A Fugitive Truth

by Dana Cameron

  “Huh,” I said. Bite me, I thought. Since when did she have a medical degree?

  “Would it help to know I had a four-year track scholarship to UMass Amherst?”

  “Yes,” I said, slightly mollified.

  “Of course, that was a long time—years—ago. I’ve slowed down considerably since then.”

  “Go to hell.” I paused to rub my throbbing thigh.

  Again came the silent laugh. “All I can say is, it’s gonna suck to be you tomorrow.”

  We limped along slowly, and by the time we reached the back field, I was hobbling along by myself. I would be feeling the effects of the night’s escapade for a while.

  “What did you find on the top of the fence?” I asked when I could finally divert some of my concentration to other matters.

  “Our friend left a small piece of electrical tape,” she answered.

  “Electrical tape? I thought he caught his foot up there. Was he trying to hide the running shoe design?”

  “Maybe just to help camouflage them; so many are white or reflective these days and stand out in the dark. Ever heard the one about the kid who was ripping off VCRs and went to a whole lot of trouble to dress like a ninja? Problem was he was wearing those running shoes that blink red lights when you run in them. And he didn’t have a clue how the arresting officer was able to follow him.”

  I thought about it. “Not much in the way of footprints going to be left on the pine needles and stuff, but there may be something in the dirt on the other side of the fence—”

  She wasn’t convinced. “Maybe. And there may be tire tracks and there may be prints in the house.”

  I nodded. “So did you find anything in Jack’s room?”

  “Jack’s room?” I could hear the confusion in her voice. Kobrinski shook her head. “I was going to Jack’s room but ended up in yours. I hate to say this, but it looks like it’s been tossed pretty good. I think whoever we were chasing was in your room. Must have gone down the back stairs as I came up the front.”

  “Oh God, what happened? My computer, my notes—!” The full implications of this were only just starting to settle in on me when suddenly I heard the detective sergeant swear hotly and run the last few steps over to her unmarked sedan parked in front of the house.

  I was about to ask what was going on when I saw the broken window glass scattered around the driver’s side door, illuminated brilliantly by the lights from inside the house. I hobbled up as she tore open the door, looked inside briefly, then just as quickly slammed the door shut again. She turned, as if to explain to me, then turned back just as quickly, slamming the roof with her hand in a white hot rage.

  The violence of her actions scared me, and I could only shrug and shake my head dumbly, waiting for the explanation, when she did turn to me.

  “I’d locked Ms. Morgan’s diary in the car, but it’s not there now. It’s been stolen.”

  Chapter 12

  “NOOO! LET ME GO!” I COULDN’T UNDERSTAND why I couldn’t move.

  “Owww! My eye! Damn it!”

  “She’s still out there!” Someone was holding me back. I fought to get loose. “In the water!”

  “God’s bollocks!”

  “I have to get out there!”

  “Emma, wake up! There’s no one in the frigging water, damn it! You’re asleep!”

  “The water! Meg!” There came a jolting realization that I wasn’t where I thought I was, and all the images that had been so real, so urgent, just a moment before, completely evaporated. I found myself in the hallway outside my bedroom trying desperately to hang onto the vanishing remnants of the dream, thoroughly confused, just a second too late to get the vital clue that I sensed waited for me.

  Michael was gripping my right shoulder with one hand, pinning me hard against the wall outside my room with his forearm. He cupped his left eye with the other hand. It was the shock of his proximity and the sudden realization that he was naked from the waist up that really woke me up.

  “You okay now?” Michael finally asked, not willing to move away until he was sure of me.

  I swallowed and nodded, not trusting myself to speak. He smelled of clean sweat, warm sleep, and, unexpectedly, baby shampoo. He looked tired and scared, worried for me. It was nothing like his daytime mask of terminal ennui. I was still shaken from my nightmare, my heart racing like twenty. Certainly he must be able to feel it pounding, pressing so close. I became acutely aware of the fact that I had been trying to shove him away from me and that my hands were still on his bare, flat stomach. I could feel chest hairs curling under my fingertips that normally would have been concealed by a shirt and the omnipresent overcoat.

  He hesitated, but as soon as he stepped back, releasing me, I fell forward, only keeping my balance by grabbing his arm. Again I realized that he was stronger than his usually careless posture would have suggested: I’d been struggling very hard.

  As soon as I’d steadied myself, I pulled my hand away as though I’d touched a furnace, embarrassing us both. I realized I couldn’t just dive back into my room and hide, but neither could I speak yet.

  “Where’s the light? God, my eye hurts! My poor glasses, I hope they’re all right. That’s some mean right you have.” After a moment, he found the hall light, then looked around. His glasses were on the floor a few feet away from us, and he picked them up, then he quickly scuttled into his room.

  “What happened?” I asked, swallowing again.

  “I thought you could tell me,” Michael called. He returned a second later, his overcoat tied closely about him. He paused, looking at his glasses. “Good, they’re not broken.”

  He didn’t put them back on immediately, but smoothed out his tousled hair, collecting himself. “I was reading, nearly asleep, when I heard yelling, screaming, not to put too fine a point on it. I figured the house was on fire. I ran out just in time to find you going berserk about someone being in the water. I tried to keep you from running down the stairs and you landed a smart one on me.”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry—”

  He walked over and checked himself out in the hall mirror. I was horrified to see a bruise already rising around his eye.

  “Oh, pree-eetty. This is going to look real nice.” He made a fierce face at the mirror, probing the contusion carefully. “Between this and the hand, I’m starting to look like Frankenstein’s monster.” He held his hands out in front of him and tried out a stiff-legged walk.

  “How’d you hurt your hand?” I asked, too quickly.

  Michael desisted with his monster imitation and waved my question aside. “I don’t remember. Whacked it on the lockers, I think. One of the doors is broken, it sticks. What were you dreaming about? Faith? Who’s Meg?”

  “Faith?” I could barely remember what had been driving me before. “Yes, it was Faith. No, wait, I don’t think so. It was where I found her, in the stream, but not really, and not her, if you know what I mean. Meg’s…a friend of mine. A student. A long time ago, I was afraid she’d drowned.” I shivered, remembering that stormy night out at Penitence Point; at the moment, that memory was the thing I could make the most sense of. “At the time, I was afraid I was going to drown too.”

  “Hmmm. Go get a bathrobe, or something, you’re starting to shiver,” he said, not looking over from the mirror.

  I hobbled into my room and threw on my robe, an absurd silk trifle that had been a gift from Marty. I brought it only because it fit into my suitcase. I found myself wishing it was a thick, shapeless piece of terrycloth, and was profoundly grateful that it was still March. If it had been June, well, I wouldn’t have been wearing my long johns to bed. I took a moment to gather myself in hand, sitting down on the bed and resting my head on my knees, waiting for my heart to slow down.

  I don’t sleepwalk. I don’t generally have dreams that drive me to it. And I almost never have experienced the sort of physical shock I had just encountered with Michael. I just don’t get that wound up about strangers, even good-looking ones.
I’m not the sort to get wound up—

  Emma, I told myself, the word you’re groping for, if you’ll pardon the expression, is aroused.

  Whatever you want to call it, that’s not me, I insisted. I just…don’t. What the hell is going on here?

  Once I settled myself, I took a deep breath and went back out into the hallway to make my apologies.

  “I really am absurdly sorry.” I was more than a little freaked out by what I’d done and how I was feeling. “Maybe we could get you some frozen peas or ice or something for your eye?”

  Michael put his glasses on, adjusting them carefully, seeing how they looked with his shiner before he put them away in his room. He was Michael the enigmatic again. “Emma,” he said disapprovingly. “You know how I feel about vegetables of any sort. I doubt there’s anything so politically incorrect as a raw steak in the house? No? Well, come on downstairs anyway, Lady MacBeth. I don’t think I could possibly get to sleep again after all that drama.”

  I limped after him, my leg still sore, and checked the big clock at the foot of the stairs. Three thirty. We’d only got to bed around one, after Detective Kobrinski and the state police crime squad had sealed Jack’s room and we’d had a look around my own devastated room. Nothing appeared to be missing there, and nothing was really damaged, as far as I could tell. Papers were strewn about the room, the covers were torn off the bed, and the mattress was on the floor. All my clothes that had been in the armoire were in a heap on the floor, and all of the drawers had been taken from the bureau and emptied, then they were thrown on top of their contents. But my computer was on the desk where I’d left it, and I found the note from Jack still crumpled in the pocket of the jacket I’d worn Saturday morning. Nothing had been destroyed.

  For all the lack of damage, I still felt creeped out; someone had handled my stuff, been near to what was important to me. Ours is a culture that values privacy and has a sharply defined notion of personal space, so much so that fights can break out over an unintentional bump on the sidewalk. The sanctity of my de facto home had been violated and even though the little interior door lock had been absurdly easy to break through, it represented a shattered social code of respect for privacy and safety. I had to resist the urge to wash all the clothes that had been thrown about, even though they hadn’t even been on the floor long enough to get wrinkled, simply because some unknown person had handled them.

  The detective sergeant had taken my statement and went off to take Michael’s, leaving me to clean up the mess as best I could. I hadn’t seen Michael since he left the gazebo—not until my nightmare dragged us both from our respective beds.

  After a quick look in the freezer, I tossed Michael a package. “Here, put that on your eye.”

  He looked at the plastic bag askance. “I suppose Tater Bites don’t really count as veg, do they? Jack won’t want them now anyway.” He clamped it to his eye, and stretched out across two chairs on the far side of the table. I could just see the tops of his bare feet, his hands as he gestured, and the bag as it sat on his head.

  A very bad parody of what was presumably an Austrian accent issued from behind the table. “Soo, vat vere you dreamink. Tell me, vat haunts you zo?”

  “It was just a bad dream, that’s all. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “You are then very often tearink around der house screamink blau murder?” Michael got bored with Freud and switched back to his normal voice. “You know sleepwalking is pretty unusual in adults? Do it often?”

  “No. No, absolutely not. Almost never.”

  “Almost never?”

  “Cocoa?” I offered, hopping up from my seat.

  “Oh God.” A vast sigh came from behind the kitchen table. “When a man takes a poke in the eye, from a woman, who’s asleep, he wants something a little more butch than cocoa to soothe his ego.”

  I almost told him about my Krav Maga lessons, as if that might be balm for his ego. Then I reconsidered; I didn’t particularly want anyone to know about whatever slight resources I might have at my disposal. Just in case. Nolan would be very proud, though: I’d finally figured out how to stop overthinking my moves and land a good punch. All I had to do was be asleep.

  Instead, I pulled the Macallan out of a cupboard, then hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Michael propped himself up on one elbow, still clutching the cold bag to his eye.

  “This is what Faith and I were drinking the night she was killed.” I looked at the label, daring it to make some sense of what was happening at Shrewsbury.

  “So what, are you afraid it’s cursed?”

  That was precisely what I was thinking. “No, ’course not.” I annoyed myself by reacting to Michael’s sarcasm. “Anything older than twelve years is proof against curses.”

  “You’re making puns? Now?” He paused. “Maybe you think it’s poisoned,” he suggested in an odd, cold voice. “Maybe you even spiked it yourself.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” I poured two shots and banged them on the table irritably, worried about what he might be, even as he bluntly accused me of murder.

  Now Michael heaved himself up on his elbow, eye level with the drinks. He hesitated, then made a big production of scrutinizing the glasses, switching them around, and around again, looking up at me to see what I thought of his antics.

  “Stop being dramatic.”

  He still waited to take his first sip until I drank first and only then raised his glass. “Chin chin. Here’s to the dramatic: It may keep you from being dead.”

  I sighed heavily. “Faith wasn’t poisoned, Michael. We don’t know how Jack died. And I had nothing to do with either of these deaths.”

  “Never hurts to be careful, does it? We’re down fifty percent in one week, you know. I think even the British officers in the Crimean would have reconsidered in light of those numbers.” He paused and took another sip. “We don’t know each other, we band of happy scholars. We don’t know who’s lurking around here.”

  “The important thing is we don’t know why.” And as long as we were on the subject…I took a deep breath, then blurted out, “Did you trash my room?”

  He rolled his eyes and set his glass on the table, sinking out of sight to recline across the chairs again. “No, I did not trash your room. Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Toss your own room. I wondered about that.” A bandaged hand snuck up and reclaimed the whiskey.

  “No! Why would I do that? What, you mean like a diversion or something?”

  I saw the bag of Tater Bites wobble unsteadily, just visible above the surface of the table, as Michael shook his head. “I have no way of knowing that I’m not living across the hall from a murderer. Your door wasn’t even busted. It does make for a nice diversion. Ought to give any thinking person pause, yeah?”

  I shook my head. “For all of Mr. Constantino’s much-vaunted concern with security, any dodo with a credit card could get by these indoor locks. A good swift kick is what did the trick, according to Detective Kobrinski. You’ll just have to take my word for it. It wasn’t me.”

  “I don’t think either of us ever got by on faith, have we, Emma?” Michael shook his head again and clucked. “And I don’t think that we can afford to start now. Just think about it. Faith herself…ah. You know, we started off with the four of us, and quite frankly, none of this excitement started until you came along—”

  The same thing that Dr. Moretti had said. “Oh, for heaven’s—”

  “—and now there’s just us twain. Ten Little Indians was hardly less subtle. So I’m all for excessive care—dramatics if you like—until we know what is going on. I like you, Emma, but I don’t think I should trust you; you know too much about door locks and credit cards. You spend too much time, by your own admission, in the heads of dead people. Contrariwise, you’d probably be smart not to trust me.”

  I thought about that for a minute, realizing that he was right and not liking it. “Did you see or hear anybody go into my roo
m?”

  “Nope. I was sitting in the parlor, by myself. Having a think. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  And sitting in the dark was perfectly useless as an alibi, I thought, especially when the parlor was so close to the front of the house, where the detective’s car had been parked while she was upstairs. That back staircase made it very easy to miss each other, it was designed to do just that, to shield the Shrewsburys from the sight of their scurrying servants. “You never did tell me what your relationship with Faith was.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well?” I still couldn’t see Michael’s face, hidden behind the table and the makeshift ice pack.

  It was a long time before he answered. “Suffice it to say, we knew each other only slightly and had nothing in common but a bleak outlook on life. We just expressed it differently.”

  “You seemed a lot more upset by Jack’s death than hers. Big difference between this afternoon, yesterday, I should say, and last week.”

  “I didn’t find her,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know Faith the way I knew Jack. Jack and I had…history.”

  I pushed on recklessly. “What kind of history?”

  “We just knew each other, conferences and such. The random contacts of our mutual field, poor bastard. You can’t tell me you don’t know how small the academic world is—you meet someone by chance, and they seem to pop back into your life for real shortly after that.” Michael was clearly getting impatient. “But what do you care? What are you, the emotional hall monitor?”

  “No. And for the record, I’m not a ghoul either,” I said. “It’s just something I do. An extension of my work. It only seems fair, that’s all; someone ought to care, want to get at the truth. But whatever the reason I feel compelled to…peer and poke, at least I feel like I’m doing something useful. And that helps.”

  Michael sat up and tossed the soggy, limp plastic bag in the sink. “I suppose that’s better than some avenging angel complex, but it doesn’t comfort me much.”