Free Drift by Jon McGoran Page A

three-story stone building with “Markson Science Annex” etched across the top floor. We entered through a small glass atrium and went up half a flight of stairs to a long sunlit hallway with large windows along one side and double doors every thirty feet on the other side.
    As we approached the first set of doors, Nola looked at her watch and said, “One-fifteen.”
    The doors swung open, and a steady stream of students started filing through, the ambient sound in the hallway getting louder and louder with each additional voice.
    Through the doors, I could see the professor, holding court over a cluster of female students. He had curly blond hair, just over his collar, but he was about my age, maybe older, and slightly thick around the middle. He had a sly smile, like he thought he was really something. The adoring gazes of his students said they thought so, too.
    One by one, he was charming them, moving his gaze from one to the next like a rich kid shopping in his favorite candy store.
    When he caught sight of Nola standing out in the hallway, however, his attention was on her and her alone. He swam through the students like a fish against a strong current, never taking his eyes off her.
    “Nola Watkins, what a pleasant surprise,” he said with a flourish, giving her the same sly smile he’d used on the girls now standing dejectedly inside the lecture hall. “You’re looking very well.”
    I was prepared not to like the guy, and I didn’t. But when his eyes went up and down Nola, the dislike intensified.
    When he was done looking at her, he stepped closer.
    Nola pulled back a bit and said, “This is my friend, Doyle.…”
    Before she finished the introduction, he had already dismissed me with a glance and resumed staring at her. “Professor Simpkins,” he said without extending his hand.
    “ Detective Carrick,” I replied, because I can be a prick, too. Some people think I’m pretty good at it.
    He stopped and glanced back at me for a moment. I gave him a grin that said, “Yes, I am being a prick.”
    “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said, turning back to Nola.
    She held up the baggie with the ear of corn. “Jerry, I was hoping you could take a look at this.”
    He looked at the bag, then looked at her, his expression changing from curiosity to suspicion to disappointment at the realization that she was not there because she missed him. When he glanced over at me, he looked resigned, and I’d like to think a little nervous, too.
    As we stood there, the cluster of girls gave up and filed past us down the hallway.
    Simpkins turned back to Nola, looking hurt and annoyed. He put on his reading glasses and took the bag out of her hand, squinting as he held it up in the light from the windows.
    “Yech.” He smiled condescendingly. “There’s a lot that can go wrong being a farmer, isn’t there, Nola? What is this, Mexican Black?”
    “Lenape Blue.”
    “Looks terrible.”
    “I know. Do you recognize it?”
    He opened his mouth, like he expected an answer to come out. But then he just closed it. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Let’s have a closer look, shall we?”
    We followed him to a lab in the basement, where he perched on a stool and put the corn on the work surface. He pulled over an illuminated magnifying glass on a spring-balanced arm and switched on the light, examining the corn closely from a number of angles. After grunting a few times, he wheeled his stool to a microscope a few feet away. Popping one of the gray kernels with his thumbnail, he smeared some of what came out onto a glass slide. He placed a glass cover over it and slid it under the microscope.
    After several minutes, he sat back and rubbed his eyes, gesturing for Nola to look in the microscope. As she did, he said, “I don’t know what you’ve got here. It doesn’t look quite right, that’s for sure, but there’s no sign of disease. No fungus or anything. The way it’s localized, I wonder if it