The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6)

by Mike Markel

  “Yes, of course. If you ran girls.”

  “Now, may I ask you a few questions, Detective?”

  I nodded for him to go ahead.

  “You say that this woman named Krista was living with this professor. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the professor is dead, but Krista is alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Krista is unhurt?”

  “She is unhurt.”

  “Has Krista accused me of killing the professor?”

  “No.”

  “Has Krista accused me of hurting her—here I mean Krista herself—in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Has Krista accused me of being her pimp?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any evidence—forensic, eye-witness, even circumstantial—that I am a pimp, that I am Krista’s pimp, that I have intimidated Krista in any way, or that I had anything at all to do with killing this professor?”

  I smiled. “Except for the convictions for pimping, no, nothing.” I paused. “Not yet.”

  Christopher James Barlow returned my smile. “Then I have to wonder why you stopped by today …”

  I stood. Ryan did, too. “You understand the routine, Mr. Barlow. We’re interviewing all of the victim’s associates.”

  “But I’ve made clear that I did not know this professor … What did you say her name was?”

  “Professor Rinaldi.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Professor Virginia Rinaldi. The sociology professor, I think you said?”

  “No, I never said she was a sociology professor.”

  Barlow frowned. “Perhaps I did hear a news report about her, after all.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.”

  “And one more thing, Detective, before you leave.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You overestimate my subtlety.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if I had a grievance with Krista, it never would have occurred to me to hurt her girlfriend.”

  “You’re saying, if you had a grievance with Krista, Krista would be dead.”

  “Hypothetically, of course.”

  “Of course. If you ran girls.” Ryan and I turned to leave. I stopped and turned back to face Christopher James Barlow. “One more question before we go.”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you tell us where you were Monday night, around nine or ten?”

  He pointed. “I was in the living room, watching a movie.”

  I had to ask, although I knew it was a waste of time. “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “My wife can confirm that.” He treated us to another smile and stood, expanding his chest and putting his hands in the pockets of his neatly pressed navy slacks.

  Chapter 14

  It was a little before noon. I was eating a sandwich in the break room when Ryan stuck his head in. “Chief wants to see us.”

  “Give me a sec.” I wrapped the sandwich up in its plastic and took it back to my desk. “Did he say why?” I brushed some crumbs off my hands as we walked to his office.

  “No. Maybe he’s got that information on Richard Albright.”

  His assistant, Margaret, waved us in.

  “Sit.” The chief was at his desk. He looked down at a legal pad on his desk. “Richard Albright was a member of the Righteous Warriors, a motorcycle gang out of Las Vegas. Fairly high up. He was released after serving six of his ten for racketeering.”

  “What was it he did?” I said.

  The chief waved his hand. “General-purpose badass. Prostitutes, distribution of controlled substances, assault. Extortion of small businesses.”

  Ryan said, “Why’d they give him early release?”

  “He set up this Christian worship group inside. He pulled in Hispanics, blacks, even some white-power guys. Apparently, it helped keep the lid on. Violence went way down. He was a model prisoner.”

  I said, “The guys you talked to in Nevada—they believe he went straight?”

  The chief shifted in his chair. “The group he founded is still going. It’s still working. But do they believe he’s straight? Not sure they ask that kind of question. They released him, didn’t have to re-arrest him. That made them happy. When I told them he was living in Montana, that made them even happier.” The chief shrugged his shoulders.

  “All right, thanks, Chief.” Ryan and I stood up. “We’re gonna head out to that rally on campus. You said you were gonna see if you could lend the Campus Substation a couple more uniforms?”

  “Done. I told them you’d be in contact to make the arrangements.”

  “We’ll brief you later. Thanks.”

  Ryan and I went back to the bullpen. Ryan phoned the Substation. The rally was still on for one o’clock, in the quad. We would have six uniforms, total, around the perimeter.

  We headed over at twelve-thirty and parked in front of the Administration Building, which anchors the quad. I put down my visor to display the Official Police Business sign. Arrayed in one corner of the lot were three network satellite trucks, their dishes already pointed straight up.

  Ryan and I walked over to the quad, where four college-age guys were assembling a portable stage on the grass bordering the wide concrete walkway on the north side of the quad. Beside the stage, stuck into the grass on a couple of poles like a volleyball net, was a banner that read Students for Decency and Morality, with crosses in the four corners. Students walking by glanced at the guys and the banner, then kept going on their way to the Student Union Building. They seemed to be thinking less about decency and morality than about lunch.

  I spotted one of our officers, Bob Stegrun. Ryan and I went over to talk to him. He told us everything was under control and that the rest of the detail would be in place within a few minutes.

  Ryan and I drifted over toward the stage, where a group of Richard Albright’s people were trying to scare up a crowd. A couple of girls from the group grabbed thick sticks of chalk and fanned out from the stage to write announcements on the walkway. Other kids passed out flyers and buttonholed people walking by. Up on the stage, a guy was setting up a microphone. All the activity started to pay off; there were now about fifty people milling about, waiting to see what the Students for Decency and Morality wanted to say. Three camera crews were in place, too, the reporters interviewing students.

  At one o’clock sharp, a guy stepped onto the stage and walked over to the microphone. He was about six-two, two-twenty. He had on black engineers’ boots, deeply scuffed, and tight black denim jeans. The short-sleeve shirt, a shiny black material, was cut tight to show off his weightlifter’s torso. His arms and the backs of his hands were covered with ink, some old and some new. A purple and red tat of a snake emerged from under his shirt and slithered onto his neck. On his right forearm, a crudely drawn black crucifix obscured some other, earlier tats.

  His face was deeply tanned and lined. He had thick black hair, cut short, no sideburns at all. His nose, crooked and scarred, looked like it had been broken a few times. He wore a goatee that was bordered by two or three days of stubble. As he adjusted the microphone stand and looked out over the couple of dozen people in front of the stage, he wore an expression that, on a less scary-looking dude, would be called serious or even solemn. But with his clothes and physique, I’d call it totally pissed off. The girls in the small crowd were wide-eyed.

  “I’d like your attention, please.” He waited a moment for the audience to get still before introducing himself as Richard Albright, president of Students for Decency and Morality. He was speaking on behalf of the group, he said, and gestured to a half-dozen other members standing behind him on the stage. He said he was going to make some remarks about the death of Professor Virginia Rinaldi, then make an important announcement. Here he paused for effect. The audience was respectfully quiet. Some bowed their heads. “Our message to you today is simple: the death of Virginia Rinaldi … was a very good thing.”

  There was a
gasp in the small audience. The students, as well as several middle-aged adults who looked like professors or administrators, shifted uncomfortably but then became silent. Students who had been passing by caught Albright’s amplified words and drifted over to the stage.

  “I realize you were not expecting to hear a statement like that.” When some members of the audience began to boo him, he raised his palms. “Give me a minute, please. I want to explain what I just said. Just give me a chance.” The audience obediently quieted down again. “Now, I am not saying that I wished Virginia Rinaldi dead. She was one of God’s creations, and she therefore was filled with the spirit of Christ—whether she knew it or not, and whether her actions reflected it. No, I did not hate her. I do not hate anyone. But I maintain that her death was a good thing—a good thing for us at Central Montana State University and for all of us in the city of Rawlings.”

  The people in the crowd looked puzzled, but they seemed willing to hear what this scary-looking guy had to say. He went into a long explanation of how she was a sinner who preached the false religion of secular humanism, how families and faith were out of date and inconsistent with today’s world. Rather than following the example of Jesus, she did the devil’s work by encouraging her students to wallow in their sexuality like animals. “So, my fellow students and members of the Central Montana State University community,” he said, “while it is our Christian duty to love the sinner, we must also hate the sin. I ask that you join with me in noting the passing of one of Christ’s children—and in sending a clear message to the administration not to repeat the mistake of allowing a person with these vile, sinful ideas to pollute our university community.”

  A young woman in the audience shouted out to him, “What was the announcement?” A couple other students in the audience began to talk among themselves. Then they started to chant “An-nounce-ment” in unison. Richard put up his hands, nodding his head to acknowledge that he heard the crowd and was going to deliver.

  “All right,” he said. “Yes, you’re right. I did tell you I was going to make an announcement today.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It gives me no pleasure to tell you this. But I think it is vitally important that you know—”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an object hurtling through the air toward Richard Albright. It hit him squarely on the left side of his face. He flinched, his hands coming up to his face. The object was a bottle, which shattered when it hit the stage. For a second, Albright’s people on the stage were frozen in horror; then they huddled around him to shield him from any further attack. One member of the group, a tall, thin guy in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and black wool cap, sprinted across the stage and leapt into the audience. He moved with such speed and authority that the crowd, which didn’t seem to understood what was happening, parted to let him through.

  As Ryan and I rushed toward the crowd where the wool-hat guy had disappeared, I saw Richard Albright wipe the blood from the gash on the side of his face, run across the stage, and follow the wool-hat guy into the audience.

  Girls in the crowd started to scream. Ryan and I and the uniforms were trying to get into the pack, but the audience members were pulling in toward the center of the crowd, and we had to push them aside. I still couldn’t see the wool-hat guy or Richard Albright.

  The uniforms were shouting for the crowd to get back. By the time I got into the crowd, I saw the wool-hat guy wrestling with another guy on the pavement. Neither of them looked like they knew what they were doing. Their long, thin arms were tangled up with each other, and they couldn’t get any separation to throw a punch. Still, because they were on the concrete walkway, I was concerned they could get hurt.

  Before any of the uniforms or Ryan or I could get in close enough to break it up, Richard Albright’s bulky figure was bending over them. He grabbed his wool-hat guy by the collar and pulled him off the other guy and tossed him to the side like he was a sack of potatoes. The wool-hat guy landed on his wrist, and I heard the unmistakable crack as a bone snapped. He cried out in pain and rolled helplessly on the pavement, cradling his broken wrist in his other arm.

  Paying no attention to the wool-hat guy, Albright was hunched over the kid on the ground. Ryan and two of the uniforms closed in on Albright and pushed him away. The kid on the ground was screaming in terror, even though he could see that Albright was restrained and wasn’t going to hurt him. Albright put his hands up in surrender, the gesture used by every rough boy to signal the cops that he wasn’t going to resist.

  The uniforms were calling for an ambulance to take care of the wool-hat guy with the broken wrist, and they had taken the other guy, presumably the one who had thrown the bottle at Albright, into custody. They left Ryan and me to deal with Richard Albright.

  “Mr. Albright, I’m Detective Seagate. This is my partner, Detective Miner.”

  A network video guy pointed his big lens into the conversation. Ryan pushed it away, saying “Stand back, please. Now.” His size and tone were persuasive; the video guy backed off.

  What Richard Albright did next, I could tell he’d been arrested before. He wouldn’t look at me. He just nodded, a quick gesture that he understood I was doing my job and he wasn’t going to put up a fight. It also said he wasn’t going to cooperate—which was his way of doing his job.

  “You want us to call an ambulance?” I pointed to his face. “That’s gonna need some stitches.”

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything. I got the feeling that this warrior of God wore his scars proudly.

  “You sure?”

  Again, he shook his head.

  Ryan pulled a white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and offered it to Richard Albright, who gave him a long, dismissive look, like the handkerchief was a lace doily.

  “All right, Mr. Albright, we want to bring you down to headquarters, have you make a statement about what happened today.”

  We started walking him toward the Charger. Ryan noticed the camera crew following us. He stopped and gave them a look, and they backed off.

  We got Richard Albright into the cruiser and drove back to headquarters, where we set up in Interview 1. Ryan put on the recorder, and I announced the time—1:23—and the names of the people in the room.

  “Mr. Albright, if you don’t get that wound stitched up, it’s gonna scar up pretty ugly. You sure you don’t want to let us take you over to the ER and get that taken care of?”

  He shook his head again.

  “I’d like you to say it out loud, if you don’t mind.”

  He paused and held my gaze. “Let’s just do this.”

  “All right. You went into the crowd and pulled your guy off the guy who threw the bottle at you. Is that correct so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when we pulled you off the guy who threw the bottle—what were you planning to do to that guy?”

  “I was going to pick him up off the ground. Make sure he was okay.”

  “Really?”

  “What I said. Then I was gonna apologize to him, for Ronny coming after him like that.”

  “That’s very gracious of you. I mean, after the guy threw the bottle at you, cut you up.”

  Richard Albright stared at me. “Is there a question in that?”

  “No, just an observation,” I said. “Let’s talk a little bit about your speech. What was your goal in saying the death of Virginia Rinaldi was a good thing?”

  “Tell the truth. ‘The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”

  Ryan spoke. “And you saw it as your job—two days after her death—to make that point?”

  He turned his head slowly to face Ryan. “‘I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’”

  I didn’t know what was happening.

  Ryan, apparently, did. He said, “‘Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from y
our Father who is in heaven.’”

  Richard Albright pulled his head back, like he hadn’t expected a cop to know the Bible. Albright nodded at him, a signal of new respect. “If the university will not send a righteous message to its students, I have no choice but to become Christ’s messenger.”

  “Mr. Albright,” I said, “what are your plans now, I mean regarding the death of Virginia Rinaldi?”

  “Students for Decency and Morality have no plans to interfere in any way with anybody’s services or funeral for her. We’re going to stay away. However, we do plan to pressure the university administration to hire a replacement who does not preach immorality.”

  “Did you really see Professor Rinaldi as a threat to the morals of the students?”

  Richard Albright shifted in his blue plastic chair. “I can prove it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The announcement I was going to make? I was going to say that there is a student on campus who appears in a pornographic video on the Internet.”

  “That’s because of Professor Rinaldi?”

  He raised an eyebrow, as if the answer was obvious.

  “What does your group plan to do about that student?”

  “What a doctor plans to do about a cancer.”

  “Exactly what does that mean?”

  “Remove her from campus so that she does not advertise her sinful practices.”

  “But you said the video’s on the Internet. It’s already advertising.”

  “When it becomes known that she is a student here, the sin will become magnified.”

  “You do understand that, if there is a student who’s made a porn video that’s all over the Internet, that’s none of your business, right? You do understand that? And you have no right to remove her like a cancer, or whatever you said? You get that, don’t you?”

  Albright opened and closed his jaw, then winced, like his wound was starting to hurt him. “What I get is what the Bible teaches, which is that there is no authority except from God. But to put it in secular terms, Detective, my speech is protected by the Constitution. And I will continue to speak, tomorrow and the day after that, until our earthly kingdom has been purged of the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the adulterers, and those who practice homosexuality.”