Free A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter

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