CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Jessie saw that the guard hadn’t fully processed the instruction and grabbed him by the shoulder, tugging him away from the door.
“Stay here.” Her voice was hushed as she undid her holster and rested her hand on her gun.
“Should I take out mine too?” Perry asked.
“Absolutely not,” she hissed.
Ryan took a step back into the hallway and was about to kick in the door when a shadow appeared in the frosted window. A second later, the door opened.
“What the hell is this all about?” Carroway demanded before he’d even fully come into view.
Ryan quickly holstered his gun, though he left his hand on it. Once the door opened wide, they got a good look at Dr. Marcus Carroway. He seemed like he’d had better days.
The man’s thinning hair was gray and haphazardly combed.
He had bifocals, which dangled from a thin chain around his neck.
He wore rumpled khaki slacks and had missed a button on his wrinkled button-down dress shirt.
His tie had been loosened and dangled below his belt buckle.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was blotchy.
If Jessie hadn’t already known that he was 59, she would have guessed that he was closer to 70.
“Dr. Carroway,” Ryan said, projecting calm in the face of the teacher’s agitation, “I’m Detective Hernandez with the LAPD. This is my partner, Ms. Hunt. We need to ask you a few questions.”
Carroway squinted at them both and then at Perry. “Tinker authorized their presence?”
“He did,” Perry said nervously.
“All right then. I guess you can come in.”
“Do you need me to come too?” Perry asked Ryan.
“I think we’re good.”
Jessie stepped in first and immediately saw what had made the loud thud earlier. A glass vase had fallen onto the rug beside Carroway’s desk. The fake flowers had tumbled out and were strewn over the floor.
“I got startled when Perry mentioned the police,” he explained, seeing where Jessie was looking, “and accidentally knocked that over. So you can take your hand off your weapon, Detective.”
He nodded at Ryan, whose fingers still rested on the top of the holster. They remained there despite the suggestion.
“Never mind then,” Carroway said with a shrug, sitting behind his desk and motioning to the two chairs in front of it. “What can I do for the LAPD, considering that we’re not even in L.A. County?”
He was right. Camarillo was technically in Ventura County, one county north. But they’d gone farther afield than this to pursue a case.
“We want to talk about your time as headmaster at Thornfield Academy,” Ryan said without preamble.
Jessie watched Carroway closely to see how he’d react. The man’s eyes went wide, which wasn’t a shock considering how his tenure there had ended. But she couldn’t gauge whether his surprise was related to anything other than that.
“What about it?”
“As we understand, it ended unceremoniously, with accusations of wrongdoing and your departure.”
“Those allegations were false,” Carroway hissed, pointing a shaking finger at Ryan. “The girl who made them did it out of malice.”
“And yet you resigned,” Jessie noted.
“I didn’t want to put my family through a trial,” he insisted.
“But by resigning, you gave the impression that the accusation was legitimate,” she said.
“An unintended consequence. I thought I could retire quietly to avoid the messiness. But in order to get the complaint dropped, I had to officially resign. Had I known the impact of that technicality, I would never have done it.”
Jessie found his claims dubious at best. To her, he sounded like a person trying to hold on to a sense of martyrdom because otherwise, he’d have to deal with what he’d done.
If the whole thing was B.S., she doubted that someone this arrogant and self-righteous would have caved.
His resignation suggested there was fire behind that smoke.
Amanda Krantz’s comments earlier this morning reinforced her suspicion.
But regardless of the truth, his agitation could be a boon to the investigation. Carroway hadn’t yet refused to talk. Rather, he was focused on defending himself. If he got exercised enough, maybe he’d let something slip. So she pushed.
“And yet resigning didn’t help. Your wife still left you, didn’t she?”
“That was about more than the student’s allegation,” he objected. “We had other problems that couldn’t be solved. Now I have a question for you. You’re spending all this time attacking me over a false, ‘alleged’ claim from a decade ago. What does that have to do with anything today?”
Jessie turned to Ryan. It was his turn to throw Carroway off guard while she watched.
“It appears that you remember Caroline Sheffield,” he observed.
“You obviously know that I do. What—has she made some new allegations? Isn’t there a statute of limitations on this kind of crap?”
“She’s dead,” Ryan said flatly. “She was murdered three nights ago.”
Carroway’s mouth was open, ready to go off on them.
But upon hearing Ryan, his jaw froze. It seemed to be in suspended animation.
After several seconds, he managed to gulp.
Then he reached for a glass of water on his desk.
As he took a sip, Jessie noticed his hand was shaking.
A bit of water spilled out of his mouth and dribbled down his cheek. He wiped it away quickly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he finally said. “But you can’t possibly think that I was involved.”
“Right now we’re following several leads,” Ryan lied. “But you’d admit that you had animosity toward Ms. Sheffield. You’ve already exhibited some of it here today.”
“That was a long time ago,” Carroway swore. “I haven’t thought about her in years. I only got upset because you brought it up and made it raw for me again.”
“But for all intents and purposes, she got you fired,” Ryan continued. “That’s why you’re teaching at a school in the middle of nowhere rather than serving as headmaster at a revered institution.”
“Camarillo Prep is highly regarded as well,” Carroway said huffily before seeming to remember that wasn’t the point. “Besides, if I were inclined to do something to Ms. Sheffield, why wouldn’t I have done it all those years ago? Or right after my wife left with my child?”
It was a fair question, but Jessie had one of her own. “How did you feel about Diana Hartwell?”
Carroway managed to look confused. “What?”
“She was killed two nights ago.”
“Jesus!” he muttered.
“And then there’s Jennifer Nash,” Ryan added. “She was murdered yesterday. They were students of yours, too.”
Carroway put the glass of water down on his desk. But even after he did, his hand still shook in fear. In fact, Jessie noted that his whole body was trembling now.
“Where were you the last three nights, Mr. Carroway?” Ryan asked, keeping the pressure on.”
“Doctor Carroway,” the man shot back as he shook his head. “Is this what it’s come to? I’m a schoolteacher. Do I really have to provide you with an alibi?”
Jessie wasn’t sure what his job had to do with it, but kept the focus on his answers.
“If you want us to eliminate you as a person of interest,” she told him, “I’m afraid so.”
Still shaking his head in disbelief, he pulled out his phone. “Give me a second to check my calendar.”
As he swiped, his body language wasn’t so much scared as angry now. Maybe that’s why his hand was still quivering. Or maybe not. Suddenly, Jessie had a flash of realization.
“Are you ready?” Carroway asked them, looking up from his phone.
“Yes, but can you please write down your whereabouts as well?” she asked, following a hunch.
“You’re the cops,” he objected. “Can’t you do it?”
Jessie looked at his hands, which were still trembling slightly. She thought of the shaking water glass, of the poorly tied tie, the missed shirt button, the sloppily combed hair. It all fits.
“Dr. Carroway, how long have you had Parkinson’s Disease?”
For a moment, the man looked stunned, as did Ryan. But then Carroway put his phone down on his desk and sighed heavily.
“For about three years now,” he said quietly.
“In fact, I was diagnosed right before I got this job. I was between positions and didn’t have insurance at the time.
My doctor is a long-time friend who happens to be on the board of trustees here.
He took pity on me and put in a good word for me.
That’s how I got hired. It’s gotten significantly worse since then.
I’ve gone from stage 1 to stage 3 since my diagnosis. ”
“I’m sorry,” Jessie told him.
“Thank you,” he said, before adding with bitterness, “so you want to know where I was the last three nights.”
He started to go over his whereabouts each evening.
Ryan took notes, but Jessie only half-listened.
Her mind was racing. Marcus Carroway might be a scumbag and likely even a sexual predator.
But if his Parkinson’s diagnosis was verified, he might not be a murderer.
If he didn’t even have the strength or dexterity to properly tie a tie, she didn’t see how he could strangle anyone.
They would need to confirm his condition and his alibi. But Jessie already had a bad feeling: they were back to square one.