Innocent Bystander (10 page)

Burnett squatted behind a dumpster on the north side of the strip mall. The sun had risen on a crisp, clear morning. Two hours ago he’d made the two-mile trek from Clara’s condo in the dark. Now he waited for Desmond to arrive at his customary time. A quick check of his watch indicated it was 7:27.

He’d spent the entire walk rehearsing what he would say. He’d started off debating foolish things, such as whether he should approach the teacher on his way in or out of the Starbucks. Soon he realized this was merely an attempt to avoid the real issues. How to open the conversation and, perhaps more important, how hard to press him on the subject, were his chief concerns. No doubt Desmond would again deny any involvement. Burnett knew he would need to gauge many of his professor’s nonverbal reactions.

When he recalled his journey here, he realized he hadn’t spent the
entire
time rehearsing. The outline of the person he’d seen in the park had crossed his mind, much as it had the previous day when he’d sat beneath the overpass awaiting nightfall.

He had seen someone. It must have been a visitor making his or her way to an exit. The person had no doubt become aware of the police activity and had bolted just after he came into view.

His head shook. He’d tried that explanation the other day, and had rejected it that time as well.

A black Mercedes sports coupe turned into the parking lot, and his throat went dry. He coughed several times. He swallowed hard. The three practice words he spoke came out scratchy.

Desmond parked his Mercedes on the side of the building. This was a relief since now Burnett could intercept him without exposing himself to too many people. He inched his way to the front corner of the structure as the professor drew near. Desmond strode forward, head down, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.

When he reached the corner of the building, Burnett grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the shadow of the wall. The stunned teacher snapped his head up and appeared even more stunned to be face to face with his student.

“Burnett,” Desmond said. “What in Christ’s name are you doing here?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“Must be damned important. Every policeman in the county is looking for you.”

“I need to know,” Burnett said, then paused, making every effort to choose his words with care. All his preparation vanished faster than the morning mist. He uttered the first words that came to him. “Did Henri show you a draft of his extra-credit paper?”

Desmond stared at him as if he’d spoken in Cantonese. “That’s the important question you have for me? That’s why you’re here, risking life in prison? Seems to me we already covered that.”

Burnett leaned closer.

“The answer is still no. He did not show me a draft of his paper. May I go now?”

Burnett still clutched his arm. He released it. “That’s interesting, because Henri told me he’d shown you his first draft. He was under the impression he’d get a passing grade if he improved it enough. Polished it.”

“Curious you did not mention that the other day.”

Desmond didn’t appear the least bit shaken.

“Henri just died the night before,” Burnett said. “Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Nor are you thinking clearly now. I know he did not show me what he’d written. He was too upset about the dream. He said he was going to scrap what he had done and start over with another subject. I said if he felt that strongly about it, that was fine. So you’re obviously confused or bluffing.”

He sounded so confident Burnett didn’t know what to say next.

“Besides, what does it matter now?” Desmond asked. He looked left, down the street.

Burnett suspected he was searching for a cop. Desmond faced him again.

“It matters because my best friend is dead,” Burnett said, nothing left to lose. “He’s dead because a girl, a girl whose body was planted in the trunk of my car, claimed to be from the future. She insisted his paper would cause a catastrophe. And that just happened to be exactly what his nightmare kept telling him.”

Desmond shook his head with obvious disappointment. “I don’t think you have to worry about going to jail. You tell that story and you will get off with an insanity plea.”

“Here’s where it gets even crazier,” Burnett said. “Last night on the news I heard that Henri’s computer is missing. The same one he used to write all his papers.”

“Is that right?” Desmond said, a trace of concern in his voice for the first time.

“So assuming the girl’s not really from the future, I asked myself who might be the most interested in Henri’s computer. Who might have put her up to it so they could get their hands on it? Who would be able to understand the significance of what he’d written?”

“Are you accusing me of being involved in this?”

“I’m accusing you of being behind it.”

A touch of crimson blossomed in Desmond’s cheeks. His features hardened. “If you try to frame me for what you’ve done,” Desmond said as calmly as if he were answering a question in class, “I will kill you. You hear me? I will kill you. And they will never find your body.”

Burnett couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. This was not the teacher he knew, the man who’d inspired him to choose his career path.

Desmond dug out his cell phone and tapped in three digits. “Yes, I’m outside the Starbucks on Route 1. I’ve spotted the man you’re looking for. Yes, his name is Burnett. No, I won’t try to apprehend him myself.” He clicked off the phone.

“Tell me why,” Burnett said.

“Because you’re a murderer. And a fugitive.”

“You know I didn’t kill that girl. You know I’m not capable.” He backed away.

“Twenty-four hours ago I would have believed that.”

“Please tell me why,” Burnett said without stopping.

“I’m assuming you wanted to steal your friend’s paper and turn it in as your own. So you would not fail the class.”

He froze. “I wasn’t failing the class.”

“That’s not what my records say. They indicate you had a low D average.”

With the police no doubt close, Burnett raced off between two dumpsters.

* * *

Mr. Frank wandered through the university’s main parking lot. With his left hand he shielded his eyes from the mid-morning sun. He knelt and examined a tiny, reddish-brown splotch on the pavement.
Dried blood, no question
.

This had to be where the girl’s body had been removed from Burnett’s car. Fifteen years spent between the county and local police had conditioned him to look for clues, and that training had proven indispensable long after he’d left the force.

He stood and marched across the parking lot. After he arrived at the entrance to the school, he slid a slip of paper from his pocket. A list of half-a-dozen students and faculty he wished to speak with had been scribbled on the page.

The first name was his top priority. As a close friend of Henri Laroche, and ex-boyfriend of Emma Blankenship, Joel Sandstrom would be the ideal person to interview. Mr. Sandstrom’s sociology class would end shortly.

Mr. Frank waited by the entrance. When the young man exited the building, he approached him.

“Mr. Sandstrom?” he asked politely, already knowing the answer.

“Who are you?” Sandstrom asked. “Another cop?”

The second question spiked his coffee-induced indigestion. “No. But I’m looking for some information on Michael Burnett.”

“Burnett?” Sandstrom said and followed it up with a derisive snort. “The guy’s lost it.”

“You think he killed that girl?”

“I bet he killed Henri, too.”

“Why?”

“I know he’s got a thing for her.”

“Who? Miss Blankenship?”

“I seen the way he looks at her.”

“You think they had something going on?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Henri probably found out about it, then lost the fight.”

“You tell the cops that?” Mr. Frank asked.

“Hell, yeah. Then the morning after Henri ‘jumped,’” he said, making quotation marks with his index and middle fingers, “he comes up to me with all these questions, like he’s a cop and I’m a suspect.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind seeing him caught?”

“The truth needs to come out. Henri was a good guy. A little eccentric maybe, but that’s not a crime.”

“Any idea where Burnett might be? Some people are convinced he’s still in the area, trying to prove his innocence.”

“No idea. But don’t waste your time following me. Something tells me he won’t be coming to me for help.”

“Who might he go to?”

“Besides Henri, I don’t know any of his close friends.”

“I’m not talking about close friends. The police’ll be watching them. How about someone he might seek out who the police wouldn’t think to watch.”

“Like who?”

“An instructor maybe. Or the parents of someone he knows.”

Sandstrom shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t know.”

While the young man had fueled his doubts about Burnett’s innocence, he hadn’t proven helpful. One more question, then he would move on.

“Anyone you know of who’s out of town right now? Anybody in one of your classes or one of Burnett’s?”

Sandstrom rolled his head and threw up his arms. “I can’t think of …” In an instant his expression turned thoughtful. “Wait. There might be someone.” He tapped his black and white Nike high tops on the cement. After several seconds the tapping accelerated. “There was a girl in one of my classes last semester. Cara, Clara, something like that. I remember some of the other girls talking to her, asking her if she was excited about studying in Europe somewhere this semester.”

Mr. Frank jotted down the two names on the paper he’d dug from his pocket. “Know anything about her? Last name? Where she lives?”

Sandstrom shook his head with disinterest.

“Any of her friends?”

“No.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Vincent Abruzzo displayed the .38 caliber handgun for Detectives Mayweather and Farrow. The three men strode past Burnett’s Camry, which lay on the floor of the cavernous building in a hundred pieces.

Mayweather shook his head in disbelief. A fragment of bagel, the last remnant of his breakfast, crumbled between his thumb and forefinger. “Where’d you find it?”

“A dumpster behind the university,” Abruzzo said.

Farrow jacked up an eyebrow. “Same caliber as the murder weapon?”

Abruzzo nodded and peeled a grayish-white fiber from the barrel of the firearm.

“Prints?” Farrow asked.

“Wiped clean.” Abruzzo dangled the fiber in front of the two detectives. “We found several of these fibers on the barrel.”

“What are they?” Farrow asked.

“Duct tape. We found the same fibers inside the front, driver’s side wheel-well of Mr. Burnett’s Camry.”

Farrow faced his partner. “Anymore doubts?”

Mayweather shook his head, but not in response to Farrow’s question. If Audrey had come into Henri’s apartment with a story that drove him to jump, why kill her rather than turn her in? “Pretty dumb to shoot her, then leave the murder weapon where we could find it.”

“Who said criminals are smart?” Farrow said.

Abruzzo and Farrow shared a chuckle.

Mayweather couldn’t imagine how his partner had enjoyed such a distinguished career with that attitude.

“Probably in a hurry,” Farrow said. “Got careless.” He extended his hand toward the fiber but retracted it at the last instant. “I still say she had something on Laroche. I don’t know what it was, but she had something. That’s why she was at his apartment that night. That’s why he jumped, and that’s why Burnett killed her.”

“Why the crazy story?” Mayweather asked. “And why kill her rather than turn her over to us?”

“Ask him when we find him.”

Farrow was reaching, he knew that, but for him the pieces still didn’t add up.

“First, I want to talk to Miss Blankenship again,” Farrow said. “Somewhere we can apply a bit more pressure.”

* * *

Michael Burnett peered around the corner of the eight-story brick apartment building. A dozen vehicles idled in line at the police checkpoint fifty yards down the road. Desmond’s 911 call had complicated an already perilous daylight return to Clara’s condo.

Four security cameras, two mounted near the front of the building and two on the side, rotated at a slow, measured pace. The closest camera swung in his direction. He offered the lens his backside. As the damn thing looked away, he shook his head.
Orwell was only off by a few decades.

It had been reckless to venture out in the daytime. He vowed not to make the same mistake again. The information he’d garnered was not worth the risk of capture.

He jogged to the far side of the building. With no one in sight, he crossed a patch of grass and hopped a three-foot wooden fence. A moment later he disappeared between two houses.

* * *

Mr. Frank strolled along the sidewalk with Tom, the manager of Clara’s condo complex, beside him. A cloud drifted in front of the late-morning sun, and Mr. Frank slipped off his sunglasses.

“You get a good look at him?” Mr. Frank asked.

“It was dark.”

Even at his leisurely pace, Tom struggled to keep up.

“And you just handed him the key?”

“He seemed genuine,” Tom said.

Mr. Frank had little doubt Burnett had appeared genuine. He’d come across the same way in his office.

“He knew all about Clara,” Tom said. “What class she was taking. What city she was studying in. And Clara mentioned she planned to rent the place out while she was gone.” His voice adopted a nervous vibrato, “So I was expecting someone, most likely a student, to show up.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Granted, I was expecting someone a little earlier in the semester.”

“Don’t worry.” Yet the last comment stirred Mr. Frank’s curiosity. With less than a month left in the semester, this Fred Blaine arrives and moves in. As of last night Burnett had been on the run for twenty-four hours. That nearly pegged the needle on his coincidence meter.

In his conversation with others from the university he’d been given two additional names of students currently studying abroad. It appeared likely he’d stumbled across the right place on his first stop.

The two men arrived at the door to Clara’s condo.

“Should I call the cops?” Tom asked.

“Chances are he’s a hundred miles away by now.”

Tom heaved a sigh.

“But I have to follow up every lead,” Mr. Frank said. “You understand?”

“Of course.” Tom plucked an off-white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed his forehead. “Of course.”

Mr. Frank shuffled to his right and peered in through the window. He saw no one in the living room. He leaned forward and tilted his head to the left. This new position afforded him a partial view of the kitchen. From what he could see, the condo looked immaculate, with no indication anyone was living there.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a key?” Mr. Frank asked.

“I only manage the complex. It’s not like an apartment building.”

“But Clara gave you a key?”

“Only because, as I said, she planned to rent the place while she was out of the country.”

Mr. Frank grunted.

“Anything else you need from me?” Tom asked. “I need to get back to my paying job.”

“I’m gonna hang around a little while. In case this Fred Blaine comes back.”

“You do think it’s him.”

“More to prove it’s not.”

Tom offered a tight smile before he lumbered off.

When the man disappeared, Mr. Frank squatted and studied the door locks closely. The one on the handle he could pick in his sleep. The deadbolt above posed a greater challenge. Despite the wealth of clues that awaited, if Fred Blaine and Michael Burnett proved to be the same person, he chose not to enter. His PI license had already been suspended once.

He decided to drive by the other locations. Both were less than a mile away. If they offered little or no promise, he’d return.