Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

History on the Bedroom Wall by Rebecca K. Jones and Josh Pachter

Rebecca Jones, 23, is a second-year law student at the University of Arizona. Born in Germany and raised in Ohio, she went to high school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut and double-majored in history and psychology at Middlebury College. She comes by her love of crime fiction honestly: Her father, Josh Pachter, has contributed stories and translations to EQMM since his own Department of First Stories appearance in 1968. He collaborated with Rebecca on this, her first, story.

I’ll never believe it was just a coincidence, not if I live to be forty. Somehow, I’m convinced, Ani knew.

It was a quarter past seven on the last Saturday morning of fall semester. I was putting the finishing touches on my physiological psychology term project, which had been due on Friday — the day after Katie dumped me. Fortunately, Professor Griffen was a good guy, and he’d given me a twenty-four-hour extension. I had three and a half of those hours left to cross my t’s and dot my i’s.

I’d been listening to a lot of Ani DiFranco since the split — Katie had recommended her, and as much as I hated to admit it, I actually liked her and her music.

“Love is a piano dropped from a fourth-story window,” she sang, “and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I had my stereo whispering for once, instead of blaring. There’d been a big party over at the Ross Townhouses the night before, but I’d been squirreled away in my friend Perveen’s senior-thesis carrel in the library, struggling to find the last connections between the neural structures involved in love and addiction, so I’d skipped it. This had been the last big party of the term, though, so I imagine most everyone else had been there. Now, just after seven a.m., it was quiet on Stew 2, a coed hall, and all signs pointed to it remaining quiet until eleven or so, which was why the assertive knock at my door took me by surprise. Except for Dee, who was by then surely folded into the full lotus position in Hepburn Lounge, everyone else in the dorm ought to have been sleeping it off.

“Come in,” I called, not looking up from my laptop.

The knock sounded again, louder this time.

Annoyed, I pushed away from my desk and went to the door.

Standing in the hall was a complete stranger. How had he gotten into the building? The Midd-wide access-card system had recently been changed to twenty-four-hour security, and now only students, faculty, and campus police could enter Middlebury College’s dormitories without an escort. The stranger wasn’t in uniform — he wore a conservative gray suit and held a snap-brim hat in his right hand — so I knew he wasn’t a campus cop. He was old, too old to be a dad, and there was a scowl on his lined face which seemed somehow more sad than threatening.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I’m looking for Ally,” he said, leaning forward against the doorjamb. “Is she in?”

“Ally? No, sorry,” I said, “there’s no Ally here.”

“Sign says Ally.” He frowned, pointing at one of the postings on my door.

I glanced at the cardboard square and laughed. “Ally,” I explained, “as in the Allied Powers. Not like a deserted alley. It’s a job description, not a name. My name’s Max, and I’m officially a junior counselor and unofficially an ally, what we call a ‘safe space’ — kids on the floor who want to talk about their sexuality without fear of being judged can come to me. All us Residential Life staff members are allies, it’s sort of part of the job.” I caught myself before launching into an op-ed piece on the importance of education and acceptance in the gay community and got back to the point. “Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want? And how did you—?”

“I’m Detective Branigan, Max,” he interrupted, flipping open a leather wallet and showing me a gold shield with the words “Burlington PD” on it. “I’m with the Homicide Bureau.”

I took a step back into my room, away from him. “H-homicide?” I stammered. “What — what are you doing here?”

His scowl deepened. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, Max, but one of the kids on this hall died sometime last night.”

“Died?” I repeated, bewildered. “One of mine? Are you — are you sure?”

He nodded sadly. “I’m sure. Her roommate found the body and called it in. She’s already identified her, but, since you’re the JC on the floor, well, we’d like you to confirm the identification before we notify the parents.”

There were a hundred questions I probably should have asked, but somehow I couldn’t think of any of them.

One of my girls was dead? I had no idea how to react, how to respond. This was something they hadn’t covered in my JC training.

My heart pounding dully in my chest, I followed him as he left my doorway and walked next-door to the women’s bathroom.

Usually deserted at this early hour on a weekend, the bathroom now was bustling with activity. In the middle of a circle of policemen, a white sheet covered what had to be the dead girl’s body.

Detective Branigan moved to the figure’s head and pulled the sheet away from her face.

And that was when the piano finished its four-story freefall and slammed into me.

The dead girl was Katie.

The next several hours went by in a blur. Someone — it must have been me, although I don’t remember — called a floor meeting and told the rest of the hall. We were all in shock, of course, completely devastated. I think everyone cried, even Jake, our token football player. I know I did.

Afterwards, Gavin started planning a memorial service for Katie — which Katie herself would have found way ironic. The day before, early Friday afternoon, Gavin had stormed into my room, totally upset. He and Katie had gone to lunch together, he’d told me, as they did every Friday, and in the salad line at Proctor he’d asked her out to dinner.

“On a date?” Katie’d said. “Have you lost your mind?”

And then she’d laughed at him.

Gavin, of course, had been mortified. He’d dropped his tray and sped back to Stewart, heading immediately to my room to tell me what had happened and to ask for my advice.

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this — I certainly didn’t say it to Gavin — but I was secretly pleased. Katie had dumped me on Thursday afternoon, claiming she was tired of hiding, tired of not being able to tell her friends about our relationship. If anyone had found out that I was dating one of my freshmen, though — well, I would have been fired, for starters, probably bounced out of the dorm, and possibly even suspended from school. I’d believed Katie when she’d told me that that was the reason she was breaking up with me, and her refusal to go out with Gavin was reassuring. I told myself that as soon as the year was over and my JC obligations were history, we could go back to the way things had been between us, pick up where we’d left off. That’s why I’d let her keep the red Hingham Hockey sweatshirt she’d swiped off my chair one chilly October evening when we’d been watching a DVD in my room.

Anyway, once I’d finally convinced Gavin that this was not the end of his undergraduate love life, I’d booted him out of my room. As I ushered him out the door, I spotted Ethan, his roommate, disappearing down the hall.

Perfect. How much of our conversation had that little sneak overheard?

Later, after the floor meeting, by the time I remembered Professor Griffen’s paper, my deadline extension had come and gone. My heart wasn’t even near it, let alone in it, but I managed to focus enough to finish proofreading the last couple of pages and e-mail it off to him with an explanation. I was pretty sure he’d understand — and if not, well, whatever.

Late Saturday afternoon, I was lying on my bed, still in shock. Katie was dead. She was dead. And the policeman who was investigating her death was a homicide cop. Was it possible that she’d been murdered?

I was curled up in the fetal position, cupping my iPod in my hands, watching a video of her I’d taken late one night with my digital camera’s video-capture mode.

Late nights were the only times we had ever really been able to be alone. She’d wait for her roommate Dee to fall asleep and the hallway to clear, then slip silently past Gavin and Ethan’s room and the bathroom and into mine, where we’d sit up till all hours, mostly just talking about everything under the sun, until it was time for her to slip back down the hall before the earlybirds began to stir.

In the video, Katie was holding her hairbrush like a microphone and singing along with Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” with all the energy and conviction of an American Idol audition. Her long blond hair flew as she shook her head to the beat, her blue eyes sparkling like sapphires as they reflected the glow from the desk lamp I’d pointed at her to illuminate the scene.

Although I wasn’t wearing my headphones — I didn’t think I could handle listening to Katie attempting to match Ezra Koenig’s falsetto just yet — I didn’t hear a knock, so it surprised me to see Detective Branigan’s head peek around the edge of my open door. As surreptitiously as I could, I slipped my iPod beneath my pillow.

“I know this is a bad time, Max,” he said, “but can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

I waved him to my desk chair, which he swung around to face me.

“I need to ask you some questions.” He spoke quietly. “Do you think you can handle that?”

“Can you tell me what happened to her, first?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How did she die?”

He tapped a Winston out of a pack, looked around for an ashtray, and when I shook my head, put his lighter away and slowly rolled the unlit cigarette between his palms. “We’re not sure yet,” he admitted. “The cause of death seems to have been a blow to the head — but there just wasn’t enough blood in the bathroom for her to have died there. We think she must have died somewhere else and then been moved into the bathroom afterwards. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

“So she was murdered?”

“I’m afraid so.” He wasn’t the least bit afraid, I thought, but I knew what he meant. “Look, Max, I’m truly sorry you lost a friend, but I—”

“No, it’s all right,” I interrupted. “We need to find out who did this. How can I help?”

He pulled a little spiral notepad out of his inside jacket pocket and flipped it open. “For starters, tell me where you were last night.”

The question stunned me. “Am I a suspect?”

“At this point,” he said, “I’m just trying to get a sense of who was where when it happened.”

I had to think for a moment: Last night seemed so far away. “I went to the library after dinner,” I said, “around seven-thirty. My friend Perveen, she’s a senior, she loaned me her thesis carrel. I had to work on my psych paper, and I wanted to be somewhere where I wouldn’t be disturbed. Somewhere along the line, I just couldn’t concentrate any longer—” I paused again, making sure I had it as right as I could get it. “I guess it must have been around one a.m., so I packed it in and came back here. I thought about stopping by my friend Larry’s room, but then I remembered that he’s gone home for the weekend to study for finals.”

“Did anyone see you in the library?”

“I–I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone I knew.”

“And where were you at three-fifteen?”

“Here, sound asleep. Why? Is that when—?”

He flipped back several pages. “According to the computer records, that’s when Katie used her access card to let herself into the dorm.”

I frowned. “That’s awfully late for Katie. She never stays out past, I don’t know, maybe two?”

He made a note. “I see.” He let a moment go by, and then he closed his notebook and looked straight into my eyes. “You seem to be taking this really hard, Max. Were you and Katie particularly close?”

I swallowed. Did he know about us? How could he? I’d never told anyone about our relationship. Had Katie?

“We were pretty good friends,” I finally said. “She was one of my freshmen here on the floor, of course, so I saw her all the time. We hung out. We were on the Student Activities Board together, and she used to ask me for help with her psych homework — she was a history major, she knew all about what people did, but sometimes she had trouble understanding why they did it.”

“I have the same problem in my line of work,” he said, nodding. Maybe he didn’t know about our relationship, after all. “Was there anyone who disliked Katie? Anyone she fought with?”

For that one, I didn’t need to think before answering. “Dee,” I said. “Her roommate. She and Katie fought all the time. They fought last night, actually, before the picnic.”

“Picnic?”

“They — Katie and Dee — Gavin and Ethan, too, actually — they were all in the same first-year seminar, Introduction to the Sociology of Gender. Professor Farmer always has a late-night picnic for his seminar students at his house at the end of the term. It’s indoors, I don’t know why he calls it a picnic, but he does. He lives a mile or so out of town, north on Route Seven. Anyway, before they left for the picnic, Dee and Katie got into a huge argument. Katie thought Dee had stolen her iPod. She accused her of it, and Dee went crazy — it was awful. They were both yelling at each other. Their room is three doors down the hall, but I could hear them from here. I went over and told them to knock it off, and Katie came here for a minute to tell me what had happened. She actually—” I swallowed back a lump in my throat — “she was sitting right there where you’re sitting.”

He gave me a minute to compose myself. When I started breathing again, he resumed his questioning. “Anyone else? Anyone she recently had issues with?”

Should I tell him about Gavin?

He sensed my hesitation. “Anything you can give us may help,” he said kindly.

I drew in a breath and decided to risk it. “Yesterday, this guy on the hall, Gavin, asked her out. Katie said no — she wasn’t interested in being in a relationship, I think, and, besides, Gavin’s not really her type. He came to me, told me about it — Gavin did, I mean. I calmed him down, reminded him that one ‘no’ from one girl wasn’t the end of the world. He was pretty steamed about the situation when he stormed in here, but I think he was okay when he left. I don’t think he was ever mad enough to — to do anything to hurt Katie. That’s — I mean — no, I’m sure he wasn’t.”

“All right, Max, thanks.” He slipped the notebook into his jacket pocket and stood up. “I think that’s enough for now. If I need to ask you any more questions, is it okay if I come back?”

I nodded.

“Here’s my number,” he said, handing me a business card. “You think of anything else, give me a call, okay?” He opened the door and walked off down the hall.

Just the thought of it was staggering.

Katie had been killed, probably murdered, not even two days after dumping me. That made me the spurned lover, and, regardless of what Branigan said, I’ve seen enough cop shows on TV to know that a spurned lover is an obvious suspect.

I hadn’t killed Katie, I knew that. But I also knew that, in order to protect myself from being suspect number one and chance the truth coming out and getting me tossed out of Middlebury halfway through my junior year, I’d have to figure out who did kill her before the detective dug any deeper into our relationship.

Right, sure, Max, you’re a big twenty years old, and now all you have to do is put on your Hardy Boys outfit and beat the police to a murderer. Piece of cake!

I knocked on Katie’s door.

Well, not Katie’s any longer. Dee’s door, now, only Dee’s.

She opened it, bouncing up and down impatiently on her perfectly pedicured toes, equally unsurprised and unhappy to see me. Dee is the pretty one on the floor — her family emigrated to Boston from Kashmir ten years ago, and Dee’d brought with her the glossy black hair and striking features of a Bollywood film star — but right now her oval face was somber.

“Look,” she said, waving vaguely towards Katie’s side of the large double room, “I’m not going to tell anyone about you two, if that’s why you’re here. It’s none of my business. It’s nobody’s business.”

I gaped at her. “You — you knew?”

“Oh, Max, of course I knew. It was so totally obvious — I realized what was going on like six weeks ago.”

“But — but I—”

“The way you looked at her? I might be a freshman, but I’m not stupid.”

I swallowed hard. “Dee, you can’t—”

“I’m not going to bust you, Max. I haven’t said a word about it to anyone, and I’m not going to tell anyone now.”

I pressed my lips tightly together and inhaled through my nose, processing this new information. “But she’s dead,” I said at last. “What if I’m the one who—?”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “She broke your heart, so you killed her? I don’t think so. And I want to know who did it as much as you do. They have to find out before — well, before he does it again.”

I hadn’t even thought of that. Somewhere out there was a killer, and whoever it was who’d killed Katie could just as easily kill again.

I pressed the heels of my hands to my temples, trying to think.

“Katie’s parents,” I finally said. “Do you know if — when they’re coming up? To get her things?” I sat on Katie’s bed, softly stroking Bennington, the stuffed bear she’d had since she was a kid.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I talked to her dad about an hour ago. They couldn’t get a flight, so they’re driving. They’ll be here in the morning.” She sighed and sat on her own bed. “Look, Max, you know Katie and I weren’t the best of friends, but I want to help. What can I do?”

I looked at her. “I want to ask you some questions, I guess. Is that okay?”

She nodded, and I saw that there was moisture in the corners of her eyes.

I took another deep breath and gathered my thoughts. Maybe the best way to begin would be to follow Branigan’s lead. “For starters, where were you last night?”

“I was at Professor Farmer’s picnic until about eleven,” she said. “Brandon gave me and Gavin a ride back here, and I sat up studying for my calc exam until like twelve-thirty. Then I went to bed.”

“Did anyone see you, once you got back to campus?”

“Not after Brandon dropped us off. I went down to the bathroom just before bed to brush my teeth, but there was nobody there or in the halls.”

“Tell me about the picnic,” I said.

She looked out the window for a minute before responding. “Well, you know about the fight beforehand. I never touched her freaking iPod — I have my own freaking iPod, everybody here has a freaking iPod! — but Katie just made up her mind I’d swiped it and practically chewed my head off. After you got her calmed down, though, she came back to the room and flopped down on her bed and picked up Bennington and hugged him — and her iPod was under the stupid bear, right where she’d left it. She apologized, but I think maybe she thought I really had taken it, but then I changed my mind when she was down in your room and put it back. Anyway, we didn’t hang out at the picnic — she was talking to Brandon, and I was with Blair and Ethan on the other side of the living room. Professor Farmer gave us our papers back around ten-fifteen or so, and what I remember is that Katie left soon after that. She was upset about her grade, I think. That was the last time I saw her.”

I got up from Katie’s bed and looked at her desk. Her laptop was there, open and on, but there was no term paper in sight. In the second drawer, I found her “Gender” notebook — but the paper wasn’t there, either.

“You didn’t see her here at the dorm?” I was still poking around, trying to find the paper or some other sign that she’d been back to her room after the picnic.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. And I didn’t see her paper, either, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

I sighed. “Okay, Dee. Thanks. I–I’m going to take her bear with me for tonight, okay? I’ll bring it back in the morning, if her parents want it.”

“Okay,” she said, walking me to the door. I was halfway back to my room before I heard her say my name. I turned around.

“I really am sorry, Max,” she said.

After talking to Dee, I really just needed to lie down and gather my thoughts, and that’s what I was doing when someone knocked on my door. I rose unsteadily and opened up to find a distraught Gavin inches from my face. Gavin was the preppiest person on the hall, male or female, and owned enough Polo shirts to make Ralph Lauren jealous. Today he was wearing a black Polo over khakis. Mourning attire.

“Can I come in?” he said. “I need to talk to someone — you knew Katie best and I — well, you know — I just need to talk.”

I nodded and let him into my room. He sat in the beanbag chair across from my bed and tried not to cry.

I handed him a tissue and sat on the edge of my bed, uncomfortable with his emotion but knowing I needed to talk to him, too.

“Remember,” he said at last, “what I told you, you know, about what happened yesterday afternoon?”

I frowned. The last thing I wanted to think about was that he had asked Katie out.

“No, listen,” he continued, “what if it’s my fault that she — well, that she — died?”

I leaned forward. “Gavin,” I said, “it’s not your fault unless you killed her. Did you kill her?”

“No!” He looked startled. “It’s just that — what if she was upset that I asked her out, and she did something stupid because of it? That would make it my fault! I mean, she went to that party at Ross last night, and you know how she gets when she drinks...”

“It wasn’t your fault, I promise you. When did Katie go to Ross, though? I thought she was at Professor Farmer’s picnic?”

“She was. Dee and I caught a ride out there with Brandon — he said Katie could ride with us, too, but she took her bike and got there about ten minutes after we did. She mainly talked to Brandon until dinner, but I was close enough to hear some of their conversation and she seemed, you know, perfectly normal. When Farmer handed back our papers, though, sometime after ten, she got really upset. Soon after that, she took off — all there was to drink at the picnic was soda and cider, and she told me she wanted a ‘real’ drink, so she was heading over to Ross. She asked me if I wanted to go with her, but I was having a good time at the picnic and decided not to. Dee and I came back to campus with Brandon about eleven. He dropped us off, and I just went to bed. I was still kind of freaked about — well, what happened. Are you sure she didn’t — you know — do it herself?”

“She didn’t kill herself, Gavin. The policeman said she was probably murdered.”

He shuddered, then got up from the chair and threw his tissue at my wastebasket. “This is so horrible, I know, but — in a way, I’m sort of relieved.” Suddenly realizing how that had sounded, he added in a rush, “Not that she’s dead, obviously. But, you know, if somebody else killed her, then I guess it really wasn’t my fault, after all. But, Max, why would anyone kill Katie? I mean — you know, man — why?”

“I don’t know. That’s kind of the million-dollar question right now, I guess.”

Shaking his head in bewilderment, he left my room.

Why had Katie been killed? If I knew that, I thought, the answer might help me figure out who had killed her.

The Ross Townhouses seemed to be the last place she’d been seen alive, so I decided to head over there and nose around. It had already turned bitterly cold in Vermont, so I shrugged into my North Face fleece, threw on a wool ski cap, grabbed my backpack, and headed out.

It was only a five-minute walk from Stew to Ross, but I was thoroughly chilled by the time I touched my access card to the pad and pushed through the door. My hard-partying friend Charlie was sprawled out on one of the shabby sofas in the downstairs lounge, surrounded by pillows, with a dog-eared paperback in his hands. I’m not sure if he was actually reading it, but he was holding it — and it was by Kierkegaard. Charlie grew up in a Chicago suburb, a real straight-arrow all the way through high school. His first weekend at Midd, though, he’d found himself at a party at one of the social houses, and I don’t think he’s been sober for fifteen minutes at a stretch ever since. I have no idea how he keeps his GPA up — but underneath his shaggy blond hair is a brain that somehow seems to be successfully fueled by alcohol.

“Yo, Charlie,” I greeted him, and slapped the hand he held aloft. “Hey, you were at the party last night, right?”

“Duuuude, Max, of course I was!” The words were slurred, and, although I couldn’t see it, I knew he must have a bottle somewhere in the immediate vicinity. “It was the party of the semester! I looked for you. Where were you?”

“Studying,” I confessed. “It’s a rough job, but somebody’s gotta do it — and I knew you’d be drinking for the both of us. Listen, Charlie, I can see you’re busy, but can you help me with something for a minute? Do you remember my friend Katie?”

He frowned, concentrating. “That’s that freshman you’re really tight with?”

I hesitated at his use of the present tense, but decided it’d be just too complicated to explain. “Yeah,” I said. “Her.”

“Sure. She was here last night, I asked her where you were. She just glared at me and walked away.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx in those goofy old comedies my dad likes to watch. “I think she was in a hormonally induced bad mood, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you remember who she was talking to, what she was wearing, anything?”

He laughed. “What are you, a detective?”

“No, Charlie, I’m not a detective,” I said patiently — while thinking, I just play one on TV. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to my friend.”

He dug beneath his pillows, found a blue Nalgene water bottle, and took a swig of whatever was in it. “That’s deep,” he said. “Hey, wait a second... she was wearing a red Hingham Hockey sweatshirt! That’s why I asked her if you were with her, ’cause I figured it had to be yours, nobody else I know went to Hingham. She pretty much ignored me, though. She wasn’t talking to anyone, I don’t think. She seemed really angry and just sort of sat in a corner by herself, pounding beers. While I was manning the keg, she got at least three or four of ’em from me, and she never said a word, not even thanks.”

“Do you know what time she left?”

He considered the question, then shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, man. I was so shwasted, I wasn’t paying any attention to the time.”

I figured that was about all I’d be able to learn from Charlie, so I thanked him, told him to get some sleep, and turned to go.

“Hey, dude!” he called after me. He pulled several folded sheets of typing paper from between the pages of his book and held them out to me. “She left this behind, Max, I found it lying on the floor when I was cleaning up this morning and saw her name on it. Can you give it back to her?”

I took the thin sheaf of paper from him and unfolded it. Across the top of the first page was the heading “Gender Is as Gender Does,” and underneath it “by Katie Parker.” Scrawled across the bottom of the page in red ink was a big circled B+ and a handwritten message: “This is promising, Katie, as far as it goes. Problem is, it doesn’t go far enough. I expected a more fully developed job from you!”

Katie’s paper. She was a straight A student, so I could imagine the B+ flipping her out. Professor Farmer was a notoriously tough grader, though. I’d only gotten a B- from him on my final paper, two years earlier, and I’d been relieved to wind up above C level.

“Thanks, Charlie,” I said dully. “I–I’ll take care of it.”

I headed out into the frosty December air. What now? I still didn’t know why Katie had been killed, and my next move seemed unfortunate but obvious. I had no idea where the expression “bearding the lion in its den” came from, but I knew what it meant — and I knew I was going to have to do it.

By the time I got into my rusted old Volvo and headed north, it was after ten. I slipped a mix CD Katie had made for my birthday into the player and jumped forward to track 9 — Ani’s “Freakshow” seemed a fitting soundtrack to the day’s events.

Several minutes north of campus, I pulled into a long driveway and wound my way through the bare woods that surrounded the house. I parked next to his truck and noticed that the living room lights were still on. Good. Despite the cold, a window was open, and I could hear soft jazz wafting towards me. I don’t know jazz, but whatever it was was mellow and warm with saxophones.

I rang the doorbell, but there was no response from within the house. I rang again. On the third ring, the music stopped, and as I was about to press the buzzer a fourth time, the door finally opened.

Professor Farmer hadn’t changed much since I had seen him last — in December of my freshman year. His hair was a little thinner than I remembered, his beard a little grayer, but the way he slowly looked me up and down before speaking creeped me out just as much as ever.

He was holding a half-full bottle of #9, a Burlington brew, in his right hand, and he raised it to eye level and tipped it towards me in a sardonic salute.

“Dr. Max, I presume,” he said. “It’s been quite awhile. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You heard about Katie?”

His smile disappeared. “Yes, it was on the news. Such a tragedy. She was a sweet girl, a fine student.”

“She was at the picnic last night, wasn’t she?”

He nodded.

“Can I come in and ask you about it?”

He seemed nonplussed by the question, but then he nodded sadly and said, “Yes — yes, of course.”

He stepped aside to let me pass, but not quite far enough. As I came into the house, I had to brush against him. The momentary touch of his skin against mine made me shiver.

His house hadn’t changed much, either. He followed me into the living room and sat down on the couch. I moved to the armchair across the low coffee table from him. There was a throw rug I didn’t remember next to the table, but otherwise the room was the same.

“Can I get you one?” he said, raising his bottle again.

“No,” I said quickly, adding a thank-you almost as an afterthought.

He took a drink. “This is rather awkward,” he said.

“About Katie, Professor? What time did she leave here?”

He paused a moment before replying. “She took off earlier than the others, I remember. Around ten-thirty, I think. Perhaps a bit earlier than that.”

“Alone?”

“I think so, yes. Yes, I’m almost certain.”

“Did anything out of the ordinary happen? I know Katie and Dee argued before they left the dorm. Did they fight again at the picnic?”

“Not that I noticed,” he answered. “She seemed quiet last night, quieter than usual. She only talked to Brandon, as far as I can recall. I handed back the final papers at, oh, quarter past ten or so, and she left not long after that.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?”

He looked into his beer, as if to find the answer there. “A shirt? A sweater, maybe? Jeans, I think. I didn’t notice, to be honest.” He drained his bottle and got up. “You sure you don’t want one?”

“No, thanks,” I said. On the drive out, I’d rehearsed a series of questions in my mind, but none of them seemed especially important anymore, and being there was making me less comfortable by the minute. “Can I just use your restroom, and then I’ll be on my way?”

He looked at me, his face emotionless. “Sure, Max, you know where it is.”

I nodded. When I reached the little room at the end of the hall, I swung the door shut behind me and leaned heavily on the sink, my five-o’clock-shadowed face gazing back at me from the medicine cabinet’s mirror. I was running out of options. Professor Farmer had been no help, and I was clueless about where to go next. If Detective Branigan didn’t know about Katie and me yet, well, he’d know soon, and my ability to find out what had really happened would be severely limited — limited to the inside of a jail cell, probably.

I sat down on the crocheted toilet cover — where had that monstrosity come from? — and buried my face in my hands. I had no idea what to do.

When I looked up again, I found myself staring blankly at the professor’s white wicker laundry hamper, eighteen inches in front of me. In the narrow gaps between the wicker slats, I caught glimpses of the blue of a pair of jeans, the white of a T-shirt, the red of—

The red of—

As if in a trance, I lifted the hamper lid and looked inside. Dirty shirts, underwear, jeans. The hint of red, barely visible through the slats, was completely invisible from above. Wincing, practically gagging, I held my breath and dug a hand deep down into the pile — probably the grossest thing I have ever done. I burrowed down past the denim and cotton and linen and pulled free — a red sweatshirt.

On the front were the words “Property of Hingham Hockey.” Inside was a label with my name on it.

I breathed deeply and stared down at it, confused and disbelieving.

What was my sweatshirt doing in Professor Farmer’s bathroom?

I searched the rest of the hamper, dumped its contents onto the tile floor, and went through everything, piece by piece. And buried way down at the bottom were a pair of flared jeans much too small and feminine to be the professor’s, a lilac bra and matching panties, and a pair of flip-flops with tiny red lobsters on the straps.

Katie’s, all Katie’s.

I went out to the living room, holding the sweatshirt hidden behind my back.

“Professor?” I said. He looked up blearily from a fresh bottle of #9. “Katie was wearing a sweater last night, you think?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Max, I just don’t recall. There were fifteen, sixteen kids here. I don’t remember who wore—”

I should have run out of the house, jumped in my car, and gone straight to Detective Branigan. Looking back at it now, I know that. But I had probably twenty pounds of muscle on the professor, and something inside me made me stand my ground, made me pull the sweatshirt out from behind my back and say, “Are you sure it wasn’t a sweatshirt?”

His eyes snapped into cold focus.

“Are you sure it wasn’t this sweatshirt?” I said.

The room went very quiet.

There was a rattle from the kitchen as the automatic icemaker in Professor Farmer’s freezer dropped a tray of new cubes into its bin.

“She — may have been,” he said. “Where did you find that?”

“It was in your hamper. Along with her jeans, her underwear, her shoes. Why did you take her clothes, Professor? Why did you keep them? Why didn’t you just get rid of them?”

Somewhere, a clock was ticking. I hadn’t noticed it before.

Professor Farmer took a slow sip from his bottle. He wiped the back of his hand across his moustache. The ticking now seemed deafening.

“I handed back the group’s final papers last night,” he said. “I’d given her a B-plus, which I thought was actually generous. She was obviously disappointed, though. She left here in a huff, early, maybe around ten-thirty. That was the last time I saw her. I don’t know what happened to her after that.”

“Her clothes are in your hamper, Professor. Was she naked when she left here?”

He shook his head, disgusted at his own sloppy thinking. “Her clothes,” he repeated slowly. “Her clothes are in my hamper.”

He drank again, finished the beer, and set the bottle down clumsily on the coffee table. He dry-washed his hands nervously — I remembered seeing him make the exact same gesture in the seminar, whenever he was asked a question he couldn’t answer — and then he seemed to come to a decision.

“She came back,” he told the table, his voice low and dull, “about one a.m. Everyone else had gone. I was sleeping, but she pounded on the front door and woke me up. I put on my bathrobe and went to the door and let her in.”

He picked up the bottle and looked at it, sighed, and banged it back onto the table.

“She was drunk,” he said. “I think she’d gone to the party at Ross. She was angry about her grade. She didn’t have the paper with her, but she insisted she’d deserved an A. I told her to come to my office Monday morning, to bring the paper, and I’d go over it with her — but she wouldn’t listen. I tried to calm her down, but she took a swing at me.”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “I pushed her away,” he said, eyes still closed. “She fell. She hit her head on — on this table, right here.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And that killed her?” I said.

He opened his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure. There was blood on the floor. I tried to clean it up this afternoon, but—” He waved a hand at the throw rug.

I swallowed. “What happened after she fell?” I prompted him.

At last he raised his head to face me. “I felt for a pulse, but I couldn’t tell if there was one or not. I’m not a doctor, I—” He twitched involuntarily and a breath rushed out of him. “I picked up the phone to call nine-one-one,” he said. “I punched the nine and the one — and, and then — I hung up.”

“You hung up? Why?”

He licked his lips. “Two years ago, Max, a girl in my freshman seminar filed a sexual-harassment charge against me. You remember that, don’t you?” He smiled at me ruefully. “I remember. She was in your class. There was an investigation, the charge was eventually dropped, but still. Mud sticks, you know? I couldn’t afford another — I mean, here this girl was, at my house, obviously drunk. Dead or alive, I was in for it, either way.”

The light finally dawned. “So you decided to move her?”

“Yes. I—”

“Why take her back to the dorm? Why not just dump her in the woods somewhere?”

He stared at me blankly. “I have no idea,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking, I was in shock. I waited until I was sure everyone would be in bed, and then I put her in my car and put her bike in my trunk and drove her back to Stewart. It was late, around three. I put her bike in the rack and carried her up the steps. I didn’t want to use my access card — that would have left a record of my having been there on the computer. Hers was in her back pocket, though, so I just touched her jeans to the pad and the door clicked open. I put her in the bathroom and — came home. I thought that, if she was still alive, someone might find her there and — I didn’t — didn’t find out she was really dead until this afternoon.”

“But why did you take her clothes?” I demanded.

He sat there on the sofa, hands clasped in his lap, blinking at me. He seemed completely bewildered.

“I — fingerprints,” he said. “I thought the police might find my fingerprints on her clothing. I stripped everything off her and brought it home and put it all in the hamper until I could figure out what to do with it. I was going to burn it tonight, out in the woods.”

I stood over him, watching him wash and wash his hands. The silence between us stretched out in every direction.

At last I said, “It was an accident, Professor. You might get in a little trouble for moving the body, but—”

“No,” he said decisively. “No, Max, I can’t let you tell them. It would — I can’t — it would destroy my career. I can’t afford to be dragged into another scandal.”

He leaned forward, put his hands on the coffee table, and pushed himself to his feet. Like a robot from one of those corny old science-fiction movies, he began to move jerkily towards me.

He didn’t leave me any choice, really. When he moved into range, I did what any good hockey player would do and punched him, right in the face.

“...so when I retired in ’ninety-four, my wife and I moved up here. She grew up in Winooski, and we always talked about eventually settling in Vermont. I couldn’t stand the peace and quiet, though, after thirty years on the NYPD, so when I heard that Burlington was looking for an experienced homicide guy, I clipped on a new shield and went back to work.”

It was three days later, and I was sitting across from Detective Branigan in the Juice Bar, the oddly named coffee shop in McCullough Hall, at his invitation.

“I wish my grandfather would go back to work,” I said. “He just putters around the house all day and drives my gramma crazy.”

“If I hadn’t taken this job,” he joked, “I think my wife would have divorced me by now.”

I laughed.

“That’s nice,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a smile on your face. You’re a good-looking kid when you smile, Max.”

I looked down at my coffee, embarrassed.

“Max,” he said, after a while, “I wanted to tell you a couple of things, now that it’s all over.”

I don’t know why I felt so nervous, but somehow I was afraid of what he was going to say.

“Farmer made a full confession,” he said. “He even admitted that Betsy Ortner — the girl from your seminar — was right to accuse him of harassment the other year.”

I looked up. “He did?”

“He did. That was then, though, and this is now. Now, he wanted to go after you for assaulting him the other night — he never touched you before you hit him, he says, and he wound up with a broken nose — but I, ah, convinced him to let the matter drop.”

“If I hadn’t hit him, he might have killed me, too!”

Branigan sighed. “That’s speculation on your part, Max. He says he was going to the phone to call the police and turn himself in.”

“That’s a lie! He told me he couldn’t let me tell on him. He said it would ruin his career!”

“Your word against his. He’ll deny it in court, and there’s no way to prove it.”

I shook my head at the insanity of it all.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked.

“Given the fact that he undressed her and moved her body, I would love to go for Murder One, but I just don’t think we can make that stick. I’ll fight for it, but I’m guessing the D.A. will charge him with involuntary manslaughter and a couple of other minor things, and he’ll plead it all down to one lesser charge. I don’t think he’ll do any time, but—”

“No time! That’s crazy! He killed Katie!”

“He killed her, sure, but it wasn’t murder, Max. It was an accident: She took a swing at him, and he acted in self-defense. At least that’s his story, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to prove otherwise. In any case, he’s finished at Middlebury, probably in academia altogether.”

I picked up my mug and sipped, but the coffee tasted like nothing.

All around us, students were talking in little groups, doing homework, opening packages from home. Professor Griffen, hunched over a table with a man who looked enough like him to be his younger brother, spotted me and waved. Katie was dead, but life at Middlebury went on.

“I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” Branigan said.

I looked up sharply. “My — she wasn’t — I mean — how did you—?”

He got up from the table and patted my shoulder. “I may be old, Max, but I’ve been a cop for a long time. I can see when somebody’s reacting to the death of a—”

“You can’t tell anyone,” I said in a rush. “If they find out, I’ll—”

He put up his hands in surrender. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with the investigation — never did. I won’t tell a soul.”

“You promise?” I said. “You have to promise! You have no idea how much trouble I could—”

“Cross my heart,” he said. “And hope to die.”

He turned, then, and went away. I watched him disappear through the Juice Bar door, and then I sighed and reached for my headphones and slipped them on. I hit the Play button on my iPod, and the stuttering opening guitar chords of “Both Hands” filled my head with sound.

“In each other’s shadows, we grew less and less tall,” Ani sang breathily, “till eventually our theories couldn’t explain it all, and I’m recording our history now on the bedroom wall.”

History, I thought. Katie’s major.

There were tears in my eyes as I pulled a notebook and a pen from my backpack.

I sat there for a moment, gathering my thoughts, and then I began recording.

“I’ll never believe it was just a coincidence,” I wrote, “not if I live to be forty. Somehow, I’m convinced, Ani knew...”

Copyright © 2009 Rebecca K. Jones & Josh Pachter