Free The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) by Mike Markel Page B

fished
through the stack of pages Mary Dawson, the dean of students, had given us this
morning. I looked at it. “Shit, he looks as stupid as me.” I paused a second.
“What address have you got on the douchebag who made that wisecrack about
Krista being up in the bedrooms?”
    Ryan flipped through the pages. “Martin Hunt is at
1200 Petrie.”
    “So is Zach Gilcrist.” I nodded. “Is that the
fraternity?”
    Ryan hit a few keys. “It’s Alpha Phi Sigma.” He
gave me a big smile. “What made you think of that?”
    “It’s my superpower. I channel douchebags.”
    “I also ran Robert Rinaldi, the professor’s son.
He’s clean.”
    “Okay, good. Now, how are we gonna identify
Krista?” I sat down at my desk.
    “Let me try the sociology department. If they paid
her an honorarium for coming to that class, they’d have a tax form on her.”
    I nodded as Ryan phoned Linda in sociology. He
asked her; she put him on hold. “Okay, thanks, Linda.” He shook his head.
    “I’ll try Vice.” I phoned Harry Weber and asked if
he knew a twenty-something working girl, European accent, goes by Krista. He
asked if I knew who ran her. Told him no. He said it didn’t ring a bell but
he’d ask around and get back to me. I hung up. “Shit. Okay, what’s next?”
    Ryan started paging through his notebook. “Until
we can run down Krista, we can interview Cletis Williams—the state education
board guy—and Richard Albright. He’s the angry student.”
    I heard my phone hum from inside my big leather
bag hanging on the back of my chair. I fished it out. Robin, our evidence tech,
had sent me a text: “Talk?”
    “Why does she do that?” I picked up the phone.
“Now I have to call her.” I punched in her number and hit Speaker. “Hey, Robin.
You and Harold got something already?”
    “Harold hasn’t finished the autopsy yet, but I’ve
got some shit for you.”
    “You free now?”
    She was. Ryan and I headed downstairs. I stuck my
head in her little office, but she wasn’t there, so we walked a few more steps
to Harold’s big lab. Ryan held the heavy door open for me. He’d do that anyway
because of the way he was raised, but in this case it was so he could push me
inside if I tried to run away. I really didn’t like the lab.
    It was cold and noisy, the whooshing of the HVAC
system bouncing off the tiled floor and walls. A vague hospital smell hung in
the air. At least it didn’t stink of shit, piss, and mold, which it often does.
Instinctively, my eyes were drawn to the big steel gurney. Harold’s wide back
blocked the top half of a cadaver. The legs, from a forty-something female,
were puckered and a little veiny. I assumed it was Virginia Rinaldi.
    I stayed close to the door. “Cause of death?” I
said to Harold.
    “Yeah, I think I’ve got it. Want to come over?
I’ve pulled her scalp back.”
    “No, that’s okay. Just tell me.”
    He pointed to the long table that ran along the
far wall. “Let me show you the picture I just took.” Harold began to lumber
over toward one of his computers along the wall. “We did a BAC. She’d been
drinking. Alcohol was .05.”
    “Probably not enough to send her down the stairs.”
    “Everybody’s different. With her body mass, if she
had a normal tolerance for alcohol, probably not. But some people are pissed at
.02.” Harold touched a key on the computer, and an image of her skull appeared
on the screen. He pointed to an area above her left ear. “See those little
lines?” He was pointing a pencil at some spidery lines radiating out from a
central spot, like a windshield after a head hit it hard.
    “Someone konk her?”
    “I don’t think so. Usually, there are
characteristic marks from a weapon. You know, a brick, a baseball bat. But
there are no marks of a weapon on her scalp. It’s an indistinct bruise, most
probably from hitting the stairs.”
    “So it’s a fracture?”
    “Yeah. I haven’t sawed off the skull to take a
look at the brain yet,