The 4th Man, Page 2

  “He’s got a point,” D.D. said now. Quincy and Rainie had exited the interview room. They clustered together in the hall. “Jaylin had purchased the shoes months before she even met Duchovny, so there’s no obvious reason for him to want the sneakers, feel entitled to take them back, that kind of thing.”

  “Add that to the lack of violence . . .” Rainie’s voice trailed off doubtfully.

  D.D. nodded. In contrast to the original case detective, D.D. didn’t like Duchovny for the murder. As she’d explained to Quincy and Rainie, Duchovny was a brute known for his explosive temper. If he’d killed Jaylin, the murder would’ve been in a fit of rage, with all the ensuing blood, bruising, and DNA that went with such attacks.

  Instead, the college student’s murder was almost startling in its nonviolence.

  “Duchovny gives credence to our fourth-man theory.” D.D. glanced at Quincy, then jerked her head toward the open door at the end of hall. “He certainly seemed suspicious of his girlfriend. New friends she wouldn’t talk about, a sudden uptick in her number of social engagements. Sounds like he even wondered if she was truly staying at the library to work on a ‘paper.’ Maybe she had a midnight rendezvous after all.”

  “All interesting suspicions,” Quincy assured her. “Except we need more from Duchovny than rampant paranoia; we need a name.”

  “And make something about this case come easy? Not a chance. I’ll assign a detective to run down this Selena Madrill, confirm Duchovny’s cheating alibi. If he really was with her after midnight . . .”

  “Then one down, two to go.” Rainie glanced at Quincy, then pointed to the next shut door.

  “Bachelor number two,” he agreed.

  File in Quincy’s hand, they got on with it.

  * * *

  Dennis Ringham had been one of two security guards working on the night in question, the university’s rent-a-cops, as Duchovny had called them. A decade ago, Ringham had been in his early thirties, with a history of washing out of both military recruitment and the local PD. Someone who wanted a uniform but couldn’t have one. A man, Quincy knew, who wanted to look bigger and better than who he really was.

  As the senior consultant of their two-person team, Quincy would take the lead on this interview. In theory, Ringham was drawn to authority figures and should aim to please.

  The years had not been kind to Dennis Ringham. In contrast to Duchovny’s heavily muscled presence, Ringham sat nearly folded in on himself. He was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered middle-aged man with thinning blond hair and the swollen gut of a professional drinker. Which, to read Sergeant Warren’s notes, was exactly what he’d become in the years since Jaylin Banks’s murder—a drunk. Even now his eyes were red-rimmed as he blearily watched Quincy and Rainie enter the room, take a seat.

  Quincy opened the case file. “Jaylin Banks,” he said casually.

  Ringham flinched, immediately looked down. He didn’t appear to be the kind of guy who’d leave his girlfriend with a black eye. Then again, he could still be the kind of killer who snuck up from behind and grabbed a smaller, weaker woman around the throat.

  Rainie began distributing the crime scene photos, lining them up on the table as she’d done in the previous room, covering all available surface. As before, Sergeant Warren remained out in the hall, utilizing the viewing window to observe and form opinions of her own.

  Quincy picked up the first photo. A close-up of Jaylin Banks’s face. Her long brown hair swept back at the temples. Those huge, dark, unseeing eyes. A lace of shadows just beginning to bloom across her throat.

  “She’s beautiful,” Quincy murmured.

  Ringham kept his gaze on his lap. He was trembling slightly. Stress, shame, need for a drink?

  “She had a signature scent,” Quincy continued. “Her parents told us about it. Nothing fancy, just something she’d blended herself using oils she’d purchased from a local store.” He held the photo closer, shutting his eyes as if pondering its smell. “Jasmine, vanilla . . . but something else. A touch of something earthy to keep it from being too sweet. Bergamot . . . citron . . . pine . . . musk—”

  “Sandalwood.” The word sounded dragged from Ringham. Less an utterance than a moan.

  “Sandalwood. That’s it. I’m told men were wild for that scent. And she knew it.”

  “She was alive. When I left, she was alive. Told everyone then, will say it again now. Her big ape of a boyfriend found me at eleven. Told me he was taking off—had better things to do.” Ringham’s thin lips twisted into a sneer. He still wouldn’t look at them. “Girlfriend was up on the second floor. Computer lab. I’d better keep my eye on her.”

  “So you went upstairs. You checked on her?” Quincy asked.

  “Not like . . . right that second. I had work to do.” Ringham already sounded defensive. He’d hardly been known for his on-the-job diligence, and that was before a student had been murdered.

  “Tell us about that night,” Rainie said. If Quincy sounded in command, then she was a sympathetic ear, ready to hear Ringham’s side of the story. “Who was in the library?”

  “Um, students. Dozens of them. First, second, third floors. You know, typical study night.”

  “And on the second floor? The computer lab. Tell us about those students.”

  “Not much to tell. There was a boy and a girl, obviously together, outside the lab. They were packing up their bags when I walked by. Leaving.”

  “And Jaylin Banks?”

  “I, uh, saw her, in the lab. She had a stack of books next to her. Like she was working on a report.”

  “Jaylin.” Rainie repeated the girl’s name, softly, like a caress.

  “I don’t know everyone,” Ringham mumbled. “Lots of students. Hundreds, you know. But, yeah, I assumed the girl must be Jaylin. Because the big lug, he said she was up there. Ordered me to look out for his girl.” Ringham thinned his lips. Stared at anything but the photos.

  “Shame isn’t it,” Rainie said, “that all the cute girls hang out with such assholes.”

  “She was alive when I left,” Ringham repeated stiffly.

  “When did you last see her?” Quincy asked.

  “Eleven forty. Final pass. She was in the computer lab, like I said, working. Then it was midnight, my shift was up, I left, too.”

  “After rechecking on Jaylin Banks.”

  “I didn’t go back to the second floor.”

  “Why not? You have a young female in the computer lab all alone that time of night.”

  “No.” Ringham shook his head. “Computer lab closes at midnight. If she was still on the second floor at the end of my shift . . . it wasn’t to do work.”

  “Meaning maybe she hadn’t stayed for the computer lab after all,” Quincy suggested. “Maybe she’d left the computer lab. In order to meet someone. Say . . . someone new. Someone special.”

  “She was beautiful,” Rainie said. “And sweet. Everyone said that. She was lovely, intelligent, definitely the kind of girl who could do better than some meathead like Duchovny. Wouldn’t you agree, Ringham? Don’t you think?”

  Ringham didn’t speak. His gaze darted around the room, as if he didn’t know where to look.

  “Tell us about the other students in the library that night,” Quincy said, jerking Ringham’s attention back to him. “Anyone you saw. Everyone you saw. Who was there to meet Jaylin?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. There were students. Lots of students. Fifteen on the third floor. Half a dozen on the first. There were . . . plenty of students, even at that time of night.”

  “Did you recognize them? Know who they were?”

  “No. It was a university library. There were hundreds of kids coming and going. Of course, I didn’t know them. How could anyone, any guard, know that many kids?”

  “But you knew Jaylin.” Once again, Quincy’s thumb rested on D
.D.’s notes. Her list of lies.

  “All students have to swipe their IDs to access the library after dark,” Ringham rattled off, as if reciting a manual. “It didn’t matter if I knew them or not. They swiped their IDs, an electronic turnstile would let them in. Us guards, the guards,” Ringham amended; he’d lost his job after Jaylin’s murder, “just kept an eye out for unusual or unruly behavior, that’s it.”

  “Library exits.”

  Quincy’s sudden switch in topic threw Ringham for a loop. “Wh-wh-what?”

  “The library egresses. First there is the main entry. Where you kept post.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But the library also had stairwells. Two stairwells, leading to the street.” Jaylin Banks’s body had been discovered in one of those stairwells.

  “Yeah. But they were locked,” Ringham added hastily. “That time of night. You could exit a stairwell door, but it wouldn’t open from the outside. No one could come in through the stairwells.”

  “Did you inspect these outer doors? Check to ensure that a student hadn’t left one propped open, say, his own personal entrance to the library?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Of course. It happened sometimes. So I checked. I always checked!”

  “And did you inspect the locks? Make sure they didn’t appear scratched, jimmied, forced?”

  Ringham was fidgeting faster now, nearly levitating with discomfort. “I heard from the police. I asked directly. No one broke in through the stairwell doors! No one. They told me that. No one broke into the library. Not on my watch!”

  “Meaning,” Quincy dragged out slowly, “whoever killed Jaylin Banks had to be someone already inside the library. It’s the classic closed-room mystery, Mr. Ringham. Only someone with access to the library could’ve killed Jaylin Banks. Such as a student. A guest of a student. Or, here’s a thought: a security guard.”

  Ringham stopped fidgeting. He stared at them, wide-eyed.

  Rainie reached over, took the file from Quincy. She made a show of skimming D. D. Warren’s notes. “Four times. Says here, witnesses saw you four times hanging out in front of Jaylin Banks’s apartment. Seems a bit much for coincidence, don’t you think? Particularly after you explained to us you didn’t even know the names of the students who used the library.”

  Ringham kept staring.

  “Did you try to talk to her that night?” Quincy asked. “Duchovny was gone, finally out of the way. And he’d as much as ordered you to check in on his girlfriend. So you went up. Told yourself this was it, you’d say hi. Finally introduce yourself to the girl you’d obviously been watching from afar.”

  “Except she wasn’t alone, was she?” Rainie piled on. “She was already with someone else. And just like that, she was once more beyond your reach. It got to you, didn’t it? That even with Duchovny out of the picture, she still wasn’t going to be with you. Was never going to be with you.”

  “No,” Ringham whispered.

  “Is that why you had to kill her?” Rainie asked. “Just to show her the error of her ways? How stupid she’d been not to see the great guy right in front of her? Or was it when you confronted her as she exited down the stairwell, tried to tell her how you really felt, and she laughed in your face? We understand. How such a thing might drive you to reach out, and maybe without even thinking, wrap your fingers around her throat.”

  “No,” Ringham whispered again.

  “You killed her,” Quincy picked up. “She wouldn’t have you. You tried so hard to get her to see you. Waited in front of her apartment. Worked night after night, right there in the library, standing guard. And still . . .”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Then who did?!” Quincy abruptly slammed the table with his fist. The sharp rap grabbed Ringham’s attention, fixed the skinny guard’s gaze on Quincy’s face. “If not you, then what happened that night? Duchovny’s gone. He signed out of the library at eleven and we have proof he never returned. Meaning now it’s just you and all those nameless students you cared so much about. We know one of you killed Jaylin Banks. We know one of you had to be the killer. Come on Ringham, four visits to her apartment? Jaylin wasn’t just another girl to you. So what happened that night? It’s time to tell the truth. About what you really did. Or maybe, who you really saw.”

  “I went up a second time,” Ringham said suddenly. Not looking at them, speaking in a rush. “Eleven forty. Except that wasn’t my first visit, but my second. You were right, I checked in when Duchovny left, eleven twelve. Walked by, looked in, saw for myself she was there, alone. Which of course got me to thinking . . . Just this once, you know. Maybe I could go in, strike up a conversation. Just this once.

  “Eleven forty I, uh, got my courage up. Second walk-through, I told myself. A good security guard conducting extra rounds. Except this time, once I was on the second floor, I’d introduce myself. Say hey. Something. I don’t know. I was gonna do it.”

  “Where was she, Ringham?” Quincy, voice firm, commanding.

  “Computer lab. Sitting with her pile of books. But . . . she wasn’t alone. There was someone else there.”

  Quincy leaned forward. “Tell us his name, Mr. Ringham. Provide a description. Who was Jaylin Banks’s new boyfriend?”

  “But it wasn’t a boy!”

  “What?” Quincy sat back.

  “She was a woman. Older than a student. Like, maybe a professor or something. And she wasn’t sitting next to Jaylin or anything. I didn’t know if they were even together. But still, she was there. A second person. So I couldn’t . . . So I didn’t. I left. I walked away. Eleven forty. Jaylin Banks still alive. Just like I’ve always said.”

  “You went to her apartment four times—”

  “She never saw me. We never spoke.”

  “You wanted her—”

  “She never saw me,” he intoned mournfully. “We never spoke.”

  “Come on, Ringham. Tell us the truth!”

  But the former guard shook his head. He finally stared at the photos. An entire tabletop filled with the end of a young girl’s life. He took her in, the object of his affection, studying her all the way from her head down to her toes.

  Then he re-laced his fingers on his lap, looked up, and declared simply: “Yes, I liked her. Yes, I thought she was too good for him. A pretty thing like that with such an over-pumped ape. But then, a girl at that age? Who could ever change her mind? Shame though. The computer lab. For days later you could still smell it. Jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood.”

  * * *

  “I feel like I need to shower,” D.D. announced, “and I was standing on the other side of the glass.”

  “He puts the creep in creepy,” Rainie agreed. Now that they were out of the room, door closed behind them, the distaste was plain on her face.

  Quincy was frowning, still turning over the conversation in his mind. “Clearly Ringham was interested in a personal relationship with Jaylin Banks,” he said. “Four visits to her apartment.” He glanced at D.D. “Nice work on your part.”

  “Thank you. Every now and then I try to be competent. Even when the case is ten years old.”

  “But for all his secret desires, it’s not clear Ringham ever managed so much as a hello to Jaylin Banks in person. Even more interesting, he didn’t spot some mysterious new man in her life. But a woman? An older female, who might have just been a second person using the computer lab, of course. Or . . .”

  They all stared down the hall, to their open fourth door.

  “There’s no evidence Jaylin Banks was bisexual,” D.D. said.

  “Maybe the woman was a friend?” Rainie asked. “Or given the age, maybe one of Jaylin’s professors, helping her out on an assignment?”

  “Right before Jaylin is strangled to death in the library stairwell?” D.D. arched a brow skeptically, then opened her personal notebook on the case. “As I said, we’ve bee
n running down the names of everyone who used their student passes to access the library that night—which, for the record, would include staff IDs as well. As Quincy explained to Ringham, this is the classic closed-room murder. Whoever killed Jaylin Banks should be listed on either the electronic log generated by the student passes or on the guards’ manual log of guests. We’ve interviewed fifty-seven of sixty names, documenting endless stories of ‘I was asleep,’ or ‘Making out in this corner,’ or, heaven forbid, ‘Working so hard on my homework I never even realized a girl was murdered that night.’ Since students often worked in clumps, most were able to alibi one another. But we do have three names we’re still working on. . . .”

  D.D. flipped through a sheaf of papers. “All right. Here we go. There is one female we haven’t been able to locate. Her ID doesn’t list her as a professor, but as a student, Erin Pizzey. According to the detective’s note: Lives in England. Too old.” D.D. frowned. Looked at them. Frowned again.

  “‘Too old’ sounds promising,” Rainie said. “It confirms Ringham’s story of an older woman.”

  “Yeah. But Erin Pizzey. Does that name sound familiar to you? Because I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before. Pizzey, Pizzey, Pizzey. Huh. Something’s off here. I’m going to ask my squad mate, Phil, to personally track down this Erin. He’s my best when it comes to computer searches. I’m sure he’ll hit us back shortly with more information.”

  “At which point, maybe our fourth man will actually turn out to be a woman,” Quincy said, glancing at the open door down the hall.

  “I’m all for equal opportunity,” D.D. assured him. “Even when it comes to murder.” She got on her cell, started dictating new search info to her detective, then, just as quickly, had her phone slipped back into her pocket.

  She glanced at her watch. “Almost noon. Shall we?”

  “Bachelor number three,” Quincy agreed. Laurel Santana, the second security guard who’d been working that night, and the one who’d finally discovered Jaylin Banks’s lifeless body.