At nine o’clock, Patty Storm, among others, left a message. She called me Dr Albo and reminded me of the class she had taken ‘a couple of years ago.’
She was working on a story and wondered if I could help her. Ten minutes later, she left another message. She had received information about Johnna Masterson’s disappearance. For the sake of fairness, she wanted my response before she went on again.
I was curious about her information, so much so that I thought about calling her, but I resisted the temptation.
Twenty minutes later we found out what she had.
Johnna Masterson’s disappearance now led all stories.
The intro music was different, urgent, not the typical stuff. This was breaking news. I checked the other two local stations. The story was upgraded there as well.
I went back to Patty Storm. She had the look of a reporter who knows she is on to something good, and I quickly realized I was the something.
‘Sources inside the sheriff’s department are investigating allegations of an affair between Professor David Albo and an unidentified freshman co-ed, who, along with Johnna Masterson, filed charges of sexual harassment against Dr Albo earlier this fall…’
‘This is not good,’ Molly offered quietly.
‘…suspended from his teaching duties as the investigation continues…’
‘Where did this woman get all this, David?’
‘…the last person to talk to Johnna Masterson on the night she disappeared…’
‘Gail told Dalton we aren’t going to play ball. This is the payback.’
‘…refusal to take a polygraph…’
They posted the university’s public relations photo of me. I had always liked the shot. It was about four years out of date, a portrait of a thirty-three-year-old man projecting confidence, training, scholarship, and just a touch of sex appeal. On television, I came off looking like an overbearing English prof with a hard-on.
‘…what some witnesses are calling a brawl at a local funeral home…’
Molly stared open mouthed at the screen. ‘Nice picture, huh?’ I asked.
‘…following Professor Albo’s arrest on felony assault charges stemming from an incident at The Glass Slipper, a local establishment featuring topless dancing…’
I snapped Patty Storm off mid-sentence.
‘I wanted to watch the rest of it.’
‘This stuff is important if you make it important,’ I said.
‘This stuff pushes prosecutors to try cases, David.
You can’t just ignore it!’
‘Watch me.’
Lucy came down the stairs, her face red, her eyes wet. Shaking her head, Lucy looked at me as if I had just violated her.
‘You saw it?’ I asked.
‘You liar!’
Molly and I both called out to her, but she headed for the back door and kept going.
As soon as she had driven off I looked at Molly.
‘How about another bourbon on the rocks?’
‘How about we forget the rocks?’
I got the good stuff out and our best crystal and poured us both three fingers’ worth. ‘To catastrophe!’
I said cheerfully. It was how we used to celebrate the purchase of broken down houses we thought we could resurrect.
Molly smiled at me suddenly as if we hadn’t a worry in the world. ‘To catastrophe!’
Chapter 25
Saturday morning the phone rang incessantly.
At midday, a TV van pulled up into our driveway. Molly took her shotgun out and sent them off in a hurry.
In the evening Lucy, having not spoken to me all day, drove off again. Molly asked where she was going but didn’t really get an answer. Alone for the evening, we talked about what happened after an arrest. That came down to money, I said. Like everything else, there were different prices for different people. A trial defence could be purchased at anything from bargain basement rates to a multimillion dollar media show. A public defender would get me the needle. Twenty thousand could probably keep me off death row. Fifty thousand would probably buy a retrial. A couple hundred thousand might get an acquittal on the second trial. Of course, if Buddy Elder decided to plant some evidence, which I thought he would do, there were only a handful of lawyers in the country who could get me off.
We could find the money, Molly said.
Of course we could, I answered, but that would stop all of our income. With my suspension continuing into the next semester, almost certainly now without pay, everything we had would go to the lawyers.
Doc and Olga could help.
I said it wasn’t their problem. It wasn’t Molly’s either.
Molly swore at this. This was our problem, and we were going to fight the bastards every step of the way!
‘Move to Florida,’ I said. ‘Take everything. I’ll get a public defender to advise me and defend myself.’
‘We fight this together, David.’
With a coy smile I asked her, ‘How do you know I’m innocent, Molly?’
‘Because this isn’t about your dick.’
‘If Buddy Elder set this up,’ I countered, ‘wasn’t it possible he had Denise keep a bogus diary?’
‘Denise isn’t on Buddy’s team anymore, David.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
The Sunday morning paper featured Johnna Masterson with her beauty pageant smile on the front page, the headlines proclaiming, ‘Search Continues for Missing Grad Student.’
My crimes and misdemeanours were listed mid-column. Unlike the article about Walt Beery, they didn’t say a thing about my book.
The sheriff’s spokesperson, Lt. Gibbons of sex crimes, insisted there were no suspects. In fact, investigators were still trying to determine if a crime had been committed. Certain discrepancies in my statement to them, however, were troubling.
I hadn’t even finished the story before the phone began to ring. The first two were death threats. One involved certain choice parts of my anatomy being fed to me. The other promised a handgun of a certain calibre rammed into a certain orifice before being discharged. The sincerity of cold rage from perfect strangers astonished me almost as much as their sexually deviant bloodlust.
It seemed to me only a matter of time before the sheriff came with a warrant for my arrest. When I heard Gail Etheridge on the answering machine I didn’t bother picking up. Gail’s message was supportive. This was what they did when they couldn’t make an arrest.
I just had to hang tough.
I decided to take Ahab around the property, though it was a cold, miserable day. I half-expected to find a grave out there somewhere, something easy to notice if you just went back and looked. What would I have done if I found a corpse? I thought about it without deciding. The right thing would be to call the sheriff.
The smart thing would be to dig it up and drop it on Buddy’s doorstep.
In fact, there was no grave. Nothing at all. I rode for nearly two hours before I took Ahab back to the barn.
Lucy was waiting for me. ‘We have to talk,’ she said.
I got the currycomb and brush from a shelf and began working over Ahab’s flanks. ‘I’m listening.’
‘You have to change your story, Dave.’
I laughed at this. ‘Why is that?’ I walked to the other side of the horse, glancing over Ahab’s back.
‘Buddy wasn’t with Johnna Masterson Tuesday night.’ I looked up, frowning at her. ‘He was with me,’ she said.
I studied my stepdaughter’s face. She was struggling with her confession. ‘You were home Tuesday night, Lucy.’
‘He called me.’ She blinked as she tried to meet my gaze. ‘He wanted to see me.’
‘Is Buddy the guy you’re interested in?’
Lucy rolled her eyes, an expression designed to convey adolescent opinion of adult intelligence. ‘It’s a little more than interest, Dave.’
I probably should have been angry. Giving the matter any thought at all, I should have realized the kind of trouble I was in, but at that moment all I felt was fear for Lucy.