Training Four Murder

by Diana X Dunn

  “Sara, does that agree with your impression of the scene?” Luke asked.

  She shrugged. “It was pitch-black inside the maze. I tripped over the body and then rushed to get out of the maze. I didn’t really have time to form an impression. I simply assumed that something awful had happened.”

  “You said it was murder,” Tamara said shrilly.

  “I believe what we could see on the cameras supported that theory,” Sara replied. “As Jake and Robert had done their best to set things up to look like a murder scene, that’s hardly surprising.”

  “So there won’t be any investigation into Jake’s death?” Jeff asked.

  “Dr. Freeman is going to conduct an autopsy. If his findings confirm that Jake died of natural causes, then there won’t be anything to investigate,” Robert said.

  Sara was sure that Jeff looked relieved at Robert’s words. She filed the observation away to consider later.

  “So what happens now?” Lacey asked.

  “I’m cancelling classes for the rest of the day,” Robert announced. “We’ll have a small memorial service for Jake at six tonight. I’d like you all to attend, but it isn’t required. Classes will resume as normal tomorrow. You’ll be spending most of the day with Ethel, but Sara will be taking each of you in turn to the weapons range for some individualized instruction. I’ll let her explain how that is going to work.”

  He looked expectantly at Sara, who sighed. “You all just need to go to Ethel’s classroom in the morning. I’ll come and collect you, one at a time, for a forty-minute session with weapons. Once we’re done, I’ll return you to Ethel and take the next person.”

  “Who gets to go first?” Tamara asked.

  “I’ll make that decision later,” Sara replied. “If anyone has a preference on what time they go, please let me know.”

  “I don’t need weapons training,” Jeff said.

  “Everyone will have a session with me tomorrow,” Sara countered. “If you truly are an expert, then you can have a go at outshooting me. Once I’ve seen exactly what everyone can do, I’ll plan additional sessions only for those who need them.”

  Jeff didn’t look happy, but he didn’t reply. After a minute, Robert spoke again.

  “That’s all for now, then. I hope to see you all at six.” He turned and marched to the door. “Sara? Ethel? A moment of your time, please,” he added as he pulled the door open.

  Sara was reluctant to follow him. She’d been hoping to have a quick chat with the students before they dispersed. It might be her only chance to talk about Jake’s death with them while it was still fresh in their minds.

  Robert led the two women back to the main building while chatting about his plans for the memorial service that evening. “Ethel, can you spare an hour now to help me get everything ready for tonight?” he asked as he held open a door for them.

  “Of course,” she agreed.

  “Sara, I’d be grateful if you could pull up the course plans for Jake’s classes and take a look at them. I need to know if there are any lessons there that you feel you could adequately cover. As I said, I’ll be taking his place, but I won’t necessarily have the time to teach everything myself.”

  Sara nodded. “I’ll do that right away.”

  “We can discuss it at four, when you come to my office,” he told her before leaving her at the door to her suite. He and Ethel continued down the corridor while Sara let herself into her room.

  After locking her door and adding an extra security code to the lock, Sara went into the bedroom and pulled down a suitcase. The mini-lab inside the case was a fairly basic one, but it would give her the answers she needed. She carefully cut away a portion of the bloodstained fabric from her shirt and slid it into the lab’s processing window. A moment later, after a few clicks and whirrs, she had results.

  “Human blood, type B,” the device told her.

  She’d expected as much, but she’d been hoping for something else. Whatever the lab results, she’d felt the knife, of course. Pacing around the suite’s living room, she tried to think. Jake had been murdered and Robert was determined to cover it up. Was he simply trying to protect the school or did he have other reasons for wanting to hide what had happened? Jake’s voice seemed to ring in her ears.

  “I know where the bodies are buried,” he’d laughed at their first meeting. The man’s subsequent behavior certainly seemed to suggest that he had some sort of hold over Robert that allowed him to behave badly and still keep his job. Was it possible that Robert had murdered Jake?

  The lab machine beeped again. Sara looked at the screen. The machine had found something else on the scrap of fabric. It only took a second to type the chemical formula displayed into her M-ped. It was the formula for an artificial blood substitute, exactly the sort of thing that Robert would have used to create a fake crime scene. Feeling puzzled, Sara cut several more samples from her shirt and her trousers. As the machine analyzed them, she took a shower and changed.

  The results only confused her more. Five of the seven samples contained nothing but the blood substitute. The first sample she’d tested showed an almost equal percentage of human blood versus the substitute. The seventh sample was almost one hundred percent human blood. As a dozen possible explanations began to play through her head, she used her M-ped to pull up the course plans for Jake’s class. Whatever else she was doing, she needed to appear to be doing what Robert had asked.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Robert said a few minutes after four as Sara showed him the list of the classes she felt she could cover.

  “I want to do what I can to help the school succeed,” she replied. “Having said that, I do hope that I won’t have to cover all of these classes. I already have a rather heavy course load.”

  “You do, of course,” Robert agreed. “I’m hoping I won’t need you to teach more than one or two extra classes now and again, but it’s good to know which ones you’re comfortable with teaching, just in case. I should have had you do this when I first hired you, really. I should have had all of the instructors go through all of the classes in the same way, really.”

  “I don’t want to teach code breaking or financials,” Sara said quickly, winking at Ethel.

  “And I don’t want to teach field work,” the older woman said. “I could probably teach a few of Jake’s classes, though. I worked with the police enough over the years to understand how they operate.”

  “We’ve two former police officers taking the course, as well,” Sara pointed out. “I’m sure their input will be valuable as time goes on.”

  “I was thinking of asking one or both of them to help out, but that seems wrong, considering they’re both paying to be here,” Robert said.

  “The students are all adults with unique backgrounds. Perhaps we should be open to their input when we’re covering topics in their individual areas of expertise,” Ethel suggested. “I’ve been thinking of asking Lloyd for his thoughts on some of the topics in the financials section, for example.”

  “I’m sure he’d love to be asked. He seems to be feeling rather out of his depth so far, at least in my classes,” Sara said.

  “I’m not sure why he’s even here,” Robert sighed. “It was made clear to him that this course focused on field training. He assured me that he was up to the challenge.”

  “Perhaps Dr. Freeman could work out why Lloyd is here,” Ethel suggested.

  “Dr. Freeman will be unavailable for the next few days,” Robert replied. “He’s taking Jake’s body to Dallas for the autopsy and for further tests.”

  “Why Dallas?” Sara asked.

  “I have connections there,” Robert explained.

  Sara nodded, not happy with Robert’s words. Would his connections be willing to falsify lab results at Robert’s request, she wondered.

  They spent several minutes going through plans for the rest of the week. Sara was unsurprised to find that she was now teaching an additional three classes.

&
nbsp; “I promise it won’t be like this every week,” Robert said with a chuckle as Sara got to her feet. “I didn’t know I was going to be teaching, or I wouldn’t have made so many appointments elsewhere. Now that I know I’ll be teaching, I’ll try to cut back on my other responsibilities.”

  “Maybe you should be looking at replacing Jake,” Sara suggested.

  “I suppose that’s an option,” he said. “I’d originally planned to teach the course myself, you know. Jake kept insisting that he wasn’t interested in giving up police work and moving to teaching. It was only a few weeks ago that he messaged me to let me know that he’d changed his mind.”

  “What happened a few weeks ago?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t think anything happened, particularly. He didn’t tell me about anything, anyway. He just told me that was getting burnt out and needed a break. He’d only committed himself to teaching this one intake of students. I believe he’d simply taken a sabbatical from the force. They were meant to be holding his job open for him if he wanted to go back in six months.”

  “He seemed happy to be here,” Sara said.

  “I think he was happy to be here, but I’m not sure he would have been content long term. Jake liked being in the middle of the action.” Robert blinked several times and then swallowed hard. “I don’t like speaking about him in the past tense.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Sara told him.

  “Thank you. As I said earlier, we were partners and that means a lot in the police,” Robert replied.

  “Have you notified the station in Chicago that he’s passed?” Ethel asked.

  “I have. I spoke to Herman Stonebridge, the man who was his most recent partner. It was a difficult conversation. He told me that he hadn’t really expected Jake to come back to Chicago, but he’d never imagined that anything would happen to him out here.”

  “Did he know that Jake had heart trouble?” Sara wondered.

  “Apparently, Jake had had some medical issues just before he left. Actually, that might be the thing that triggered his decision to come out here, now that I think about it. Jake never told Herman what was wrong with him, he just took a few afternoons off for medical appointments, something he’d never done before. Dr. Freeman will have to find out, of course, as part of his investigation.”

  Sara nodded. “It’s all very sad, of course. I’ll see you both at the service at six.”

  “Thank you again for all of your help,” Robert said. He got to his feet and walked her to the office door. “See you at six.”

  What do you wear for a memorial service for a man you didn’t like, she wondered as she paced around her room an hour later. She’d eaten a bar for dinner and washed it down with a small glass of some horrible white wine. Hoping that the alcohol would make the evening ahead more bearable, she opted not to take a neutralizing agent. Now she zipped herself into a plain black dress and slid on flat black shoes. That would have to do.

  “Ah, there you are,” Robert said in a low voice as Sara walked into the large meeting room where the service was going to be held.

  Sara just nodded. He and Ethel were the only ones there. For a moment, she worried that the students weren’t going to bother to attend before she heard voices in the corridor.

  “This is awful,” Lloyd said as he walked into the room. He was wearing the same suit that he’d worn to the first day of classes. Luke was right behind him.

  “That’s a nice suit,” Ethel said to Luke.

  Sara tried not to stare at Luke who looked incredibly handsome in a very dark grey suit. A subtle pinstripe kept it from being too somber and she found herself wanting to stroke the rich-looking fabric.

  “You look amazing,” Tamara gushed as she rushed into the room and grabbed Luke’s arm. “I love a man in a nice suit. It’s so much fun helping them get out of all those layers.”

  Luke nodded at her but didn’t reply.

  “I don’t know if that dress is appropriate,” Lloyd said.

  Tamara shrugged. “I mostly brought jeans and T-shirts. This dress was for clubbing, if we ever went.”

  The low cut neckline and short skirt made the dress perfect for clubbing. Only its color, black, made it at all suitable for a memorial service.

  “I don’t think any of us were prepared for this,” Lacey said as she joined the crowd. She was wearing a pair of black jeans and a simple sweater.

  “You look lovely,” Luke said, earning a frown from Tamara.

  “Mark, there you are,” Tamara exclaimed. She let go of Luke’s arm and rushed to Mark’s side.

  Mark was also wearing a suit, but one that had clearly been bought off the rack. The sleeves were a bit too short and the bottom of the jacket was slightly too long. Bill was right behind him and similarly dressed.

  “We should get started,” Robert said as he looked around the room.

  “Jeff isn’t here yet,” Tamara pointed out.

  “We’ll start without him,” Robert replied.

  There were chairs arranged in rows in front of a small lectern. As everyone took seats, Robert moved to stand at the lectern. Sara sat down next to Ethel and had to hide a smile as Luke took the seat on her other side. Once everyone was seated, Robert began.

  “I don’t want to bore you all with endless stories about Jake and me, but I’ll share a few, anyway,” he began.

  An hour later, Sara was tired of hearing about how wonderful Jake had been. The way Robert told it, the pair had been the most successful pairing in the history of the Chicago Police Department, putting criminals behind bars a rate that had never been seen before. Sara had dug through enough of Robert’s past to know that he was exaggerating wildly, but she’d been expecting that.

  “I suppose I should stop,” Robert said eventually. “I don’t want to stop. I want to keep talking about Jake. I want to keep his memory alive. I worry that once I stop, everyone will start to forget about Jake.” He shook his head. “We can’t let that happen. I welcome your suggestions on the best way or ways to memorialize the man. Perhaps we can name a building in his honor or something. Please, bring me every idea you think of. I won’t let Jake be forgotten.”

  “He’s pretty broken up about his friend’s death, isn’t he?” Luke whispered as Sara shifted in her seat.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to meet his eyes. Alex had always insisted that he could identify her, no matter what identity she was using, because he could see the real her in her eyes. While she and Luke had never been more than friends, she worried that he might be similarly perceptive.

  “I’d like to invite each of you to come forward and say a few words about your own relationship with Jake now,” Robert said. “Ethel, maybe you’d like to start.”

  Ethel nodded and slowly rose to her feet. When she reached Robert, she patted him on the arm before she turned around to face everyone else. “Jake and I didn’t always agree on things, but I believe he would have been an excellent instructor in police procedures. He was charming at times and challenging at times. I’m sure he will be missed. Sara, would you like to go next?”

  Sara gritted her teeth and then got to her feet. As she walked to the front of the room, she toyed with the idea of being completely honest about Jake. It might be fun to watch everyone’s reaction if she told them about how he’d forced his way into her room and then locked the door and refused to leave.

  “Jake and I were still coming to grips with our working relationship,” she said instead. “Given time, I’m sure we would have found common ground. As Ethel said, he will be missed.” Not by me, but probably by someone, she added silently as she walked back to her chair.

  A few of the students make remarks about how interesting Jake’s classes had been and then Candie wrapped things up with a non-denominational prayer to whatever higher being might be out in the universe. From where she was sitting, Sara thought it looked as if Candie had been crying. Was she actually mourning for Jake? It was an interesting idea.

  “Thank you all
for coming,” Robert said. “I’ve brought a few bottles of wine. Perhaps everyone would like to join me in a toast to Jake.”

  There was no polite way to avoid it, so Sara lined up with the students, waiting for Robert to pour drinks for them all.

  “To Jake,” Robert said when everyone had a glass. “He was my friend, my partner, and a good man. I’m going to miss him.”

  Sara downed her drink in a single swallow and then headed for the door, feeling an almost desperate need to get away from everyone. Several of the students were right behind her.

  “Don’t rush off,” Robert called. “We should all get drunk. It’s what Jake would have wanted.”

  Sara didn’t slow down until she was back in her room.

  Chapter 7

  “I’d like to start with Donna, please,” she told Ethel the next morning.

  Ethel looked slightly surprised, but didn’t question Sara’s decision. Instead, she turned and looked around the room. “Donna, if you could go with Sara now, please,” she said.

  Donna looked even more surprised, but she got to her feet and followed Sara out of the room without saying a word.

  Sara led the woman through the building and out to the small transport she’d left outside. The drive to the weapons range didn’t take long.

  “I know a bit about your history,” Sara began. “You’ll have used a lot of these weapons before.”

  “Some of them,” Donna shrugged.

  “Let’s see how good you are, then,” Sara challenged. She handed the woman a laser pistol and took one herself. “Start with the ten-yard target and keep moving out until you miss.”

  The women were silent as they began shooting. Sara shot her way through the targets, enjoying having something to focus on that required total concentration. When she’d hit the final target, a hundred yards away, she turned and looked at Donna. “How did you do?”

  “I missed at ten-yards.”

  “Try again, then. This time, I’ll watch you.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t like weapons. There was an incident, in my last job, where a weapon was discharged in error. I’d prefer to skip this part of the training, please.”