Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson Read Free Book Online Page B

something,” Anne said crisply. “You say he wasn’t
robbed. I know it’s not suicide. I can’t think of any reason
someone would do this, but I can’t just sit around fretting. I
could help you check his office. That’s where he spent the morning.
Something may occur to me.”
    Hines checked the
pugnacious tilt of her jaw and acquiesced. “Okay. I’ve got some
things to finish up here, then we’ll go to Van Brunt Hall
and—”
    “ Sergeant
Hines.”
    The speaker was a
handsome, square-faced, graying man with a mustache and sharp blue
eyes. His gray uniform strained around a beer belly, but Charlie
sensed power yet in those muscles. Burt Reynolds at sixty. Hines
turned, but didn’t seem impressed. “Captain Walensky,” he
acknowledged, but Charlie could hear quotation marks around
the Captain .
    Walensky scanned the
group, nodded at Charlie and at Nora before returning his attention
to Hines. He wasn’t as tall as the black detective, but he wore his
age with a solid dignity. His eyes fastened on Anne Chandler.
“Hello, Mrs. Chandler,” he said solemnly.
    Anne gave him a curt
nod.
    He cleared his throat and
said, “What have we got, Reggie?”
    “ Suspicious death, Wayne,”
Hines snapped back.
    Walensky’s Burt Reynolds
eyebrows furrowed. “My man said suicide.”
    “ Yeah, but you know how
things are, Wayne. You never know how things may turn
out.”
    “ It was Professor
Chandler?” Walensky said softly, his eyes sidling to
Anne.
    “ I’m afraid so,” said
Hines.
    Walensky muttered
something under his breath, then, “I knew him. Great
guy.”
    “ Yeah.” Hines’s expression
didn’t change.
    “ Well, I’d better get at
it.” He took a step down the path.
    Hines’s arm shot out, hand
up in a traffic-cop stop. “I’ll show you.”
    Walensky paused. “It’s on
NYSU property.”
    Hines said softly, “And
you’re calling us in, right, Wayne? Even if it’s your side of the
line. How about we go look together?”
    Walensky’s frown swept
over the watchers. He jerked his head toward the body. “C’mon,
Reggie. We gotta cooperate.”
    “ Right. That’s what I’m
saying.”
    “ All right.” Walensky
looked at Anne again. “Mrs. Chandler, I’m sorry.”
    Anne nodded, unsmiling.
The two policemen moved down the trail.
    “ Little bit of friction
there,” Maggie observed.
    Charlie nodded. “Yeah.
Dorrie called the Laconia police but the Campus Security people
usually respond to campus problems so I suggested calling them too.
Didn’t know they’d all show up at once.”
    Anne said, “They’re
supposed to have an agreement now. The administration got together
with the city police chief and with Walensky.” Her voice was crisp,
detached, scholarly. “Worked out some arrangement; I don’t know the
details. The campus police handle campus complaints, but they’re
supposed to call in the city department when it’s
serious.”
    “ I remember in the sixties
the city cops tried to break up an antiwar demonstration,” said
Maggie. “Roughed up some students and made the thing twice as
bad.”
    “ Right,” said Anne. “That
kind of thing was why they worked out the agreement. Basically it
means student demonstrators are called before campus judiciary
committees.”
    “ Instead of getting real
rap sheets. I see,” said Maggie.
    “ But major crimes are
turned over to the city police, right?” Charlie said uneasily.
“Like that kid who stole the NYSU Film Club receipts?”
    “ Right,” said Anne. “He
was caught by Walensky’s people but turned over to the city courts.
What the hell are they doing down there?” She gestured with her
reeking cigarette.
    Charlie looked too.
Walensky was squatting, with some effort, inspecting the muddy bank
of the creek. When he straightened he looked grim.
    “ Footprints,” Maggie
informed them.
    “ What?” asked
Charlie.
    “ Someone walked through
the creek, came up the bank at that point, then back down into the
creek.”
    Anne’s