Tall Man Down - 10. Chapter 10

When we got home, Nollie told me to call Don. He’d stopped by maybe forty minutes earlier and had seemed disappointed not to find us.

“Did you remind him where we were?” I asked.

She nodded.

“He could’ve met us there,” I told Pete.

“Maybe he didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Not everyone’s use to having cops around.”

I shrugged, thinking that somewhat narrow. “That’s their problem.” Then I thanked Nollie for the message and phoned Don.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Home.”

“Be there in five minutes.”

“What’s going on?”

“Can’t talk from here. Can you get away?”

“Let me check.” I turned to Pete. “You need me?”

“How long?”

“How long?” I asked Don.

“Maybe an hour.”

“Maybe an hour,” I reported.

Then I laughed. Nollie was already giggling, following this three-way conversation. “Wait a minute,” I told Don and handed my phone to Pete. I didn’t want to put the call on speaker in case there was something Nollie shouldn’t hear.

Pete talked with Don for less than a minute, mostly listening, and then clicked off. “I deserve this,” he informed me.

‘Why?”

“For plotting with Sandra.”

“What’d Don tell you?”

“Nothing really.”

I grinned. “That’s about what he told me.”

“But you’ll know more when you get back.”

“Where am I going?”

“He didn’t tell me that, either. Just said for you to be ready outside.”

“I’ll tell you everything I find out – I promise.”

I kissed him, though while we were talking, I’d punched the number Sandra had given us into my phone. A friendly woman answered, and I quickly lied about having pocket dialed. “An inn,” I told Pete, after I clicked off.

He didn’t seem surprised. “Don said ‘an hour,’” he told me instead. “Call if you need more.”

“We have plans?”

“Maybe that evening drive.”

I hoped not but didn’t want to say so. “I don’t think hide-a-way inns allow babies,” I suggested.

Pete simply smiled as a car honked in front of our house.

As it happened, it wasn’t Don. The beep was for one of our neighbors’ kids. Still, it didn’t take long for Don to drive up, and without cutting the engine, he pointed to the passenger door. Almost before I shut it, he pulled away from our curb.

“In a hurry?” I joked.

He nodded, indicating a manila envelope on the seat between us. I opened the envelope and started to work through a short but dense autopsy report.

“Catlin didn’t die by accident,” he soon interrupted.

But I was concentrating and waved him off. For maybe five minutes, he drove, and I read. As I was slipping the report back in its envelope, Don pulled into my parking space in front of the theater.

“Why are we here?”

“Let’s talk about the report first.”

“There’s nothing in it that proves it wasn’t an accident. In fact, there’s nothing that even hints at that.”

“But there’s nothing that says it was.”

“Why are you pushing again?”

“Because I’m right. There are too many little things off.”

“Like what?”

He repeated what we’d been through before: Catlin’s clothes. His jewelry. His wallet and phone. Where he was found.

“But the report said nothing new,” I insisted. “Mainly that he drowned.”

“What about the bruise on his forehead?”

“He bumped it while slipping in the tub.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“That doesn’t matter. If you can’t prove anything.”

Don hesitated.

“Can you prove someone didn’t hit him?” he offered slowly – as if knowing how stupid that sounded. “And then put him in the tub?”

I sighed, watching a couple of students play Frisbee on the small lawn between the theater and dance studio. “Can you prove aliens don’t walk among us?”

Don ignored this and waited for a more reasonable reply. “Build a case,” I finally said. And he paused again.

“I can’t. At least, not yet – I don’t have one. But I was hoping you’d see something I missed.”

I hadn’t. But I needed to be polite. “Were there fingerprints?” I asked. I knew they wouldn’t turn up in an autopsy report. “Did you have the bathroom checked?”

“Yeah,” he said, as if that were routine. “But everyone in the world’s been in that house. And the downstairs bathroom – the one where he died – is the one every visitors uses.” He smiled. “And they don’t wipe down the walls a lot.”

I laughed at that.

“Did you even wonder why he used that bathroom?” Don went on. “To shower? Why didn’t he go upstairs? To the john off the bedroom he sometimes used?”

I considered. “Maybe he couldn’t handle the stairs? If he was that drunk? That could explain so much.”

“Or excuse it. But what if you ignore all that?”

“I don’t see where ignoring logical evidence is useful.”

Again, he had no response.

“In any case, why are we here?” I virtually repeated from before. “As a convenient place to talk? Or are we headed down the block?” I didn’t think the reception was over but didn’t know.

Instead, he admitted, “I’m not really sure. I got a call – forwarded from the station – and followed it up.”

“From who?”

“Abby Rodelle.”

“Catlin’s assistant?”

“Yep.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”

Abby had just been at the President’s House, though we hadn’t spoken. But it seemed we were going to. Still, I had to ask Don, “Why am I tagging along?”

He grinned. “Because you know these people, remember? And I thought she’d feel more comfortable having you around.”

He was taking Pete’s advice and handing it back. “There’s only one problem,” I casually mentioned. “I don’t really know Abby.”

“You know her well enough to call her by her first name.”

That made me laugh. “I call most women by their first names. And most guys by their last. It’s sexist – I know. But I can’t break the habit.”

He found that weird. “We live in different worlds.”

“Maybe. Where are we meeting her?”

“Her office?”

“Catlin’s?”

“I guess. She said, ‘Second floor, Waldron Hall.’”

“That would be it.”

So we got out of the car.

“One more thing,” he wanted to know.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

We were almost to the main building. It was that close to the theater and probably why Catlin often parked at the nearby President’s House – to avoid being bumped by student drivers in the common lot. For a moment, I thought how to answer Don. Again, politely.

“No,” I finally allowed. “I don’t think you’re an idiot. But I do think you’re getting close.” I grinned, possibly to take off the edge. “And ‘idiot’s another word we’re no longer allowed to use.”

He skipped past that. “It’s just that I’m looking for a start,” he admitted. “I’m sure Catlin didn’t die by accident, and if I can just find a direction... I mean, even if I dummy in the details at first... Eventually, I’ll find an answer.”

I looked at him for a moment, then turned toward the quad. It was a beautiful day. The leaves hadn’t changed color. The sky was barely clouded. And there was a breeze.

“Say you’re right,” I cautiously offered. “Say there is someone on this campus... or in the town... who’s crazy enough... or who thinks he – or she – somehow has the right to kill somebody else... And that’s an enormous stretch right there – one I’m not sure I’m willing to make. But say I give you that... And that somehow, the little things you’ve managed to find indirectly support that. You may still not be able to prove anything. Because either by luck – or by very careful planning – the damned thing’s worked. So there may be no way you can show that Catlin wasn’t so drunk – or so high and drunk – that he didn’t just forget everything that was normal and die by accident.”

Don absorbed all that, maybe parsing each of my “if’s” and “possibilities.” Then he started up the steps of Waldron Hall. “I know that,” he quietly allowed, sounding close to gloomy. “But I still hoped you’d talk me out of it.”

I stopped, and so did he. “Is that all you wanted? Some resistance? Because you could’ve said so.”

“I told you before – I wanted you to find something I hadn’t. Or something you looked at differently.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? Not finding what isn’t there?”

“Don’t get pissed off. At me or yourself.”

For a moment, he didn’t answer – just stared at the doors in front of us. Though I doubted he was seeing them.

I took the report he’d brought with him and started skimming again, though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. Basically, it said Catlin had drowned between one and six AM. That there was alcohol in his blood that was beyond the legal limit and traces of marijuana. There was also a small bruise on his forehead, halfway in the hairline above his right eye. And there were other bruises, consistent with the daily activities of a man as athletic as he’d been. Or with someone who – not long before his death – had made love on a living room couch or floor. I would have kept skimming, but Don finally took the report away and tapped on his watch.

“Sorry I haven’t helped,” I admitted. But he simply opened the door. Inside, we had to dodge students coming down the marble stairs. Only a few. Far more were playing – or tanning – in the quad behind us. But there were Saturday classes for the older Continuing Ed students.

“What do you know about Abby Rodelle?” Don asked, as we went up the steps.

“As I said – not too much. She’s relatively new to the school. But I think she worked with Catlin before.”

“Why new?”

I laughed. “He tore through a raft of other assistants – that’s what we now call secretaries. Computers knocked off most of them, but every department – or group of departments, now that Catlin’s combined as many as possible – still needs a coordinator. That’s another euphemism. Still, being president, Catlin had an assistant to himself. And – not unpredictably – it took a while to find one who could meet his... expectations.”

Don smiled at that.

“When no one from the college came through, he brought in someone from outside.”

“The others are that inbred?”

I laughed. “Let’s just say it’s a limited pool in a somewhat restricted town. I mean, who wants to be a secretary anymore?”

He seemed to be thinking. “Is she resented?”

“Nah. People working together become friends quickly enough. Though I think what she does keeps her pretty isolated. And there are a lot of people here who don’t much like each other but still work together pleasantly. They’re just not outside friends.”

Don grinned. “A happy group.”

“Yeah. Some days I don’t know why I quit the force. After New York, I hoped if I worked small enough, I could avoid politics. What was I thinking?.”

“At least, no one dies when you mess up teaching.”

“Normally.”

He stopped on the stairs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I was thinking power tools and ladders. But who knows? Maybe I believe some of your crapshoot theories.”