Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  Inythin. Wayne was starting to annoy her. Harmless as he was, this was the second time he’d caused a panic attack. And he smelled. Not that she was proud of it, but she and her friends had often talked about how Wayne wore the same shirt all week, a clean one only on Mondays. Typical bachelor, they’d said, but Jake was as well-groomed as her own father, even when he lived alone.

  MC’s breathing finally slowed down. “What’s going on, Wayne? Where have you been?” She rubbed her arm through her sweatshirt, then massaged her lower calf where the metal ridge of the Nissan had dug in.

  Wayne turned to face her, his knees now on the floor of the car, surrounded by empty water bottles and magazines on their way to recycling.

  “Come away with me, MC.”

  MC gave him an incredulous look. “What? What are you talking about?”

  She really wanted to ask, “Are you crazy?” but forced something less offensive out of her mouth, not to be too rude, and just in case he had gone off the deep end. Wayne Gallen was a good chemist, everyone agreed, but also a little strange. Although he must have earned the same good salary as all the other program chemists, he lived in a trailer park outside town, brought his own lunch every day in what looked like the same paper sack, and gave no visible sign of spending his money elsewhere. And his long, red handlebar mustache alone was enough to qualify him as weird, MC thought.

  She’d always known Wayne had a crush on her. Now and then he’d ask MC how things were going with Jake, as if hoping she’d say, “I’m through with Jake. Let’s you and me party!”

  “Can we start from the beginning, Wayne? Where have you been since you left the police station last week?”

  “I’ve been hiding out, you might say.”

  “Why?” MC heard herself ask whaa? in the whiny sound of her own come-and-go Texas accent. She swallowed, as if to get the drawl out of her mouth.

  “MC, you got to trust me. I did not kill that girl, but I don’t want to be answering to these Back East police.”

  “You mean Mary Roderick, uh, Nina Martin? Wayne, they caught the guy who shot her. And now he’s dead, too. There’s nothing to hide from.”

  “You don’t know the whole story, MC.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I can’t tell you now. You’re in enough trouble as it is, but believe me, this is how it has to be. I tried to warn you last week.”

  MC clicked her tongue, frustrated. That email thing again.

  “I checked, Wayne. There’s nothing in my emails to—”

  “You’re not safe here. We need to disappear, get a new start, MC.” Wayne grabbed her hand. Kneeling, holding her hand, he looked like he was going to propose. A pitiful sight.

  Wayne kissed MC’s hand. She shrank back. From the bit of moonlight that reached to the interior of the Nissan she caught a glimpse of his eyes. A creepy gray-green color, watery, darting around the parking lot as he talked. He wore a silly Dallas Cowboys cap, embroidered with a cartoon horse in football gear.

  “I’ve always loved you, MC. From the first day you brought your students into our lab. Remember that field trip sort of thing you did?”

  An SUV with enormous tires and a bar of lights across its roof turned into the lot. She considered trying to get their attention, but the vehicle did a quick U-turn and drove off. It was okay, she told herself. Wayne might be a smitten cowboy, but he was also a scientist; she could reason with him.

  “Wayne—”

  “I know Jake is in the area,” Wayne said.

  How do you know that? MC felt the panic return. She tried to remember self-defense moves. Wayne was strong, but small-built, like Jake; she ought to be able to get away from him. She blew out a breath and tuned in again to what he was saying.

  “You don’t want to take Jake back, MC. He doesn’t know how to treat you. I bet he treats his horses better. You were right to leave him in the first place.”

  Suddenly, the Nissan seemed too small for both of them. She felt Wayne’s foul breath on her, smelled his sweaty clothes—the tight black jeans and that very ugly brown western-style shirt reeked, even more intensely than when he’d first gotten in. MC was breathing hard, as if she had just finished a run. She tried to gain control of herself, lest she freak Wayne out by her body language, and … who knew what he’d do? The last car besides MC’s started up, probably Rick’s, since the club closed at seven. The parking lot was not visible from the street, and once Rick left, there was no chance anyone would come around. If she were quick, she might be able to jump out of her car and run screaming to Rick.

  She slid over far enough to press down on the door handle. Locked. Wayne must have hit the child-proofing button while he was shoving her in the backseat.

  “Not a good idea, MC.” Wayne frowned; his voice went down in pitch. He squeezed her hand harder, put his other hand on her thigh.

  MC stifled a scream. “I just need some air, Wayne.” Not a lie, MC thought she would suffocate in the close quarters. Wayne’s breath reeked of garlic or onion, or both. And cigarettes, definitely. Not alcohol, at least, she thought. She was an expert at detecting that.

  Wayne smiled, apparently satisfied; he reached across the seatback and opened the driver’s door a crack, still holding her down with his strong grip. She estimated the chances that she could get in a punch or a kick and then fling herself over to the front seat on the driver’s side, and out the slightly open door. Slim to none.

  MC sat back, tried to look comfortable, and gathered her wits. She summoned a calm voice.

  “I need to think about this, Wayne.” She forced a smile, counting on the darkness to hide its deceit. “It’s a big decision, but you’re right, I should definitely not go back to Jake.” Tell them what they want to hear, she’d learned from women-in-peril movies. She could use a Keanu Reeves or a Colin Farrell right now, to drive in on a motorcycle and save her. And where were her brothers when she needed them?

  Wayne seemed to relax. Could it be this easy?

  “Okay, MC. I can see that.” Talking so slowly. Was he on something? “You do care for me, don’t you? I can tell. And I would be very, very good to you.”

  “I know you would, Wayne.” MC was amazed at how convincing she sounded. Thinking of movie stars had helped; she’d cast herself in a woman-in-jeopardy role and now she was playing it out. “Where can I reach you?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you.”

  His grin sent a chill through her. Be Ashley Judd, she thought. Jodie Foster. Julia Roberts. MC reached out with her free hand, ran it over Wayne’s stubbly cheeks, her brush with his mustache grossing her out.

  Wayne leaned into her, kissed her hard, but then abruptly released his hold. He let out a long sigh, left her car, and disappeared into the trees.

  MC could hardly move. She looked for a vehicle but couldn’t see or hear one. Where had he gone? Then, why does it matter? She quickly flipped herself over into the driver’s seat, not wanting to step out of her car, even now that she wasn’t being held captive.

  As soon as she hit the street, she grabbed her bottle of water from the cup holder. She rinsed out her mouth, lowered her window, and spit the taste of Wayne Gallen into the gutter.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It wasn’t like me to miss deadlines, even self-imposed ones, but my concern for Matt and for MC had pushed my to-call list out of my mind. At seven o’clock on Tuesday evening, it was time to get back on track, I decided.

  I looked up the home phone number for Daniel Endicott, the young science teacher and Science Club leader at Revere High, and punched it in. Thanks to Daniel and his enthusiasm, the science curriculum had greatly expanded since my day, giving students electives in astronomy, meteorology, and environmental sciences, besides the core subjects and several AP courses.

  “We’re conducting a study of coyote populations in urban areas,” Daniel told me over the phone, prompting me to wonder if there was any end to the Texas influence in Revere. “We’re trapping the animals,
with humane boxes, of course. We put radio transmitter collars on them so we can track them for up to three years. We’re working with a vet—Dr. Timothy Schofield. He’s local, so maybe you know him. In fact, he might come to your talk. He’s going to do a session for us later on, and he wants to get an idea of how to do it.”

  I smiled at the idea of a humane trap, and also at the notion that I might know a veterinarian. I’d studiously avoided pets all my life, not wanting any more maintenance chores than those already required for clean clothes and dishes. That I might be a model high school lecturer also added to my amusement.

  “Sounds like you have the wildlife topic covered. I’m leaning toward buckyballs at the moment,” I told him.

  “Cool,” he said, sounding like his predecessor and peer, Erin Wong, who was on maternity leave. “I’m a huge fan of Bucky Fuller. Very cool.” I decided cool was the designated enthusiastic response of people under thirty. I tried to remember what Rose and I would have said at their age; it seemed it would have been a long sentence, correctly constructed. But then, we weren’t very cool in those days.

  “And, for the second talk, I thought I’d do Maria Telkes.”

  “Sure.”

  Not cool. I figured he didn’t know her. “Hungarian-American, physical chemist. You might have heard of her as the Sun Queen. She designed the first solar-powered house, long before it was fashionable. It went up in 1948 and is still in use, in Dover.”

  “Dover, Mass.?”

  “That’s right. I thought your students might relate to her. Telkes started her research when she was in high school, then went to MIT. She has many other solar-power patents; we ought to have your class try to reproduce some of the simpler ones, like her solar oven.”

  “Cool. I’m all into solar stuff, so I’m surprised I haven’t heard of her. By the way, Gloria, did you hear about the dead body in the marsh last week?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “Well, the weird thing is I got my general science students involved in the restoration project. You know, some dumb land debates held up that construction project, so it became, like, one large junkyard. So I got my kids interested in the cleanup. Environmental consciousness and all that. We hauled more than three tons of trash out of there last year. Well, the point is we were there the day before the dead woman turned up. It would have been awful if one of them had stumbled onto a dead body.”

  Daniel uttered a shuddering noise.

  “Awful,” I agreed.

  “The reason I’m telling you is, maybe you could mention to the class—the parents, really, but the kids will take the info home—that it’s not dangerous to be out there. You know, the chances of getting murdered out there are …”

  “Very slim, Daniel. I’ll be happy to reinforce that, though maybe you want a visiting detective in your class. In fact, you can tell the students the police think the woman was murdered somewhere else and her body dumped there.”

  “Oh,” he said, weakly, and I imagined he was considering whether that made things sound better or worse to the parents.

  When we hung up, I put a check mark next to Daniel’s name, and wrote buckyballs and Telkes in large letters off to the side.

  Andrea Cabrini, a technician at Charger Street lab, was next on my list. I’d done better in the last couple of months keeping in touch with her, and not simply using her as a way for me to get into the lab without a badge. Andrea was the kind of person who wouldn’t have minded the latter, but I would have. I was glad I’d invited her to lunch last week, when there was no murder on the agenda.

  I punched in Andrea’s number. She gave me her usual enthusiastic greeting, always making me feel she’d been sitting around hoping I’d call.

  “Hi, Gloria. I’ve been thinking about you.” She lowered her voice. “The body in the marsh and all. And I figured you’d need a consultant.”

  “A consultant to a consultant. You’re too good to me,” I said.

  “I pass by there all the time, when I go to see my aunt in Lynn.”

  Andrea had come a long way from the days when she would have thought she might be a suspect herself, for just such a drive-by connection. Her “big, beautiful woman” status didn’t help her self-confidence, but I thought she was doing better since she’d started dating my old friend, Peter Mastrone.

  Gloria, the matchmaker.

  “The only thing is, I couldn’t see that there was a link to the lab,” she said.

  “The police didn’t release everything, Andrea.” I lowered my voice for effect, bringing her into the small inner circle. “It turns out there might be a connection.”

  “Wow.” She whispered, matching the pitch of my clandestinemeeting voice.

  How good I’d become at manipulation—I knew Andrea loved being on the inside of police work. Come to think of it, so did I.

  “I have some brochures on the buckyball program, but I need some real, technical reports. Can you meet me—”

  “You bet. When and where?”

  I gave her specifics of what I would like, and we made a date for the next morning. I checked another name off my list.

  I made a few other calls, leaving Jean for last. I’d decided I should personally confirm her visit, and make her feel welcome. I’d prepared an “I’m looking forward to having you” line, with a tone to match. I can do this much for Matt, I told myself. As luck would have it, I was interrupted in the middle of dialing her Cape Cod number.

  MC arrived on our doorstep out of breath, her eyes filled with tears and panic. She flung her keys onto the small table in our entryway, and curled up on the couch, pulling her hands back into the sleeves of her navy blue sweatshirt. Her retreat position.

  “I’ve never been so scared in my life. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me. Kidnap me, or … or kill me.”

  Jake Powers, I thought.

  “Wayne Gallen,” she said.

  Déjà vu—like midnight at the RPD, my thinking of Jake when Wayne was the culprit.

  I sat down next to her. Matt, who’d been reading the newspaper while I was phoning, gave MC a glass of water, which she guzzled down too fast, causing her to cough for a few seconds. I waited for the details, flexing my fingers, clenching my jaw. Had he … raped her? I could hardly think the word, and looked for signs that might tell me. MC did not look disheveled or bruised, which brought me some relief.

  I let her tell the story, in fits and starts. The parking lot at the Windside in Winthrop, entering her car, keeping her there, wanting her to go away with him, once again telling her she’s in danger from someone in Houston.

  “I don’t know if he’s crazy—well, I do know he’s crazy—but is he just crazy or am I really in danger from something?”

  My question exactly.

  “I didn’t know whether to go to the police first, or come here, Aunt G,” MC said, addressing me but looking at Matt. “I figured coming here was a little of both.”

  “You did the right thing,” I said, patting her hand. I looked across at Matt for confirmation. He gave a slight nod, as if to say we were half right, that MC should have made an official complaint. Matt was tied into law enforcement protocol in a way that I was not.

  “Did he give you any idea where he’s staying?” Matt asked.

  MC shook her head. “He appeared from nowhere, and then left. I wasn’t paying attention to the direction he went. There was no other car in sight, so I don’t know how he got there or how he got away.”

  “I know he hasn’t rented a car from any of the local places—we checked, just for closure after we let him go last week,” Matt said. “We could check again, see if anything’s changed in the last few days.” Matt had taken out his notebook. Making this now an official interview?

  “What about the car Rusty Forman rented?” I asked, wondering if indeed hit men did rent cars. “Maybe Wayne took that car.”

  Matt shook his head. “That vehicle was impounded from outside the motel when Forman’s body was found. Either it�
��s still in the impound lot, or it was returned to the rental agency, a place at Logan if I remember correctly.”

  “What should I do?” MC asked, looking like a child, asking a question to which there should be a simple answer. I felt utterly inadequate.

  “A PFA,” Matt said. “That’s about all we can do at the moment.”

  “Isn’t that like a restraining order? Is that it?” I asked, my voice shrill.

  “Protection From Abuse, a specific kind of restraining order. Even that’s pushing it,” Matt said, “since he didn’t really threaten her. Right, MC?”

  She nodded, shrugged her shoulders. “I guess not,” she said, in a weak voice.

  “He entered her car and kept her there against her will,” I reminded them both.

  “Let me get busy on the PFA,” Matt said, doing his job.

  We have to find him first, to serve him, I thought, but decided not to make a point of it.

  An hour later, I sat next to MC in my old apartment on Tuttle Street. Matt had insisted on accompanying us. He made some calls from MC’s phone, then fell asleep in one of my old glide rockers. I worried about all the extra napping he was doing these days, and hoped it didn’t mean his system was breaking down. The cancerous “five” that was always at the back of my mind.

  MC had installed her computer on the opposite side of the room from where mine had been, and I felt lopsided. I found myself checking off items in the apartment that were the same as when I’d lived there. The blue-and-white speckled linoleum in the kitchen, a small bookcase I’d brought from California, appliances that were duplicates with Matt’s, like the espresso maker and the toaster. I’d left MC my bed, too, and it looked the same, except for colorful pillows that I wouldn’t have thought to add.

  We sat together in front of her monitor, waiting, after MC clicked on open messages.