She started to flush three small jars of chemicals down the sink and hesitated. These compounds were important clues to her research, but it was poor environmental practice to dump them into the sewer. It occurred to her that a thorough inventory of her supplies was probable. If the weasel was only moderately clever, he would be waiting to discover what she had removed from the lab! Considering the neat row of highly purified bottled elements on the shelf above the oven, Priscilla smiled mischievously at the thought of how she could confuse her adversary. She removed four small bottles of powdered elements that were not used in her compound and dropped them into her purse. If he noticed their absence, that would give the bastard a few false trails to follow!
After she had used the DEC terminal to clear all of her files on the VAX mainframe, the young woman pressed the power button on the Macintosh computer. When the screen had turned a bright blue, she opened her daily log and scanned each page until she reached the final entries. There was nothing in that file to worry about—it was all routine stuff, no mention of after-hours research. The data on her sensitive research was still on the hard disk, but it was safe from prying eyes. The file was encrypted with the best technique available; without the code word, the most clever hacker in the world couldn’t read her notes. Even so, it was time to erase the encrypted file from the disk.
She had just placed her fingers on the computer keyboard when she heard footsteps in the hall. Odd. Who would be in the building so late? Probably a campus guard making his lonely rounds. No. The gait—the sound of the footsteps were unmistakably familiar … but surely not! The footsteps stopped outside the laboratory door. Priscilla watched the doorknob turn.
* * *
It was late and Arnold Dexter was utterly exhausted from his work. Nevertheless, the chairman of the Physics Department was particular about his appearance. He straightened his platinum-plated cuff links just so. He tilted his head slightly and inspected his reflection in the office window; he was smoothing the knot on his narrow red tie when he heard the screams echo down the empty halls. The animal sound was terrifying; the chairman felt ripples of horror propagate along his spine. The Mexican was shrieking in his native tongue, but Dexter understood less than a dozen words in Spanish. The physicist grabbed the telephone receiver and dialed 911. The answer was immediate.
“Granite Creek Police. How may we help you?” He recognized the choppy speech pattern of a Ute. Must be the Tavishuts woman. Dexter’s hands were trembling; he tried hard to control himself. “Hello? My name is Dexter, Professor Arnold Dexter. I believe a violent crime is in progress.… I can hear screams.… I don’t know what to do … please…”
Clara Tavishuts was rock steady. “Understand. Tell me where you are … and whatever you do, don’t hang up the phone.”
“I’m here in my office,” he whined desperately. “Please send help. I think someone is being killed.…”
“Where is your office? You at the university?”
“Yes, yes. Physics Building, third floor. Just across Willow Avenue from the gymnasium. Please hurry.…”
“Got it. Now hold on, sir. Don’t hang up.”
He could hear her calling for help. “Car Three. Car Three. Emergency.” There was a brief pause before he heard Clara’s voice again. “E.C., drop that jelly doughnut and answer this call right now or I’ll kick your fat butt into the next zip code!”
The next voice Dexter heard crackled over the squelch on the shortwave police radio.
“Hold your panties on, Minnie-Ha-Ha. I’m right here. Whatsamatta?”
“See the man at the university. Physics Building, across the street from the Sports Complex. Report of a fight or something. Sounds like serious business. You better peel rubber, E.C.”
E. C. “Piggy” Slocum’s reply was sober. “Ten-four, base. ETA three minutes.”
Clara was back on the telephone. “Help is on the way, Mr. Dexter. Now listen closely. Leave your phone off the hook. Get out of the building and onto the street pronto. Avoid the area where you hear the screams; take a back door out if there is one. You got that?”
“Yes, but what about—”
“No buts. Get out of the building and wait on the Willow Avenue side. Our man will be there in nothing flat. You tell him where the disturbance is, but don’t get involved yourself. Now get moving.”
Arnold Dexter did precisely as he was told. He had barely reached the street when he heard the wail of the approaching siren. Julio had heard it, too. The handyman was walking, somewhat unsteadily, from the building as E. C. “Piggy” Slocum screeched to a halt. Dexter pointed at Julio’s figure and screamed at the policeman. “That’s him, Officer. Stop him. Don’t let him get away!”
Instinctively, Julio raised his hands above his head. This evident gesture of guilt was enough for Piggy, who had already removed his .357 Magnum from its holster. For most of his life, Piggy had lived for this moment. He leveled the bulky pistol at the hapless repairman and called up the best Clint Eastwood imitation he could muster. “Freeze, you little cockroach, or I’ll drop you like a bad habit.” Piggy cocked the hammer.
Julio’s visual field narrowed, tunnel-like, to focus on the chrome-plated revolver in the policeman’s trembling hands. Few things were as unsettling as a nervous man with a loaded gun. Impulsively, he turned and sprinted toward a grove of lodgepole pine at the end of the building. Piggy’s stubby finger squeezed the trigger; the pistol nearly jumped from his plump hands. A brick exploded in the wall a yard behind Julio’s head, and this inspired the terrified man to accelerate. Piggy emptied the remaining five chambers in rapid succession, but each shot was a worse miss than the previous one. Several more bricks and a window were demolished by the cannonade.
Julio’s form melted into the darkness as Piggy made a valiant attempt to chase after the vanished Mexican. It was no contest. The policeman, whose form resembled his nickname, was sixty pounds overweight, and the Mexican was lean and terrified. Piggy, puffing and wheezing, waddled back to the squad car and pressed the button on his mike. “Clara … ahh … oh damn … this is Slocum. Put out an APB on … ahh … whew … following suspect for resisting arrest. About five seven or five eight, medium build, dark complexion, heavy mustache. Wearin’ jeans and a leather jacket. Cowboy boots, too, I think.”
Dexter cautiously approached the wheezing policeman. “May I help, Officer?”
“Help away, fella. You”—he stopped to draw a gasping breath—“know somethin’ about that guy?”
“He’s Julio Pacheco, a university employee. Lives over on Denver Street, in that run-down apartment building near the YMCA. The one that used to be the High Country Motel. That”—Dexter pointed—“is his university vehicle.”
Piggy glanced at the handyman’s truck, then squinted his little porcine eyes at Dexter. “You know anything else, mister?”
Dexter’s normally bland face was a picture of dread. “You’d better have a look on the third floor. From the screams I heard, it sounded as if he was attempting to … to molest someone.”
FIVE
Scott Parris, clad in boxer shorts and a White Sox T-shirt, had been watching the late sports news from a Denver station. He was muttering in disbelief at footage of the Broncos’ most recent loss when the telephone jangled.
Clara Tavishuts was already talking when he put the receiver to his ear. “I sent Slocum out on a call from the campus, Chief, a report of some kind of fracas. There’s been an assault, maybe a homicide. Piggy wasn’t too clear. Victim is a young woman, probably a student. No ID yet.”
“Do we have a suspect?”
“I already put out an all points on a Mexican suspect who resisted arrest. Lieutenant Leggett has taken charge and Sergeant Knox is on the way to the campus. Thought you’d want to get there right away while the scene is fresh.”
Parris groaned. He could feel it. This was the reason for the visit by the Dread. “Thanks for the heads-up. It’ll take me a few minutes to get dressed, then I’ll check it out.�
��
“What you need to know,” she added, “is that Piggy unloaded all six chambers of his big horse pistol at the suspect, who fled on foot. Doesn’t sound like E.C. killed anything, though, except a window—glass.” Parris wondered what trouble Patrolman E. C. Slocum might have landed the department in this time. “Tell me what you know,” he said. “Was it a righteous shoot, or did our pistol-happy cowboy go bananas when he had a live body to aim at?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but there was a witness to the shooting. A Professor Dexter. He’s the guy who called nine-one-one to report the assault; he was on the scene later when Piggy fired his piece.”
“Oh great,” Parris said, “a witness, and ten to one the suspect wasn’t armed.”
When Parris arrived, cars Seven, Four, and Three were on the scene, along with the county coroner’s unmarked gray van. An ambulance was leaving without a customer. The hospital would be of no help to this particular victim. The medical examiner would be with the corpse, and that scene was not one that appealed to Parris. He had avoided the homicide squad during his entire tenure in Chicago. Vice, burglary, and auto theft details had been sufficiently grim; the bodies of murder victims gave him the shivers.
Sgt. Eddie “Rocks” Knox was busy directing occasional traffic and keeping a few curious onlookers at bay. Parris stopped to question Piggy, who, oblivious to the cold, was sitting on the hood of his patrol car, his short legs dangling over the radiator grille. Eddie Knox backed off to allow the chief some privacy. Piggy shrieked when Parris asked about the victim. “Is she dead? Hell yes she’s dead! You’d be dead, too, if you had that thing stuck in your…” The fat policeman paused to blow his bulbous nose into a filthy red bandanna. Piggy began sobbing like a small child. It was too much for Parris, who turned away in embarrassment.
“I understand the suspect ran when you arrived. Was he armed?”
Piggy dropped his head and muttered something incoherent.
Parris left Piggy and headed for Car Seven, where Eddie Knox was notifying Clara Tavishuts that Parris was on the scene. He dropped the mike and grinned at the chief. “Don’t you just love police work?”
“What went down here?”
Eddie Knox’s features harbored a perpetual hint of insolence, a barely concealed insubordination. The “Rocks,” so the story went, was afraid of nothing and nobody. And that went double for a new chief from an eastern city. Eddie chewed thoughtfully on a jawful of Red Man, then spat carelessly on the pavement, just far enough from Parris’s shoe to avoid insult.
“I know less than nothin’. Showed up here about ten minutes before you did. Didn’t go inside. Just doin’ crowd control.” He jerked a thumb toward the lighted windows on the third floor. “Leggett’s up there with the body. Doc Simpson’s there, too.”
“Slocum is pretty shaken up. I understand you two get along pretty well. Would you keep an eye on him for me?”
Eddie Knox’s eyes lost their insolence at this request. “Well, I guess you know, I’m probably the only real buddy Piggy has in the whole department. Old E.C. never did have much in the way of friends. Why, did you know … well, no, I expect I shouldn’t shoot my mouth off so much. Just gossip anyhow.”
Parris was still new on this job; he was eager to know everything about his staff. “Whatever it is, Sergeant Knox, I think you can share it with me.”
Eddie Knox hesitated, then gave in with a shrug. “Well,” he replied between chews on the wad of tobacco, “I’m probably the onliest one what knows about it, but poor old Piggy never did have any buddies, even when he was a little boy this high”—Knox held his hand knee-high to illustrate a boy-sized Piggy—“’cause he was always such a little twerp. The way I hear it”—he leaned closer to stage-whisper into Parris’s ear—“Piggy’s momma had to hang a pork chop around his fat little neck just to get his dog to play with ’im!”
Eddie Knox watched Parris’s mouth drop open before he snickered. The snicker grew to a chortle, which gave birth to a genuine belly laugh, and the laugh erupted into a loud series of snorting mulelike haw-haws. Parris turned on his heel and walked away as Knox choked and gagged on a swallow of tobacco juice.
Parris climbed the stairs to the third floor slowly, like a small boy approaches the principal’s office. Lieutenant Leggett was stationed in the hall outside the physics laboratory; he had already set up four plastic stands to hold the yellow Mylar tape that announced DO NOT ENTER—POLICE—DO NOT ENTER, and so on.
Parris nodded at the lieutenant. “Bring me up to date.” Anything to delay looking at the body. Leggett, who had the appearance of a casting director’s policeman in his immaculate blue uniform, flipped his notebook open. “Here’s what we have so far. University employee, name of Arnold Dexter, better make that Professor Arnold Dexter”—Leggett grinned—“called on nine-one-one at twenty-five to ten. Clara took the call. It’s all on the tape. This professor reports some kind of rhubarb, says he can hear screams. Piggy … uh … Patrolman Slocum was close by and got here pretty quick. When he arrived on the scene, this Dexter guy met him at the curb and pointed out the suspect, who was leaving the building. Officer Slocum ordered the suspect to halt, but he hotfooted it, sir.”
Parris grimaced. “And Officer Slocum felt compelled to fire his piece?”
Leggett hesitated. “Six times. Suspect wasn’t hit. Did some damage to the building, though.” The young policeman could not suppress a weak smile. He turned his head and covered it with a cough.
The chief laughed. It felt good; laughter drove the dark spirits back into the shadows. “I saw the shattered bricks. I’d have thought the shrapnel alone would’ve killed the suspect.” Parris paused to regain his composure. “Does the Physics Department use the whole building?”
“No,” Leggett said. “Just the third floor. Chemistry Department has the second floor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science occupy the ground floor.”
“Everybody’s talking about a Mexican. Do we know the suspect is a Mexican? Is this speculation or fact?”
Leggett flipped back one page in his shirt-pocket-sized notebook. “Our suspected perp is one Julio Pacheco. Works for University Maintenance. Had the job for just under three years. Clara woke up some guy in Personnel and got Pacheco’s folder; some of the boys have already checked the suspect’s apartment, but he’s long gone, of course. Our guys found a green card that looks like a fake. We’ll get a search warrant tomorrow morning, give his digs a thorough going-over.”
“Clara said she put out an APB.”
“That’s right,” Leggett said. “State cops should have roadblocks up in a half dozen spots from Gunnison over to Pueblo, and Alamosa up to Leadville.”
Parris glanced apprehensively at the laboratory door. “What about the, uh, corpse?”
“Female. Graduate student. Really gruesome. Simpson’s in there now. Once he’s done with the body, I’ll bag all of the evidence, check for prints and fibers, the whole ball of wax.”
Parris beamed at the young man. Leggett had completed the FBI’s eleven-week National Police Academy course with high marks. If only he had a half dozen bright fellows like Leggett, Piggy took early retirement, and Eddie Knox landed a job doing stand-up comedy. It was one of his dearest fantasies. He slapped Leggett on the back with a force that rattled the young officer’s teeth. “Good work, Lieutenant. With the exception of the folks from the coroner’s office, don’t let anyone else, including Officer Slocum, near the crime scene. I don’t want anyone entering that room until further notice. Put a department padlock on it before you leave. Ditto on the suspect’s apartment.”
Parris attempted to prepare himself mentally for the ordeal; he pushed the lab door open and was assailed by mixed odors—the corpse’s blood and the medical examiner’s raw alcohol. Walter Simpson was between him and the body, evidently studying it thoughtfully. The physician heard the footsteps and turned to glare under his bushy eyebrows at whoever might be intruding on his domain. The medical examiner’s
gruff appearance dissipated when he recognized Scott Parris. They had met only a few months earlier but were already good friends.
Simpson grimaced and raised his hand to hold the chief at bay. “You won’t like this, Scott.” He had firsthand knowledge of Parris’s distaste for corpse viewing. They had worked a bad accident on a steep jeep road only a month earlier. Parris had been searching a dark ravine for a body when he stepped in something slippery. He had wiped some of the shiny material off his boot sole for a closer inspection. It was a splattering of human brain. The chief had been sick and Simpson had been thoughtful enough to keep this piece of information to himself.
Parris steeled himself as he moved past Simpson. He was totally unprepared for the sight that had turned Piggy into a blubbering child. For a fleeting moment, his mind could not accept what he saw. He wondered, irrationally, if this could be real. It was a scene from a grade-B horror film. The young woman’s body was nude; her jaw shifted sideways, as if it was completely unhinged from her skull. Her clothing was scattered across the floor in a random fashion—a yellow dress splattered with blood, black spike heels, panty hose. An implement that appeared to be a heavy screwdriver was buried almost to the handle in her left eye socket. The socket was filled with blood that had spilled out and soaked into her lustrous dark hair. Her abdomen had been ripped open by a half dozen slashes; entrails were exposed, spilling out onto the floor. His mind reeled under the impact. This looked less like a human being than a small animal that had been ripped apart by a wild beast.
He couldn’t tear his gaze from her face; the right eye was open, staring cyclops-fashion at the ceiling. This blank uninjured eye was, somehow, more obscene than the nude, mutilated body. Parris’s knees wobbled; he steadied himself on a file cabinet and felt an irrational burst of anger. Why the hell didn’t Simpson close the undamaged eye?
The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries) Page 4