Such A Nice Girl (Part twelve of twelve)


Adult Content Warning
The following work of fiction may contain language, violence or themes considered unsuitable for young readers. Parental discretion is advised. (If this story was a film, it would likely pull a PG-13 rating.)
Such A Nice Girl
A Trick Molloy Mystery
©2008 Michael A. Stackpole
Part Twelve
You’re not surprised to see me, are you, doc?
Larson smiled, resting both hands on his walking stick. Students moved around us in a stream. “Mr. Molloy. I had expected to see you again. Would like to come to my office?”
I glanced up at the English Department’s gray façade, then shook my head. “I’ll pass.” I wanted him in the open, in a crowd. All these young minds would keep him overwhelmed and distracted, pretty much as I’d been dealing with the jac-offs the night before.
“It will make our conversation less constrained.”
“Oh, I’m not likely to be constrained at all, Doc. In fact, I like being in a crowd with you. Gives you more to listen in on.”
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Do you know, or are you guessing?”
I thought for a half-second and could feel him pushing at me. It was the itch, but hotter now, clawing. I’d drunk my breakfast, so I was able to push him back. I didn’t push hard, though. Didn’t mind if he came in, just didn’t want him in deep.
“That how you do it, doc? You ask a question you know the answer to, then you pick up on their thought pattern? That becomes the key to unlocking their minds?”
He raised an eyebrow. “A surprisingly adroit deduction, Molloy.”
“I got more. Walk with me.” I pointed off across the green toward where his creative writing center was being built. “You learned to do that in grad school.”
“Working as a TA. You try to make a student understand something complex, and you start by asking questions he already knows the answer to. You lead him to the conclusions you want drawn.” The man walked with me, but kept a distance between us. “I began to notice I could tell what they were going to say, and then I was able to go deeper.”
“Depending on how well you knew them?”
“Depending on the depth of connection.”
He said it in a way that made me immediately think of sex, which is what he wanted. He pushed again. I gave a little ground, then held him off. “You’re not going to get to know me that well, Doc.”
“You’ve nothing I want.”
“Been reading my journal, doc?”
His head came up. “Touché.”
I laughed. “I’ve done my reading. You stole things from Sarah’s mind, used them in one of your stories. You were able to read her thoughts on the matter. It wasn’t threatening. She wouldn’t have turned you in.”
“You, on the other hand, Molloy?”
“Oh, I could ruin you, doctor. Probably will. Bug in the right ear, some computer analysis of your stories and her journals, you’re done. You didn’t realize Sarah was keeping journals, did you?”
He hesitated, and I read it on his face. “You didn’t know she kept multiple journals. Why not, doc? That should have been easy to pick up.”
He composed himself. “I found her, one night after we had lain together, writing in a journal with three Xs on the cover. I thought she meant it as triple-X, and she was recording details of our tryst. It wasn’t until later I learned that was a number.”
“By later you mean after you killed her, right?”
“I didn’t know of the other journals because Sarah was a remarkable young lady. She had a great facility for compartmentalization. While she was easy to read, navigating inside her head wasn’t simple.”
I nodded. “I heard about your teaching methods. You take students through ‘creativity exercises’—guided visualizations and the like. They let the ideas flow and you just harvest them.”
Larson’s nostrils flared. “It’s far more complex than that. I work with them, evaluate their skills…”
“And then you rape their minds.”
He stared at me, pushing hard. I gave a bit more, then gave him a full dose of what I thought of him. The image had him all bloated and covered in boils that oozed. His nose grew long, he hunched over and his flaccid pecker dragged on the ground—not because it was long, but because his legs were stubby and infantile.
He recoiled.
I smiled. “I still don’t get why you killed her. Did she know she was carrying your child?”
“I sensed a second life in her. Sarah’s abilities would have let her know, too, soon. I asked her what she thought about having children, and how she would balance motherhood and a career. She said she wouldn’t. Children were more important than her writing. She’d quit and just raise them, just like her mother had.”
“She’d rob you of your muse.”
Larson laughed and spread his arms wide. “Take a look where we are, Molloy. We are in the midst of muses.”
“No sale, doc. Sarah was one of a kind. It wasn’t that she’d someday win a Nobel, it was that she was the way you could win your Nobel.” I scratched my throat. “She was determined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. You decide to convince her otherwise, so you invite her to a tryst, slip her a mickey. You found date-rape drugs made your victims more suggestible? You managed to use it and magick to erase memories from others? Nice. You start suggesting, she reads your thoughts on the matter and tries to resist. She was going to expose you. You had no choice but to make it look like suicide.”
“Nice fairy-tale, Molloy, but she was taking anti-depressants.”
“Placebo.”
“So she was unmedicated for her depression. Learned she was pregnant and that I would not marry her, so she killed herself. I’m so sorry. I never imagined.”
I nodded. “Works, save that you have journal thirty.”
“She mailed it to me before she killed herself. In fact, she had the motel clerk do it for her. He’ll remember that, and he won’t remember seeing me there.” Larson paused at the curb. “Any evidence you have will only convict me of the poor judgment of sleeping with a student. Other than that, Molloy, you have nothing.”
It was actually worse. As an active telepath, he could read the reaction of any jury. He’d pick out where they had doubts, and his counsel would be able to exploit them. I could have caught him with a razor in hand, covered in her blood, and he’d never be convicted.
Tired of waiting, I started across the street through a tight break in traffic. “You’re right, doc, all I’ve got is circumstantial. So I have one choice left.”
I gave him the bullet. Gave it to him hard. Big push, then a pull as he shoved back. Got him in and hooked. I imagined myself whirling through a roundhouse kick that would take his head clean off. I even began the turn.
That’s how I got to watch.
Larson, in fine form, dropped back into a defensive stance. His walking stick came up and started spinning. He’d block the kick and then beat the crap out of me.
He would have, too, except that Coast College really does have horrible drivers. His defensive backstep put him smack dab in front of a speeding Impala. A bloody halo marked where his head hit the hood. He didn’t fly as far as the snuff had last night, but he flew. His body twisted up. Impact pulverized his left leg so it wrapped around the right like ivy. He bounced a couple times, then rolled to a stop.
He stared at me. I don’t know if he was alive. He wasn’t trying to get into my head anymore, so maybe not.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I crouched over him, peered into those dulling eyes, and smiled. They’ll never remember you. I’ll see to it. You killed Lexie. I’ll kill your memory. It’s as close to even as things will get.
Cate confirmed that Larson was the father of Sarah’s child. Cops found Thirty among his effects. The affair had been torrid. Partners are easy to please when you really know what they want. Nicole helped box everything up and we shipped it off to Sarah’s mother.
Coast College originally announced plans to name the creative writing center after Larson, being as how he’d died in its shadow. Problem for Larson was that he’d been too overtly political in dealing with colleagues. A whispering campaign began about how he’d carried on affairs with undergrads, how one had committed suicide because she was pregnant. I’d have thought that would be enough, but when indignation stalled, I unleashed the big guns.
That being evidence of plagiarism.
Didn’t matter to folks that Larson was taking advantage of students and that one had killed herself. But, let him steal someone else’s work and all hell broke loose. Donors started to back off their pledges and former students started crawling out of the woodwork with “me, too” stories that kicked Coast College’s reputation square in the ‘nads.
In the end the Center and program went ahead, but Kenneth Larson’s contributions to the whole project got tossed into the ” and too many other people to mention them individually” category. Another ten years and the campus newssite would resurrect the story of Larson and create a scandal. Gotta love student muckrakers just for the chaos.
A week after Larson’s funeral, Cate met me in the Irish pub a block down from the Morgue. As she sat down at the bar, I slid an envelope to her. “The copy of the journal and a report on everything. Just so we both know how the records should have read.”
She nodded, then pointed to my empty glass and indicated two more. “We okay, you and me, on this?”
I gave her a sidelong glance, then nodded. “You had to suspect me.”
“I didn’t want to.”
I smiled and turned to face her. “Here’s the deal, Cate. You’re the kind of friend I need. You’ll tell me what I need to be told. You have in the past.”
“I’ll do so in the future.”
“You didn’t have to say that so fast.”
“But I’ll be saying it so often, Trick, I wanted to get the first one out of the way quick.”
She raised her glass. “In wine, truth; in friends, trust.”
I drank, letting it burn all the way down. I ordered two more, then looked at her. “So, ask me again.”
“I know you weren’t the child’s father.”
“I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Did you want to?”
I thought for a moment, then patted the envelope. “Not Lexie, nope. After what I’ve learned, maybe Sarah.”
Cate grinned, watching the bartender pour. “Maybe even figure out how to love her?”
“Love’s strictly for suckers.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Talia’s hand slipped onto my shoulder. “Let’s hope, Mr. Molloy, you’re open to being convinced otherwise.”




Photo by: Michael Pearo

