Maid of Murder

Mark looked up from his folded hands, startled. “No, of course not.”

“Then, it’s not your fault that she died. Don’t take responsibility simply because you have some misguided white knight fantasy.”

“Not my fault?” Mark leapt from the couch. “Of course it is my fault. She came to Martin to see me. If I hadn’t asked her there, she wouldn’t have come. If I’d left her alone. . . . If I’d met her at the fountain when I heard her voice. . . . If I—”

“Son, sounds to me like you have a lot of ifs, but not a lot of sense.”

Mark collapsed back onto the couch.

The dramatics wore out my last nerve. I bit the inside of my lip, and the taste of blood stopped me from screaming at my brother like my sister and mother had. How dare he let me think even for a minute that he killed Olivia? How dare he indulge himself in wails and lame guessing games when he was in real danger of being fired or even arrested? I thought angrily.

Still gnawing my lip, I left the room. In the kitchen, I filled a glass with water. I rinsed out my mouth and into the sink’s steel basin. Bloody water spiraled down the drain. I wondered how this could get any worse.

Chapter Twenty-One

Around eight o’clock, Lew came in to tell me he was going home. My brother would be spending the night at my parents’ house at Lew’s urging. He thought Mark shouldn’t be alone. My brother had agreed to visit the police station early the next morning; Lew would drive him. The lawyer had also agreed to pursue a lawsuit against the college; the paperwork would be on Lepcheck’s desk by tomorrow afternoon, although Mark hadn’t seemed to care about his jeopardized position at Martin.

Tuesday, I was the poster child of denial. I had the evening shift at the library. I spent the daytime feverishly cleaning the apartment and, for the first time in a long time, painting in my studio. Around ten, Mom called to tell me Mark had returned from questioning at the police station. She withheld any other details, and I didn’t ask. At the library, I passed my shift in a daze and four cups of coffee. Looking for distraction, I volunteered to help Jefferson catalog the new books and had little contact with people, either patrons or staff. It was Bobby’s day off. I gave my mind the day off thoughts of Mark and Olivia, as well.

The next day was my day off, and I ran out of stall tactics. My apartment sparkled from the ceiling corners to the bathroom tile. A completed oil painting solidified on my easel, but I couldn’t motivate myself to start a new one.

I picked up the morning paper off the front porch. The Stripling Dispatch, owned by some huge media conglomerate in Albuquerque, appeared every Wednesday and Saturday on the townspeople’s doorsteps regardless of whether they actually read it.

While the Akron paper had made a small mention of Olivia’s death in the local section, the Dispatch gave the story full coverage. Front page, above and below the fold. Never one to withstand the seduction of print, I read.

Martin professor chief suspect in Blocken murder

-Maribel Smythe, Dispatch staff writer

-Stripling. The day after the Fourth was a dark one for one local family. While other families were enjoying the extended holiday weekend, community leaders Donald and Regina Blocken received a frightening phone call a little after ten Saturday morning informing them that their daughter, Olivia, was in an ambulance enroute to the hospital. Olivia Blocken, Stripling High School graduate and recently of Newport News, Va., suffered from brain and head injuries after falling into the fountain outside the Dexler Math and Science building on Martin College’s campus. The fountain is a well-known landmark on the campus entitled “Empowerment.”

I skimmed down through the full-page article as Maribel Smythe waxed on about the details of the fountain. No wonder she couldn’t find a job at a large daily, I thought uncharitably. In the third paragraph, she wrote,

Due to an extensive brain injury, Blocken’s surgery was unsuccessful. Dr. Andrea Maddox stated, “Olivia’s impact with the fountain was severe. The sculpture cracked her skull and punctured her frontal lobe. My team and I did everything we could for her. We told the family that permanent brain damage was likely.”

Sunday, doctors determined that Blocken was indeed brain dead, and the family removed life support early that morning.

The police are investigating Blocken’s fall as the coroner suspects Blocken was a victim of foul play. Detective Richmond Mains, the lead detective on Stripling’s police force, well known for solving the mailbox baseball case last April . . .

I skimmed again.

During the interview, Regina Blocken stated, “I heard that the Hayes boy was found near my daughter. He’s been obsessed with Olivia for years.”

I paused in my reading. Mrs. Blocken’s accusation again of my brother was clear.

Mark Hayes, son of politically active Alden and Rev. Lana Hayes of Stripling, and a member of the mathematics faculty at Martin College, dated Blocken during high school. Blocken and her fiancé, Kirk Row, were in Stripling this week preparing for their wedding, to be held at St. Jude Lutheran Church on Saturday. On the Fourth, Hayes crashed the Blocken family gathering, reportedly to ask Blocken to meet him the next morning, the morning of her attack, at his office on Martin’s campus.

My arms dropped the newsprint from my sight while I conjured the courage to keep reading.

The police are investigating Hayes, but stress he is not under arrest at this time.

Dr. Samuel Lepcheck, provost at Martin College, stated in a press conference yesterday afternoon that the college is in “full cooperation with the police.” He refused to comment on the involvement of Hayes in the case. However, a college source confirmed exclusively to the Dispatch that Hayes has been suspended indefinitely from his position as assistant professor of mathematics at Martin College.

The article ended with a request that anyone with information about the case contact Mains or the Stripling Justice Center. Theodore had watched me pace as I’d read the article. He yawned enormously, allowing me to view his full range of sparkling white teeth. Templeton, persistent in his war for dominion, was MIA, probably doing undercover work. However, I didn’t have time to worry about their feline domestic dispute. All 20,000-plus Stripling residents and the entire Martin community were hungrily reading the Smythe article. The paper had committed irretrievable damage to Mark’s reputation, to my family’s reputation. Innocent or guilty, public opinion would hang my brother.

Knowing that my parents read the Dispatch religiously, I called their home. The answering machine picked up. “You have reached the home of Alden and Rev. Lana Hayes,” my mother’s preacher voice announced. “We are unable to come to the phone right now and encourage you to join us at Martin College in support of our son, Mark, who has been unjustly suspended from employment there. If you have an emergency to share with Rev. Hayes, please contact the church office. Have a blessed day and may the peace of Christ be with you.”

Oh, hell.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I circled campus with the windows down, hoping to locate my parents. Not much of a challenge. At the south end of campus near Dexler, I heard them.

“Hark, Hark, bring back Mark! Hark, Hark, bring back Mark!” A militant’s call that wrote itself, I thought. I still couldn’t see the protest from Dexler’s lot but heard it clearly. The chanting increased in volume and ferocity. “Hark!