Free Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson Page A

Okay. Thank you. Now,
when did you see it last?”
    “ Let me think. This
morning, before I left home. I checked the time I was supposed to
meet Dr. Ryan. Then I put it in my outside jacket
pocket.”
    “ Right or
left?”
    “ Right.”
    “ And you haven’t looked at
it since?”
    “ No, there was no reason
to. I’d saved the whole morning to talk to Dr. Ryan, and nothing
else came up that I had to note down.”
    “ Not the lunch
appointment?”
    “ I could remember that
without writing it down.” Charlie’s glasses had migrated down his
nose again. He pushed them into place, wishing Hines would show
some reaction, some emotion, any emotion, instead of regarding him
with that impassive gaze. Porter too was unmoving, leaning relaxed
but attentive against the doorjamb.
    “ Well, now, Professor
Fielding, we found that book on the lower trail. Can you tell us
how it got there?”
    Charlie’s mouth was
bone-dry. “I don’t know. All I can think is that it fell out of my
pocket.”
    “ You were on the lower
trail?”
    “ No. Well, yes, when we
all went to see… to see Tal. I told you before.”
    “ Yes, we have to keep
going over things. Now we want to know exactly what
happened.”
    “ Well, Maggie—Dr. Ryan—ran
out of Plato’s. Then in a minute she came back in with the student,
um…”
    “ Doris
Keating.”
    “ Yes. Dr. Ryan said there
had been an accident and to help Dorrie call the police, and she
ran out again. So we got Dorrie to the phone, and she called you
people and you told her to wait at Plato’s. But Bart thought we
might be able to help, so he and I left Nora Peterson with Dorrie,
and we ran down to the lower trail.”
    “ Which way? Across College
Avenue from Plato’s?”
    “ That’s right. The steps
that come up next to the College Avenue bridge. We ran down those
steps and followed the trail down toward the creek. We crossed that
little stone footbridge and went on—”
    “ You turned right or left
after you crossed the stone bridge?”
    “ We turned right. We could
see Maggie from the little bridge.”
    “ Okay. So you’re on the
lower trail, right next to the creek now.”
    “ Yes. We
ran along a little ways. We could see there was… something on the
trail.” Charlie licked his parched lips. “But Maggie was waving at
us, yelling to us to stop. So we did. She said to stay where we
were and keep anyone from coming down the trail until the police
arrived. We asked her what happened and she said Tal had been
killed. I couldn’t believe it.” The shattering horror of her words,
his own instant defense against them: No, not true, not possible. Charlie
shuddered.
    “ That’s a natural
reaction, Professor Fielding.” But there was no special glimmer of
sympathy from either policeman. “Now, we’ll get back to Dr. Ryan in
a minute. Right now I want you to focus on where you were on the
lower trail when you stopped.”
    “ I was… well, it’s hard to
remember. Maybe I could show you.”
    “ Okay. Just for now, give
me a rough idea if you can. Try to visualize yourself standing
there, where Dr. Ryan told you to stop.”
    “ Okay.”
    “ Now, there are three
bridges over the gorge in the area, three different heights. The
lowest one is the little stone bridge you crossed.”
    “ Yes.”
    “ Next one up, to the north
of the little stone bridge, is the metal footbridge you cross if
you use the upper trail.”
    “ Yes. That’s the one I
crossed on the way to Plato’s.”
    “ The highest one is the
vehicular bridge, the College Avenue bridge. That’s south of both
the other bridges. That’s where the steps go down to the lower
trail.”
    “ Yes.”
    “ Now, you’re standing
there looking at Dr. Ryan, right where she told you to stop. The
stone footbridge is behind you.”
    “ Yes, and the College Ave.
bridge is even farther behind me. You want to know if we’d passed
under the metal bridge of the upper trail.”
    “ Just to get a rough idea
of where you were