The Hydrogen Murder (25 page)

"Miller," she said, and I remembered a few hours
too late that Eric's father had referred to Janice's father as "old man
Miller."

"Janice Miller Bensen. J. M. B.," she said.
"You scientists are too smart for your own good. I always told Eric
that." She seemed to be biting her lower lip as she talked and I couldn't
imagine how I understood her words. "You all thought I was stupid, just a
secretary, lucky to be married to an important physicist, that I'd be nothing
without him."

Janice was standing on my narrow runner, about a third of
the way past the threshold of the one and only door to my apartment that led
outside.

"No one thinks secretaries are stupid, Janice. And we
all think you've done really well at your company."

Although I believed what I said about secretaries, at that
moment it didn't matter. I didn't even remember what company Janice worked for.
I was grasping for any words that might calm her down.

"For years all I heard was hydrogen this, hydrogen
that," she said. "It was going to make us rich. It was going to get
me a family. Then he thinks first he's going to be high and mighty honest and
chuck everything and then he's going to walk out on me."

Words I'd learned in my negotiating seminars and
communications classes ran through my head, and I actually used one of the
classic phrases on the double-murderer in my living room.

"I understand how you'd be upset, Janice," I said,
showing more loyalty to sensitivity training than it deserved. "Let me
help you work this out."

I came to my senses, however, and let my survival instincts
take over when I saw her hand reach into her duffel bag. I took a step closer
to the edge of the runner, reached down quickly and pulled as hard as I could.
Luck was on my side as I caught her balanced on one foot, walking toward me.
She fell backward toward my door, her head hitting the open door, the gun
falling out of her hand.

I made a split second decision not to try to get past her,
out my door. Instead I ran back to my bedroom, grabbing my cordless phone on
the way. As I'd guessed, she was far from knocked out by her fall and I could
hear her already moving in my direction. I slammed my bedroom door and locked
it behind me. I knew the flimsy lock on the knob was relatively useless, but I
hoped it would at least slow her down and buy me a little time. I had no idea
what good time would do me, trapped in my attic, the only place left to go. I
thought of my warnings to dozens of leading ladies in movie thrillers.

"Don't go up there," I'd say to the celluloid
women, gritting my teeth, but they all did, from Olivia De Havilland to Julia
Roberts.

On the way to the hallway I passed my exercise bicycle and
wished I'd used it more often. Not only did Janice have a twenty-five-year age
advantage, she was fit in a way that I never was even at her age. Too late now,
I thought, resolving to join the senior softball league at Di Salvo park if I
lived to have the chance again.

Besides age and extra pounds, the other things working
against me were my wide-legged paisley pants and bare feet. I'd kicked off my
shoes while I was relaxing in my rocker. The ladder to the attic was still in
place from Matt's last trip to the attic. Ignoring creaking knees and the
stiffness in my hips, I climbed up in record time, my personal best with no
shoes.

When I got through the trap door, I tried to pull the ladder
up but Janice had already broken through my bedroom door and reached the bottom
rung. Her weight kept me from pulling the ladder through the opening.

I was on my knees at the edge of the trap door, keeping to
the side, where I hoped a bullet wouldn't find me. With my left hand, which has
never been very dexterous, I was pushing 911 on my phone pad, and with my right
I was struggling with the top of the ladder, trying to unhook it from the
grooves in the attic floor. I mentally drew the force diagram with an arrow to
represent Janice's weight on the third or fourth rung and another arrow to
represent the direction I was pushing. I realized I'd need two hands to unhook
the ladder completely, but I didn't want to give up my phone work. Lucky for
me, Janice had only one hand available also, since she wasn't about to give up
her gun.

We volleyed back and forth, grunting as if on a tennis
court—just as I'd get one hook off, she'd get the other on. We were both
breathing heavily and making sounds that could have passed for screams, but
nothing I could distinguish, even from my own mouth. I'd given up trying to
talk her out of killing me. Although Janice seemed to have abandoned her
speeches about how unfair Eric and his colleagues had been to her, I heard one
or two phrases from her.

"It's over," she said once, and I couldn't tell if
she meant my life or hers or both.

I heard a shot ring out and shrank back from the opening. On
an imaginary piece of paper in my mind, I plotted the trajectory of a bullet
and got no comfort from the calculation. The next one could be dead on. At the
same time I was looking around for something I could use as a weapon,
remembering the baseball bat and swords I'd seen a few nights before. My deep
breathing brought the sharp smell of the attic to my nostrils and I wondered if
I would die among musty relics of my life.

The high-stakes interaction with Janice was straining my
physical limits. I'd always been able to juggle several things at once in my
mind. One spring while I was doing full-time research on crystals, I also wrote
a short biography of the nineteenth century British mathematician Mary
Somerville for a children's book publisher, devised and tested a program of
science experiments for first-grade teachers, and taught Italian conversation
at a community adult school.

When it came to physical maneuvers, however, I couldn't
successfully stir soup with one hand and hold a book with the other. I knew
because the one time I'd tried it, I'd burned a large pot of lentil soup and
dropped my math book, ruining several pages.

After what seemed like hours, I heard an operator's voice in
my ear. I focused on my mouth and said every syllable of "Galigani's
Mortuary attic" as clearly and loudly as I could. I tossed the phone to
the side and grabbed the object nearest to my knees—a rubber sword.
Great, I thought, feeling like a cartoon character. It was all I had nearby,
however, and I slammed it down on Janice's fingers, still conscious of staying
out of gunshot range. She grabbed the prop from me easily and threw it down to
the hallway floor. Another gun shot frightened me into moving back from the
edge, but I knew that if I left my post and let Janice's head and arm reach the
opening, she'd have a straight shot at me.

The trap door was hinged to the floor on one side, and with
the luxury of two hands free I managed to close it over Janice's hands and hold
it down. The door was made of thin plywood, however, and she pushed it up
easily, but dropped her gun in the process. I heard it clank to the floor and
knew I had a few seconds grace.

I thought of all the practice I'd had with last minute
deadlines and tried to come up with a plan. I knew I didn't have the strength
to keep the door down with my hands and I wasn't about to risk sitting on it
and taking a bullet in my seat. I stayed at the edge, sweeping my eyes across
the attic for something heavy enough to keep the trap door closed.

A shaft of light from the tiny attic window bounced off the
edge of something shiny less than a foot away and caught my attention for an
instant. My box cutter. I paused for what must have been less time than
hydrogen was a metal in Eric's target chamber. I picked up the knife and
removed the safety shield.

Janice was back near the top of the ladder, presumably with
her gun. I twisted the knife in my hand, feeling the ribbed handle and the
short blade. I swallowed hard at what I might have to do to save my life. I
wished I knew more about guns, like how many bullets Janice's model held or
whether guns would work after an eight-foot drop to a hard wood floor. I
thought of tricking her into firing wildly, using up the bullets that were
left, but I didn't have a clue how to do that.

I'd never before deliberately hurt a person physically. I
was willing to risk a lot rather than use my box cutter on anything but sealing
tape, but my brain was succumbing to my will to live. I took a deep breath and
blocked out the knowledge that the person below me was another human being.

I came down as hard as I could with my knife, catching
Janice's hands and arms. I closed my eyes and struck again and again, aware that
I was meeting flesh every time. Janice screamed and so did I, but I didn't stop
until I heard her fall. It was at the same time that I heard the police sirens.

~~~~

Without the benefit of an anatomy class, I'd managed to
slash Janice's wrists and arms and the side of her neck, enough for her to lose
her balance on the ladder.

The bloody image that met my eyes when I looked down at her
was more than I could bear. I fell back on the attic floor and leaned against
the wall, fast becoming the most popular resting place in my apartment. Below
me I heard a cacophony of sounds I'd heard only on television or in
movies—police walkie-talkies, loud static, and hurried phrases about
stretchers and IVs.

Blue, white, and red lights from the emergency vehicles in
Galigani's driveway flashed across the dark attic, creating a patriotic image
strangely like the summer's fireworks display. I stared down at my body and saw
that my own hands and arms were bloody. I became aware of a sharp pain in my
left shoulder and realized that one of Janice's bullets had hit me.

Before I even heard their voices, I felt the presence of
Rose, Matt, and a paramedic near me in the attic. I was shivering and babbling,
asking if Janice was alive or dead, not sure which answer I wanted to hear.

"She's going to be fine," Rose said, putting a
blanket around me. "And so are you. He says the bullet isn't even in
you."

Rose's voice had the comforting sound of a mother comforting
a child who's just fallen from a swing. And whoever the "he" was that
she referred to—Matt or the paramedic or God—I felt a wave of
relief and a surge of confidence that I was still alive.

Rose was sitting behind me, trying to enfold my wide body
within her narrow frame. Matt was in front of me, holding my cold, clammy fingers
between his own warm hands. The paramedic had torn away the sleeve of my tunic
top, strapped something to my arm and dabbed a foul-smelling chemical in the
vicinity of my shoulder.

"We have some surface wounds," he said in a
soothing bedside voice. "Try to relax. That's it. Just one more
spot."

Apparently, in my debut as an action figure I'd also slashed
my own arm a few inches above my elbow.

A feeling of safety came over me as I focused on the arms of
my friend around my waist, a friend who'd come to spray me with perfume. I saw
the face of Matt in front of me, tender and caring, and felt the skillful hands
of the paramedic at my side.

 
I heard the
bells from Saint Anthony's Church. The Angelus. Six o'clock.

"I made my deadline," I said, and listened with
gratitude to the laughter of my attic guests.

CHAPTER
24

Matt and I sat in the Galigani living room three weeks after
Janice's arraignment. Rose and Frank had invited us to dinner to sample one of
Frank's specialties, pasta primavera.

Matt had been called out on another murder case just before
he picked me up, but he refused to divulge a word about it. I didn't pursue the
topic, hoping he would reward me by telling me more about the final resolution
of the Bensen and Leder cases.

I knew that Janice had signed a confession in the hospital.
I understood her frustration with Eric, even if I didn't accept her murderous
resolution. After sticking with him through the long graduate school ordeal,
Janice was about to be served divorce papers and for all she knew, watch Eric
hook up with another woman. She knew enough about the dilemma he faced
regarding the falsified data to try to make it look as though a colleague
killed him.

Although Matt tried to avoid it, we'd pressured him into
tying up the loose ends of the case for us.

"Janice owned two guns," Matt said. "One had
been her father's when he was alive, and wasn't re-registered to her. Her own
licensed gun, which she'd never used, was a perfect cover."

"Why did she kill Doctor Leder?" Rose asked.

"He'd figured out the significance of the last three
characters just as Gloria did. Janice said she'd seen Eric hit the keys in his
last moment alive, but she figured that even if he wrote her name in plain
English she'd taken care of it by deleting what was on the screen. Janice's
plan might have worked if Gloria hadn't suggested retrieving that file."

I covered my embarrassment by faking a slight bow from the
waist as I sat in one of Rose's antique chairs, opposite Matt.

"I'm sure Leder was anxious to clear his team of
suspicion of murder at least," I said. "He probably confronted her
without thinking of anything but salvaging what he could of their
reputations."