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Authors: Sandra Brannan

In the Belly of Jonah (26 page)

BOOK: In the Belly of Jonah
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“Yes, yes, but how can I help you?”

Streeter studied Dr. Bravo’s hands as he flailed them impatiently in the air. Long, lean fingers, curiously strong. Maybe from endless hours of sculpting, he supposed.

“Tell me about her.”

Dr. Bravo leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. “Jill was a wonderful student. She was earning an A in my class.”

“Intermediate sculpting?”

“Yes,” Dr. Bravo said. “And she had earned an A in the beginners class as well.”

“Spring semester?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Bravo said. “You must have her transcript?”

“Dr. Pembroke gave it to me,” Streeter answered.

“Ah, Rebecca. Sweet Rebecca,” Dr. Bravo said, twisting in his chair to gaze out his window toward the Administration Building, where she had her office.

“You two friends?” Streeter asked.

Dr. Bravo grinned. “Aren’t we all, Agent Pierce? Academia is quite the clique. A close-knit gaggle, if I may say so. All of us seeking to impart higher knowledge to today’s youth.”

“Higher knowledge?”

Dr. Bravo arched his brows and sighed. “Must I spell it out for you?”

“That’s what you call it these days?” Streeter said, resisting the urge to spring across the desk and wring this pretentious gigolo’s neck for all womankind’s sake.

Dr. Bravo turned to face Streeter and raised his hands in surrender. “I am nothing but a man and easy prey for the wiles of the lovelier sex. I love them all, and I choose not to discriminate.”

Streeter drew in a large breath. “Tell me about your relationship with Jill.”

“Ah, but alas, Jill was one of my serious students.”

“Serious?”

“Focused, goal oriented. She was not one to stop and smell the roses,”Dr. Bravo said. “You know the type. A go-getter, a type-A personality.”

“You say that as if it was a bad thing,” Streeter retorted, thinking of himself.

“Well, in the world of Art, in which I live, focus and goal setting are okay, but living life is more important.”Dr. Bravo leaned forward on his desk and held Streeter in his fierce gaze. “You look as if you don’t understand. Probably a type A yourself. Art comes from emotion, from life experiences. You must
feel
what you’re doing, not think about what you’re doing.”

Streeter noticed the scratch along Dr. Bravo’s jawbone and suddenly realized he’d just discovered the reason for the professor’s odd Jack Benny pose and seeming fixation on the views outside the window.

Dr. Bravo had closed his eyes and was rubbing his fingertips together as if sensing something Streeter couldn’t see. Streeter again used the opportunity to soak in every detail of Dr. Bravo’s office. His desk was neat and organized, with three piles equally spaced apart: graded papers in one, papers needing to be graded in another, a third pile that looked to be administrative memos or letters. His two pens lay parallel to the piles. His books, obviously well read, were stored on the shelves alphabetically by topic.

As to the professor himself, Streeter noted his hair, although long and below his ears and shirt collar, was washed, neatly combed, and perfectly cut. His fingernails were groomed, his open shirt ironed, and his silk pants custom cut to his strong body. Everything about him was immaculate—maybe psychotically so.

“When you feel what you are doing, the art is natural, not forced as it is when you think you’re way through it.” Dr. Bravo’s eyes fluttered open. “Jill’s sculpting was forced.”

“You said she was an A student?”

“She was,” Dr. Bravo said. He gave a shrug and a crooked smile. “I never said she couldn’t sculpt. I just said it was forced. She thought too much about what she was doing. She was good, but I would have liked to see her be great. If she could have felt her work, she could have been one of the greatest students I ever taught.”

“You liked Jill?”

“Very much so,” he said, twisting his body again to face the window. “Who didn’t? She was smart, talented, strong. A regular Venus. That combination is an aphrodisiac for most of us men, don’t you agree Agent Pierce?”

Something about the way he said his name bothered Streeter. “And was Jill one of the many students you’d slept with, Dr. Bravo?”

A smile slid across the professor’s lips. He lifted his hands in surrender once again. “Agent Pierce. As I told you, I avoid confrontation of any kind. Capitulate, not conquer. Kiss, not clash. Cuddle, not quarrel. So why do you choose to joust with me about something so personal?”

“Because it’s my job when someone is murdered,” Streeter said, measuring his words carefully.

Dr. Bravo chuckled. “I see. So, nothing is off-limits? Not even my love life? Well, normally I would say Jill Brannigan would be someone I was very interested in . . . sampling, shall we say? But she was an athlete and I have no interest in muscular women. A turnoff for me, I suppose you could say.”

The muscles in Streeter’s jaws were working double time. “You never hit on her? Pursued her?”

Dr. Bravo’s head bobbed from side to side. “Maybe a little, in the beginning. That was this past January. Before I knew she was an athlete.”

“Yet you hung out with her and other students from your class at the bars every weekend,” Streeter pressed.

“Of course,” Dr. Bravo admitted. “They are a wonderful lot. Full of life and wonder; brimming with energy.”

“And have you ‘sampled’ any of them?”

“Agent Pierce,”Dr. Bravo said with a cluck of his tongue. “You surprise me. A voyeur, are you? Interested in all that is so intimate, so personal? But if you insist, of course I have. Have you met the cute little cherub known as Alicia? Or the wild Christina? And that hot little Shelby . . . oh, what a man-eater!”

“You’re disgusting,” Streeter said.

“Maybe to you, but you’re a thinker. If you lived life like I do, you would understand why feeling is so much better than thinking.”

“You’re just a lecherous opportunist.” Streeter surprised himself with this uncharacteristic voicing of an opinion, warning him to regain control of his emotions.

“Lecherous?” Dr. Bravo mused. “So often that is coupled with
old
, Agent Pierce, and I am not old. Only a few years older than my students, as a matter of fact. They’re old enough to know what they’re doing—and to choose to do whatever they want with me, I might add. At least I treat them with the respect they deserve, as adults who have opinions and desires, unlike those of you who treat them as brainless tots needing parental advice at every turn. Your dismissive and pejorative treatment of these intelligent human beings is as useless as training wheels on a motorcycle.”

“Who scratched you?”Streeter suddenly shifted gears and then gauged Dr. Jay’s reaction.

“I told you, some of my lovers are a little wilder than others, like my little Christina. She likes it rough. As does Yolanda.”

“Yolanda Fischer, the statistics professor?”

“Does that shock you?”

In truth, it further disgusted him. Streeter wasn’t getting anywhere but angry during this interview. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Jill in any way?”

Dr. Bravo leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes once more. Streeter took the moment to scan Dr. Bravo’s office again. Books were everywhere, of course: on art, on artists, on the masters, on romance, on Italy and France. An empty champagne bottle and flute sat on the windowsill, together with a small glass replica of the globe and a romantic greeting card that was too far away for Streeter to make out the name of the sender, but he saw the heart drawn under the signature. Dr. Bravo had placed a tiny blue ceramic songbird, an agate with purple crystals, a heart-shaped piece of glass, and a rock formation of clear crystals next to a photograph of himself in a graduation gown standing with what looked like his mother, who was laying a kiss on his cheek.

“This is a difficult question you ask me, Agent Pierce, because of course you are looking for the murderer. But I am seeing it from my view as a friend,” Dr. Bravo said.

Streeter perked up. “Which friend?”

“My assistant.”

“Zack Rhodes,” Streeter said.

“Zachary was quite infatuated with our little Jill Brannigan. Enough so, that he would stalk her. In fact, on Monday night when I was dropping off some art books at the library, I saw him hiding behind a pillar in the library, watching Jill as she worked in a cubicle nearby.”

“Why didn’t you tell the authorities?”

“About a college boy infatuated with a college girl? You can’t be serious, Agent Pierce,” Dr. Bravo said.

“About seeing Jill at the library with Zack Rhodes Monday night, the last time she was ever seen alive,” Streeter growled.

“You sound like you swallow barbed wire for sport, Agent Pierce,” Dr. Bravo mused.

Streeter contained his simmering anger. “Why didn’t you tell the police once you learned that Jill had been murdered?”

Dr. Bravo waved a dismissive hand. “Not everyone thinks as you do, Agent Pierce. As I have told you, I’m a lover, not a fighter. And I pity Zack for loving someone incapable of seeing his attributes. I certainly don’t see him as a murderer. I only suggest he may know more about what may have happened to poor Jill that night. Maybe you should talk with him instead of prying into my love affairs?”

Streeter wanted to reach across the desk and punch this Romeo’s lights out.

“And what were you doing there that night?”

“As I said, I was dropping off some art books. And I had a student consultation, if you must know.

“I must. Give me a name.” Streeter clenched his teeth.

“So you can verify my alibi? His name is Barton. Collin Barton.”

Just as he was deciding it might be a good idea to poke Dr. Jay in the nose after all, Streeter’s cell phone chirped. He punched the buttons to silence the ringer.

“Before I go, what kind of car do you drive?”

“A Maserati, of course,” Dr. Bravo said, smiling widely at him. “A coupe, actually.
Nero carbonio
.”

“That’s the model?”

Dr. Bravo chuckled. “The color. Black as coal. I can see you are no connoisseur of the automobile.”

That was an understatement. Streeter couldn’t care less what type of car he drove. It was a means to an end: something to get him from here to there. But he did know that owning a Maserati coupe meant Dr. Bravo came from money. A college professor’s salary wouldn’t support the man driving such an expensive luxury car.

Dr. Bravo added, “Unique, sporty, muscular styling.”

“Let me guess,” Streeter said. “Like you?”

“Why, yes, Special Agent Streeter Pierce. You catch on quickly.”

“And who’s Jonah?”

Dr. Bravo looked puzzled. “Jonah? Who’s Jonah?”

“I’m asking you.”

Didn’t so much as blink or hesitate, but Streeter thought he saw the slightest flicker in his eyes. “A jealous boyfriend? Husband?” Dr. Bravo ruminated. “Maybe he’s a thinker like you.”

Streeter excused himself to answer the call that was coming in for a second time.

JACK LINWOOD LIFTED HIS
eyes from the scope and rubbed them with the back of his wrist, using his lab coat sleeve to avoid the fine latex dust on his gloved hand. Dr. Berta Johnson had stopped by on her way to the autopsy of Lisa Henry to see if he’d learned anything from the evidence the techs had driven down from Fort Collins the previous afternoon. Linwood had worked all night, sleeping for only a few hours on a small couch in the break room. He had helped with prep work on the boxes of evidence and, since midnight, he and Tim Gregory had been on their own, poring over the slides looking for some clue, an anomaly. The only items the techs did not prep were the bedding materials, which were now splayed across the lab counters.

Linwood knew how important this was to Dr. Johnson and to the guys upstairs. He knew how important this was to Streeter. He knew how important this was to the Henry family. He knew all too well how important this would be to him, if he were Lisa Henry’s father. He knew all this, but he didn’t know yet how the evidence would help them find de Milo. And he didn’t know what to tell Berta Johnson this morning on her way to the autopsy other than he had an even stronger conviction that de Milo was indeed a monster.

BOOK: In the Belly of Jonah
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