Murder My Past

by Delia C. Pitts

  Annie’s tone was brisk, without her usual warm drawl. The story was straightforward. She said she would have to dig to get the papers she had kept on the hours spent interviewing each of her employees. She said Professor Keith asked her to maintain a cuff account of the hours – informal notes on the back of an envelope – so he could pay each girl what was due them. “But he wanted it kept off the official company records, so it wasn’t recorded as part of the regular hours each girl put in,” Annie explained.

  Though she hadn’t stopped writing, Galaxy recovered her voice. Low, rough, and menacing. Lucky I wasn’t the focus of her anger, I’d have burned to cinders where I sat.

  “So, how many hours did Keith spend interviewing employees at the company in Miami?”

  Pearl tapped the screen to freeze Annie’s image and answered the dean’s question. “I don’t know exactly. Anniesha had that all written up. She told me it was twenty to forty hours he spent with about twenty women. That Sally Anastos spent time down there too, living in the neighborhood. But Anniesha said her workers told her Sally didn’t do much talking with them, even on a social level. Kept pretty much to herself on the job and on the weekends too. Didn’t go out, or visit, or socialize, or nothing. Just kept to herself all the time. Hiding out in her apartment. Scared or something, I guess.”

  “And did Sally Anastos spend the entire twelve months in Miami, as she claimed?” Galaxy’s tone was frosty enough to snap the beak off a penguin.

  “Not from what Anniesha told me. No. Sally wasn’t down there a solid year. She’d fly in, work a little with one of the cleaning teams, and then disappear after a few days. Anniesha knew who was on each team, on each assignment, and for how long at each location. She told me she had proof of exactly how much work the two professors put into their research down in Miami.”

  Galaxy was terse in outlining the importance of Annie’s information. “And she also had proof of how much time and effort they did not put into their research.”

  “Yes, Dean. She did.” Pearl nodded and tapped the keyboard. “Here’s what she said.”

  The tablet blazed again. Annie’s bold eyes flickered as she leaned toward us. This time her voice had a metallic edge, like shears slicing through silk. “I’m going to show them, Pearl. Show them good. They thought they could pull a fast one. Use us in their little game of snob versus snob. But I won’t be used. Not now. Not ever. And I won’t let them use you either.” The click of tongue against teeth made hairs rise on my neck. “Oh, it’ll be a blast to see Gerry and his little side chick squirm, won’t it? Their faces, puffing up like freaking pink frogs! Can’t you just picture it, Pearl? I can’t wait!”

  Tears brimming, Pearl poked the screen. The smile on Annie’s face froze, eyes tight with glee. Her voice stopped, one touch forever muting the past. My gut clenched; desire rushed, fresh as always. Guilt heaved too, glazed with anger. Bile slicked the crest of my tongue. Did Annie’s pull grip the others? Did they want to claw through the screen to arrest the past too?

  Behind me, Brina gasped. I turned to see her slam hand to mouth. But words escaped anyway: “She had no idea how serious this was. What she was planning. How it could devastate the careers those profs had built. Anniesha wanted revenge for being dissed. But she never imagined how deep the threat was.”

  Under Brina’s wet glance, I gulped and shook my head. Nothing I had could break the silence. It went on for hours, years. When I winced at the gut pain, Pearl squeezed my hand tighter.

  Galaxy asked the practical follow up. “So, what happened to Anniesha’s report? The presentation she was planning to give with you, Pearl?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself. Anniesha had it all ready the day before. I saw her after she gave that keynote speech. She told me she had her presentation all set. Slides, graphs, PowerPoint. It must have been on a laptop or in one of those power sticks.”

  Brina, in her seat again, turned to me. “Did the police find a computer or thumb drive in Anniesha’s room?”

  “I asked. They said no. I didn’t see one when we entered the room. But we weren’t looking for a laptop.”

  An image of Room 1823, as it looked when Pearl and I followed the manager through that door, shimmered in my mind. The vision was clear. But I couldn’t see anything except Annie’s beautiful body. No bed or nightstand or chair. No suitcase or laptop. Just Annie, drifting in peace, terrible holes ripped through her breast.

  “Then it must have been removed and destroyed by the murderer.” Brina was the first to use that word. A grim reminder of the act that brought us to this point.

  Galaxy’s intervention was harsh, laced with bitterness that seemed as personal as mine, but for different reasons.

  “Yes. This is academic fraud covered up by murder. Fraud at its purest. Keith and Anastos conspired to commit academic deceit. They fabricated information and presented the lies as truth. They forged data they claimed to have collected in the field from informants. They made up the names, backgrounds, histories, and interview responses for hundreds of informants to fill in the contours of their research. Plain and simple: they cheated.”

  “And Anniesha had the goods on them.” Pearl said this with force, pride wringing sadness from her voice. She looked at the screen, smiled at Annie, then tapped it. Oblivion, in a dazzling blue wash of pixels, erased my past.

  I squeezed her hand again. “Yes, she did.”

  Brina’s crisp tone crackled with alarm. “But if Anniesha was in danger, doesn’t that mean you could be too, Pearl? You know the same thing she knew.”

  “Maybe, I guess. I never thought about it. I didn’t know why Anniesha had been killed. It never occurred to me the information she knew had cost her life. Or that what she knew, I might know too.”

  Realization contracted Pearl’s eyelids until white showed all around her pupils. She stared at me, the only person she knew or cared about in the room.

  I couldn’t offer comfort. “That’s exactly what the killer was counting on. That no one would ever figure out a motive for Annie’s murder. That killing her was the single blow which eliminated both the knowledge and the person who held it.”

  I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself. The waste of Annie’s death overwhelmed me again. I’d investigated enough murders to know sometimes people got killed because of a few tiny scraps of information. The victim could know something, or see something, or hear something that meant the end of the world to the killer.

  Sometimes the victim might even know she possessed that nugget of insight. She could hold it up, turn it around, focus a magnifying glass on it. Even boast about it, the way Annie did. But without context, she could never imagine how crucial her bit of information was. And she couldn’t conceive of how far a terrified fanatic would go to erase it. As I’d learned through painful experience, murder didn’t take two to tango. Only the killer needed to know the information was of fatal value. Annie’s had almost been a clean murder, one that erased the dangerous facts and the person who held them in a single blow. If not for Pearl Byrne’s payroll accounts and her recordings of her conversations with Annie, we never would have known the truth.

  I shuddered, sending a tremor from my body to Pearl’s. She glanced at me, a frown line folding her brow. Then she squeezed my hand to reassure me as I had done for her a few minutes earlier.

  “Don’t worry about me, SJ. Nothing bad’s going to get me. I’m too tough a bird to get into trouble.”

  “Nothing bad’s going to happen to anybody. Count on it.” I sounded more confident than I felt. Pearl looked relieved, so I tossed her a smile to seal my promise.

  Galaxy Pindar had no patience with mushy reassurances. She lumbered to her desk. She punched at a cell phone lying on a stack of papers. Without introduction or apology, she snapped orders. She told someone he needed to hear from a new witness with key testimony about one of the books under consideration. She never
used the term, but I knew she was speaking with a member of the Blackistone Prize committee. Academics are often accused of being vague, indecisive, and slow to act. Why decide today? When you can have three committee meetings about it this semester. And five more next semester. And submit a report at the end of the academic year after that? But fury driving her, Galaxy Pindar proved the exception to the rule: she moved fast.

  When she hung up, the dean turned heated eyes on the three of us.

  “Pearl, you come with me. A faculty committee is meeting right now in another part of this building. They need to hear your story. They need to know the background to Gerry Keith’s field research for his book. After the committee, you go to the police.”

  Pearl gulped, her chin twitching. “Okay, Dean. If you need me. But I want SJ to come with me. Can he?”

  “Of course.” Galaxy was crisp as she stuffed her note pad into a tan leather folder. “Rook, the Blackistone committee is meeting in a conference room on the first floor. Both of you can come.” She tilted her head to include Brina.

  Her mouth squeezed into a tight O, Pearl looked a plea at me. I patted her shoulder as we stood from the table. Maybe the committee would boot me from the room when they listened to Pearl’s story. But if she wanted me there, I was ready.

  Galaxy led the way to the outer room of the dean’s office suite. Sharing a nod, Brina and I stepped into flanking positions on either side of Pearl, forming a triangle of protection as we moved toward the exit.

  But none of our security measures mattered in the face of a loaded gun.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Nine

  Sally Anastos prodded the nape of Gerry Keith’s neck with her gun. As she herded him across the threshold into the dean’s suite, she deepened her voice. Commands rumbled across the room.

  At the four of us: “You, step back. Hands in front.” Her stare raked across our line, vacant and cold. Did she even see us?

  At Keith: “Stand over there. Next to him.”

  Gerry stumbled to my right. With the blunt nose of her Beretta, Sally arranged us in a broad arc. We were a captive chorus and she was the choirmaster. Did the formation suit her notion of status? Keith, then me, with Pearl, Brina, and Galaxy fanned on my left. Or was this the order in which Sally planned to kill us?

  Hands clenched at my thighs, I focused on the wall over Sally’s shoulder. No good challenging her with a direct stare. Defuse the situation, keep Sally calm. Connect her to us as humans, not aggressors or prey. Gerry Keith swayed, as if for a dance. At my left, Pearl shivered, fear seeping like rot through the room. Her whimpers would swell into groans if this stand-off wasn’t resolved soon. Mewling might generate pity. Or provoke Sally into a sadistic attack.

  Galaxy coughed. I turned my head. She launched daggers with her eyes: “What are you doing here?” Nonsensical and threatening, but it was her office. A dean in command, staring down the barrel of a gun.

  “I brought him to you.” Sally narrowed her eyes, then shifted her jaw toward Keith. He dropped his head until the red goatee brushed the knot in his tie. His hands twitched against his gray trousers. “You’re the dean. You need the truth from his mouth.”

  “I’ve got the truth. Seen it. You – you don’t need to do this…You…” Galaxy’s plea spluttered to a gasp.

  Sally laughed at the stumble. “You don’t even know my name, do you?” The screech sliced the dank air. Galaxy stepped back, chewing her lip.

  I spoke into the hollowed-out silence. “I know your name. Sarah.” Maybe the formality would stitch her wounded pride. Restore her connection to us. “And you know me.”

  Sally swallowed hard. I slid my eyes to the left. Brina’s hand twitched near her pocket. She wanted to grip the gun at the small of her back, a disastrous option. Matching firepower with firepower would end this standoff in bloodshed. I sent cautioning brain waves. We’d collaborated in crises before. Our ESP might work again. I tilted my head toward Brina with a quick warning. A flicker of eyelashes, nothing more.

  But the subtle gesture ignited Sally’s fury. “Don’t move, Rook!”

  She was dressed for her mission: black tights and shoes, a black shirt revealed ropey veins jumping along her neck. No earrings, her red hair spiked like a raptor’s frill. Chewed skin flaked from her bare lips. She snapped at Brina: “Who are you?”

  Muscles along Brina’s jaw clenched, but she said nothing.

  Sally filled in the gap. “You another of Gerry’s little fuck buddies?”

  The hard green of her pupils glittered with excitement. An animal musk rose from her body. This was exhilaration, the same release and triumph I’d seen in her face the morning after she’d murdered Annie.

  Sally waved her pistol at Brina. “Over there, bitch.” She pointed to a spot next to Keith. “He gets it first, then you.”

  Brina crossed in front of Pearl, then me. Sally jerked the gun again. Brina, wrists and knees flexed, stepped into place at Keith’s right. Our circle contracted.

  I wanted attention off Brina. I scratched my nail along a pants seam. The sound, like the rustle of a creeping rat, scurried across the room. Sally growled at me. “I know you don’t have a gun. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I shook my head, but kept my eyes low. “Nobody’s doing stupid, Sally. Not me. Not you. Everybody walks away. Nobody gets hurt.”

  “Too late for that.” A laugh blurted from her throat. “And you know it. And she knows it too.”

  Sally whipped the nose of her gun from my chest to Pearl’s. Tension contracted her finger.

  “I… I don’t know anything. I just clean houses. You know that, Miss. You know me. I’m just the cleaning lady.” Pearl’s stuttering appeal drew a gauzy veil over Sally’s face.

  Her gaze stiffened into steel when she turned to Gerry Keith. “But he knew,” she snapped. She stepped into our tight circle.

  The coward whined. “No, I… I didn’t, …not quite. Not really. No.”

  Red flooded Sally’s cheeks at this babble of negatives. My fingers clenched and released. I wanted to slap Keith into silence.

  Sparks darted from Sally’s eyes. She waved the gun at her mentor. “You knew. Say it! You knew.”

  Keith flapped his hands in front of his chest. “Yes, alright,” he said. “Yes, I knew. I knew you fabricated the data.”

  Brina sucked her teeth. Galaxy hissed contempt from the edge of the circle.

  Sally ignored them. Keith was her target. “And you accepted it anyway.”

  Keith’s chest swelled, rejecting the blame. He wagged his head. Blustering ego aimed a desperate dart at Sally’s weak spot. “From you? You’d be nothing without me. I made your career.”

  Sally recoiled, her shoulders jerking. She stepped into the attack. “No, I made your career, Gerry.” She railed against the professor she had loved. “And you accepted it. Like tribute from a vassal. You took it all.”

  His lips trembled. “No, that’s not true. Not true.” The splutter landed wet and futile in the hushed room.

  Sally thrust the gun in a straight line. “Say it, Gerry. Say it here. Now. You used my research. You knew it was bogus and you used it anyway. Say it. Or I blast that stupid goat’s beard off your face.”

  “Okay! Okay! Yes!” His eyes darted to the windows beyond the assistant’s desk. First count in the indictment delivered.

  But Sally wasn’t finished. Next charge in the case against Keith: “And you slept with her. You abandoned me in that hell hole in Miami while you fucked your head off with… with her. Say it!”

  Keith shook his head again. When Sally stepped forward, he clutched his chin. “Yes, all right. All right! Yes, Anniesha was… Well, she was someone I liked a lot.”

  Rancid tobacco floated as Gerry breathed at me. “I’m sorry.”

  Someone gasped. I squeezed my eyes. Sorry. A red tide pounded behind my nose. So
rry. Fourteen days since Annie’s murder. Since these depraved freaks stole her life. Murdered my past. Cancelled my future. Sorry.

  My eyes flew open when Sally’s voice blared. “He knew I killed her. And he said nothing. He fucked her that night. Then me the next morning. He accepted her death. Like it was nothing. Erased. Like the phony data. She didn’t count. She was just another sacrifice on the altar of his magnificent career.”

  Tears glittered on reddened lids. She turned toward Gerry, voice rising. “You knew. Say it. Say. It. Now.”

  “Yes, Okay. Yes, I knew. I guessed you shot Anniesha. You were excited that morning, buzzing and happy. Proud even. But I didn’t know why. Not for sure.” Drawing me into their orgy of confession, he muttered: “I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

  Pearl sobbed, the sound wet and distant, as if from a deep well. She swayed, bumping my shoulder.

  All the anguish, the fury, and the sorrow burst from me. “You fucking bastard! You used Annie.” I looked at Sally. “And her too. You used them like Kleenex. And what about Pearl? Were you going to erase her too?”

  “No… I…” Wheedling, bargaining, maneuvering for his advantage, as always.

  “Shut up!” My words.

  Sally’s move. She lowered her gaze to Gerry’s mouth. Lined the gun barrel to track her stare. A smile flattened the elfin peaks of her lips. Slight pressure squeezed the trigger.