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

all, I was a teacher—and no one had yet come after me with a hunting rifle.
    The idyllic leaf-green and red-brick scene before me stood in bald contrast to the ugly fact of Marty Katz’s murder—and to the sordid world homicide lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski negotiated on a daily basis. The lieutenant’s impressive size—six-foot-three, well over two hundred pounds—was not all that distinguished him from the professors and administrators bustling around the campus on academic errands. A general air of attentiveness to the variegated phenomena—human and physical—that surrounded him, of alertness and readiness to respond—set this plain beige man apart from the abstracted scholars around us. He seemed to inhabit space more concretely than did my colleagues, rendering the space he inhabited intensely more concrete. Slit-eyed, Piotrowski watched the unmarked Taurus until it turned onto the campus ring road and disappeared from sight. Then he pivoted and barked at me. “They treat you okay?”
    “Yeah,” I replied. His brusque tone put me unexpectedly on the defensive. “As okay as possible for a couple of homicide cops who think I killed a
New York Times
reporter in cold blood.” I frowned at him. “What are you doing here, Lieutenant?”
    He grumbled. “Thought I should get myself out of reach for a while; your friends from New York are gonna be making mad-as-hell phone calls about metipping you off.” Then, before I could thank him for that tip, he eyed me closely, and his manner gentled. “You don’t look so good, Doctor—kinda pale and shocky. They didn’t hassle you, did they?”
    I shrugged.
    “They can’t really consider you a suspect.…” Lieutenant Piotrowski squinted in the noontime sunlight, his face set in professional cop mode, sussing out the situation, checking all the angles.
    “No. Not really. At least, I don’t think so. But, Jeez, Piotrowski … I’m in a state of shock. A reporter from the
Times
is dead, and all because he sought out a writer I told him about, a novelist nobody had seen—or heard from—in decades. A deliberate
recluse
, the New York detectives said. I may not have killed Marty Katz, but, you know, it’s beginning to look as if I set in motion a chain of events that did.”
    “Cut yourself a break, Doctor!” His tone was sharp, and a woman student passing by gave us a quick glance.
    “But it’s all my fault,” I protested. “When the New York lieutenant gave me the facts of the case—that Marty was gunned down in Mildred Deakin’s, ah, Finch’s driveway—it became clear to me that he would never have been there in the first place if I hadn’t told him about her. He was a journalist; he must have hunted her down to get her story. From what those cops said, it looks like she probably freaked out when he told her what he was there for, grabbed her husband’s deer-hunting gun, and killed him. At least, that’s what that skinny lieutenant said—that they’ve got Mrs., ah, Finch in custody.”
    “Hmm, well, you might be right that he wouldn’t have looked her up if you hadn’t mentioned her, but you couldn’t know—Hey—whoa—Doctor, don’t
cry.”
He reached out to pat my shoulder, then glanced around and abruptly pulled his hand back. “At least, don’t cry here, right in front of your office. Ya gotta remember that. It’s a cardinal rule: Never bawl where they cut you a paycheck. No telling who’s gonna be watching.” He slid a pack of tissues out of his pocket, handed me one, hesitated for two seconds, then continued. “Listen, why don’t we take a ride and talk about this? I got some, ah, other things I been thinking about lately—thinking about a lot, as a matter a fact. I’d like to … ah … run them by you. You had lunch? No? Okay, I’m buying.”
    “I don’t
bawl!”
I dabbed at my eyes. Piotrowski was right; I had to get out of here. The campus was at its busiest this early September afternoon, students, staff, and