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 It had gone for years with yellowed construction paper stapled to the back, broken pushpins holding a wildly out-of-date class schedule and various illegible notices, and an array of deceased insects on the ledge at the bottom.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 Halclass="underline" 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.
But this was a different room, matching neither the way I’d always seen it, nor the description Virgil had given me of it as a crime scene.
Not a surprise: The office had been stripped of the main pieces of evidence-I saw no lethal bottle of potassium chloride and no yellow pages that were allegedly from Rachel’s thesis. There was no white chalk line on the floor as I’d envisioned either. Today’s law enforcement officers had new techniques, I supposed. I checked the trash for the party cake, in case no one thought to look there.
Only Keith’s bookcases and the walls of his office looked as they did the last time I was here. Two walls were peppered with degrees, certificates, and photographs of Keith with distinguished scientists. Here and there were framed articles of his that had appeared in technical journals. I couldn’t imagine doing that with my own articles, but that was Keith.
“If we don’t promote ourselves, no one will,” he’d said often.
Whatever works, I’d thought.
His newest award, the designation as Fellow for his distinguished participation in the Massachusetts Association of Chemists, hung front and center on the Keith A. Wall, or, alternately, the Apep Wall, as I’d heard the students call it. There wasn’t a single family picture. There never had been.
I stood still, continuing my efforts to absorb the reality of Keith’s death. I was ashamed that I’d come here partly out of curiosity, like rubberneckers unable to avert their eyes from an accident on the highway. I wasn’t proud of the other reason either, that I thought I was smarter than the police-hadn’t I already proven otherwise, in several orders of magnitude?-and that I’d be able to see at a glance something they’d missed. Something that would exonerate Rachel, if not point directly to Keith’s real killer.
Now that I was here, however, it behooved me to at least make myself useful. I looked around. Keith’s bookcases were intact, as was an open magazine rack in which he always kept the latest technical journals. A black mesh organizer that held rubber bands and paper clips neatly separated had been left in its place at the corner of the desk.
A short side desk, where Keith had kept his laptop, stood empty.
I’d assumed the police would have confiscated Keith’s computer. The last time I’d seen him in his office, a few days ago, he’d been updating his organic chemistry grade sheet and complaining about the poor quality of students in his class. No one above a C, he’d said. I’d thought of recommending a peer review of his teaching style. Now I was glad I hadn’t.
I wished I could have had a look at his computer files. As I tugged at his desk drawers, I saw that the police hadn’t completely emptied them, though they’d definitely been rummaging and probably had taken a significant bundle away. I pulled open the shallow middle drawer. Pens and pencils were arranged next to each other on a long built-in tray. The rest of the space held a familiar folder with Henley College letterhead and its blue-and-gold Henley seal, issued to every faculty member. Nothing else crowded the drawer.