Everyone groaned. As they went off, her smile faded and she thought: what happened in the Formal Gardens is the work of the devil.
She turned to begin her day of perpetual motion when the elevators opened and a familiar figure strode purposefully in her direction. It was one of those out-of-place moments and she didn’t immediately recognize the silhouette, one the shape of a small refrigerator, coming her way.
“Hank?”
“Glad I caught you.” It was indeed Hank Brooks of the Oxford Police Department. “I need to talk to your students.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, talk? To all your students.”
“Well you picked a damned bad time, Hank.”
“You’re pretty when you’re angry.”
“That’s a cliché,” she said, frustrated that it showed. “And you’re an oaf.”
“So others have said. Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Jodie Foster?”
“Only all my life, Hank. I don’t see it.”
“So where are they?”
“Hank, they’re attending to patients, and I need to be checking on them. You can’t barge in here.”
“I can and will.” His nose was three inches away. He really was about her height. “I want to interview each student. Did they know the dead girls? Did they know Noah? Yes. I need their statements.”
“Why?”
“Because this is a homicide investigation.”
Cheryl Beth put her hands on her hips. This was her environment, not his, and in a moment the reality caused him to let out a long sigh.
He steered her to a corner by the code cart. “Cheryl Beth, this guy is a bad dude, get me? He was Army Special Forces, served in Iraq. I suspect one of his specialties was knife combat. We searched his apartment and found two different knives there.”
“So was one of them used in the attack?”
“No.” He stared at his feet like a little boy caught doing something wrong.
Her phone buzzed and she checked it: A text from one of her students: a patient was complaining about his pain meds.
“I’ve got to go, Hank.”
He held her shoulder in a firm grip. “Goddamnit, Cheryl Beth, I’m going to have to kick this guy loose by Thursday morning if I can’t get some evidence. Maybe sooner.”
“What?”
“You heard me. There’s not evidence enough to hold him. I’m going to get my ass handed to me by a public defender, no less.
“I saw the police catch him right there.”
“Yeah, I wish the real world worked like one of those TV shows, but that’s not enough. He claims he was attacked, too. He was a decorated soldier. You very helpfully found that goose egg on the back of his head. We don’t have a weapon. We don’t have a motive. The D.A. won’t file on him. So they’ll probably release him for now. And while we’re trying to make a case, this bad dude is going to be out on the street, maybe coming to a place near you.”