The Square Root of Murder (11 page)

“Just his regular office stuff. But his desk was a mess and, you know, it’s usually in perfect order.”

“Did the police tell you what they found?”

“They didn’t tell me much, except that Dr. Appleton had been poisoned, and that they were talking to everyone in the building. But I knew it was more than just routine with me because they asked me things like did I work more closely with Dr. Appleton than the undergraduates, and did I have a key to the chemical cabinet.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I just said how Dr. Appleton was a strict teacher, but people respected him for it, and I was glad I had him for an adviser. I guess all that was another lie, but I wasn’t going to make myself look worse.”

“And the key to cabinet?

“I told them the truth but then when they asked me where it was, I couldn’t find it. It’s always on a separate key ring in my purse, the one you gave me, with the metal pi symbol on it? But I went to get it, and it wasn’t there, Dr. Knowles. I lost it.”

Or someone took it.

I didn’t know too many legal terms, but premeditated was one that stood out. If someone went to the trouble of stealing Rachel’s key ahead of time, then Keith’s murder wasn’t a random act, in the heat of an argument, but a well thought out frame-up of Rachel.

From outside, I heard the sound of a plane taking off. At least this time it was not an emergency mission, but one of the many small plane owners treating friends or relatives to a bird’s-eye view of the beautiful New England landscape.

“Rachel, you said Dr. Appleton’s desk was a mess. Did you see anything in particular that was . . . out of place? Papers strewn about? Anything like that?”

She frowned, thinking, then shook her head. “Not that I remember. I think his lamp was knocked over, but I’m not sure. I was only in there, like, a minute.”

“So no yellow computer paper everywhere, for example?”

“You mean like what we use for drafts?”

“Maybe.”

Rachel bit her lip. More thinking. “No, I think I’d remember that.”

I tried to keep track of the inconsistencies without taking notes, which I was afraid would intimidate my witness. The crime scene people had not found the cake Rachel said she left outside the door, but they had found pages of Rachel’s thesis on yellow paper, which Rachel had not seen.

A medium hard puzzle, I told myself, not impossible, once I have a little more information. And as long as I can trust Rachel to tell the truth from now on.

“Did you see anyone else in the corridor, when you arrived or when you left?”

“No, you know no one stays around on Friday afternoons except for a party.”

“Did you see Woody, by any chance?”

Rachel twisted her lips in concentration, as she did when she was assembling a graphing lab for me. “I might have heard him. There was definitely some noise when I got there. It could have been Woody’s cart rolling down the other wing.”

I wondered why the police hadn’t told Rachel that pages of her thesis had been crumpled up and thrown around the late Keith Appleton’s office. I debated whether to tell her now. Virgil hadn’t exactly sworn me to secrecy.

Another time, I decided. Rachel needed a breather from her intense confession.

And I had a cop to meet.

As I drove toward town, rolling around in my head was a big question: What obligation did I have to tell the police about Rachel’s lie? It wasn’t as if she’d confessed to murder, but the simple fact of withholding information from the police was a crime, wasn’t it? If I didn’t report Rachel, were we dealing with crime squared?

I wondered if I could trust Virgil with my question. I doubted it. Not after the ridiculous performance I’d given last night. I had to hope that Rachel herself, who’d declined my invitation to accompany me to the police station, would see the light and be completely forthcoming before she had to be grilled under a bare bulb.

The Henley skyline was coming into view, the golden dome of its city hall sparkling in the sun. The dome essentially
was
Henley’s skyline, sitting atop its tallest building. Henley was a three-exit town these days, four if you counted the outlying one that led to and from the airfield. In the direction I was traveling, the next exit would take me to what was formerly an industrial area where all that was left were rows of abandoned factories, a few of which had been turned into warehouses. The following exit ramp ended up downtown, where the police station awaited me; the one after that, the last exit, practically flowed into the college campus.

My appointed time with Detective Archie loomed in my mind, but I had about an hour and forty-five minutes to spare. Thanks to my cheekiness, which put me in an apologetic mood, he now had an advantage, even more than his cop status gave him. I wondered what his birthday was. Knowing it always helped me get a handle on a person. Bruce claimed that knowing a person’s favorite movie—if you could upload only one to your smartphone—told him everything he needed to know.

I’d done nothing to prepare for my two brushes with law enforcement this weekend. Big mistakes. I had to turn that around and I couldn’t do it without trying to anticipate what Archie might ask and prepare an answer that spoke of complete cooperation.

Either that, or I needed more information in my own arsenal.

Without further thought, I drove past the downtown exit and the police station and headed for the off-ramp that led to campus. I couldn’t help myself. I had the gall to think that I might find something the police overlooked, maybe a scrap with scientific notation they weren’t used to. To be honest, I also wanted to check on Franklin Hall. The only way I could explain that, if anyone asked, was that I was worried about the building and how it had survived this crushing blow. A silly reaction, as if the building itself had been affected by Keith’s murder.

From a distance of a few hundred yards, nothing looked different. The administration building tower, taller than Franklin Hall’s, was still intact; the surrounding brick buildings had the same aura of steam as yesterday from the heat wave that wouldn’t quit. The various grottos with statues of our founders were standing in their proper places, as were the small fountain behind Admin and the blooming flowers around the library.

There was a significant lack of fun-loving students kicking up sprays of water.

I’d driven onto the campus from the south side, between Admin and the library. The walkways were empty, but that wasn’t too strange for a Saturday afternoon, especially one that was a good beach day for those lucky enough to have houses or friends with houses on the Cape.

The lot closest to Franklin Hall had no cars. Evacuated, you might say. I didn’t know what I expected, but the building I worked in stood there, same as always, red brick, one big solid figure shaped like an L with a slightly thicker short side. I saw no crime scene tape on the outside of the building, and no police presence. Had the facility I called home already been cleared by the police? All the better for them to be able to concentrate on interviewing people. Lucky for me.

I got out of my car and walked slowly up to the building. With every step I had to remind myself that there was no longer a dead body on the fourth floor. That didn’t mean there was no one lurking on the first floor—my floor—however. I scanned the windows, not knowing which I preferred, signs of life or of emptiness. All that reflected back to me were the stark rays of the sun.

I climbed the stately steps under the clock tower, fumbling for my key to the large, heavy front door. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to use it. I was almost never the first one to arrive. I preferred late morning classes and had the seniority to make the schedule work for me. When I did drop in on an occasional Saturday, I’d find at least a few people, students or faculty, cramming in the science library or grinding out what they hoped would be useful data in one of the labs at the last minute.

Not today. Inside, the building was as creepy as I thought it would be. The interior hallways were always relatively dark, and even more so now since Woody drew all the shades in the labs and classrooms in the summer. The contrast with the glaring sunlight outside blinded me for several seconds, the short fluorescent light in the display case at the entrance offering very little help. I wished I had Bruce’s fifteen thousand dollar goggles.

I half expected to see Keith walking down the corridor toward me with his quick, purposeful stride, calling out a greeting then immediately engaging me in a discussion of a contentious issue. Faculty perks, student government representation on faculty committees, science requirements for humanities majors. Not even the choice of graduation speaker escaped his scrutiny. Of all the faculty, he’d be the one most likely to be here on a Saturday or Sunday. He’d be in a trademark striped shirt, long-sleeved in the winter, short-sleeved in the summer. His light brown hair would be neatly combed and his shoes polished. Never in a T-shirt as the rest of us would wear on an off day; never in jeans.

I regretted all the times I’d joined in making fun of his narrow wardrobe choices, and would have given anything to have him back.

Rachel’s presence was here today also. She’d taken it upon herself to manage the glass-fronted display case, the first thing a visitor saw upon entering the building. It had gone for years with yellowed construction paper stapled to the back, broken pushpins holding a wildly out-of-date class schedule and various illegible notices, and an array of deceased insects on the ledge at the bottom.

Rachel had cleaned it all out and made a banner for the top of the case, an attractive photo presentation of the people and facilities of the four Franklin Hall departments. She’d stripped out the old construction paper and installed a clean corkboard. The former eyesore was now an inviting source of information that everyone checked on a regular basis.

This week she’d posted what looked like an oversized scrapbook page about a group of high school seniors who’d spent a week in a special program to prepare them for their first college math classes. She’d arranged photos, problem sheets, and contact information, along with souvenir ticket stubs from a performance they’d all attended. I studied Rachel’s image in a photo of her in the student lounge with a crowd of teenagers around her. She was smiling broadly; it was clear they loved her.

I knew if she’d been able to, Rachel would already have put up photos from yesterday’s party for the new Dr. Hal Bartholomew.

This was not the profile of a killer.

I had no desire to check in at my own office. I wanted to get in and get out of the building in a short time to minimize the chances of meeting danger, that is, coming upon a killer. Never mind that it made no sense that he’d still be hanging around. I had to admit also that I was a little creeped out at the possibility of finding an unwelcome something, or someone, on my own office floor.

I needed to get up to the fourth floor. My quandary: take the elevator or use the stairs? Ordinarily, unless I was carrying a heavy load of books and papers, I’d walk up, as a gesture toward fitness. Today I was lugging only a light fabric purse. But stairwells were notoriously scary, full of hollow sounds and creaking boards. I recalled a few dozen movies where nasty things happened through the door marked “STAIRS.” Didn’t fugitives enter and exit that way? Didn’t hit men wait there?

Riding in the elevator wasn’t that appealing either. Bruce, I knew would have reminded me of the elevator scene in
The Silence of the Lambs
. Brownouts were all too common during heat waves like the one we were suffering through. Even barring nefarious characters lurking about today, if there was a power outage, I’d have no hope of rescue.

In the interests of speed, and trusting technology more than the criminal element, real or imagined, I took the elevator. The ages old car rattled up past physics to the biology floor, where unpleasant odors seeped through the cracks, and then to chemistry. There was something to the old joke about how you could tell which floor you were on in Franklin Hall: If it smells, it’s biology; if there’s a glow, it’s chemistry; if something’s not working, it’s physics. No one had come up with a good description of mathematics. That suited me just fine. I’d never tell.

The trip seemed endless. I pushed the button for the fourth floor repeatedly. It was a wonder I didn’t accidentally hit the red alarm knob. Finally, I stepped out in one piece and breathed a sigh of relief.

Keith’s office was far down the hallway to the right, the last office in the crook of the L, overlooking the tennis courts. Every step I took toward that goal generated a loud echo. Every intake of breath seemed to bring a new, unpleasant smell to my nose.

I walked by familiar signs on the bulletin boards on both sides of the hallway.

My favorite had always been the cartoon-illustrated flyer listing “Six Major Dangers” in a chemistry lab. Burns, fires, spills, cuts, hazardous waste, and the one that stood out among all the rest today: poisons.

The vast number of warning signs seemed to be mocking me as I made my way toward Keith’s office. “DON’T HEAT A STOPPERED FLASK,” said one. “WEAR GLOVES WHEN CLEANING SPILLS,” shouted another, and “KNOW PROPER DISPOSAL PROCEDURES,” read another.

I would have bet that Keith was responsible for many of the signs and warnings. He was probably the most safety and security conscious faculty member in the building. A lot of good it had done him.

As I approached Keith’s office, I could see that the crime scene tape had fallen from the doorframe, the last several feet of it lying in a heap to the side, daring me to go in. I reasoned that a dangling piece of tape simply meant that a policeman had been a little sloppy in removing the warning. He’d fully intended to let the world know the room was now open to the public. Like me.

For no good reason, I used the hem of my shirt to turn the knob. You might have thought I’d chosen my wardrobe in anticipation of breaking and entering. I was wearing a brown paisley top, which wouldn’t show dust marks, over black cotton pants. The real reason for the conservative dress was to look serious for my interview at the police station, in case Archie’s personality ran parallel to that of Henley’s dean. The door opened easily and I stepped into Keith’s office, as I had many times in the past.