Broken Saint, The (2 page)

Chapter 2

“There’s a Walter Senden, age seventy-nine, wandered away
from his nursing home, and an Amber Alert on a Dakota Wilbur, age seven.”

“That’s it?” I let Ryan do all the computer stuff. His
fingers are three times faster than mine. Plus, he actually likes dredging
stuff out of computers. But this time, Missing Persons wasn’t giving us
anything useful.

We were sitting at our desks, set up head-to-head
in the detectives’ bullpen. We’ve only got three sets of detectives—two on day
shift, one on night. Any given moment, there’s likely to be only a couple of
detectives in the bullpen. The other pair of day-shift detectives hadn’t yet
checked in for their shifts, which start at eight.

I had my hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. I’d
put on this new pair of flats today, not realizing I’d be spending some time
out on the river, and I was having a little trouble shaking the chill. “You
want to just wait till we get a preliminary from Harold and Robin, see if
they’ve got anything else to go on?”

“Let me try the Campus Substation.” He picked up
his phone. The Campus Substation was part of the Rawlings Police Department.
Back when I was in college, they were more like mall rent-a-cops: fat old white
guys with radios. They were there mostly to ticket cars, do traffic at football
games, and sniff around for pot in the dorms. Today they had the same training
and equipment as all the other officers, and they volunteered for the gig,
usually for a year at a stretch.

Now they were more about terrorism. It was hard to
imagine a terrorist hot to target Central Montana State University, but the
school was working hard to attract science and engineering students from all
over, and I was seeing more kids from the Middle East around town. I guess it
wasn’t impossible.

More likely, trouble would come from a domestic
idiot. Just last year, the state legislature got all patriotic about the Second
Amendment and introduced a bill to let students carry concealed weapons on
campus. For obvious reasons, cops everywhere consider that an Extremely Bad
Idea. Usually our word doesn’t carry much weight, but when the presidents of
all the schools in the state signed a letter objecting to the bill, the
legislature backed down. It wasn’t that the letter changed any minds. It was
more that since the legislature keeps cutting the money it gives the state
schools, the legislators decided to do something the schools wanted that didn’t
cost any money.

“We just brought in a homicide, female eighteen to
twenty-five, non-white. You got any reports?” Ryan said to the officer at the Substation.
“No? Okay, thanks.” Ryan shook his head as he hung up.

It was half an hour later when a call was put
through to us from the main switchboard. It was some guy named Al Gerson. I hit
Speaker.

“Okay, Mr. Gerson, give us the name of the missing
person.”

“She’s Maricel. Her name is Maricel Salizar.” He
sounded way overcaffeinated.

I asked him to say it slow, spell the two names,
which he did. “All right, can you tell me your relation to her?”

“Maricel is an exchange student, from the
Philippines. She lives with my family here in Rawlings.” I looked over at Ryan,
who was wearing a grim expression as he looked at a photo of the victim’s face.
He nodded at me, like he thought she could be from the Philippines.

“Tell me about why you think she’s missing.”

“She didn’t come home last night—”

“Is that unusual, her not coming home?”

“Well, no, actually. She’s started to see a young
man. It might be serious. But we have a very clear policy: she is to phone us—before
ten o’clock—if she’s planning to stay out that night.”

“And you didn’t hear from her, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And you haven’t been able to contact her since
last night?”

“We’ve tried her ten or fifteen times. All through
the night.”

“And she hasn’t picked up?”

“Maricel always has her phone on. But it’s been
off since before ten
pm
last
night,” he said. “My wife and I are very concerned.”

“I understand that, Mr. Gerson. But in my
experience, this kind of thing is usually just a misunderstanding.”

“We’re afraid that something bad’s happened to
her.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Gerson. But let’s not get
ahead of ourselves. My partner and I would like to sit down with you, see if we
can get some more information about Maricel. Would that be all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “That would be … yes, please. Do
you want me to come to police headquarters?”

“No, Mr. Gerson, we’re happy to stop by your
place. Can you give us an address?”

“I’m on campus. You know the Administration
Building?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s room 101.”

“Okay, Mr. Gerson, we’ll be there in ten, fifteen
minutes.”

“Thank you very much. I’m sorry, I don’t know your
name.”

“I’m Detective Seagate.”

“Thank you very much, Detective Seagate. I
appreciate it.”

I hung up. Ryan was looking at his computer screen.
“He’s the acting provost.”

“What’s a provost?” It was one of those words I’d
heard for years but never knew what it meant.

“A provost is the boss on the academic side of a
university. The president is largely about fundraising and being the public
face. The provost works with the deans and the vice presidents. He’s the inside
guy.”

“So Mr. Gerson’s probably not just a mister,
right?”

“Dr. Gerson,” Ryan said. “Or Provost Gerson.”

“Got it,” I said. “Bring the photo.”

Ryan tapped his leather briefcase as we stood up
and walked over to the coatrack.

On the five-minute drive over to campus, the
steel-gray sky started to release a few flurries. I flicked the fan up another
notch to get more heat into the big cruiser, but it was still pumping out
mostly cold.

“You think Maricel’s our vic?” I turned the fan back
down.

He took a manila envelope out of his briefcase and
slid out the photo. He looked at it for a moment. “That’d be my guess.”

A year ago, when I first started working with
Ryan, he’d have said something a little cheerier. But four or five murders into
our partnership, Ryan was started to get a little … not exactly sure what to
call it. Let’s say he was getting a little more realistic. He was still
optimistic, but experience was coming up fast on the outside.

I pulled into one of the metered spots in front of
the Administration Building and flipped down the visor with the Official Police
Business tag on it. The building was big and ugly, three stories of blocky gray
stone, built around 1930. It was the first and, for fifteen years, the only
building on the Central Montana Junior College campus. I think I remember it
was built with some federal money during the Depression to keep the quarries
alive—and keep some of the homesteaders alive one atrocious winter after they’d
been dining on roots-and-bark soup for a few weeks.

We found room 101 at the far end of the first
floor. It was a suite of offices for the university president, the provost, and
the attorney. A forty-something secretary in a sober beige pantsuit and white
blouse greeted us with a smile that she kept under tight control, as if Gerson
had told her to expect some cops.

“Detectives.” She stood and stepped out from
behind her desk. I saw her looking at my shield, attached to the leather disc hanging
on a chain around my neck. “Let me show you to Dr. Gerson’s office.” She led us
across a thick forest-green carpet, past two other office women guarding a
couple of interior offices, toward the back of the suite.

A tall, thin man in a navy blue suit, pale blue
shirt, and green striped tie came out of the office and greeted us. “Al
Gerson,” he said. He tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. His right eye was
twitching pretty good. He extended his hand. “It’s Detective Seagate, have I
got that right?” We shook hands.

“That’s right,” I said. “Detective Karen Seagate.
This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner.” The two guys shook hands, briefly
but with some muscle, the way ex-athletes do.

“I want to tell you how much I appreciate your
willingness to come right over like this.”

I don’t think he knew what we really wanted to
accomplish. “Not at all, Dr. Gerson. We take reports of missing persons very
seriously.”

He gestured toward a couple of upholstered chairs
in front of his desk. There was a coffee table between the two chairs and a
matching love seat. After he closed his office door, we all sat down.

He was a good-looking guy, in his mid-forties,
with sandy blond hair going gray at the sides. His eyebrows were pale, almost
invisible, over dark brown eyes. He had the ruddy complexion of a guy who spent
a lot of time outdoors. When he saw me and Ryan looking at him, the twitching
became more frequent and more pronounced, and his hand came up and touched his
cheek, like he was trying to make it calm down. It didn’t work.

“I’m sorry.” He flashed a quick smile. “As you
might imagine, I’m very concerned about Maricel.”

I started to feel really bad for this guy. He was
so jumpy I concluded maybe he did realize we were going to show him a photo.

“Yes,” I said. “We understand.” We would get to
the photo, but if it was Maricel, we’d have a harder time getting a read on him
after he saw it. “I called you
Mister
Gerson on the phone. I’m sorry, I
didn’t realize you were the provost.”

He shook his head and waved away my apology. “Just
the acting provost. Keeping the seat warm. A few weeks ago, I was head of
Modern Foreign Languages. The provost had to resign for medical reasons, and
I’m just pushing the papers around until a replacement is hired this summer.”

The words came out smooth. I got the feeling he
was the kind of guy said self-deprecating things about himself—just to let you
know he meant the opposite. I was fine with that.

“Well,” I said, “I doubt the administration would
ask you to serve as provost if they didn’t think you’d do an excellent job.”

“I appreciate the compliment, Detective. But I believe
I was chosen because I made it clear that I had no intention of applying for
the position.”

“Oh,” I said, “why is that?”

“I love the classroom. This job is all about
meetings.” His hand took in the office in a sweeping gesture. “It just doesn’t
suit me. As department chair, I still get to teach a course or two. I’ve got
fifteen faculty, all of them good people, all rowing in the same direction.”

I nodded. We were silent for a moment, ready to
make the transition from pleasantries to business. “Tell us about Maricel. You
said she’s an exchange student from the Philippines?”

The twitching began again. “Yes, my wife and I,
and our son, Mark, are hosting her.”

“How long has she been here?”

“This is her second semester. She got here in
August.” He leaned forward, like he was going to say something he says a lot. “My
wife and I feel strongly that we’re living in a multicultural world, and the
more our kids understand about that, the better off they’ll be. That’s why we
hosted a boy from Denmark, a girl from Saudi Arabia, another boy from South
Korea, and Maricel, from the Philippines.” During this little speech, his
twitching calmed right down.

“That’s really something,” I said. “Very generous
of you.”

He smiled. “We get more out of it than they do, I
can assure you.”

The conversation paused.

“Dr. Gerson,” I said, “I have to tell you the
body
of a young woman was recovered this morning.”

His shoulders sagged and his head tilted forward, his
eyes closed.

“We have a photograph of her face. But before we
show it to you, I want you to understand that there’s a very good chance it is
not Maricel.”

“Let me see the photograph, please.” His voice was
almost a whisper. He looked like he already knew it was.

Ryan reached into his briefcase and removed the
envelope. He pulled out the photo and passed it across the coffee table to
Gerson.

He looked at the photo for a second before crying
out, a long, low moan of anguish that came from deep inside him. From outside
the office I heard movement, and a secretary opened the door a crack to look in
and see if there was something she needed to do. I turned my head and waved her
off. The door closed quietly.

Al Gerson was holding his gut with both arms, as
if the pain had a specific location. He began to sob, grabbing huge gulps of
air, out of control. He shook his head, slowly, and big tears started flowing
down his face. His mouth contorted in agony, he
said,
“It’s … it’s …” He couldn’t say Maricel’s name.

We sat there. I’d showed photos to a couple dozen
people in my sixteen years on the force, but I’d never seen anyone more busted
up than this guy. It was the better part of a minute before he could speak.
Through his sobs, he said, “What happened to her?”

“We’re not sure, sir. She was attacked. We haven’t
determined the details yet.”

He leaned over so he could take a handkerchief
from his pants pocket. He dabbed at his eyes and blew his nose. “I’m very
sorry, Detectives,” he said, swallowing hard, trying to get his breathing under
control. “I’m going to go home now, tell my wife and my son.”

I nodded. “We’d like to stop by your house early
this afternoon if we could. Talk to you a little more.”

“Yes, of course.” He stood and walked over to his
desk. “I understand.” He took a piece of note paper from a leather holder and
wrote down his address.

“Between one and two o’clock. Will that work for
you, sir?”

He nodded and began to sob again.

Ryan said, “We’re very sorry for your loss,
Provost.”

“Our condolences, Provost Gerson,” I said. “We’ll
stop by early this afternoon.” As we turned and left his office, I looked back
at him. He was standing next to his desk, his head bowed, his hands covering
his face, sobbing out of control.