A Function of Murder (6 page)

I dug in my purse for my phone, shrugging off my cotton sweater at the same time.
I stuck the phone under my chin talking to dispatch, hopping around the fountain,
trying to free my sweater from my arms, as if I’d been hired to do a frantic, comic
dance.

I handed my sweater to Bruce, who promptly wrapped it around the shiny silver blade,
close to the wound in the mayor’s back, and applied pressure to the surrounding area.
At first the blade looked to me like a knife, then a screwdriver or some other tool,
and finally I recognized it as a letter opener. One of the special Henley College
letter openers, in fact. The same letter opener that the Mathematics Department and
every other department handed out to its majors on graduation day. My eyes were locked
on my sweater, steadily soaking up the mayor’s blood. Finally, I turned away from
the unlikely, gruesome sight at our beautiful fountain.

I thought I heard low cries of help and indecipherable words from the mayor as he
lay on the ground, but it might have been the rustling of the nearby trees, or my
mind in trauma.

At one point, Bruce stood for a moment and twisted his body in all directions, taking
in the campus. Stretching, I assumed. I had always thought I’d like to see Bruce in
action, at his job. And although Bruce simply piloted a helicopter, he assured me,
and left the medical ministrations to the flight nurses, I saw now that he was ready
to fill in wherever he was needed. I had a new appreciation for my boyfriend and his
grace under pressure and knew I’d never again need an up close demonstration of his
skills.

By the time the emergency workers arrived, I felt I’d been holding my breath all evening.

The noise and lights from the vehicles and crew turned the campus inside out, from
its serene late-night ambience to a loud and busy scene. I hadn’t noticed the small
crowd gathering, approaching as near as they could get to the fountain without interfering
with the workers or battling with the police.

I stepped back and surveyed the groups. I saw students
in various sleepwear outfits huddled together, most of them texting or speaking on
cell phones and snapping pictures. Some of the students waved at me, but I kept my
head down and pretended not to see them. It didn’t seem the right occasion for meeting
and greeting, and they did have the good sense not to make their way over to me. I
couldn’t tell whether it was clear to any of the spectators that the body sprawled
out on their campus lawn was that of the mayor, the man who’d addressed them from
a stage only a few hours ago. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if the scene had
already gone viral, no matter who they thought the victim was.

My lovely white sweater was now in an evidence bag, as was other detritus of the mayor’s
plunge. After conferring with the police and dispatched crew, Bruce had jogged across
the campus to my office, unsolicited, to pick up a jacket for me. There was no reason
for my chill other than the rupture of my quiet campus, but I was grateful as he wrapped
me in my own hooded sweatshirt. It wasn’t the freshest item of clothing I owned, the
garment of choice after my occasional bout of exercise, but at least it wasn’t bloody.

“Did the mayor say anything while you were…down there with him?” I asked Bruce.

Bruce shrugged. “He said, ‘Sophie, something something.’”

I took a quick step back, recoiling from Bruce’s response, nearly tripping on an uneven
patch of grass, and almost ending up sprawled on the ground. “What? What something
something?”

Bruce shrugged. “I couldn’t get anything else.”

“Was he asking for me? Do you think he wanted to talk to me? Or was he just pointing
me out? What did he mean?”

Bruce took my hand to steady me. “I don’t think he meant anything by it, Soph. Just,
maybe, you were in his field of vision.”

“But you were the one rushing to help him.”

“He doesn’t know my name; he knows yours.” Bruce took a breath and, I was sure, called
up the protocols for distraught witnesses in his MAstar handbook. “You know, he was
mumbling. He might not even have said your name, Soph. I don’t know why I sounded
so sure. Now that I think about it, he might have said, ‘Off me,’ like ‘Get this knife
off me.’” Bruce made
off me
sound uncannily like
Sophie
, but I wasn’t buying it.

“You said—”

Bruce patted my hand before he let it go. “I’d better run back and see if I can be
of any help to those guys. You’ll be okay for a little while?”

I nodded, as much as I hated for him to leave. I glanced up at the back of Admin and
saw that whatever offices had been lit up a few minutes ago had gone dark. Probably
whoever was working over there realized there was more excitement down here. No kidding.

I took a deep breath and turned from Admin, which now looked like an enormous haunted
house.

I didn’t believe Bruce’s
off me
theory for a minute. Did the mayor think I was the one who’d stabbed him? I felt
a new chill. I zipped my jacket all the way to my neck and threw the hood over my
head. Had the mayor been on his way to see me when someone put a pseudo-knife in his
back? Why would he want to see me? Why would someone stop him by stabbing him?

I wanted answers, but I’d have to wait until he was recovered enough to ask him.

It seemed the mayor was still in my life for a while longer.

The weeks after graduation, before the start of summer school, were supposed to be
the most relaxing for the faculty. Sure, there was research to get back to, and prep
for the interim classes and the fall term, but there was also time to bid the campus
good-bye for a while and hit the beaches or the mountains, both of which were plentiful
along the eastern seaboard.

The presence of homicide detective Virgil Mitchell, Bruce’s best friend since college,
pushed that dream away. Virgil had arrived about the same time as the ambulance, patrol
cars, and fire truck. Though I’d seen a letter opener sticking out of the mayor’s
back, I hadn’t fully processed the idea that someone had deliberately stabbed him
or that he might not survive the attack. Even now I held on to the possibility that
he’d fallen on the letter opener, never mind the shaky physics involved, or that a
party game had gone bad. Virgil would figure it all out and declare it an
accident; the mayor would end up good as new after a brief recovery period; and we
could all go back to normal.

Someone in uniform thought it was a good idea for Bruce to ride in the ambulance,
so off they went, leaving me with my imagination. I was free to run rampant over the
idea that a city official who might be dead might have said my name as one of his
last words, and might have been trying to ask me something. Or tell me something.
Or…

I needed to calm down, to do a statistical analysis of the theories. I chose one of
Bruce’s several interpretations, the least worrisome, as the most likely: I happened
to be the person the mayor saw as he stumbled toward the fountain looking for help.
It made sense—Bruce was wearing a black polo shirt; I was wearing a white sweater.
I knew enough physics to do a little riff on the pattern of reflection from the lamp
near the fountain.

When Virgil approached, I collapsed for a moment on his hulking chest. Virgil was
large in size and in heart, and this wasn’t the first time his presence had provided
comfort. Just seeing someone who was like family, who’d shared many a meal in my home,
brought a measure of relief. He gave me a brief hug and walked me away from the scene
(why hadn’t I thought of that?), toward the back of the looming redbrick Administration
Building.

We sat on a bench looking away from the fountain. My mind wandered to irrelevant details
like whether I should call Ariana, who was combining bead shop business with a vacation
in San Diego, and how convenient that a hazmat team had arrived to rid the water of
the mayor’s blood.

“Tough night, huh?” Virgil said.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

He handed me Bruce’s car keys. “Bruce said your car isn’t here, so you’ll need these.
He’ll get a ride to your house a little later.”

“I thought he was just drunk—the mayor, I mean—but the wound…” I closed my eyes as
if the image of blood
spurting everywhere was in front of me and not in my head. “Did someone do that to
him?”

Nice going, Sophie.
It’s a good thing it was Virgil and he was used to hearing dumb things escape my
lips.

“You were here at graduation, when the mayor gave his speech?” Virgil asked. He bent
over, leaning his forearms on his wide thighs, bringing himself down to my level.

It would have been hard to find two more physically different men than Bruce and Virgil,
except that they both had widow’s peaks of dark hair. There was my fitness freak,
ice-climbing boyfriend on the one hand, and his somewhat lumbering, oversize buddy
on the other. But in temperament the men were so much alike, both able to respond
to crises with professionalism and compassion.

Thanks to his bent-over posture on the bench, I was able to meet Virgil’s eyes. “It
was a beautiful night. All the graduation craziness was over. Bruce and I got ice
cream and thought we’d stroll around for a while.” I felt my throat choke up. “I’m
sorry to be such a flake right now.”

“Take your time, Sophie.” Virgil gave me a minute. “You heard the mayor’s speech?”

I finally became aware that I hadn’t answered Virgil’s question. “Yes, pretty much
all of the faculty were here. The mayor gave the keynote address.”

I didn’t mention how I now regretted all the criticism I’d levied against the poor
man, how Fran and I had gossiped like schoolgirls during his talk. I found myself
hoping Mayor Graves would be well enough to address us again next year. I swore that
I’d pay attention and clap the loudest, and whatever it took, I’d strong-arm the whole
rest of the faculty into doing the same.

“Do you have any idea what time the mayor left the campus?” Virgil asked.

“His speech was over at three fifteen. I don’t know if he left the campus right away,
but he left the stage with his wife at that time.”

Virgil grinned. “Looked at your watch a lot, huh?”

At last, I felt a smile creep onto my face. “Nothing personal.”

“I’ve been to a few ceremonies like that. I get it. Bruce indicated that the mayor
mentioned your name before he fell? Any idea why?”

“Bruce said that?” What happened to “get this knife
off me
” instead of “
Sophie
”? “No. I can’t imagine why he would have said my name. I don’t think I ever heard
the mayor call me by my first name.”

“But you had conversations with him in the past?”

Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

The old-fashioned sound from my smartphone, the unlikely ringtone suggested by my
new age friend Ariana, the one with multiple body piercings and rainbow-colored hair.
To look at our fashion choices, you’d never know we’d been best friends since our
days at the same schools, from K to twelve. I wished she herself were here now and
not just her selection of ringtone.

I snuck a look at my phone’s screen, in case there was an even more important person
than a homicide detective wanting to talk to me. I was surprised to see Monty Sizemore’s
name. If the mayor’s fall had already made the Internet news, Monty would want details
right away. I hoped he and his sister weren’t gloating at the fate of his nemesis.

I wasn’t sure why, but Monty had always struck me as somewhat shallow, a wheeler-dealer
who liked to be on the inside of things, always checking to see if he had the attention
of the highest-ranking person in the room. Fran said it was just my perception, because
I had misgivings about anyone who wasn’t an academic, and Monty was definitely a businessman
first, an instructor second.

“It’s one of the faculty. I’ll call him back later,” I told Virgil. Before I could
switch my phone to off, I noticed another incoming call, this one from Fran. Their
calls were
more blows of reality. There was no way Monty or Fran would be trying to reach me
at this hour unless they’d heard the news. Or seen it on YouTube. I clicked off. I’d
call Fran later. And maybe Monty.