Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) (13 page)

"You still have no idea what you did wrong."

"I know perfectly well what I did wrong," he says. "Your department was investigating Tom Blackman. I flirted with you, got you to trust me by setting up a scenario where you were attacked by an asshole, but it was an act because my boss had told me to get close to you in order to figure out how far along the murder case was--or, at least, it was an act for the first few days. I fell in love with you, Mira. I don't know what else I could do to prove it to you."

When he talks about it like that, just a recounting of the facts, it doesn’t make me angry anymore. Not like it used to. It makes me sad. "I understand what you're saying and I feel that on some level it's true," I say. "But I can't let you back into my life like that. I mean, you're still undercover--"

"Speaking of that, I began helping the police because I felt so bad about hurting you," he interjects. "It's not exactly my lifelong dream to be a confidential informant."

"...and I can't trust you again," I say. "How could I ever be sure that you aren't double-crossing the police? And if I can't ever be sure, how could we have a stable relationship?"

"I assumed that love conquered all."

"Well, you assumed wrong," I say. "The only thing that love conquers is...erectile dysfunction."

He chuckles. "Maybe. Are you sure I can't change your mind?"

I shake my head. "I've thought about this for a long time. I know this is the right decision."

"But you keep coming back around here."

"Maybe I like your apartment," I say. "It reminds me of a stripper joint that's trying to be a corporate office."

"That is exactly what I told my interior decorator I wanted," he jokes. "I'm glad that she did so well."

I set my beer bottle on his end table and pull a small pillow shaped like a football under my head.

"Are you going to sleep?" he asks. "It's only six o'clock."

"Well, I'd like to sleep for the next year," I say. "So, time is a bit irrelevant."

“I’ve got some errands to run, but you can stay here,” he says.

I nod, truly just wanting to sleep the rest of the day away. I’ll need to find an actual job soon, but I have enough money stashed away that I can pay next month’s rent and buy enough food to survive.

But that’s not all survival is about. I’ve spent most of my life with my career pushing me forward and now I don’t have a purpose. Now I’m just a woman who sleeps before darkness falls.

* * *

E
verything feels so
surreal as I linger outside of John’s office. He’s sitting in his desk chair, but he’s staring at the place where Victoria died. His head jerks up as he notices me.

“Hey, Mira,” he says. “I heard there about the shooting on Main Street. I thought you would have been there.”

“Really?” I ask. “You thought about me?”

He shrugs. “You are my crime solving partner.”

I sit down across from him and cup my chin in my hand as I lean on the armrest. “I was fired.”

He takes in a sharp breath. “What? Why? What happened?”

“I made enough mistakes that they didn’t think I was worth keeping,” I say. “But I need to know something right now and I need to know the truth. I’m not kidding around. If you lie to me, I’m not going to be happy.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he says, showing his hands in a gesture of openness.

“Why did you lie about your alibi?”

“I didn’t,” he says. “I had a doctor’s appointment.”

“Bullshit,” I say, standing up, feeling heat rush up to my face. I lost my damn job to this man. “I have a witness that places you here.”

“I wasn’t here,” he insists. “I don’t have the most distinguishing features. Maybe they mistook me for someone else.”

“Oh, please,” I say. “Come on. You’re young, blond, with that haircut—anybody would recognize you from a distance.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I was at the appointment. It was a check-up with Dr. Wallace. You can ask him or the receptionist.”

“Why?” I ask. “For all I know, you charmed them too. Did you purposefully get close to me because you knew you could pump me for information? Is there a sign on my back that says I’m easy to manipulate?”

“No,” he says. “That’s not what happened. I thought you were beautiful, funny, and intriguing…and then I knew you could help me with the case. It’s two separate emotions.”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to see how you capitalize on emotions,” I say. “For God’s sake, you wrote about two of your students. Have you ever thought that maybe they didn’t want their lives written about?”

“They told me they were fine with it.”

“After you did it!” I snap. “And of course they’re going to say that. Everyone adores you. They all want your approval. They’re little, lost, hungry puppies that you give a little bit of kibble to. Then you’ve got their loyalty until the end of time. Or, in these cases, until they’re dead. Maybe you became attached to this devotion. Maybe Victoria and Everett found out that you wrote about both of them and they got angry. Maybe they vented at you and you decided to kill them, so they wouldn’t go to
The Noise
, talking about how you used their lives to make stories. So they couldn’t tell people that you can’t write fiction to save your life—you just steal from other people’s lives.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” he says, “and they’re all untrue. Many of my students read my books. I always knew there was a good chance Victoria and Everett would find out about the books that were written about them. Yes, I should have mentioned the fact that they were heavily influenced, but I would never kill them over this.”

“Over
this
?” I ask. “Is there a different reason you would kill them?”

He slams his fist on the table, standing up. “I didn’t kill either of them! These students—especially those two—are like my own children. They’re not supposed to be and I try to distance myself…but these are the kinds of students that I will remember decades from now.”

His eyes move above my shoulder. I turn around. Detective Stolz and Macmillan are stepping through the office door frame. Stolz raises her eyebrow at me.

“Mira. I didn’t expect you to be here,” she says.

“I was just telling Dr. Zimmer that I was no longer on this case,” I say, looking over at him. “Because I no longer work for the police.”

I can see the surprise pass over his face, but he keeps his emotions in check enough that I hope the police won’t question my motive for being here. This may be another one of my bad choices, but I don’t want them to focus on Dr. Zimmer because of an eyewitness statement from a drug dealer. I don’t trust him, but I don’t think he’s the killer, either. I’d rather they put their efforts into finding the person who really did this.

“That’s nice,” she says. “But we’re going to need to talk to Dr. Zimmer and we’d like him to come down to the station.”

“Look, I’m not the killer,” he says. “Seriously. You can ask as many questions as you want, I didn’t do it. I don’t know what you want from me, but—”

“We know it’s not you,” she interrupts. “Or, at least, if you are the killer, you’re doing a superb job at not being around when the person dies."

She turns to me. "Can I talk to Dr. Zimmer alone? Since you no longer work with the police you shouldn't be here."

"I want her to be here," John says. "Anything you tell me, I'll just tell her later. She's been helpful and I know she's concerned about what's been happening, so she has a right to know everything."

Stolz sighs, shaking her head. "There’s been another student who just dropped dead about two hours ago," she tells John. "And since we had patrolmen watching you, we know you weren’t there.”

“How can you be sure on a campus?” I ask. “He could have snuck away while the officers weren’t watching. Not every building has windows that they could see into.”

She stares at me for a couple of seconds, deciding if she wants to tell me anything.

“We know because the murder was committed in Vermont,” she says. “He couldn’t find a way up there and back down to New York within the time he’s had classes, plus the fact that the victim died in the middle of teaching a class of her own.”

“What makes you so certain this one isn’t a natural death like you assumed for Victoria?” I ask.

“Because,” she says. “I received a call from the local police since they had heard similar murders had been committed here…and the victim’s name is Iris Knight.”

“What?” John breathes. “No. No way.”

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Who’s Iris Knight?”

“She was one of my students,” he says. “She was so…so bright, so funny, so kind…she was so great. I thought she could have become an amazing author, but it makes sense that she would teach people, too. That’s the kind of person she is…she was.”

“So that’s why we want you to come down to the station,” Detective Stolz says. “That’s three victims that are connected to you and one of them isn’t even within the area.”

“I…I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I have no idea why they’re dying.”

“We might,” she says, pulling a notebook out of her jacket pocket. “The killer left another quote.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
It’s a quote from Oscar Wilde from his book,
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Now, if all these murders weren’t connected to you, I’d think that this quote was some reflection of Ms. Knight, but since all these students are connected to you, I’m thinking maybe these messages are meant for you.”

“All of the students that have been killed…” I say. “They were all your favorite students. Somebody is killing off your favorite students.”

John stares at the two of us. “I think I know how the killer is choosing them.”

“How?” Stolz asks.

“When they went missing, I didn’t think much about it,” he says. “I thought I had misplaced them or accidentally thrown them out. I don’t know. But—”

“How is the killer choosing the victims?” I interrupt.

He turns to me. “You remember when my office was broken into?” When I nod, he says, “Since that happened, I haven’t been able to find the copies of recommendation letters I’ve written. I keep a copy of some of the letters I’ve written, just as a way to remember some of my students and also have a template to write future letters. I realized they were gone a couple days after the break-in, but I didn’t make the connection. Why would I think someone who ransacked my office would want some old letters? But they’re gone and I had written letters for all three students.”

Stolz rubs her temple. “How many letters went missing?”

“All of them,” he says. “There were nine total.”

“Which means six more potential victims,” she says. “You’re going to have to give me their names and we’ll go find them.”

He nods, grabbing a sticky pad and a pen. “Of course. Definitely. Anything to protect them. I can also email you copies of some of the recommendation letters since they’re saved on my laptop.”

As he jots down names, I shake my head. “Is that really going to help when we don’t know how they’re dying? That’s two victims who have died right in front of people. I don’t see how having police hang around our potential victims will help.”

“We have to do something,” Stolz says. “We can’t just wait for them to die.”

“We have to figure out how they’re dying.”

“No, Mira,
we
don’t.” She indicates to herself and Macmillan. “The two of us and our forensic team do.”

John hands her a paper with names scrawled on it.

“Thank you,” she says. “We’re still going to need you to come down to the station.”

“Can you give me a minute?” he asks. “I have a class in half an hour. I need to type up an email to tell them to not come.”

“Fine.” She hands him her card. “I’m fairly certain I already gave you one of these, but here’s another one. It has my email address on it. We’ll be in the parking lot behind the building. Make it fast.”

She and Macmillan leave.

“I’m sorry you lost your job,” John says.

“It’s fine,” I say.

He sits down at his desk. “No, it’s not. Especially if I caused you to lose it.”

“I make my own choices,” I say. “And I’m making another one now. I want you to give me the same names you just gave the detectives.”

“What? Why?” he asks. “They’re already going to go check it out.”

“No, they’re going to have some patrol officer watch over these potential victims, which doesn’t help them when we don’t know how they’re dying,” I say. “Come on. You just felt guilty a few seconds ago. The least you owe me is this.”

He grabs his pad of paper again and begins jotting down names.

“You know, since you’re so touchy about it, I should tell you that I began writing about you too.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask.

He shakes his head. He takes the sticky note off the pad and sticks it onto a short stack of papers. He picks up the stack and hands it to me. “Clearly, I don’t know much, so a fair amount is fictionalized and it jumps around a bit since it’s a very early draft, but you should read it. If you hate the idea of me writing about an idea of you, then just tell me to fuck off.”