by Bill Crider
It didn’t happen.
The hoist stopped moving while it was still several feet away from Jack, and the welder left it to run for the door. Jack realized that the man hadn’t intended to hurt him anymore. All he’d really wanted was a way out.
Jack limped after him, but he couldn’t have caught a sluggish snail. The man was outside in moments, and the door swung shut behind him. Jack was still trying to get the door open when Sally came out of the pit to help him.
Together they pulled the door back and looked outside, blinking in the late afternoon light. There was no one in sight. After all, it was Friday afternoon, and the campus was virtually deserted. The welder’s mask was lying at their feet where whoever had been wearing it had hastily dropped it. The gloves and jacket were a little farther away, but not much.
Jack leaned back against the rough brick side of the building and slid slowly down it.
Sally sat down beside him. For a while neither of them said anything.
Finally Jack turned to Sally. He tried to smile, which was about the only thing he could do that didn’t hurt him, and even that didn’t feel so good.
“Who was that masked man?” he said.
14
Jack, who had been taped up tighter than King Tut by the skilled practitioners at the Hughes Hospital emergency room, was sitting in Eric Desmond’s office with a can of Pepsi One in one hand and a package of peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers in the other. Jack had often wondered what there was in those crackers to make them such a funny color of orange. Probably better not to think about it.
Jack looked around the office. There were photos of Desmond on all the walls: Desmond riding horses, Desmond crossing the finish line at a 10K race, Desmond receiving some award, Desmond on the firing range wearing ear protection and holding a very large pistol, Desmond (probably a much younger version, though he still looked much the same) leaning out of a military helicopter and waving to someone, maybe the photographer.
“You’re supposed to like yourself,” Sally said, walking into the office. “It’s a sign of a healthy self-concept.”
Jack told her that he hadn’t heard anyone use the phrase self-concept in years. “Are you sure there’s not some new phrase for that?”
“I don’t keep up,” Sally said. “It doesn’t seem worth it, somehow.” Then she changed the subject. “Weems is pretty upset with us, you know.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jack said. And immediately felt like an idiot. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be crude. That just slipped out. I’ve been feeling a little weird ever since I hit my head on the floor in the automotive building.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Sally said. “And the thought of having to talk to Weems would make anybody want to say a few bad words.”
Jack had avoided seeing Weems sooner by virtue of the fact that Sally had called the EMS on her cell phone while Jack sat by the wall and suffered in silence. As she had predicted, the phone hadn’t worked inside the shop, but it worked just fine once they got out. She called the EMS first, then Desmond, and then Weems. The EMS had beat Weems to the scene by at least a minute and a half, for which Jack would be eternally grateful.
At the ER, he’d been poked and probed and X rayed and wrapped. To his surprise, he had only two cracked ribs—not broken but cracked—and while they hurt quite a bit, it could have been worse. The tape would hold him together for a while, and then he’d be fine. Or so he’d been told. Jack wasn’t sure he trusted a doctor who looked so young that she could have passed for a student at HCC. Besides the cracked ribs, Jack also had a hard little knot on the back of his head, but there was no concussion.
He sipped at his Pepsi, then said, “Weems can’t possibly believe I had anything to do with this murder,” he said. “Can he?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sally said. “You’re the one with blood on his hands. You’re the one whose handprint is going to be right there on the floor by Thomas’s body in Thomas’s own blood.”
“I think it was something besides just blood,” Jack said, but he didn’t say what it was.
He looked at his hand, palm up. It was clean now, but he easily could imagine that the blood was still there. He could practically see it trapped in the lines that crisscrossed his skin. He knew how Lady Macbeth must’ve felt.
“I shouldn’t have told you about that,” he said. “That Weems couldn’t possibly think I had anything to do with the murder, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds almost like I was trying to create an alibi. When I think about it, I can see how Weems might figure it: I was supposedly in my office working on the lesson plans for Naylor, but in reality I was out in the automotive building killing Thomas.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t have a clue, but I’m sure Weems will come up with a reason. That’s the way his mind works.”
“You don’t have any history with Thomas, do you?”
Jack sighed and offered Sally a cheese cracker. She declined, so he ate it himself. The peanut butter gummed up his mouth, and for a few seconds he couldn’t talk at all. He took a drink from the Pepsi can, swallowed, and said, “I might.”
“You might? What do you mean by ‘might’?”
“I guess I mean that I sort of do.”
It was Sally’s turn to sigh. “For such a mild-mannered man, you seem to make a lot of enemies.”
Jack wondered whether it was a compliment to be considered mild-mannered. He decided that he wouldn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“We weren’t enemies,” he said. “I just had a little disagreement with him. It wasn’t even that, exactly.”
“What was it, then?”
“Okay, call it a disagreement. It was when I was taking that knife-making class.”
“You really should’ve found a better way to spend your time,” Sally said.
“I couldn’t agree more. Next time I think I’ll take something safer, like recreational bungee jumping.”
“What did you disagree with Thomas about?”
“He disagreed with me. He thought I was a bit careless with the torch when I was heating my knife blade. He said I was a menace, or words to that effect.”
“Were you?”
“I don’t think so, but then I’m not a professional welder. It was the way he said it that upset me.”
“Just how upset were you?”
“Well, I might have told him to back off before I set his shirt on fire.”
“There’s that ‘might’ again,” Sally said.
“Right. Well, that’s what I said, more or less. I don’t remember the exact words, but that’s close enough.”
“Did anybody hear you say them?”
“Sure. Several of the class members were there, not to mention the instructor.” Jack had another drink of Pepsi. “But why should any of that matter? You saw what happened in there. You even know how the handprint got there, if there is one. Weems would have to be crazy to suspect me.”
“You could have set up the whole thing,” Sally said. “Just so you could claim me as a witness.”
“Who’s my accomplice in the welding mask?”
“You’ll have to tell me. I don’t know.”
“Why would I let him beat me up?”
“What better way to set up your alibi?”
Jack ate the last cracker, crumpled the cellophane wrapper, and tossed it in Desmond’s wastebasket. He finished off the Pepsi and set the can on the desk so he could take it out to the recycle bin in the hall later. What kind of killer would recycle aluminum cans? he asked himself. He was sure Weems would have an answer for that, too.
“You should have been a cop,” he told Sally.
“I’m sure you mean that in a good way.”
“I do. Really. It’s not just anybody who could come up with that line of reasoning.”
“I’ve been teaching Poe.”
Jack laughed. One of the things he enjoyed a
bout Poe’s detective stories was that the explanations for the crimes took up about two-thirds of the stories.
“I don’t think these two murders are as complicated as what happened in the Rue Morgue,” he said.
“Do you think they’re related?”
“To the murders in the Rue Morgue?”
Sally just looked at him.
“I’m sorry. I told you I wasn’t thinking straight. Anyway, this isn’t Houston. We might be fifteen miles away, but we’re still not a big city. So I think that when two guys connected with the college are murdered, the killings just about have to be related.”
“You forgot to mention that both of the murdered men are connected with you, however tenuously.”
“I didn’t forget,” Jack said. “And I’ll bet Weems won’t, either.”
“Forget what?” Weems said, walking through the open door.
“I can’t remember,” Jack said.
15
It wasn’t as bad as Sally had thought it would be. Weems led them through the events of the afternoon, listening carefully to everything they said and even agreeing that it would be stretching a point to ridiculous lengths to assume that Jack could have had any part in Thomas’s death.
“It could even have been an accident,” Weems said. “The back of Thomas’s head was crushed. There was blood and brain matter on the floor, but we don’t know yet how it happened.”
Jack unconsciously wiped his hand on the leg of his pants. Weems didn’t seem to notice.
“Maybe he tripped over his own feet somehow and fell in that grease pit,” Weems continued. “It’s a possibility.”
“What about the man in the welder’s mask?” Sally asked. “If it was just an accident, what was all that about?”
“How do you know it was a man?” Weems asked.
“We don’t,” Jack said. “But he, or she, was big, strong, and kicked like a mule on steroids.”
“There are some big, strong women around,” Weems said. Sally thought about Mae Wilkins, who wasn’t big at all, though she might have been strong.
“Whoever it was walked like a man,” she said. “And he had on men’s pants and shoes.”
Jack looked at her as if amazed at her powers of observation, which didn’t surprise her. Men got distracted by little things like a welder’s mask and didn’t notice the important parts of a person’s attire.
“Can you describe the shoes and pants?” Weems asked.
“The light wasn’t good, but the shoes looked black, and so were the pants. I couldn’t really tell much more about them.”
“Have you told President Fieldstone about this?” Jack asked Weems.
Weems looked at him. “Not yet. We haven’t been able to locate him.”
Sally saw Jack glance at her out of the corners of his eyes. Everyone knew that Fieldstone made it a point of honor to stay at the college until five o’clock every Friday afternoon. But not today, apparently. Could he have been the man in the mask?
“Getting back to that accident theory,” Sally said. “Why the mask?”
“If some guy just happened to be there when the accident happened,” Weems said, “he might have had a reason for not wanting anybody to see him. Maybe he was afraid he’d be blamed for it.”
“Surely not,” Jack said. “He’d know that the Hughes police would never blame an innocent man for a crime.”
Weems glared at him. “How are those ribs feeling? Still hurting?”
“Only when I laugh,” Jack said. “Or breathe, or move.”
Weems smiled. “I know what you mean. But in two or three months you’ll be fine. More or less.”
“Two or three months?”
“Well, you’ll still have a little pain now and then, but three months is about right.”
Jack sighed, which seemed to Sally to make Weems feel better.
“Can you think of anyone who might be afraid he’d be blamed for the accident?” Weems asked. “Somebody who might have a lot to lose?”
Sally thought of Jorge Rodriguez immediately, and she could tell that Jack was thinking the same thing. Maybe it was the remark about steroids that Jack had made.
And then she thought of Fieldstone. He would have as much to lose as Jorge if he was caught in a compromising position.
“I can’t think of anybody,” Jack said, with a glib nonchalance that Sally admired.
“Me neither,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she’d managed to be nearly as nonchalant as Jack.
“Okay, then,” Weems said, seeming to accept their answers, “tell me this: Did Thomas know Ralph Bostic?”
“They were acquainted,” Sally said. “Bostic wanted to eliminate all the college programs that weren’t making money, and auto mechanics hasn’t had great enrollments lately.”
Weems looked at her thoughtfully. “So I guess if Bostic wanted to eliminate programs, he had plenty of enemies.”
“More than one, anyway,” Jack said. “You should’ve thought about that before you ran me in.”
“I didn’t run you in,” Weems told him. “If I’d run you in, you’d still be in, believe me, probably becoming real good friends with some very strange people in the holding cell.” Weems smiled, probably thinking of Jack in the holding cell, and then changed the subject. “What other programs did Bostic have it in for?”
Jack didn’t say anything, and Weems looked at Sally, who looked at a photo of Eric Desmond receiving some kind of award from President Fieldstone. Maybe he’d been employee of the quarter or something like that. Sally couldn’t recall.
“I can’t hear you,” Weems said.
“Only because we can’t think of anything,” Sally told him. “Auto mechanics was one program that Bostic had it in for, and I’m sure there were others. But English wasn’t one of them, and as long as my department isn’t threatened, I don’t worry about it.”
Sally really didn’t feel that way at all, but she thought Weems would believe her. And maybe it would keep him from asking her anything else on the topic.
“Looking out for number one,” Weems said.
“That’s right,” Jack said, following Sally’s lead. “That’s what the academic world is all about. Think about yourself and watch your back.”
“Poor choice of words for an English teacher,” Weems said. “The part about watching your back, I mean.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jack said. “Like Bostic. It’s just that there are plenty of people who’ll stick a figurative knife in your back around here if you’re not careful. But not a real one. People in this profession don’t much go for real knives.”
Weems crossed his arms and smiled. “Another poor choice of words, I’d say, considering the knife that killed Bostic just happens to be yours.”
Jack looked flustered. Sally felt a little sorry for him, but there was nothing she could do. He’d created his problem, and he’d have to solve it.
“You know what I mean,” Jack said, which wasn’t the most forceful of arguments.
Weems, however, surprised Sally by saying, “Yeah, I think I do. And I think you’re not telling me all you know. But that’s all right. I’ll find out. And you can be sure I’ll be keeping an eye on you while I do it. You’re not out of the woods yet. You might not have killed Thomas, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t good for the Bostic deal. There’s no way of getting around whose knife that was.”
“You don’t believe Jack killed anyone,” Sally said. “You know that these two deaths have to be related somehow.”
“You never know,” Weems said.
“It would be too much of a coincidence if they weren’t,” Jack said. “We’re not living in the murder capital of the world here.”
“You should never underrate coincidence,” Weems said. “I’ve seen a few that Charles Dickens would have been embarrassed to use.
“You know Dickens?” Jack said.
“That’s right. Beowulf isn’t the only thing I like to read.”
“You
read Beowulf?” Sally said.
“You think all I do is catch crooks?”
“No,” Sally said. “I don’t know why I should be surprised.”
“Stereotyping,” Weems said. “But I’m used to it.”
“Stereotypes or not, I didn’t kill Bostic,” Jack said. “No matter how many coincidences you’ve seen or how many books you’ve read.”
“I guess we’ll find out about that, won’t we,” Weems said. He started out of the room, then turned around and came back in. “By the way, there’s one other thing I meant to ask you.”
Sally wondered if he’d been watching Columbo reruns. In between reading Dickens and Beowulf, of course.
“What’s the other thing?” she asked.
“The lights in that auto shop. We couldn’t get them turned on.”
“Neither could we,” Sally said.
“We finally had to get one of the maintenance crew to show us where the breaker box was,” Weems said. “Somebody had tripped the switch.”
“It wasn’t us,” Jack said.
“Assuming that you’re telling the truth,” Weems said, “and assuming that there really was someone else in there, whoever it was also knew where that breaker was.”
“So?”
“So he was familiar with the building,” Weems said. “Not just some guy who walked in off the street. You say you didn’t know where the box was?”
Jack and Sally both nodded.
“Then he was even more familiar with the building than you are,” Weems said. “That’s something you might want to think about. I’ll be seeing you around. Especially you, Neville. You might want to think some more about how your knife got from your desk to Bostic’s back if you didn’t put it there.”
Weems gave a little wave. This time he went through the door and didn’t come back.
16
Jack went home to take a nap and recuperate. Sally went back to her office because she needed a Hershey bar in the worst way. In fact, she couldn’t think of a time when she’d been more in need of some chocolate comfort.
But she wasn’t going to get it. When she reached her office, she was shocked to find two people waiting for her: Troy Beauchamp and Ellen Baldree. It was after five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. The campus should have been deserted. She didn’t remember ever having seen anyone on campus at that time of day on a Friday. Of course, she usually wasn’t there herself.