Corpse in the Campus (2 page)

—In order to avoid this turning into a total chaos, agent Karen Phillips is going to be in charge of writing on the blackboard and placing a copy of the most relevant evidence on the pannel. None of the rest of you should do this. All of us can and should contribute however we can, but in an orderly fashion —dictated Stevens.

Suddenly someone knocked on the door. It was the local police chief’s secretary.

—What’s the matter, Susan?—Thomas asked in a worried tone, since it was strange that his assistant should interrupt him in a private meeting.

—A student has arrived at our reception. She says she has something important to tell us. She feels that she can determine the time of the murder.

T
he young woman was waiting for them in one of the local police interrogation rooms, biting her nails nervously. When she saw the police officers come in, she twitched nervously.

—Calm down. You are in the best of hands. We are happy that you have come to us.

The local police chief had decided that only three persons should question the student: detective Gordon Stevens, who after all was in charge of the case, investigator Ron Davies and agent Karen Phillips, who was their spokesperson. Everyone seemed to agree that the student would be more comfortable with a woman, even though this all may have been an old male chauvinist attitude.

—I’m sorry. I’m a little scared. I knew Sarah. We weren’t friends but I knew her...

The young woman began to sob, and Karen held out a Kleenex.

—I understand. It’s something that’s going to be hard for all of us to assimilate. What’s your name?

—Maddie —answered the student, almost in a whisper.

—Great, Maddie. They have told us that you have come to tell us something. Anything that you may have seen or heard is very important, and for this reason I want to thank you on behalf of everyone —said Karen, who was talking to the student in a soft and agreeable voice tone.

—I have asthma, you know....

—I understand.

The detective and investigator looked at each other puzzled, but allowed their police agent to go on, since she was handling the situation masterfully. The girl was truly shocked and a witness in this kind of situation is extremely vulnerable to any kind of remark or reaction which could provoke multiple interpretations.

—On Saturday morning at two thirty, I woke up with an asthma attack. I was able to grope for my inhaler to catch my breath again. I’ve always got it on my bed stand in case of emergencies.

—That very sensible, Maddie. I’m sure you are a very responsible student.

For the first time this student broke into a slight smile. That was a good sign. She finally seemed to feel comfortable.

—That’s what I think. Thanks.

—Then —said Karen, who didn’t want to get off the track of the conversation previously started— you woke up and were able to get back your breath. It was around two thirty in the morning on Saturday...

—Yes. That’s it. I remember that clearly because I looked to see what time it was on my radio alarm clock. Whenever I have an asthma attack at night I look to see what time it is.

—And what happened afterwards?

—I stay at Hillside apartments.

—On Jennings Drive on the edge of the campus—confirmed Karen, avoiding confirmation that precisely in the trees across from the apartments Sarah Browns body had been found.

—Exactly. What happened is that I got up and opened the window to feel a little relieved.

—Did you see anything?

—No, the truth is that I didn’t see anything suspicious. Everything was calm. The air was very cold, but I needed to breathe. I didn’t see anything, but I did hear something that sounded like a firecracker. At least that is what I thought at the moment. However, later when I found out what had happened...

The student started sobbing again, even though she was trying to suppress her emotions.

—Take it easy. You found out what had happened, and what did you think?

—Well, I thought that it really must not have been a firecracker. Nobody lights firecrackers at that time and less probably on the campus. I understood that it must have been a gunshot, do you understand? I heard the gunshot that killed Sarah, and that is horrible!

After calming her down, agent Karen Phillips took the young girl to another room to fill out the paperwork and for her to sign her statement. In the meanwhile, Gordon Stevens and Ron Davies stayed on to comment on what they thought about what they had just heard.

—What do you think, Gordon?

—I don’t know what to tell you. If what this student has just told us is true, and what she heard was the gunshot that killed Sarah Brown, we can start to draw a timeline.

—Yes. I’m following you. She was missing from Thursday morning. She was not killed until early Saturday morning.

—True, Ron. And in that case, who the devil and for what reason on earth had her retained for nearly 40 hours? And what is equally important, where the hell did they keep her hidden for all of that time?

G
ordon Stevens spent all Monday morning interrogating student residents at Hillside Apartments along with police investigator Ron Davies. They were seeking to find some kind of testimony that should ratify what Maddie had said in her declaration. This operation should be managed astutely since at this point everybody could be considered potentially suspicious, and any hypothesis considered by agents could be a possible alert to the murderer or murderers.

Around noon, they had interviewed around 50 students, and none remembered anything worth mentioning. Almost all of them had been sleeping soundly at that time, and another significant portion of them had left that Friday for their weekend at their respective homes away from there.

Gordon and Davies decided that it would be good if they took a walk from where Sarah Browns dead body had been found to the place where she had been seen alive for the last time: Prime Falls apartments, which was precisely on the other side of the campus on the extreme north edge.

From Jennings Drive, they took the direct path any university student would have taken for reasons of convenience, and went up Campus Street until they got to the student complex center where there was a tower that loomed over a large courtyard that was called ‘The Belltower. On the way there, they had come across relatively deserted areas that were mainly used as parking lots.

—Heck, Ron —exclaimed Stevens, as he kicked the air—, it is practically impossible to take a body there without being seen by somebody.

—Think of the time. It’s on a peaceful campus, and surely or dead or alive, the victim was taken there in a car —objected the investigator.

Gordon looked upwards toward ‘The Belltower’ and was able to see that it was getting late for lunch, according to one of the four clocks that decorated this tower. He felt impotence, and anger, and both of these were bad news for a detective that should stay calm and that should be discovering a way toward the truth as soon as possible. He had not yet been able even to come up with a hypothesis, and that in itself made him feel more martyrised. Would he be what Sarah Brown and her family needed so that justice could be served? Once again he felt a deep pang of pain in his stomach.

—You are right. Let’s go on.

Both men kept moving along Campus Street to the end. It ended up at 19th Street and there on the right were Prime Falls apartments where the victim had lived. Stevens looked around in all directions, as if he had some kind of radar, and he were capable of detecting some piece of evidence that the person or persons guilty had left behind in the area.

—You know, Ron, something just doesn’t fit in....

Davies knew the university better and all the streets in Cedar Falls like the back of his hand due to the fact that he had patrolled all of that area for half of his life. He did believe that the pieces of this puzzle were fitting in.

—Yes. I think you are right. They weren’t able to carry her the way we came. That is, they didn’t want to do that.

—How do you know?

—Because they had better alternatives. I would have gone down 19
^th
Street to Hudson Road, and I would have gone down to University Avenue. From there in a minute you can be on Jennings Drive, and you have taken a big roundabout route, but on the other hand you have only used main thoroughfares on which you are not very conspicuous.

The detective smilingly faked a punch at his companions jaw. It was the first time he had smiled since the previous Friday.

—You’re a genius, you know that don’t you?

—My wife says so almost every night —answered Davies laughing.

The sound of Stevens Smartphone pulled both agents out of their speculations. It was Karen Phillips.

—Gordon, where are you?

—With Ron taking a walk around the campus, trying to put ourselves in the criminal or criminals shoes, those that killed Sarah —answered the detective, in a serious tone, and suddenly letting go of all that nice relaxed atmosphere they had had for an instant in which they had had a brief respite.

—Great, that way I have you both located. I need you here as soon as possible at the headquarters offices.

—Has anything happened?

—I have the coroner’s preliminary report in my hands. It is pretty revealing.

W
hen the detective and the investigator arrived at the police department, Karen was already waiting for them before a blackboard on which she had drawn two columns.

—You haven’t taken very long.

—You know very well how to call a couple of mature and attractive guys attention —said Ron, winking at her and laughing.

Gordon, who was less of a jokester sat down and started staring at the blackboard.

—What do we have, Karen?

Davies got the hint and went over to sit down next to his colleague. He was always making an effort to smooth over uncomfortable situations with a little of his benevolent sense of humor, but he knew that his innocent pranks were not always well received.

—The coroner had established Sarah’s death at between 8 and 16 hours previous to the discovery of her body. That gave us two hypotheses—said the agent, as he was writing on the board—. The first: that Maddie truly heard the gunshot that killed the victim at around 2:30 AM on Saturday. The second: that she was killed before that time and she was taken afterwards to the trees. Both possibilities fit into the time frames.

—Has the autopsy revealed any additional data? —inquired Stevens while dozens of thoughts that he was unable to manage were running through his head.

—Yes. She was shot at a very short range with a 22 caliber gun, something that could already be deduced judging from the hole in her temple. The girl was right handed, so we can totally rule out suicide.

—Are there any other signs of violence? —asked Ron who was already getting chills only imagining how much the girl must have suffered before death.

—None. Not even a small bruise. There are no signs of sexual aggression either.

Gordon thumped on the boardroom table with his knuckles; it was a habit he had had since he was a teenager, and that made him be able to concentrate even when things seemed the darkest. It was as if he were releasing part of the stress to the wood. This was how he found it easier to liberate his thoughts.

—At the time, she had to be with someone she knew well, someone she trusted and didn’t fear in the slightest.

Karen kept noting down everything that was being written down on the big plastic board with a blue marker. Somehow, however sad it might have been deep down for her, she still felt excited to be there with an investigator and a detective; involved in the solving of a homicide case. This was a bitter satisfaction, but she couldn’t avoid feeling euphoria. Now she should channel all of this bulldozing energy in her effort to do justice in Sarah Browns case.

—It is also possible that they drugged her somehow without her being aware of it, and that made her vulnerable to a stranger —suggested Davies, who had heard about similar cases through police investigation programs broadcast on television, which was the kind of program he was addicted to. He was always justifying himself to his wife saying that he needed to see these as part of his training.

Karen quickly checked a folder that had preliminary information gathered for the coroner. She just wanted to check something that she already knew ahead of time.

—Ron lets rule out that option. There are no drugs on her body; what’s more, no type of toxic substance. It’s true that there are still more tests to be done on stomach residue, but the coroner has already made this observation.

—In that case, there is no other option: everything seems to point to the fact that someone close to her killed her; that is, someone that knew her well.

—Have you finished the interrogation with her friends? —asked Gordon, who had expressed that he wished to be present if some interesting option were to come up.

—Well, we are still gathering a lot of information. We are still expecting to talk to Mark Walton, the girl’s boyfriend. We have thought that it is best to do it once we have gathered information about the kind of relationship they had: if everything was going well, jealousy, arguments, fights; that kind of things—answered the agent sure of herself.

—I think that is good strategy. And her two friends that she had agreed to go to Waterloo with. Have you been able to interview them?

—We have interviewed one of them that is Carol Weight. I was at the interview this morning. We were interested in it because she is the last person that saw the victim alive, and you already know the saying....

—The last witness is the main suspect —mumbled Davies, in a sarcastic tone, as if this were a torturing ritual that he had had to repeat all his life.

—What then? —asked Gordon impatiently.

—Nothing that would interest anyone. She has reiterated to us things that we all already knew. And fortunately or unfortunately she has a very solid alibi for all of Friday and early Saturday morning: she spent the night with her friend and her friend’s family.