Split Second (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 1)

“I was asked all that years ago. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.”

“All right,” said Michelle. “How about anybody coming around in the weeks leading up to the Ritter shooting? Anybody you didn’t know?”

“Arnold had few friends.”

King cocked his head at her. “He’s Arnold now?”

“I think I have the right to call him whatever I want.”

“So he had few friends. Any potential assassins lurking in there?” asked Michelle.

“That’s hard to say, since I didn’t know Arnold was one. Assassins don’t tend to broadcast their intent, do they?”

“Sometimes they do,” responded King. “Dr. Jorst said that your father would come in and rant and rave to him about Clyde Ritter and how he was destroying the country. Did he ever do that around you?”

In response Kate stood and went to the window that looked out on Franklin Street, where cars and bikes drifted by and students sat on the steps of the building.

“What does it all matter now? One assassin, two, three, a hundred! Who gives a shit?” She turned and stared at them, her arms stubbornly folded over her bosom.

“Maybe you’re right,” said King. “Then again, it might explain why your father did what he did.”

“He did what he did because he hated Clyde Ritter and everything he stood for,” she said vehemently. “He never quite lost that drive to rock the establishment.”

Michelle looked at some of the political posters on her walls. “Professor Jorst told us you’re following in your father’s footsteps as far as ‘rocking the establishment.’ ”

“Lots of things my father did were good and worthy. And what reasonable person wouldn’t detest a man like Clyde Ritter?”

“Unfortunately you’d be surprised,” said King.

“I read all the reports and stories that came out afterwards. I’m surprised no one did a TV movie about it. I guess it wasn’t important enough.”

King said, “A man can hate someone and not choose to kill him. By all accounts your father was a passionate man who firmly believed in certain causes, and yet he’d never engaged in any violent act before.” At this Kate Ramsey seemed to twitch slightly. King noticed but continued his line of thought. “Even during the Vietnam War when he was young and angry and might have picked up a gun and shot someone, Arnold Ramsey chose not to. So given that history, your father, a tenured professor in middle age with a daughter he loved, could plausibly have made the choice not to violently act on his hatred of Ritter. But he might have if another factor was involved.”

“Like what?” Kate asked sharply.

“Like someone else, someone he respected, asking him to. Asking him to join in killing Ritter, in fact.”

“That’s impossible. My father was the only one who shot Ritter.”

“What if the other person got cold feet and didn’t shoot?”

Kate sat down at her desk, her nimble fingers once more playing their geometric games with the pencil and ruler.

“You have evidence of that?” she asked without looking up.

“What if we did? Would it jog your memory? Does it bring anyone to mind?”

Kate started to say something, then stopped and shook her head.

King glanced at a photo on the shelf and went over and picked it up. It was of Kate and her mother, Regina. It must have been a more recent picture than the one they’d seen in Jorst’s office, since Kate looked to be about nineteen or twenty. Regina was still a very lovely woman, but there was something in her eyes, a weariness that probably symbolized her life’s tragic circumstances.

“I take it you miss your mother.”

“Of course, I do. What sort of question is that?” Kate reached over and took the photo from him and put it back on the shelf.

“I understand they were separated at the time of his death?”

“Yeah, so? Lots of marriages break up.”