, and it’s all fading fast.”

  “So you don’t remember falling, anything like that.”

  “No, not at all,” Ray answered. “So what time is it now?”