October 23

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October 24

 

 

When I called Dr. Armitage’s office in the morning, a male voice I didn’t recognize answered. “Yes?”

“Hi, this is Lisa Morton calling for Dr. Armitage.”

“What did you need to speak to him about?”

Something about the voice was wrong—it was too gruff, too harsh to belong to anyone who worked at a university. “I was consulting with him on a project.”

“Well, Ms. Morton, I’m afraid I have some bad news: Dr. Armitage is dead. My name’s Lieutenant John Bertocelli, and I’m investigating his death.”

Oh god. “How did he die?”

“He was found here on campus last night. It looks like he was attacked by some sort of wild animal, but we’re not ruling out murder yet.”

Wild animal…maybe something with a too-wide mouthful of jagged fangs, something that moved unseen through the night…

And I’d been there. If they found that out, would I be a suspect? Would it look better for me if I told them now? “I was at the campus last night.”

“What time would that have been?”

“I came to talk to Dr. Armitage’s associate Conor ó Cuinn. I was there from about eight-thirty to not quite nine.”

“We think that’s about the time Dr. Armitage was killed.”

“Something followed me last night.”

There was a pause, and I imagined the detective waving his partner over, or grabbing a notepad. “You mean something followed you last night while you were on the school grounds?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see it?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If you’d gotten a look at it, you’d probably be dead today instead of Dr. Armitage.” He asked a few more brief questions, then took my contact information and hung up.

After several seconds of just sitting, staring, and wondering if Conor had killed him, I googled UCLA news and found a brief mention on a local news website of Armitage’s death. It didn’t add much to what I’d already heard from Lt. Bertocelli—that he’d been found dead outside Haines Hall late last night, his body mauled and covered with what looked like bite marks.

That could have been me.

Maybe I’d been wrong about the face I’d seen outside the window. Maybe it’d been an animal; a mountain lion? A maddened, injured dog? Yet Conor had known it was there.

Had Conor meant to kill Wilson Armitage?  Why?

I was interviewed by Lt. Bertocelli a day later, in an ugly little office with scratched furniture and sickly-green walls in a Westside police station. They told me they were still leaning toward wild animal attack, but they had some questions…mainly about Dr. Conor ó Cuinn. Apparently he and Armitage had argued earlier in the day, about something to do with what was now being called “the Celtic manuscript.” Students who’d overheard the confrontation mentioned a loud “Yes, I do intend to try it,” in Conor’s accent, to which Armitage responded, “You can’t be serious.”

The fact that I’d been with ó Cuinn at the time of Wilson’s death—it’d been put fairly precisely at 8:40—ruled him out as a suspect. And they told me repeatedly I was not a suspect.

They also said they might have more questions.

That night, a mountain lion was spotted in wealthy Bel Air, just to the north of the UCLA campus. It happens sometimes—predators are driven down out of the few remaining patches of Southern California wilderness by hunger, thirst, wildfires…maybe loneliness. In another few hours, the story would probably end the way these stories always did: Some cop would claim his dart gun had jammed, and he’d just kill the poor cat instead. Meanwhile, we’d all know: That the cop, when faced with a 140-pound, yellow-eyed carnivore, had reacted on the most primeval level possible, that his every instinct had said “Kill or die,” and he’d opted for the gun that he knew would put the beast down permanently. An armed caveman.

The news was already speculating that the big cat had savaged Wilson Armitage. Bel Air was within (human) walking distance of UCLA, separated only by Sunset Boulevard. It might provide a convenient close to the case.

But I knew a mountain lion was not what I’d heard following me. And it certainly wasn’t the grinning, red-eyed specter I’d seen outside ó Cuinn’s window.