Sleeping Beauty

by Phillip Margolin

  Ashley was starting to get hysterical again. Rice held up her hand.

  “It’s okay. I believe you. Could you see who the women were?”

  “No. It was very dark in the boathouse. I only saw them for a second. The flashlight beam stopped halfway up one woman’s body so I couldn’t make out anything above the bottom of her blouse. The other woman was curled on her side and she was facing away from me. She was in the shadows. I could just make out her body.”

  “Give me your home number, Ashley.”

  Rice turned toward the security guard.

  “Arthur, call the police. I’ll call Dean Van Meter and Ashley’s mother.”

  Rice dialed the dean, but there was no answer. The proctor left a message on her machine before calling Terri Spencer. She didn’t answer, either. Ashley heard Rice leave a message on her mother’s machine. If her mother wasn’t home, where was she? Probably working, Ashley told herself.

  “I’m going to the lobby to wait for the police unless you want me to stay with you,” Rice said.

  “No, that’s okay. Sally’s here.”

  The door closed. There was an awkward silence for a moment. Sally felt it was her duty to stay with her friend, but she’d seen TV reports about the murders at the Spencer house, and they frightened her. She stared out into the night through the office window.

  The first squad car arrived a few minutes later. A uniformed officer talked with Ashley long enough to understand what was going on. A short time later, Larry Birch checked on Ashley before heading to the boathouse.

  The girls waited in the dorm proctor’s office while the police collected evidence from the boathouse and searched the grounds for Joshua Maxfield. Half an hour after Birch’s visit the door to the office opened. Ashley looked up expectantly, hoping it would be her mother. Instead, Detective Birch entered and pulled up a chair next to Ashley. He seemed to be under a terrible strain.

  “I have a question I need to ask you,” the detective said.

  “Okay.”

  “Your mother came to see me yesterday. She was very agitated. Do you know why she came?”

  “No. I didn’t even know she talked to you.”

  “Okay.” Birch took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you.”

  “Has Mr. Maxfield escaped?” Ashley asked, not wanting to think about another possibility that she’d considered and quickly rejected in order to preserve her sanity.

  “We haven’t found him on the grounds and his car is missing. We have an all-points bulletin out for him. He won’t get far.”

  “That’s good.”

  Birch took hold of Ashley’s hands and looked into her eyes. Ashley tried to stop all of her thoughts.

  “We know who was in the boathouse with Joshua Maxfield.” Ashley tensed. “One of the women was Casey Van Meter.”

  “Is…is she…?”

  “No, she’s alive but she’s not conscious. She’s been taken to the hospital.”

  “Who was the other woman?” Ashley asked. Her voice sounded far away to her, as if someone in another room had asked the question.

  “She’s dead, Ashley.”

  Ashley could not understand a word Birch was saying. The room spun around and Ashley passed out.

  Birch had foreseen the possibility that Ashley would collapse and had made sure that a doctor was available. Everyone waited outside the office while the doctor saw to Ashley. After she came to, she couldn’t stop crying. The doctor gave her a sedative and helped her to her room. Birch followed Ashley upstairs. He waited until she was under the covers. The poor kid, he thought. No one should have to go through what she’d experienced.

  Birch left Ashley with the doctor as soon as a guard was posted outside the door. Terri Spencer had been stabbed to death, and so had the victims at the Spencer home. Birch was not a big believer in coincidence. If Maxfield was the man who invaded Ashley’s home, he’d succeeded in killing everyone in the Spencer family except Ashley. Birch had no idea why he would do such a terrible thing-there might not be a rational explanation-but the guard was in the hall in case Maxfield made another attempt on her life.

  A policeman was waiting in the lobby with a summons from Tony Marx, Birch’s partner. He escorted the detective along a path that led down to the river. The klieg lights that had been set up around the boathouse turned the night into day. Birch had been in the boathouse earlier. It had been a grim scene. Ashley’s mother had been the victim of a savage attack. Birch would have to wait for the autopsy report to find out how many times Terri Spencer had been stabbed. There had been too many wounds for him to count.

  Casey Van Meter had not been stabbed at all. Birch believed that Ashley had saved her life. She had been struck forcefully on the jaw. The blow had driven the back of her head against the roof support, and she would have been unconscious when Ashley distracted Maxfield and forced him to flee. Attempts to revive Casey had been unsuccessful, and she’d been rushed to the hospital.

  Birch’s escort led the detective past the boathouse. A minute later they arrived at a stone cottage. The path was close to the river, and Birch could see a narrow deck in the back. The setting was idyllic. The detective imagined himself sitting peacefully on the deck at dusk with a glass of scotch, watching the sunset. Maxfield wouldn’t be doing much of that anymore after they caught him.

  The inside of the cottage looked lived-in but tidy. There was no television in the front room, but there were many books lying about. Birch glanced at some of the titles. He recognized a few from his college literature courses. There were also several books about creative writing. A shout distracted Birch.

  Tony Marx was a chubby African-American with salt-and-pepper hair, ten years older than Birch. Marx had seen it all during his career, so Birch was surprised by how excited his partner seemed.

  “Larry, you’ve got to see this,” Marx said as he grabbed his partner’s arm and dragged him into a room that opened off a narrow hall. It was obvious that this was where Maxfield wrote. A comfortable armchair was stuck in a corner of the room. A lamp stood behind the chair, next to an end table. On the table was a pen, some Post-its, a steno pad, and a stack of paper that looked like a manuscript.

  A window looked out at the river. In front of the window was a desk dominated by a computer monitor. Beside the monitor was another stack of paper covered in type. Marx smiled when he saw where Birch was looking. He handed his partner a pair of latex gloves like the ones he was wearing. Birch picked up the top page and started to read.

  “I smiled when Martha screamed. Her pain was a symphony more beautiful than any Beethoven had ever composed. I held her ear by the edge and began to slice slowly to prolong her agony…”

  Birch looked up. “What is this, Tony?”

  Marx’s smile widened. “A novel Maxfield was writing. He was kind enough to put his name at the top of each page so we wouldn’t think that another psycho killer wrote it. He’s only about one hundred and seventy pages in but there’s enough there to hang him.” Marx threw a thumb over his shoulder that pointed at the manuscript on the table by the armchair. “That’s more of the same. Probably an earlier draft, because it doesn’t have his name on it. But I spotted several similar scenes.”

  “Didn’t you say that this is a novel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The DA can’t use this. Maxfield’s lawyer will argue it’s make-believe.”

  Marx grinned. He looked like a child who had just been given a really great toy for Christmas.

  “I didn’t give you the good part. Take a gander at this scene.”

  Birch took the new pages. At first he didn’t get it. The scene was pretty gruesome but it was still only a scene in a novel. When the murderer tied up the parents and the teenage daughter with duct tape, Birch got a funny feeling in his gut. Then he reached the part where the serial killer went to the kitchen. When the killer selected a piece of pie and a glass of milk to ease his hunger, Birch stopped reading.

  “We’ve
got him,” Birch said. Involuntarily, his lips began to mimic his partner’s triumphant smile. Then he remembered Ashley Spencer and the smile faded, and his features hardened into a look of grim determination.

  Chapter Nine

  Ashley was awake but lightly medicated when the door to her room opened. Detective Birch stepped aside and an old man limped to Ashley’s bed with the aid of a stout walking stick. He was over six feet tall, with thick, stooped shoulders. Behind him was a male version of Casey Van Meter, dressed in a rumpled suit with his tie askew.

  “Ashley,” the detective said, “this is Henry Van Meter, Dean Van Meter’s father.”

  Henry Van Meter was rarely seen anymore except at official functions or on occasional walks around the Academy grounds when the weather was warm. He had been a vigorous man until he suffered a stroke that almost killed him. Ashley had seen him a few times from a distance, strolling slowly through the campus, leaning heavily on his walking stick.

  Van Meter’s sad blue eyes peered at her through the thick lenses in a pair of old-fashioned, wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was snowy white. His skin was sallow and sagged at the jowls. He wore brown corduroy pants and a bulky wool sweater, even though the outside temperature was in the mid-eighties.

  “And this,” the detective said, pointing to the younger man, “is Miles Van Meter, Dean Van Meter’s brother. He’s just arrived from New York.”

  Miles nodded. He looked terrible.

  “They came here directly from the hospital after visiting the dean,” Birch said. “They insisted on seeing you.”

  There was no reaction from Ashley. Birch felt awful. The doctor told him that she had been talking about wanting to die. He prayed that she would put those thoughts behind her, and he was furious that a sweet kid like Ashley would ever have to feel that way.

  “We want you to know how sorry we are about your tragedy,” Henry Van Meter said. His speech was slurred because of his stroke.

  Ashley turned her head away so they wouldn’t see her cry.

  “My sister means the world to me, just like your folks meant the world to you. Casey isn’t dead but she might as well be.” Miles’s voice sounded hoarse and on the edge of a sob. “The doctors say that she may never come out of her coma. So we’ve both lost people dear to us in the same insane act.”

  Miles stopped, unable to go on.

  “We will do everything we can for you,” Henry said. “You must tell us if there is something you want, something that will help you survive this terrible ordeal.”

  “Thank you,” Ashley mumbled. She knew they meant well but she wanted these people out of her room.

  Birch saw Ashley’s distress and touched Henry Van Meter on the arm.

  “The doctor said we shouldn’t exhaust Ashley.”

  “Yes,” Henry agreed. “We’ll leave you. But we are very sincere. We want to help you.”

  “God bless you,” Miles said as he followed his father into the corridor.

  Birch waited until the door closed before pulling a chair next to Ashley’s bed.

  “Doctor Boston told me that you were talking about killing yourself.”

  Ashley looked away but she didn’t answer.

  “I’m a homicide detective, Ashley. Do you want to know the worst part of my job?” Birch waited a heartbeat to see if Ashley would answer. “It’s not the bodies or the bad guys, it’s dealing with the people who are left behind. So many of them feel like you do, like there’s no reason to go on anymore. I’ve never felt that way but I’ve talked to so many people who have that I think I have some understanding of the way you feel. They tell me it’s like being a living dead person-you’re walking around but there’s no feeling inside. They say they feel like they’re empty and they’ll never get filled up again.” Ashley turned her head toward him. “Before the murder they had all these good feelings. They loved and they were loved. And then the person who loved them disappears and it’s like those feelings are sucked out of them and they can’t get the person or the feelings back. If you give into that kind of despair you’re rewarding Maxfield. He lives to make people suffer, he feeds on suffering.”

  “I don’t care about Joshua Maxfield,” Ashley whispered.

  “You have to, Ashley. You have to hate him for what he did. You have to make yourself feel something, anything. You can’t give in to the sadness. You’re too good a person. You’re the kind of person who makes a difference. Look at how much you’ve done already. There are your soccer accomplishments and your grades in school.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything now.”

  Ashley started to cry. Her body shook. Birch touched her on the shoulder.

  “You are special, Ashley. You are unique. Your parents were so proud of you. Don’t do this to them. Don’t let them down.”

  Birch watched her cry. He didn’t know what else to do. He’d wanted to bring her back and he’d failed. He stood up, utterly defeated.

  “We’ll catch Maxfield,” Birch whispered. “I will bring him to justice.”

  Ashley turned her tearstained face toward the detective. “What good will that do? My parents are dead. Catching him won’t bring them back.”

  Larry Birch felt horrible when he left Ashley. He had a daughter. She was much younger than Ashley Spencer but he could imagine how she would feel if her parents were taken from her in such a horrible way, one after the other. Birch killed the sick feeling inside him by smothering it with anger. He knew that it was unprofessional to take a case personally but he hated Maxfield and wanted him dead. The detective liked Ashley. She was so decent, so innocent. Maxfield had murdered her too, just as surely as he’d murdered Norman and Terri Spencer. Maxfield had cut out Ashley’s heart and trampled her spirit to dust, and Birch swore that he’d make Maxfield pay for that.

  But why had he murdered Tanya Jones and the Spencers, and beaten Casey Van Meter into a coma? Birch’s partner, Tony Marx, opted for the simplest explanation. He believed that there was no rational explanation for Maxfield’s crimes. He saw Maxfield as a psychopath whose motives made sense only in the killer’s twisted mind.

  At first, Birch thought that Marx was probably right. Then, shortly after returning to the Justice Center, he received a call that led him to believe there was a rational motive for the crimes Maxfield had committed in the boathouse.

  “This is Detective Birch.”

  “Are you the detective who’s investigating the attacks on Dean Van Meter and Terri Spencer?” a woman asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m Cora Young, Dean Van Meter’s secretary.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I only found out about what happened at the school this morning. I would have called sooner but it was such a shock. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Do you have some information that will aid the investigation?”

  “I’m not sure, but yesterday afternoon, around four, Mrs. Spencer met with the dean at the school.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No, but she seemed tense when she was waiting for the dean. I thought you should know.”

  “Thank you. It might be important.”

  “There’s something else. Joshua Maxfield had permission to use one of our classrooms for a writing group he was teaching. The class had nothing to do with the school. It was for adults. Terri Spencer was one of his students. They had their first meeting the night before Mrs. Spencer met with the dean.”

  “Bingo!” Birch thought. The secretary had provided a connection between Maxfield and Terri Spencer, and Spencer and the dean.

  “Am I speaking to Lori Ryan?” Birch asked after dialing the first name on the list of the writing students Cora Young had given him.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Larry Birch, a detective with the Portland Police Bureau. I’d like to talk to you about Terri Spencer.”

  “I’m so glad you called. Actually, I was going to call you. I read about the murder in the morning paper. Do you think Jo
shua Maxfield killed Terri?”

  “He’s a suspect.”

  “Did he really run away?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s…well, unbelievable. I knew both of them. We were together in the same room, just the other day.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I wanted to learn a little about Joshua Maxfield’s writing class. What exactly was the class for?”

  “To help unpublished writers with their work.”

  “I understand that there were six students?”

  “Yes. We all had books we were writing. Mindy Krauss and I took the class together because we’re working on a murder mystery. I don’t know what Terri’s book was about.”

  “And Maxfield helped you with your books?”

  “Yes. We gave him our manuscripts and he read parts of them to the class. Then we critiqued what he read. That’s why I was going to call you. I thought that you should know about something that happened during the first class that upset some of the students, including Terri.”

  Ryan told Birch about the chapter that Maxfield had read at the first meeting. He recognized it as one of the chapters in Maxfield’s manuscript that he had read at the cottage.

  “I was sitting across from Terri when Maxfield read the part where the killer tortures those people. She looked terrible. I thought she might pass out. After I read the paper this morning it all made sense. The scene was so similar to what happened at her house.

  “Terri was looking at Mr. Maxfield in a very peculiar way all the time he was reading. After the class, she questioned Mindy and me to find out if we’d written the chapter, and I think she asked one of the men in the class about it, too. I’m sure she suspected Maxfield of writing the piece and was eliminating the rest of us. I think she suspected Maxfield of writing about something he’d done.”

  Birch talked to Lori Ryan a little longer before phoning the next person on the list. He got through to two of the other members of the writing class. They didn’t add anything to what Lori Ryan had told him but they confirmed her observation that Maxfield’s reading had disturbed Terri Spencer.