Innocent In Death

He strolled up to the door, removing a small palm device from his inside coat pocket. After keying in a code, he aimed it at the security plate, engaged.

The locks gave up without a whimper of protest.

“Showoff.”

“Well, I did have a minute or so to look over the system last night. And in anticipation of orders, programmed a little bypass.” He opened the door, gestured smoothly. “After you.”

“Security?”

“Please.”

She shrugged, stepped in. “Interior security? Log-in scan?”

He glanced up at the sca

“Something like that. Say someone didn’t have your sort of education. How much trouble would it be to do what you just did?”

“More, certainly, as I was top of my class, so to speak. But it’s not a complicated system. Your average going-out-of-business-endlessly sale shop on Fifth would have better.”

He tapped her side and her sidearm under the coat. “However, the fact that you’re carrying is a bit more problematic. I’ll need a minute to shut down the weapon scan.”

“Go ahead.” That was just for convenience, she thought. It wasn’t smuggling in a stu

“Sca

“You’re clear.” He stood a moment, sca

“Not sure.”

“Not, I imagine-unfortunately-to play teacher-keeps-the-naughty-student-after-school.”

“No,” she agreed. “Empty schools are even creepier than when they’re otherwise.” She slid her hands into her pockets as she walked.

“The ghosts of students past. Bloody prisons, really.”

She laughed, gave him a friendly elbow bump. “Yes!”

“Not that I spent a great deal of time inside places like this. At least not until Summerset took charge of me. He was rather insistent about attendance.”

“The state-run schools I was stuck in weren’t like this. None of this air of privilege, and the security was a hell of a lot tighter. I hated them.”

She stopped by an open classroom door. One of the cells-or so it had seemed to her-of the prison. “First few years I just felt scared and stupid, then later it was ‘Okay I get all this. When can I get out?’”

“And once you did, you jumped right into the police academy.”

“That was different.”

“Because it was a choice.” He touched her arm, just a brush of understanding. “And a need.”

“Yeah. And nobody in the academy gave a shit if you recognized a dangling participle or could write a brilliant essay on the sociopolitical ramifications of the Urban Wars. Then there was geometry. That’s sort of the thing, though.”

“Geometry’s the thing?”

“Lines and spaces and crap. Area, radius, blah, blah. It gave me a headache. But I’m thinking geometry. The distance, the angles, the shortest route between two points.” She started up the stairs.

“First vic’s classroom. That’s the-Shit, what’s the middle of the thing.”

“Which thing?”

“The middle of the space.” She lifted her hand, fashioned a space in the air.

“Well, that would depend, wouldn’t it? If you’re meaning a circle, it might be simply the center. Or, staying with a circle as the space, you may mean the central angle, and that’s the angle whose vertex is at the center.”

She stopped walking atvertex to stare at him.

“Then, as every central angle cuts the circle in two arcs, there’d be the minor arc-the smaller, which would be less than one hundred and eighty degrees, and the major, the larger, which is always more.”

“Jesus.”

He gri

“Geek.” She scowled down the hallway. “Now I forgot what I was doing.”

“Or you may be after the tangent,” he said, unconcerned. “The point of tangency would be the point where a line intersects the circle at precisely one point, and one only.”

“Shut up.”

“You asked. Of course, your shape might be a triangle, say, and in that case-”

“I’m going to draw down on you in five flat seconds and stun you senseless.”

“You know what I liked even more than geometry? Finding the blind spots on the security cams,” he said. “Which, in fact, geometry helped me with. Then snagging some sweet young thing, and-”

He snagged her, whipped her around, back to the wall, and, gri

His mouth managed just what geometry did. It fuzzed her mind.

“Work now, tonsil hockey later.”

“You romantic fool. Now then, I think I understand what you’re trying to figure out, and it’s more to do with intersections and betwee

She actually had to press her fingers under her eye to still a twitch. “‘Betwee

“It is, in fact, in math language. And I think it would be your first victim’s classroom. That’s the point between the others. And also, I’d think, where your lines intersect, in the first theorem.”

“Let’s just leave the higher math out of it because it’s going to separate my mind from my body, and I’d rather save that for sex. Foster’s classroom.” She gestured. “Which was empty for at least fifty minutes, twice that day-before class and during his fourth period, giving the killer ample opportunity to doctor the go-cup, or simply replace it. I’m going to push on the replacement angle tonight. Maybe get lucky there. It was inscribed with his name. Anyway…”

She walked over, uncoded the seal, opened the door. “Other classes are in session, including the second vic’s. Here.” She walked over, opened the door on Williams’s classroom. During the second fifty-minute segment when Foster’s classroom was unoccupied, Williams leaves his classroom for about ten minutes. Used the bathroom, he claimed.”

“Which gives you a segment line, from point to point. Opportunity and motive.”

“Yeah. Means is yet to be proven. I can’t tie the poison to Williams. How’d he get it, why would he choose it? Meanwhile, there’s some foot traffic. There’s a janitor in the students’ bathroom-male. He’s clean and clear. No record, no motive, excellent work record, married, father of three, and two grandkids who attend this school.”

“But he’s another intersection.”

“Yeah, yeah. He sees, and is seen by Mosebly, Hallywell, Williams, and Dawson. Then by Rayleen Straffo and Melodie Branch. Each pass by at some point, with Dawson, um, intersecting again with the two students. On the lower level, Hallywell intersects with two other students.”

“There’s also your unknown.” Following her equation, Roarke added to the data. “The possibility someone not identified ran a parallel line. A segment that didn’t intersect with another segment, but arrived at your center.”

“The outsider. Allika or Oliver Straffo, for instance, both of whom could-with forethought and pla

She stopped again, turned a circle. Puffed out a breath. “It’s possible it could have been done by one of them without being seen. Low risk, as if they had been seen, their kid goes here. Any handy excuse or reason to be on site would have passed without a blink.”

“But they weren’t seen.”

“No, they weren’t. Straffo was in his office off and on that morning, door closed. Did he slip out, get over here, and do it? Possibly-very tight, but possibly. Allika was shopping. Same deal. However, Allikawas seen on the day Williams was killed. Signed in, hung around.”

Again, he followed her reasoning. “If she decided to eliminate teachers, why run the parallel line with one and intersect on the other?”