Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The unhappiness and frustration she heard jolted Madison. She’d been ridiculously defensive when Troy had only been trying to tell her why he’d been hurt by the picture of his father, suddenly skewed. He’d made it clear that he understood her mixed feelings. He respected them. In doing so, he’d given her something she hadn’t reciprocated. As confused as she was, Madison knew she wanted to be a person who deserved Troy’s love.

  “I wonder,” she said, “whether he started being more bothered by the choice he made once you became a cop. Maybe those talks you had were part of his process of...oh, I don’t know, coming to terms with a decision he could never quite make himself undo.”

  Troy breathed out a sound that might have been “Huh.” He seemed to be staring into space rather than at her. “When I was a kid—maybe twelve—I saw a friend shoplift. I told Dad. At first I wouldn’t say who.” He briefly focused on her and waited for her to nod her understanding. Of course he hadn’t. “We talked for a long time about the obligation any of us owe to a friend. About how much we can expect to influence another person, about being honest about how we feel about someone else’s behavior. About when speaking out is right and isn’t tattling. And about when we should cut ties with someone whose choices we don’t like.” He shook his head, seemingly absorbed in his memory of that talk with his father. “Funny, I’d forgotten the whole conversation.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  Once more she had his attention. “About the friend? I told him I didn’t think stealing was cool, and if I saw him do it again I’d quit hanging out with him.” His mouth curved. “He did, and I did. We actually got to be buddies again later. I was first baseman on our high school team, he was shortstop. He told me he was really pissed when I ditched him, and he went out and stole some stuff and got caught. It freaked his mother out, and he admitted that’s what he’d wanted all along. His parents had gotten divorced, Mom was seeing a new guy and he felt invisible.”

  Madison laughed. “A self-aware high school boy? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

  He clapped a hand over his chest, his own laugh transforming his face. “I was a self-aware high school boy. Give me some credit.”

  “But two of you.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. That stretches credulity.”

  “I confess, it was probably a momentary aberration. I have no doubt we were crude and sexist again in no time.” His smile became wry. “That talk Dad and I had. He came down pretty hard on the side of friendship. You’ve got a point.”

  Some instinct made her stand up and go around the table. Troy pushed his chair back and held out an encircling arm. She sat on his thighs and pressed a kiss against his jaw, prickly with evening stubble. “Your father sounds like a good man, Troy. You were lucky.”

  He cupped her cheek and lifted her face so he could see her. His expression disquieted her. “You’re pretty convinced your father was, too.”

  Her stomach took a sickening dip. There was a difference, she suddenly saw, between having an inflexible standard of conduct and being good. Good suggested something more than not doing wrong—like kindness, understanding and accepting other people’s weaknesses, caring about them anyway.

  She was not at all sure her father really was good. And she had a very bad feeling Troy knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked, in a gentle voice.

  She shook her head hard.

  He stilled the movement with his big hand. “Okay,” he murmured, pulling her closer so she could bury her face against his neck. They sat there for a long time, either not needing to talk or unable to, but soaking in something from each other.

  The entire experience was new to Madison. She’d never known it was possible to gain strength from someone else’s touch. Anger sparked in her. Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t Mom or Dad ever hold me this way?

  Her nose against his skin, she breathed in Troy’s scent, distinctive to him even when it was overlaid by coffee or whatever he’d eaten for dinner, and she thought, with aching need, I want this.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PLEASE, WILL YOU TELL ME anything you learn about my dad?

  As he listened to what Don Mayer had to say, Troy winced at the recollection of a promise he’d been foolish enough to make to Madison. Mayer had thought Guy Laclaire was a prick.

  He wasn’t the first person to tell Troy that.

  Did he have to pass along what he was learning to her?

  Now that Troy’s list of potential blackmail victims was growing, he’d started asking more general questions of each person he talked to, trying to get a sense of personalities, relationships, tension. Which of these victims got heated up easily? Buried anger until it exploded? Thought so highly of himself that he’d do anything to avoid shame or humiliation?

  Troy grimaced at the last thought. There was no getting around the fact that Madison’s dad was still his best suspect.

  His impression of Frank Claybo had been confirmed by a couple of people.

  “Frank? Nice guy. Not very competitive.”

  “Always broke,” someone else said. “His dad had died, I remember that, and his mom was a secretary. He had great scholarships at Wakefield, or he wouldn’t have been able to go. He worried because his mom had to take on some loans. Most of us got money from home, but all Frank had was whatever he made.”

  Troy had confirmed blackmail victim number two. Randy Pearson hadn’t even hesitated when Troy reached him.

  “Yeah, I paid the son of a bitch for almost a year. I broke into a professor’s office to take a look at the test he’d prepared the night before he was going to give it to us. Mitch took a Polaroid of me climbing in the window. I’d have told him where he could go and then made up some story, except the professor happened to be my major advisor.” A certain amount of anger still bubbled just beneath the surface, but also the same rueful self-knowledge Troy had heard from Claybo. It said, He was an asshole squeezing blood from me, but I’m the one who screwed up. Made my own bed.

  The killer, Troy thought, was someone who didn’t think whatever he’d done was wrong. Or, if he knew on some level that it was, he also believed he was justified, that he had a right to break whatever rule he’d broken, steal whatever he’d stolen. His rage would have all been directed at Mitch King, not at himself.

  Troy also doubted the killer was someone who’d been making monthly payments for that long. Unless...

  “Did Mr. King ever try to up your payments?” he asked.

  “No.” There was a pause. “I used to worry about that. What would I do if he suddenly decided to double what I was supposed to give him? Triple it? But it never happened. The whole thing was surreal. When I stopped to slip him the money, he’d laugh and joke or complain about a paper he had due like we were friends.”

  He added a couple of other names to Troy’s list, one of whom was Laclaire.

  “Laclaire was so full of himself, I really wanted to know what he’d done. I’d have liked to tarnish some of his shine. You know?”

  “You had classes with him?”

  “I roomed with him freshman year. Can you believe it? Even then, he had his nose in the air. The rest of us were on financial aid, the great anonymous pool of money for good students whose parents weren’t loaded. Guy, though, he’d won one of those prestigious named scholarships. He’d been valedictorian of his high school class. He made sure everyone knew he’d been accepted at Stanford, but decided he wanted to attend a smaller school. I discovered my high school biology class had been grossly inadequate and got a C first semester at Wakefield. Guy breezed through with a four point. He played varsity tennis even as a freshman. He was awesome at debate. The frats all wanted him. The girls all wanted him.”

  “You wanted him to stumble.”

  Randy Pearson laughed, sounding good humored. “Yeah, who wouldn’t? But that wasn’t it. You can like a guy even if you envy him. Guy’s problem was, he was sure he was better than all of
us and didn’t bother to hide it.”

  “Great way to make friends.”

  “Yeah, but he did, anyway. He could be wickedly funny, and even when you didn’t like him, you were flattered if he asked you to be on his intramural rugby team or whatever.”

  Troy didn’t get a lot more that was useful out of him.

  He met with several employees at the college who’d worked there at the time of the murder, ending with a professor in the English department.

  Herbert Wilson was a stooped, slightly built man who couldn’t have been more than five foot seven or eight when he was young and had stood straight. His scanty gray hair was cut short, doing nothing to hide a bulky hearing aid.

  When Troy stepped into his office and introduced himself, Wilson bellowed, “Who?” then reached up and fiddled with the hearing aid, which squawked, making him jump. “Damn thing buzzes,” he muttered. “I turn it off when I’m alone.” He focused exceedingly intelligent blue eyes on Troy. “What can I do for you, young man?”

  Once he understood the purpose of the visit, he settled quite happily in for a bout of reminiscence. He hadn’t personally had Mitchell King in a class, but recalled at least two other professors remarking that they weren’t impressed with him.

  “He was a shallow thinker,” he proclaimed. “His work was geared to earning good grades. No fire inside.”

  Troy had begun to believe that King was actually a rather creative thinker. How many college students kept up in class while also running a small business that brought in what Troy was preliminarily estimating to be one to two thousand dollars a month? He was utterly without conscience, of course, but that was another matter.

  Three of the possible blackmail victims had been English majors. Dr. Wilson didn’t recall one of them at all. One was only a distant memory. He brightened at the mention of Guy Laclaire.

  “Fine, analytical mind.” He nodded. “I understand he turned it to business. His daughter works here at Wakefield, you know.”

  “Yes, actually I do know. I suppose you’re aware Madison organized the time capsule opening.”

  He chuckled. “So she did, so she did. Pretty young woman, too. Not surprising—Guy was a good-looking boy. Have you met him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If you do, you say hello to him from me.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.”

  Dr. Wilson had not been Guy’s major advisor. No, no, that had been... “Adams!” he declared in triumph. “Dr. Adams. She left the college, oh, twenty years ago. She’s considerably younger than I am. I believe she’s at Tufts in Boston, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Troy thanked him cordially and gave him a card, in case he thought of anything of interest.

  “You believe it was another student who killed that boy.”

  “I think that’s a possibility.”

  He shook his head. “Hard to conceive, but then the suggestion that the killer was a drifter never held water. When the gymnasium is open, even in the middle of the night like that, there’s always someone on duty, you know. Of course, that would have been a student who probably had his head buried in his books, but I’m betting he still glanced up and made note of everyone who came and went.”

  “The student on duty was an excellent witness at the time,” Troy agreed. “However, he apparently left the counter a few times to help students with equipment. There was a shower in the women’s locker room that wouldn’t turn off, too, and he probably needed to use the john. He either forgot or missed seeing a number of students who have since been identified as having been at McKenna Center within the hour or two before the murder.”

  Those blue eyes were still bright and curious. “Can’t see how you’d get anywhere with this after so many years.”

  “It may prove impossible, but I’ve already learned quite a bit that eluded investigators at the time. I’m hopeful. Er, I have one more question, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  Exceptionally bushy eyebrows rose. “Not at all.”

  “I’m wondering how likely it is that any employees of the college would have used the gym in the middle of the night finals week. I assume many, if not most, professors and probably classified employees did use both the gym and library.”

  “Certainly. I still swim laps in the pool.” His eyes twinkled. “Slower than I used to, and fewer of ’em, but it’s part of my routine.”

  Troy smiled his appreciation. He was rather enjoying Dr. Wilson.

  “Middle of the night, though...” He shook his head. “Unless someone had insomnia and knew the gym was open longer than usual hours...”

  “Everyone would know that, wouldn’t they?”

  “I suppose they would.” He was speaking slower now, looking perturbed. He hadn’t liked the idea that a student could have been a murderer, but obviously liked the possibility of an employee—God forbid a professor—being one even less. Troy couldn’t say he blamed him. “We’ve always had some exceptionally athletic men and women on the faculty, I’ll admit. Often the young ones. Perhaps more inclined to be lifting weights or using the swimming pool at odd hours.”

  “Can you think of any who were at Wakefield at the time?” Seeing the professor’s discomfort, Troy added, “Please understand that at this point I’m looking primarily for witnesses. I can see why a professor might have been reluctant to come forward at the time and name students. But perhaps he or she would be willing to speak with me now.”

  The professor’s concerns allayed, he turned to his bookshelves and produced a college catalog of classes for the relevant year. It appeared he’d kept the catalogs since arriving at Wakefield in 1969. Troy wanted to snatch it from his hand. Would Madison be able to find him one? he wondered. Or could he persuade Dr. Wilson to loan out his copy?

  The elderly man paged slowly through the class listings, mumbling to himself. At last he suggested several names. “Antoinette Perry—Biology—was quite dedicated to her swimming. She competed at a masters level. Jay Aldrich—now he was an interesting fellow, he was actually an Olympian, a long distance runner—ran marathons as I recall. Not sure how much he used the gym, though. Stephen Coleman I remember as being a dedicated weight lifter. He was a Psychology professor, bearded, quite popular with the female students. I believe he left Wakefield only a year or two later. Hadn’t thought of him in years.”

  Troy’s patience deteriorated at the slow pace of the recollections, each page being turned deliberately with a finger moistened by the tip of Dr. Martin’s tongue. He ended up, however, with a list of seven faculty members who had been frequent users of the college athletic facilities, from one who had, according to Dr. Wilson, tended to “hog” the racquetball courts when he really ought to have given way to students to a female sociology professor who had had polio as a child and regained surprising mobility by swimming as much as a couple of hours a day.

  The visit might have taken more time than he’d allotted, but Troy had acquired some new information. He emerged from the basement of Welk Hall, where the English department had set up their offices until Cheadle was replaced, a process that was taking longer than expected. It would be at least the middle of October before it came down, at best estimate. Troy had never heard of a construction or remodeling timeline that didn’t elongate.

  He could just see the bell tower of Memorial from here, above a cluster of maple trees. Without having made a conscious decision, he started across the lawn toward Mem. He couldn’t be this close and not stop to see Madison.

  Both outer and inner office doors stood open. He found her alone at her desk, frowning with intense concentration at her monitor. She’d dressed up more today, wearing black slacks and a loosely knit, short-sleeved black cardigan over a red camisole. Remembering the red suit she was wearing when he first met her, he smiled. He was amused to see her shoes, which had at least three-inch spike heels, lying on their sides where she’d discarded them.

  “Hey,” he said from the doorway.

  Madison jumped six inches. “Troy!�
�� Her hand whisked to the computer mouse, closing whatever file she’d had open.

  As if she didn’t want him to see whatever she’d been looking at? As he wondered, his mood shifted to disturbed.

  “Wow,” Madison said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “Sorry.” He ambled in, Mr. Casual. “I happened to be on campus and decided to drop by.”

  “Oh.” Her smile didn’t quite hide how flustered she was. “I’m glad.” She lifted her face to his when he bent to kiss her lightly.

  Despite himself, he was distracted by the plush feel of her mouth under his, the quiver of her lips and the soft sigh she made.

  Even so, as he straightened, his gaze slid sidelong to her computer monitor, which showed only a college logo. He nodded that way. “Did I interrupt anything?”

  “Heavens, no!” she exclaimed brightly. “I was only...” Her toffee-brown eyes met his and she faltered. “You can always tell when I’m trying to hide something, can’t you?”

  He propped one hip on the edge of her desk, resting his weight warily. Those pretty Queen Anne–style legs were kind of spindly. It felt solid, though, so he relaxed. “You’re not a very good liar,” he told her with a tinge of humor.

  Madison scrunched up her nose. “I know I’m not. I have one of those faces. I’ll bet you could get away with anything.”

  Troy grinned. “I’m a cop. How could I do my job if I couldn’t hide what I’m thinking?”

  No way was he going to ask again what she’d been up to. She was clearly uncomfortable about it, and he’d pushed her too much already. Whether what she’d been doing was related or unrelated to his investigation, she was entitled to some secrets.