What Janie Saw

by Pamela Tracy

  Including, it seemed, the person who’d left her a plate of brownies.

  Rafe didn’t even attempt to enter Patricia’s office. He rattled off the most important questions to the officer at the door, and then glanced in and groaned. As far as crime scenes went, this one was a nightmare. Usually the floor offered the most in way of evidence. But he couldn’t even see Patricia’s floor. Books, canvasses, boxes of supplies—some open, some not—and other paraphernalia took up all the space except for a narrow walkway to her desk.

  And that’s where he found Patricia, slumped back in her chair.

  Rafe took in every detail, from the position of her office window to the type of light on the ceiling. He’d just started examining the pictures on her wall—mostly abstract art but a few personal photos—when Nathan appeared.

  “You’re not part of the immediate investigation, Rafe,” Nathan said.

  “You’re stuck with me. I didn’t enter, didn’t disturb anything, and I have Janie with me.”

  “Good, I want to talk with her.”

  Nathan looked like a man on a mission. Rafe had seen other cops take cases too personally—himself included. Nathan was doing that now. He was so tightly wound that those around him gave him a wide berth. Rafe had watched the man bring suspects to their knees, but even then he’d never displayed this much intense determination.

  “So, what do you think happened?”

  Nathan’s gaze moved from Patricia’s office to down the hall, where the dean of students again was on the phone, to the other end of the hall where yet another officer blocked an entranceway. “I think this killer is in some way connected to the college and to the police.”

  “Then you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Rafe said. “I’ve got a few people to question, so I’ll get out of your way. You’ve got this under control. We’ll meet later when the medical examiner arrives. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “I’ll keep you informed.”

  Rafe walked down the hallway, noting the office doors on each side and their corresponding nameplates. Most of the faculty had personalized their doors in some way, such as taping up cartoons, kids’ pictures, news articles about the state of education in Arizona, etc. Soon, Nathan’s officers would open every one of these offices, search them, and question the occupant.

  He ducked under the tape again, nodded to the officer and the dean, and sat down in a chair next to Janie. He angled his chair so he could see past the elevator.

  “Did they say when she died?” Janie whispered.

  “Why are we whispering?” Rafe whispered back. He couldn’t talk to her about the crime scene, not while he could be overheard, anyway.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  Rafe simply whispered louder. “The medical examiner hasn’t arrived yet to give an estimated time of death, and I’ve learned to never guess.”

  “If I were a cop,” Janie said at her normal volume, “I’d always be trying to guess.”

  “It’s only on television that a time of death is given as a fact,” Rafe said. “In real life, it’s a guess, nothing more.” And he didn’t want guesses, he wanted facts.

  But Janie was pale and tired, so Rafe was willing to cut her a little slack. “I’ll tell you as soon as I find out.”

  The chairs in the students’ waiting area were as uncomfortable as the chairs in his police station’s waiting room. Rafe shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable and forcing himself to remain seated. He was a guest on this case. He had to let Nathan take the lead.

  Students came and went, all pressing against the cordon tape that blocked the double doors to the art department. Some were clueless about what had happened, but most wanted to find out what was going on. Many were in tears. An officer dutifully copied down each and every name. Rafe didn’t envy Nathan having to run down so many long-shot leads. But if Patricia’s death was deemed a homicide—and there wasn’t an officer involved, including Rafe, who believed it was an accident—murderers too often came back to the scene.

  At the moment, Nathan was busy questioning Georgia Stratton, the liberal arts division secretary. He’d not invited Rafe to join in. That turf thing again. Of course, it might have to do with numbers: two’s company; three’s a crowd.

  Rafe shifted on his chair again, reminding himself that the more he pushed Nathan to work with him, the less chance he had of getting any cooperation.

  It wasn’t easy. From his vantage point, he could see Georgia through the glass windows of the private office. She looked about ready to faint, not good for a woman of her age. She’d been here when Rafe was a student.

  “You on a first-name basis with Georgia?” he asked Janie.

  “I go to her whenever I need supplies, or have a question. We get along fine. I gave her one of my paintings.”

  He noticed the painting then. An acrylic of a lion, standing still, chin raised and mouth open. Behind him was the pride. They all faced the main lion.

  “Georgia has all the answers,” Janie supplied, as if she sensed what Rafe was thinking. “Everyone comes to her. One day I was waiting my turn to ask her a question, and I decided she needed a painting.”

  “You painted it from your imagination.”

  “No, I used Terrance the Terrible at the zoo as a model, and then just painted him fat, skinny, squatty, regal, young, old.”

  Rafe was amazed. “One lion over and over.”

  “From different angles, at different times of the day.”

  “Amazing.”

  Even more amazing than her talent was the lady herself. Rafe forced himself to look away from her because all he could think was about the last line in that art book.

  ...whomever I tell will be in as much danger as me.

  The kid had been right.

  The brownies had been left in Patricia’s office, on a paper plate covered with a paper towel. Georgia insisted that she hadn’t brought in brownies yesterday, and that whenever she did bake brownies, she never added nuts.

  But they’d been left on a plate from the teacher’s workroom. A note with the word ENJOY had been left beside them. The letters didn’t resemble Gloria’s handwriting.

  However, even though everyone, including Nathan, believed Gloria innocent, he continued to ask her question after question.

  Finally standing up, Rafe excused himself and walked to the end of the hall, away from the noise. He pulled out his phone and dialed.

  “I was expecting your call,” Justin answered without a hello. He wasted no time. “So, who discovered Patty’s body and exactly when?”

  “The division secretary found her this morning. She got here about six and noticed her boss’s car in the parking lot. After she did her morning routine, she went down and knocked on Patricia’s door. When she got no response, she got curious, unlocked Mrs. Reynolds’s office door and found her.”

  “This case is taking on a life of its own,” Justin muttered. “A couple of kids Derek hung out with have suddenly had a change of lifestyle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve either left town or gone home to live with their parents. And they’re the same ones Janie picked out as Derek’s friends. I’ve kept track of them. Right now his old crowd, well, it’s a different kind of scared. They’re itchy.”

  Rafe could tell by Justin’s voice how disturbed he was.

  “It’s as if,” Justin said, “the carpet is being rolled up, and some kids had the brains to get off the carpet while others got trapped inside. We need to figure out who’s controlling the carpet.”

  It was a pretty decent analogy, even if it wouldn’t stand up in court.

  “Then why isn’t Nathan willing to let me assist? He’s always been one to appreciate help.”

  “I’m not sure,” Justin admitted. “But I suspect he
feels he wants to redeem himself. There’s also the time element. Once this latest death hits the airways, everyone we’re investigating will disappear into the night. That’s why we’re taking it slow. I’m following Nathan’s lead, but he’s frustrated. And, I’ve never seen him quite like this.”

  “I’ve never seen you quite like this,” Rafe pointed out.

  “I knew Derek personally,” Justin said, slowly. “I wish Nathan had, too. Maybe then he’d have believed Derek’s death was murder from moment one, and he’d be doing things a bit differently.”

  “Why?”

  Justin cleared his throat but didn’t answer, struggling with his grief.

  “Why? Why would he do things differently?” Rafe asked again.

  “I’ve been undercover now for over five years,” Justin finally said. “In that time, I’ve had three kids die. One OD’d, and let’s just say the other didn’t fulfill an obligation. Then there’s Derek. None of them were yet twenty-five. Their deaths made the streets safer and my job easier. I went to their funerals. I understood why they’d died and I didn’t worry about blowing my cover by attending their funeral.”

  “You did all you could, and—”

  “See,” Justin continued, not waiting to hear Rafe’s platitudes, “there’s a few things I haven’t shared with you. Things that I only reported to Nathan because we don’t want to blow my cover if we don’t have to. You should know, though, that I was at that farm an hour before it exploded. They’d finished making the batch for the day. They’d cleaned up.”

  “Who cleaned up?”

  Justin named a few names that meant nothing to Rafe.

  Justin continued, “After they cleaned up, a couple of the guys went smurfing for materials for the next batch, but there were no plans to head back to the house that night. We all knew it would be awhile. See, it was no longer safe for the boys to simply walk into a nearby store and buy the stuff. They’d been in there buying supplies already that week. They couldn’t afford to be recognized trying again. They had to find a third party, someone who hadn’t bought the supplies in the area before. So Derek and I headed to a burger place, ate, and then went our separate ways. We were supposed to meet at a party later that night. Derek didn’t show.”

  “Because he’d died in the explosion.”

  “Right,” Justin said bitterly. “But there was no reason for him to return to the house, none. There were no plans to start the next batch, and Derek wasn’t the cook anyway. The kid could barely make a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. So he must have been lured back or forced back and then...”

  Before Justin even said the words, Rafe knew what they would be. Justin had uttered them once before, clandestinely, just two days ago, over the phone.

  “...he was murdered.”

  No doubt about it. Now that Patricia had been killed, Derek’s untimely demise would receive a bit more attention.

  And so would Janie.

  “So,” Rafe said, “theoretically, you were the last person to see Derek alive.”

  “Except for whoever murdered him.”

  Rafe hadn’t put any thought into Justin being the last, besides the killer, to talk with Derek. It added a new angle. “What did the guys who went to buy more supplies say about Derek’s death?”

  “It’s amazing how much kids can talk and still say nothing,” Justin said. “I can tell you they never made it back to the farm. They’d found a guy to do the buying, but when they got to the store, he chickened out. By then, it was getting late. The store would be less crowded, and they were afraid somebody would notice how often they came in, so they went home.”

  “What else?”

  “They said Derek never cooked up any meth. But they’re not going to talk to the police. Most are just glad they weren’t in the house when Derek bought it. The rest simply hope whoever came after Derek doesn’t come after them.”

  “None of them have any idea who killed Derek?”

  “If they did, I’d be the happiest man in Adobe Hills. Then I’d either have the connection to the cartel, or at least someone who reports directly to him. When this case finally breaks, I can start an investigation, testify and go back to being a street cop.”

  Frustration edged his every word. In order to get the kingpin, Justin had to wait. But the longer he waited, the bigger the drug ring grew, like a flood, swallowing Adobe Hills Community College first and then lapping against Adobe Hills High School and Middle School.

  “Are any of the kids you’re talking about in Janie’s class?”

  “No. I have a list of names I’ve given Nathan. I’ll email you them tonight and put an asterisk around the ones I believe are most involved. Both Nathan and I would appreciate any help, since you are more familiar with the kids who live in Scorpion Ridge.”

  “And you don’t know any Chris or Chad?”

  “No.”

  Rafe finally hung up and headed back to Janie. He hadn’t really gotten any answers, but at least now he’d decided which angle to investigate first: Derek’s murder.

  “Important call?” Janie asked.

  “Yes.”

  She wanted more details. He could tell by the myriad of expressions that crossed her face and the questions in her eyes. He’d give them to her because she knew more about the college than he did, almost making her his inside man.

  He muttered, “Later, not here.”

  That satisfied her. “What do we do next?”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. Up until this morning, you’d considered yourself my personal bodyguard. My life hasn’t been my own for days. Now, with Patricia’s death, I’m stuck with you, aren’t I? It’s a ‘we’ whether you admit it or not.”

  “I could assign a deputy to guard you.”

  Janie rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  Just then, Georgia left the office, grabbed her purse and stomped to the restroom. The officer who’d been gathering names headed for Nathan and turned over a stack of papers.

  “He’s giving Nathan the names of the students who stopped by, plus the names of anyone Patricia might have spoken with last night,” Rafe told her.

  But Janie didn’t pay any attention to him. Funny, she’d been hanging on his every word until then.

  “I have to visit the ladies’ room,” she said.

  Rafe opened his mouth to tell her not to interfere with Nathan’s investigation, but he closed his mouth before the words came out. She would do with Georgia what he’d just done with Justin.

  They really were a “we.”

  The chair was no more comfortable now than it had been an hour ago. It creaked as Rafe leaned forward to get a better look at Nathan.

  Rafe often felt angry when investigating a senseless crime. So he understood the expression on Nathan’s face. It could best be described as fury.

  The presence of drugs did that to a cop.

  Janie came back.

  “Spill,” Rafe ordered.

  “Georgia arrived just after six, her normal time. It was close to six-thirty when she opened Patricia’s office with her keys.”

  “Where does she keep the keys?”

  “I think she has them on her key chain. There’s also a set in the top desk drawer, but Georgia keeps that door locked and the key is on her key chain.”

  That didn’t mean much; desks were notoriously easy to break into.

  “Georgia phoned campus security, and an officer got there about three minutes later. He stepped in, checked Patricia for a pulse and then called the local police.

  Rafe had never shared information this easily with a civilian. It felt right; Janie had said it correctly earlier. They were a “we,” whether it was a good fit or not.

  Janie’s face seemed a bit paler than it had been just five minutes ago.

 
; “What else did Georgia say?” Rafe asked.

  “That Patricia’s EpiPen was missing from the top drawer of her desk, where Patricia kept it. There’s no sign on her body that she used it. Nor can they find it on the floor or underneath anything. Georgia says if it’s missing, someone took it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “WHAT ARE THEY going to do about Patricia’s classes?” Standing in front of the elevator with Rafe, the dean and Detective Williamson, waiting to go down and hopefully home, Janie wasn’t sure why she felt obligated to ask, especially now.

  Patricia Reynolds, the only other person to have read Derek’s art book, was dead.

  But the twenty students in Intermediate Canvas partially belonged to Janie. She knew their names and their stories. Some were truly gifted. “The students have already had to deal with Derek’s death,” she continued. “For some of them, it’s their fifth or sixth time taking Patricia’s class. Many of them consider Patricia more a mentor than a teacher.”

  “You’re just the lab assistant, right?”

  Janie didn’t appreciate how Detective Williamson said “just,” but that didn’t matter now. “I haven’t got the credits to be the main teacher.”

  She could do the job, though, probably better than a sub as they were halfway through the semester and Janie had been there every day.

  “And,” Rafe said, “it’s probably not a good idea for you to continue teaching right now. It’s not safe.”

  The dean of students, standing next to Detective Williamson, nodded. “He’s right. It’s not safe for you, and it’s not safe for the students. You and they are our top priority.”

  Before he could say anything else, the elevator door opened. More students poured into the hallway. Janie recognized two of them.

  “Is it true?” they asked. Their eyes, however, weren’t on Janie. Their eyes were on the cordon tape.

  Rafe’s arm gently gripped her elbow, and he answered when she couldn’t. “Right now, we’re in the middle of an investigation. As soon as we have something definite to report, we’ll make an announcement.”