The Dead Student (41 page)

The homeless man’s lips seemed cracked, and Student #5 knew the man’s throat would be parched by fear. It hadn’t been hard to get him drunk the night before, to the point of unconsciousness. There was some humor in this, he realized, because Timothy Warner was undoubtedly familiar with the same stupor. Student #5 believed there were both irony and intellectual symmetry in using a drunk to kill a drunk.

He popped open another beer and held the cold bottle to the man’s lips. The homeless mad slurped wildly at the drink.

“Better?”

The man nodded.

“Want a chaser?”

Student #5 held up a large bottle of cheap whiskey.

The man nodded again, and Student #5 generously poured some into the man’s mouth. He wondered,
Is he thinking, If I have to die, I might as well go out drunk? Probably. Makes sense.

“Do what I say, and there will be more.”

The man looked eager.

“A good performance. That’s what I want. I need you to continue for five, no, at least ten minutes. That will seem like a long time, but keep it up. No breaks. Do you understand?”

The man’s eyes twitched a
yes.

“Think of it this way: You are calling for help. That help will save you.
So I’d put heart and soul into it. It’s your best chance.” The homeless man seemed ready. “Okay. Start … now!” He pushed the “record” button on the old-fashioned tape machine and glanced down at his wristwatch.

The first
Help!
was croaked, a word spoken with sandpaper.

Student #5 used his arms to gesture, like someone mimicking an orchestra conductor. The words started to flow, genuine, sincere, totally panicked, rising like an aria of despair.

38

The drive from the motel near the airport outside of Hartford, Connecticut, to Charlemont, Massachusetts, took nearly two hours, but more than the time involved, it was the change from urban to rural that kept Andy Candy’s eyes on the passing scenery. For the last twenty minutes or so, they paralleled the Deerfield River. It glistened in the morning sunlight. Moth was familiar with the history of a famous massacre that had taken place nearby back in the 1700s—local Native Americans doing in some settlers in unpleasant fashion—and started to mention it, until he realized that bringing up centuries-old ambush killings might not be the right tone for this day.

They passed rolling hills covered with thick stands of tall fir trees. The Green Mountains of Vermont loomed in the distance. It was the antithesis of Miami—which was all neon, glowing lights, concrete, and palm trees, a go-go atmosphere. This was a far different America, different even from the farmland and forest that they’d seen in New Jersey when they went to see Jeremy Hogan. This seemed almost antique. Andy Candy couldn’t have said exactly how it was different—but there was an odd feel
to the isolation they were driving into.
A good place to hide,
she thought, and this made her shift about with growing tension.

The town of Charlemont was even smaller than they expected it would be. A bedraggled gas station. A pizza place. A general store. A church. It lacked most of the romantic New England qualities of slightly more substantial old towns. No grassy common and stately white clapboard homes built in the 1800s. Instead, it was spread along both sides of a road, near the river, with some whitewater outfitters and a nearby modest ski area that offered zip-line trips in the off-season. To say it was quiet would have been an exaggeration.

Susan Terry was driving. She pulled into the parking lot in front of a redbrick building with a large old-fashioned bell tower rising in its center. There was a sign: “Town Offices.”

“Just follow my lead,” she said as she parked.

Inside it was cool, shadowy. A town directory pointed them toward the Charlemont Police Department. Susan Terry saw that it listed only four names—and one was designated “river patrol.” She guessed this was the officer best equipped to deal with folks who got into trouble canoeing on the water without life jackets.

There were two people in the office, both in uniform, a middle-aged man and woman. They looked up when Susan Terry entered, trailed by Andy Candy and Moth.

“Help you?” asked the man pleasantly. Andy Candy assumed he was accustomed to helping strangers out with routine messes. In the fall the area was likely filled with leaf peepers traveling to see the foliage.

Susan Terry produced her badge. She smiled. Friendly. But focused. “Sorry to show up without advance warning,” she said. “But we need a little assistance. I’m with the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office, and a resident of your fine town is a potential witness in a felony case we have down in Florida. He might be reluctant to give me a statement—and I think we will need an officer to accompany us to his home so we can question him appropriately.”

She lied easily. Moth knew this capability went hand-in-glove with drug use and alcoholism. When one was so accustomed to lying to oneself, it wasn’t hard to lie to others.

The Charlemont policeman nodded. “Don’t get this sort of request too often,” he said. “Sure you wouldn’t prefer a state trooper? There’s a barracks not too far away.”

“Local jurisdiction is better from the legal point of view.”

“Okay. What sort of felony are we talking about?”

“Homicide.”

This made both officers hesitate. “We’ve never had a murder here, at least none that I can remember,” the man said. “Don’t know if we’ve ever even had someone connected to a murder.”

“We have them all the time down in Miami,” Susan said lightly.

“Who are these young folks?” the policeman asked, gesturing at Moth and Andy Candy.

“The other witnesses. It’s important that they get a look at the fellow up here.”

“He a suspect?”

“Not precisely. Just a person of interest for my case.”

“You expect trouble?”

Susan smiled, shrugged. “No one’s ever all that eager to help out in a criminal case, especially one that’s out of state. That’s kind of why we’re here unannounced.”

The cops nodded in agreement. This made sense. “So you want us to …”

“Drive up. Knock on the door with me. Give me some backup if I need it. Encourage a conversation. Just a little muscle-flexing.”

She made it sound like this was nothing more complex than a discussion over unpaid parking tickets. Susan’s mind churned with possibilities. She imagined flight and absence
.
Or perhaps door-slamming refusal
.
The possibility of gunfire. In truth, she had no idea what to expect, but having a uniformed officer was undoubtedly going to help. A part of her would have preferred a detachment of Marines. She’d faced many criminals, but
always with an upper hand—in a courtroom or when they were already behind bars. Still, she believed she had the advantage here of surprise and numbers, It did not occur to her that she might be wrong.

“We can do that. Where we going?”

“Fellow’s name is Munroe, lives out—”

“In those old trailers on Zoar Road, near the catch-and-release trout management area. We know it,” the woman cop interrupted.

“You know him?”

“Not really.” The male cop took over seamlessly. Andy Candy figured they were husband and wife. “See the guy in his truck from time to time. This is a small town, so you get to know all the names. He’s not there too much, which makes me think he’s got some other home somewhere, although he don’t look like he’s got any spare change lying about to help him maintain more than one place. Definitely keeps to himself. Can’t recall ever going out there on any call of any sort.”

The cop turned to the woman policeman. She tilted her head.

“Me neither,” she added. “I hate those old trailers. Fire traps and big satellite dishes. Total community eyesore. Wish the town would condemn them. And when we do get called out there, it’s usually domestic disturbances—you know, someone drinking too much, starts beating on their spouse or the kids. Very poor folks for the most part—and it isn’t like this is a rich community, like Williamstown.”

“When were you looking to knock on his door?”

“Now.”

The man nodded. “Well, the young guy—our newest officer—is on patrol and he’s probably bored already. I’ll give him a call. Donnie’s just two weeks on the force—hell, there’s only four of us anyways—but he can use the experience.”

“That would be great,” Susan Terry said. She had the distinct impression that newly minted officer Donnie would catch all the pain-in-the-butt assignments for some time.

Moth and Andy Candy kept quiet.

I didn’t want to take this way out, but after all that’s happened it seems reasonable. None of it was MY FAULT. But those whose fault it was have all been taken care of.

Student #5 had painstakingly written each word with his left hand before leaving the single sheet of paper on the dashboard of his truck. He doubted that a real forensic handwriting examiner would be fooled, but he also doubted whether the local cops would have the money in their tight budget to hire some big-city expert. Before heading back into the trailer, he also took the time to spread around a dozen bright red tablets of pseudoephedrine on the floorboards and leave an open, half-empty box of baking soda on the passenger seat.

He heard a muffled cough from the bedroom. He didn’t turn that way; instead he continued to keep his eyes focused on the roadway down to his trailer. He had tried to invent some early-warning system, but hadn’t been able to come up with something that he thought would be reliable, so he was forced to keep watch, even though he was tired and his muscles ached both with strenuous work and tension.

Timing, he knew, was critical.

Three minutes. Maybe four. It could be a little less. Not much chance it would be more.
They will pull in. Stop. Get out. Survey the front. Then approach. One one thousand, two one thousand, three …
He counted seconds in his head, envisioning the scene in front of him.

He went over each detail. It was a little like the orchestration of a play in football. This player goes this direction while another takes a different route, everyone following a specific plan. Offensive success. Defensive confusion. He smiled. Coaches in football forever admonished their players,
Do Your Job
. The cliché was,
Everyone on the same page.

Student #5 had pantomimed every action he expected to take, carefully clocking each motion until he was at four minutes. He was a little nervous because there didn’t seem to be any leeway for the unexpected—and one thing killing had taught him was to always keep the unexpected expected.

He reassured himself:
You’ve prepared wisely. It will happen as you imagine it will.

The day before he had purchased seven canisters of propane—the sort used for outside gas grills. He had also acquired a half-dozen five-gallon plastic containers of gasoline, some plastic tubing, and glass bottles. He had carefully placed all of these in locations throughout the trailer where they couldn’t be immediately spotted. The large fan he’d obtained was to shift scents and fuels through the trailer rapidly.

Home becomes fake meth lab. Meth lab becomes bomb. Simple. Effective. The sort of basic plan that someone living in this run-down world might come up with.
He had a sudden memory of the late, great Jimmy Cagney in
White Heat
standing on the roof of the burning oil tank:
“Top of the world, Ma!”

When he looked up, he saw two cars approaching. The first was a marked Charlemont patrol car, the second a small rental. He could see three shapes in that second car.

Now!
he told himself.

Without hesitation, he spun into action.

Young Donnie was a local boy less than a month out of police training academy after two tours in Afghanistan, unsure of whether he’d made the right decision in joining the hometown force instead of holding out for the more sophisticated and adventurous duties of a state trooper. The Charlemont Police Department job consisted primarily of giving out speeding tickets to folks who failed to notice that the town’s limit was 25, rousting local high school kids from hanging out and smoking pot behind the church, and occasionally acting as a referee in a beer-fueled husband-wife argument. He looked at his future and saw a thickening waist, a modest house, a day care operator wife, two kids, and the same old thing day in, day out. He didn’t like this vision.

When he’d received the radio call to accompany a big-city Miami prosecutor to a potential homicide case witness’s house, he’d leapt at the
chance. This task seemed much more in line with what he’d hoped becoming a policeman would entail.

He’d never been to Miami. He imagined it to be always sunny and warm and filled with unusual crimes, drugs, guns, desperate criminals, and cops who frequently unholstered their sidearms. Shoot-outs, supermodels and high-speed chases—a television-show version of the city that while not precisely accurate, wasn’t exactly untrue, either. So he made a point of reminding himself to ask the lady prosecutor about policemen’s job opportunities down in Dade County after she finished interviewing the man in the trailer.
Get out of Sleepytown and head to Dodge,
he told himself.

He was driving slowly so that the trio in the car behind him could keep up.

On his radio, he called the main office. “Hey, Sergeant,” he said briskly. “We’re arriving at that location now.”

“Ten-four,” came the curt response.

This was, he thought, the most interesting thing that had happened to him in days.

Turn on the fan. It oscillated back and forth. Humming.

Spill the gasoline containers. Liquid sloshed across the floor.

Open the propane tanks wide. They hissed as the gas leaked out.