CHAPTER TWO
1948 Words
CHAPTER TWO
A few hours later, just past midnight, their plane touched down in Boston. Daniel’s research had been correct. Remi did know Professor Angus MacPherson. He was one of the leading authorities on Christian symbolism. They had discussed history at countless conferences over the years, often talking late into the night, she with a glass of wine, he with a glass or two or three of single malt Scotch. Outgoing and brilliant, it was hard not to like Angus. They had even written a paper on Marian symbolism together several years ago.
He was one of those close colleagues that made a career in academia enjoyable, not quite a friend but certainly a friendly acquaintance, a fellow traveler through the world of research.
To discover that he had been murdered was unthinkable.
She had not yet brought herself to look at the crime scene photos.
The other victim was unknown to her. Oliver Ruggles was also from the United Kingdom but had a green card thanks to an American wife and taught at a community college in upstate New York.
What raised a red light in the FBI national crime monitoring unit was that both men were killed in the same week, both men taught medieval history, both men came from the UK, and both men had been killed with a sword.
A sword. What kind of maniac attacks academics with a sword?
She hadn’t had time to delve into Ruggles’s case. She was still trying to process the fact that Angus was dead.
His wife had died a few years before. Cancer. Angus hadn’t talked about it much. She knew he was devoted to his two adult children, a son and daughter, who he visited in Scotland regularly. Remi supposed they had already been notified. While she had never met them, she would reach out to them in a bit to offer her condolences.
First, she needed to give them justice.
Her shock and grief weren’t helped by the awkwardness of her situation with her partner. Even though he was supposedly getting back with his ex-wife, he had come to her apartment a couple of weeks ago and poured out his feelings for her, saying that he had fallen in love with her.
Well, he hadn’t actually used that word, but it was written all over his face.
That had thrilled and scared her. Not that it was entirely unexpected. She had been feeling little tingles around him for a while now but had compartmentalized them because they were in a working relationship, and he was already in a romantic relationship. But she couldn’t help noticing how he looked at her sometimes, and then he came over and confirmed all his feelings, saying that he wasn’t going to try with Veronica anymore, and that the relationship was finished.
She had fumbled through an answer, saying but not quite saying that she felt the same. He had caught her off guard, and she felt guilty that she might have had a role in the final disintegration of his marriage.
They hadn’t discussed it since. In fact, they hadn’t seen each other since. They’d been given a vacation thanks to the tough circumstances of their last case, and they had stayed well away from each other.
And now she was sitting next to him on a cramped American Airlines flight, facing the fact that she had to solve a murder with him.
Professionalism first, she reminded herself. You owe that to Angus. And to that other professor.
As soon as they got into a rental car and Daniel was driving them toward the Boston University campus, Remi got on her phone to look up Oliver Ruggles.
Remi quickly discovered that the reason she had never heard of him was because he had not made much of an impression on the academic community. He had earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Birmingham—which did not have one of the nation’s top programs—and had taught at various small institutions before ending up at Oxford Brookes.
Oxford Brookes, while situated in Oxford, was entirely separate from Oxford University. A small university with good programs in architecture and law, it was not known for anything else, certainly not history. The best program for that was just down the road at Oxford University, so close and yet so far.
That seemed to symbolize Ruggles’s career. He had only a few publications, all in second-tier journals, and no book publications. He didn’t even have a personal website.
He hadn’t done much better when he moved to the United States. He taught history at Tompkins Cortland Community College in Cortland, upstate New York. Remi had never heard of Cortland or the community college, or indeed of the much larger branch of the State University of New York in the same city.
Oliver Ruggles was one of those academics fated to obscurity. It was sad that his life had been cut short. Now he would never have a chance to climb out of that and prove himself.
Remi settled in to look at his list of publications and immediately saw a trend. He had written almost exclusively about the writings of Sir Thomas Malory, famous for writing Le Morte d’Arthur, which brought together many older stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He had also written some articles on the legend of the Holy Grail and the Mabinogion, a collection of mythological tales compiled in Wales in the twelfth century.
That got her thinking. Many researchers believed that the Mabinogion preserved pre-Christian Celtic legends that formed the early basis for the Grail legend.
So, he wrote about the Grail. That should have made him both popular and a bit suspect to the conservative academic establishment. Remi, with her cryptex research, certainly knew all about that. She had managed to overcome the skepticism. Ruggles had not.
She took a deeper dive into the search, trying to find his name on forums that talked about conspiracy theories, New Age religion, and neopaganism.
Nothing. If he had written for the fringe communities, he hadn’t used his real name.
“Find anything?” Daniel asked, keeping his eyes on the nearly empty highway. It was now past one in the morning.
“Ruggles wasn’t much of an academic. He mostly seemed to have researched King Arthur and the Grail legend.”
Daniel cursed under his breath. When Remi glanced at him, she saw him gripping the wheel so hard that the whites of his knuckles were clearly visible in the streetlight.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
For a moment, she thought that someone had cut them off or done something else stupid on the road, but she saw no one close.
Then she realized this was another one of Daniel’s strange mood swings. He got so upset and angry at such random things. On their first case together, he had muttered that he hated stained glass. Why in the world would someone hate stained glass?
“Did you ever read about the Holy Grail and King Arthur?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he growled.
Remi backed off. She had never understood these mood swings and now wasn’t the time to find out more.
She scrambled for something to say. “Anyway, I don’t see much connection to Angus MacPherson except a general similarity in their period of study and the method of death.”
Remi choked on those last few words.
Daniel cleared his throat. With a visible effort he said, “I’m sorry about your friend. Were you two close?”
“Colleagues. I suppose I would have called him a friend, but Americans use that term more freely than Europeans. We were certainly on good terms, and had a positive working relationship for, oh, more than ten years now.”
“Do you know anyone who would have wished him harm?”
“Angus? God, no. He was a fine man. No scandals with female graduate students or anything like that. In fact, the female students I knew all wanted him as an advisor because he never made a pass or stared at their bodies. That sort of behavior is all too common in academia.”
“Was he into … that stuff?”
“That stuff?”
Daniel waved an impatient hand. “Arthur. Holy Grail. That stuff.”
“Not that I know of. Of course, he would teach those subjects. All medieval history teachers do.”
“Any connection between the two? Did they know each other?”
“Not that I’m aware. I only saw Angus once, or at the very most twice, a year at conferences. And we’d exchange emails once a month or so. I’m afraid I don’t really know everything he was up to.”
“Well, once we get to his office, maybe you’ll see something I can’t see.”
They lapsed into silence, and it was not a comfortable one.
Remi almost felt relieved when they made it to campus. A call to campus security led them to the history department parking lot, where two security guards and a member of the Boston police department waited for them. The police officer was a young man, almost as wide as he was tall. He looked like he should be on the university football team.
The officer took over the conversation while the two security guards, looking nervous, hung back. Remi suspected they hadn’t had to deal with any murders before.
For her, it had become an all too common experience.
“Glad you could make it,” the officer said. “We could use some outside help on this. The victim had no known enemies and there are no witnesses. The office was ransacked, so we’re thinking robbery was the motive.”
The officer handed over a folder. Remi’s heart started hammering in her chest. That would be the preliminary report from the CSI team. It would contain photos of Angus, just like the initial crime scene photos sent to the FBI that she hadn’t looked at.
But she knew that she’d have to eventually.
“Let’s go,” Daniel said, taking it.
They walked to the ornate, gabled brick building. Remi’s mouth went dry, and she had to stop herself from shaking. A line of yellow police tape blocked the entrance, and a security guard stood on duty. At this hour, no one else was in sight. The campus was silent. The downstairs lights were on, as was a lone light two floors up.
That must be Angus’s office.
As they ducked under the yellow police tape and entered a spacious front hall, the police officer continued.
“The last person to have seen the victim alive, as far as we know, was the night janitor, who cleaned and locked up the building at eight last night. He says Professor MacPherson was the only person in the building at that time. The two said goodnight, and MacPherson promised to lock the front door behind him when he left. Apparently, it wasn’t unusual for MacPherson to stay late.
“The morning janitor opened up the building at six but didn’t go upstairs. The body was discovered by Ryan Andrews, a student of MacPherson’s, an hour later.”
“I’d like to speak with him,” Remi said.
“He asked me to call him anytime. He actually asked if the FBI would get involved in this case.”
Remi turned to him, surprised. “He did?”
“Yeah,” the officer said, looking at her curiously. “He asked for you by name.”
- Writer
