The Perfect Murder, page 18
“But Kemper didn’t end up coming,” Jessie reconfirmed. “Did Tobias appear upset about that?”
“No. he seemed satisfied, like he’d done what was asked of him, regardless of how it turned out.”
“Okay, Jessie continued. “You said there were two students. Who was the other one?”
“Her name is Amanda Bratton,” Justin said. “She was a lot harder. That’s why the professor paid me double.”
“$20,000?” Ryan exclaimed.
“Right,” Justin answered. “It was the same deal as before—half up front and half if she got in.”
“Did she?” Jessie asked.
“Yes, but like I said, it wasn’t easy. She was a mediocre student, C+ average, coasted along on her looks, I think. Other than cheerleading, she didn’t have many extra-curricular activities. I had to work with her to fudge the application, and then massage it once it came in. Even then, it was close.”
“Why did he want her to get in so badly?” Jessie asked, afraid she already knew the answer.
“He never said,” Justin admitted, “but I doubt it was out of the kindness of his heart. When I was helping her with her application, she told me how she visited some late night show when he was one of the guests. He invited her and her folks backstage. They got to talking and he suggested he might be able to help get her in here. Amanda’s pretty dense but I got the sense that her folks agreed to some kind of payment in return.”
“Who else in the admissions office knows about this?” Ryan asked.
“No one,” Justin said emphatically. “After what happened with the previous scandal, everyone around here is on high alert. Plus, no one liked Tobias because he was always informally ‘recommending’ potential students despite a prohibition on that. That’s why he only went through me. He knew I needed the money and that I’d keep quiet.”
“Well, that’s about to end, Justin,” Jessie told him. “I need Amanda’s admission application. Can you send it to me?”
Justin nodded vigorously, clearly excited for any scenario that allowed him to return to his life.
“If you let me go now, I could probably send it to you before the meeting starts.”
“Do that,” Jessie told him. “But this isn’t the end of our communication. If we call, you pick up right away. No avoiding us. No backtracking. No refusing to answer our questions. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” Justin said, nodding so hard that his blond hair started flopping wildly.
“Then get back in there, Justin,” she instructed. “We’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
As Justin scurried off, Ryan muttered, “I don’t think he understands that he just confessed to a felony.”
“Nope,” Jessie agreed. “I almost feel bad for him.”
“Let’s wait to see if this pans out before shedding any tears,” Ryan countered. “Also, this Amanda Bratton doesn’t sound like Tobias’s type. He didn’t seem to go for the conventionally pretty cheerleader sort.”
“True,” Jessie conceded. “But maybe he made an exception in her case. If he did, he might have gotten a surprise.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“Amanda Bratton doesn’t strike me as the shrinking violet type. What if he tried to make a move and she decided to fight back?”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Hannah had to stop walking and lean against the wall.
She wasn’t used to this. She so infrequently felt strong emotions that when one hit her this hard, it was almost overwhelming. She knew what it was—a flight of nervous butterflies in her stomach. But since it was so rare for her, it was hard to know what to do with the feeling.
At least she understood why it was happening. She was about to tell the administrative director of the Seasons Wellness Center that Merry had been murdered and that she knew who did it. She had no idea how it would go. Once she came clean, the situation would be out of her control. But that was the only way to get justice for Merry. So she would have to push through this unfamiliar feeling and hope for the best.
She walked into his outer office and waited for his secretary to look up. It took a while, so long that Hannah started to wonder if the woman, whose nameplate said “Gina, executive assistant,” was keeping her waiting on purpose. Finally Gina looked up and offered a fake smile. She had lipstick on her teeth and wore too much eye makeup. Even though she was clearly in her thirties, she’d made herself look a decade older.
“How can I help you, dear?” she asked insincerely.
“I need to speak to Director Goodman,” Hannah said simply.
“Certainly,” Gina replied, “let’s see when we can set up an appointment for you. I know he’s fully booked through the middle of next week.”
“No, I need to speak to him right now.”
Gina offered her a pitying look.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, dear,” she told her. “Director Goodman has a packed schedule. No one, not even one of our valued residents, can just come and meet with him right away.”
“Tell him it’s about Meredith Bartlett,” Hannah said loudly. “Trust me—he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Gina’s eyes widened briefly before she regained control. Hannah watched her trying to calculate the consequences of sending her away versus letting her in. It didn’t take long to make her choice.
“Hold on a moment,” she said, picking up her phone and pushing a button. After Goodman picked up, she whispered quietly. “I have a resident at my desk who insists on speaking with you about the Bartlett girl.”
Goodman said something Hannah couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know,” Gina replied, then looked up at Hannah.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Hannah Dorsey.”
Gina repeated that into the phone, waited as Goodman said something, and then hung up.
“He’ll see you,” she said, standing up and escorting Hannah to the door. She opened it but didn’t enter herself. Once Hannah was inside, Gina closed the door without a word. Goodman was at his desk with his head down, scribbling something.
“Just give me one second, Hannah,” he said without looking up. “I’m just finishing up.”
“Okay,” she said, doing her best not to let the butterflies fly up into her throat. She awkwardly shoved her hands deep in her pockets, squeezing a ball of tissues in one of them and fiddling with the phone in the other.
While she waited, she looked around his office, hoping it might give her a better sense of the person she was about to speak with. The walls were covered with various diplomas and certificates of commendation, too many to read. She noticed one from the Malibu Chamber of Commerce, another from the local sheriff’s office, and a third from some nearby conservancy.
She wasn’t sure if the man truly deserved all the honors, or if he was just fishing for stuff to put on his wall. The Seasons at Sea speech yesterday morning certainly suggested that he liked being in the limelight, but she was counting on there being more beneath the man’s shiny surface. Otherwise coming here was likely a waste of time.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said, putting down his pen, taking off his glasses, and looking up. His gray hair wasn’t as tidy as at yesterday’s speech and Hannah noted that while he wore a different tie and shirt, he had on the same suit jacket as yesterday. “Gina said you wanted to talk about Meredith Bartlett, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Goodman is fine,” he told her, motioning for her to sit on the loveseat against the wall by the door. “Please, go ahead. What about Meredith?”
This is it—all the sneaking around, all the questions, just to present my suspicions to this guy, without any idea if it will do a bit of good.
Goodman stared at her, pretending to be patient. She shook off her apprehensions. If she was going to make a compelling case to Goodman, she had to sound compelling.
“I have important information about her death,” she said, the words tumbling out more quickly than she liked. “We need to get the authorities to re-open the case.”
Goodman looked at her quizzically and folded his hands on his desk, like a one-room schoolteacher preparing to deal with an unruly student.
“Why?” he asked. “My understanding is that she committed suicide. Do you have reason to doubt that?”
“I do, sir…Mr. Goodman. But I worry that no one will take me seriously.”
Goodman sighed softly, apparently deciding how best to handle such a touchy situation.
“Why wouldn’t you be taken seriously?” he asked.
“Look at me, Mr. Goodman,” she replied. “I’m an underage resident in a psychiatric facility. That doesn’t scream credibility.”
“That shouldn’t be disqualifying, Hannah,” he said kindly. “Have you told someone about your concerns and had them dismissed?”
“No. I haven’t told anyone else yet,” she answered. “I was worried that if I went through—what do you call it—the chain of command, that what I had to say would never get to someone in a position to actually do something. That’s why I came straight to you.”
“Well,” he said, his face now grave, “normally I don’t approve of skipping steps in the process, but considering the seriousness of the matter, I’ll make an exception. This is a judgment-free environment. So tell me what has you so troubled and I promise that I’ll do my best to help.”
“Okay,” she said, closing her eyes tight. There was no more delaying. This was the moment of truth. “I think someone murdered Merry and made it look like a suicide.”
She opened her eyes to find Goodman staring back at her, stunned. He tried to speak, then stopped himself, and tried again.
“I see why you hesitated in sharing this,” he said quietly. “That’s hard to accept. I say that not because I doubt your sincerity, but because the police investigated this. I saw their report. It was quite definitive. Now that doesn’t mean you’re wrong, of course. But I need to know why you feel differently than the authorities, the people who do this for a living.”
“I know it sounds crazy, Mr. Goodman,” Hannah said plaintively, “but I think the person who did this was afraid that Merry was about to reveal something about them and had to shut her up before she could.”
Goodman leaned in closer, seemingly having trouble wrapping his head around what she was saying.
“What do you think she was going to reveal?” he asked.
Hannah opened her mouth, and then closed it, shaking her head.
“I can’t say it,” she whispered.
“Hannah,” he said slightly sternly. “You’ve bravely come here. I know that can’t have been easy for you. But you chose to come to me with this for a reason. Now I need you to put your trust in me. If you have some information that could change the nature of this case, you need to share that. I’ll help get it to the people who need to have it and let them evaluate it fairly. But you can’t come all this way and then, for lack of a better phrase, chicken out. Tell me.”
Hannah nodded and looked at the floor as she answered.
“I think she was going to reveal that this person was sexually abusing her.”
The room was silent for a long time. Hannah looked up to see Mr. Goodman staring blankly past her, his jaw open. Finally he swallowed hard and spoke.
“If this is true, then that means we have a potential predator on our campus,” he said, his voice becoming more commanding with each new word. “Of course, we’ll alert the authorities. But before we do that, I need to call security in for the rest of this conversation. I know it might not be easy for you to repeat this, but we need to have our people on high alert until we can get to the bottom of it. Hold on a moment.”
He got up from behind his desk, hurried over to the door, and opened it wide.
“Gina,” he said urgently but quietly, “I need you to go directly to the security office and ask Chief Gluck to come here immediately. Don’t use the phone or speak to any intermediaries. Only talk to him. Tell him I have a situation that requires his assistance. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Goodman,” Hannah heard Gina say. “I’ll have him here as fast as I can.”
“Thank you,” he replied, “we’ll be here waiting.”
He closed the door and sighed heavily. This time, instead of returning to his desk, he took the chair opposite Hannah’s loveseat. After wavering briefly, he appeared to have rediscovered his sense of authority.
“It’s all going to be okay, Hannah,” he said, putting his hands together as if praying for it to be so. “We’ll have you tell Chief Gluck everything you told me. You can get into all the details at whatever pace you’re comfortable with. But for now, I think you should at least tell me what kind of evidence you have. It’s not that I doubt you, but the chief is going to ask the same question, so you should get used to talking about it.”
“That makes sense,” Hannah said. “Okay. I was in Merry’s room earlier today—I know I shouldn’t have gone in without permission—but I was looking for anything that could support my suspicions. And I found something—a single word carved into her headboard. It was faint, like she’d used her fingernails to scratch over the same area repeatedly.”
“What was the word?”
Hannah gulped hard before answering. This was her one real piece of evidence. She needed it to be as impactful for him as it was for her.
“GRAND,” she said loud and clear.
Goodman looked perplexed.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he said, “maybe I’m missing something but I don’t get the significance of the word.”
“It was a clue,” she explained. “Merry couldn’t say who did this to her out loud so she wrote it down, or more accurately, scratched it down. Maybe she was hoping it would be discovered so that someone could rescue her. Maybe she was building up the courage to say the word out loud. Either way, the word points to the person who killed her, the one person who uses that word all the time.”
Goodman’s confused look slowly melted away, replaced by something she couldn’t quite identify. But at this moment, Hannah wasn’t worried about that. She took a deep breath and went for it.
“Have you figured it out yet, Mr. Goodman?” she asked, her voice rising in anger, “Because you should have. After all, you’re the only person around here who says that word on a regular basis. In fact, I remember you using it a couple of times just yesterday in your Seasons at Sea speech. Maybe you’ve gotten so used to it that you don’t even realize that you’re saying it. But Merry did. Clearly, it was burned in her mind. Maybe scratching it into her headboard was her way of trying to exorcise it—and you—from her nightmares.”
Goodman stood up, looking aghast.
“Are you actually accusing me of harming one of our residents? And all based on a single word scratched into a bed?” he demanded. “Why would you do such a thing? I think I should call Dr. Lemmon in here right now. Maybe she can talk some sense into you.”
Hannah felt a flicker of panic. This wasn’t the reaction she had anticipated. Had she guessed that wrong? Was it possible that Merry had just scratched the word into the headboard out of boredom? Could the resident in the room prior to her have done it? Her mind was swimming with uncertainty.
Goodman turned toward his desk, but instead of walking over to the phone, he stopped. With his back to her, he lifted his right hand up to his face and did something that she couldn’t see.
Hannah stood up, her whole body tense, waiting to see what he would do next. When he turned around, there were deep, bloody scratches down the right side of his face. He had used his own nails to rake away the flesh. His mouth was twisted into a grotesque grimace.
She wanted to scream and opened her lips, but discovered that her voice wouldn’t cooperate.
Her whole body had frozen up.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Hannah gulped hard, willing herself to speak.
“What the…?” she started to whisper.
“Why would you do this to me?’ he demanded, his voice echoing all around her.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked, finding her voice again as she took a side step toward the door. “Why would you scratch your own face like that?”
“I didn’t do this, Hannah,” he said, eerily composed. “You did. You came at me in a crazed frenzy, screaming that you had to get out of this place. I tried to calm you down but you wouldn’t stop. I had to defend myself so I pushed you away. That’s when you slammed your head on my desk. You died right there. I was horrified.”
Hannah didn’t need to hear anything else. She spun around and grabbed the office door, turning the knob, even though she was fairly certain it was locked. Sure enough, it was. She flashed back to Goodman telling Gina to get security and closing the door as he sighed heavily. He must have locked it then, using the sigh to cover the sound of the locking door, already knowing what he would do next.
She was about to smash the frosted glass of the door when he grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her backward. She stumbled, trying to keep her balance. With one hand on her wrist, he used the other to grab the back of her head. He cupped it like a melon and squeezed hard as he forced her over to his desk. Then he grasped a chunk of her hair and jerked her head back, before clutching the back of her skull again.
She could feel him shifting his weight so he could slam her forehead down onto the edge of his desk, when there was loud, sudden rap on his door. Goodman froze. Hannah didn’t. She twisted around and reached up, clawing at the unmarked half of his face, ripping down as hard as she could.
Goodman screamed and let go. Hannah, off balance, dove away from him, in the direction of the door, landing on the floor a few feet from the locked doorknob.
“Help,” Goodman yelled. “She’s attacking me.”
She saw a body moving quickly toward the frosted glass door and smash into it, sending it flying open. The glass shattered. Standing in the doorway was Brian, the tall, skinny, glasses-wearing psychiatric aide.
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