Karin Slaughter - A Faint Cold Fear

Rosen must have sensed Lena’s feelings. She wiped away a tear, her tone turning brisk. “I need to call my husband,” she said. “Can you give me a moment?”

“Of course,” Lena told her, relieved. “I’ll meet you in the library.” She put her hand on the doorknob but stopped, not looking at the doctor. “I know I don’t have a right to ask this,” she began, aware that Jeffrey would write her off completely if Rosen told him what had happened.

Rosen seemed to sense exactly what Lena was worried about. She snapped, “No, you don’t have a right to ask.”

Lena turned the knob, but she could feel Rosen’s stare burrowing into her. Lena felt trapped, but she managed to ask, “What?”

Rosen offered what seemed like a compromise. She said, “If you’re sober, I won’t tell him.”

Lena swallowed, and her mouth could almost taste the shot of whiskey her mind had been conjuring for the last two minutes. Without answering, she shut the door behind her.

Lena sat at an empty table by the circulation desk at the library, watching Chuck making a fool of himself with Nan Thomas, the school librarian. Setting aside the fact that Nan, with her mousy brown hair and thick glasses, was hardly worth the effort, Lena happened to know that the woman was gay. Nan had been Sibyl’s lover for four years. The two women had been living together when Sibyl was murdered.

To take her mind off Chuck, Lena glanced around the library, looking at the students working at the long tables lining the middle of the room. Midterms were on the horizon, and the place was pretty packed for a Sunday. Other than the cafeteria and the counseling center, the library was the only building open today.

As libraries went, Grant Tech’s was pretty impressive. Lena supposed that the school’s not having a football team meant more money could be spent on the facilities, but she still thought they would have been better off with some sort of athletic department. Five years ago two Grant professors had developed some kind of shot or magic pill that made pigs grow fatter in a shorter amount of time. Farmers had gone nuts over the discovery, and there was a framed cover of Porcine & Poultry by the library entrance with a picture of the two professors looking rich and satisfied on the cover. The headline read “High on the Hog,” and judging by the smiles on the professors’ faces, they certainly were not hurting for money. As with most research institutes, the school got a chunk of the proceeds from anything its professors worked on, and Kevin Blake, the dean, had used some of the money to completely refurbish the library.

Large stained-glass windows facing the eastern side of the campus had been reglazed so that heat and air-conditioning didn’t seep outside. The dark wood paneling on the walls and the two stories of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves had been lightened so that they were still imposing but not oppressive. The overall atmosphere was soothing, and Lena liked coming here at night as part of her after-work routine. She would sit in one of the cubicles in the front and thumb through whatever book was handy until around ten, when she would return to her room, have a drink or two to take the edge off, and try to go to sleep. All in all, the routine worked for her. There was something comforting about having a schedule.

“Fuck,” Lena groaned as Richard Carter walked toward her.

Without waiting for an invitation, Richard slumped down in the chair opposite Lena.

“Hey, girl,” he said, flashing a smile.

“Hey,” she said, injecting as much dislike into her tone as possible.

“Whatcha know good?”

Lena stared at him, wishing he would go away. Sibyl’s ex–teaching assistant was a short, husky man who had only recently traded in his thick glasses for contact lenses. Richard was three years younger than Lena, but he already had a large bald spot on the crown of his head, which he tried to cover by brushing the rest of his hair straight back. Between the new contacts, which had him constantly blinking, and the widow’s peak on his forehead, he had the appearance of a confused owl.

Since Sibyl’s death Richard had been promoted to an associate professorship in the biology department where, considering his repellent personality, his career would probably stall. Richard was a lot like Chuck in that he tried to cover his suffocating stupidity with an air of completely unfounded superiority. He could not even order breakfast at a restaurant without implying to everyone around that he knew more about the eggs than the cook did.

“Did you hear about that kid?” Richard made a low whistle like a plane going down, waving his hand in the air and slapping it on the table for emphasis. “Jumped right off the bridge.”

“Yeah,” she told him, not offering more.

“Assassination plots abound,” Richard said, almost giddy. He loved gossip more than a woman; appropriate, considering he was queer as a three-dollar bill. “Both his parents work at the school. His mother is in the counseling department. Can you imagine the scandal?”

Lena felt a flush of shame as she thought about Jill Rosen. She told Richard, “I imagine they’re both pretty broken up. Their son is dead.”

Richard twisted his lips to the side, openly appraising Lena. He was very perceptive for a self-involved asshole, and she hoped she wasn’t giving anything away.

He asked, “Do you know them?”

“Who?”

“Brian and Jill,” he said, glancing over Lena’s shoulder. He gave a silly little-girl wave to someone before turning his focus back to Lena.

She stared, not answering his question.

“Have you lost weight?”

“No,” she said, though she had. Her pants were looser than they had been last week. Lena had not felt much like eating lately. “Was he one of your kids?”

“Andy?” Richard asked. “Sibyl had him for a quarter right before—”

“What kind of kid was he?”

“Nasty, if you ask me. His parents couldn’t do enough for him.”

“He was spoiled?”

“Rotten,” Richard confirmed. “He nearly failed Sibyl’s class. Organic biology. How hard is that? He’s supposed to be the next Einstein, and he can’t pass OB?” Richard gave a snort of disgust. “Brian tried to lean on her, call in some favors to get the grade bumped up.”

“Sibyl didn’t do favors like that.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Richard said, as if he had never called it into question. “Sib was very polite, as usual, but Brian was ticked.” He lowered his voice. “Let’s be honest. Brian was always jealous of Sibyl. He lobbied night and day for her position as department head.”

Lena wondered if Richard was really being honest or just stirring up shit. He had a habit of putting himself in the middle of things. At one point during the investigation of Sibyl’s murder, Richard’s big mouth had nearly talked him onto the list of suspects, even though he was as capable of murder as Lena was of sprouting wings.

She tried to put him on the spot. “It sounds like you know Brian pretty well.”

He shrugged, waving at someone else behind Lena as he said, “It’s a small department. We all work together. That was Sibyl’s doing. You know her motto was ‘Teamwork.’ ”

He waved again.

She was half curious to turn around and see if anyone was really there but decided she would be better served pumping Richard for information.

“Anyway,” Richard began, “Andy ended up dropping out, and of course Daddy found a job for him at the lab.” He puffed an irritated breath. “Not that I’d call sitting on your ass listening to rap music for six hours a day a job. And God forbid you complain to Brian about it.”

“I guess he’ll take the news pretty hard.”