4

“IF HE DIDN’T KILL HER in her office, he made a damned good start there.”

Pete Baird, Frank’s partner, had accepted our invitation to join us for dinner that night. While Frank acted as chef, Pete was filling me in on the progress they had made in the Blaylock case. “There was blood splattered everywhere – over her desk, the windows, her books, the floor, her papers. The guy went nuts. Really sprayed the place. I doubt she walked out of there, anyway. We’ll know more when the lab and coroner’s reports come in.”

You get two homicide detectives together, you have to be prepared not to let much of anything ruin your appetite.

“She was killed there,” Frank said, coating some orange roughy fillets with a mixture of herbs and a small amount of olive oil. “All the blows were to her skull. He was hitting her hard.”

“He?” I asked.

“Figure of speech,” Pete said. “But didn’t you say the voice on the phone was a man’s voice?”

“It was synthesized. No telling. But I admit the letter made me think the writer is a man. Thanatos is a male character in mythology, for starters. Clio is female, a woman was killed. Cassandra was a woman. But maybe the killer is a woman who wants us to think she’s a man, to throw us off her trail.”

“If the killer’s a woman,” Frank said, “she’s a very strong woman.”

“Why strong? You told me that you thought the professor was sitting at her desk, bent over some papers…”

“Right. Her desk faces some windows. It was late at night. If she had been looking up, she might have seen his reflection in the windows. Might not have made a difference if she had seen him, but in any case, there was no sign of a struggle on her part. I think he got her with the first blow.”

“Exactly,” I said. “One good blow to the head and she wouldn’t have put up much of a struggle. So the killer wouldn’t need to be strong.”

“If the body had been left there, I’d agree,” Pete said. “But after making all that mess, the killer was very neat. Must have bagged her – or at least wrapped her head up, because there wasn’t so much as a drop of blood out in the hallway. My guess is that he was wearing something over his own clothing – coveralls, maybe – because he couldn’t have been in that room or picked her up and carried her out without getting anything on himself. The professor wasn’t a very big woman, but even if she only weighed about a hundred pounds, that’s a lot to lug around. He carried her downstairs, took her to a vehicle, drove to the zoo, and then dumped her over a fence and in with the birds. Leaves her wallet and all her identification on her, so that we know exactly who we’ve got.”

“He’s damned sure of himself,” Frank said, putting the fish under the broiler. “No question about that.”

“Yeah, and not just because he left her ID,” Pete said. “You ever been around peacocks? They’re noisy suckers. He had to know that someone was going to hear all that racket.”

“Zoo keepers might be used to it,” I said.

“The birds were raising Cain. They’re beautiful, but not pleasant, if you know what I mean. In fact, they-” Pete halted when he caught Frank shaking his head. “Sorry. We shouldn’t be talking about this before dinner.”

If it was something that bad, I wasn’t going to challenge him.

“You said the chair of the history department let you into Dr. Blaylock’s office,” I said. “Was it locked?”

Pete nodded. “Yeah. But the killer probably just locked the door after he left. Hiding the mess for a while.”

“He didn’t need a key to lock it?”

“No, the history offices are in one of the older buildings. Some of the buildings on campus, especially the ones where they keep a lot of equipment – art studios, science buildings, the gym – those buildings have electronic locks that open with key cards. They lock automatically when the door shuts. But the college couldn’t afford to put them everywhere, so lots of the classrooms and faculty offices are standard-type locks. Use a key to get in, but once you’re in, you have to push a button lock on the other side to lock yourself in.”

“And you don’t think she locked herself in?”

“No, probably not. She taught a class on Wednesday nights, and had a habit of working late in her office after the class. She usually had the door open or unlocked, from what the other faculty and her students say.”

“So we’ve got one of two possibilities,” I said. “Either she invited the killer in or he entered without her knowing he was there.”

“You ask me, she didn’t know he was there. Probably never knew what hit her – BAM! – and she’s out. He keeps going at her, but not ’cause she’s fighting him.”

Throughout dinner, I picked up other details.

No one at the college or the zoo reported seeing anything suspicious before the body was found, but it would not have been difficult to move around unnoticed at either place during the hours in question, sometime between midnight and four in the morning.

The professor was fifty-four years old. Her colleagues described her as a vivacious woman who wore her years well. She lived alone. She seemed quite devoted to her students; she often held meetings of her graduate seminars in her home, and willingly gave of her time to students who needed extra help. She taught a seminar in twentieth-century U.S. history on Wednesday nights, and was doing some research on the Truman administration. It was not uncommon for her to work late in her office on her research and writing. When she was killed, she had been working on an article she hoped to submit to the Journal of American History.

After Pete left, Frank and I sat together in the living room. I asked him about his meeting with John. At first he claimed that they were just talking about cooperation between the newspaper and the police on the Blaylock case.

“No sale,” I said. “You wouldn’t need to exclude me from that conversation.”

“Okay, so maybe we talked about you. What of it?”

“What of it? I’ll tell you what of it. Shall I go into Captain Bredloe’s office and have a nice long talk with him about you?”

“Be my guest.”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

He was quiet for a moment then said, “No, I guess not. Look, John’s just concerned about you.”

“Concerned how?”

“Well, in a fatherly kind of way, I guess.”

“Fatherly? You mean as in Father Knows Best? As in ‘Well, son, we men folk need to protect our little gals’?”

“I don’t mean that at all…”

“I got scared today,” I went on, ignoring his protest. “Anybody would have been scared, I think. But because of this damned splint and cast, my being scared looks different to him. John doesn’t think I’m ready to come back to work.”

There was a long pause before he said, “Well, yes. That came up in the conversation.”

I stood up. “You know what I want?”

“Irene…”

“Faith. Faith in my ability to function. Less help. Less control by well-meaning but-”

“No one is trying to control you-”

“Bullshit. Oh, it’s all in the name of taking care of me, mind you. Friends. People who just want to make sure I’m all right. I’m all right!”

He was silent.

“He had no business talking to you about my ability to do my job!”

“You’re right.”

“Absolutely none.”

“None whatsoever.”

“You’re not even a relative.”

A pause. “No.”

“You’re just… you’re just…” I was losing steam. I sat down next to him. “Why am I yelling at you? It’s not your fault.”

“No, it’s not.” He said it without looking at me.

“Sorry.”

He didn’t say anything. It was then I realized it wasn’t anger that was keeping him quiet.

“You’re better than a relative,” I tried. “Much better.”

Still nothing. For a few seconds, I felt like I might start crying or something.

Don’t do it, I told myself.

He finally looked over at me. When he did, his expression changed. “Irene? Hey…”