The Probability of Murder (29 page)

Or a badly sum. I shook my head. “I don’t get why, Marty. You’re a smart man with a good job. I don’t understand what happened. First you waste your time at Suffolk Downs, and then you have to break the law to support the habit?”

This time my mental picture of Marty was of him in disguise, his wingtips and bow ties left at home, sitting in the grandstand of the horse racetrack in East Boston.

“I guess you have no addictions?”

None that I could think of. None that I wanted to admit to Marty.

“None that put me in debt,” I said.

“Saint Sophie. Good for you.”

I let it pass. “So Garrett Paulsen came after you?”

“He must have hired someone to help him. I can’t believe Garrett’s smart enough to have found me. I needed to pay him back, and there was no other solution than to go to Charlotte for help. I thought he might expose me or even kill me. Hard to tell which one would be worse.”

“She wouldn’t help?” Meaning, my friend Charlotte wouldn’t do anything wrong.

“No way. She refused to even give me a loan. I figured she still had money from her former profession. She actually told me any money she had was for charity”—Marty let out a cackling laugh that annoyed me—“and she was donating it piece by piece until she could manage on her own. Legit, she meant.”

I was sad to think she thought she had to flee with it instead.

“So you went to the library last Thursday night to—”

Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Whirrrr.

I whipped out my phone. A text from Jenna Ramirez. “I have to take this,” I said.

I opened the text, my fingers sticking to the screen from perspiration, though the rest of me was chilled from the drafts in the old building.

I read: “Weathr bettr. Help on way.”

I took a breath and imagined a whole posse of trained rescue workers on the way up the mountain to carry Bruce and his buddies down. At the same time, who was to say what the rescuers would find? I couldn’t think of that right now.

I texted back: “Do u have #?”

I tapped my phone on my knee.

“Do you have to go?” Marty asked—hopefully, I thought.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” I said. “I might have to leave in a hurry.”

“Well, as I was saying, I told the police the truth about Thursday evening. I had nothing to hide. I went to the library to talk. I found Charlotte in the stacks. We fought,
but with words only, I swear. I finally realized she wasn’t going to budge, and I stormed out of there.”

“Was the library closed at the time?” I heard my voice from a distance, what with half of me being on a mountain in New Hampshire.

“Yes, it was after nine. And she was alive when I left her.”

“Did anyone see you leave?”

I felt I was on autopilot, listening, asking questions, but waiting for the
whirrrr whirrrr whirrrr
of my phone. The part of me that was tuned in to Marty registered that Marty had been there after Hannah and Chelsea left. But before the killer. Unless Marty was the killer.

“I wasn’t anxious to be seen,” Marty said. “There were students around outside. It was before the rain and rather mild, so no one was in a hurry to get back to the dorms.”

“Except the party people.”

“Excuse me?”

I hadn’t realized I’d said anything out loud. I waved my hand for Marty to continue.

“I recognized a couple of students, but you know, I don’t know a single one by name. They’re just ciphers to me.”

He would say that, ratcheting up my annoyance factor a notch.

I’d been glancing out the window on a regular basis during our non-lunch, wondering when I’d see a car that told me the Henley PD had arrived, in either a marked or an unmarked vehicle. I looked now and saw nothing resembling an official car. Virgil had been ready to confront Marty almost an hour ago. Maybe, unlike us, he’d stopped for lunch.

I had another key piece of information to squeeze from the administrator in front of me.

“Marty—”

“I hate that name.”

“I know. Back to your fingerprints on my alarm clock?”

Marty sighed loudly. “Garrett brought me your duffel.
He threw it at me to make a statement. Made me open it up and rustle around inside. Wanted me to see how there was no money. He’d gone to your house and—I told you he’s dumb—grabbed a duffel from the garage without checking to see if there was anything in it worth taking. Then, when he entered the house to grab whatever else he could, he tripped the alarm. So he ran.”

“What made him go after my house in the first place?”

“I…I might have mentioned…” Marty showed me his palms. If he was asking for sympathy or forgiveness, he wasn’t getting either.

“You pointed Garrett to Charlotte and then to me? To save yourself and your habit? That’s pitiful, Marty.”

“You have to understand—”

“Maybe Garrett killed Charlotte,” I said, alarming myself. “And then followed me when you told him I was her friend.”

It hadn’t been Daryl at all who was the murderer. It was the Shop at Ease guy, of whom I’d still had only glimpses. I shivered, thinking of him following me, entering my home.

I checked my phone for the third time in as many minutes, making sure each time that the ringtone volume was set at maximum.

Marty shook his head hard enough to dislodge his glasses. “No, no. He didn’t do it,” he said, but I’d lost my place in the conversation and must have looked as confused as I felt.

“Garrett did not kill Charlotte,” Marty said, emphatically. “He had a gun. He would have shot her, and I know she died from a fall from the ladder.”

I knew I hadn’t been paying full attention, but fallacious reasoning always woke me up. “You’re saying the reason you know Garrett didn’t kill Charlotte is that he had a gun?”

Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Whirrrr.

I started, dropped the phone, and banged my head on the table when I rose. The number of phone droppings and
clumsy incidents in my life had gone up about 400 percent in the last three days.

I looked at the screen. Not Jenna. A call from Virgil.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you calling with the number?”

“Sorry?”

Another casualty of my scattered brain. I’d assumed Virgil knew the storm had broken and that I’d just asked Jenna for a phone number. It’s a wonder he didn’t think I was playing the lottery.

“Eduardo’s wife texted me that the storm was over and they’re starting the rescue.” I tripped over
rescue
, apparently having a love/hate relationship with the word. “Detective Mitchell, I’m in the Administration Building having lunch with Martin Melrose,” I sent a meaningful glance Marty’s way, putting him on notice that the cops knew where I was, should anything nasty happen to me.

“I know. His secretary just informed me of the fact.”

“Are you calling with a number, then? I’m hoping for a direct line to the sheriff or the rangers up there.”

“I have better than that. I have a ride for you. Are you up for a trip to the mountains?”

“When?”

“Now. Just come to the east entrance to the Administration Building and look for a tall, handsome cop.”

Another time I would have asked what the cop’s name would be. This afternoon, I fairly screamed, “I’m on my way.”

I stood and clicked off the phone. Before I could say anything, Marty picked up my unopened lunch bag and handed it to me, as if he wanted no trace of me in his office.

“You’re leaving,” he said. Not a question.

“I guess it’s your lucky day,” I said.

I caught one last glance out Marty’s magnificent windows and saw a familiar beige sedan pull up to the west side of the building, not bothering to park in a legitimate space. Virgil’s partner, Archie McConnell, back from vacation in time for this plum assignment, exited and headed for the outside stairs I’d used an hour ago.

“Or maybe not,” I said.

“Excuse me?” I heard for the last time, I hoped, from the tight little man who thought he was virtuous because he could have robbed the college blind but didn’t.

“Maybe it’s not your lucky day,” I said.

I left Marty’s office and nearly ran through the waiting area and down the hallway to the east end of the building. Not bothering to wait for the elevator, I flew down the stairs and out the door.

Virgil leaned against the fender of his personal black Camry, arms folded across his wide chest. Except that he was hatless, the whole picture mimicked an inexpensive version of a livery service.

I knew Virgil would be taken by surprise and put off-kilter, but I ran up and kissed his cheek anyway, in full view of the passing coeds.

Virgil insisted he didn’t know anything more than the one happy fact: Bruce and his buddies were on the way down the mountain. Were they walking on their own, as opposed to being carried on a stretcher? He didn’t know. Were they starving? Frostbitten? No information on that. Was anyone seriously injured? He couldn’t say. Anything broken? Fractured? Sprained? Nothing had been said about any of those possibilities.

I’d gone down the list in descending order, except for having skipped number one—“Alive?” Virgil was patient through it all.

We made one stop before leaving campus, to my car, where I picked up a jacket and bottles of water. So what if they were the dusty purchases from the Bailey’s Landing Shop at Ease stores? If Bruce could survive on granola, I could rough it in Virgil’s car.

I finally slumped down in the seat, stopped badgering the driver, and took out my phone to replan my day.

My first business was to call Fran Emerson and ask her
to take a linear algebra study group for me at three. Fran was well positioned to help the students with homework in vectors and transformations, since that was her current research interest.

I explained my new plan for the afternoon and asked if she could also cover for me at the Franklin Hall faculty meeting. Not satisfied with the full faculty meetings that ate up an evening every month, the science and math faculties gathered separately, as needed, for issues pertinent only to us.

“You poor thing,” Fran said. “Missing the privilege of hearing Robert’s latest chemistry joke. Will you give me your proxy vote on what color we should paint the walls of the lecture hall? If we authorize the money, that is. So, first you have to turn over that vote.”

“Where do I sign?”

We both laughed. It seemed a long time since I’d felt so light and nearly carefree. As long as I didn’t worry about what was in store for me in New Hampshire.

I called Jenna and told her I was sorry I didn’t know much more than she had texted me.

“You’re so lucky you can pick up and go,” she said.

The sound of Todd’s voice, screaming in the background, told me why she couldn’t join us. I promised to call her as soon as I learned anything.

Ariana was as excited as I was.

“Things are shifting for the better. The weekend is finally ending,” she said.

I did a calculation.

Charlotte’s killer had possibly been identified, but not caught; Bruce had been located, but was not home safe.

“I’d say we’re about eighty percent there,” I said.

I was used to the scoffing noises I heard from my friend whenever I threw a quantitative caveat into her pronouncements.

“It’s facing reality,” I told her now through my cell phone.

“It’s being bound by the rules of Earth,” she said.

A typical routine from the Ariana and Sophie friendship, the longest lasting one I had.

I checked my email and decided everyone else could wait until tomorrow for a response, though college students rarely believed that. One date gone bad, or one B+ instead of an A, was on a par with a life-threatening event to many of them.

I badly needed a review of where things stood with the investigation into Charlotte’s murder. A lot had happened at the same time that my beloved was stranded on an icy mountain, and I knew details of the case had gotten lost in the pathways of my brain.

As I was trying to formulate a question in a politically correct way, Virgil favored me with current information.

“You may be interested to hear that we picked up Garrett Paulsen this morning. He has so many priors, it’s not hard to find a reason to hold him while we figure out his role in the Crocker case.” Virgil glanced over at me. “Sorry, I should have said, ‘in your friend’s murder investigation.’ We don’t mean any disrespect. It’s just habit.”

Virgil seemed to be speaking for the whole Henley PD. I certainly understood the habit and, I suspected, the need for emotional distance when your job was nearly all about the seamier side of life.

“No problem,” I said.

Virgil reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a photograph, and handed it to me. “Ever seen him before?”

I looked at the image of a squirrely young man with a flak jacket, dreadlocks, and a baseball cap.

“Garrett Paulsen?” I asked, realizing I’d never seen the man. At least I didn’t think I had, until I caught a glimpse of his neck and the faint outline of a birthmark crawling up his cheek. I turned the photo to minimize reflections from
the afternoon sun. The memory clicked in. “Yes, he was with Marty at the police station.”

Come to find out, with his stained jacket and matted hair, Garrett did look worse than I did, even less fit for an appearance in the hallowed marble halls of the Administration Building. I wondered how the dapper Marty coped with him. I guess large financial debts could make a difference in what a person could tolerate.