Madison was dressed down today. In deference to the continuing heat wave, she was wearing calf-length chinos and a tiny T-shirt with a deep scooped neck and sleeves that barely qualified. His body had responded the instant he saw her. He was having a hell of a time lifting his eyes from her cleavage, especially since a bead of sweat was even now trickling in slow motion from her chest into the valley. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to follow it, or lick it.
Damn it, concentrate!
Her eyes widened at his question. “Yes, of course all employees have full access, but in the middle of the night?”
“Not likely,” he agreed, “but the faces would be familiar. A student wouldn’t think twice if he saw someone who, sure, is usually out mowing the lawn, but is always around. Young, hip professors might keep the same hours as students do. And in this case, the killer wasn’t there to swim a few laps. He was there because Mitchell King was.” If he suddenly sounded grim, Troy thought—so be it.
Her head bobbed. “Yes, okay.” She seemed to think about what he’d said—and his request. “I’ll have to clear it.”
“Understood.” While reluctant to leave, he stood nonetheless. “This gives me a good start. Thanks, Madison.”
She rose to her feet as well, more slowly. “You’ll keep me informed?”
“Daily updates,” he promised. “Preferably given over dinner.”
She relaxed enough to smile. “Deal. Although I don’t want you feeling obligated....”
He took a step toward her and slid his hand beneath the silky bob of her ponytail. She was sweating there, too, but sweat, he had discovered, could be sexy. “You haven’t noticed that I want to spend time with you?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Actually, I had.”
He was about to bend his head when boisterous voices announced the arrival of somebody—at least two somebodies—in the outer office. Troy almost groaned.
“Another time and place,” he conceded. Releasing her, he stepped back. “Damn, it’s hot up here. Haven’t you complained?”
“Believe it or not, this is air-conditioned. Just not very effectively. I whine, maintenance shows up and I hear some bangs and clangs but the temperature never drops. Fortunately, the heat only lasts for a few weeks after school starts. By December, it’s the people on the first couple of floors who have to come to work wearing wool socks, scarves and gloves while my office is completely comfortable. And spring is lovely for all of us.”
“We do have nice springs.” Even a hard-bitten cop occasionally paused to smell the lilacs once they came into bloom in every shade from white to the deepest plum. The old bushes crowded damn near every porch in town and branches weighted with blooms hung over sidewalks.
He settled for a quick, light kiss and let Madison escort him out of the office, past the curious stares of the two students who apparently were her helpers today. He’d have to ask what her next big project was. Maybe one of those—what had she called them? Those get-togethers that happened across the country? On the Road? He thought that was it. That got him wondering, as he descended the stairs, how much time she spent on the road herself.
He found the police station to be relatively quiet today. After spending some time highlighting the names of people he wanted to start with, he went to talk to Davidson.
He outlined his plan of attack, starting with his hope to meet with as many potential witnesses as possible in person.
“Several of the students who were interviewed still live in eastern Washington, two right here in town. From there on, I intend to focus first on the senior class.”
His lieutenant nodded, as he’d anticipated; as a senior in college, King would have known his classmates better than younger students. A freshman might have been a witness, sure, but probably not the killer.
“I’ll begin with the ones I can talk to face-to-face. I’m expecting to make a trip to the Seattle area in the next week.”
“We can swing that,” Davidson agreed gruffly.
Troy told him his intention to speak to as many professors and other employees who’d been here at the time, too. “I’m not sure investigators at the time did.”
“It’ll be interesting to see what you learn about the victim.” Davidson ran a hand over his crew-cut, graying hair. “Like every other cop in Frenchman Lake, I’ve read that whole damn murder book. Students who knew King were pretty reticent, as you’d expect, but between the lines...”
Troy nodded. “He wasn’t well liked. Hard to miss.”
“I’m betting people who knew him will be more willing to open up now. Why wouldn’t they?”
Troy pushed himself to his feet. “Here’s hoping.”
“I won’t swear you’ll be able to give this all your time,” he was warned.
“I know.” With a nod, he left.
He’d counted himself lucky when he saw that two students who had admitted to being at McKenna Sports Center on the night in question still lived in Frenchman Lake. If Madison’s records were complete, Karen Blair Wardell was currently unemployed although remaining an active volunteer in the schools, and Bob Schuler was an attorney. When he called, both were available to see him today.
Turned out, Karen Wardell’s husband had inherited one of the few wheat farms large enough to survive the trend toward conglomeration. Troy actually enjoyed the twenty-minute drive through the rolling countryside, mostly covered by curving rows of grapevines. Eventually a rocky gully formed a sort of demarcation, and golden fields of wheat, familiar from his childhood, took the place of the grapes. He turned into a long driveway bordered by tall poplars that dead-ended at a good-sized rambler surrounded by farm outbuildings.
Ms. Wardell was a still-trim woman with curly brown hair captured in a bun and a friendly smile. She invited him in.
“Detective Troyer. Any relation to Joe Troyer?”
“My father.” He accepted her condolences, and then an offer of lunch. While they ate sandwiches and a fruit salad, he asked how well she’d known Mitchell King.
“Not well,” she said frankly. “You’re wasting your time talking to me. I had a roommate who dated him for a few months back in—oh, I don’t know, our sophomore year? If not for the murder, I doubt I’d even have remembered him. As it is...”
She didn’t finish the sentence and didn’t have to. Nobody attending Wakefield College at the time would ever have forgotten Mitchell King’s name.
“Any impressions of him?”
“I couldn’t see the appeal.” She wrinkled her nose. “But the roommate and I didn’t stay friends either, so...”
He smiled. “Would you mind telling me her name?”
She did, and he jotted it down in a spiral notebook.
“Was your, er, distaste physical, or did you not like him in general?” he asked.
She paused with the sandwich halfway to her mouth. Wrinkles formed on her forehead as she thought. “A little of both,” she finally said. “I mean, he wasn’t my type, but mostly there was something about him...” That required more thought. “He had a really unpleasant sense of humor,” she concluded, her expression troubled. “Somebody was always the butt of it. Someone not present to defend him or herself. You know?”
“I’ve met the type.”
“Like I said, I didn’t see enough of him to tell you if my impression was accurate.”
He asked about the night of the murder, and she told him that she and one of her housemates—by then she was living in a rental off-campus with three other women—had gone to McKenna for a swim. “I wonder if those all-nighters actually helped when we sat down to take the exam, or hurt,” she said wryly, her smile reminiscent.
He smiled, too. “It’s tradition.”
“More like the perennial tendency of kids to put off until the last possible second what they don’t want to do today. So I guess we can call it human nature.” She poked a strawberry with her fork but he had the impression she didn’t see it. Her gaze was fixed on the past. “I actually saw Mitch that nig
ht. I think Becca and I were the only two who did.”
Or the only ones who admitted to seeing him, Troy thought.
“He was pushing open the door to the men’s locker room just as we arrived. We were quite a ways down the hall, of course. I guess we were talking, because he turned his head and looked at us. He sort of nodded and I didn’t give it another thought.” A pained smile told Troy how often in the days following the murder she’d remembered that nod, that moment.
Back then she’d said King was carrying a duffel bag, which in fact was found in a locker along with his clothes. She struggled now to remember the few other people she’d seen. He was dismayed to note the list didn’t include anyone new—or two of the names she’d given to the police at the time. He knew what had happened—her memory of the night had gotten trapped in that last glimpse of Mitch King himself, in the realization that within an hour, max, he’d died horribly. For her, it would be like a scratch on a record album, replaying over and over while what came after never replayed.
She and her friend Becca had stayed together, she said, which meant she was unlikely to have seen anything Ms. Wardell hadn’t.
He thanked her sincerely, appreciating both her cordiality and the lunch that saved him from a fast-food stop once he got back to town. When he told her he was on his way to talk to Bob Schuler, she smiled.
“Bob and his wife are good friends. I know he’ll help you as much as he can.”
As he drove away from the farmhouse, a golden tail of dust rising behind his Tahoe, Troy reflected on how much happier he’d be to talk to someone who wasn’t thrilled to cooperate. Someone who maybe had secrets, or at least bad memories.
You already did, he reminded himself. Madison’s father.
Hell.
So, okay, what he really wanted was to find someone else, someone with an even bigger secret. He couldn’t say he’d much liked Guy Laclaire after listening in on the one phone conversation. But he knew this much: he surely didn’t want to have to arrest the man.
* * *
MADISON SPENT PART of her day on a teleconference call with Jasmine Miller, a 1995 grad who was serving as liaison for the Alumni Admission program. An assistant director of admissions, Marco Quiroz, had joined her. Last year, nearly a hundred alumni across the country had volunteered to interview kids who’d applied to the college. The program had taken on increasing importance, as the impressions conveyed by the alumni interviewers had more of an impact on an applicant’s admittance than most people would have guessed. Inevitably, some of those interviewers wouldn’t be available to do it again this year. Jasmine had ideas for recruiting more alumni to help and for offering guidance to the volunteers, all of which had Marco and Madison nodding and offering their support.
Alone again in her office, she tried to concentrate on the column she was supposed to be writing for the upcoming college magazine that went primarily to alumni but was also used by admissions officers in recruitment. She kept an eye out year round for alumni who did something exciting enough to merit a feature article. This particular magazine included an interview with a fifty-eight-year-old woman who, after her husband died, decided to fulfill her dream of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer. She’d been accepted with enthusiasm and sent to Ghana.
Madison realized she’d been staring at her computer monitor for a good ten minutes, her fingers resting, unmoving, on the keyboard. Not a single sentence had formed in her mind, much less appeared on the blank screen. She made a sound of disgust and sat back.
The column wasn’t due for a couple of weeks. She might as well give up. The truth was, all she could think about was Troy’s quest. So why not do something useful? Maybe she could descend into the basement, where paper records were stored. She’d been mildly surprised to discover how many classmates of Mitchell King had dropped off the college’s radar at some time in the past thirty-five years.
And, hey! It was bound to be cool down there.
It was so much cooler that she moaned with pleasure, then sneaked a surreptitious look out into the hall to be sure no one had heard her.
The pleasure fled when she got a look at the banks of old metal filing cabinets and tall metal shelving units packed with dusty cardboard banker’s boxes. If she had to open every drawer and box...! But it turned out labeling was adequate for her to find a good starting place, saving her from perusing records that dated to the 1930s or who knew when. Eventually Madison plunked one of the boxes on the single library table and pulled out the first file.
Nope—these graduates were seven years ahead of her father. She checked a couple of other files then replaced the lid and heaved the box back onto a top shelf, taking down the one next to it.
She was already tired by the time she found the first records from her father’s year of graduation. They’d been tidily put away in alphabetical order. Jennifer Abhold was the first student.
Jennifer, Madison discovered, had dropped out before the end of her freshman year.
Gerald Ackerman had graduated. There were a couple of brief communications from him—he was working toward a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at an East Coast school, he’d gotten married... And then at the back of his slim file was a note from his wife, saying that Gerry had been killed by a drunk driver.
Feeling sad, Madison jotted down the widow’s name and last contact information. Her husband might have talked to her about the murder.
And so it went. Madison was only halfway through the Cs when she realized the basement had grown silent. She glanced at her watch in surprise to find it was 5:30. Troy was to pick her up in not much over an hour. Time had flown. Looking down at herself, she made a face. Between the sweat and the dust, she so needed a shower.
The hour before she saw him was enough for her to work up a case of nerves. Silly, since she’d been seeing him daily, but their meeting that morning in her office had been a smack of reality for her. Except for that moment at the end, Troy had been back in his cop persona. The badge glinting at his waist was enough to remind her what he was, without the unavoidable additional sight of an alarmingly large black handgun holstered at his side.
She had looked at him and had the shocked thought, This man is investigating my father. Wow. He suspected Dad of murder. She had yet to succeed in wrapping her mind around the bizarre concept. Maybe that mental resistance explained why she’d been able to keep falling for Troy even as she accepted that he was determined to do his job—which, at the moment, involved patiently hunting down a killer who he fully expected to be her dad.
In the interest of protecting herself, shouldn’t she pull back a little? Maybe suspend the dating side of this relationship?
Yeah, but if she did that, would he continue being as open with her?
Maybe not. Probably not.
Her uneasy reflections continued. Did he want to see her daily because he had the hots for her...or because she was potentially useful? Plus, oh yeah, it would be a good idea to ensure she didn’t warn her father.
So maybe we’re using each other.
Great if she could be appropriately cynical and accepting, and actually believe that, but Madison knew better. Her stomach was full of sparkling fireflies because Troy would be knocking on her door any minute, then those gray eyes would survey her, head to foot, after which he’d give a slow smile, step forward and kiss her, one big hand at her neck or waist, holding her firm.
She huffed out a breath. Maybe she should have sex with him now. All illusions might be ripped from her. Her knees could quit going weak. He’d be just another guy, crude, over-muscled and ultimately nobody she’d want to keep around. And then she could think with real clarity.
Good plan, but what if he turned out to be a fabulous lover? What if he made her feel things she never had before?
This is such a mess, she thought unhappily. She’d felt...safe—she guessed that was the right word—once Troy had agreed to keep quiet about what his father had seen. The fact that he was doing something he considered unethical becaus
e she’d asked it of him was amazing enough that she’d let it obscure the bigger truth. Troy had every intention of finding the killer, no matter who he was.
The doorbell rang and her heart did a dizzying spin worthy of an Olympic gymnast.
Madison walked from the kitchen to the front door, disturbed by the realization that regaining her emotional equilibrium wasn’t actually an option anymore. She was afraid it hadn’t been since the big man with sun-streaked brown hair had walked into her office and looked at her with an arrested expression, as if without so much as moving or speaking she’d shaken him.
She knew something else, too. If she went to bed with him now, baring herself physically and emotionally, she’d feel as if she was betraying her father.
Again.
She was having enough trouble living with herself after making that phone call. After she’d set Dad up to say things he wouldn’t have if he’d known a cop was listening in and cold-bloodedly analyzing every word.
As she turned the doorknob, the last thing Madison felt was a surge of anger, this one directed at her father—who almost had to have done something wrong.
But not murder. It couldn’t have been murder.
* * *
TROY DIDN’T SEE Madison the following night. Dinner for him was grabbed at a restaurant in Walla Walla, a college town that looked a lot like Frenchman Lake.
He had made a good-sized swing around eastern Washington, talking to two people in the Yakima area, one up in Moses Lake, another in Pullman—now teaching at Washington State University, and finally yet another professor, this one at Whitman College in Walla Walla. He’d leave Spokane for another day—there was a fair cluster of alumni up there.
Swallowing iced tea while he waited for his entrée, Troy brooded about his day. He was beginning to think his whole strategy needed rethinking.
Karen Wardell had laid down the pattern for what he was hearing. Not a single soul had remembered seeing anyone at the gym that night they hadn’t mentioned to the investigator in the days following the murder—and most, like her, didn’t remember everyone they claimed then to have seen.
Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead Page 10