Ten minutes later, Connie’s friend called. Nothing. And an hour after that with a report on the overall faculty. Also nothing.
“Let’s put it together, Bailey,” Connie said to me, seeing my hangdog expression. “The vandalism was in the Chemistry Department. The graffito was sprayed on the wall outside the faculty suite. It was a warning of some kind. If not, why didn’t Penn or whoever did it just spray some person’s name on the wall? Or something right over the person’s desk, instead of in neutral territory in the hall? Penn apparently didn’t find what he was after. He spilled everybody’s papers on the floor, ransacked all the desks, and sprayed ‘hog’ on the wall because he wanted the person to know he was after him.”
I told you she’s good. She reminds me of Colleen Dewhurst.
I put in my two cents. “O.K. But you’ve checked the faculty out. Why was Penn searching the chemistry offices? Because back in Houston he’d found out who his sister’s PCP dealer was and he trailed him here to Riverton College. He had to know the dealer had something to do with the Chemistry Department here — otherwise why would he single it out? Why would he bring along a spray can and write ‘hog’ on the wall?”
Connie nodded. “Penn knew he’d flush his dealer out with that word. It was unlikely that more than one person would know what it meant.”
“But if not a chemistry professor, who?” I asked.
Connie picked up one of my doughnuts and took a bite.
“Maybe a T.A.,” she said.
“What’s a T.A.?”
“A teaching assistant. They’re usually graduate students, working on a Master’s or a Doctorate. They help grade papers, assist in the classroom, even substitute teach once in a while.”
“Do they get an office?”
“No, but they have access to the office of the professor they work for. They file stuff, use his or her office to grade exams, and like that.”
“Can you get your friend to run a check on the T.A.’s in chemistry?” I asked her.
She was already dialing.
There’s a whole list of things you aren’t supposed to be able to get from a student’s record, but Connie Oates got what I needed.
The T.A.’s name was Albert Moorehead. He was from Houston, he had done his undergraduate work at Southeastern Texas State and had completed some work towards his Master’s Degree in chemistry when he left Texas about nine months ago — five months after Joann Penn’s death and very shortly after Jack Penn had returned home from the Navy to begin his search for Joann’s dealer. Moorehead showed up at Riverton College not long after he decamped from Houston, transferred his credits, paid the out-of-state tuition, and got a job as a T. A. for one of the chemistry professors.
Connie squeezed Moorehead’s Riverton address from her personnel friend and I called Jerry Quinn with that and the rest of what I had learned from the stunning Connie Oates and the man whose number I now dialed.
Rasmussen called a couple of hours before deadline. “Quinn told me to call you, Bailey. Moorehead bugged out a few days ago. His apartment is empty and the professor he worked for says he hasn’t seen him since last Tuesday. That would be the day before Penn got iced. Are you gettin’ all this down?”
“I’m gettin’ it, I’m gettin’ it,” I said.
“Quinn said to tell you the make we ran on Moorehead turned up some interesting stuff, including a couple of busts for dealing down on the border.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Nothing. Except Quinn said to tell you we got an all-points out on Moorehead. He probably won’t be hard to find.”
“Tell Quinn I said thanks.” I was about to hang up.
“Hey, Bailey, let me ask you something. Why did Quinn ask me to call you on this stuff? Do you think he’s on to me and you?”
“Forget it, Rasmussen,” I said comfortingly. “It’s just a coincidence.”
Willis ran my story on Sunday morning under the nameplate and a six-column head. It made no attempt to convince the reader that the murder of Jack Penn was solved. It just presented the facts and a little speculation from the mouths of people such as Lieutenant Quinn of Homicide.
I called Charlie Craddock from home on Sunday and we compared notes again. I read him my story and he read me his and we fawned all over one another.
He said that after he put his paper to bed at midnight and went home he couldn’t get to sleep. He kept his wife up half the night telling her about the case. “I’ll tell you somethin’, Bailey, I haven’t done that in more years than I can remember. What’d you do after deadline?”
I told him I took Connie Oates out to a big dinner. I explained about Connie and said, “I’ll tell you something, Charlie, the more I look at her the more I see Colleen Dewhurst.”
“Colleen Who-hurts?” he asked.
“Forget it, old friend,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about her and a bunch of other lies when I come down to buy you a drink. And we’ll also lift a glass in memory of Jack Penn — he tried to do good.”
Death Rattle
by Stephen Wasylyk
The mountains had a way of exacting a price for ignorance and carelessness, just as the city did...
At dawn, Drake was up and driving, dressed in heavy boots and lightweight slacks and jacket, leaving the motel and heading toward the creek beside which Gruber camped on his annual fishing trip.
He crossed a low stone bridge and followed the road as it rose toward the crest of the prehistoric wrinkle of land that formed the side of a small valley. At the top he maneuvered the car off the road and deep into the woods, unlocked the trunk, and pulled the rifle from under the lip of the rear deck where it was held by heavy magnets sewn into the case and where it was out of sight when the trunk was opened. The rifle had started out as a standard 30.06 but Drake had replaced the stock with one custom-made for himself, incorporating more drop than usual and specially worked hand grips. Dropping three shells into his jacket pocket, he started through the trees along a narrow hiking trail.
He hadn’t gone twenty feet when he stopped, startled by the dry rattle.
Coiled in the grey dappled morning shadows, a large timber rattler contested his passage, its coloring blending with the dust and dead leaves.
Drake’s mouth twisted. A tall man with long blond hair and a square, bony face, he had few extreme dislikes and feared little, but rattlesnakes fell into both categories. Looking at the coiled snake brought to mind the feel of the dry scales and the powerful muscles beneath. His palms grew wet. Still sluggish from the cool night, the snake regarded Drake with malevolent eyes, its tongue flickering.
“Seems like they come in cycles and the woods are full of them this summer,” the kid in the motel had said. “You gotta be careful.”
Drake stepped back and set the rifle aside. He searched until he found a flat heavy rock and, from high over his head, smashed it down on the coiled rattler, driving the triangular head deep into the dust with a feeling of satisfaction.
The body writhed for long minutes before it was still.
Drake picked up the rifle and continued, his cold eyes searching the ground before him.
The trees grew thin, then opened to a wild meadow that was the result of a long-ago fire from which only a few trees had recovered. Below, to his left, curls of mist rose from a small creek. Drake left the ridge, angling downward, working his way around patches of dense brush.
He pushed his way down the hillside until the little valley opened before him and Gruber’s camper and tent were in sight. There was no movement there. Drake looked for a place of concealment, not only from the creek but from anyone hiking along the crest of the hill. The woods were awake now, birds singing and unseen small animals making rustling sounds in the brush.