Murder Misread Read online

  Title Page

  Copyright & history

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Murder Misread

  About the author

  Murder Misread

  Maggie Ryan, 1977

  by P.M. Carlson

  The Mystery Company

  Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

  MURDER MISREAD

  Copyright © 1990 by P.M. Carlson

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Pat Prather

  Cover art by Robin Agnew

  Author photo copyright © by Kathy Morris

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Doubleday first edition: December 1991

  The Mystery Company paperback edition: August 2015

  The Mystery Company e-book edition: October 2015

  PRINT ISBN: 978-1-932325-46-1

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-932325-47-8

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  The Mystery Company, an imprint of Crum Creek Press

  24 N Bryn Mawr Ave #271

  Bryn Mawr, PA 19010

  www.crumcreekpress.com

  For Jim, Mike and Bill

  Three great guys

  I am grateful for the helpful suggestions of Harry Levin and David I. Grossvogel, professors and friends. Errors remaining are mine and not theirs.

  — P.M.C.

  CYRANO: Rien ne me reste.

  LE BRET: Jeter ce sac, quelle sottise!

  CYRANO: Mais quel geste!

  —Rostand

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  1

  Anatomically, the thing to do was to hit the brainstem. The medulla oblongata, familiar from Intro. to Psych., skipped over quickly by bored professors because it was concerned with plodding functions like reflexes, heartbeat, breathing. The same services it had performed for eons in fish, in reptiles, in shrews, in apes. Professors preferred the neocortex, that Johnny-come-lately that surged out from the humble stem to fill the skull like an atomic mushroom cloud. The cortex had all the exciting functions—intelligence, problem-solving, language, personality, literature. And yet if you damaged the glamorous cortex, the ages-old medulla—aided by some bright young doctor with a set of machines—might still keep the frail, well-plumbed bag of bones and guts ticking along, might even resuscitate a few twitches of consciousness from the cortical remnants. But damage the medulla, and the cortex, too, would wither helplessly on its ancient, bleeding stalk.

  The gun was tiny, snub-nosed, but heavy enough to drag down the clothes a little. Or maybe it wasn’t physical weight, maybe it was, as they said, psychological. The months of fear, of not knowing enough, of frustration at every attempt to resolve the problems, all now coalesced into a compact steel mechanism in the pocket. A solution of sorts to the insoluble. Something that could clip out poison mushrooms at the stem.

  And afterward? Who could tell? Tracks had been covered, loved ones protected. Values conflicted, and choices had to be made.

  Muggy with the humid breath of vigorous new maple leaves and young vines, the June morning sent sweat trickling down Associate Professor Charlie Fielding’s heaving chest. He was bounding up the railroad-tie steps from the parking lot to Van Brunt Hall, aviator glasses bouncing on his slippery nose, making the solid world appear to hiccup with each step. Charlie was late, and heartbroken. Both Deanna’s fault. He’d waited half an hour longer than he should have, hoping, but she hadn’t appeared. Probably with her new friends. Damn her anyway. Deanna of the glinting hair, whose special magic could transform a winter afternoon into a tropical haze of laughing mint-scented delirium. No, it wasn’t over. It couldn’t be over. Just a misunderstanding. He was sure.

  But he’d fix it later. Right now, he was late for his appointment. And sweating like Stallone in Rocky under his summer tweed jacket. And, he noted with an inward groan, his socks didn’t match. One blue, one black. Today was going to be a stinker.

  His office was on the first floor of Van Brunt, an unimaginative fifties building that had largish rooms but little else to recommend it. He wrenched open the door and threw himself into the fluorescent-lit white hall. A dreary rhythm of brown doors and cream walls flowed past him like the opening zoom of some science-fiction film. Only the water fountains and the little brass-rimmed door placards that announced each professor’s name broke the monotony. Charlie was glad that someone in the Buildings Department, in a rare fit of maniacal imagination, had painted the hall of his own wing bright Disney yellow. Poor fellow had probably been fired instantly in retribution. True, the color was garish, but better than the main hall’s vanilla blandness. Dodging the few people strolling through the hall, Charlie aimed at the yellow gleam and galloped down the vinyl tunnel. Ben Hur. Usually he could park near his own end of the building, but today he’d had to settle for the corner farthest from his office. It was that kind of day, a Jerry Lewis day.

  “Charlie!” A glum, tweedy mountain jutted suddenly into his path. Bart Bickford, reeking of pipe tobacco.

  “Sorry, Bart, I’m in a rush! I’ll see you a little later,” Charlie called over his shoulder. Bart peered after him, his small eyes blinking below his massive brow. Pithecanthropus, Tal called him at the Christmas party, right to his face. No, Bart protested with a grin, that’s Java Man, that’s you with the coffee. Tobacco is my vice. Tal had hooted with laughter.

  Charlie raced past the hall clock across from the main office. God, nine-twelve already. He rounded the corner of his own hall and braked frantically. Three people—two quite small, all upside down—blocked his door. He caught himself on the edge of the doorjamb and lurched to a halt. Not Ben Hur. A Mack Sennett pratfall. The little girl that he’d almost knocked over returned her sneakered feet calmly to the floor and straightened out of her handstand. Luminous brown eyes, black curls, a mischievous grin. “’Scuse me,” she said.

  “Ditto.” The tallest of the three, a lanky young woman in her twenties, had bounced upright from her handstand too. Black curls again, and an infectious smile, but this time the eyes were jay-blue. He generally didn’t like tall women, but this one had an endearing gawkiness that made him think of Big Bird. “We were just practicing our gymnastics. Didn’t expect anyone to come around the corner so fast.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m running late.” Charlie pressed his aviators up on his nose and glanced at the young woman doubtfully. “Are you, um, Dr. Ryan?” Big-boned and slim in her blue jeans and loose sky-blue shirt, she might be student, faculty, or visiting townie.

  “Right. Maggie Ryan. And you’re Dr. Fielding?”

  “Charlie.” He nodded as he pulled his office key from his pocket.

  The third and smallest member of the trio still had his hands on the floor, kicking one short leg out behind him in vain imitation of the handstands. Now he stood, toddled toward Charlie with a broad grin, and announced, “Da!”

  “Will thinks all men are named Daddy,” Maggie Ryan explained. She grabbed both children, their dimpled fingers disappearing into her bony hands. “Will and Sarah, this is
Dr. Fielding. He’s the man I’m going to be working with this summer.”

  Charlie smiled at the children and was rewarded by twin grins. “Hi,” said Sarah.

  “Da!” insisted Will gleefully. Sarah rolled up her eyes.

  “All right, pick up your stuff,” Maggie instructed Sarah, swooping up Will with a practiced arm. “What’s next, Charlie?”

  “Checking in with our efficient Cindy Phelps in the departmental office. She’s supposed to have a sitter ready. Let me just stow my briefcase and we’ll take the kids over there.”

  “Stow mine too.” Propping Will on her hip, Maggie handed over the briefcase to Charlie. He slid them inside his office door while she helped Sarah tuck a book back into her satchel.

  “This way.” Charlie offered Sarah his hand, but she held his finger for only a few steps before bouncing ahead to turn a cartwheel. Charlie laughed. “You’ve got an energetic pair here!”

  “Yeah. I really sympathize with my own mom now! Do you have kids?”

  “No, I’m not married. But of course I like kids. You see quite a few of them around an education department. Even one as theoretical as this one.” He nodded at an open door with a sign painted on it: Main Office, Educational Psychology. They all trooped in. The no-nonsense chairman, Reinalter, had kept the drab vanilla-modern decor provided by the university, but nevertheless a few tools of the trade had drifted onto the bookcase shelves: a Montessori block, a carousel projector, a 3-D model of a statistical bivariate normal surface. Little Sarah headed straight for the life-size plastic head with a cutaway, take-apart brain in tastefully muted pinks and purples. Its name was Eric, after the long-dead founder of the department.

  The quiet tapping of the Selectric halted. “Hi, Charlie.” Cindy Phelps was freckled, muscular, with a Farrah Fawcett-Majors tumble of highlighted hair and a shell-pink dress. She ran the department like a high-fashion spider tending her web.

  “Hi.” Charlie cleared his throat. “Cindy, this is Dr. Ryan, the project statistician. You’ve probably got a form for her to sign.”

  Cindy’s prominent blue eyes swept eloquently to the ceiling. “God, yes! I’ve got forms for every occasion. And to match any color scheme. Today’s special is buff and canary.” She nodded toward a chair in the corner. “I’ve also got you a sitter. One of our undergraduate majors. Liz!”

  Charlie watched his new statistician size up the tanned, broad-shouldered young woman with unfashionably short, dark hair who came toward them. “Hi, Liz, I’m Maggie,” she said. “This is Sarah, and this is Will. I hope you like reading stories and climbing trees.”

  Liz grinned. “Yep. Also Play-Doh and swimming.”

  A trace of caution in Maggie’s blue eyes. “Swimming?”

  “I’m on the team here. And I work as lifeguard at the state park on weekends.”

  Maggie relaxed. “You’re hired! I won’t have to tell you about energetic kids, I see. Here, Will, meet Liz.” She handed over the little blue-jeaned boy, who looked up somberly into Liz’s face. “Don’t let them run off too far just yet, okay? I want to talk to Dr. Fielding a little while, then I want to talk to you and set up a schedule. Will needs a nap after lunch or he’s whiny and nasty all afternoon.”

  “Can do. Why don’t you come out to the preschool area when you’re done? Northeast corner of this building.” Liz gestured with her free hand.

  “Fine.”

  “Come on, Sarah, want to go to the playground?” Competently, Liz bustled the children from the office.

  Charlie turned back and saw the inner office door open behind Cindy’s desk. Bernie Reinalter came out holding a sheaf of papers. Bernie was lean, very fair, no taller than Charlie but with an aloofness that was suitable for the chairman of the department. “Good morning, Charlie,” he said.

  “Hi, Bernie.” Charlie started to smooth his hair but stopped himself. Bernie was always carefully and conservatively dressed. Even now, in shirtsleeves for summer, he was in a pale yellow button-down shirt, and there was a crease in his gray trousers. “Uh, Bernie, this is my statistical consultant for the summer. Dr. Ryan. This is our chairman, Professor Reinalter.”

  “Glad to meet you,” said Maggie.

  “Sorry I don’t have time to talk to you just now,” Bernie told her. “I’m just bringing Cindy some material to type up. I’m meeting a couple of Japanese scientists for lunch so it helps to have it in written form too.”

  “Sure, we’ll have time to get acquainted later.”

  Bernie disappeared back into his office. Cindy glanced at the stack of papers he’d left on her desk, then turned back to Maggie. “You’ll be using the corner office in Charlie’s wing. Professor Schiff’s office. He’s moved out, but the custodian says he won’t be finished cleaning till late this afternoon so I’ll give you the key later.”

  “Okay.”

  “And now forms. All assembled in one color-coordinated packet. Unlike socks,” she added, with just a hint of a glance at Charlie. In his pocket, his fist tightened on his keys. Bitch. Cindy continued smoothly, “Why don’t you take them along, Dr. Ryan, and fill them out when you can? I’m here till four-thirty.”

  “Fine. And please call me Maggie.” She scooped up the packet. “The checks come to this office too?”

  “Right. I’m the money lady.”

  “You sure are. Another day, another dollar, eh, Cindy?” said Charlie.

  “Now, where have I heard that before?” Cindy turned her shell-pink back abruptly and resumed typing.

  “Dismissed,” said Maggie. Her smile was as mischievous as her daughter’s.

  “She rules us all,” explained Charlie as they walked back toward his yellow hall. “Money, keys, typewriters—she controls the mainstays of life.”

  “I’ll treat her with proper deference,” Maggie promised. “Okay, now. Tell me about this project of yours.”

  “Fine.” Charlie pushed his door open and kicked the wedge under it to hold it open. He hung his jacket on the wooden coatrack, then picked up his briefcase and pulled out a stapled manuscript. “You’ve seen the proposal?”

  “Skimmed it.” She slid Cindy’s varicolored forms into her own briefcase. “But my experience has been that proposals often get altered as the first results come in.”

  Charlie laughed ruefully. “You’ve got us pegged, all right. A lot of the details have changed. But we’re still hacking away at the same basic question: How does a skilled reader read? When we know what the best adult readers are doing, we can start thinking about how to teach kids to do it too. I mean, just think what happens when you read.” He gestured at the papers in his hand. “You pick up a sheet of paper with funny little marks on it, and your eyes look at the marks. Not all the marks—your eyes bounce from one fixation point to another, usually hitting just a few spots per line.”

  “Right, I remember the basics. You process hundreds of words per minute. More like picking up thoughts instead of letters.”

  “Something like that. But remember, all you have on the page is letters, grouped, with spaces between groups.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and waved his proposal eagerly. “So an efficient reader must have some sort of plan, or he’d be misreading all the time, having to go back and check. Obviously your peripheral vision will have some blurry information about what’s coming up next on the page, so when you know how, you can bounce your eyes to the best possible next fixation point.” His fingers stabbed at the pages he held. “The point that will give you the most information about the thought that the writer is developing. We’re trying to figure out what kinds of points are chosen for fixation by skilled readers. How the hell do we do it? What blurry peripheral cues do we respond to? It’s not easy. As you guessed, we’ve already given up on half of our bright ideas about how to measure this process.”

  Maggie cocked her head, her hands thrust into her jeans pockets. “But the other half must be working or you wouldn’t have sent for an expensive New York statistician like me to help analyze it.”
r />   He couldn’t help responding to that smile, a sudden glow like Diane Keaton’s. “Well, I have hopes.” Boy, did he ever! He’d been promoted on the basis of work that had grown out of his long-ago thesis. This was his first major project since then, his bid to prove that the department hadn’t been wrong to choose him to fill the famous Professor Chandler’s shoes as reading researcher. If this multitude of interconnected studies didn’t work out—well, he’d still have tenure. But he’d seen too many professors scorned and patronized when their early promise had fizzled out, human deadwood in their own departments. Last year, two of his pilot studies in a row had failed, and for a week he’d had nightmares: rigid shoulders marching out the door, little Charlie screaming, “Wait, wait!” unable to follow.

  But he’d succeeded on the next experiment and dared to hope again. “At least we’ve got a usable method,” he told Maggie. “Here, let me show you.” He flicked on the television that sat on the side table, and went to the bookcase-covered back wall. The books in fact sat in carefully organized stacks on the floor, crowded out by rows of plastic videotape containers. Charlie selected one and fed it into the machine. Uncooperatively, the screen began lazily to flip up horizontal bars.

  “What we’re using is basically a double-exposure technique,” he explained as he struggled with the controls. “Camera one is recording the reflection of a light on the cornea of the reader’s eye. You see the reflection as a white spot on the TV. Camera two is on the page he’s reading. So the white spots you’ll see superimposed on the page are the places on the text where the eye fixates.” The bars were rolling down the screen now.