Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) Read online

  I rub my temple. “That doesn’t mean he killed her.”

  “Like you said before—it means he has motive.”

  “It means that he’s a cheating asshole who abuses his power as a professor,” I correct. “And it means nothing when I could lose my job over a cheating asshole that likely lies all of the time.”

  “Mira, I can’t do this alone,” he says. “You’ve been involved in…how many investigations? A hundred?”

  “More than that,” I say. “But I’ve helped you look and there’s nothing—”

  “So, you just give up after a day?” he asks.

  I press my lips together. He could have taken the words straight out of the conversation I had with Detective Stolz.

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  He rubs his thumb against his bottom lip for a second before nodding.

  “Of course,” he says. “I understand. You’ve already stuck your neck out for me. I’m sorry I tried to push you to do more. That was wrong of me. I’ll…leave you alone. I’m sorry.”

  He stands back up.

  “Thank you for all of your help,” he says.

  “I wish I could do more,” I say. “But I just can’t.”

  He forces a smile before turning and leaving the store.

  Who needs magic when I can make men disappear just by speaking?

  When I was a child, my father told me that success was composed of three elements: luck/circumstances, hard work, and the ability to focus on one goal until it was accomplished. In my life experience, I found his belief to be true. I had the circumstances of being raised in a family that put my studies first and also offered me a job that could help me pay for my education, but also work around tests and other important events. I worked hard through school and had an internship with a forensic scientist. I focused on this goal of becoming a trace evidence analyst, forgoing many of the expected social engagements other people my age were involved in.

  But now that my goal is accomplished, I’m not sure if it’s what I should have spent so much time focusing on.

  It’s not that I think I should have focused on having a family or friends. It’s that when I’m confronted with this death of a student and it’s being ignored because of time constraints and the murders of people who are considered more important, it feels like I haven’t succeeded. It feels like my life is a complete and utter failure.

  “There was also an incident at Tuskmirth College,” the radio hosts says.

  I turn up my radio as I stop at an intersection. I’ve just begun driving to my lab and the caffeine from my coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, but the mention of Tuskmirth College has jolted me a bit.

  The radio host continues, “A professor’s office had been ransacked. Nothing was reported stolen, but the campus police are looking into the incident since the door had been locked and it appeared that the office had been purposely turned into a mess. I’m pretty sure there are some college movies about this. It may not look like anything was stolen, but a student could have stolen some test answers or something to blackmail the professor.”

  “Wasn’t the professor in the English department?” the female co-host asks. “I’m fairly certain they don’t have tests in most English classes.”

  “Of course, they do,” he says. “With questions like, Who are two characters in Romeo and Juliet? But, yeah, it was from the English department, so at least we know it wasn’t from some important field of study that was going to cure cancer or create some new technology.”

  “Campus police also noted that this was an interesting occurrence because it’s the same office that a student died in a couple of days ago. You remember the one—Victoria Glassman. The police never released her cause of death.”

  I flip on my turn signal. They haven’t said anything about John, but there’s always the possibility that we tipped off a killer while we were questioning people. The last thing I need is his murder on my hands.

  John isn’t in his office, but after asking another professor next door, I find the English building and walk down the hallway until I hear his voice. I stop right outside the doorway, seeing him lean against his desk with a small stack of paper in his hand, talking to his students.

  “…and if you just clarify what you’re talking about a bit more, I think it would improve the story. Your metaphors are beautiful—I love the comparison between the ritual of communion and falling in love—but in some parts, it takes away from what’s actually happening in the story. You also tend to fill your stories with facts. I think you just become so involved in what you’re researching that you feel the need to put it all in the story, but it’s unnecessary. Seriously, though, Amanda. It’s a great story. I’m only critiquing it this way because I know you and I know you can make it better.”

  “Thank you so much, Dr. Zimmer,” a petite brunette in the second row of desks murmurs.

  His eyes flicker up as he notices me. “Uh, one minute, class. I need to talk to a friend for a second.”

  He sets down the papers and walks out to the hallway. He stands in front of me.

  “What’s going on?” he whispers. “Did you find something in the evidence you had missed before?”

  “Um, no, sorry,” I say. “I just heard about what happened to your office, and I was concerned that if something had happened to Victoria, that the person who hurt her could have gone after you.”

  “Oh,” he says, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “Well, thank you, but I’m okay. It was probably just a student angry about some criticism or a bad grade.”

  “You don’t think it could have been someone who could have hurt Victoria?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Why would they go from killing someone to wrecking my office? That makes no sense. Maybe it was one of her friends who suspected me, like you had suspected me. Maybe it was the killer, but he was just making sure he didn’t leave anything behind. I don’t know, but they did it before I got here this morning, so I don’t think they wanted to hurt me.”

  “The fact that you only think this person didn’t want to hurt you isn’t very reassuring.”

  “It’s nice that you’re concerned, but I’m fine,” he says. “But since you came rushing over here, that makes me think you do think Victoria was murdered and you still want to investigate.”

  I grimace. “Of course I want to figure out what really happened, but I also don’t want to lose my job. I worked really hard to get it. Chemistry is not the easiest field of study.”

  “You can tell yourself what you want, but you would have heard on the news if I had been hurt, or you could have just called to check on me,” he says. “I think you wanted to come back here to start up our investigations again. I’m not trying to—”

  There’s a loud clanging sound in the classroom, followed by several gasps.

  John turns back toward his classroom and rushes inside. I peek past him. A young man—bald, wearing a plaid shirt and carpenter pants—is lying on his side, his chair knocked over beside him. He must have fallen back from his desk. His eyes stare blankly up at the ceiling.

  John kneels down next to him. He presses two fingers against the man’s neck. After a few seconds, he grabs the man’s wrist and checks his pulse there. He looks up at me.

  “He’s dead.”

  “His name is Everett Pine. He is…he was in his senior year. This is the third class I’ve had with him. Everyone called him Plaid because he has at least a dozen plaid shirts,” John tells Detective Stolz.

  Detective Macmillan and I watch as Tim takes the body out of the room.

  “And where did all your other students go?” Stolz asks.

  John turns to me. “Mira had me tell her all of their names and we dismissed them all,” he says. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep them around a…a deceased person. I’m sure the fact that they were all in here was traumatizing enough.”

  Stolz scowls. “Good. So you may have set loose our killer, who c
ould disappear forever now.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you proposing that I should have kept all these kids here?” I ask.

  “Young adults, Solano,” Stolz corrects. “And they were all suspects.”

  “We have their names.”

  “The killer could still run.”

  “Okay, ladies,” Macmillan interrupts. “Let’s focus on what we have right now. Did Mr. Pine have any connection to Ms. Glassman?”

  I look to my right, where Ed Bunt, another forensic scientist, is packing up everything he found around Everett’s desk. Ed leaves the room, silent as always. I wonder if it’s just a job to him or if he cares whether or not a killer is found.

  “They’re both in the English department. They’re both good writers…I don’t know. They likely share a few classes and have overlapping friends. It’s a tight knit group.”

  “You know what else they have in common?” Macmillan asks. “You.”

  He shakes his head. “I had an appointment when Victoria was killed and I was talking to Mira when Everett died.”

  “But somehow you know Victoria was killed?” Stolz interjects.

  “I think that’s the obvious assumption at this point,” John counters. “Two students don’t just drop dead on their own.”

  “They could,” Stolz says. “They could have both taken some kind of recreational drug and had a bad reaction.”

  “Yeah, death is a pretty bad reaction,” Macmillan mutters. “They could have also come into contact with some kind of poison. Have they traveled recently? Dr. Zimmer, do you know if the two of them were friends?”

  John shrugs. “I never had a class with both of them in it and I never saw them talk to each other, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t spend time together.”

  Macmillan whispers something into Stolz’s ear. They exchange a look and she nods.

  “We’ll wait until our M.E. is done with the body,” she says. “And we’ll question the students who were in here. Dr. Zimmer, is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Pine? Even the smallest fact that you know about him could help.”

  “Um…well, his brother is in the military. I think the Navy,” he says. “He won the Mulvihill Award—it’s a poetry contest. The English department of every college in the state nominates a student. It was Dr. Pierce’s and my choice; we chose Everett. There was even a photograph taken for the school newspaper. I think he lives around here, but I’m not sure. He loves police procedural shows. He used to work as an ironworker, but I don’t think he liked it. I’m sure I know dozens of other things about him, but I can’t think of them right now. I honestly don’t think any of this is helpful.”

  “You never know, Dr. Zimmer,” she says. “If you think of anything else, you can call me.”

  She hands him a business card, which he takes before carefully tucking it into his pocket.

  “Let’s get out of here so we can lock up the crime scene,” she says. We all follow her out and she locks the door. She turns to me. “Mira, can I talk to you for a second?”

  I follow her until we’re around the corner of the hallway.

  She spins around to face me. “Why in God’s name are you still hanging around this guy? Do not tell me you’re still investigating.”

  “I had stopped investigating. I am done investigating,” I say. “I just heard his office had been broken into, so I came to check on him.”

  “Check on him? He’s a full grown man. There’s already campus police working on that case, if you can even consider an office break-in a case. Listen to me: you’ve always tried to skirt the rules. I still remember the Blackman case. Do you remember that one?”

  “Of course,” I mutter. “But this isn’t like that.”

  “You get too involved with these cases and you fuck everything up,” she says. “I don’t think you do it on purpose. I think you’re just an empathetic person and you want to save everyone. But not everyone can be saved and you can’t jump into everyone’s lives. Stop before this turns out exactly like the Blackman case.”

  I grit my teeth together. “Fine. Fine. I won’t get involved. But now there are two dead students. You can’t ignore that.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” She takes a few steps back, moving toward her partner. “Just don’t get attached. Stay away from the case and anyone involved in it.”

  She spins around, heading back to Macmillan.

  John catches my eyes. He takes a step toward me.

  I turn on my heel and walk away from him.

  Chapter Three

  The Killer—one year ago

  "In this marrow is the DNA of the unfaithful

  Catholic priest and the drunk brawler,

  but I inherited my eyes from a woman who sacrificed her quiet

  life for this body.

  I will not spend my days

  shedding skin cells like every single one of them wasn't fought for.

  They say freedom comes at a cost.

  Praise our soldiers, but I know that the first sacrifice was made

  the moment the nurses put me in my mother's arms."

  I clapped with the rest of the audience as the young man finished his poem. He grinned as he stepped off the stage, and a few people shook his hand or clapped him on the back.

  I stared down at my own poem, the piece of paper feeling extraordinarily thin in my hands. It was open mic, but I couldn't follow his act. My poem was decent, certainly, but his was much better and twice as long.

  He walked over to me. "Hey, aren't you in my Intro to Ethics class?"

  "Um, I don't know. It's a big class."

  "There's only one class, so you must be," he says. "How do you think that test went?"

  I shrugged. "It was...hard as they always are. I can't believe he expects us to memorize the answers nearly word-for-word, but we're not allowed to quote the answers word-for-word."

  He laughed. "Yeah, it's a pain. I just memorize the answers as well as I can and I know by the time the test is in front of me, my mind will have warped it enough that it won't be an exact match to the answers he gave us."

  "Yeah," I said. "That sounds like a good plan. Um. I liked your poem. It's rare to hear a poem that's honoring somebody without anger or resentment."

  He sighed. "God, I know. It's hard to find a poem that isn't depressing as hell...but that's how I write them anyway. But if you liked my poem, you should check out my band. We're called The Bungalows and we're playing here tomorrow. It'll be a lot of fun. Bring your friends, too."

  He walked away from me and struck up a conversation with the people at the next table. I realized that was why he had begun talking to me—he was trying to charm me enough to go see his band.

  I was such an idiot—so easily conned that he skipped straight to the purpose of the conversation in less than a minute.

  I turned around and look at Everett Pine's plaid shirt that clung to his body in a way that was usually only seen on a model.

  He had a band, a writing career that was already beginning to take off, and he likely had a girlfriend...there was a man who needed absolutely nothing, but still felt the need to take things from others. He took their trust and turned it into a profit.

  I envied him and I detested him, which created so much turmoil in my chest that it felt like my heart was being ripped to shreds.

  Chapter Four

  Mira

  My apartment is small and undecorated. It’s a place where I sleep and, occasionally, eat. The kitchenette has rarely had anything cooked in it more complicated than a grilled cheese sandwich and the living room has a TV that still has a VCR attached. It’s not a place of comfort for me, but a touchstone. It’s a reminder that my life could be more than my job.

  I scribble Victoria’s and Everett’s names in my notebook. I may not be allowed to investigate, but I can still figure out what connected these two. I begin to jot down ideas.

  Same class?

  Same dorm?

  Connection through roommates?

/>   School club?

  Same job?

  Victoria’s boyfriend knew Everett?

  Dr. Pierce—knew Everett through award given

  Maybe this is obsessive. It’s a miracle that I wasn’t fired after the Blackman case and I shouldn’t be pushing my luck, but I can’t get this case out of my head.

  How are these students dying?

  Could it be a drug? Maybe there’s someone purposely giving them a recreational drug that was created to not be detectable in a toxicology screen. But that doesn’t seem like a normal drug dealer, especially not one on a college campus. They aren’t criminal masterminds.

  Clearly, someone is.

  I trace the curves of my plastic bracelet. I have to remember what apathy can lead to, but it keeps getting clouded by obligation and grasping the idea of responsibility. My mind is all messed up and I can only think of one person who can put it back on right, but Andre is an asshole with an affinity for accidentally ruining my life.

  I stare at my list. I jot down one more word.

  John.

  Detective Macmillan and Stolz have circumstantial evidence that Senator Holden was murdered by his stepson—since the stepson lied about his alibi and had been secretly working against him during the election—so I’ve been checking for blood on various sharp items the detectives had bagged at the crime scene. I’m supposed to see if there’s any hemoglobin—which would indicate there had been blood on it—but, so far, I haven’t had any luck.

  Detective Stolz isn’t going to be happy, but quite honestly, I don’t care much about her happiness right now.

  I hear the door swing open. I spin around and see John, who is already rushing over to me.

  “Look at this,” John says, shoving a note in front of me. “This was left inside my desk.”