Marcie's Murder (34 page)

The other woman
, in her late thirties,
had a medium build.
H
er straight chestnut brown hair
fell
across her shoulders
and
h
er brown eyes were soft
,
with
crow’s feet show
ing
at the corners. She wore a coffee
-
colored suit and white blouse. The skirt came just below her knees. Her dark brown shoes were flat-soled and sensible.

Hank looked at Karen. She looked back at him without expression. He nodded.

“We’re looking for Professor
Brogan
,” Karen said, holding up her ID and badge.

“I’m Erica
Brogan
,” the redhead said.

“Detective Karen Stainer. This is Lieutenant Hank Donaghue. We
need to ask you a few questions about
Marcie Askew
.
”

Brogan
frowned. “Of course.
I heard about what happened to her.
What a terrible thing.”

“We understand you taught a photography course this spring that she took. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“What can you tell us about her?”

“I don’t know,”
Brogan
shrugged. “She was a nice person. She seemed to enjoy the course. She attended every class, participated in the field trips, got along very well with everyone else.”

“
Was her class work any good?
”

“She finished with an A
, which i
s not all that hard to do, really. Attend the classes, take notes, get all your assignments
in
on time, and show that you’re learning the basics and you’ll probably get an A. We’re not exactly looking for the next Annie Le
i
bovitz here.”

“Anyone in particular she seemed close to?” Karen asked. “In the class?”

Brogan
thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“She come across like the big fish in a small pond? Being the wife of the chief of police and all?”

“No, not
hing like that
. She had a good sense of humor, liked to laugh, asked questions, took notes
. She
was completely normal.”

Karen looked at the other woman. “And you are?”

“Dr. Jane Morley.”

“What do you do around here?”

“I’m
the director
of
our c
riminal
j
ustice
program
.” She tapped her forehead with a long, slender finger. “I’m taking mental notes right now.”

“Good for you.” Karen turned back to
Brogan
. “Was she the same way from beginning to end in the class?
E
asy going?”

“Well, no, actually,”
Brogan
replied, pursing her lips. “After a while she seemed to withdraw into herself a little bit. Got a little more quiet. I thought maybe she was worried about her grade but she said no, nothing like that. She said she’d planned on opening a photography business in a little store her husband owned
,
but he sold it and she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
H
er motivation for the course might have dipped after that.”

“She give any indication she was having marital problems?”

“No. We weren’t friends
;
it was strictly professional. She was a student. We didn’t talk about personal things at all.
”

“Can you give us a list of the other students taking the course? We’d like to talk to them as well.”

“
A
sk the registrar’s office. They have it there.”

“They balked,” Karen replied. “Privacy concerns.”

“Well, I’ll give you a copy from my files. I’ll get it for you in my office before you leave.”

Karen looked at Jane Morley, whose expression remained neutral and mildly interested. “What about you? Did you know Marcie Askew?”

“Only by sight,” Morley replied. “I never
spoke
to her.”

“Ever deal with her husband?” Hank asked.

Morley shrugged. “Once or twice. I spoke to him briefly at a job fair we held last year. They had a booth. Maybe once or twice after that. Two
-
minute conversations. Nothing memorable.”

“This is a small community,” Hank said. “Neither of you heard talk of Marcie having problems with her husband?”

A frown flitted briefly across Morley’s face. “No. Sorry.”

“You’re more likely to hear gossip about people here on campus than people from town,”
Brogan
said.
“A college in a little place like this is kind of like its own little universe. Closed in and shuttered. They could set a bomb off downtown
,
and you’d probably hear about where the Dean spent last weekend before anybody’d get around to mentioning an explosion. It’s that kind of place.”

“So just to make sure we’re asking all the right questions, then,” Hank said, “did either of you hear anything connecting Marcie Askew with anyone on campus?”

“No,”
Brogan
said.

“Sorry,” Morley said.

“All right, well, thanks,” Karen said. She looked at
Brogan
. “Maybe we can get that list now.”

“Of course,” she said, standing up.

Karen gave Morley her card. “If you do hear anything, call.”

“I’ll be glad to, Detective,” Morley said, looking at the card.

“Oh, by the way,” Karen said, turning back. “I understand you have a student by the name of Rachel Meese. That right?”

“Rachel? Yes.”

“We were talking to her roommate,
Debbie
Stump.
I understand Rachel’s an excellent shot.”

“Yes,” Morley replied. “The best in class, by far.”

“How are her
grades
?”

“Top
three,” Mo
rley said. “She’s an excellent student
. She
should make a very good police officer.”

“Glad to hear it,” Karen said.

2
5

Hank lean
ed
against Hall’s car in the employee parking lot behind the Harmony police station
,
talking through the window to the detective, who was about to go home
.
Karen was inside, giving Branham a summary of their conversation with
Erica Brogan
. Hank asked Hall if he’d had a chance to interview the other customers who had been in Gerry’s on Saturday night when Marcie was murdered.

“Not my problem anymore,” Hall said. “All the files were sent to County. Done deal.”

“I get that, Hall,” Hank said. “I’m just asking if you
or your uniforms
talked to them all.”

“I talked to
all the locals,” Hall replied.

“They have anything useful to say?”

“No.”

Hank waited.

“Henry Fink spent a lot of time describing you
,” Hall finally said
.
“
He thought you probably did it.”

“That’s the best you could do?”

“I’m off the case, Lieutenant. And I’m tired. I’m going home to get some sleep.”

Hank could no longer ignore the strong odor of alcohol coming
from
the open car window. “It’s two in the afternoon, Hall. You really need to pull it together.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Hank
was thinking about
Gerald Mayburn, a former partner
of his
when
he
was still the Golden Boy of the department.
Hank was
twenty-eight
years old at the time
,
and a
s part of his development he’d taken
courses from the famous Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI at Quantico
. H
e’
d impressed his instructors as serious
minded and highly
motivated.
One day after a class
on the management of death investigations
,
he
went for a drink with
one of the instructors
, Ed Griffin
. They talked
about the toll the job can take on
even the toughest, thick-skinned individuals.

“
It can eat away at you
,”
Griffin
said,
lean
ing
back on his bar stool
to
poke himself in the stomach.
“From the inside out. Ulcers, heartburn, high cholesterol, hemorrhoids, you name it. You bottle up the stress inside your body and it keeps trying to
get
out. And up here, too.” He
mov
ed
his finger up to his temple.
“You end up spending all your waking hours either thinking about what you’ve seen or trying your damnedest
not
to think about what you’ve seen. You can’t sleep at night because when you do fall asleep
,
you dream about what you’ve seen when you’re awake. Then you turn to this.” He lifted his beer glass off the bar and set it down again. “You think that maybe a
drink
now and then will tone it down some, take the edge off,
give you a little peace
between the crime scenes and autopsies and interrogations and court appearances. Then it’s a
quart
every night.
Then a mickey during the day to get you to the quart at night. Then you’re gone.”

“My partner’s like that
,
”
Hank said.

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

Hank found himself telling Griffin about a recent case and how he’d blown up at Mayburn in the Homicide bullpen, making a fool of himself in the process.
Mayburn
was
a
twenty-seven
-year veteran who’d worked in Homicide so long no one really remembered where else he’d been before that. They closed a few cases together
,
and quite a few others remained open
.
His relationship with Mayburn was almost non-existent.
The veteran
was solitary and unfriendly, and refused to call Hank by his name, referring to him only as “Golden Boy
.
”
R
ealiz
ing
how it was going to be,
Hank
kept their interactions to a minim
um
.
Then the homicide of Solomon Black
fell
into their laps.

Solly
Black owned a chain of liquor stores
and was known as
a rough and aggressive competitor who
wasn’t afraid to
do business
on
both
side
s
of the law
. He was
inspecting
one of
his stores
in upper Midtown early one evening when a man entered, pulled out a gun
,
and told the
female clerk
behind the counter to hand over the cash in the register. In the back room, Solly saw what was happening on the video surveillance monitor and marched up to the front as the
clerk
was explaining that the
seventy-five
dollars she’d handed over was
the most
they were allowed to keep in the till at one time. When the robber
threw the cash back down on the counter and
demanded to be taken to the safe, Solly
came up to him, pushed him hard on the arm
,
and told him to get the hell out of his store.

At that point the robber could have done any number of things.
He could have been surprised
at
Solly’s aggressiveness and backed off, even run away. He could have stood his ground and forced Solly to take him to the safe.
What he decided to do, though, was grab Solly, wrestle him into a headlock, drag him outside of the store, force him down onto his knees on the sidewalk
,
and shoot him through the right ear. Then he calmly walked to a car parked at the curb a few yards away, got into the back seat
,
and was driven away.