Murder Misread (32 page)

“
My God,” said Cindy,
“that’s Eric’s eye.”

“
Eric?” asked
Nick.

“
The take-apart head on
the office shelf. I’d recognize that blank stare
anywhere.”

Anne Chandler said in a
strained voice, “Is that the little Hammond boy?”

They fell silent as a new
image filled the screen: back view of a paunchy, muscular man in an
official-looking tan uniform. “I’ll catch that shark,” he said,
with a clumsy theatrical clenching of his fists. “I’ll catch that
child-eating shark! But—I need bait!”

Cut to a lovely blonde,
blue-eyed girl. She was dressed in pink jeans and a lighter pink
T-shirt. Anne Chandler gasped, “Jill! That’s Jill Baker!” She
scooted to the front edge of her chair, eyes intent on the
scene.

Jill was frowning. “I
don’t like this,” she mumbled. Then, more clearly, “I want to go
home.”

Nick murmured, “That’s not
acting. She meant that.”

“
Use whatever they give
you, right, Charlie?” Maggie’s voice was like vinegar.

The official tan shirt was
putting on a dark slicker, careful not to show his face. “You and
me against the world,” he was saying. Cut to the exterior of a
boat. Then to Jill, still protesting, saying she didn’t like
sharks. Charlie looked at his shoes. He was ashamed. Jill was not
special, she was an ordinary child, she didn’t like it. He should
have tried harder to keep her out of it. But damn it, he’d done all
he could. And he’d saved her from some of the scenes they’d asked
for….

Jill was in the boat now.
“I want to go home,” she repeated. On the sound track a song faded
in, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” The man, face still hidden,
explained to Jill that she must sacrifice her clothes to serve as
shark bait.

Nick’s hand tightened on
Charlie’s shoulder at the next shot. Jill huddled naked in the
bottom of the boat. Then a shot of the water, the slicker-clad arm
swishing pink clothing through the waves. Then purposely murky
shots of the shark, violent amidst foam and shadows, intercut with
lingering views of Jill stretching to peer through a porthole. “I
know that shark!” Maggie said. “It’s plastic and it’s sitting on
your living room shelf.”

Nick said, “She doesn’t
seem aware of the camera.”

“
We shot through a one-way
mirror,” said Charlie. “She never knew I was there.”

“
All she knew was that no
one would ever believe she was telling the truth,” said
Maggie.

A hasty shot of the
muscular man firing a gun. The shark thrashed in red water. Then
there were bubbles, then calm. A voice-over explained that the girl
was grateful to her hero. Too bad they’d had to use the voice-over,
Charlie thought clinically, but the damn kid hadn’t given them much
that was usable. But they’d got her to do the main scene, anyway.
Here came the shots of her groveling in the boat, glancing up
fearfully at the porthole, and crying out the obscenity they had
taught her.

“
What the hell!” exploded
Anne Chandler. “She wouldn’t say that!”

“
The magic word,” said
Maggie bitterly. “Remember she told us there was a magic word to
make the shark go away?”

“
Good God,” growled
Anne.

The voice-over explained
the girl’s gratitude, and the footage was repeated in case anyone
had missed it. Cut to the man, removing the slicker to reveal his
muscular back. As he tossed it aside the light caught the back of
his upper arm. “What was that?” Maggie asked. No one
answered.

The rest of the film had
no dialogue, just their few usable shots of Jill respliced in
various combinations with occasional views of the man’s bare back.
Damn fool was an exhibitionist. Didn’t really care about kids. It
was all done against the sound track “Show Me the Way to Go Home.”
They all watched in silence until Charlie cleared his throat and
said, “He, uh, he never actually touched her.”

“
Great,” snapped Maggie.
“You must be real proud.” She switched off the projector light and
began rewinding the reel.

“
Look,” Charlie said,
eager to explain, “I didn’t want to upset her, so—”

“
Didn’t want to upset
her?” Maggie exploded.

Nick flicked on the room
lights, and the sudden brilliance caught Charlie full in the face.
Anne Chandler and Cindy shifted their chairs around to face him.
Maggie dropped the
Baby Jaws
reel into her briefcase and walked around his
chair to stand in front of the screen. In her navy blue shirt,
shoulders hunched vulturelike, arms crossed, she reminded Charlie
of the Disney sorcerer returning to annihilate his cringing
apprentice. In memory the fly crawled across Aunt Babs’s
face.

Charlie pulled himself
together and faced the blue glare of Maggie’s eyes. “I didn’t upset
Jill! I helped every way I could because she was just a kid…
couldn’t understand.”

“
God, Charlie. You really
believe that, don’t you?” He was surprised to hear pity in her
voice.

Cindy said, “Charlie, tell
me, did your wife find out about Melanie? Is that why she
left?”

“
No. No, not
really.”

“
She
found a little white sock. And a copy of
Screw
he’d hidden, with an ad with a
Laconia box number,” said Nick.

“
Damn that ad—” Charlie
suddenly realized what Nick had said. “Lorraine told you that?
Lorraine sent you?”

“
No, no.
I was coming anyway. So I stopped by to see her, to ask if she knew
of any reason someone might be trying to frame you. First she said
she knew nothing. But I pointed out someone was after you and
anything she knew would help. She got very upset. She said she’d
left you years ago and you hadn’t told her a thing. She’d talked
you into research with adults, she said, and she’d been sure her
suspicions were wrong, and she didn’t want to know anything more,
but if I did maybe I should look at
Screw
. By then she was crying so I
left her alone.”

“
Damn.
You sent me that
Screw
?”

Maggie said, “We thought
you’d try to destroy evidence and lead us to it, or at least you’d
try to contact any partners you might have. Well, you must have
covered your traces at the post office pretty well, since you
turned it right over to the police. You looked innocent as pie. I
almost thought we were on the wrong track. But since then I’ve
learned that Walensky was probably already blackmailing you. Right?
And Nick lifted the film when he delivered a box here yesterday. I
squinted at enough of it last night to know we’d better keep an eye
on you. And then Nick caught you with Deanna.”

Charlie asked miserably,
“Why couldn’t you leave it to the police?”

Anne snorted. “They aren’t
very gentle with children. Tell me, are you the one who hit the
little Hammond boy and broke his legs? That was him lying on the
beach with the plastic eye, right?”

“
Yeah, but he wasn’t hurt
then!” Charlie shuddered. “That all went wrong! See, the kid wasn’t
hurt at all in that scene, but he didn’t like the ketchup,
and—well, no, I didn’t hit him.”

“
Whether you did or not,
we’d better decide what to do with you, Charlie,” Maggie said
briskly.

“
I—look, I never wanted to
make those films anyway. I stood up for the kids, didn’t let him
touch them. Really!” he insisted as Nick’s hand tightened. “He just
wanted the money, wanted to show off a little. He didn’t touch
them!”

“
That’s real nifty,”
Maggie said, “but we’ll get to that in a few minutes. You see,
somebody did touch Deanna and Melanie. That has to
stop.”

“
All right. It’s not the
way you think it is, but I’ll stop.”

“
You said that before!”
said Cindy, her voice dark with scorn. “You promised me the same
thing years ago. It’s time to lock you up.”

Stupid woman. Charlie shot
back, “If I go to jail, Cindy, so do you!”

Fear flashed in Cindy’s
eyes, but she tossed her head and said, “I doubt it. The money’s
back and I’ve been clear for years. So I’m ready to risk it if it
means getting you behind bars.”

“
Stupid move, Cindy.
You’ll be out of a job too.”

“
Hey, Charlie, you know
I’m a gambler. If you get locked up, it looks like a win to
me.”

There was no reasoning
with her. The point of despair deep in his ribcage was growing,
sending out spidery arms to chill his bones. Then he remembered
what had worried Cindy most years before. He said, “It’s no favor
to Melanie to bring it up again!”

But it was Maggie who
answered. “Glad you see it that way,” she said genially. “We agree,
courtrooms are pretty brutal places for victims. I know, I’ve been
there. Now Jill might be strong enough to testify if she gets some
solid counseling. But even there I’d hate to make her go through
it.”

“
Yeah!” He turned eagerly
to Maggie. “You do understand! So, well, I’ll stay away from little
girls.”

“
Even the special ones?”
asked Nick.

Charlie
hesitated.

Maggie shook her head
hopelessly. “God, Charlie, you still think it’s okay sometimes! I
wish we knew how to reach you, but—Look, you’re abusing children,
it’s as simple as that. We’ve got to stop the damage. The only
answer I can see is to lock you up.”

“
You’d hurt the children?
Dragging them into court?”

“
No, no. We’re going to
lock you up for murdering Tal Chandler.”

19

It took a moment for her
words to register. Then Charlie squawked, “Me? For murdering Tal
Chandler?” He looked wildly at the others. They were shocked
too.

“
But he didn’t!” Anne
exclaimed. “Because—”

“
Hush!” Maggie raised a
palm to interrupt her. “Think about the children, Anne! Let me
explain how he did it, okay? Look at his motive first. We know how
long he’s been working on this research project. How important it
is to his career. And suddenly this emeritus professor, retired and
then some, is writing a paper that cuts at the root assumptions of
the project.”

Charlie shook his head.
“Impossible! No one will believe that a professor
would—”

“
Quiet!” snapped Anne
Chandler. “Let her finish.”

“
You see, Charlie,” Maggie
went on, “we’ve remembered some interesting facts. Cindy and Anne
both remember how Tal said his new study might hurt your work.
Right?”

Cindy and Anne
nodded.

“
I can report that
statistically, the effect you’re basing your theory on is very
weak, and in fact there’s evidence for Tal’s theory in your studies
too. So it’s obvious that if you were going to get your stuff
published, Tal’s findings would have to be kept quiet. But he was
going to report them at the MPA meeting next month.”

Nick was leaning against
the closed door, arms crossed. “Why didn’t he just destroy Tal’s
research instead of murdering him?” he asked. Charlie looked at him
gratefully.

But Maggie had an answer.
“Because that would point directly to Charlie. By staging another
crime and leaving evidence that threw suspicion on others in the
department, he hoped to deflect interest from his own
motives.”

“
And his Chaplin memo
book?” asked Anne.

“
That could have fallen
out of his jacket pocket, just as he’s been saying all along.
Probably when he pulled out Nora’s gun from the same pocket. Cindy,
don’t you remember this morning, the bulge in his jacket pocket? It
clunked against the door frame when he came into the
office.”

Cindy looked coolly into
Charlie’s eyes. “By golly, I do remember. Clunk.”

“
Right,” said Maggie. “On
the other hand, Bart and Nora won’t remember anything in his pocket
in the restaurant. By then he’d left it in the gorge.”

“
In the gorge? But—”
Charlie began.

Nick cut him off. “When
did he have time to go into the gorge?”

Maggie smiled
apologetically. “Well, you see, I thought I’d only been in the post
office for a minute or two. But now I remember that I paused to
leaf through a little newspaper that they had on the table. A
summer supplement, exhibits and parks and theatre, you know. The
Syracuse Farm Theatre was listed, I remember. Could have been
twenty minutes before I met him again.”

“
God!” Charlie stumbled to
his feet. “This is unbelievable! You’re saying that—Maggie, for
God’s sake, you were with me, you know it wasn’t that long! You
know I didn’t kill Tal!”

Maggie’s restraining hand
on his arm was gentle. “I know you’re damaged, Charlie. I don’t
know how you got that way but don’t you see? You’ll hurt one child
after another all your life! We have to protect the
children!”

She didn’t understand
about the girls, that was the problem. Stupidly assumed that Deanna
and Melanie had been hurt, when they’d been so happy to have such a
special relationship. Women were bitches, if you trusted them they
left you in the lurch, alone, out of control. Mother. Aunt Babs.
Lorraine. Now Maggie. Charlie said, “Look, if you frame me for
this, don’t think you’re keeping the kids out of court! I’ll tell
about the girls! Name names, everything!”