"Her clothes are in your hamper, Professor. Was she naked when she left here?"
He shook his head, disgusted at his own sloppy thinking. “Her clothes,” he repeated slowly. “Her clothes are in my hamper."
He drank again, finished the beer, and set the bottle down clumsily on the coffee table. He dry-washed his hands nervously—I remembered seeing him make the exact same gesture in the seminar, whenever he was asked a question he couldn't answer—and then he seemed to come to a decision.
"She came back,” he told the table, his voice low and dull, “about one a.m. Everyone else had gone. I was sleeping, but she pounded on the front door and woke me up. I put on my bathrobe and went to the door and let her in."
He picked up the bottle and looked at it, sighed, and banged it back onto the table.
"She was drunk,” he said. “I think she'd gone to the party at Ross. She was angry about her grade. She didn't have the paper with her, but she insisted she'd deserved an A. I told her to come to my office Monday morning, to bring the paper, and I'd go over it with her—but she wouldn't listen. I tried to calm her down, but she took a swing at me."
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “I pushed her away,” he said, eyes still closed. “She fell. She hit her head on—on this table, right here."
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And that killed her?” I said.
He opened his eyes. “I don't know,” he said. “I'm not sure. There was blood on the floor. I tried to clean it up this afternoon, but—” He waved a hand at the throw rug.
I swallowed. “What happened after she fell?” I prompted him.
At last he raised his head to face me. “I felt for a pulse, but I couldn't tell if there was one or not. I'm not a doctor, I—” He twitched involuntarily and a breath rushed out of him. “I picked up the phone to call nine-one-one,” he said. “I punched the nine and the one—and, and then—I hung up."
"You hung up? Why?"
He licked his lips. “Two years ago, Max, a girl in my freshman seminar filed a sexual-harassment charge against me. You remember that, don't you?” He smiled at me ruefully. "I remember. She was in your class. There was an investigation, the charge was eventually dropped, but still. Mud sticks, you know? I couldn't afford another—I mean, here this girl was, at my house, obviously drunk. Dead or alive, I was in for it, either way."
The light finally dawned. “So you decided to move her?"
"Yes. I—"
"Why take her back to the dorm? Why not just dump her in the woods somewhere?"
He stared at me blankly. “I have no idea,” he said. “I wasn't thinking, I was in shock. I waited until I was sure everyone would be in bed, and then I put her in my car and put her bike in my trunk and drove her back to Stewart. It was late, around three. I put her bike in the rack and carried her up the steps. I didn't want to use my access card—that would have left a record of my having been there on the computer. Hers was in her back pocket, though, so I just touched her jeans to the pad and the door clicked open. I put her in the bathroom and—came home. I thought that, if she was still alive, someone might find her there and—I didn't—didn't find out she was really dead until this afternoon."
"But why did you take her clothes?" I demanded.
He sat there on the sofa, hands clasped in his lap, blinking at me. He seemed completely bewildered.
"I—fingerprints,” he said. “I thought the police might find my fingerprints on her clothing. I stripped everything off her and brought it home and put it all in the hamper until I could figure out what to do with it. I was going to burn it tonight, out in the woods."
I stood over him, watching him wash and wash his hands. The silence between us stretched out in every direction.
At last I said, “It was an accident, Professor. You might get in a little trouble for moving the body, but—"
"No,” he said decisively. “No, Max, I can't let you tell them. It would—I can't—it would destroy my career. I can't afford to be dragged into another scandal."
He leaned forward, put his hands on the coffee table, and pushed himself to his feet. Like a robot from one of those corny old science-fiction movies, he began to move jerkily towards me.
He didn't leave me any choice, really. When he moved into range, I did what any good hockey player would do and punched him, right in the face.
* * * *
"...so when I retired in ‘ninety-four, my wife and I moved up here. She grew up in Winooski, and we always talked about eventually settling in Vermont. I couldn't stand the peace and quiet, though, after thirty years on the NYPD, so when I heard that Burlington was looking for an experienced homicide guy, I clipped on a new shield and went back to work."
It was three days later, and I was sitting across from Detective Branigan in the Juice Bar, the oddly named coffee shop in McCullough Hall, at his invitation.
"I wish my grandfather would go back to work,” I said. “He just putters around the house all day and drives my gramma crazy."
"If I hadn't taken this job,” he joked, “I think my wife would have divorced me by now."
I laughed.
"That's nice,” he said. “That's the first time I've seen a smile on your face. You're a good-looking kid when you smile, Max."
I looked down at my coffee, embarrassed.
"Max,” he said, after a while, “I wanted to tell you a couple of things, now that it's all over."
I don't know why I felt so nervous, but somehow I was afraid of what he was going to say.
"Farmer made a full confession,” he said. “He even admitted that Betsy Ortner—the girl from your seminar—was right to accuse him of harassment the other year."
I looked up. “He did?"
"He did. That was then, though, and this is now. Now, he wanted to go after you for assaulting him the other night—he never touched you before you hit him, he says, and he wound up with a broken nose—but I, ah, convinced him to let the matter drop."
"If I hadn't hit him, he might have killed me, too!"
Branigan sighed. “That's speculation on your part, Max. He says he was going to the phone to call the police and turn himself in."
"That's a lie! He told me he couldn't let me tell on him. He said it would ruin his career!"
"Your word against his. He'll deny it in court, and there's no way to prove it."
I shook my head at the insanity of it all.
"What's going to happen to him?” I asked.
"Given the fact that he undressed her and moved her body, I would love to go for Murder One, but I just don't think we can make that stick. I'll fight for it, but I'm guessing the D.A. will charge him with involuntary manslaughter and a couple of other minor things, and he'll plead it all down to one lesser charge. I don't think he'll do any time, but—"
"No time! That's crazy! He killed Katie!"
"He killed her, sure, but it wasn't murder, Max. It was an accident: She took a swing at him, and he acted in self-defense. At least that's his story, and I don't think we're going to be able to prove otherwise. In any case, he's finished at Middlebury, probably in academia altogether."
I picked up my mug and sipped, but the coffee tasted like nothing.
All around us, students were talking in little groups, doing homework, opening packages from home. Professor Griffen, hunched over a table with a man who looked enough like him to be his younger brother, spotted me and waved. Katie was dead, but life at Middlebury went on.
"I'm sorry about your girlfriend,” Branigan said.
I looked up sharply. “My—she wasn't—I mean—how did you—?"
He got up from the table and patted my shoulder. “I may be old, Max, but I've been a cop for a long time. I can see when somebody's reacting to the death of a—"
"You can't tell anyone,” I said in a rush. “If they find out, I'll—"
He put up his hands in surrender. “Your secret's safe with me,” he said. “It's got nothing to do with the investigation—never did.
I won't tell a soul."
"You promise?” I said. “You have to promise! You have no idea how much trouble I could—"
"Cross my heart,” he said. “And hope to die."
He turned, then, and went away. I watched him disappear through the Juice Bar door, and then I sighed and reached for my headphones and slipped them on. I hit the Play button on my iPod, and the stuttering opening guitar chords of “Both Hands” filled my head with sound.
"In each other's shadows, we grew less and less tall,” Ani sang breathily, “till eventually our theories couldn't explain it all, and I'm recording our history now on the bedroom wall."
History, I thought. Katie's major.
There were tears in my eyes as I pulled a notebook and a pen from my backpack.
I sat there for a moment, gathering my thoughts, and then I began recording.
"I'll never believe it was just a coincidence,” I wrote, “not if I live to be forty. Somehow, I'm convinced, Ani knew...."
Copyright © 2009 Rebecca K. Jones & Josh Pachter
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: CITY IN FOG by John Morgan Wilson
John Morgan Wilson throws a spooky twist into our Halloween issue this year with his special take on the genre of vampire fiction. He is also the author of the Edgar Award-winning Benjamin Justice series. The eighth Justice novel, Spider Season, was published in December, 2008. The Mystery Scene review raved: “This exquisite novel is the finest yet in a powerful series.” Bold Strokes Books recently reissued the first four Justice mysteries, including Simple Justice, the 1996 Edgar winner.
* * * *
Art by Mark Evan Walker
* * * *
The first body turned up in early February beside a Dumpster in a dead-end alley in the Tenderloin.
Nothing too unusual in that. The Tenderloin is San Francisco's seediest district, a magnet for the city's more troublesome creatures of the night. Homicides are almost as common there as jumpers from the Golden Gate Bridge.
What was different about this one was the condition of the corpse. A city worker discovered it just after dawn, crumpled against a graffiti-scarred wall in a shaft of early sunlight. When my partner and I arrived, we found a victim without pulse or heartbeat, and unusually pallid. We immediately noticed bruising on the neck, signs of possible strangulation. Upon closer inspection, we saw that a carotid artery in the neck appeared torn and collapsed, possibly from sustained suction. There was no sign of spilled blood anywhere, as if the suspect had been careful not to waste a drop.
"The Chronicle will have a field day with this one,” my partner said, as we picked through litter for possible evidence, while the coroner's people handled the body. “I can see the headline now: Vampire Killer Stalks City.” With a wink, he added, “Whoever did this won't be getting a booster award from the tourism bureau."
My partner was Inspector Jack Riordan, a beefy, balding detective who'd been my kindly mentor over the past few years. My name is Alice Martell. At thirty-seven, I was the junior partner on our robbery-homicide team, a few years up from patrol and a year out of a childless marriage that shouldn't have lasted as long as it did.
Upon arrival at the crime scene, we'd identified the victim at a glance, because his face was only too familiar.
"At least it wasn't a tourist,” I said, in the hard-edged manner I'd developed like a callus since my divorce. “I don't expect too many tears to be shed over this one."
"You just get colder and tougher, don't you, Martell?” Jack winked, grinning impishly. “Maybe it's time you started dating again. Rediscover that sunny side that we all used to know and love."
"Thanks for the advice, Jack, but I'd rather spend my time finding out who did a Bela Lugosi number on our victim here. Even if he is a scumbag who deserved what he got."
The scumbag was an ex-con named Bobby Tremaine. A few days earlier, he'd beaten a rape charge on a technicality, enraging the judge and spectators when he'd blown a kiss to his victim on his way out of court. It had made the evening news, giving Tremaine his fifteen minutes of fame and the victim and her family an extra measure of grief. So no one at the SFPD was going to be heartbroken because Bobby Tremaine was no longer among the living.
"We'll have to look at the girl's family for suspects,” Jack said, sounding regretful. “Possible revenge killing—obvious place to start."
"That doesn't explain the odd wound on the neck, or the apparent loss of blood."
"Could be a ploy to confuse us, throw us off the scent."
"That's a stretch,” I said.
He grinned. “Okay, the usual explanation then. A vampire did it."
"Sorry, Jack. I don't believe in vampires."
Neither of us did, of course. But we also knew that a compulsion for blood-letting among individuals or cults was well-documented, either as an erotic fetish or a criminal pathology connected to murder. The medical facts in our case clearly pointed in that direction. The coroner estimated that Tremaine had lost nearly three pints of blood from the gash in his neck. Traces of human saliva were found around the puncture site. Strangulation had put out Bobby Tremaine's lights but he'd died from plummeting blood pressure because someone had used him as a human blood bank.
One such homicide was trouble enough. Then, later that month, another victim in similar condition was discovered near the ocean, in the swampy remnants of the old Sutro Baths. A few days later, victim number three turned up in Nob Hill, not far from the Grace Cathedral. Because they were obviously linked to the first, Jack Riordan and I caught those cases too. Naturally, the grisly murders got front-page headlines in the Chron and sent the cable gab shows into a feeding frenzy.
"I guess my kids won't be seeing me for a while,” Jack said, as we studied the coroner's report on the third victim. “At least our suspect waited until after Christmas."
"You can thank him when we put the bracelets on him,” I said.
Jack's eyes shifted uneasily, without their usual glint of humor. “If we catch him,” he said. “Let's not forget the Zodiac. Not every serial killer gets caught."
We compared notes as we began building our file: Like Bobby Tremaine, the second and third victims had been strangled into unconsciousness before their throats had been gouged and their blood drained. Each murder had occurred shortly before sunrise, when a predator with a taste for blood could find an ample supply among the countless derelicts and predators who prowled San Francisco in the wee small hours.
Our commander assembled a special task force to investigate, putting Jack and me in charge. Jack was understandably disheartened by the added pressure and responsibility. Pushing fifty and nearing retirement, he had three kids and a second marriage he was trying to hold together by spending more time at home. Me, I welcomed the heavier workload. As far as I was concerned, a demented vampire wannabe stalking San Francisco's streets was a useful distraction from the emptiness of my little apartment up in Potrero Heights. My closest friends were all cops, but everyone was either married or dating long-term. Hanging out with couples only reminded me how single I was, so I'd stopped. Other than Jack, I no longer had anyone in my life who meant much.
What I had was my job. So I embraced our investigation with a vengeance, only too willing to lose myself in it, seeking refuge from the ache of loneliness I was too proud and too stubborn to acknowledge.
* * * *
I first encountered Eduardo Arce in early March, a few days before the fourth body was found.
We literally bumped into each other as he stepped around a corner in a drift of fog near the wharf, not long after sundown. I'd been checking leads that afternoon in Chinatown and the Anchorage, and was late for a task-force meeting back at the Hall of Justice. My eyes were on my watch, my mind on the case. When I looked up, Eduardo and I were suddenly face to face.
If you have to collide with a stranger on the street, I thought, it might as well be a guy like Eduardo Arce. I put his age at forty, give or take a year. He was tall and le
an, with dark, wavy hair, a nice face, and a beguiling soul patch beneath his lower lip. His attire looked hand-tailored but on the comfortable side: fine-looking dark slacks, a loose-fitting silk shirt, a gray fedora, and long black coat to ward off the evening chill. I was blond, blue-eyed, and not bad-looking—Jack Riordan let me know that from time to time, in a brotherly way—but not remotely in the league of a suave looker like Eduardo Arce.
After our collision, he held me by the shoulders a moment to steady me, studying my face with his soulful dark eyes.
"You seem to be in a hurry."
His voice was deep and warm, his accent faintly South American.
"Working,” I said. “I'm a cop."
That's usually enough to discourage a man on the make. But Eduardo seemed to perk up when I mentioned my occupation. He glanced at my left hand as I drew back, almost surely searching for a wedding ring.
"Divorced,” I said tightly, and started to step around him.
"Even a police officer needs to slow down now and then,” he said, “and get her mind off the job. Especially a police officer."
His tone was gentle and understanding, his smile reassuring. Since the split with my ex, I hadn't spent any significant time with a man except Jack, and that had been strictly work-related. I didn't want the complication of another relationship, the deceptions, the tensions, the pain and ugly words when it ended. I was better off solo, keeping it simple. At least, that's what I'd been telling myself for the past year.
Eduardo handed me a business card.
"I teach the tango, just a few blocks away, in North Beach. I'm a recent arrival to your fine city, and accepting new students."
Part of me wanted to be gone, away from his empathetic nature and seductive charm. But something held me back.
"I'm afraid I have two left feet,” I said, but without much conviction.
"For you, a free lesson.” His smile was like salve. He extended his hand. It was surprisingly soft, the fingers long and slender. “Eduardo Arce, formerly of Argentina."
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