The Guilty hp-2 Page 9

  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 magnate 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 decor. 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.

  "You say you think this rifle bears a significance to the case?" she asked. All the playfulness had left Agnes Trimble's voice. She was working now, the switch I assumed made her so good at her job was now turned on.

  "I don't know about the case, but it does to the man committing these crimes. I just need to prove it. I need to know why this gun is so special to him."

  She turned the book around so it faced me.

  "Could this be the gun?"

  On the page was a photograph of a rifle. It had a wooden stock, like Lourdes's assistant said. Other than that, I didn't know.

  "Look here," Agnes said. "Rather than a traditional trigger guard, it has a reloading mechanism with only one side attached to the frame. Makes for easy and fast reloading.

  These kind of rifles are as common as sequin jumpsuits. You asked about the gun that won the West? Well, here it is."

  The caption beneath the rifle read, Winchester 1873, First

  Model Rifle, S/N 27.

  It was a beautiful piece of firepower. I examined it.

  "At the time, this gun was given the highest production run of any rifle in history," she said. "As much as the Winchester won the West, it nearly drowned it in blood as well."

  "Does the Winchester 1873 take. 44-40 magnum rounds?"

  Agnes nodded, her fingernail underlining a passage in the text.

  The Winchester 1873 lever action rifle was originally chambered for the. 44-40-a bottlenecked cartridge that has acquired legendary status and is often referred to as 'The car tridge that won the West.'

  I read the line, wondered if this was the gun the killer was using. The rifle obviously had history, a literal one at that.

  But why would somebody in the twenty-first century use a nearly hundred-and-forty-year-old gun?

  "So the gun was accurate," I said to Agnes. "And fast. But it surely can't match some of the weapons around today.

  Hell…Uzis, semiautomatics, Saturday night specials."

  "Yeah, I've seen movies, too. And yes, there are many guns currently on the market that obliterate the necessity of the Winchester. But if this is the gun, and I'm assuming at this point that's a big if, this man is not using it for efficiency or posterity."

  "So why use it?" Amanda said. She was into this, a little too much.

  "The Winchester 1873," Agnes said, her voice taking on a reverential tone, "until the Uzi 9 mm came along, was the most famous and most recognizable gun in the world. Over half a million were produced and in circulation before the turn of the century. Between lawmen, outlaws and other savory and unsavory types, just about anyone who needed to kill someone was doing it with a Winchester model 1873."

  "What made it so popular?"

  Agnes breathed out, whistled. "Oh, well, take your pick.

  The construction was far more rugged than the previous models. That beast could take a pounding. It had a leveraction mechanism, and what that does is allow the shooter to fire several cartridges without having to reload. The 1873 model was lighter and faster than its grandfather, the 1866.

  The 1873 had a steel frame, which allowed Winchester to use a centerfire instead of a rimfire for the first time."

  Amanda said, "You know if I knew you knew all this, I might not have registered for your class."

  "If I didn't know all this, I wouldn't have a dozen unregistered students every semester taking my class for no credit."

  "So what's the difference between centerfire and rimfire?"

  Agnes seemed to get that I knew a little less about weaponry than your average twenty-five-year-old. She spoke with no condescension, and I could tell her interest was more than academic.

  "The centerfire was one of the most important technological advancements in the history of advanced weaponry. See, with a centerfire, a gunman could use more than one cartridge at a time."

  "Or gunwoman," Amanda added. "Hey, I know about

  Annie Oakley."

  Agnes con
tinued. "The older model Winchesters used a rimfire, which fired at a lower velocity and smaller caliber since the firing mechanism would often be damaged when using higher power ammunition. The steel frame made it the first rifle which could be used in just about any weather condition. It truly was an all-purpose killing machine."

  I said, "Athena Paradis and Joe Mauser were killed by . 44-40 magnum rounds. I'm willing to bet Jeffrey Lourdes was the same. My friend on the force told me the. 44-40 rounds are pretty uncommon calibers to be used in an urban setting."

  "They are, mainly because they're impractical as hell,"

  Agnes said. "But in the 1880s, you didn't have Uzis. A good rifle, accurate, powerful and easily reloaded, could win a war, wreak havoc everywhere, or keep the law."

  "So basically this was a bad-ass rifle of the first degree."

  "I believe that's how pretty much any historian would put it."

  I sat back and tried to digest all of this. According to all the facts we had so far, a young man could be running around

  New York with a rifle made famous in the nineteenth century.

  A rifle that would be described as a "killing machine." So far he had targeted three people who had seemingly no connection to each other aside from their propensity for front-page coverage. Popular gun, popular targets. I knew there was more to this story. That there was a very specific reason, if this was the right gun, that this monster was using it.

  Agnes continued, confirming my thoughts. "Nobody would be using this weapon today without a purpose."

  "I know that," I said. "But we don't know what that purpose is. Where could someone find this gun?" I asked.

  "Oh, hell, I don't know. Someone who wants it bad, that's for sure."

  "Look, Agnes," I said. "Three people are dead. Who knows how many more are targeted, or if the cops can catch this guy before he crosses anyone else off his list? Right now all I want to do is find out if this is the gun being used, and if so, why.

  I know in my heart if I can answer that question, we'll find out who this man is."

  Agnes looked at me, looked at Amanda.

  "You love her?" she asked.

  Amanda's mouth opened. The question knocked me a bit, but I looked her in the eye and said, "Yes I do." I felt Amanda's hand on mine.