Chapter 16
Nick Turner
Dr. William Zanes had been crouched over the body for the better part of ten minutes.
He’d had his gloves on before he cleared the doors, and he paused only to murmur the occasional number to the tech keeping his notes.
Behind him, another technician knelt at the foot of the stairs with a camera, working the angles in a steady rhythm of shutter clicks and white flashes that lit the underside of the railing.
A sheet of clear plastic lay half-folded a few feet from the body, a numbered marker set beside it where it had come to rest. A third tech crouched over the cracked glasses six feet off across the tile, a yellow marker already down, reaching for a second to flag the single shoe.
The rest of the lobby belonged to Nick’s deputies.
Strickland had the stairwell. Holt worked the crowd penned behind the tape with a notepad.
The yellow line ran from a stair rail to a column to the frame of the front doors, and behind it the gathered students and faculty stood three deep, phones up, the low buzz of them filling the space where the morning’s ordinary noise had been an hour ago.
It had taken Nick close to twenty minutes to lock down the campus.
He’d leaned on campus security to close the gates and hold everyone already inside until his deputies could take a statement from each of them.
There’d been the usual grumbling about missed classes and parking, and a pair of students had made it three steps toward a side exit before Holt turned them around.
He’d lost track of Hadley twice and found her both times without much trouble.
She’d kept herself out of his way, which he appreciated and didn’t trust for a minute.
She didn’t have it in her to stand at the edge of a thing like this and wait to be told what came next.
She drifted the perimeter of the room, stopping here and there to trade a few quiet words with the people his deputies hadn’t reached yet.
To anyone else, she’d have passed for a woman keeping her hands busy to settle her nerves.
Nick wasn’t fooled, though. She’d decided days ago that Roland Mercer was tangled up in whatever had happened to Reed Langley, and a body on a lobby floor hadn’t shaken that loose.
If anything, it had set the hook deeper.
One of the forensics techs came down the staircase, and there was nothing in the man’s face to say he’d turned up anything useful on the upper levels.
He’d spent a good while on the landing, where a section of railing stood roped off, the balusters gone and the orange cones knocked askew.
The plastic that should have covered the gap was the same sheet folded on the lobby floor beside the body.
Given that he and Hadley had both heard the man scream before he fell, Nick doubted Zanes would be ruling this one a suicide.
They weren’t the only ones who’d heard Roland cry out.
Knox Hudson and his student had given the first deputy near-identical statements, which was likely why Hadley had the pair of them cornered by the windows at the back of the building, working whatever a second telling might shake loose that the first hadn’t.
“Sheriff.”
Nick turned. A heavyset man crossed the lobby toward the tape, his suit buttoned a notch too tight across the middle, a woman keeping pace at his shoulder until the two of them drew up at a respectable distance from the line.
“Could I have a moment of your time?”
Nick crossed to the tape and ducked under it to the public side rather than wave the pair into the scene. He didn’t need the introduction. The same face hung framed on the wall just inside the entrance.
“I’m Dean Fred Briscoe.” The handshake was firm and held a beat too long, the grip of a man used to respect. “This is Annette Belkin, one of our psychology faculty. She’ll be coordinating grief counseling for any students or staff who’d like to speak with someone over this tragedy.”
“Ma’am.” Nick gave her a nod and let his attention rest on her a moment.
She held a tissue, which she’d worked soft between her fingers.
Her eyes were rimmed red, her hair done with a care that hadn’t slipped.
Either the woman was grieving, or she’d decided grief was the expression the morning called for and put it on accordingly.
“My only request is that you set those appointments up off-site. My people are still clearing this building.”
“For how long?” Annette’s brow drew down. The tissue went still in her hand. “My office is upstairs, and I’ll need access to my office.”
“Closed to the public for now, Ms. Belkin.” Nick caught the shift of her gaze and followed it. Hadley had peeled off from the windows and was crossing the tile toward them. “You’ll get back into your office. There’ll just be areas that stay off limits.”
He would spend the better part of the afternoon in Roland Mercer’s office before driving out to the man’s residence in Holloway.
Hadley would be at his elbow the entire time, and he had no intention of denying her the access.
She was the one who’d run the connection from the professor to Reed in the first place.
Nick would be a poor excuse for a sheriff to pull the line out of her hands now that it had led to a body.
“I’ll be honest with you, Sheriff.” Briscoe dropped his voice into the register men used when they wanted a thing handled quietly.
Out past the glass doors, two news vans had already nosed into the lot, so the man’s wish for discretion was already lost. “We have never had anything happen remotely like this on this campus before. I’ve already had my assistant reach out to our insurance carrier so we can get ahead of it. ”
“I’d hold off on calls like that, Dean Briscoe.” Nick kept his tone even. “We’re a long way from certain what happened here this morning. Anything you set in motion now, you may find you’ve gotten ahead of the wrong thing.”
Briscoe’s lips pressed thin at the suggestion that Roland’s death was something more than an accident or a private tragedy. Before Nick could decipher which, Hadley came to a stop at Nick’s side.
“Dean, this is Chief Hadley Dawkins, Whistlerun PD.”
Briscoe shook her hand with a wary look. It was obvious he was trying to work out why a police chief from another town was standing in his lobby. Annette spared him the trouble.
“You think this is about Roland’s research.” Annette’s gaze drifted off Hadley and settled past her, where two of Zanes’s people had begun easing the body into a black bag. “You think he was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Briscoe’s voice climbed before he could rein it back in. “You can’t be serious.”
“We’re not speculating on anything, Dean Briscoe.
” Nick cut a hard glance at Hadley, in no humor to hold this discussion in the open with a dozen phone cameras forty feet off and Holt already squared up against a reporter and her cameraman at the doors.
“We’re going to clear this building, let the doctor do his work, and finish taking statements.
You’d help me considerably by assisting me in those things. ”
“Of course. Of course.” Briscoe’s head bobbed, his shoulders loosening at the offer of a task that pointed him away from the body on his floor. “Whatever you need, Sheriff.”
Hadley didn’t take the bait.
“Did you happen to see or hear anything odd this morning, Ms. Belkin?” Hadley shifted her stance as she asked the question, angling her body so the woman had a clear line to the body bag.
Nick figured the move was deliberate. “Your office is just down the hall. I’d think you’d have heard a heated conversation, if not witnessed it. ”
“No, I’m sorry.” Annette straightened, the tissue disappearing into her closed fist. “I had a meeting with Dean Briscoe, and—”
“Chief Dawkins, I’m sure we can conduct the rest of this inter—”
“Our meeting wasn’t until ten, Annette.” Briscoe quickly turned his attention toward her, the confusion written plainly on his face, and she shifted under the correction. “You—”
“I was getting our coffees, Fred.” Annette’s arms came up and folded across her chest, the answer landing a half beat too fast. It was the man’s first name that caught Nick off guard, and it was obvious that Hadley had caught the slip, as well. “You know how the cafeteria line backs up this early.”
Coffee a few minutes early made sense.
Coffee a half hour early was a woman accounting for time she’d rather not have to explain to the police.
“Deputy Holt will take your full statement, Ms. Belkin.” Nick stepped forward, planting himself a half pace in front of Hadley so there’d be no mistake in front of the dean about whose scene this was.
He understood what she wanted from the woman, and he didn’t fault the instinct.
He just wasn’t going to let her conduct such an interview here, in the open, with the press leaning on the tape.
“Dean Briscoe, I’ll need access to your security system.
The entire campus, as a matter of fact.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, though you should know the coverage isn’t comprehensive.
” Briscoe turned to lead the way, glad of the direction.
“We placed the cameras where the liability is, Sheriff. The entrances, the lots, the library, the cafeteria, anywhere money changes hands between our staff and the students. The upper floors of the academic buildings were never part of that. There was talk of expanding the coverage a few years back, but the money went where the risk was.”
“That’ll have to do.” Nick took a step after the dean, then paused to glance back at Hadley. “Chief Dawkins. Would you like to join us?”
Nick could already read it in her expression that she would turn down his offer. It was in her stance, and it was in the way her attention had hooked onto Annette Belkin.
“I’ll hang back, if it’s all the same to you.
” Hadley’s gaze slid to Holt, who’d gotten the media out the doors and was turning the crowd after them.
“I’ll give Deputy Holt a hand finishing the statements.
Ms. Belkin, why don’t you and I take the elevator up to your office where we’ll have some privacy? ”
Hadley didn’t wait on Nick to agree or argue.
Briscoe was already moving, and the answers to how Roland Mercer had come off that landing might be sitting on the dean’s security drives.
If the professor had a hand in what happened to Reed Langley, there was a chance Nick walked out of this building before dinner with both deaths traced down to the same root.