A profiler, an emotion reader, and a lie detector went to a party….
An hour later, Michael had identified the people in the room who seemed hardest hit by the murder that had rocked the campus. We’d found a few partyers who were upset for other reasons—including, but not limited to, unrequited crushes and backstabbing roommates—but there was a certain combination of sorrow, fascination, and fear that Michael had zeroed in on as marking someone a person of interest.
Unfortunately, most of our persons of interest had nothing interesting to say.
Lia had danced with at least half the boys in the room and spotted at least three dozen lies. Michael was playing sympathetic ear to the female half of the student population. I stuck to the edges, nursing my fake punch and turning a profiler’s eye on the college students crammed into the frat house like jelly beans in a Guess How Many jar. It felt like Colonial’s entire student body had showed up—and based on the general lack of sobriety, I was certain that none of them were drinking Gatorade.
“People mourn in their own ways.” A boy sidled up next to me. He was just shy of six feet tall and dressed entirely in black. There was a hint of a goatee on his chin, and he was wearing plastic-rimmed glasses that I deeply suspected weren’t prescription. “We’re young. We’re not supposed to die. Getting wasted on cheap alcohol is their misguided attempt at reclaiming the illusion of immortality.”
“Their attempt,” I said, trying to look like I found him intriguing—and not like I was thinking that there was a 40 percent chance he was a philosophy major and a 40 percent chance he was pre-law. “But not yours?”
“I’m more of a realist,” the boy said. “People die. Young people, pretty people, people who have their whole lives in front of them. The only real immortality is doing something worth remembering.”
Definitely a philosophy major. Any second, he was going to start quoting someone.
“‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’”
And there it was. The challenge to getting information out of this guy wouldn’t be getting him to talk; it would be getting him to actually say something.
“Did you know her?” I asked. “Emerson Cole?”
This guy wasn’t one of the students Michael had picked out, but I knew before he responded that the answer would be yes. He wasn’t mourning Emerson, but he’d known her all the same.
“She was in my class.” The boy adopted a serious expression and leaned back against the wall.
“Which class?”
“Monsters or Men,” the boy replied. “Professor Fogle’s class. I took it last year. Now I’m the TA. Fogle’s writing a book, you know. I’m his research assistant.”
I tried to catch Lia’s eye on the dance floor. Professor Fogle was a person of interest in Emerson’s murder. He taught a class on serial killers. And somehow, his teaching assistant had found me.
He likes being the pursuer, I thought, watching Lia dancing her way through the frat boys, listening for lies. Not the pursued.
“Did you know her?” the boy asked, suddenly turning the tables on me. “Emerson. Did you know her?”
“No,” I said, unable to keep from thinking of the lengths Dean had gone just to learn her name. “I guess you could say she was a friend of a friend.”
“You’re lying.” The boy reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. It took everything in me not to pull away. “I consider myself an excellent judge of character.”
You consider yourself excellent at everything, I thought.
“You’re right,” I said, fairly certain those were his favorite words. “I don’t even go to school here.”
“You saw the story on the news,” the boy said, “and you decided to come check it out.”
“Something like that.” I ran through everything I knew about him and settled on playing to his supposed expertise. “I heard that the professor’s a person of interest because of that class he’s teaching. Your class.”
The boy shrugged. “There was one lecture in particular….”
I took a step forward, and the boy’s eyes darted down to my legs. The outfit Lia had picked for me left very little to the imagination. Behind him, I caught sight of Michael, who pointed at the boy and raised his eyebrows. I didn’t nod to tell him that I had a promising lead. I didn’t have to. Michael saw the answer in my face.
“I could show you the lecture in question.” The boy lifted his gaze from my legs to my face. “I have all of Professor Fogle’s slides on my laptop. And,” he added, “I have a key to the lecture hall.” The boy dangled said key in front of me. “It’ll be just like sitting in on the class. Unless you’d rather stay here and drown your sorrows with the masses.”
I met Michael’s eyes over the boy’s head.
Follow me, I thought, hoping he’d somehow manage to read my intention in the set of my features. This is too good to pass up.
“Take a seat. I’ll get the lights.” The boy’s name was Geoffrey. With a G. That was how he’d introduced himself on the way to the lecture hall—like it would have been a tragedy if I’d mistakenly thought he was Jeffrey with a J.
I wasn’t about to turn my back on a boy who’d lured me away from a frat party, so I waited for Geoffrey with a G to turn the lights on, my back to the wall. The lights flickered overhead and then the auditorium was flooded with light. Hundreds of old-fashioned wooden desks sat in perfect rows. At the front of the room, there was a stage. Geoffrey walked backward down the aisle.
“Getting cold feet?” he asked me. “Criminology isn’t for everyone.” Most people would have stopped there. Geoffrey didn’t. “I’m pre-law.”
“Philosophy minor?” I couldn’t help asking.
He paused and gave me an odd look. “Double major.” Eyes on mine, Geoffrey climbed onto the stage and plugged his laptop into the projector.
Who brings their laptop to a frat party?
I answered my own question: a person who was planning on bringing a girl back here for the show all along. I took a seat, still on guard, but less wary. Geoffrey wasn’t our UNSUB. He was so high on himself that I couldn’t imagine him needing the validation of the kill.
Then again, I also hadn’t sensed that need in Locke.
“Hope we’re not late.” Michael’s voice echoed cheerfully through the auditorium. He’d followed me. Good. On the stage, Geoffrey frowned. I turned in my seat to see that Michael hadn’t come alone. There was a girl with him: pretty, blond, and curvy, with hipster glasses of her own.