Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

I got out of my car and walked slowly up to the building. With every step I had to remind myself that there was no longer a dead body on the fourth floor. That didn’t mean there was no one lurking on the first floor-my floor-however. I scanned the windows, not knowing which I preferred, signs of life or of emptiness. All that reflected back to me were the stark rays of the sun.

I climbed the stately steps under the clock tower, fumbling for my key to the large, heavy front door. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to use it. I was almost never the first one to arrive. I preferred late morning classes and had the seniority to make the schedule work for me. When I did drop in on an occasional Saturday, I’d find at least a few people, students or faculty, cramming in the science library or grinding out what they hoped would be useful data in one of the labs at the last minute.

Not today. Inside, the building was as creepy as I thought it would be. The interior hallways were always relatively dark, and even more so now since Woody drew all the shades in the labs and classrooms in the summer. The contrast with the glaring sunlight outside blinded me for several seconds, the short fluorescent light in the display case at the entrance offering very little help. I wished I had Bruce’s fifteen thousand dollar goggles.

I half expected to see Keith walking down the corridor toward me with his quick, purposeful stride, calling out a greeting then immediately engaging me in a discussion of a contentious issue. Faculty perks, student government representation on faculty committees, science requirements for humanities majors. Not even the choice of graduation speaker escaped his scrutiny. Of all the faculty, he’d be the one most likely to be here on a Saturday or Sunday. He’d be in a trademark striped shirt, long-sleeved in the winter, short-sleeved in the summer. His light brown hair would be neatly combed and his shoes polished. Never in a T-shirt as the rest of us would wear on an off day; never in jeans.

I regretted all the times I’d joined in making fun of his narrow wardrobe choices, and would have given anything to have him back.

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 It had gone for years with yellowed construction paper stapled to the back, broken pushpins holding a wildly out-of-date class schedule and various illegible notices, and an array of deceased insects on the ledge at the bottom.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 Hall: 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.