Cause to Kill

Who are you? she asked.

The walls were practically bare except for one picture of George, proudly displaying a medal he’d won for a race. On his desk, Avery found keys and a wallet. At least ten keys were on the chain. What do you need all these for? she wondered.

No password locked his computer. A check of his recent Internet activity proved useless: a bunch of porn videos, relationship advice, and workout locations around campus. Two social networking sites were open. He had thirty-two friends on one of them. Mr. Popularity, she sarcastically thought.

Hidden in his closet was a box full of pictures: George with a group of men in the woods all wearing Army Reserve T-shirts; George between his parents with Harvard in the background; and Cindy Jenkins, hundreds of photos of Cindy Jenkins: Cindy at the mall, Cindy in Harvard Yard, Cindy at a party. Every photo appeared to have been taken in secret, from afar, or sometimes from right beside her, without her knowledge.

“Jesus.”

Anger welled up inside of her, not at the find or what George might have done if left unchecked, but at Harvard, the dean, and a life of secrecy that had nearly killed her partner.

A few minutes searching on her phone and Avery dialed a number.

“I want to speak to Dean Isley, right now,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” the assistant replied, “the dean is in a meeting.”

“I don’t care if he’s on the fucking moon,” Avery snapped. “This is Avery Black, Boston PD, Homicide. I’m standing in the room of one of your students: George Fine. Does Isley know about George? He must, because your ‘normal’ Harvard senior just stabbed a cop. Get him on the phone right now!”

“Hold, please.”

Two minutes later, the dean came on.

“Hello, Detective Black,” he said, “sorry about the wait. I’ve just been briefed on your activities this morning.”

“I just want to understand something,” Avery said. “My supervisor, Dylan Connelly, called you last night for a background check on George Fine and Winston Graves. You said, and I quote my partner here, the one that was stabbed, ‘They’re both good boys from good families.’ Do you want to revise that statement?”

The dean cleared his throat.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said.

“Really? Because I think I’m being crystal clear. Let me say it in another way. We’ve got one downed cop. We’ve got one dead girl. Now we have a prime suspect who yousaid wasn’t a problem. I’m giving you one last opportunity to revise your statement before I seriously consider pressing charges. I just discovered George Fine was an army reserve. That might have been relevant information, don’t you think? He’s also a trained martial artist. Again, relevant. Good boy from good family just doesn’t cut it. What else do you know about him?”

“Officer Black, our relationship to our students is – ”

“Tell me now or I hang up and you’re on your own.”

“Ms. Black, I can’t just – ”

“Five…four…at one I hang up…”

“We have – ”

“You have a dead girl and a possible murderer on your hands…three…two…”

“All right!” he yelled, flustered.

His voice went low.

“Now mind you,” he said, “no one here actually believes that one of our students could possibly be responsible for – ”

“He stabbed a cop. My partner. Tell me what you know.”

“He was on disciplinary probation his first two years at the college,” the dean admitted. “He’d followed a young girl here from Scarsdale: Tammy Smith. There were…problems. No charges were filed. We didn’t want the press. He was under strict orders to stay two hundred yards away from her and have weekly meetings with our school psychologist. I was under the impression his sessions were going well. He’s been a model student ever since.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s all. The files are here if you care to look through them.”

‘What about Winston Graves?”

“Graves?” The dean nearly laughed, “He’s one of our top seniors, a standout in every way. I hold him and his family in the highest regard.”

“No secrets?” Avery pushed.

“Not that I’m aware.”

“That means maybe,” Avery said. “I’ll check on my own. And the next time a cop calls you for information, you might want to be as forthcoming as possible. ‘Cop stabbed in Harvard dorm’ probably isn’t a great headline for school admissions.”

“Wait a minute, I thought we – ”

Avery hung up.

The next call was to Jones, a skinny, humorous Jamaican who complained about everything, even when he was having the time of his life.

“Jones here,” he said.

“This is Black. Where are you on the street surveillance?”

Jones was cramped in a dark office space surrounded by two technicians in blue. He leaned forward on his keypad and cocked his eyes like he was about to jump off a roof.

“You crazy, Black,” he complained. “You know that, right? How much longer I gotta do this maddening shit? It’s like a guessing game out here. I have to guess where he might have gone, then I gotta access those cameras and punch in the right times and see what happens. Hours and hours I stare at nothing. Only once I get lucky.”

“You got lucky?”

“Yeah,” he said and watched the screen. “I’m in traffic control right now with Stan and his girlfriend Frank. These guys are great. They helping me out all day. So here’s what I do. I accessed the cameras on the street lights on Auburn, at Hawthorn. You know what I find? I find your minivan. He go straight up Auburn, past Hawthorn. I check on Auburn further west, just past Aberdeen, and I see the minivan again. He’s heading west.”

“Where did he go after that?”

“Are you fuckin’ serious!” Jones cried. “What I look like? I ain’t no satellite imagery system over here! That took me like, five hours!”

“Keep on it,” Avery said and hung up.

The minivan was headed west, she thought. Out of the city. If George is our guy, he definitely had a house somewhere.

Her next call was to Thompson, longtime partner of Jones, a huge, brutish man who looked almost albino from his coloring, with blond hair, full lips, and the facial features of a woman. Thompson was kicked back in an office with a bunch of state troopers, eating donuts and telling a story about when he caught Jones sleeping and painted a bunny face on him.

“Thompson,” he answered in a deep voice.