More Bitter Than Death

by Dana Cameron

  “If you are thinking that Garrison was murdered, you’ve just given me all sorts of reasons to suspect you. Professional rivalry with your beloved grandfather, loss of some income and possibly the right to dig on an important site, personal hurt that might have festered over the years. And who knows what you haven’t told me? Didn’t you both have words at the site on Wednesday? All that careful planning for vengeance, even at that early age—and you get away with it? You sound like a fabulous suspect to me.”

  Chapter 13

  “MARTINI, PLEASE,” SHE TOLD THE WAITER. THEN she turned back to me. “That’s why the cops might be keeping you so close. Are you having anything?”

  “Uh, no. No, thanks,” I told the waiter, and he left. “Laurel, you know I didn’t have anything to do with Garrison’s death.”

  “You’re not my favorite suspect at the moment,” she admitted with a rueful little grin.

  “Well, I didn’t. Just so you know. Damn, Laurel, how can you be so cold-blooded about this?”

  She shrugged. “Simple. I don’t have any skin in this game.”

  It was such a perverse thing to say that I got up and left without a word. Soon I found myself on the fourth floor, and I knocked on Chris’s door. I heard the television get turned way down; the door opened, and Chris looked bleary-eyed, a beer in one hand.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “I’m glad I caught you. Where is Brad’s room? It’s this floor, right?” I didn’t just want to call Brad and warn him that I was on my way to see him.

  “Uh, yeah, just taking a nap.” He rubbed his face, which was red. “He’s in four-sixteen.”

  “Great, thanks. Sorry to disturb you.”

  The image of the television reflected in the mirror caught my eye, and I quickly looked away. When I take a nap, I like watching professional golf. I find the low murmur of the voices soothing. Apparently when Chris took a nap, he liked to watch naked women washing a truck.

  “No problem. See you tonight.”

  He shut the door hurriedly; I heard the television volume rise, but just a hair. I went down the hall to Brad’s room and knocked.

  When he opened it, I saw he was fully dressed, and didn’t seem sick at all, although his color was not good.

  “How you doing?” I asked.

  He scratched at his head. “Oh. You know. Okay.”

  “You had a meeting with Garrison the night he died, didn’t you?” I said.

  I’d hoped he’d be taken off guard by my directness; I was more than surprised. Brad grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his room. He shut the door behind us.

  “What do you know about this?” he hissed.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said as calmly as I could. When he didn’t immediately let go, I jerked my wrist toward his thumb, and freed myself.

  “How did you know that?” he repeated.

  “Petra Williams said that you’d been after him.” I glanced around his room; it was immaculate. The only thing out of order was the rumpled bedspread; I noticed family pictures on the nightstand. “What time were you supposed to meet him?”

  “I…I didn’t…he never showed up,” Brad said.

  “You’re lying.”

  His mouth twitched. “I…Emma, I think I killed Garrison.”

  Now if he was trying to shock me, I don’t think he could have succeeded any better. “You…think…you killed Garrison?”

  “I might have, I don’t know.” He burst into tears.

  I was horrified. “Brad, have you spoken to the police?”

  “Yuh—yes, and I told them the truth.”

  “What?” That couldn’t be…

  “I answered their questions truthfully,” he insisted. They asked if I’d seen Garrison after eleven o’clock. I hadn’t. We were supposed to meet at ten-thirty.”

  “Oh my God, Brad!” My hand flew up to my mouth.

  “But we didn’t,” he insisted. He snuffled, and managed to pull himself together. “I ran into him earlier in the evening, down by his room, and I spoke to him, asked him if he wanted to chat sooner. You know, so we could both get to bed early.”

  “And?” I wanted to shake him for the answers, comfort him…

  “He said no.”

  “And that was it? Is that when you killed him?”

  He recovered enough to look indignant. “I only said I thought I did. I don’t know for sure.”

  “This isn’t the time for playing with semantics, Brad!” I said, clutching his arm. “When did you go outside?”

  “Outside?” He shook his head, puzzled. “We didn’t go outside.”

  “Brad!” I exploded. “He was found outside, in his winter clothing, on the lake! If you ‘think’ you killed him, how did you manage to do it without going outside?”

  “Well, here’s what happened.” He paused, wringing his hands. “I’m scared Emma.”

  “I know, I know. Just tell me.”

  He took a deep breath. “I went up to him, in the hallway. I said hello. He didn’t answer. He was going through his pockets, looking for his key. I spoke a little louder, he turned around. His eyes seemed really unfocused, like he was sleepwalking, or something.” Brad paused.

  “Yes?”

  “So I asked him if we should talk now, rather than waiting until so much later. He mumbled something about not wanting to talk to me at all. I asked if another time would be more convenient. He told me to go to hell.” Brad buried his head in his hands; I could barely hear his next words. “Emma, I can’t even look at you.”

  “Tell me what happened.” I tried to keep my voice as calm and uninflected as possible.

  “I—I never did anything like this before. I grabbed his arm. I didn’t want him to just walk off on me like that, like I was nothing, not even worth answering. I didn’t mean to…but…I grabbed his arm…just to keep him from going into his room right away. I didn’t mean to, I mean, I just wanted him to stop. But he…his arm was so thin. I…I must have hurt him, I didn’t mean to. He cried out. I let go, and he stumbled against the doorjamb.”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “What happened next? Did he fall?”

  “No, the door wasn’t open. He just…sort of bumped himself against it. He might have hit his head. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”

  “But…you didn’t see any blood?”

  “No, I don’t think so. No, I would have seen it. Maybe…he sort of bumped his forehead. Maybe.”

  “Brad, the cops said that Garrison’s wounds were all on the back of his head.”

  “That’s why I didn’t think it was important, at first,” he said eagerly. Then Brad drooped. “I wondered whether he didn’t go out afterward and then fall down. I think that’s what happened, Em.”

  “But then, that would be an accident, Brad, wouldn’t it? That’s…that’s not murder.”

  “But I was so angry. I was so tired of being dismissed. Things…things have been really bad lately. I always knew something bad would happen if I ever lost…things got out of control.”

  For Brad, with his planning and schedules…“Things have been out of control for a while now?”

  He nodded. “Francine is leaving me. No matter how many therapists we see, I don’t see how she’s going to be happy. I should be grateful she stuck around while I was sick—”

  “You were ill?”

  “Sick.” He swallowed. “Cancer-sick.” He could barely bring himself to say the word, much less give me any other details. “She waited until we knew I was out of the woods, then she said she wanted to leave.”

  “My God.” I sagged. “And you never said anything, to any of us?”

  “I wanted to make sure, one way or the other. It’s been a horrible year. I don’t know what to do, I love my kids, I can’t live without them.” He started to cry again, softly.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “And the Connecticut University job?”

  “I hoped a change would be good for us, I thought it would help. She says we’re in a rut
, I thought if we moved, shook things up a little…” He shrugged weakly; he could barely lift his shoulders. “It’s not good to feel desperate, Emma. I…I can’t tell you how awful it is.”

  I thought about what he was saying. It didn’t fit. “But what about the artifacts?”

  “What artifacts?”

  “Bea’s stolen artifacts. The stuff that was taken from the book room.”

  “I have no idea.” His face brightened, but then took on a different degree of puzzlement. “Wait, yes I do. Bea’s found her artifacts. She’d left them behind the chair in the bar.”

  I swore to myself. “Are you kidding me? When was this?”

  “Yesterday. Friday.” He shrugged again, happier to have one answer, at least.

  “Jeez, I guess it’s not surprising that she wouldn’t be as vocal about having found something as having lost it, but you’d think she’d at least tell people so they didn’t think there were thieves around.”

  Brad shook his head. “But there are. There were a few break-ins. And there was the book room, don’t forget.”

  I rubbed at my forehead. “The detective has been trying to tie them in with Garrison, but I don’t think they’re related.”

  I thought about the other things I had questions about. Was whoever came after me looking for something that had nothing to do with Garrison? That didn’t seem likely. “Where were you yesterday afternoon?” I asked Brad. “We haven’t seen you since Thursday night. Now it’s Saturday; that’s a long time to be out of sight at a conference.”

  “But there was the session that I was chairing, all afternoon. And then there was a meeting into the evening. Why?”

  “There was another incident, last night. I was shot at and the police think the two were connected.” I looked at him. “I think the fact that you had a hundred people watching you at the session would be a pretty good alibi.”

  Brad looked relieved. “Still I think you need to talk to the police,” I said. “Maybe they’ll be able to tell you that you weren’t responsible for Garrison’s death, and if by some remote chance you…it’s as you said, then they’ll know and they’ll find out it was an accident, and all of this will be over.”

  At this point my head was spinning, and it wasn’t even that I needed to focus on sorting things out; I needed to reboot entirely. I didn’t feel safe enough alone in my room, and I was in no mood for the bar any longer. It was that awkward part of the day when you have finished the day’s papers but are between cocktail parties, and too early for dinner. My feet, however, knew exactly what my head needed, and they marched me right over to the pinball machine at the side of the lobby.

  I had a pile of quarters still in my pocket from my poker winnings, and I set three of them down on the Plexiglas, after I loaded one up. It had been way too long since I’d played pinball, and I spent the first quarter recalling my old skills. I’m not a brilliant player, no one will ever play Pinball Wizard when I walk into an arcade, but I play well enough to shut everything else out and keep my brain happily distracted for minutes on end. This was an old-fashioned type of machine, a Wild West motif with the bare minimum of electronic gadgets, for which I was grateful. I barely know what to do with the games I pass in the cinemas or at the mall, the few times I’ve ventured into that juvenile wonderland.

  The tension gradually left my shoulders as I got the feel of the table. If you aimed the ball toward the saloon girl in the fancy red dress, you could bank it off and hit the steer target for double points. I noticed that one of the flippers was a little sticky and learned to compensate for it.

  I was racking up a respectable score and had just gotten a free ball, when I noticed Katie Bell hovering just within my peripheral vision. I tried to ignore her, but she wasn’t going away; I furrowed my forehead with a feigned concentration, and kept playing. Finally, she inched her way closer and closer, until she was finally standing right alongside the table. She wouldn’t be wished away.

  She waited until I pulled back on the plunger and had launched my third ball before she started speaking. I didn’t have to look at her—I was still trying to get another free play—but she started talking anyway. She was too young to know better, I suppose, having grown up with games that could be paused; and I felt bad, thinking I sounded too much like Noreen with her uncharitable description of “Katie Car Alarm.” But she really shouldn’t have waited until I pulled the plunger.

  “I feel like that ball in there,” she was saying.

  “Uh-huh,” I answered, whacking the ball with the small flipper at the top of the table. Then realizing that it was actually a pretty nasty way to feel and that I was at least partly responsible for it, I asked: “How’s that?”

  She looked at the leering card sharp whose mechanical voice was coming from the back of the machine and frowned. “Batted around from here to there, too much noise, too much everything.”

  “I can see that.” There—a bit of luck; rather than going down the chute that led to the place behind the flippers from which no ball returns, the ball actually wavered in my favor and slid back down to where I could flip it back to more targets. I looked at her suddenly. “You haven’t been attacked, or burgled, or anything?” I suddenly remembered Duncan had “lost his temper” with her. “No one’s been mean to you, have they?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  I paused, then turned back to the table. “Okay. Who’s doing the batting?”

  “I am, I guess. It’s the conference. I just feel like I want to see everything, and I can’t. I can’t sleep either, because everyone keeps coming in at all hours. Even before the break-in, it was the same. Meg snores.”

  I tried not to smile. “You can’t do everything. You have to prioritize. If you miss something, you can always follow up with emails after.” I was within ten thousand points of another free ball and it was the closest I felt to good all day. “You remember what I said at dinner the other night? There’s no rule that says you can’t take a break, get a nap, order some real food, get a little fresh air—I noticed it stopped snowing earlier. You’ll be sharper if you take care of yourself.”

  “I suppose.” She knew she knew better, but was just overtired and overexcited and on a low. “That looks complicated.”

  “It’s not really, once you get the hang of it. The trick is to just relax, most of the time. Keep your shoulders from tensing, keep your eye on the ball, and don’t react to every bit of the racket. The racket is just a distraction. That’s when you lose. Actually, if you just wait for things to come to you, that’s the best way. Just chill out and make small moves, wait to pay attention to the really important stuff.” Here the ball fortuitously drifted toward my flipper, and I batted it away toward the big bumpers.

  I risked a quick look at Katie. “And when you get really familiar with things, you can even tell by sound where the ball is, and you can reorient yourself, if you need to. You buy yourself the time you need, when you learn not to react and overreact.” I turned back to the table just in time to grab the ball with the middle flipper and send it away again, just in time to be rewarded with a free ball. “See?”

  She shifted her weight. “I guess. I s’pose it works for the conference too.”

  I smiled. Katie was smart enough to pick up on a metaphor. “I suppose. You know, you’ve got an hour before dinner. You could grab a nap.” I wanted her to go away now; I was just hearing the pinging that meant I could get triple points for the next five seconds. I was about to beat my personal best for the day, and I was only on my second quarter.

  “No, I’m too wound up.”

  “Get someone to go with you, and stick your nose outside, then, while there’s still a little light.” Please, Katie, I’m not your mother. I was starting to get wound up myself and was missing easy geometry with all the talk, and I had been so close to clearing my head.

  I could see her shrug her shoulders. Shit, I lost my ball and was down to my last free play.

  “No, that guy just went outside
again, and I don’t want to run into him.”

  “What guy is that?” The ball arced up and around the table.

  “You know, that weird guy from Northeastern Consulting? He’s been popping in and out all day. He’s a little sketchy.” She struggled with her scrunchie, trying to get it to stay put in her hair. “Do you know he was actually outside the building when the police were questioning everyone? He wasn’t supposed to be, none of us were. But I saw him.”

  It took me a minute to register what she said. “What? You saw him leave the dining room Thursday night? By himself?”

  “Yeah and he didn’t come back. Hey, be careful! You’re going to miss—!”

  But I had already turned to her. “How come you saw him?”

  “I asked the cop to let me go to the ladies’ room. He was just going out the side door when I went in. I don’t think he was supposed to,” she said unnecessarily.

  I caught my breath. “Katie, I’ve got to go, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “Don’t forget your quarters!” she called.

  “Play a couple of games for me,” I called over my shoulder as I raced for the side door and outside.

  I saw Widmark a couple dozen meters ahead of me, just at the edge of the road. It occurred to me that I could be following Garrison’s killer. If he saw me, I figured I’d apologize for ducking out on him last time, and I hurried a little to catch up with him. The snow was still fairly loose and flew up as I walked, not making a lot of noise.

  He didn’t follow the path I had, but went down a road off to the left: the access road that led down to the lake and the shed with the snowplows, I realized, remembering how Garrison’s body had been found by someone going to get equipment. The road was paved, and it was a hell of a lot easier going down here than down the steps I’d taken the other night: It was sanded, and the icy patches were concentrated at the middle of the road. Garrison, if he’d come on his own, would have had only little trouble, especially if the roads had been plowed, as they were now. The streetlights that lined the road were already illuminated, the late afternoon was so overcast.