riddles. “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “Tommy Tompkins International. He’s the ex—TV evangelist who used to own the property the APOA now occupies, isn’t he? I heard he went to prison on some kind of tax evasion charge.”
“Right, but what most people don’t know is that the person who brought Tommy to the attention the IRS was a woman, one of his seminary students who claimed Tommy had broken into her room in the middle of the night and raped her. No charges were ever filed. TTI bought her off for a lot money, and that was what raised all the red flags. Randy revivalists are so prevalent these days that it’s become a cliche. These guys paid off so much so fast, that the IRS auditor figured they must hiding something. Turns out there was a whole lot more to it than just cooking the books, but I didn’t figure some of it out until tonight.”
Joanna waited without comment while Carol Strong drew a long breath. “Did you ever wonder about the mirrored tiles on that one whole side of your room?”
“Not particularly,” Joanna answered. “As part of a decorating scheme, I thought they were odd—a little cold.”
“They’re odd, all right,” Carol said. “What I discovered tonight is that some of them are two-way mirrors. Mirrors on your side, windows on the other. Someone could see in, but you couldn’t see out. If you go into that little private courtyard between Dave Thompson’s apartment and the dormitory, you’ll see what looks like the door to a storage shed of some kind built into the back of the building. It’s not a storage shed at all. There’s a long, narrow passageway back there that runs the whole length of the building and dead-ends on the far side . It’s only about twenty inches wide, so it’s not recommended for claustrophobics. It’s not big on comfort, and the ventilation stinks. But from the number of cigarette butts we found in there, I’d say Dave Thompson or someone else spent a good deal of his off-hours time in there.”
The sudden realization sickened Joanna. Of course, the cigarette smoke. Every time she had turned on the exhaust fan in her bathroom, there had been that sudden burst of smoke in the air, and now she knew why. Dave Thompson had been right there, almost in the same room, watching her.
“That son of a bitch!” Joanna murmured. “That dirty, low-down son of a bitch.”
“And that’s evidently how he gained entry to Leann Jessup’s room as well. There’s a hidden, half-sized access door into the closet of each of the rooms on the bottom floor. The crack at the top of the door is concealed right under the shelf. The only way to see it would be if you were down on your hands and knees on the floor.
“An alternate light source examination revealed dirty footprints leading from Leann’s closet to the bathroom. It looks as though he came in and surprised her while she was relaxing in the hot tub. She evidently put up quite a fight. He may have hit her over the head with her hair dryer. We found pieces of shattered hair dryer all over the bathroom including in the tub. My theory is that he knocked her senseless. He tied her up while she was out cold, and carried her out to his pickup. Do you know his truck?”
“No.”
“It’s a white Toyota SR Five, one of those small four-by-fours with a canopy. He tossed her into the back of it, probably planning on taking her elsewhere to finish the job. He left the campus with her in the back and ended up turning off Olive into Grand. My guess is he didn’t see the northbound car coming around the curve at the underpass south of Olive. He turned right on a red light and pulled out in front of a car driven by a bunch of high-school-aged kids coming home from a party.”
“In the meantime, Leann must have come to. I believe she was trying to get out of the vehicle while it was stopped for the light. She somehow managed to open the canopy, but when the Toyota accelerated, the sudden movement pitched her out of the truck. With her hands tied behind her, there was nothing to break her fall. She landed on her head and somersaulted at least twice. Her skin looks like it was run through a cheese grater.”
“That’s appalling!” Joanna murmured.
CaroI nodded and continued. “She came to rest directly in the front of that carload of kids. The other driver’s only seventeen. He left skid marks all over the road, but through some miracle, he managed to avoid hitting her. If he had clobbered her traveling at forty-five or so, she’d have been dead for sure. The kids stopped long enough for some of them to pile out of the backseat. Three of them stayed behind to do
