Marcie's Murder (33 page)

“Okay.”

“You’re sure you guys don’t believe in reincarnation
?
”

He smiled at her patiently. “I’m sure.”

Karen told him the story of Taylor Chan, the three-and-a-half year old boy in Glendale who
suddenly began to talk
about his past life as Martin Liu, his mother’s cousin. Martin had bee
n murdered four years earlier
. Precocious to begin with, little Taylor soon began talking about his “before mother,” Meredith, who had blond hair and was not Chinese like the rest of them. Meredith
Collier
was Martin’s mother, but Taylor
had never met her. As well, he somehow h
e knew that Martin’s eyes had been green. He
talked about
time
he
spent
as Martin
with Peter Mah, Martin’s cousin
, things they’d done together, places they’d gone such as a traditional Chinese theater and
a member’s-only club in a basement underneath a hairdresser’s salon
. He could describe the Triad tattoos Peter
wore
on his chest, tattoos
his parents never
talked about. He also described his death in chilling detail, including the first names of two of the men
involved in his murder
.

Karen
told him
about talking
to the boy at his daycare
, how
he described the murder to her,
and she tried to explain
how
badly
it
had shaken
her. A murder victim’s voice
seeming to come
out of the body of a three-and-a-half year old boy. She
admitted
that the boy had birthmarks
which
corresponded to the gunshot wounds
on
Martin Liu’s
body, a
birthmark on the front of his leg that matched the entry wound and another birthmark on the back of his leg that matched the exit wound.

She talked about how she still didn’t sleep very well at night. She had a lot of dreams about children asking
her
for help. She told him she was
going
to get married, that
Sandy
was
level-headed
and
easy-going
and
didn’t really have strong religious beliefs
,
but was firmly grounded in modern rationality and didn’t have much interest in metaphysical issues such as life after death or reincarnation
.

“Have you talked to him about the case involving the little boy?” Brother Charles asked.

“Yeah,” Karen said. “A bit.”

“Did you talk about how you felt about it? That you were trying to decide whether it was actually true that the boy’s spirit was the reincarnated soul of the murder victim?”

“Not really. I mean, he knew I was upset about it at the time.” Karen shrugged. “He asked, but I didn’t really want to talk about it. You know. We’re going to be married, and he doesn’t want a flake for a wife. And if we have a kid, he sure as hell doesn’t want a flake for his kid’s mother.”

“Have you talked to him about your mother?”

Karen frowned. “What do you mean?”

“About her condition, the fact that she’s in an institution, and how you feel about all that?”

“No. But look.” She moved forward in the chair, getting ready to stand up. “I’m not the kind of
woman
to talk about feelings. I don’t do that thing, the Weepy Wendy crap. And he doesn’t want to hear about it. He wants me to be a stand-up
person
, reliable, dependable. That’s who I am.”

“I don’t know him, of course,” Brother Charles replied, “but I know it helps to talk to the people we love about the things that bother us. If they truly love us, they won’t be judgmental about what we tell them
. T
hey’ll actually feel good that we care
enough
about them to trust them with our inner feelings.”

“You could be right,” Karen said.

“If not your fiancé, then maybe a close friend.”

S
he thought
again
about Hank. “Maybe
.
”
S
he
stood
up. “Anyway, thanks for listening. I didn’t mean to take up your time.”

Brother Charles stood up with her and led the way out of the gazebo. “
No trouble at all.” Back on the sidewalk, he put out a hand to stop her. “By the way, just so you’re clear about something.”

Karen looked at him with calm blue eyes, her expression neutral.

“The way we just talked? That’s the kind of conversation I had with Marcie Askew. No more and no less.”

Karen stared at him
for a moment
, then nodded. “I get the message, Padre.”

2
4

The next morning, Thursday, Karen picked up Hank outside his motel room and
drove
across town to
Mary’s Donuts
for breakfast. They sat at the same window seat in which Karen had been sitting on Monday morning when she’d seen Brother Charles for the first time. She described to Hank her conversation with
the abbot
and Dr. Orlov.

“So she didn’t tell them who it was,” Hank said.

Karen shook her head,
draining her
coffee
cup
.

“You believe them? Are they telling the truth?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure
.
” Karen pick
ed
at her muffin. “Orlov’s not one of the brothers or monks or whatever. He’s just a rich doctor in a wheelchair who donates most of his time. Pretty straightforward guy. No bullshit.” She downed what was left of the muffin and crushed
her napkin
in her fist.

“What’s your take on Brother Charles?”

She dropped the
napkin
into her empty coffee cup. “Same thing. Straightforward. Truthful. He went there because she asked him to, he didn’t see her because she was already lying dead in the ravine, he didn’t know who was beating her or who fathered the child.
I
t’s believable
. He didn’t kill her and doesn’t know who did.
”

“All right,” Hank said. “So we’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the eyewitness who saw the big bearded guy has ended up pointing everybody in the wrong direction.”

Karen
nodded, amused
.

“That leaves us with Askew
.
” Hank
ran a hand through his frizzy hair
. “His whereabouts at the time of the murder are currently unknown, he had all kinds of motive, he’s a violent guy who uses his hands, he’s strong enough to have carried her back to the ravine
,
and remorseful enough to have
eased
her down under the tree branch.”

“All we need is a single scrap of evidence placing him at the scene and putting his hands around her neck,” Karen remarked, staring out the window.

Hank said nothing.

“So d
o
you want to go look at that SIG?”

“I don’t think I need to,” Hank said, touching the holster on his hip beneath his jacket.

“We could look anyway. It’d be an
improvement on
that
Gleeyuck
you carry around now.”

“We’ll see.” Hank
drank
the last of his coffee and
went over with her once more
his interview with Betty Gibson. “She was back and forth on whether he was capable of beating Marcie,” he finished. “On the one hand he
became
a model husband and on the other he ha
s
a bad temper and might have been capable of losing control.
But w
e don’t know enough yet. There’s someone else still out there.”

She
slid out of the booth
. “Lover boy.”

He
nodded
, getting up
.
“Physical evidence either turns up or it doesn’t. But until we know who the other guy
is
, we don’t know enough.”

She pushed the door open and held it for him. “What do you want to do?”

“Go to the college. See if she
met
with someone there.”

“When she was taking that course.”

“
R
ight.”

They got into the
Firebird
. Karen
flew
out of the parking lot and into the street as though propelled from a giant catapult.

The college campus was fairly large for the size of the community it served. Karen stopped at the booth just inside the main entrance and asked the uniformed security
guard
where they’d find the registrar’s office. He directed them to Lancaster Hall, which turned out to be
a
Greek-style building with a
large
cement staircase,
columns with scrolls on the top, and two cement lions sitting on blocks on each side of the front doors. They went inside and followed the signs to the registrar’s office where a young man with a cheerful smile and bright eyes
nodded
at the badges they held up and brought out a course calendar from the spring term.

“This is the only photography course we offered that term,” he explained, folding the calendar at the appropriate page and pointing to the listing.

“No prerequisites,” Hank said.

“That’s right,” the young man
said
. “It’s a general elective that pretty much anyone can take. Graphic design students need the credit for their program
and so do
most
students taking
other
Media Studies programs,
but
a lot of
people take it just
for
interest.”

“Bird course,” Karen said.

He looked at her, smile steady.

“We need a list of students who took it this spring,” she said.

The smile didn’t falter
. “I don’t think I could do that, sorry. We don’t normally release that sort of information. Privacy considerations.”

“It doesn’t list the instructor,” Hank said, tapping his finger on the course calendar. “Can you tell us who taught it?”

“Sure, I guess.
Professor
Brogan
is
our
photography
instructor.”

“
Where’s
his office?”

“
Her
office is
.
. .
” he flipped open a binder and turned a
few
plasticized pages, “H building, second floor, room 216.”

Out in the corridor, Karen gritted her teeth. “Do you have to have some kind of surgery to keep a smile on your face that long? Christ, it was like tal
k
ing
to the fucking Joker.”

“He
wa
s just trying to be polite,” Hank said.

“Yeah, well
he acts
like he’s psychotic.”

“You’re way too hard on people
.
”

They walked out the rear entrance of Lancaster Hall and followed the signs across the concourse to H building. It was a long, square, four-story building made of bricks and glass. They tramped up the staircase to the second floor and found room 216. It was empty. They backtracked to the main office of Media Studies and got the attention of the woman behind the front counter.

“Professor
Brogan
?” Karen asked. “She wasn’t in her office. Is she in class?”

The woman shook her head and pointed to a doorway down at the far end of the office. “Faculty lounge.”

I
t was a typical lounge with
comfortable furniture,
a glass case displaying faculty publications,
a single window with heavy dark drapes, a coffee machine, a Coke machine
,
and a little kitchenette with a microwave oven
, kettle
,
and mini fridge
. Two women sat in armchairs on either side of a round pine coffee table.
One was small and athletic,
in her mid-thirties,
her straight red hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, her face plain and her eyes bright and penetrating. She wore black slacks and a black long-sleeved t-shirt. A black jacket was lightly folded on the table
in front of her.