Split Second

54

“So what do you think?” asked Michelle as they were driving off. “He might have been telling the truth. And maybe he thought he’d be the first on the scene to comfort the poor widow. Capitalize on his friend’s death at the same time he’s playing Good Samaritan.”

“So he’s a creep. But maybe not a murderer.”

“I don’t know. He clearly bears watching. I don’t like it that he withheld being at the Fairmount all these years and that he was planning to marry Regina. That alone puts him high up on my suspect list.”

Michelle jumped as though she’d been stabbed. “Wait a minute. Sean, this may sound crazy, but hear me out.” He looked at her expectantly. “Jorst admits to being at the Fairmount. He’s in love with Regina Ramsey. What if he’s the one who talked Ramsey into killing Ritter? He clearly knew that Ramsey hated Ritter. He was his friend and colleague. Ramsey would listen to him.”

“But Kate said the man she overheard wasn’t Jorst.”

“But she couldn’t be sure of that. Jorst might have changed his voice a little because he knew Kate was in the house. Okay, so Jorst is the one who makes a pact with Ramsey. They go to the hotel, each is armed.”

King picked up the thread of her deductions. “And then Ramsey fires, but Jorst doesn’t. He slips out, hides his gun in the supply closet, where Loretta sees him, and then races off to tell Regina and Kate.”

“With the thought of marrying the widow at some point.”

“Well, he waited a long time to ask her,” commented King.

“No, he might have asked before and she might have said no. Or he wanted to wait a reasonable time so there’d be no suspicion. Or maybe it took that long for Jorst to make Regina fall in love with him.” She looked at him anxiously. “So what do you think?”

“It makes sense, Michelle, it really does. But then Regina died. Jorst didn’t end up with her.”

“Do you really think Regina Ramsey was murdered?”

“Well, if Jorst is to be believed and they were getting married, why would she have killed herself?”

King said slowly, “And Kate knew they were talking marriage. And Jorst said that Kate seemed to be okay with it.”

Michelle said, “But what if she wasn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Kate loved her father. She told me that if her mother hadn’t left him, he might not have killed Ritter. But he does and he’s dead. Then her mother is going to marry a colleague of her father’s. And then she dies.”

“So you’re saying Kate murdered her mother?”

Michelle put up her hands. “I’m just saying it’s a possibility. I don’t want to believe it. I like Kate.”

He sighed. “It’s like a balloon. You punch one side, and another bump pops out on another side.” He glanced at her. “Did you put together those timelines I asked for?”

Michelle nodded and pulled a notepad out of her bag. “Arnold Ramsey was born in 1949. He graduated high school in 1967 and attended Berkeley from 1967 until he received his Ph.D. in 1974. Arnold and Regina Ramsey were married that year too, by the way. Then the two bumped along until he took the position at Atticus in 1982. Kate was about a year old then.” She stopped and looked over at him. He had a confused look on his face. “What’s bothering you?”

“Well, according to what Kate told us, Ramsey was supposed to have been involved in some war protest in which maybe a police officer died. That started all his problems. Now, she told us that Berkeley reluctantly let him graduate with his Ph.D. because he had completed all the work for it, including his dissertation. So the incident must have happened about the time he was actually graduating.”

“That’s right. So?”

“Well, if he received his Ph.D. in 1974, he wouldn’t have been protesting the Vietnam War. Nixon signed the cease-fire in early 1973 and, though both sides sniped at each other about violations of the cease-fire pact, fighting didn’t start up again until 1975. And if the incident with the police officer happened before Ramsey earned his Ph.D., I bet Berkeley would have just canned him.”

Michelle sat back. “I guess that’s right.”

“And if Ramsey wasn’t protesting the war in 1974 when the police officer was killed, what was he protesting?”

Michelle suddenly snapped her fingers. “Nineteen seventy-four? You mentioned Nixon. That was when Watergate was happening. Right?”

King nodded thoughtfully. “And it makes sense that Ramsey would be protesting against a guy like Nixon, calling for his resignation, which he finally gave in August of that year.”

“But Kate said it was a war protest in L.A.”

“No, she said that’s what her mother said. And she said Regina had been drinking heavily during that time. She easily might have gotten the date, event and even the place wrong.”

“So the incident that involved the officer being killed might have been in Washington and not L.A. and was about Nixon and not Vietnam?”

“If so, we should be able to find out details about that.”

“And the law firm that interceded on Ramsey’s behalf. Do you think that’s D.C.-based too?”

“I guess we’ll find that out.” King pulled out his phone and punched in some numbers. “I’ll check in with Joan. She’s great at digging up stuff.” However, there was no answer and King left a message.

King continued, “If somebody got him off, and a law firm was involved, that’s something tangible we should be able to track down.”

“Not necessarily. You can’t possibly account for the whereabouts of everybody back then. Hell, Jorst could have been throwing rocks at City Hall in L.A., and we’d never be able to prove it. And finding anybody to talk about it might well be impossible. And if there’s nothing in the public record, poof, that’s it.”

King nodded. “What you say is completely logical. But we still need to check it out. It’ll cost us nothing but time.”

“Yeah,” said Michelle. “But I’ve got a bad feeling we’re running out of that really fast.”