Ruth saw he wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. She couldn’t really blame him. Violent death was always a shock if one knew the victim.
Gordon covered his eyes with his hands. “This is very difficult to accept. A student, one of my students, murdered. Things like that simply don’t happen at Stanislaus. Oh dear. What will this do to our school, to our funding? You’re not thinking that another student murdered her, are you? We breed musicians here, not murderers.” He lowered his head, trying to get ahold of himself. When he looked up again, he was still remarkably pale, but his voice was steady. “Erin studied with Gloria Brichoux Stanford, an older woman, immensely talented, flamboyant, with a razor tongue. She’s given a dozen performances at Carnegie Hall over the years, made many recordings, played with a number of orchestras around the world. You and Christie knew her in New York, Dix.”
Dix explained. “Christie and Gloria’s daughter went to school at Carnegie Mellon at the same time. Gloria accepted a position here at Stanislaus about six months after we left New York, which surprised and pleased us. Her daughter also moved here with her. So Erin studied closely with her, Gordon?”
“Since the beginning of the fall term in September, Erin studied with Gloria two hours a day, at a minimum. I’d say no one on the faculty knows Erin better than Gloria. She may be able to tell you, well
…I don’t know, but wouldn’t she know about Erin’s boyfriends, people she didn’t like, if she’s been worried about something, things like that?” His voice fell off and he stood silent, leaning against his desk, staring down at his lovely Italian loafers. “Erin was so very young, twenty-one, twenty-two? Have you spoken to her parents, Dix?”
“Yes, I did. It was very difficult. They couldn’t think of anyone who disliked their daughter, much less enough to kill her. No recent boyfriend problems they were aware of. They’ll be coming here to take her back home to Iowa. Helen gave us Erin’s address. Do you know if she had roommates? Lived alone?”
Gordon shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“No matter. Thank you, Gordon, for your help. I’m very sorry about this. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to do now. Especially when this gets out to the media.”
“Oh yes, the media will see to it everyone at Stanislaus is crucified over this. I’ve got to take steps to protect my students from them. Well, we’ll deal with it, no choice.” He was no longer Gordon, he was Dr. Holcombe again. “Please keep me informed if you learn anything. I will call Erin’s parents myself. We
’ll set up a memorial here for her.”
Helen was silent when they came out. There were tears in her eyes. “This simply doesn’t seem possible. Erin, dead. I’m so very sorry. She was a fine young woman, really nice at least around me. I was at a couple of faculty parties where she was present. She didn’t drink much, I remember, seemed rather shy, but friendly if anyone made the effort. This is tragic, Sheriff, it really is.”
Ruth lightly patted her arm. “Thanks for your help, Helen.”
Helen said, “Erin didn’t have any roommates. She lived alone.” She handed Dix a card. They watched her walk into Dr. Holcombe’s office and speak quietly to him for a moment as they left. The air outside felt heavy, and cold.
“What’s on the card Helen gave you?” Savich asked Dix when they’d climbed back into the Range Rover.
“Gloria Brichoux Stanford’s cell phone number and address. We’ll visit her tomorrow. Let’s take thirty minutes now to stop by Erin Bushnell’s apartment, see if we can find anything.”
“Some torn-up love letters, signed, might be nice,” Ruth said.
“I’ll settle for some nice clear fingerprints,” Dix said. A couple minutes later he turned onto Upper Canyon Road, only three blocks from campus. It was an old neighborhood lined with brightly painted wooden houses, some of them Victorians. Ancient snow-laden oak trees filled the deep yards.
“She lives on the second floor. There it is,” Dix said.
There was no answer when Dix rang the bell. He knocked, waited, and knocked again. He yelled out his name. Still no answer. He tried the doorknob, and it opened.
He said over his shoulder, “This trust in your fellow man is good for us. Let’s go.”
It was a large house, an apartment on each of three floors. There was no number on the second-floor apartment. He turned the knob. The door opened. “I can’t believe she didn’t lock her door,” Ruth said. “
The front door’s one thing, but this is asking for trouble of a bad kind.”
Sherlock said, “Maybe the killer took her here and he was the one who left the door unlocked.”
They walked into a large, high-ceilinged living room with cushioned window seats lining a turret to the right, facing the street. The living room connected to a dining alcove and a kitchen on the other side of a long serving counter.
Even though no lights were on, it was bright and made brighter by colorful throw pillows and pastel walls covered with huge posters, mostly of Brad Pitt.
“Okay,” Dix said. “Let’s split up and check it out quickly. My deputies will be here to check for fingerprints when they’re done at the crime scene.”
They all knew what they were doing, and in ten minutes they were together again in the living room.
“She needed to go food shopping,” Ruth said. “There was a packet of carrots and a carton of nonfat milk in the refrigerator. I didn’t want to smell it. Only junk in the junk drawer, no memos, no notes.”
The living room, the single bedroom, and the bathroom looked almost unlived in. But not Erin Bushnell’s music room. It was shuttered and small, but they could tell this was the room where the young woman spent all her time. There were piles of neatly arranged musical scores for violin and orchestra. On a chair sat an open violin case with her violin tucked snugly inside it. Sherlock eased it out of its case, held it in her open hands. She said, “It was made by Hart and Sons in London in the nineteenth century. You rarely see these. It’s exquisite.”
Sherlock glanced through the music, didn’t see anything that didn’t belong. There was no address book, no diary, no stray pieces of paper with notes or names for appointments. She did have a small laptop and Dix took it with him. “I’ll have our resident Weenie check it out.” At Ruth’s raised eyebrow, he smiled. “His name is Allen. Everyone calls him Weenie. He actually likes it.”
Ruth closed Erin’s apartment door behind them. “The only thing really personal about the place was her music and her violin.”
“I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for why she died,” Dix said. As he pulled away from the old house, he added, “Okay, we’ll have to knock off for the night. The boys will be wondering where I’m hiding you guys. I hate to have them at home alone for too long after school. They’re beyond excited that you FBI agents will be at the house again.”
“Yep, I guess they’re the Big Dogs now at school,” Ruth said. “Bet they promised all their friends they’d dig secrets out of us tonight.”
Dix honked his horn to alert a car turning in front of him. He said to Ruth, “Be careful Brewster doesn’t pee on you again.”
Ruth grinned. “I know to be careful now. I couldn’t go out to dinner with any of my admirers if he did. And I may be wearing the last of Rob’s clothes.”
Dix’s cell rang as he was negotiating the Range Rover through a three-foot pile of snow blocking the middle of Stumptree Lane. Someone had put a ball of snow on top of it with a carrot for a nose. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Rob and Rafer were involved in that stunt.” He answered, “Yeah? Sheriff Noble here.”
He listened for a moment, pulled the Range Rover to the side of the road, and said, “Tell me you’re kidding. I really need you to.” He listened awhile longer, rang off, and slid the phone back in his jacket pocket. He said, “That was the medical examiner, Dr. Himple. He says Erin Bushnell had a drug in her system that he identified with his spectroscopy unit. He thinks it’s a chemical called BZ, and it may have incapacitated her. Then the murderer slid a thin blade or a needle into her chest.” Dix drew a deep breath. “But it’s what he did to her after he killed her—damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of.”