8

The walkways and paths through the campus were normally bustling, teeming with professors and students on the move. The same paths were now vacant, only traveled by leaves and debris shoved along by occasional gusts. I put my hood up and left the Shack, aimed straight for the library, and worked around puddles and mud slicks that were gradually turning into half-frozen sleaze.

While the campus grounds were empty, the library was not; there might not have been any electricity, but that didn’t stop some the more studious of the collegiates. There was enough natural lighting in the library that—unless you went deeper than the main stacks or went into the periodical archives—you’d be able to read and work just fine. The main reading rooms on the left and right of the entrance turned into a makeshift classroom; students and professors talked in small groups, sat in corners and journaled, or jammed onto one of the meaty couches guarding the newspaper rack.

Local newspapers were a no-go; a good portion of the county was still staggering from the storm, I assumed, so expecting the printing presses to be operational was foolish. The nationals were on the rack, draped over each wooden dowel like a drying shower towel. I grabbed one: nothing. Another: the same. The third one worked, though I had to dig through the scattered news in the fourth section.

As short as the article was, it still cleared up a few points. DEATH AT SMALL NEW YORK COLLEGE, the headline proclaimed, followed by a barrage of short, choppy Hemingway sentences reveling in their inverted pyramid glory. The article explained how the death was still under investigation by local law enforcement. They couldn’t be reached for comment. And the deceased was definitely not a student, nor—interestingly—a member of the custodial staff. Seemed it was one of the men that worked in the duplicating office. The article didn’t go into any further detail on the murder itself; I guessed that the facts would leak out in time.

I set the paper back on the rack and found a good seat in the corner of the reading room, away from most of the commotion. I needed to think, and not about Linda. Most of the intimate chatter and whispered conversation was accomplished with a secretive flair, like they were afraid someone, maybe that guy the next table over, would hear them, even though they knew that’s what every other whispered exchanged was likely to be about.

If this was the case, word was getting around. Word would spread, friends would tell friends, who would tell more friends in class or in the dining hall, and others would hear, and tell their friends. It was a college-sized game of Telephone, only with murder acting as the dial tone. The details would change, rumors would grow and mutate, with deformed strands of gossip DNA floating through the ether looking for more hosts to cling to and change. Soon, I thought, a good portion of the campus would assume the vice president of academic affairs killed himself with a tea ball.

It hadn’t taken much, but Matt had convinced me the prior day—either I was going to sit on my hands do whatever I damn well could to help figure this thing out. But there were too many variables missing, too many puzzles pieces missing from the box to get a good idea of what’s in the picture, and until we searched some more and found the pieces under the couch cushions or in the guest room, we’d be flailing blindly for answers.

How could we do this? Talking to the police directly was worth a shot, but that could flip-flop unpredictably into us just making the police mad. Asking a few questions would be a good initial step, but we had to prepare for the steps to come. We could break into the evidence room—no. We could sneak into the police station and stage an incident so one of us gets a photo of the investigation reports amidst the chaos—no no no. We could observe the scene, try to figure out what happened through context clues—possibly. We could dress up as c—can't even finish that.

I would get ahold of Matt--Steve and Guy were too excitable. We'd investigate the scene from the top of another building, maybe one of the study rooms on the fringe of the library, see what we could see. But asking the police was the first step.

Hands in my jacket pockets, hood still up, I marched from the reading room, out the massive entrance doors, down the steps, sneakers crunching hardened grass, and reaching the police tape wall to ask to the first plainclothes detective in sight: "Hey, can I find out more about what happened?"

It was one of the ones staring at me the day before. He squinted, worked the filter of the cigarette over to the other side of his mouth with a lip twitch. "Huh. Nope."

And that solved that.