Dark Mural Read online

  I read the dean’s email again. It said nothing about how she died.

  After class yesterday, when Devon tried to make a date with her, Kate said she might walk into town. Maybe she was hit by a car.

  I had to know.

  I called the sheriff. “The email says a student died but doesn’t say how. What happened?”

  “I’ll explain that when I meet with you.”

  “Was there an accident on the highway?”

  “Dr. Noonan, we like to have these conversations in person. I will see you at your office at eleven.”

  I felt a fury rise from inside me. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. That’s not a good time for me.”

  “Doctor, I’m sure you understand that law enforcement officers depend on cooperation from the citizens we’re trying to protect.”

  “Why can’t you just answer my question?”

  “If eleven o’clock doesn’t work for you, I could come by at ten.”

  He sounded bored. There was no way to make a dent in him. “All right. I’ll be at my office at ten.”

  I hung up and called Lionel. “Would you mind if we left for Columbus at eleven instead of ten? We could still have a late lunch at the museum’s cafe.”

  “That will be fine,” he said. “Are you feeling alright? You sound a bit—I’m not sure—perplexed?”

  “I just got a call from the county sheriff. He needs to speak with me. Have you seen the email from the dean of students?”

  “Yes, about the death of that student. Did you know her?”

  I had to clear my throat before I could say, “She was in my art history class.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nicole. Are you sure you feel up to our trip today?”

  “I’m not sure about anything right now, but I think it would do me good to get off campus. I need to spend some time in a city.”

  “All right, then. I’ll pick you up at eleven.”

  While doing my hair and makeup for the day, I remembered the cheerful way Kate called out, “Hey, Dr. Noonan!” She enjoyed learning and she enjoyed life. How could that have ended?

  I needed answers. I needed something to make sense. I threw on a sweater, jeans, and running shoes and headed out to meet the sheriff.

  My office on the third floor of Arts and Humanities had a window overlooking the downward slope of a wooded hillside. Sitting at my desk, I saw some pale-yellow spots among the wave of green treetops, my first glimpse of autumn color.

  I had just fired up my laptop and was trying to keep myself busy when I heard a knock. I looked up to see a man the size of tree trunk standing in my doorway. Almost everyone looks tall to me, but even allowing for that this man was mighty impressive.

  “Dr. . . . Noonan?” He got points for originality: putting the five-second stare between “Doctor” and “Noonan.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Have a seat.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Sheriff Mason Adams, Edwards County Sheriff’s Department.”

  He took the chair next to my desk, looked for a place to put his hat, and ended up resting it on his lap. Even sitting down, he looked tall.

  “How can I help you, sheriff?”

  “We’re investigating the death of Kate Conrad. The dean of students said you were one of her professors and gave me your name and phone number.”

  “Yes. Kate was in my art history class.”

  The sheriff wrote in his notebook before speaking again. “Now then, we would like to know anything you can tell us about her work as a student, her friends, activities on campus, and so forth.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Until we’ve completed our investigation, I can’t say. . . .”

  “Where was she found?”

  The sheriff raised his eyebrows, and I had a feeling he did not do that very often. His crew cut, clean shave, crisp uniform, erect posture, and rock-solid physique suggested he could have been on a Marine Corps recruiting poster twenty years ago. “All of that information will be made available through the department’s public information officer. Now then, how many students are in this class of yours?”

  Abbie had told me that in this rural county people at the college, especially professors, were treated with extra respect. I decided to test that theory. I cleared my face of expression and stared at the bridge of the sheriff’s nose, certain I could wait as long as he could.

  He glanced away and looked out at the hillside below my office window. “Dr. Noonan, I’m asking for your cooperation.”

  “Cooperation means we work together.”

  He kept his eyes on the woods outside as he considered his options. “The victim was found lying along Route 212 early this morning. A local farmer saw the body, stopped, and called 911.”

  Route 212 was the continuation of College Avenue after it left campus. “Was she close to a footpath that crosses a field?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She was about thirty yards from there. Now, I think you’d better tell me why you would ask that.”

  “Some students use that as a shortcut to walk into Blanton.”

  “I’m aware of that. Do you have reason to believe the vic . . . uh, Ms. Conrad may have used that path last night?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, I heard her tell another student she might walk into town in the evening.”

  “Who was this other student?”

  I hesitated, unsure about whether to put Devon on the sheriff’s radar, but sensed that refusing to name him would arouse greater suspicion. “His name is Devon Manus. He’s also in my art history class.”

  “Did there appear to be any reason why she would have told him this?”

  “He had offered her a ride into town along with some of their friends.”

  “So a male student, Devon Manus, offered her a ride into town last evening, and she said she would prefer to walk?”

  “That was the gist of it.”

  The sheriff read over what he had just written before asking, “Were they arguing? Did they seem angry with one another?”

  “I think that’s fair to say.”

  “How well acquainted were they?”

  “I only met them two weeks ago when classes started, but I had the impression there was a romantic relationship or maybe the beginnings of one.”

  The sheriff made notes. “Was Ms. Conrad enrolled in any of your other courses?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever hear her speak about any other students she may have been friends with?”

  I’d had it with the guessing game. “Sheriff, I don’t understand why you’re asking about everyone she knew. How will that help you find out who was driving the car?”

  “Which car is that, ma’am?”

  “The car that hit her.”

  “Why do you believe she was struck by a car?”

  “I . . . Isn’t that what happened? You said she was lying along the road. If she was walking back to campus at night . . .”

  The sheriff closed his notebook. “We haven’t determined the cause of death. Until we do, it would be best not to start rumors. That can only make our job more difficult.” He got up to leave.

  I stood up too, and that’s when it became clear I was about eye-level with the badge on his chest. “But you can tell from the condition of the body if she was hit by a car, can’t you?” I stood as straight as I could and crossed my arms over my chest, doing my best to look imposing.

  He looked down at me for a moment, and his official pose seemed to soften just a bit. “There was a massive head trauma. That appears to be the only injury, but that’s for the medical examiner to decide. Until he does, there’s no use guessing about what killed her. I would ask you, please, do not circulate that bit of information.”

  He thanked me and left.

  If a person were hit by a car and knocked down, her head would hit the pavement, but how could she not be injured anywhere else? It sounded more like someone had deliberately struck Kate. The idea that someone had killed her—that she had been murdered—made this
so much worse. I felt sick to my stomach.

  Something else about this conversation with the sheriff bothered me. When I gave him Devon’s name, he didn’t ask me to spell it, and he didn’t pause before writing it down. He must have already heard it from someone else.

  Chapter 6

  I was dressed and waiting when Lionel parked in front of my Rabbit Hutch and got out of his car, looking sharp in gray slacks, a lemon yellow knit shirt, and a blue blazer. If not for the catastrophe of Kate’s death, a trip off campus with this man would have sent my spirits soaring.

  His eyes scanned the small, wood-frame building, and he smiled as I walked out to meet him.

  “This takes me back,” he said.

  “In a good way?”

  He considered that for a moment. “I am not unhappy with what I was able to make of those years.”

  I’m sure there was great truth to what he was saying, but my brain wasn’t up to it just then.

  We left the campus on College Avenue. Where it became Route 212, I looked to the right so I could see where the path across the field joined the road. When I saw it coming, I looked to the left and caught a glimpse of crime-scene tape on the saplings that grew on the other side.

  Lionel pulled over at a wide spot covered with gravel.

  “Why did you stop?” I asked.

  “Was there something you wanted to see back there?”

  I turned and looked out the rear window of the car. “The sheriff said she was found back there, lying along the road.”

  Lionel turned the car around, drove back, and stopped near the path. We got out and walked to the spot marked by the tape.

  There were lots of footprints in the dirt alongside the road but not much else. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to see. Still I was glad I had come to this spot where she breathed her last. I took a quiet moment to remember her enthusiasm, her intelligence, and her innocence.

  When I started back to the car with Lionel, an alarm went off somewhere in the back of my mind. “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Lionel turned to me. “What is it?”

  “Why was she walking on this side of the road?”

  Lionel looked back and forth, assessing the situation. “I don’t know.”

  “It was after dark. She should have been walking on the other side of the road, so she faced the oncoming traffic.”

  He nodded. “She might still be alive if she had.”

  “No. What I mean is, she had no reason to cross to this side. If she came from the path over there, she would have turned left and started walking toward campus on that side of the road. It would have been simpler, and it would have felt safer. Why would she bother to cross to this side of the road?”

  “Maybe someone in the woods on this side called out to her, and she came over to join them.”

  “That’s possible, if it was someone she knew.”

  “Or maybe a car came along, headed toward the campus, and the driver offered her a ride.”

  “Also possible, and again it would have to be someone she recognized. That means she probably was killed by someone she knew.”

  “You think someone killed her?”

  I remembered the sheriff’s warning not to repeat the information he had given me. “I don’t know. Let’s get in the car.”

  Lionel found a driveway, turned the car around, and again drove away from campus, toward the highway. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  We were quiet during the rest of the drive into Blanton. As we drove down Main Street and crossed Brook and Maple, I found myself scanning the sidewalks to see if Huey Littleton was around. If he stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of an Asian woman in “his” town, I hated to imagine how he might react to an Asian and an African-American in a car together.

  “You’ve had a very hard week,” said Lionel.

  After a sigh I said, “Until this happened, it was a good week. I met my art history class in the chapel to study the mural, and the students responded to it really well.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. What I meant was this tragedy comes on top of having your car vandalized. Two traumatic experiences in a few days is a lot to absorb.”

  “Now that you mention it, I should have asked the sheriff about my car. But it doesn’t seem so important now. I can’t believe I was so upset about it earlier in the week.”

  “I can see why you were. You were the victim of a crime. Frankly I’m feeling a bit anxious about two violent incidents in our community in just a few days. In my three years at Fuchs, nothing like either of these has happened. I’m starting to ask ‘Why now?’ though I know there’s no answer. These things occur randomly.”

  Lionel’s question resonated deep inside me. “Now that you mention it, my car got vandalized, and my race insulted, and Kate was my student. I seem to be the common element.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that,” he said. “No, you shouldn’t think this is about you. The tagging and the race-baiting perhaps, but not the death of this student. That was probably a hit-and-run, the kind of thing everyone has worried about for years with students walking into Blanton at night.”

  But if it wasn’t an accident—if Kate was murdered—I faced the horrifying possibility that someone, who did their best to make my life miserable by spray-painting my car, also went so far as to take a student’s life just to . . . To do what? To scare me off?

  “You’re right,” I said to him. “I’m probably overreacting. Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  As we drove up to Columbus, we had the usual getting-acquainted conversation, academic edition. He told me he was from New York City, specifically Harlem. His family had lived there for four generations. He went to Howard University and did his graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris.

  I was equally forthcoming, describing myself as the daughter of a Chinese-American mother who worked as a librarian for the San Francisco Public Library, and an Irish-American father who worked in construction. After graduating from San Francisco State, I went on to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for grad school.

  Lunch at the museum cafe overlooking the sculpture garden was like breathing pure oxygen. After lunch, we walked through the permanent collection, and I made mental notes to return. I liked the way they hung the work of local artists alongside that of recognized masters to invite comparison. The collection was especially rich in the works of George Bellows, who is both a native of Columbus and widely recognized.

  After the museum, we drove to a neighborhood called the Short North, where our tour of Lionel’s favorite gourmet food shops left me giggling with delight. At his suggestion, we stopped at a neighborhood Italian restaurant for an early dinner. I was surprised at how hungry I was.

  I felt a deep satisfaction as we negotiated the freeway interchanges and got back on Route 23, headed south. We discussed paintings in the museum and scenes from favorite films, allowing comfortable silences in which our thoughts could ripen.

  After we bypassed Chillicothe, the lights from towns became fewer and farther between, and it felt like we were driving into a dark tunnel. The isolation that came with living on a rural campus weighed more heavily on me than when we had set out that morning. The horror of Kate’s death came back double.

  When Lionel stopped the car in front of my Hutch, I said, “Please come in for a glass of wine. It’s the least I can do to thank you for a wonderful afternoon and evening.”

  Chapter 7

  Lionel smiled before replying to my invitation. “That’s a lovely thought, but . . .”

  I saved him the trouble of thinking up an excuse that wouldn’t hurt my feelings. “I’m talking about a glass of wine and a little conversation while you’re not having to drive the car. Then I’ll send you on your way.”

  He nodded. “All right then.”

  In the Rabbit Hutches, when you step through the front door you’re in the living room, which is also th
e kitchen and dining room. One could call it a great room, but fifteen by fifteen is not all that great.

  Lionel glanced around and smiled. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

  What I had done was to furnish my Hutch on a budget with an eye to practicality. That meant a pair of canvas-sling beach chairs by the front window, a folding cafe table and two chairs by the back window, and two shelving units on the sidewall. Except for the floor lamp it was all outdoor furniture. With that in mind I had skipped getting a rug and instead had visited a large gardening store where I found artificial turf available in doormat-size pieces. I had stitched a few of them together and had a little green lawn in the middle of the room.

  We hung our coats on hooks by the door, and I poured two glasses of wine while Lionel stepped into the other room to use the facilities.

  When he returned and sat in the beach chair opposite me, I asked, “How do you do it?”

  “Specifically?”

  “Live here. You left New York, where you were a subway ride away from anything you could want. In San Francisco, I can take a bus or a streetcar to museums, festivals, theater, and baseball games, not to mention restaurants and every kind of store. Here, it’s a long drive to Columbus, and when you get there it feels like you’re just visiting. I thought going there today would help, but it only makes me feel more isolated.”

  Lionel tilted his head to one side and rested his eyes on my face. “I know what you mean. My first semester was like that. Think of it this way: When Thoreau moved to his one-room cabin at Walden Pond to live deliberately, he stayed two years; then he moved back to town.”

  I was going to have to get used to Lionel thinking on a plane I only glimpsed from time to time. When the further implication of what he said hit me, I asked, “So you’re moving on?”

  “I’m remaining aware of other opportunities. Meanwhile, my time of living deliberately has stretched to three years. I’m probably better for it, but I don’t think of it as a permanent situation.”

  “I don’t either, but the job market in art history is not encouraging.”