Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

“You guess?” I paused. The last thing Rachel needed was my anxiety-ridden response. I lowered my voice. “You have to promise me that you’ll go to the police station. In fact, you can come with me this afternoon. I have an interview there myself.”

I’d made it sound as though I’d initiated the meeting with Archie. Archie cop, me reporter.

Rachel pointed across the room to an old, round fan on a high stand. “It’s roasting in here. Can we turn that on?”

“If it works.” No promises from her about making a trip downtown, I noticed.

We shared the chore: moving the fan, finding a socket, adjusting the speed-all very legitimate distractions while Rachel stalled and stalled. I tried to think of another occasion when she’d put off a distasteful task. I couldn’t. Not even when she worked on the biology floor.

“What else can you remember? What did the office look like?”

“Just his regular office stuff. But his desk was a mess and, you know, it’s usually in perfect order.”

“Did the police tell you what they found?”

“They didn’t tell me much, except that Dr. Appleton had been poisoned, and that they were talking to everyone in the building. But I knew it was more than just routine with me because they asked me things like did I work more closely with Dr. Appleton than the undergraduates, and did I have a key to the chemical cabinet.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I just said how Dr. Appleton was a strict teacher, but people respected him for it, and I was glad I had him for an adviser. I guess all that was another lie, but I wasn’t going to make myself look worse.”

“And the key to cabinet?

“I told them the truth but then when they asked me where it was, I couldn’t find it. It’s always on a separate key ring in my purse, the one you gave me, with the metal pi symbol on it? But I went to get it, and it wasn’t there, Dr. Knowles. I lost it.”

Or someone took it.

I didn’t know too many legal terms, but premeditated was one that stood out. If someone went to the trouble of stealing Rachel’s key ahead of time, then Keith’s murder wasn’t a random act, in the heat of an argument, but a well thought out frame-up of Rachel.

From outside, I heard the sound of a plane taking off. At least this time it was not an emergency mission, but one of the many small plane owners treating friends or relatives to a bird’s-eye view of the beautiful New England landscape.

“Rachel, you said Dr. Appleton’s desk was a mess. Did you see anything in particular that was… out of place? Papers strewn about? Anything like that?”

She frowned, thinking, then shook her head. “Not that I remember. I think his lamp was knocked over, but I’m not sure. I was only in there, like, a minute.”

“So no yellow computer paper everywhere, for example?”

“You mean like what we use for drafts?”

“Maybe.”

Rachel bit her lip. More thinking. “No, I think I’d remember that.”

I tried to keep track of the inconsistencies without taking notes, which I was afraid would intimidate my witness. The crime scene people had not found the cake Rachel said she left outside the door, but they had found pages of Rachel’s thesis on yellow paper, which Rachel had not seen.

A medium hard puzzle, I told myself, not impossible, once I have a little more information. And as long as I can trust Rachel to tell the truth from now on.

“Did you see anyone else in the corridor, when you arrived or when you left?”

“No, you know no one stays around on Friday afternoons except for a party.”

“Did you see Woody, by any chance?”

Rachel twisted her lips in concentration, as she did when she was assembling a graphing lab for me. “I might have heard him. There was definitely some noise when I got there. It could have been Woody’s cart rolling down the other wing.”

I wondered why the police hadn’t told Rachel that pages of her thesis had been crumpled up and thrown around the late Keith Appleton’s office. I debated whether to tell her now. Virgil hadn’t exactly sworn me to secrecy.

Another time, I decided. Rachel needed a breather from her intense confession.

And I had a cop to meet.

As I drove toward town, rolling around in my head was a big question: What obligation did I have to tell the police about Rachel’s lie? It wasn’t as if she’d confessed to murder, but the simple fact of withholding information from the police was a crime, wasn’t it? If I didn’t report Rachel, were we dealing with crime squared?

I wondered if I could trust Virgil with my question. I doubted it. Not after the ridiculous performance I’d given last night. I had to hope that Rachel herself, who’d declined my invitation to accompany me to the police station, would see the light and be completely forthcoming before she had to be grilled under a bare bulb.

The Henley skyline was coming into view, the golden dome of its city hall sparkling in the sun. The dome essentially was Henley’s skyline, sitting atop its tallest building. Henley was a three-exit town these days, four if you counted the outlying one that led to and from the airfield. In the direction I was traveling, the next exit would take me to what was formerly an industrial area where all that was left were rows of abandoned factories, a few of which had been turned into warehouses. The following exit ramp ended up downtown, where the police station awaited me; the one after that, the last exit, practically flowed into the college campus.

My appointed time with Detective Archie loomed in my mind, but I had about an hour and forty-five minutes to spare. Thanks to my cheekiness, which put me in an apologetic mood, he now had an advantage, even more than his cop status gave him. I wondered what his birthday was. Knowing it always helped me get a handle on a person. Bruce claimed that knowing a person’s favorite movie-if you could upload only one to your smartphone-told him everything he needed to know.

I’d done nothing to prepare for my two brushes with law enforcement this weekend. Big mistakes. I had to turn that around and I couldn’t do it without trying to anticipate what Archie might ask and prepare an answer that spoke of complete cooperation.

Either that, or I needed more information in my own arsenal.

Without further thought, I drove past the downtown exit and the police station and headed for the off-ramp that led to campus. I couldn’t help myself. I had the gall to think that I might find something the police overlooked, maybe a scrap with scientific notation they weren’t used to. To be honest, I also wanted to check on Franklin Hall. The only way I could explain that, if anyone asked, was that I was worried about the building and how it had survived this crushing blow. A silly reaction, as if the building itself had been affected by Keith’s murder.

From a distance of a few hundred yards, nothing looked different. The administration building tower, taller than Franklin Hall’s, was still intact; the surrounding brick buildings had the same aura of steam as yesterday from the heat wave that wouldn’t quit. The various grottos with statues of our founders were standing in their proper places, as were the small fountain behind Admin and the blooming flowers around the library.

There was a significant lack of fun-loving students kicking up sprays of water.

I’d driven onto the campus from the south side, between Admin and the library. The walkways were empty, but that wasn’t too strange for a Saturday afternoon, especially one that was a good beach day for those lucky enough to have houses or friends with houses on the Cape.

The lot closest to Franklin Hall had no cars. Evacuated, you might say. I didn’t know what I expected, but the building I worked in stood there, same as always, red brick, one big solid figure shaped like an L with a slightly thicker short side. I saw no crime scene tape on the outside of the building, and no police presence. Had the facility I called home already been cleared by the police? All the better for them to be able to concentrate on interviewing people. Lucky for me.