20: The Fourth Woman
“Can’t I have a cigarette, Sister Polly? I need a cigarette.”
“You have my deepest sympathy,” Mac intoned gloomily.
“Offer it up for the poor souls in Purgatory,” Triple M advised 28-year-old Minnie Cooper.
“I call them my homies,” Minnie volleyed back.
It was Saturday morning in the campus ministry office, and the beneficiary of these variant smoking-related messages was the fourth woman. Calling Lynda and me her “old friends” was a bit of a stretch on Triple M’s part. We first met Cooper exactly six years earlier, when she was doing community service.[6] She had cut her long brown hair since then and dyed it in the trendy “toasted coconut” color. At least, that’s what Lynda called it when I described it. Lynda wasn’t with us, and (as promised) neither were the official gendarmes.
Mac tried to get this train back on the rails.
He leaned forward on one of his crutches. “We are interested in your interactions with the late Warren Burch,” he told our guest—as if she didn’t know.
“The old goat palmed my pomegranates.”
Mac arched an eyebrow.
“You know, groped my guavas.”
I don’t know why Triple M looked so mortified at this rather delicate description of what Ohio Revised Code Section 2907.06 considers “sexual imposition.” I’d expected a more graphic account.
“He didn’t make so free with Zoe,” Cooper amplified. “She’s a good girl and her parents are lawyers. I’m not a good girl. I came with a rep when Sr. Polly got me the job. Burch wasn’t just being nice when he agreed to hire me. He knew what he was getting.”
Her bravado tone struck me as a pose. The offenses that landed Cooper in Oscar’s lockup were minor offences, mostly a matter of sticky fingers with the occasional disturbing the peace. She liked jewelry that didn’t belong to her.
“Our understanding is that Dean Burch touched you more than once, and that Zoe Slade recorded an instance of it on her phone,” Mac said. In court that might have been called a leading question, but nobody objected.
“Yeah, that’s right. She showed it to Burch. He left me alone after that, until Zoe transferred out. Then he started in on me again.”
“And how did you react?”
“After the second or third time he didn’t pay attention when I said ‘hands off,’ I kneed him in his nuts.” The Erica Slade School of Conflict Resolution! Cooper looked at Triple M. “I didn’t tell you this before, but I did that because of you, Sister.”
“Me?” Sister Mary Margaret Malone, campus minister, looked horrified. “What did I do?”
“You treated me like a human being, that’s what. You got me that job, which should have been a really good job, and you gave me some self-respect. That’s why I pushed back on him.” That’s one way of putting it.
“Oh, Minnie!” They hugged.
After a suitable interval, Mac said: “And then?”
“Then he fired me. I wouldn’t have minded so much, except that Sister Polly got me the job and I felt like I let her down. Burch threatened to accuse me of stealing exam questions if I reported him. He still taught one class a year then. If he did that, I knew nobody would believe me.”
“But there was the video!” I said.
“I didn’t want to drag Zoe into it.”
“Most admirable,” Mac said.
Triple M disagreed. “No, it’s not. This isn’t just about Minnie and Zoe and whoever else was hurt directly. There’s a justice issue here, Mac. I told Minnie at the time that law enforcement should be notified.”
“That obligation has been obviated by Professor Burch’s demise.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry,” the fourth woman declared. “When the crap about Burch and the other three women hit the fan in the newspaper, I was afraid somebody would get my name from Zoe. I’m glad it was you guys. You were okay to me last time. Maybe I can stay out of it as far as anybody else goes. I mean, Burch is dead, like Mac said, so what difference does it make now?”
“Minnie’s afraid that if her name gets dragged into this, even as an innocent party, her ancient dirty laundry might get aired and it will hurt her,” Triple M. said. “She wants to leave the past behind.”
Motive! I thought. In a strange way, Minnie Cooper benefits from the murder.
“I’ve been keeping my nose clean,” Cooper said. Said nose had a ring in it. “I haven’t even been to the new jail. How is it?”
“Just like home,” I assured her.
Triple M glared at me, but she’s too nice to do it well.
“I don’t want to lose my job,” Cooper added. “It’s a good one.”
“Do you work on campus?” Mac asked.
She shook her head. “I did for a while after I left the business school, but then I got a gig at Paddles & Wheels, the boat and bike rental on Front Street. Business is booming since the bike trail along the river got extended. I love it. In the summer I get to work outside where I can get fresh air and grab a few smokes.” Somehow that seems contradictory. “I’m taking night classes at SBU, too.”
“Even more admirable,” Mac opined.
“In what field?” I asked.
“Criminal justice.”
Figures.
I looked at Mac. “Motive and opportunity.”
“Give me a break!” Triple M cried.
“What the hell?” was the way Minnie Cooper put it.
Max explained. “I believe what Jefferson means is that you are well acquainted with the SBU campus and even had a reason for being there at night—though surely no class runs until eleven o’clock, even in the criminal justice program! And as for motive, Ms. Cooper, you yourself indicated you are relieved that Dean Burch is dead because it now seems unlikely that your name will come forward, along with your somewhat colorful history.”
Triple M made a rude noise that sounded more Army than convent. “Are you guys kidding? Burch’s murder is going to bring more interest to the women he molested, not less.”
“Oh, crap,” Cooper said.
“Ms. Banfield shall not learn your identity from us,” Mac assured her. “And even if she has the happy thought of looking for another female employee in the dean’s office at the same time as Zoe Slade, your name need not become public unless it is relevant to the investigation at hand.”
“It’s not,” Triple M said sternly.
“Well, just for the record, what were you doing when Burch was killed”—by an invisible intruder—“around midnight Tuesday night?” I asked Cooper.
She had the grace to look sheepish. “Close your ears, Sister. I wasn’t alone.” If Lynda were here, she would have rolled her eyes. Triple M didn’t even try to look surprised.
“And your alibi’s name is?”
“A lady never tells.” Cute. “I can get his permission to tell you if it gets to be important. But you’re going to solve the murder so that I don’t have to do that, McCabe. Right?”
Mac apparently thought that didn’t require a reply. Instead, he said:
“And who do you think the murderer might be?”
“I’d vote for Burch’s stuck-up wife. I met her in the office a couple of times throwing her weight around. She probably killed him in revenge for the humiliation when his creepiness went public.”
“But she defends her husband and blames his accusers for lying,” I protested. Not to mention what she said about Heidi Guildenstern.
“That’s all show to cover up her embarrassment, believe me.”
Mac pressed Cooper for other suspects, based on office dynamics or anything she’d seen or heard in her time in the dean’s office, but that was the best she could come up with. Mac thanked her for her cooperation and wished her well in her future endeavors. She waved that away, something more important on her mind.
“I need a cigarette,” she said.
“Well?” I asked Mac as we headed back to my car.
“I do not find it psychologically credible that Ms. Cooper would be so stealthy if she wished to dispatch someone.”
“Me neither. Besides, I can’t help liking her even though I don’t want to. What about her idea that Catherine Burch did it?”
“Convoluted, but not impossible. Perhaps Mrs. Burch’s apparent distress at her husband’s death was artifice. The motivation Ms. Cooper suggests, that of retribution for humiliation and embarrassment suffered by a woman of substantial social standing in the community, is plausible. Although the murder has extended that mortification by keeping the deceased’s behavior in the public eye, she may not have foreseen that. Here is yet another consideration: Murder on campus instead of anywhere near her home has the obvious advantage of literally distancing Mrs. Burch from the crime. And it is certainly possible that she would know the intricacies of campus security from her husband.”
So, Mac had taken the notion of Catherine Burch as a suspect seriously and thought it through. Interesting.
“Call me selfish,” I said, “but the less connection there is between the killer and SBU the better I’ll like it.” That reminded me of the whole “Banfield says Gibbons says Grant Kingsley didn’t take a plane to Connecticut” thing. Mac and I had barely discussed it before getting to Triple M’s office. “Worst of all would be if our interim president killed Burch,” I added.
“That would indeed be a negative development, old boy. Perhaps there is some mistake that will all be clear on Monday morning.”
“We can hope. Meanwhile, Gibbons must be happy to find some support for his suspicion of GK. He doesn’t usually spin theories like that.”
“He did in the opera murder,”[7] Mac reminded me. “This time around, however, I suspect that the good man hoped to impress Ms. Banfield.”
“As if he needs to. The woman can’t even say his name without drooling.”
Just then, Mac’s smartphone erupted into “The Ride of the Valkyries,” his favorite ringtone. For a while he had it set like a telephone, but what fun is that?
“McCabe here.” His eyebrows flew up. “Oh, hello, Marvin. One o’clock? Yes, I am available. Jefferson, also? Of course. I understand. We shall see you then.”
He disconnected. “The prosecutor is taking us to lunch Monday at the Nonpareil Club in Cincinnati. He says the agenda is a personal one and he requests that we keep the meeting ‘on the Q.T.,’ as he put it.”