The Sixes (22 page)

Phoebe thought of Ginger then. Where
was
she? With relief she remembered what the cop with the flashlight had said.
She led us to you
. The police must have her. But what about the retriever—where had he gone? Hutch had said he had a nephew, and somehow Phoebe needed to contact him—to tell him about Hutch and to ask him to track down the dogs.

Odds and ends began to fight their way to the surface of her mind.
Her purse and her phone
. Surely the police had found them, or at the very least they would still be in the woods.
Her car
. It was still at Hutch’s. It was almost Monday, she realized, and she would have to miss class. She had to let the school know.

She shifted position, turning a bit onto her right side. She became aware that the pain was getting stronger now. She found the call button, and a nurse came in, giving her more medication. As she drifted off to sleep again a few minutes later, a gray light was seeping in around the edges of the window blinds. At least the night is over, she consoled herself.

The police wasted no time getting there in the morning. Phoebe had woken around seven, when a nurse came in to check on her. He’d helped her out of bed, and in the bathroom she was surprised to see that her tumble had remaining her with a black eye and a crosshatching of scratch marks on her face. The nurse had pointed out that her purse was safely tucked away in a cabinet by the bed. With the little battery power she had remaining in her phone, she left a message for the department chairman, Dr. Parr, explaining she had been injured and would not able to teach today.

Breakfast arrived next—damp toast and limp-looking scrambled eggs.

As she was poking at the food, she heard a light knock on the open door to her room. It was the pink-faced Detective Michelson, who walked in without waiting for her to reply. A slim Asian man accompanied him.

“Feeling any better?” Michelson asked her.

“Yes, much,” Phoebe said. As she scooted up to a seated position in the bed, she nearly yelped from how much her butt hurt.

“This is Detective Huang,” Michelson said, nodding toward his colleague. “As you can imagine, we’re both anxious to talk to you.”

“Of course,” Phoebe said. She hadn’t been forthcoming with the police previously, but she was now going to do everything she could to help. “Did you catch the killer yet?”

“Unfortunately, no, the person is still at large.”

Michelson took the chair closest to the bed, splaying open his legs; Huang dragged an extra chair across the room for himself.

“Why don’t you take us through everything—from the beginning,” Michelson said. Huang drew a notepad from his coat pocket and flipped the cover over. Both men reeked of fresh aftershave, and the smell, mixing with the gamy hospital odors, nearly made Phoebe retch.

“First, there’s one thing I need to tell you about Hutch,” Phoebe said. “He has a nephew in Allentown. Can someone contact him?”

“Yes, we’ve already been in touch with him,” Michelson said.

“And what about the dogs? Are they both okay?”

“The nephew has the little one. She’s fine.”

“But what about the retriever? I never saw her last night.”

Huang shot a glance at Michelson that wasn’t returned.

“Unfortunately,” Michelson said, “she was hit and killed by a car last night. She must have wandered out onto the road after Mr. Hutchinson was murdered.”

Phoebe lowered her head as she felt tears well in her eyes.

“Miss Hall,” Michelson urged. “We need to hear your story. It’s essential for our investigation.”

She obliged, taking them through every detail she could think of, knowing it all could be important. At the end she thought to add that the only vehicles she’d seen in the driveway were the Honda and the pickup truck, which she assumed were both Hutch’s since they’d been there on her previous visit. For the first time she wondered how the murderer had arrived at the cabin.

“And you can’t make a guess whether the person who chased you was a man or a woman?” Michelson asked.

Phoebe shook her head. “Last night I thought it must be a man because the head seemed so smooth—as if he was bald. But since then I’ve realized it could have been a cap or the hood of a sweatshirt.”

“Any revealing characteristics?”

Phoebe shook her head. “Not really. I’m not sure of the height because I couldn’t see where the ground began. My sense, though, is that the person wasn’t
short
. Or particularly large.”

Michelson glanced down at his notebook, thumbed back a few pages, and then looked back up.

“And what were
you
wearing last night?”

“
Wearing
?” Phoebe asked, puzzled.

“Yes,” Michelson answered bluntly, not bothering to elaborate.

“Jeans, a sweater . . . um, a wool peacoat. They’re probably in there.” Phoebe pointed her chin toward a closet. Huang jumped up, crossed the room, and opened the closet door. Everything was there and folded, except for her coat, which drooped forlornly from a hanger. She saw that the left sleeve had been sliced open by someone who’d treated her last night, but she had no memory of it.

“That’s it—no hat, gloves, scarf?” Michelson asked.

“Some gloves,” Phoebe said. What was this about, she wondered. “I assume they’re still in the coat pocket.”

“All right, let’s switch gears now,” Michelson said as Huang returned to his seat. “What prompted you to visit Mr. Hutchinson last night?”

His tone had suddenly shifted from courteous enough to plain blunt. Phoebe could feel her head start to throb again.

“I’m glad you got to that, because it may be relevant,” Phoebe said, though she knew Michelson would be ticked once she came clean. “As Wesley Hines may have told you, I spoke to him last week. I then shared what I’d learned with Mr. Hutchinson. He asked me to come over to discuss it.”

Michelson looked incredulous at this news. “It’s hard to imagine how a faculty member came to be pals with the former campus police chief,” he said, frowning.

“On behalf of Dr. Johns, I’ve been checking out some of the problems created by the River Street bars—and I ended up speaking to Mr. Hutchinson for background. He had interviewed Wesley last fall after the river incident, and we talked about whether it might be connected to the drownings. Hutch—er, Mr. Hutchinson, thought he’d found something important.”

“Are you saying Mr. Hutchinson was
investigating
?” Michelson said. His face seemed to get even pinker. She realized that his blue, blue eyes and hot pink skin were a color combo that definitely appeared in nature—pink-tinged clouds on the horizon at sunset, for instance—and yet it just didn’t work well on a human face.

“Not investigating per se,” Phoebe said. “Hutch was worried that he might have been wrong to dismiss Wesley’s story last year, and so he’d reviewed his old notes. Can you pass me my handbag?”

Huang retrieved it from the cabinet. With her right hand, Phoebe dug out Hutch’s notes and handed them to Michelson, glad she’d made a copy since she was sure she wasn’t getting these back. She didn’t have a copy of her
own
notes to give him but she saw no reason to bring it up. The exact same things had been underscored by Hutch in both sets of notes.

“He told me a lightbulb went off for him when he saw the notes again,” Phoebe said as Michelson scanned the pages intently. “He didn’t want to discuss it until we were face-to-face.”

“As far as you know, did he share these notes with anyone else?”

“He didn’t say. But of course, now I’m wondering if he
had
.”

“I’ll keep these, then,” Michelson said, folding the notes and tucking them into the inner pocket of his jacket. “And I’m going to tell you just this once, do you hear me, Ms. Hall? Let the police handle this business.”

“Yes, of course,” Phoebe said, trying to look contrite. “I never meant to interfere. I thought I was just helping the college.”

“There’s one other matter we need to discuss—these incidents at your home. As you can imagine, I wasn’t happy to learn that the first ones hadn’t been reported to the police.”

Phoebe started to offer an explanation but bit her tongue. The less said the better, she knew. Besides, she wasn’t sure exactly how Ball had worded his excuse.

“Well, I’m glad you can investigate
now
,” she said. “I hope you can find someone to look at my kitchen. There’s still blood in my dishwasher, and the spoons are on the counter.”

They made arrangements, and Phoebe handed over her front door key, which Michelson promised to return as soon as possible. He also said he would have the police deliver her car to her house.

Michelson rose from his chair then; Huang followed suit just a second behind him, as if, like the perfect sidekick, he’d picked up an infinitesimal cue. As Michelson buttoned his coat, he trained his eyes directly on her.

“You live alone, correct, Ms. Hall?” he asked.

His tone was ominous, almost disapproving.

“I do,” she said. “Why?”

“You need to be
very
careful going forward. Do you understand?”

“Are you saying you think the Sixes might try to pay me another visit?”

“I have no idea. But there’s a chance that the person who murdered Mr. Hutchinson will.”

22

“I
DON’T UNDERSTAND,”
Phoebe said, flustered. “What threat do I pose to the person now? They managed to hightail it away from the scene of the crime.”

“If Mr. Hutchinson discovered something incriminating in the notes and alerted the person, it may be the reason he was killed. And the person, having seen you at the cabin, may suspect you’d been talking to Mr. Hutchinson about what he’d found and are still putting two and two together.”

Phoebe swallowed hard. “Tell me. Were Lily and Trevor murdered?” she asked. “If you think Hutch’s death is connected to the drownings, then you must suspect those drownings weren’t accidental.”

“Ms. Hall, it seems you like playing Nancy Drew. You need to stop.”

His comment was almost as good as a yes.

“I’m not playing detective now,” Phoebe said. “I’m simply trying to assess what kind of risk I’m facing.”

“I think you need to take this seriously—that’s all I’ll say. If possible, stay with a friend for a few days just to play it safe.”

Fat chance, she thought. She basically knew only two people well in Lyle, and she wasn’t on wonderful terms with either of them at the moment.

“Good day, then,” Michelson said. “And just so you know, we’re not sharing your involvement last night with the press. It’s a detail we want to keep under wraps for now, partly for your own protection. And of course, we expect you to remain mum about what you know of the crime.”

With that, the two cops departed. Phoebe drank the last of the tepid tea. She could feel fear creeping up the sides of the bed around her. I can’t just lie here and come undone as I did at fifteen, she told herself. She had to try to figure out the revelation Hutch had experienced. As soon as she was home, she would scour the notes again. But first she had to spring herself from the hospital.

She reached for the call button, but before she pressed it, a man with a stethoscope draped around his neck entered the room and introduced himself as Dr. Awad, part of the same “team,” he said, as the doctor who’d treated her last night.

“You feeling a bit better today?” he asked. He was good-looking, Phoebe thought, and no more than thirty-five.

“Yes, much better,” Phoebe said. “I’d like to be able to go home today.”

“Well, let’s see how you’re doing first,” he said. “You did have a mild concussion, and we like to keep an eye on those. How’s the pain on a scale of one to ten?”

“No more than a one or a two,” she told him, which wasn’t exactly the case. But she thought she could manage if they sent her home with painkillers.

After scanning her chart, he listened to her heart, asking her to take quiet breaths. Next he drew a penlight from his pocket and examined her eyes with it. Then he explored her skull with his hands—searching for swelling, she assumed. When he was finished, he stepped back and studied her.

“Your elbow has just a hairline fracture, but you need to keep your arm in a sling for six weeks. As for your head, your tests were all good, and you seem fine now. Why don’t we let you enjoy our fabulous lunch here, and then send you home in the afternoon. It will give us a bit longer to monitor you.”

As soon as the doctor left, Phoebe felt suddenly ambushed again by fatigue, and within moments she was asleep. She had a dream, an endless, irritating one in which she was overheated and sweaty, stuck in a room where people were making too much noise. “Please transfer me,” she told someone who refused to listen to her. She woke to her good arm being lightly touched. Forcing open her eyes, she found Glenda hovering over her.

Phoebe grinned before memory caught up with her. She was still pissed at how Glenda had handled the fake blog incident; her friend had sandbagged her.

“Hey,” Phoebe said neutrally.

“Fee, tell me you’re okay,” Glenda said.

“Yeah,” she said, struggling. She pulled out one of the pillows from behind her and tucked it under her injured arm for support. “Unless you count the fact that I look like I fell face-first into a briar patch.”

“I feel totally to blame—I dragged you into this awful mess.”

“Neither of us could have predicted anything like this. When did you hear the news?”

“I heard about Hutch last night. At first I assumed he’d been killed during a break-in. This morning Craig told me that he’d heard from his contacts in the police department that someone else had been injured at the scene—a woman. But I had no clue it was you. I knew you’d talked to Hutch that one time, but I would never have guessed that you were out there on a Sunday night. And then, late this morning, Dr. Parr’s office called to make sure I knew you were in the hospital, and suddenly I put it together.”

“Sorry not to call you myself. My phone ran out of battery.”

“I figured you didn’t call because you were still livid with me.”

“Well, that too.”

Glenda slipped out of her dark red coat and folded it across the arm of the chair near the bed. She was wearing a long-sleeved black dress with a flattering high waist. On her neck was a pearl choker. Glenda’s motto had always been: If you
look
cool in a crisis, people’s first impression will be that you are. And yet Glenda’s face told another story. It was drawn, and she had deep circles under her eyes.

“Fee,” Glenda said, settling into the chair. “I
never
for a second thought you’d concocted that blog site or lifted that kid’s essay. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Then why not discuss it with me alone and hear my take? Why subject me to an inquisition in front of Stockton and Ball?”

“It was all coincidental. Tom had a number of urgent things to discuss with me, so I asked him over before our lunch. While we were talking, Ball burst into the house with the laptop. He’d told us about the blog seconds before you arrived. I should have demanded they leave and talked to you myself. I wasn’t in any way accusing you, though. I was just shocked by it, and concerned.”

Glenda was right, Phoebe thought—she
should
have asked the men to beat it before discussing the matter with Phoebe. But it wasn’t such a big infraction that Phoebe couldn’t let Glenda off the hook now.

“Have the tech people made any progress tracing it?” Phoebe said, her voice softening.

“Yes and no. They traced it to a fake e-mail account, but it’s a dead end from there.”

“Well, the
New York Post
has already posted an item. I need the school to release a statement saying I’m completely in the clear.”

“It’s already in the works. Now tell me about last night.”

Phoebe shared the story, as well as the conversations with Hutch that had led up to it. When she’d finished, Glenda slumped back in her chair and let out a ragged sigh. Phoebe could see her friend felt truly anguished by what she’d heard.

“I just have such an ache in my heart about Hutch,” Glenda said. “He was a good, good man—and it’s horrible that he died in such a brutal way.”

“This must be making things even worse on campus,” Phoebe said.

“You bet. Everything up to now seems like one big May Day festival. Two girls have actually withdrawn—forced to, I’m sure, by Mommy and Daddy.”

Glenda pinched her lips together. “I’ve got to ask you,” she said. “Do you think the Sixes killed Hutch?”

It was a question Phoebe had asked herself more than once as she lay in her hospital bed—both in her drugged stupor and later with a clearer head.

“My answer’s probably going to surprise you,” she said. “Because for days I’ve been trying to figure out if they were behind the drownings. And yet my gut tells me they didn’t do this.”

“Are you thinking it seems off-brand for them?” Glenda asked. “That they may run around in their Frye boots pushing students into rivers, but they wouldn’t beat an old man to death?”

“I’m not saying they
didn’t
do it. Wesley remembers Blair being at Cat Tails the night he went into the river, and it could be she drugged him as part of this pattern of targeting so-called loser guys. There’s a chance that as Hutch looked back into the river incidents, he saw something that clearly implicated the Sixes and he called Blair, tipping her off. She then showed up at his house—alone or with other members—and killed him.

“But there’s a flaw to that theory,” Phoebe continued. “I keep coming back to the fact that Hutch told me that a big clue lay in the notes about Wesley. And there was nothing in those notes about either Blair or, for that matter,
any
girls from Lyle College.”

“If the Sixes didn’t kill Hutch, who did? Are we back to the serial killer theory then?”

“Possibly,” Phoebe said somberly. “But with a twist.”

“Explain,” Glenda said.

“Stockton talked about drownings in the Midwest and north of here and how those deaths might be related to the ones in Lyle—that they could be all the work of a killer who moved around the country. But I’m thinking the killer may be someone local. In the notes, Hutch heavily underlined a part about this guy who tried to chat Wesley up at the jukebox. That could have sounded familiar to Hutch for some reason. He mentioned to me that he had pals on the police force here. Maybe in the last year he’d heard tales of a local predator that operates this way but hadn’t connected it back to Wesley until he reread the notes.”

“You’re scaring me big-time,” said Glenda.

“I know, it’s a sickening thought, but if Hutch figured it out, I might be able to too.”

“
You
? Phoebe, you cannot take this on, especially after what happened. Do you hear me?”

Phoebe reassured Glenda that she wouldn’t do anything that put herself in more danger. Before Glenda left, Phoebe asked that she track down the number for Hutch’s nephew in Allentown.

The next few hours were interminable. A patrol cop stopped by to return Phoebe’s house key, but that was her only visitor. After lunch an elderly woman rolled in a cart, offering the local newspaper, which Phoebe snatched eagerly to see the murder coverage. There was a small box on the front page about it, likely squeezed in at the last minute because the paper wouldn’t have had time for a longer report. As guaranteed by Michelson, there wasn’t a word about her.

Using her right hand only, she thumbed through the rest of the paper, just to give herself something to do. There were endless pictures of trick-or-treaters—kids dressed as Wolverine and Bat Girl and Harry Potter, and babies posing as strawberries, pea pods, and bumblebees. Someone
had
been killed on Halloween after all, Phoebe thought ruefully. Against her will, her mind found its way back to the sight of Hutch lying dead on the floor. If the killer hadn’t come by car, how had he or she gotten there? she wondered. Hutch’s cabin was too far out of the way for someone to have walked the entire distance. The killer must have parked somewhere and then reached the cabin by foot through the woods. Phoebe decided that as soon as she could, she would drive along the road and see if she could locate the spot—it might offer insight into who the person was. Something seemed to swim in front of her brain about this, but as she reached out for it, it slipped away.

Finally she was cleared to go home, and she alerted Glenda, who had offered to come back to pick her up. A nurse helped her dress, stretching the sweater carefully over her elbow, replacing the sling, and then draping her ruined peacoat over her shoulders. She was given an envelope of Tylenol with codeine and instructions on caring for her injured arm. The idea of going home filled her with dread. She thought of Duncan. She wondered if he had heard she was in the hospital.

It was cold and bleak outside, the sky once again covered with sooty smudge marks. But Glenda was back in kick-ass mode, a woman on a mission.

“By the way,” Glenda said, as she navigated their way out of the parking lot. “Stockton was asking about you earlier today. He heard from Cameron Parr that you’d had an accident, and he was trying to suss out the facts. I told him you’d been injured but that I didn’t know any details yet.”

“Is he using Hutch’s death to keep fueling the flames of panic?”

“Don’t know. But Madeline told me that at one of their strategy meetings, he made a comment about how the college should have put more pressure on the police when Trevor Harris disappeared. By the college, he means
me
. It’s pretty clear he’s finding little ways to undermine me.”

“You know, I’d almost forgotten,” Phoebe said. “Saturday night I stopped in at Cat Tails to see it for myself, and I found Stockton there. Claimed he was scoping the place out because it was tied to all the drownings.”

“Or he was looking for a student to hook up with.”

“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked.

“When I first started at Lyle, I tried but couldn’t get a bead on him—like why he’d leave a really prominent institution to come here. About six months ago, an old pal of mine started working at the college Stockton left, and so in light of his behavior lately, I called her the other day to see if she could learn anything on the down-low. I heard back yesterday. Apparently Stockton was rumored to have had flings with female students. It’s not illegal for a professor to have an affair with a student, but it can be dicey, and most colleges frown on it, particularly if it’s a pattern. And a dean of students is technically in charge of all the students, so it’s even more complicated. Apparently he tried it one too many times at the last place, and they eased him out.”

“Any hint he’s done it here?” said.

“None. He’s either wised up or has learned to be more discreet. But regardless, it backs up my instinct that he’s not to be totally trusted.” She paused as she switched car lanes. “By the way, you’re bunking down at the presidential palace tonight. We can swing by your place first to get a change of clothes and whatever else you need.”

Part of Phoebe longed to be tucked away safely in that yellow guest room tonight, but she knew she had to take a pass.

“I really appreciate it, G, but like I said before, I’d only be putting off the inevitable.”

“I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“There’s another reason why it’s probably best that I don’t.” She told Glenda about Mark’s comments to her in the hall.