Deadly Misconduct

by R. J. Amos

  But there was no evidence of smoking or drug taking, the house was well looked after – clean and tidy. There was even a vase of fresh flowers on the front hall table. There was newish furniture and nice blinds on the windows.

  It wasn’t a dysfunctional household. No evidence of drugs, no need for money, so what was the motivation? Why on earth had this crime been committed? Had it been committed by Sally at all?

  ‘Sally, you were one of the wait staff at the conference dinner held at ‘The Bay’ last week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you serve Prof Conneally?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nate got tired of the monosyllabic replies. Maybe she was just holding herself together but holding it in was not going to solve this case. If it had to be tears, it had to be tears.

  ‘Listen, I can sit here for as long as it takes. It is obvious to me that you have something to tell me that will help me know why this guy was murdered, its obvious that something is bothering you. I’ll wait. You can let me know in your own good time.’

  The tears started in earnest then. The ‘M’ word had a huge effect. Nate waited as the sobs wracked her body. It was like she had been holding her emotion in for days and he had turned the relief valve. He felt for her but at the same time he knew now he was definitely on to something. Finally, the fountain dried up and hiccupping and sniffing, Sally opened up.

  ‘I didn’t intend this to happen. It wasn’t what I thought would happen. I just thought he would be sick, not that he would die! Not die!’

  ‘How about you start from the beginning.’

  ‘The beginning? I don’t really know the beginning. Josh knows. I only know a bit.’

  ‘Who is Josh?’

  ‘You mean, you think it’s all me? All my fault?’ the valve was open again, the tears flowing and a look of terror on her face, ‘It was Josh, it was all Josh, I only ... I didn’t know!’

  ‘Ok, ok,’ Nate calmed her down. He said that he really wished that Jan could have been there to help out.

  The assigned police woman was just sitting there – fulfilling her duty of being present in body but she was not going to get involved, apparently. Nate was pretty much on his own.

  ‘Ok, have a drink, calm yourself down, and tell me about this Josh. It’s going to be ok, just let me know your story. Start from the point where you came in.’

  ‘Whatever that meant,’ Nate said. ‘I was firing arrows in the dark. I really hoped I’d get some clarity, and soon.’

  Sally made a valiant effort to pull herself together. She blew her nose, had a sip of water and stared at the desk for a few minutes before taking a deep breath and telling her story.

  ‘I met Josh, Joshua Hume, that is, a few years ago. Oh gosh, maybe eight years? Maybe longer. No, it was our seven year anniversary last year – we must have met eight or nine years ago. He was pretty down – he had just been kicked out of uni for something that wasn’t his fault. I mean, if your professor tells you to do something, you do it, right? I mean, he just did what he was told. But the professor got off scot-free and he got all the losses. We would spend hours talking, we really got along well, and I guess that the uni situation was something we talked about a lot. I really felt for him. I wanted to make him feel better.’

  ‘Do you know anything about what went wrong at the university?’

  ‘No, he never told me the story. He said it was too complicated and I wouldn’t understand. He just told me how he felt about it and, you know, the general unfairness of it all.’

  Nate wondered what Jan would have said if he’d tried to fob her off with the same excuse. He reckoned he wouldn’t have heard the last of it for years.

  ‘So you’ve been together for seven years?’

  ‘Yep, we hooked up together pretty much straight away, he’s been the best boyfriend I’ve ever had but it’s been obvious to me that this whole thing has been eating away at him all the time – just in the background, you know.’

  ‘The being kicked out of uni thing?’

  ‘Yeah, it wasn’t his fault, he said. It was the professor’s fault. But he never suffered anything and Josh lost everything. So when the professor was actually in town for this conference thingy and Josh told me he wanted to do something to make him suffer, well, I thought, why not? I got a position as waitress at the conference dinner and made sure I was assigned to the VIP table. It wasn’t hard, I know a lot of people and I’m good at serving.’

  You wanted to make him suffer?’

  ‘Only a little bit.’

  ‘How do you suffer a little bit?’ asked Susannah.

  ‘Just to get some of what should have come to him before. Josh had given me some stuff to put on his food. He told me that it would make him pretty sick. Josh told me that when something happened I needed to be there to clear the food away and dispose of it so that no-one could link the sickness to anyone. I thought it was about time that the professor suffered for what he did. I was happy to help Josh out. I mean Josh had suffered! He had suffered for years. Never being able to get a proper uni position. His career had been taken away. It affected his whole life.’

  ‘Right, so you had some “stuff” – what sort of stuff?’

  ‘It was just some powder. I put it on the food. It was just meant to make him sick. But then ...’ Sally faltered, ‘He was never meant to die! That was never meant to happen. I’m sure that wasn’t what Josh meant to happen. When I saw him fall over I just, I hoped that it wasn’t my fault, I never set out to kill anyone! He was just supposed to get sick, that’s all. Just be sick for a couple of days. It wasn’t me that made him die. Was it? I’m sure he was just sick from something else ...’

  Sally’s voice trailed away as the full force of what she had done closed in on her again. Nate could see that when she thought about Joshua, she could almost make herself believe that what she had done was for the good – a righteous act of vengeance on behalf of an injured person. But once her thoughts turned back to the professor, she realised that she didn’t have the authority to take anyone’s life.

  And while Joshua’s situation was pitiable, it did not mean that any of the actions taken were acceptable. Not even the thought of making the professor sick. Revenge just doesn’t work, Nate thought, you just have to let it go. For your own sake.

  Sally was staring at the table, tearing at one fingernail with her teeth, tears dripping down her face. Nate asked her where he would find Joshua.

  Sally looked up at him, totally broken.

  ‘You can’t. Don’t tell him I told you,’ she whispered, ‘He would never forgive me.’

  ‘Where do I find him, Sally?’ Nate spoke in a firmer voice and Sally responded to authority the way he guessed she always had.

  ‘He’s at the university. He works in the Chemistry Department.’

  And that’s when Nate had decided that I was in trouble. He had remembered Jan telling him that I was working there and he thought about my hair-brained ideas about who committed this murder and my habit of blurting it out to anyone listening – or at least that’s what he figured. He felt he had to get to the university immediately, before something went horribly wrong.

  ‘And that’s why I came running in.’

  ‘And found that my “hair-brained” ideas were just peachy, thank you very much!’

  ‘I guess so, in the end they were, anyway.’

  Now that the story was all told, Susannah, Trudy, and the two students had to head back to the university. We waved them goodbye and I stayed to help Jan and Nate clear off the table.

  I had to be honest. ‘Nate, it looks like you could have solved this whole thing without me.’

  ‘I’m not sure, your hunch was what got me started.’

  Jan asked, ‘are you two going to go into partnership now? You could be a great crime fighting team.’

  I was considering the question with a smile but Nate was much more certain.

  ‘No,’ he stated with great finality and we exploded with laugh
ter.

  I agreed. ‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of information. I couldn’t have figured anything out without the knowledge I got from doing the chemical analysis. I’m sure I’ll never be in the same situation again.’

  ‘So do you still think you’ll work towards a job in academia?’ Jan asked.

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder, I just don’t know. It’s really thrown me that Joshua could get it so out of proportion – that he could think that being an academic was that important. I don’t think it’s worth killing for.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Nate, stacking the plates in a pile.

  ‘And when you look at Brasindon, he was just so grumpy. He’d given his whole life for research – nothing else mattered – he couldn’t even have a fun conversation, let alone a hobby. He lived for the job but he was miserable. I don’t want to end up like that.’

  ‘You sure don’t,’ that was from Jan. I cleared off a few more mugs and took them into the kitchen. And Jan wiped down the table.

  ‘And then Conneally, it looked like he was starting to get the balance right. But how much of his life had he dedicated to the work? And his poor wife, she would have had to put up with the long hours, she was just as dedicated as he was. But then it all came to nothing in the end. His life was just taken away, just like that. It could happen to anyone – a car accident, or cancer, and then it’s all gone.’

  ‘This is getting morbid, what are you trying to say?’

  ‘I guess I’m thinking, I want a job, but I’m not sure if I want a job that takes all of your life away. Maybe I’m just not passionate enough about the science, but I want a chance to live a bit too. How much time have I spent in the lab that I wish I could just get back and spend with my mum? Do I want to lose you guys and the community here just so I can do some more science, and get the title ‘professor’? I don’t know. I think I’m going to have to think on it a bit more.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad. If that means you’re with us for a little longer, that’s a good thing in my book,’ said Jan.

  ‘Yep I’ll be staying at least a little bit longer. There’s the beach to walk on, the cottage to renovate, and many more coffees to enjoy right here. And I hear Susannah needs a new lab technician ...’

  The End

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  Acknowledgements

  To my St Clement’s family, to have a church family like you is an amazing privilege. Thank you so much for your support of my life journey all the way through. It’s so great to go to church and be reminded of what is really important (hint: it’s not this book).

  To Sandessa, thanks for the friendship first and foremost, and for the technical help as well. Mice and mouse-related research is beyond me and you have saved me from much embarrassment.

  To Jules, thanks for the information about the police department. Good to have a friend ‘on the inside’ (grin).

  To Megan, your encouragement and critical help have been essential for both this book and the beginning of my writing journey. You’ve been my cheer squad from the very beginning. Looking forward to seeing your books in print too.

  To Ree and Ray, thank you for making time in your busy family madness to read the novel and give me feedback. I really appreciate your friendship and support.

  To Ruth and Keith, I so hope that my journey encourages you on yours. If I can do this, you most definitely can. Thanks for the reading, the many conversations between yourselves, and the roast dinner that softened the feedback that I so appreciated even if it was a little hard to hear.

  To Wendee, thank you for your invaluable encouragement and advice. It’s been more than helpful to look at the slopes of Everest and see someone a little (or a lot) further on who can show me what to do and how.

  To Sheelagh, I can’t thank you enough for your expert editing that came with a helpful dose of encouragement. I so needed both.

  To my colleagues in the Discipline of Chemistry at UTAS who sat and brainstormed methods of chemistry-related murder over the morning tea table and would then greet me with ‘Ruth, I’ve thought of a new way for you to kill someone’ in the hallways, thank you. I hope to make use of many of your suggestions in future novels and you will be glad to hear that the police have not come after me yet.

  Mum and Dad, you read the book when no one else was reading it, and you read it more than once. Your support over the ups and downs has been incredible and I want to thank you so much for instilling in me a love of reading. I will never forget our times together as a family with Dad reading to us. Even if the tears over the book made us look a little strange on family picnics in the park!

  Jess and Caleb, you guys rock. Caleb, your little words of encouragement when I felt like everyone else thought I was mad, they helped me keep going. Jess, thank you for believing in me and being so excited when the parcel containing the manuscript turned up at your house.

  Moz. What can I say. You are just amazing. Everyone else only has to put up with me on occasion but you have to put up with me every single day. You know more of the elation and disappointment than anyone and you have been so incredibly supportive of this venture. Thank you. I love you.