by Pamela Tracy
The cop tailing her offered to carry her bag, but Janie turned him down. It would only draw more attention to her. She didn’t want that. As she made her way to the art department before her class, she saw a few of her students and nodded her head but pressed forward. If they’d been curious before about what she knew concerning Derek’s death, she could just imagine their questions about Patricia. The sub had only been privy to the most superficial of details.
And thanks to being at Rafe’s side for hours on end, then watching and listening as Detective Williamson investigated Patricia’s death, she could answer just about every question—except the identity of the killer.
That information eluded everyone. So far, all Detective Williamson had been willing to share was a rough time line. He had a good-size window for the time of death. One of the social-science teachers remembered seeing Patricia getting off the elevator and heading for her office just after 8:00 p.m. The last thing Patricia had done alive was place a phone call, at exactly nine-thirty, to one of her adjuncts. She’d left a message asking if he’d be willing to sub. Patricia hadn’t mentioned what class or when. And then Georgia had found her the next morning. The hours in between were a mystery.
Janie switched her art bag from one shoulder to the other and waved at one of the other faculty members as she headed for the stairs. The two-o’clock classes were ending and classrooms were starting to empty. Suddenly the stairway became very crowded as students made their way to their next class. Janie moved closer to the handrail as she headed up the stairs against the flow of exiting students. The cop was just a few steps behind her.
She made it to the top, waited for a group of students to move out of the way, and stepped around a Brittney look-alike to reach for the door.
She didn’t make it.
Even as her knees hit the top step, she couldn’t figure out what happened first. Had someone grabbed her bag? Had someone managed to tangle their foot under hers? Or had she really felt someone push against the back of her left knee until she fell?
By the third step down, she knew it didn’t matter.
This was going to hurt.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“IT COULD HAVE been much worse,” Katie said.
Gazing down at Janie’s sleeping form, complete with taped ribs, assorted bruises, an impressive goose egg and one black eye, Rafe didn’t blame Katie for not sounding convinced. Still, she was ever the optimistic sister, always searching for the positive.
“And you say Max Carter is involved in all this?” she asked with wonder. “He’s helped out at the zoo a time or two during events.”
“He claims he didn’t mean to push her. He was trying to get her attention and grabbed her book bag. Max didn’t leave the scene and started confessing before she hit the first step. There’s no reason not to believe him.” Rafe could still see the kid. He’d practically been crying. It had only taken a phone call to discover he didn’t have a police record, not even a speeding ticket. He was, however, a student in Janie’s Monday/Wednesday class—Rafe remembered interviewing him—and one of the few students who had known both Brittney and Derek.
In class, he palled around with Amanda.
Rafe checked his watch and then looked out the hospital room’s window at the setting sun.
“And you believe him?” Katie asked.
Had they been at the station, or back at the school, Rafe would have refrained from giving an opinion. Too often the picture of innocence was an illusion. But in this case... “I believe him.”
Katie pulled her chair closer to Janie and stroked her sister’s arm. She probably wasn’t even aware she was humming a lullaby.
Janie resembled her big sister in many ways, except Janie was a bit taller, more willowy, graceful.
Exactly what Rafe preferred.
Janie wasn’t moving. Her blond hair lay listless against a white pillow. The color of her face matched the pillow. All traces of makeup had been wiped away, and with a start, Rafe realized how little she needed the makeup.
Not with her eyes. Through this whole ordeal, they’d been a vibrant testimony to annoyance, anger, indignation, disbelief, realization, fear and quite a bit more.
Camaraderie?
He hated that her eyes were closed now and she wasn’t sitting up, narrowing her eyes at him and sharing her opinion on what just happened.
Rafe had been at the college, but he’d missed the most important part: the actual fall. He’d heard the commotion and gotten to her side, praying all the way, just as she’d landed. Janie had been barely conscious. A thin drop of blood had slowly dripped from the corner of her mouth. She hadn’t been moving, but she’d managed to say, “Somebody pushed me,” before he shushed her.
He had to give Nathan credit. He’d arrived in minutes and had done what Rafe should have been doing. Even after Max’s confession, the detective had pushed the crowd back and was taking names within a minute. The dean of students had called for an ambulance.
Rafe’s eyes had been on Janie and only Janie. His hands had been reaching for her yet afraid to touch her.
He’d felt helpless. Not his usual reaction.
From the moment Janie unwillingly walked into his office, this criminal investigation had taken on a life of its own. One very different from the usual missing-persons case. And Janie Vincent wasn’t a typical witness. She’d already managed to worm her way into his world with her drawings of imagined crime scenes and attention to detail like the green shoe.
He stood on the other side of her hospital bed. He touched her hand, so small and cold. Cupping it in his, he traced her fingers and then lifted them and gently kissed each one.
“Rafe?” Katie began.
“I’m so glad she didn’t break her arm or anything that would keep her from her art. She’d hate that.” Maybe if he changed the subject, Katie wouldn’t mention what she’d just witnessed.
He cleared his throat, and added, “Especially now, when she’s so close to finding out if she’s going to South Africa.”
Away from him.
Well, at least she no longer seemed to be in pain. That had killed him the most: the blood on her chin, the agony in her eyes right before they closed and his unwanted, unwelcome sense of helplessness.
“Rafe!”
“What?” He’d been in a land all his own, just him and Janie. But Katie’s exclamation brought him back to earth.
“I was going to ask if you’d gotten any farther in your investigation into Patricia’s death, but now I’m more interested in what’s going on between you and Janie.”
“Patricia? Were you on a first-name basis with Patricia Reynolds?”
“Of course. A few years ago, some students did a documentary at BAA. Patricia brought her art students to design the sets. Now, what’s going on with you and Janie?”
“Nothing’s going on, except she’s involved in an investigation.”
“Yeah, right,” Katie said, switching from the lullaby to “Here Comes the Bride.”
Rafe ignored her—it was the pregnancy hormones, that’s all—and addressed Katie. “By all accounts Patricia accidentally ingested nuts that were in some brownies left in her office.”
“Who would leave brownies with nuts in Patricia’s office? She’s allergic.”
“You knew that?”
“Everybody did. She keeps an EpiPen in her purse as well as in the top drawer of her desk.”
“Georgia mentioned that she carried one,” Rafe said. “They found Patricia’s purse locked in the cabinet in her office. Exactly where Georgia said she put it. The EpiPen was there. Nothing appeared to be disturbed. And while the EpiPen was missing from the top drawer, the key to the cabinet was there, right where it was supposed to be.”
“You think she ran out of time?” Unspoken were the words or w
as someone preventing her...
“That’s a question we hope the medical examiner can answer.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure...” The words were throaty, as if the speaker needed a drink.
“Janie!”
If Katie wasn’t occupying the chair by Janie’s hospital bed, Rafe would have slid into it. Good thing, because he’d have taken Katie’s place and clutched Janie’s hand, and Katie would have started asking questions all over again.
Janie opened her eyes. They were dark and brooding. Not typical for her, but better than closed. And throaty had never sounded so good.
“What’s for sure?” Rafe asked, retreating to lean against the wall, by the window, away from the bed.
“My life’s in danger.”
“No,” Katie said quickly. “They’ve already spoken with the kid, Max Carter, who grabbed your book bag. It was an accident. He’s beside himself.”
“It wasn’t the grabbing of the bag that sent me down the stairs,” Janie protested. “It was whoever tangled their feet in mine, found the back of my knee and gave a little push.”
“You’re sure?” Rafe questioned.
“I’m sure. I felt someone messing with the book bag, but I didn’t fall until someone kicked in my left knee.”
“You see anyone?” Rafe was already taking his notebook from his shirt pocket.
“Just a bunch of students, mostly young.”
“Four classes were emptying,” Rafe said before Katie could ask. “We’ve had the instructors supply their attendance charts. Maybe you know the teachers—Burt Taylor was teaching an economics class, and CeeCee Harrington was teaching an English class.”
“I know CeeCee.”
“To be safe,” Rafe added, “we’re also talking to the students who were filing into those same classes for the next period.”
“That’s a lot of kids,” Katie said. “Plus, some of them have boyfriends or girlfriends who walk them to class.”
“It’s a long shot, I agree, but right now it’s all we have.”
“Okay!” Katie held up one hand. “No more case talk. Janie, how do you feel?”
Janie closed her eyes as if she had to think about the answer. Katie met Rafe’s eyes and grimaced.
“I feel like someone tried to kill me,” Janie said, and promptly drifted back to sleep.
“And,” Katie said, eying Rafe, “I’m sure the sheriff of Laramie County is going to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Right?”
Before Rafe could answer, his radio sounded. For the last four days, every time he got a call, it had something to do with the Brittney Travis case.
Almost as if God understood he didn’t need other distractions.
No, almost as if God understood that Janie Vincent was distraction enough.
* * *
THEY’D KEPT JANIE in the hospital overnight, just as a precaution. Now, breakfast was over and she’d already had her blood pressure taken twice. She wanted to go home. For the fifth time she texted Katie. U almost here?
Katie didn’t respond and Janie hoped that meant she was busy driving.
Janie hadn’t been in the hospital since the day seventeen years ago when Tyre, a young black leopard, had taken exception to her walking into his enclosure.
She’d been looking for Katie. Even back then, she’d known to go to Katie. The cat had taken two steps in her direction, leaps really, and she’d not been afraid. After all, she’d watched Katie work with both Tyre and his brother, Aquila. At age six, Janie hadn’t figured out the difference between pets and wild animals.
That changed in a twinkling.
Tyre had swiped just one paw at her, claws digging into the side of her face, and took her down. It lasted maybe ten seconds and then Katie had been there, making noise, getting Tyre away from her, subduing him.
It had been Katie and Jasper, her father’s right-hand man, who’d stopped the bleeding and called the ambulance.
Her father had picked her up from the hospital the next day. He’d not commented on her stitches, not asked her how she was feeling, or anything. A month later, when the stitches had been removed and the doctors had concluded she’d be fine—no damage to her eyesight—he’d shipped both Katie and her off to live with his older sister.
Neither girl had met Betsy.
“It will be safer,” he’d explained.
Janie had more respect for Tyre than she had for Betsy. She’d figured out quickly that the leopard had been behaving exactly as a leopard should.
Aunt Betsy had no inclinations to act like an aunt, let alone a mother figure. The scars from Tyre’s paw were now light pink, and only two claw marks had left standing puckers, and now that Janie worked at BAA, she figured her scars were the mark of a true animal handler.
The marks left by Aunt Betsy weren’t visible, but were harder for Janie to get over.
“The doctor will be here momentarily,” a nurse said from the doorway to Janie’s room. “He’ll sign your release form and you can go. You feeling okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine.” Yes, Janie had a nice-size lump on the back of her head, but it didn’t bother her. Her ribs, on the other hand, hurt. Every time she breathed, her ribs ached. The flesh around her left eye was tender and swollen, but her ribs were the only real reminder that yesterday she’d pretty much plummeted down an elevator chute without waiting for the door to close or pushing the bottom-floor button.
“Good,” the nurse said. She’d barely exited before someone else showed up in the doorway.
“Miss Vincent, I’m sorry.” Max Carter stood in the door to her hospital room. He was a gangly kid who managed to always say the wrong thing and ducked his head a lot. Sometimes Janie wanted to assure him that he’d grow into his shoe size, but she imagined that family and friends had been telling him that for years, and that as a college freshman, he suspected that it should have already happened.
There were late bloomers.
Janie was one, at least by her big sister’s standards.
Janie had never held a job for more than a year, didn’t worry about social security and retirement, and was now living with her sister instead of on her own. She was saving all her money for the visiting-artist possibility in South Africa.
Katie didn’t understand.
“Come on in, Max. What are you sorry for?”
“I’m the one who caused you to fall.”
Janie swallowed. “You tangled your feet in mine and pushed my left knee?”
“No, I grabbed your book bag because I wanted to ask you a question. Someone bumped into me and I bumped into you. I think the way I pulled your book bag threw you off balance.”
“No.” Janie shook her head. “Someone pushed into my knee and I felt a hand in the small of my back.”
“I didn’t touch you. Only your book bag.”
“Then you can stop beating yourself up. It was whoever tripped me that caused me to fall.”
“I promise. That couldn’t have been me.” Relief didn’t begin to describe the expression on his face.
Janie looked at the clock. Just after ten. The doctor should be there any minute and so should Katie. She wanted to pick Max’s brain before her sister or the doctor arrived.
“Did you see anybody you recognized in the crowd around the stairs?” she asked.
“The cops asked me that. I was at the police station for hours answering questions. I knew probably half the people in the stairwell. I’d just gotten out of my communications class and was heading to the student union to grab something to eat. I saw you—”
“Tell me the names of the students in your class?”
“I’m not sure I can remember all of them. Some never talk.”
From her art class, Janie knew that Max was a talker, but he usuall
y chose the wrong thing to say and then spent five minutes saying it. It took him an hour to go through the twenty students in his class. In the end, he remembered all their names and their quirks. Janie only recognized one name: Amanda Skinley. But apparently she’d been absent that day.
Well, Rafe would certainly be interested in that if he hadn’t already discovered it.
“How close are you and Amanda?” Janie asked.
“My mom and her mom are friends. I’m supposed to watch out for Amanda while she’s here because she’s only seventeen.”
“She needs watching out for?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you yesterday!” Max suddenly became animated. “I haven’t seen or heard from her since the Wednesday night two weeks ago when the cops came and she left the classroom crying. She hasn’t been coming to school at all. She’s not answering her cell phone or returning my text messages, and no one answers at her parents’ house, either. Even my mom tried calling.”
Janie closed her eyes. Fatigue took a brief hold. Unbelievable. She could fall asleep right here, right now, with Max fidgeting in the hospital room’s doorway. Forcing her eyes open, she stared at the young man. She couldn’t tell him about Amanda’s visit to the zoo and the drawing they’d made. She couldn’t tell him that Amanda’s mother had said she would take both her children on a vacation just to get them away from Scorpion Ridge and Adobe Hill.
Janie knew so much and yet so little. She suddenly wished she’d pressured Rafe about what he’d gleaned from his interviews with her Wednesday night students.
He’d not been willing to tell her. So, she’d have to ask her own questions.
“I usually hear from Amanda about ten to twenty times a day,” Max continued.
“Did you know Brittney?”
He sobered. “I did. Last semester she was in two classes with Amanda and me. We took a basic math class and then a college success class.”
“So, the three of you hung around?”
“No, not really. Brittney’s really pretty and kinda cool. Since Brittney and Amanda are from the same high school, Brittney’s mom would drive them to the college. Mrs. Skinley or Amanda’s brother would pick them up. Once Brittney got to school, she pretty much ditched Amanda. I think she was trying to hide the fact that she was still in high school. She ignored me.”