Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson

the bridge.”
    “ Yes, that’s right.” It
was vivid yet—the bubbly water, Bart’s lumpy hulk on the bridge.
Charlie added, “Also, while you people were talking to us I looked
over at her and saw a Campus Security guy talking to
Maggie.”
    “ So he’d come down from
the campus side. Okay, thank you, I’ve got the picture.” Hines
switched topics abruptly. “Now, I’d like you to look at some things
here, see if you recognize them.”
    Charlie licked his lips
again and tried to concentrate on the objects in the evidence bags
that Hines was showing him. A red baseball cap. A muddy pipe. A
plastic ballpoint pen. A card-sized scrap of paper with a fragment
of a bibliography printed on it. A pair of big black rubber
overshoes in the box.
    “ Does anything look
familiar?” Hines prompted.
    “ Well… Bart has a pipe of
that general type, but lighter colored, as I remember. And the
little card looks like what you find in the library for scrap paper
to jot down call numbers. They cut up excess copies of old handouts
and leave them in little boxes for people to use when they’re
looking up books.”
    “ I see. The boots don’t
look familiar?”
    “ Not really. I’ve seen
that kind before, it’s common enough. They’re a pretty large size,
aren’t they?”
    “ Size twelve.”
    “ I’m a size
nine.”
    “ Thank you.” Hines pulled
his own large oxfords under him and stood up. Porter, at the door,
shifted to attention too. “We’ll be back to you soon, Professor
Fielding. I’d sure appreciate it if you could remember exactly when
you misplaced your memo book.”
    Charlie shook his head.
“I’ve told you all I can remember.”
    “ Well, let me know if
anything occurs to you. We’ll have to hold onto it for the time
being, I’m afraid. See you soon, Professor Fielding.”
    Charlie nodded weakly and
watched Hines and Porter out the door.
    What the hell should he do
now? Tal shot: unbelievable. His own memo book on the lower trail.
How had it gotten there? And where was it? He’d been unable to tell
from Hines’s impassive expression whether his movements down the
trail with Bart could account for where it had been found. He
closed his eyes and tried to reconstruct those terrible moments.
Tracking shot: Charlie Fielding hurrying down the steps next to the
College Avenue bridge. Down into the leafy gorge, Bart crashing
along close behind. The damp earth packed behind railroad-tie
steps, the jar of each footstep—that could have bounced his book
from his pocket! Would Hines have worried about something found so
far away? Maybe. But Charlie had gone much closer to Tal. Could it
have fallen out closer? Think! On down the trail, still very steep
but sloped now, no actual steps. Across the little stone
footbridge, three feet wide, gray stones assembled in a gentle arch
over the creek, WPA project, the aging mortar cracked in places.
Maggie’s distant figure off to the right, sky-blue sleeves flapping
like semaphores. But wait a minute. Coming off the footbridge, two
stone steps down to the trail. Could the book have jounced from his
jacket then? Would Hines be interested in something found by the
footbridge?
    Maybe.
    Tracking on: moving toward
Maggie, noting the lump of gray tweed at her feet with no conscious
understanding of what it was, but looking away hastily even before
she spoke, some inner director crying, Cut! No more, no more!
    Don’t think about that.
Stick to the memo book.
    If it had fallen from his
pocket earlier, while he was looking down at the lower trail from
the upper footbridge, it might have landed closer. Pushed by the
breeze, maybe, or ricocheting off a branch. But he couldn’t
remember any time that—
    “ Hi,” said Maggie. She
glided into the office and dropped a flat white box onto his desk.
A puff of air from its landing lifted the pages of his grant
proposal. “I bribed what’s-his-name, your assistant—Gary, right?—to
go get us a pizza. What some?”
    “ God, I