The Guilty Read online

  “That was days ago, Henry,” Jack said. He sighed, sank into the couch. “Since then it’s neck and neck. Nobody is getting new scoops. So it comes down to juice, plain and simple. Paulina has it, we don’t. People want salacious stories, headlines in bold, and photos of celebrities in bikinis. Only thing that can distract them from that is real, honest-to-God news. And until we get that, we’re going to get creamed every day. If two people are tied during the race, everyone stares at the one wearing flashier clothing.”

  “I prefer jeans,” I said.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. And listen, Henry, you should be aware of it…Paulina knows you were at the crime scene today. Knew it before we did, actually.”

  “What—how is that possible?”

  “I think she has some chumscrubber tailing you. But she’s mentioning it in tomorrow’s article on the Lourdes murder, claiming you always find yourself at the scenes of brutal crimes. Between Fredrickson, Mauser, your quote being found at Athena’s crime scene and being seen talking to a witness today, she’s got enough paint on her brush to level some pretty brash accusations.”

  “That was a coincidence. I was talking to a friend. Any decent reporter would have done the same thing.”

  “A friend. You mean the cop.”

  “Yes, a cop friend, Curt Sheffield.”

  “I know Curt. Seen that recruiting poster everywhere but my refrigerator.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Bottom line is I have a lead on a hell of a story.”

  “You know, I thought you might.”

  “That gun, the one the killer is using, there’s a reason he’s using it. I’m going to find out what that is. Paulina doesn’t have that. Combine that with this new quote, it’s going to fit somewhere.” I sat there silent. Watched Jack rattle his empty glass. Then he stood up, tipped his cap at Amanda, nodded at me.

  “Find the story,” Jack said. “Behind every murder is a motive. The cops don’t care about that right now, they just want the man. Motive will come later, once they can be sure there aren’t any more high-caliber bullets aimed at anyone’s skull. So keep on keeping on.”

  “I will.”

  “Important work is silent until it needs to be heard. Keep that in mind. Other people want this story, too.” Then he left.

  I turned to Amanda. “Your history professor,” I said. “You think she’s still awake?”

  CHAPTER 18

  The headline read, Head Of Franklin-Rees, Now Without A Head.

  Even I was shocked by the tactlessness and audacity of the Dispatch’s front page. The lead story, naturally, was the murder of Jeffrey Lourdes, accompanied by a gruesome photo of the man’s legs with blood pooling around them. In Technicolor.

  The paper neglected to mention how Jeffrey Lourdes had revolutionized the magazine industry in the early seventies with several titles that captured the zeitgeist with aplomb and erudition, how he’d mentored many of the country’s most talented writers and journalists from scruffy-haired hipsters to men and women who changed the face of American culture. Instead the Dispatch focused on rumors of money laundering, infidelity, drugs and under-the-table deals. It noted how, over the last decade, Lourdes had been accused of letting his legacy go to seed, eschewing strong journalism for salacious stories and shoddy reportage that his younger self would have thrown in the fire. It also noted how, despite Lourdes’s rumored twenty-million-a-year salary, circulation for Moss was way down, and the magazine had long ago ceded any cultural impact.

  They would have had you believe Lourdes was as dirty as they come, a common rat working in an ivory tower.

  Our article for the Gazette painted a more accurate, more even picture. Giving Lourdes credit where he deserved it. I expected the Dispatch to kick our asses at the newsstand.

  If I didn’t know any better, the Dispatch was suggesting that the magazine industry was better off with Jeffrey Lourdes dead.

  At the same time, I knew I was on to something, that there was an even bigger story surrounding the deaths of Athena Paradis, Joe Mauser and Jeffrey Lourdes. I needed to find out why someone had murdered a famous socialite and a publishing magnate, and tried to assassinate a government official mere days apart, and why the killer seemed to be using weaponry and ammunition completely impractical for someone who was smart enough to carry the murders to their grim conclusion.

  I’d spent all night poring over the details given by Lourdes’s assistant regarding the gun she saw, the man she saw wielding it, as well as the info Curt Sheffield gave me about the ammunition caliber. At eleven-thirty I’d left a message for Professor Agnes Trimble. I name-dropped Amanda, her former student, said I needed to talk to her about an important story. She called me back within fifteen minutes.

  “I don’t have much of a nightlife,” she’d said. If what Amanda said was true, and she collected firearms, I wasn’t totally surprised. But could a college professor help paint a clearer picture of a murder suspect?

  I squinted as we walked toward the subway. Agnes was expecting us at eight-thirty sharp. Not much of a nightlife, didn’t care much about sleeping in. No wonder Amanda liked her so much.

  “So you’re sure Trimble isn’t just someone who has a strange gun fetish,” I said. “You really think she can help?”

  “No, I just like spending my free time with old teachers,” Amanda offered. “Trust me, if this thing has a trigger, she can help. Not that you learned anything at whatever that school was.”

  Guess it was that simple.

  We took the 4 train down to West Fourth street and headed toward the NYU College of Arts and Sciences, located in downtown Manhattan by Washington Square South.

  “You know, I did go to a pretty good college,” I said.

  “According to who, U.S. News and World Reports? Please. They know as much about academia as I know about horticulture. Most Ivy Leaguers are the kind of students who work twenty hours a day to make a three-point-eight, then get hit by a bus on your first day of work because you don’t have enough common sense to know that red means ‘stop.’”

  “I’ve never been hit by a bus,” I replied.

  “Right. You just got shot.”

  She had me there.

  Amanda had taken a class with Trimble, Professor of the Humanities, Professor of nineteenth-century American Cultural History, during her junior year. She claimed Trimble was brilliant, slightly loony, but if you wanted to know anything that took place between Maine and California between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, you could be sure it was rattling around in her brain.

  Hopefully we could jar something loose, because aside from my employer losing ground to the print princess of darkness, three people had been killed and a murderer was still on the loose.

  I’ll let them know what bad means.

  It was early May, and Trimble had just finished up finals week. According to Amanda, she was spending her final days in the city packing up the office before heading off to Malibu for the summer. I wanted to ask more about this Malibu trip, but Amanda shushed me.

  “Better you don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just say her favorite movie is Point Break.”

  I hadn’t been back to NYU since several people had wanted me for murder. That coincided with how I met Amanda. Needless to say, the school held some memories for me. Traded pain for pleasure, took a bullet in the leg in exchange for a lover at night. Fair deal, but if the bullet had been a few inches higher I wouldn’t be thinking that.

  The NYU College of Arts and Sciences had a storied history, and what was now known as the Brown Building was formerly known as the Asch Building. The Asch Building was the site of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The blaze, which occurred on March 25th, 1911, began on the eighth floor and quickly spread. Due to cramped working conditions and a lack of exits (including one that had been locked ostensibly to prevent workers from stealing), the fire killed a hundred and forty-six workers before it was put out.

  It was purchased by real estate magnat
e Fredrick Brown, who donated it to the University where it became the Brown Building of Science. I didn’t want to ask Amanda about it, but I don’t know how I would have felt taking classes in a building where nearly a hundred and fifty people had died.

  “Ah, home sweet home.” Amanda sighed as we entered the CAS building. Despite the fact that summer was nearing and most sane students would have fled the campus weeks ago, there was a line twenty people deep waiting for an elevator that looked like it’d been erected by people who still wore shirtwaists. Amanda, though, seemed completely unsurprised.

  “It’s always like this,” she said. “The elevator goes about a floor an hour. It’s an excuse for students to be late to class. Professors can always tell who the serious students are because they’re the ones who are panting and sweating when the bell rings. Come on, let’s take the stairs.”

  Agnes Trimble’s office was on the third floor. I was hardly panting when we arrived. I felt a small amount of pride at that. Then I felt ashamed for being proud of walking up two flights of stairs.

  I followed Amanda down a whitewashed hall. Most of the doors were closed, the faculty having all adjourned for the summer, the corkboards adjacent to them holding naked staples and thumbtacks and occasional notices whose posters had neglected to take them down.

  As we turned down one corridor, I heard loud noise coming from the end of the hall. As we got closer, I could hear the strains of the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones” playing at full blast.

  “That’d be her,” Amanda said without an ounce of irony. “She’s a huge deadhead.”

  We followed the music and came to an open doorway whose nameplate read Professor Agnes Trimble. And immediately my expectations were blown to hell.

  Agnes Trimble was a small woman, sitting down I guessed about five foot three and a hundred ten pounds. She looked to be in her late fifties, with hair dyed so red I was surprised a horde of bulls weren’t stampeding around the office. Her hair was done up in what I could best describe as a bird’s nest, pretty much clumped together and held there with a brown scrunchy and a few terrorized bobby pins. On her ears rested a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, which I suppose helped her enjoy the two lava lamps in either corner. On her computer, a felt monkey dangled from a small American flag, its Velcro hands fastened to the top of the Stars and Stripes. Taped to one shelf looked to be an actual ticket stub from the original Woodstock, complete with authentic-looking mud stain. Her shelves were covered in books whose staid titles must have been hideously embarrassed by the rest of the décor. I debated relaying the information that the Partridge Family bus had left the parking lot a long time ago.

  And resting among these hipster-drenched relics were dozens of toy guns. All makes and models. Rifles, cannons, small arms and enough tanks to blow the hell out of the Indian in the Cupboard.

  And somehow I was not surprised to see pictures of various male celebrities, many of them sans shirts or other commonly worn articles of clothing, taped to a corkboard behind her desk. I suppose reporting while staring at the nipples of Orlando Bloom and George Clooney had to happen sometime.

  “Amanda, baby!” Agnes leapt up, leaned over the desk and wrapped her arms around Amanda, who leaned in awkwardly to reach the small woman. Agnes squeezed her eyes shut, sucked in a breath, and for a moment I worried she might be trying to inhale Amanda’s soul.

  When they separated, Amanda gestured to me and said, “Professor Trimble, this is who I was telling you about, Henry Parker. He’s a reporter for the Gazette.” I held out my hand to shake hers. She eyed me, squinted slightly.

  “He your…boyfriend?” she asked, a sly smile on her lips.

  “Uh…” I said.

  “Actually, yes,” Amanda said. “I didn’t realize we were wearing name tags.”

  Agnes sat back down, reached into her desk and pulled out a candy cane. She unwrapped it and popped the whole thing in her mouth. Through a mouthful of peppermint, she said, “You didn’t need name tags. Eighty-thirty in the morning, both of you dressed and showered, Henry wearing matching socks and the whole nine. Henry here is a reporter…no guy I’ve ever met under the age of thirty is dressed well and showered this early unless they’re going to work, going to a funeral, or going somewhere with the person they sleep with. Do you have a funeral this afternoon?”

  My cheeks grew warm, and Amanda’s looked like they could catch fire at any moment. “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “Then you’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” Agnes said. “That’s lovely. Please, sit. Candy cane?”

  “No, thanks,” we echoed.

  Agnes shrugged as if she couldn’t believe how anyone could say no to such a scrumptious treat at this time of day. In the meantime, Agnes seemed to have noticed me staring at the photos behind her desk. I’d also noticed that she wore a wedding ring.

  “You never had pictures taped to your locker?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said, “back in high school.” I glanced at her wedding ring. “How does your husband feel about them?”

  “What are you, ten years old?” she asked. “He knows I’m not sleeping with Brad Pitt, and as long as that stays the case he could care less if I have pictures of him or Stephen Hawking on my wall. If you have a problem with them, you can leave any time.”

  There was a sharp pain in my side as Amanda elbowed me.

  “Nope, no problem.”

  “So, Amanda, how are you? It’s been, what, three years?”

  “Four,” Amanda corrected. “Junior year, U.S. Nineteenth Century Intellectual and Cultural History.”

  “What’d I give you in that class?”

  “A minus.”

  “That’ll do. I refuse to put up with students post-graduation unless they’ve received at least a B plus. So what brings you to our humble university? Not soliciting donations, I hope.”

  I laughed. Amanda didn’t. Clearly I’d missed a joke.

  “So, Mr. Parker,” Agnes said. “Amanda tells me you’re a reporter and you have some questions a woman of my expertise might be able to assist you with. That correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. Agnes cringed.

  “Don’t call me ma’am, please. I’d rather die alone surrounded by cats than think I’m a ma’am. Call me Agnes.”

  “Right, Agnes. Anyway, you’ve heard about these murders, right? Athena Paradis, Officer Joe Mauser, Jeffrey Lourdes?”

  She shook her head sadly. “Terrible, terrible things. How someone can murder people who’ve contributed so much to our society is just shameful and beyond me.”

  “The person who committed these crimes, I’m pretty sure they’re using a weapon, specifically a rifle, that has some specific cause or reason behind its use. The killer is also using ammunition I’ve been told is quite out of the ordinary,” I eyed her red hair, the lava lamps. “Amanda said you were familiar with nineteenth-century weaponry…”

  “Shoot,” she said. Then she laughed. “Get it, shoot? Go on.”

  “Right. So my source in the NYPD told me that the bullet used to kill both Athena Paradis and Officer Mauser was a .44-40 caliber magnum round.”

  Agnes bit her lip, furrowed her brow.

  “That’s a powerful bullet,” she said.

  “So I’ve heard. Is it true that it’s an uncommon round?”

  “Depends,” she said. “Hunters use them all the time—.44-40 bullets have massive stopping power, and just enough accuracy that if you’re a decent shot, you’ll only need one shot.”

  “I’ve scanned the police reports for every homicide in the five boroughs over the last five years,” I said. “Three hundred and twelve murders. None of them with magnum rounds.”

  “Well, to be honest magnum rounds aren’t the kind of ammunition you tend to see these days, at least not around here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the area between the Hudson and East River isn’t exactly known for their hunting grounds.” She paused. “Unless this man is making
them.”

  “I think he may be,” I said.

  “Listen, Mr. Parker…”

  “Call me Henry.”

  “Right, Parker, I appreciate you coming down here, it flatters me to no end that a former student thinks so highly of me to believe I might be of some assistance on a murder case. But I’m a college professor. Nothing more, maybe a little less.”

  I looked around her office. “Mrs. Trimble, it’s clear you have a passion for these weapons. Now regardless of what that says about you, I’d sure as hell trust someone who has a passion for something over someone who gets paid to do it. I think Amanda’s right. But I’m not a cop, I’m not asking you to help catch a murderer. But I think there’s more to this than simple killings. I think this guy has a motive, and I think his gun is a clue to that.”

  Agnes took the candy cane from her mouth, tossed it in the garbage. Looked me over. “You know my father took me to the range when I was a little girl. Had one set up in our backyard. Picket fence with empty paint cans on it. Only seven-year-old in my town who could shoot paint cans from twenty yards out with a 9 mm with eighty-seven-percent accuracy. I know guns. I don’t like what they can do, but I’m in awe of them.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “And that could be the difference here.”

  “Do they know what kind of gun it was fired from?”

  “Not specifically,” I said. “But there are clues. A witness to Jeffrey Lourdes’s murder said she got a good look at the weapon. She said it looked old, like she’d seen it in a movie. It might have had a wood stock. That’s as much as I know.”

  “Mr. Parker, hundreds of guns fit that description. If that’s all you have…”

  “Does the phrase ‘gun that won the West’ mean anything to you?”

  Agnes’s eyes opened wide. She brought a hand to her mouth, chewed on a fingernail. Suddenly she stood up, started running her finger along the spines of various books on her shelf. She stopped at one. Took it out and laid it on her desk. She flipped it open. It was text heavy, filled with old photographs and illustrations. She turned to the index, flipped some more, scanned down, then stopped when she found what she was looking for.