Murphy's Law (35 page)

“What?” Nick asked plaintively.

“There! There!” Loiacono jabbed at the paper so hard it tore. “See?”

Nick didn’t. Then he did. Gamma hydroxybutyrate had been found in an unopened bottle of whiskey on Roland Kane’s desk. He frowned and read further. No GHB found in Roland Kane’s blood. “Someone tried to poison him, but didn’t?”

“Strange, no?” Loiacono was quivering like a bloodhound on the scent.

“It seems to me that someone wanted to poison the man with his own drug. But then he didn’t. That’s weird.” Nick read further down the transcript. “The girl’s disappearance was reported by her brother, a professor of mathematics at Southbury.

“He testified Candace Simmons had had an appointment with the head of the department, Roland Kane, to discuss a few academic matters and hadn’t returned that night. The brother of the victim—”

Nick sat up straight. “Whoa.”

“What?” Loiacono asked, bending forward. His thick black eyebrows formed almost a straight line across his forehead. “What?”

“The brother—” Nick continued reading slowly. “—Tim Gresham, was worried when his sister didn’t come back to her dorm. He reported her missing on the morning of the 28th. She was found at ten that morning naked in Lone Ridge Park with signs of violent rape.

“She remained in a coma for five days. Ms. Simmons has been confined to a psychiatric hospital since November 10th.”

Nick met Loiacono’s eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” Nick breathed, and Loiacono made a quick sign of the cross.

Tim’s quiet words seemed to echo in the clear still air.

Madeleine didn’t kill Roland. I did.

Tim smiled again. “But you knew that, didn’t you, Faith? You’ve known since last night. I could see it in your eyes. You recognized me. And to think I told you to get out, to go home. I was afraid this would happen.”

“You—you left the note? Why?”

“Like I said. I knew that at some point you’d remember. That you’d recognize me.”

Faith’s mind was stumbling, tumbling. “I don’t know what you’re—
recognize
you? Where? How? What are you talking about?”

“Last night.” Tim’s shoulder rubbed against hers in a friendly fashion. It creeped her out. “Come on now…don’t be coy. You and I both know what happened. You saw me coming and you recognized me.”

She shook her head. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Coming where?”

Tim gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right. Think back. Last night, coming down
Via di Città
toward the square. I was with Richard . You were further down the street. You saw us, and you froze. What were you thinking of?”

How perfect Nick was compared to you.
How could she possibly say that? She couldn’t. “I, ah—” She fumbled for words and his voice rode right over hers.

“Of course you recognized me. I realized that right away. I had no idea anyone had seen me that night until you told me. The perfect crime and here there was a witness.” He shook his head. “I’ve been planning this for ten months, Faith. I’m sorry you had to get in the way.”

Faith bristled. It was so like a man. She was being made to feel guilty for something she had no memory of doing. “Listen, Tim, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she began heatedly. Then stopped, because she did. Jesus Christ, she did. No wonder she’d been feeling so ill-at-ease around him.

“Oh, my God.” It came out without thought. She flashed again on her first night in Siena. The maid carrying the tray with the bottle, strong calf muscles bunching as she walked. Broad back, no waist, stubby legs.
Tim
. “You—
you
were the maid I saw that night.
You
were the one who brought Roland that bottle of whiskey. You were the one—”

“—who killed Roland. I already told you that, Faith. Weren’t you listening?”

Faith searched his eyes for signs of violence or madness, but all she saw was the same old Tim. A little agitated, a little excited maybe, but essentially the mild-mannered nerd she’d known for over a year. The first man she’d slept with, though that was hard to remember just now.

There was an immense silence, as if the whole world had suddenly gone away. For the moment there were no tourists to be seen in the square, none of the police officers from the
Questura
around the corner lounging on the cathedral steps, sneaking a smoke, even the damned pigeons had disappeared.

Faith was suddenly conscious of being high up on a deserted walkway with a confessed murderer.

“But—but
why?
And how?” she blurted, then bit her lip. This was no time for explanations.

This was a moment for edging back into the museum, walking downstairs as quickly and quietly as possible, emerging into the central square and then making a run for the police station.

The hand Tim clamped on her arm was as firm as shackles.

“Why?” Tim mused. He turned his gaze outward as if just now noticing how deserted the square was. He addressed the side of the cathedral and his profile was hard, tense. “The son of a bitch raped my sister, that’s why. And got off scot-free, the fucker,” he added viciously.

Faith had never heard Tim swear. And she had never seen that expression on his face before.

“Your sister?”

Tim turned then. “You remember the girl who was raped last October? And then the whole thing was hushed up?”

“Yes.” Faith kept her voice low. “Candace Simmons.”

“That’s right. Well, Candace Simmons was my sister. Stepsister. My mother married her father when she was seven and I was seventeen. She was a sweet girl, a little young for her age. Trusting, overly sensitive. We didn’t spend much time together growing up because my mom divorced her dad soon after the marriage. But Candy and I kept in touch. Neither of us had siblings and, no matter what, she considered me her big brother.”

A nerve twitched heavily along his cheek. “She wanted to go to college at Southbury, to be near me. But she refused to let anyone know we were brother and sister, so she wouldn’t get privileged treatment.”

He gave a short bark of harsh laughter. “Well, she got privileged treatment all right. Roland Kane’s special brand. That guy had radar and zoomed right in on the weak and vulnerable. You. Madeleine. Candace.”

Faith frowned, trying to remember the story. “Your sister. Stepsister. She’s still…alive isn’t she?”

“Alive!”
Tim slapped the balustrade with his free hand, startling the two pigeons who had come back to roost on the little tablets. They rose fluttering in the air. “She was in a coma for days. When she came out of it, it was as if Candace, my sweet little Candace, had just…disappeared. She’s completely psychotic. She’ll be in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life.”

“But—but if Kane did this, why isn’t he—wasn’t he—tried and put in jail? Why didn’t you press charges? How could you let him get away with it?”

“Candace couldn’t testify. And there was only my word she had been going to see Kane. Do you know what a decent defense lawyer can do with that? It’s hearsay. And Kane could afford the best lawyer around. There might have been a trial and he might even have lost his job, but he’d have gotten off. And I didn’t want him on trial anyway.” He turned his head to look at her. “I wanted him dead. I’ve been waiting all year to do it.”

Faith shivered. All last year, Tim had worked side by side with Kane. They had sat in academic councils together. They had discussed students together and had planned the Quantitative Methods Seminar together. And every second of every day, Tim had been planning Kane’s death.

The day was hot, but she felt cold. “How?” she whispered through lips that had gone numb.

“What do you mean,
how?
” Tim frowned, annoyed. “You know how. You found him. I stuck a knife—oh.” His brow cleared. “I see what you mean. Well, that part was easy. I came over the day before you guys arrived.

“I’ve been planning this for a long time now and I had it planned down to the last detail. Except for you. You almost ruined everything. I had no idea anyone had seen me.”

He gave her a steely look and Faith almost apologized.
Sorry, Tim, I had no idea you were planning on killing Kane. If I’d known, of course I would’ve stayed home.

She looked yearningly at the door. Tim’s grip on her arm tightened.

“I’ve been to Siena seven times and I know the routine down pat. Roland goes up drunk to his room around ten, Grif takes a sleeping pill and sleeps like the dead, and Madeleine goes off to have her yearly affair with the night porter.”

Faith jolted. Her gossip lobe took instant precedence over the survival instinct. “Madeleine’s been having an affair? With the night porter?” she breathed. “How long has
that
been going on?”

“For seven years,” he snapped. “Now pay attention.”

She shut up.

“I entered early in the afternoon and hid in one of the rooms with the stiletto, the bottle and the maid’s uniform.” He frowned. “That threw me a little when I found out later that the caterers had changed. All the years before, there’d been an elderly maid.” A look of anger crossed his face, and then he shrugged. The CEO recalling a minor glitch in the company plan.

“They make such a big thing over here about never changing anything. Roland’s room is always seventeen and there’s no one else sleeping along his corridor until the delegates start arriving the next day. No one was supposed to see me. It went even more smoothly than I thought.” Faith was creeped out by Tim’s smile. “Roland was in a stupor, and he was barely conscious. He didn’t recognize me. He wouldn’t have recognized his mother. I was going to give him the bottle and wait for the drug in it to take effect, but it wasn’t necessary. A little pressure on his neck and he went down.

“I sat in his room and watched him until after midnight, just enjoying the moment.” Tim’s fists clenched, the slug-pale skin over the knuckles turning white.

It was so creepy, listening to Tim’s matter of fact voice. She could imagine the scene all too vividly. The dark cell, Kane lying on the floor and Tim, like some gigantic vulture, watching over him, waiting for the moment in which he’d kill his prey.

“Around one a.m., I did it,” he continued briskly. The hairs on the nape of her neck stood up. “The door of the
Certosa
isn’t locked on the inside. The night porter was—busy. Humping Madeleine. I just walked out. I’d arrived that morning in Rome, rented a car and driven up to Siena. I left the car about half a mile away from the
Certosa
. That night I drove myself back to Rome Airport in time for the morning flight out.

“I traveled under a different name. I have an English passport in the name of Timothy Dunham. I’ve kept it up. I always knew it would be useful one day to be somebody else. Timothy Dunham arrived back in Boston and two hours later, Tim Gresham took a flight to Rome.

“I have a perfect alibi. When Kane was killed, I was six thousand miles away, sick in bed with the flu. And no one will ever know the truth.” He looked at her steadily and his chest rose and fell on a sigh. “Except for you.”

“Oh, hey.” Faith smiled reassuringly. She held up her hands. “Don’t worry about a thing, Tim. I won’t tell a soul. I swear.”

“Of course not,” he said gently. “Because you’ll be dead.”

And he pushed her over the balustrade.

Dante opened the door to the common room where Nick and Loiacono were working, slammed it closed and leaned against it wearily. “Damn,” he said. “Madeleine Kobbel didn’t do it.”

Nick and Loiacono looked up. “What?” Nick said. “What do you mean? We had a whole Certosa full of geeks who saw her do it. Listen, she can’t wriggle out of this one. She almost killed Faith.”

“No.” Dante stepped forward and leaned a hand on the desk. He stared down at his knuckles. “I don’t mean that. I mean she didn’t kill Roland Kane.”

“She tried to kill Faith,” Nick said hotly.

“Probably.” Dante drummed his fingers once, violently. “But we can’t prove it. Even if she tried to kill Faith, though, she didn’t kill Roland Kane.”

Nick cared far less about Roland Kane than he did about Faith. The only thing he knew, though, was that anyone capable of tilting a heavy vase over a wonderful woman’s head was certainly capable of killing a nasty man. “Why do you say that? How do you know she didn’t off the prof?”

“Because.” Dante sighed. “The night Kane was murdered, Madeleine Kobbel was in bed with Egidio Pecci. All night. I just got off the phone with Egidio and he says they’ve been having an affair while she’s in Siena for the past seven years.” He shook his head. “Egidio says she’s a tiger in bed.”

Nick was stunned. “Egidio was having an affair with Madeleine Kobbel? What’s the matter with the guy?” Nick couldn’t fathom it. He turned the thought around in his head, but it still didn’t make any sense. “I’d rather stick it into a rattlesnake’s jaws.”

Loiacono cleared his throat and turned his head swiftly, but not before Nick caught a smile on his face.

“Amen.” Dante shrugged. “Bottom line, though, is that Egidio swore she didn’t leave his bed from until seven in the morning. He says they didn’t sleep at all.” Dante looked pained. “So I guess that’s that. We’re going to have to look elsewhere for Roland Kane’s murderer.

“Damn! Just when I thought I could wrap everything up in time for the Pa—” Dante glanced at Loiacono and coughed.

Nick slid the printouts of the Southbury PD’s emailed attachments over. “We might have another candidate for you, Dante.”

Dante picked up the sheaf and leafed through it. “Is there a short version of this?”

“The short version is that Roland Kane raped Tim Gresham’s sister. But first, Kane pumped the girl full of Gamma hoomma hubba.”

Dante straightened. “Gamma hydroxybutyrate.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Gamma hydroxybutyrate is what was found in—”

“The bottle of whiskey in Roland Kane’s room,” Loiacono finished. “But not in Roland Kane’s blood.”

“Tim Gresham didn’t arrive in Italy until after the murder. So we’re back to square one,” Dante said glumly.

Nick didn’t feel like letting Gresham off the hook that easily. “How do we know that?”