Page 21 of M for Murder

Gotta pee. Gotta pee.

He tried to focus his mind on other things. He thought of Rebecca Angell over at the college and felt a pinch of jealousy knowing that he should be in her place.

Goddamn rookie. Boy, had she lucked out on that one.

Well, almost. She did still have to put up with that idiot Fed, Hickok. A small price to pay, though, to be in a nice, warm, dry building, chitchatting and probably drinking coffee.

Coffee!

Gotta pee. Gotta pee.

His bladder was starting to feel as though it might burst. It was no good. He was going to have to go.

What if someone sees you?

Vic glanced over his shoulder and swung the flashlight around. The tunnel was empty, and Sutton was hopefully a distance away, so not likely to stumble upon him. All he really had to worry about was running into the odd sewer worker. But right now it looked as though he was pretty much alone.

Not that he would be likely to hear anyone approaching with all that damn water trickling in the background.

Trickling.

It was no good. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. Vic clicked off the flashlight and slipped it into his belt. He didn’t need to see what he was doing, and he felt safer in the darkness. Less exposed. He fumbled with his zipper, eager to get the dirty deed out of the way.

Come on, buddy. Out you come.

Warm fluid splashed onto the running water below and he moaned with relief. Something heavy ran into him, wedging itself between his legs. Vic jumped and let out a yelp. Still in full flow, he released one hand and reached for the flashlight.

He tried to widen his legs to allow whatever it was room to pass through, but it didn’t budge. Pulling the flashlight from his belt, he clicked on the switch. The beam shone down on a face just below the surface of the water. A guy who had bright red hair and bulging eyes, whose mouth was open in a wide crooked grin, catching the fall of his pee.

Lurching forward, Vic barfed on the guys face. Then he started screaming.

The coffee sold in the machine at the police precinct had never seemed particularly good, until today. Now, sitting in the large, clinical-looking cafeteria of the college, sipping acidic-tasting black liquid from a plastic mug, Rebecca found herself longing for a cup.

Mindy had wisely avoided the coffee, choosing instead to have tea, so it was probable that she already knew how bad it was. She was preoccupied, and Rebecca knew it was with worry about Emma.

She tried to place herself in the girl’s position. Emma and Mindy were roommates and, according to Mindy, best friends. Half an hour chatting with her had Rebecca understanding that Emma had the bolder personality, and it would be fair to say that Mindy probably looked up to her, possibly even idolised her a little.

Emma was the one with good-looking boyfriends. Mindy, whilst dating a lot, never seemed to pick guys in the same league as her friend. Emma, studying piano, was top of her class. Mindy, on a real estate course, was struggling to maintain average grades. Mindy was cute, but Emma was perfect, with pale skin, ice-blue eyes and chic, shiny black hair. Rebecca had now seen the pictures and could imagine her up on stage, haunting and evocative, dressed in black and playing to a hypnotised audience.

Emma was the one everybody loved, the one with the bubbly personality and the brilliant social life. Mindy was her shadow, and now without Emma she seemed lost. Rebecca hoped for her sake that Emma would turn up okay. She knew that Hickok already had her down as dead, but there was nothing wrong with being optimistic. After all, it wasn’t as if they’d found a body. At least, not yet.

Several of the students in the cafeteria had glanced over at Rebecca when she had walked in; a few of them started whispering. She knew it was the uniform. They were curious to know what a cop was doing at college and probably wondering what the girl sitting with her had done wrong. Chances were that Mindy Tyson was going to find herself very popular once she had left.

At the moment, Scott Jagger’s murder was being kept under wraps. Even so, Rebecca didn’t doubt for a second that the majority of the students knew, or at least suspected, what had happened to him. If Emma Keeley turned up dead, she barely dared imagine what kind of chaotic turmoil the college would be thrown into.

It had been less than eight years since Rodney Boone’s reign of terror had taken place and it was only in the last couple of years that attendance figures at the college had started to rise. People weren’t eager to spend time on a campus where one of the professors had killed eight of his students and it had taken a lot of convincing to make them return. With Scott, and possibly Emma, dead, the future reputation of the college was likely to be beyond repair.

Rebecca had pushed Mindy for further information about the person Emma was supposed to have met on the Thursday night she disappeared, but the girl hadn’t been able to offer any more details. It was the same story with the mystery man Emma had been dating. Rebecca had taken half a page of notes, though she wasn’t too sure that they would be of any help. They’d established that the guy was older. Though older, Mindy had pointed out, could be anything from twenty-five to forty-five, which didn’t really eliminate very many people. The only other thing Emma had told Mindy was that they liked to make love to classical music.

Would a classical music loving killer choose the sewer as his dumping ground? It didn’t really work in Rebecca’s head and she hoped that Hickok was wrong about Emma, that maybe she had just holed up with her mystery boyfriend and wasn’t dead after all.

Hoped, but wasn’t too sure that she believed it to be true.

Smooth, secretive and unpredictable. These were the first three words that sprang to mind when Joel Hickok met Lawrence Parker.

Dean Edwards had arranged the introduction. Parker had been only too willing and immediately Joel smelt a rat. This guy didn’t belong in college. There was a sly self-serving cockiness about him, and he looked as though he should be on a billboard selling cologne or satisfying rich women, cash in hand – a regular Don Juan.

The two of them met in Parker’s classroom. His mid-morning lecture had just finished, and a few students were still lingering when Joel entered the room. One of them, a young girl with short mousy-blonde hair, seemed to be purposely taking a long time to gather her books together. Finally, she made her way across the room, her walk slow and exaggerated, her hips swaying, and her head thrust back. Joel watched her sneak a look at Parker before turning on her heel and leaving the room, and he wondered how many more of the pupils had crushes on him.