Cold and Pure and Very Dead by Joanne Dobson Read Free Book Online

the handcuffs, baby, we’ve caught us a killer
.
    The lieutenant’s pale eyes narrowed. “Who?” she asked, in a voice like a razor.
“Who
didn’t you kill?”
    “Marty Katz, of course,” I replied. “I didn’t kill him.” She should have said
whom
. Whom
didn’t you kill?
But this did not seem to be precisely the right moment for a lesson in grammar.
    Rudy Williams, alert as a feral cat, seemed ready to spring out of his chair. “Professor, nobody said nothing … anything … about the shooting death of an individual named Martin Katz.”
    Lieutenant Syverson threw him a
stuff-it
look.
    I repressed a groan. “I seem to be getting off on the wrong foot here.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Syverson said. “Professor Pelletier, look at this from our point of view. We walk in here cold, giving you no information about the purpose of our visit, and right off you deny committing a homicide we didn’t, until this very second, have any reason to suspect you of. And, then, you identify the victim—whose name we never mentioned. That sounds a lot like the
right
foot to me—at least from an investigative point of view. Professor,” she ran the tips of her fingers back and forth over the arm of the green vinyl chair, “have you done something you need to tell us about?”
    “No, Lieutenant, of course not.” I straightened up in my desk chair, and shifted a vase of purple iris I’dbought from the florist on my way in to work that morning. Then I clasped my hands together—tightly. “Look, the only thing I’ve got to confess is that I received a phone call a couple of hours ago from an acquaintance with the Massachusetts Staties … ah, State Police. He told me you were coming—and why.”
    For a brief moment she had absolutely no lips. “He did, huh? And who, may I ask, was that?”
    I told her. Looked like Piotrowski
was
about to get into deep shit. But, then, any good cop knows what he’s letting himself in for when he breaks regulations, and Piotrowski is nothing if not a good cop. He could handle it.
    “Lieutenant Piotrowski didn’t tell me anything specific about the case, other than the name of the victim,” I continued, attempting to smooth things over for him, “but he did say that the circumstances of Mr. Katz’s death link it directly to me. Could you please tell me why?”
    The investigators exchanged a long, silent look—their favorite means of communication, it seemed—then Syverson shrugged. “Professor, do you know a woman named Milly Finch?”
    “Milly Finch?” I sped through a tabulation of friends, colleagues, and students, former friends, colleagues, and students, former employers as far back as the truck stop in North Adams where I’d first entered the work world as a single mother with a three-year-old daughter to support. Then I went back even further, to girls I’d known in high school, junior high, elementary school. “No. No, I don’t think I’ve ever run across anyone named Milly Finch. Who is she?”
    “She’s a goat farmer.”
    “A
goat farmer?”
    “Yes. Mrs. Finch is an old … ah … elderlywoman from a small town called Nelson Corners, over in Columbia County. Just across the New York State line from Massachusetts. She’s kind of a recluse—raises goats and sells the milk. Goes to church once in a while. That’s just about all anyone in that area ever thought there was to her life: raising goats and going to church.”
    “Oh?” Obviously there was more to this story—and to Milly Finch’s life. I waited.
    “On Friday afternoon, Martin Katz was found shot to death with a thirty-thirty Winchester in Mrs. Finch’s driveway.”
    “Re-e-e-ally?” This was strange, even tragic, but so far I couldn’t see any “circumstances” that linked the killing to me. “That’s too bad,” I said, then added, inanely, “he wrote so well.”
    “Did he?” the pale lieutenant asked, and exchanged another significant look with her subordinate. “Well, so did