“Not unless you can tell me how to get my two-year-old to stop playing hide-and-seek in public bathroom stalls and my five-year-old to stop tackle-hugging people.” Stu studied me with a curious tip of his head. “My sister has been reading parenting blogs and she’s convinced my son is expressing an unhealthy avoidance of potty training and that my daughter is developing attachment issues as a side effect of my divorce.” My laugh was unconvincing as I waited for affirmation that I hadn’t screwed up the one part of my life that meant more to me than anything else.
“I can’t say I’m much of an expert on potty training,” Stu confessed, “but games like hide-and-seek can be a way for children to reinforce their sense of object permanence—their confidence that even when they can’t see something, it still exists in the world. As for the tackle hugs, it’s not necessarily unusual, or concerning, for children to be uninhibited when expressing themselves. Your son’s willingness to put space between you, trusting he’ll be found, and your daughter’s unreserved passion for the people she cares about … those aren’t unhealthy qualities, Finlay. If anything, we could all learn something from them.”
“That’s a metaphor, isn’t it?”
Stu’s smile creased the corners of his eyes as he took up his messenger bag. “Children are remarkably resilient, Finlay. Grown-ups can be, too.”
The door swung closed behind him, muting the hum of conversations in the hall, leaving me alone in the empty classroom and yet oddly reassured that there was hope for my heroine after all.
CHAPTER 16
Vero was waiting for me in the hallway when I left Stu’s classroom. “What did he say?” she asked, falling in step with me as I navigated around clusters of academy students searching for their next seminars.
“Nothing that will help us narrow our list of suspects. Did you get anything out of Sam’s class?”
“Aside from a girl crush?” Vero shook her head. “That woman is beautiful, smart, and sassy as hell. And she has great taste in shoes.”
“Remember what Cam said. Anyone can be anyone online, and designer pumps don’t come cheap.” Money was a powerful motivator, but it was also a universal one. Any person here might be swayed to do the wrong thing for the right price. “Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she isn’t our guy. I only saw EasyClean from a distance. Sam’s tall enough to have been the shooter I saw and, in the right coat with her hair pulled back, I could easily have mistaken her for a man in the dark.”
“I don’t know, Finn. I’m not getting serial killer vibes out of her. Sam’s studied every kind of cyber-fraud that exists. She takes down bad guys with a keyboard, not a firearm.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to use one.”
“True. But she’s definitely more Lord and Taylor than Smith and Wesson. She wasn’t even wearing a holster under her jacket. Probably because it would have clashed with her suit.”
“We can’t rule her out just because she’s well dressed.”
“No, but we can rule her out because she’s smart. If Sam wanted to use her cyber powers for evil, why would she have bothered getting her hands dirty by actually murdering people when she could have just hacked their accounts or scammed them out of their money? Think about it,” she said in a low voice as we wound around a group of oncoming students. “EasyClean could have blackmailed Feliks as soon as he discovered the forum. Instead, EasyClean chose contract killing for a revenue stream. Probably because he wasn’t secure enough in his own computer skills to think he could hold his own against Feliks’s cyber guys.”
She had a point. “Fine. We’ll rule her out. For now. But I reserve the right to reopen our investigation if she asks my sister out. What’s your next class?”
Vero turned her schedule toward me. “That’s why I came up here to find you. Check out the seminar in the auditorium. It starts in thirty minutes.”
I read the title of the class aloud as we walked. “Crime Scene Forensics: Impressions and Pattern Evidence.”
“No, the instructor.” She tapped the names listed beside it. Dr. Mohammed Sharif, Tool Marks Examiner, and Peter Kim, Lab Technician. “Isn’t that the same Pete you met at the lab? The one who reads your books?”
I drew the schedule closer and read the brief bio under Peter Kim’s name. I’d never asked Pete for his last name, but how many Peters could there be in one lab who worked in soil analysis and impressions? “It must be.”
“Still have that bullet with you?” Vero asked. I nodded. “If we hurry, maybe we can catch him before his lecture starts.”
* * *
Vero and I drew open the door to the auditorium and peeked inside, relieved to find most of the seats were still empty. A projection screen rested on the stage between two podiums. Pete looked up from his notes as the door clicked shut behind us. He nearly tripped, his note cards scattering to the stage floor in his rush to get out from behind his podium to greet me.
“Wow! Finlay, I didn’t know you were going to be here.” He met us at the side of the stage, took my hand, and shook it enthusiastically. “I mean … that’s not entirely true. Nick told me you’d be here this week. I just didn’t know you’d be at my lecture.” He did a double take as he noticed Vero beside me.
“Sorry,” I said at his dumbfounded look. “This is my nanny, Vero.”
“Accountant,” she corrected me.
“Oh, wow, an accountant,” Pete said, reaching to shake her hand, too. “Numbers are great. I like numbers.” His eyebrows shot up. “I mean, not your number, because that would be inappropriate. And probably awkward. You know, for both of us. I just meant numbers in general.” Pete took his hand back, clamping his arms tightly against his sides, probably to hide the damp rings that had begun forming under them. “You’re the first ones here,” he said, ducking to retrieve his note cards from the floor. I knelt and scraped up a few stray cards for him. “We’re not supposed to start for another ten minutes, but you’re welcome to sit wherever you like. Preferably somewhere I won’t be able to see her…” He shook his head. “I mean you, because sometimes when I get really nervous, I sort of freeze up, and once it was so bad, I even—”
“Pete,” I said, bending low to catch his eye as I handed him the cards. “We came early because we were hoping to ask you for a favor.” The instructor at the other podium—presumably Dr. Sharif—glanced over at us between stern looks at his notes. I lowered my voice, gently pulling Pete aside into the shadow of the thick red folds of the stage’s curtain. Vero followed, tugging it closed behind us as Pete gave his armpit a discreet sniff. His arm fell back to his side as I retrieved the bullet from my backpack. It didn’t look like a bullet—at least none I had ever seen. It was shaped more like a wilted flower, but Pete seemed to recognize it immediately.
He reached for it, squinting at it under the low lights. “Where’d you find it?”
I looked to Vero. We hadn’t come up with a story. “We … didn’t. A friend of ours did. We were curious if you could tell us anything about the weapon that might have fired it.”