The report will be on my desk if you manage to get your head out of your ass …
Meaning Joey’s office door would likely be open. The movie would run at least two hours. I turned the schedule over, studying the campus map.
“Where are you going?” Vero asked as I got up and shrugged on my coat.
“Snooping.”
Vero narrowed her eyes at me as I tugged on my shoes. “If you’re going snooping, what the heck am I supposed to do?”
“How do you feel about Silence of the Lambs?”
* * *
I peered into the window of the auditorium. The movie had already started. Joey sat with his arms crossed in the aisle seat of the back row. Roddy walked up and down the steps, handing out paper bags full of popcorn. “You promised I’d get to snoop,” Vero said as I nudged her to the door.
“You can snoop and go hungry, or you can do reconnaissance and have snacks.” Roddy had taken the microwave from the faculty lounge and wheeled it to the auditorium on a kitchen cart. He’d plugged it into an outlet in the hall, beside a folding table packed with soda cans and a case of microwave popcorn.
Vero eyed the snack cart and snagged herself a Coke. “Fine. You do the snooping. I’ll handle recon. What’s the code word?”
“What code word?”
“The one I’m supposed to text you to warn you if Joey’s coming.” She peeped in the window. “How about Hannibal Lecter? He kind of looks like Hannibal Lecter. He gets that same crazy look in his eyes when he stares at you, like he’s thinking about eating your liver with—”
“Go!” I whispered, shoving her through the door. “We don’t need a code word. The movie just started. I have plenty of time.”
I started briskly toward the faculty offices, checking the room numbers against the ones listed on the map, praying none of the instructors were working late tonight.
Joey’s office was at the end of the dimly lit hall. His door was closed and I tested the knob, not sure if I was relieved or terrified to find it unlocked. I slipped inside and shut myself in, my heart racing as I pressed back against the door. I rushed to the window to close the blinds before turning on the light.
I’m in, I texted Vero.
She texted me back a photo. The image was dark and a little blurry. I held it close to my face to decipher what I was looking at. Joey slouched in his seat, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. His mouth hung open as if he’d fallen asleep, and some of the tension slipped out of me.
I tucked my phone in my pocket and turned a quick circle in the room, wondering where to start.
Joey’s laptop sat open on his desk. My phone vibrated again as I reached for the keyboard.
Vero: Hope you remembered gloves.
Finlay: Shit.
Vero: Told you I should do the snooping.
Finlay: Shut up and eat your popcorn.
I dug my mittens from the pockets of my coat and drew them on, wishing I had been prepared with something more Temperance Brennan and less Bernie Sanders. I poked the spacebar with thick, woolly fingers. A password prompt appeared on the screen, and I abandoned the laptop with a whispered swear.
I slid Joey’s desk drawer open. The contents were spare, the barest essentials someone might need for a week—a stapler, a sticky note pad, a box of toothpicks, a handful of pens, an opened pack of chewing gum …
“He has to be hiding something,” I whispered as I turned away from his desk.
His leather jacket hung on a hook behind the door. I patted it down, retrieving a key ring from one of the pockets. Fanning the keys across my mitten, I singled out the smallest one. I scanned the room. A file cabinet was wedged between the desk and the window. When I worked the key inside the lock, I was rewarded with a soft click.
The metal drawer slid open. I pushed aside a carton of cigarettes to see the items underneath: class schedules, faculty emergency numbers, student rosters, a handful of unfinished police reports, and a stack of files. I read the names on the tabs, pausing over the only one that was familiar—Charles Cox.
Why would Joey have a file with Charlie’s name on it?
I pulled it free of the drawer and opened it, skimming the contents, surprised by the amount of personal information inside: employment history, promotion letters, retirement records, the details of Charlie’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, copies of commendation letters and a handful of minor disciplinary ones, spanning nearly twenty years. A few handwritten notes had been scribbled in the margins. Dates. Phone numbers. Most of them hardly legible and none of them making much sense to me.
I returned the file to its place with the others, remembering what Nick had said about Joey having a big shadow to walk in. Maybe this was Joey’s way of trying to one-up Nick’s old partner, by learning as much as he could about him. Whatever rivalry was brewing between them, I didn’t have time to concern myself with it now.
I slid the drawer closed and returned the keys to Joey’s jacket. If Joey Balafonte had any secrets, he wasn’t keeping them in here.
My phone vibrated. I slipped off a mitten to check Vero’s text.
Vero: Tow truck.
Finlay:???
Vero: Your code word if you need an emergency extraction.
Finlay: Very funny.
Vero: Find anything?
Finlay: Noth …
I paused, my fingers hovering over my screen. I thumbed off my phone and returned it to my pocket, reaching for the file on Joey’s desk. It was the same one he’d tried to push on Nick in the kitchen.
Curious, I used my mittens to open it. The five toxicology reports inside had been ordered by Ekatarina Rybakov, Feliks’s attorney. Each report corresponded to an autopsy. Four of the victims had died from gunshot wounds to the head. The fifth had been a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. A chill drew up my spine as I read the positive findings on the tox screens, recalling what Joey had started to tell Nick in the kitchen.
… four of the victims had traces of weed, opioids, coke … the usual suspects. But vic number five—
Victim number five had tested positive for ketamine.
I didn’t have to read the victim’s name. I already knew it. Because I had been the one who’d roofied him. It was Harris Mickler, Feliks’s accountant, the very first body Vero and I had ever buried after I’d discovered his corpse in my minivan.
No. No, no, no, no.
Feliks’s trial was starting in a matter of weeks. What was Kat planning to do with this?
I stiffened at the sound of footsteps approaching in the hall.
Shit, shit, shit! My hands shook in my mittens as I shoved the reports back in the file and returned it to Joey’s desk. I whirled at a soft rap on the door, my heart thundering as I searched for a place to hide. There was no closet. No furniture to crawl behind.
The knob began to turn. I leapt behind the door as it opened. Breath held, I pressed flat against the wall.
I stood stone still as the door swung closed again, too terrified to breathe as I stared at Nick’s back, three feet in front from me. I leaned closer to Joey’s jacket, ignoring the thick smell of cigarette smoke as I tried to melt into its sleeves. Nick reached for the toxicology reports as he sat down in Joey’s chair. He rifled through the pages. I could hear the exact moment he got to victim number five, the quick exhalation of his whispered swear.