Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson

sharp eyes were on
Maggie. “You were down there?”
    “ I went down while Dorrie
was phoning the police and ambulance, just in case I could help. I
couldn’t, but I did take a quick look around.”
    “ And what did you see?”
Anne asked dryly.
    “ The gun in his right
hand. Powder burn on the right side, behind his ear. Footprints
along that muddy section. Some very small ones, maybe that little
girl that Bart saw. And big ones, deep tread like a man’s boot. No
overlap. Don’t know which came first.”
    “ A good observer,” said
Anne.
    “ Just curious. Anyway,
you’re right. As a suicide it looks pretty fishy.”
    Anne nodded vehemently.
“Impossible.”
    Hines and Walensky had
apparently agreed to a truce and were ambling back up to the
group.
    “ Thank you all for
waiting,” Hines said. “Mrs. Chandler—”
    “ Yes?”
    “ We’d appreciate it if
you’d identify him for the medical examiner downtown. In about an
hour, if that’s all right.”
    “ I can’t go with
him?”
    “ It would be easier for us
to take him. We’ll send someone for you soon.
Meanwhile—”
    “ Meanwhile,” Walensky
broke in firmly, “we’ll take you all back to Van Brunt Hall. Take
some preliminary statements for our own records while we wait for
Sergeant Hines to finish up here.”
    Hines’s face had that
carved-wood look again. “Thank you, Captain Walensky. See you all
soon.”
    Charlie trooped up the
hill with the others, following Walensky and his men. His mind
churned, images and worries flashing by in a rapid-sequence
montage. Tal, expansive, inviting everyone to lunch. Hines’s
careful reconstruction of the traffic on the trails. The shadowy
figure among the trees. The obvious disruption to come as two
different police forces took statements and snooped through Tal’s
things and Tal’s friends. He had so much to do, and this was bound
to louse things up. Things wouldn’t get back to normal until the
cops had tracked down the killer. Could be weeks. And he had so
damn much to do. But God, that was a selfish, callous thought. Tal
came first.
    Anne was trudging up the
hill next to him, smoking, her face as wooden as Hines’s, trying to
escape grief behind an Eastwood-tough exterior, trying to distract
herself.
    And you, Charlie Fielding,
trying to distract yourself too.
    An image pushed itself to
the fore: Tal pretending to be Cyrano, the ruler-sword waving, yes,
in his left hand.
    Something seemed to be
caught in Charlie’s throat.

5
    Captain Walensky handed
Anne into the backseat of the pale gray Campus Security car. Her
mind, hunting distractions, cataloged the smooth plastic
upholstery, the floor carpeting scrubbed but still stained faintly
yellow by some accident or other. “There you go, Mrs. Chandler. Are
you comfortable?”
    “ Fine,”
said Anne shortly. She hated to be fussed over. Disguised
condescension, most of it. Men holding doors for you and then
shocked when you insisted on attending the meeting instead of
fetching them coffee. Better these days, or better disguised. But
Wayne Walensky was old-style, un vieux birbe . She’d have to bear with
him. And, she reminded herself, he meant well. He knew her, knew
Tal, knew and loved the whole damn campus. That was worth a
lot.
    Charlie’s new statistician
slid in next to her without waiting for directions while Hines and
Walensky stood talking to the student outside. Anne could hear
their voices dimly, making arrangements to get the young woman’s
official statement. Anne felt distant, an observer only, suspended
above the petty world on a jet of pure white rage. She’d have to
cope later, she knew. Pull out her shredded heart and hold it up to
the light. But for now the job was to find out who the hell had
done this to Tal. To her .
    Outside, Walensky was
telling the student they could drop her at the library, and the
girl climbed in next to the statistician. Strangers both. Just as
well. Charlie and Nora and Bart would just ask what they