Current draft.

An Affair.

The small car, an old dark green Chevy Cavalier, pulled up on Courtland Street next to the entrance to G-Deck. One of the occupants, a woman, quickly kissed the other, a man. Then she said, “Next week my love?”
“Next week. Do you think he suspects us?”
“No, as far as he knows I'm at an administrative meeting.”
“Good. I like paperwork.”
She reached over and gave his crotch a squeeze, “I like your latex work, myself.”
They kissed again, this time with more passion and for much longer. Then she slipped out. She walked along the sunny sidewalk to the pedestrian entrance on the fourth floor of the parking deck. There had been a holdup in the Atlanta traffic and she was late, but if she hurried there was still time to reach her car and drive to pick up her husband at work in time for dinner.
She didn't realize that anything was wrong until she sat inside the car and he was sitting there beside her.
“Sam!”
He pointed a paper bag at her. She knew what it contained. He hunted hogs and bear in the mountains. It was his .44 Magnum. It could kill a black bear. If he pulled the trigger it would splatter her brains on the wall outside.
He said, “Drive.”
“Where? Can we talk? I didn't mean to hurt you Sam.”
“Too late. You already did. Get on 75 and keep going.”
“Sam?”
“I packed your pack. You always wanted to walk the AT. This is your chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Start walking. North.”
“Sam, please.”
“I have nothing else to say to you. When you get to Maine, you can call me.”
“But, Sam.”
“Diana, it's better this way. Right now I'm so upset and angry with you that I could do something awful. I need time. You need time. We need the distance. I'll pay your credit card, food, backpacking supplies only. You climb Katahdin, then we'll talk. If we still want to. You settle down somewhere, then I'll know it's over.”
“Sam, I love you.”
“Funny way to love me. Seeing that bastard accountant. How many others?”
There wasn't anything she could reply to that. There had been others. Too many others.
“Diana, this is cheaper than a fucking lawyer.”
She glanced at him, when traffic permitted. He sat there frowning. When he wasn't frowning his face was drawn. Sam had been so fun when they'd dated, and the first years of their marriage had been blissful. Then there was that awful word, infertile, that the doctor's had said. It wasn't even worth trying a donor egg. Their marriage wasn't so much fun after that.
True to his word, he directed her to Amicalola Falls state park. He shoved the bag at her, and said “Open the trunk.”
She reached down and pulled the lever.
“Get out!”
He watched as she stepped out. Then he followed her. He gestured with the contents of his bag. Open it. She opened the trunk, and as he said, her pack was there.
“Take it.” She did.
“But my clothes?”
“That's your problem.” He slammed the trunk shut, then got in the car and sped off.

Filling In.

My department chair cornered me. One of our instructors had disappeared, and somebody was needed to take the load.
“Come on Will, it can't be that bad. Just Freshman physics for poets. You could do this in your sleep.”
“Sorry, I've already got a full load.”
“You know your post-tenure review is due this spring.”
I hadn't quite finished my two-year stint with Argus detectives, and wasn't completely ready to give up on academia. Although that day was coming closer. The university administration would breath a collective sigh of relief the day I handed in my resignation. On the other hand, I still enjoyed working with students and research had its attractions. Having a potential second career made the possibility of “punking” them all the more fun.
“Why can't Diana teach it?”
“Don't know. I wish we knew where she was. She just left.”
“Just left? Are you sure this isn't a job for my alter-ego?”
“No. I want a physics instructor.”
“Well, you know I'm already teaching my full load.”
“We don't have anyone else.”
“I'll think about it.”
“You'll do more than that. You will show up tomorrow at 3pm in 203 Classroom South. You will be prepared to instruct the class.”
“No I won't. I'm sorry, but do you want to talk to the dean?”
“She's already decided you will do as I say. In fact, she requested you teach the class. Look Will, GSU is changing. We're going into 'Urban studies' and 'Media production'. Physics and science are so passe. There aren't any movie stars who are physicists are there?”
“But I'm funded.”
“Doesn't matter. They'll take your lab and put you in the basement of the Sun Trust Building or over in the Annex.”
“It doesn't have hoods or any of the other facilities I need.”
“That's your problem, not theirs.”
Later that evening I talked to Laura. Danny was in bed and we sat together on the sofa watching a DVD with the sound low. We'd found a nice house in a good school district. Her son, my soon legally to be stepson, Danny was enjoying Oak Grove. He'd even joined the cub pack. I'd convinced them that I wasn't den leader material, or at least so it seemed. Except they kept asking.
“Laura?”
“Yes?”
“They want me to teach another course.”
“Aren't you already at full load?”
“Doesn't seem to matter.”
“Why?”
“The instructor, Diana Millibank, has disappeared. They need to keep the class going.”
“And I suppose you've drawn the short straw?”
“I doubt they looked very hard to find anyone else. Apparently it's a command from on high.”
“Can they do that?”
“The English and Philosophy departments will back them up in the faculty senate, so yes.”
“Want me to look at your contract?”
“Didn't you once say 'Never fight an institution with a law school' in court?”
She nestled close to me on the sofa, “John, you're stuck. Aren't you?”
“Yes, but at least I'll have a GTA to help with it.”
I'd logged into GSU's course management software, desire2learn or perhaps better named as desire2runaway, for the course and was trying to figure out where Diana was in her syllabus when my cell rang. It was my erstwhile boss from Argus, Arthur Ellis.
“John, we've got a client that you might find amusing.”
“Really? I could use the amusement right now. Who is it?”
“It's right up your alley. There's this instructor at GSU who's gone missing.”
“Don't tell me. Diana Millibank from physics?”
“How did you guess?”
“I'm stuck with her courses, and mine.”
“Ah.”
“Who is the client? Not her husband, I bet.” I'd seen her in tears, more than once, and been told politely but firmly that everything was OK.
“No. Wouldn't give his name, but he's someone in GSU accounts.”
“Oh no. I'm not going there again.”
“He'll call you. He wants to keep this quiet if he can so it should be safe.”
I paused and gave it thought. “You know this could lead into real trouble.”
“Yeah. But it will be fun.”
Three PM found me standing in front of thirty-odd odd college students. Room 203 was one of the new rooms with computers where the monitors retracted into the desk. They were all up and something told me that the students were on Reddit or facebook rather than the physics lecture notes associated with the course. I coughed to get their attention.
“Mrs. Millibank is unavoidably detained. I'm Dr. Sharpe and will be filling in.”
They watched, dull as the lumps of chewing gum on the street outside, while I gave them my contact information and went over what I thought the syllabus said.
“My apologies that I'm not as pretty as Mrs. Millibank, but maybe you'll learn some physics instead. According to her notes, we should be just about to start on the idea of force, mass and acceleration.”
I started to describe velocity as change of position and then acceleration as change of velocity, when a student put up his or her hand and asked me. “Yo prof. We haven't done anything like this.”
Oh well. I guess it was back to the beginning. “Where did you get to in the book?”
“Book?”
“OK have you had the first mid-term yet? The syllabus says it was done two weeks ago.”
“No.”
I was saved from a few infelicitous words when my cell went off. It was our client. I said, “Can you call me back in an hour or so? I'm teaching.”
He agreed and I got on with trying to elicit a response from the students. It was tough going.



An hour later my phone failed to ring. I figured, our client had cold feet. It happens.

Cooking the Books.

I walked out onto one of the many Peachtree streets, this being the one that was in front of Kell hall and noticed the flashing lights from police, ambulance and fire trucks by the new trolley line. The trolley, which was the size of two buses, ran a 2.7 mile loop through GSU and the Martin Luther King National Historical Monument. The trolley moved quickly and took a surprisingly long distance to stop, but since our mostly 18-21 year old students were on the spry side it hadn't killed anyone, yet.
It looked like this was its first.
It did mean I took a detour away from the direct route to get back to my office. The traffic was already backing up into another famous Atlanta gridlock. On the way my cell rang again. It looked like our client's phone number. I answered, “Argus detectives, John speaking. How can I help you?”
It was my friend detective Alvin Morrison. “John. For a start, you can tell me why your number was the last one a Mr. Simon James called.”
“What happened? He was planning to hire Argus to find a Diana Millibanks. He called when I was teaching so I asked him to call me back later.”
“He's lying under the trolley. We're not sure how to get what's left out from under it, but his cell flew free.”
“Pity. It sounded like an interesting case. Infidelity puts money in our pockets you know.”
“A witness says he was pushed.”
“Oh. By who?”
“That's not clear. It's also in the shadow of the street cameras, and at the time class changes.”
“How convenient.” There would be crowds of students, but no one would see anything. “All I know is he wanted us to search for Diana. Don't know why. Arthur might know a bit more, but I gather our late putative client was a secretive man.”
“You don't know anything else?”
“No, but has anyone talked to the husband? I would have thought he'd be an obvious suspect.”
“Can you find out who he is?”
“I'll ask at the department, someone might know.”
It actually didn't take long, one of the 'administrative assistants' knew. She even knew he worked as an auto mechanic at one of the classy car dealers near Peachtree and 285. Audi's or something equally unaffordable by an academic, at least one who wasn't independently wealthy or wanted to eat. I called Morrison again, “Got the information on the husband.”
“Give it to me.”
“He's a mechanic, works up at an Audi dealer near 285. They probably keep good timesheets.”
“John, that's out of my jurisdiction. I could start the paper work for it, but”
“You want me to nose around?”
“Yes.”
“Let me check with my attorney.”
Morrison chuckled, “See what Laura says.”
I called Laura to ask her. “Could you pick up Danny today?”
“Got a case?”
“A favor, for Morrison. Need to ask about the husband of someone who's missing. Almost a case, the man who was going to hire us to do it was pushed under the trolley.”
“Not freelancing?”
“Doing the police a favor is sometimes useful when you're a PI.”
“I'll get him, but try not to be too late. It's a pack meeting night and Danny wants you there.”
“I'll do my best.”
“Just make sure you obey the law of the pack.” We'd been practicing the cub scout oath.
I found my car and working around the blockages found my way out to the car dealer. Diana's husband was still at work. I showed him my card and explained, “Someone was hiring me to look for your wife.”
“So, I know where she is. Well at least that she bought trail food last week in Neel's gap.”
“The trouble is this someone was pushed under the trolley downtown.”
“If it's that bastard James, good. He was fucking my wife.”
He looked up at me and continued, “I know you, you're in her department. You haven't been fucking her too?”
“Me, no. I've only been married a year.”
“Doesn't mean anything.”
I showed him my ID as a private investigator again. “I am doing a favor for Detective Morrison of the APD. Have you been here all day? I mean you don't have to tell me, but it could be easier if you do.”
He waved a grease-stained pair of hands at me. “I've been redoing a transmission. Started at ten. Just finished as you came in.”
“No lunch break?”
“No, an important client. Needed his dam car fixed today.”
“and I'm sure you can document that if needed?”
“What do you think I am? Harry Potter? I was here all day, working on a car with another mechanic.”
“Great. I'll tell Morrison and that should be all.”
“Better be. Damn woman. Wish I hadn't met her.”

All Packed In.

I made it back home in time to grab a quick bite. Then I joined Danny and Laura on the way to a pack meeting. It was a huge pack which held its meetings in the youth area of a huge church near the school. Danny and his friends were 'tiger's' which was reserved for his grade. I watched the adult, nominally in charge, struggle to keep his 'den' in some semblance of order while they waited their turn to do a skit or a song or something equally painful – except to the proud parents – in front of the pack. I could see why they were asking me to help, it was that desperate.
I sat in the back with Laura and we watched as Danny's den trooped up in front of everyone. They announced they were doing the 'submarine skit', which was some complicated thing where messages would get passed from the captain to one end of the chain or the other. Halfway through the skit, which was excruciating even to Laura, a young woman, college age, came into the back of the room and started to scream at the den leader.
“There you are! You stood me up for this!”
She was rapidly hurried out of the room by a couple of the more seasoned scout leaders. I turned to Laura and asked “Do you know what that was about?”
“No, but look at her.” She pointed to the Den Leader's wife who was white with mortification and anger. “I think you might have a client if you ask quickly.”
While the cubmaster and his assistants restored order in the room, I took one of my cards, wrote “I'm Danny's step-father, call me if you need help.” on it, walked over and handed it to her. She quickly read it, and gave me a grime determined smile. Then she said, “I'll call you in the morning.”

2

Unfortunately, the morning didn't bring a call. I taught my way through class without a welcome interruption, saw my graduate students, and was packing up to go home when my cell finally went off. It was a police detective, from Dekalb county. He wasn't as friendly as Morrison, but this wasn't a friendly call.

“Will Sharpe?”

“Yes.”

“Of Argus detectives?”

“The same.”

“How well do you know Mary Hartree?”

“Not at all.” I paused, the name was vaguely familiar, “I think her husband is my son's den leader.”

“Then could you explain why she had one of your business cards on her?”

“I gave her one last night.”

“Why?”

“It rather looked like she might want to hire an investigator; for a divorce case you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was this young woman who came into the pack meeting last night and caused a fuss about Dan Hartree. Don't know more about it than that, but his wife looked highly upset.”

“So you gave her your card?”

“Of course. Why give the competition a chance?”

“So you wouldn't have any idea what she was doing at the disused rest stop where 985 splits off of 85?”

“None at all. Laura, Danny and I went home after the pack meeting, then I dropped him off at school on my way to GSU. I've been here all day.”

“Do you have any witnesses? It was a messy homicide. Ritualistic dismembering.” I thought, “Oh God, not again,” but answered him directly. “Only about a hundred students.”

He paused, unsure what else he should ask me, so I decided to give him some character references, “Do you know Alvin Morrison from the APD? I've worked closely with him on a couple of cases. My wife, Laura Brown, is a well-regarded state prosecutor. Both will vouch for me if need be. You probably know Arthur Ellis from Argos.”

“It seems you're in the clear then.”

“Let's just say I wouldn't last long if I went rogue.”

I put down the phone and turned to leave. As I opened my office door, a young female student ran up to me. She said, “Dr. Sharpe! Please wait.”

“Do I know you? What class are you in?” I didn't recognize her from any of the classes I was teaching, but that didn't mean much. There were far too many students for me to be on more than a passing familiarity with any of them.

She stared at me, then said, “I saw you last night, at that cub scout meeting.”

“You weren't that woman who screamed at,” I paused, trying to recall the name.

“Doug Hartree? Yes I was.”

“Why did you scream at him? He always seemed a decent enough chap to me.”

“Is it true that you're a PI?”

“Yes.” I handed her one of my cards and showed her my license. “I work for Argus Detectives. Why do you want to talk to me?”

“I need you to follow the bugger. Is this enough for a retainer?” She handed me a thousand dollars, ten Ben Franklin's, cash.

“It'll do.” It was more than we usually needed for the entire case, but I wasn't about to say no.

“Good.” She handed me a sheet of paper. “Here's his contact information.” Then she pivoted, expertly, on her stiletto heels and pranced down the hall to the elevators.

I grabbed my cell and called Arthur.

“What's up?”

“We've got a client”

“Really, did they pay?”

“I'm holding a thou, cash. As a retainer.”

“Not counterfeit?”

“Doesn't look it. Trouble is she wants me to follow Danny's den leader.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn't say, but I'd bet he's her sugar daddy.”

“Or at least one of them.”

“The other complication is the wife.”

“What about the wife – I presume you mean his wife, not Laura.”

“I was just called by a Dekalb County Detective. She was going to hire us. Ended up dead at a disused rest-stop on I-85.”

“Cute. Are you going to be home tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I'll see you there. Need to talk to your lawyer. This is going to be interesting.”

“Fuck.”

“To say the least.”

3

I told Laura about the call. She expressed appropriate skepticism, and asked if the girl was pretty. I reassured her that as far as I could tell, she didn't have to worry. Arthur rang our door about 8 and we talked while Laura put Danny to bed.

I handed Arthur the sheet, and said, “This is going to be a sticky one. I mean Doug's someone I know so there's conflict of interest and his wife was just found with my card.”

“Found where?”

“That disused rest-stop where 985 splits from 85. In pieces.”

“How did you know?”

“Dekalb county police called me. Fortunately I was teaching all day.” I'd never thought that an extra class would be helpful.

The doorbell rang, and Laura answered it on the way back from tucking Danny in. It was a plainclothes detective. He showed her his badge and a warrant. It was for me.

I heard Laura say, “What's going on?”

“I have a warrant for a Will Sharpe. He lives here, doesn't he?”

“Yes, why?”

The detective, followed by a pair of uniformed officers entered the hall and forced their way into our living room. “You Sharpe?”

“Yes.”

“Cuff him.”

“What the hell is this about?”

Laura stopped them, then told me. “Will, say nothing. I'll get you bailed out.” Arthur reinforced it. “She's right. Anything you say, they will use against you. Or use it to lever something out.”

“In other words, name, rank and serial number?”

“Not even that, my love.” Laura replied, while she searched her phone's contact list for a good defense attorney. “It's not my specialty, and I can't represent my husband.”

While she called one, the uniformed officers led me to the police car, helped me into the back seat, and sped off.

We didn't get to the county station, off Memorial Ave just before it crosses 285, before the car stopped. They pulled into a park and stopped. The two officers got out of the car, and left me handcuffed in the back seat.

I heard someone say, “See you in ten minutes.” It was going to be a long ten minutes.

“Well Dr. Sharpe, what am I going to do about you?”

“About me, why?”

“You've been sticking your nose in places it doesn't belong. Be careful or I'll see that it's chopped off.”

“I haven't done anything. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I'm not ending up like McHenry. I've already dealt with Simon, and I'll do you too.”

It was nice to have the threats up front for a change. At least I knew what I was getting into. That was the only nice part of the process. I felt a sharp sting followed by an excruciating electric pulse. When I got my breath back, he said, “That tazing was just for laughs. I know where you live, where your Danny goes to school, and Laura, she's an even softer target.”

He saw me stiffen, so continued, “I see you understand. Now as a reinforcement.” The shocks began anew.

4

Laura answered the door and heard the noise as a car sped off. I was lying there on the front step. Not that I remembered anything about it when I woke up in a hospital room in Grady. Apparently the charges had already been dropped by the time Laura's Attorney called the jail to arrange bail.

The frist few chapters of "an affair" (working title)

An Affair.

The small car, an old dark green Chevy Cavalier, pulled up on Courtland Street next to the entrance to G-Deck. One of the occupants, a woman, quickly kissed the other, a man. Then she said, “Next week my love?”
“Next week. Do you think he suspects us?”
“No, as far as he knows I'm at an administrative meeting.”
“Good. I like paperwork.”
She reached over and gave his crotch a squeeze, “I like your latex work, myself.”
They kissed again, this time with more passion and for much longer. Then she slipped out. She walked along the sunny sidewalk to the pedestrian entrance on the fourth floor of the parking deck. There had been a holdup in the Atlanta traffic and she was late, but if she hurried there was still time to reach her car and drive to pick up her husband at work in time for dinner.
She didn't realize that anything was wrong until she sat inside the car and he was sitting there beside her.
“Sam!”
He pointed a paper bag at her. She knew what it contained. He hunted hogs and bear in the mountains. It was his .44 Magnum. It could kill a black bear. If he pulled the trigger it would splatter her brains on the wall outside.
He said, “Drive.”
“Where? Can we talk? I didn't mean to hurt you Sam.”
“Too late. You already did. Get on 75 and keep going.”
“Sam?”
“I packed your pack. You always wanted to walk the AT. This is your chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Start walking. North.”
“Sam, please.”
“I have nothing else to say to you. When you get to Maine, you can call me.”
“But, Sam.”
“Diana, it's better this way. Right now I'm so upset and angry with you that I could do something awful. I need time. You need time. We need the distance. I'll pay your credit card, food, backpacking supplies only. You climb Katahdin, then we'll talk. If we still want to. You settle down somewhere, then I'll know it's over.”
“Sam, I love you.”
“Funny way to love me. Seeing that bastard accountant. How many others?”
There wasn't anything she could reply to that. There had been others. Too many others.
“Diana, this is cheaper than a fucking lawyer.”
She glanced at him, when traffic permitted. He sat there frowning. When he wasn't frowning his face was drawn. Sam had been so fun when they'd dated, and the first years of their marriage had been blissful. Then there was that awful word, infertile, that the doctor's had said. It wasn't even worth trying a donor egg. Their marriage wasn't so much fun after that.
True to his word, he directed her to Amicalola Falls state park. He shoved the bag at her, and said “Open the trunk.”
She reached down and pulled the lever.
“Get out!”
He watched as she stepped out. Then he followed her. He gestured with the contents of his bag. Open it. She opened the trunk, and as he said, her pack was there.
“Take it.” She did.
“But my clothes?”
“That's your problem.” He slammed the trunk shut, then got in the car and sped off.

Filling In.

My department chair cornered me. One of our instructors had disappeared, and somebody was needed to take the load.
“Come on Will, it can't be that bad. Just Freshman physics for poets. You could do this in your sleep.”
“Sorry, I've already got a full load.”
“You know your post-tenure review is due this spring.”
I hadn't quite finished my two-year stint with Argus detectives, and wasn't completely ready to give up on academia. Although that day was coming closer. The university administration would breath a collective sigh of relief the day I handed in my resignation. On the other hand, I still enjoyed working with students and research had its attractions. Having a potential second career made the possibility of “punking” them all the more fun.
“Why can't Diana teach it?”
“Don't know. I wish we knew where she was. She just left.”
“Just left? Are you sure this isn't a job for my alter-ego?”
“No. I want a physics instructor.”
“Well, you know I'm already teaching my full load.”
“We don't have anyone else.”
“I'll think about it.”
“You'll do more than that. You will show up tomorrow at 3pm in 203 Classroom South. You will be prepared to instruct the class.”
“No I won't. I'm sorry, but do you want to talk to the dean?”
“She's already decided you will do as I say. In fact, she requested you teach the class. Look Will, GSU is changing. We're going into 'Urban studies' and 'Media production'. Physics and science are so passe. There aren't any movie stars who are physicists are there?”
“But I'm funded.”
“Doesn't matter. They'll take your lab and put you in the basement of the Sun Trust Building or over in the Annex.”
“It doesn't have hoods or any of the other facilities I need.”
“That's your problem, not theirs.”
Later that evening I talked to Laura. Danny was in bed and we sat together on the sofa watching a DVD with the sound low. We'd found a nice house in a good school district. Her son, my soon legally to be stepson, Danny was enjoying Oak Grove. He'd even joined the cub pack. I'd convinced them that I wasn't den leader material, or at least so it seemed. Except they kept asking.
“Laura?”
“Yes?”
“They want me to teach another course.”
“Aren't you already at full load?”
“Doesn't seem to matter.”
“Why?”
“The instructor, Diana Millibank, has disappeared. They need to keep the class going.”
“And I suppose you've drawn the short straw?”
“I doubt they looked very hard to find anyone else. Apparently it's a command from on high.”
“Can they do that?”
“The English and Philosophy departments will back them up in the faculty senate, so yes.”
“Want me to look at your contract?”
“Didn't you once say 'Never fight an institution with a law school' in court?”
She nestled close to me on the sofa, “John, you're stuck. Aren't you?”
“Yes, but at least I'll have a GTA to help with it.”
I'd logged into GSU's course management software, desire2learn or perhaps better named as desire2runaway, for the course and was trying to figure out where Diana was in her syllabus when my cell rang. It was my erstwhile boss from Argus, Arthur Ellis.
“John, we've got a client that you might find amusing.”
“Really? I could use the amusement right now. Who is it?”
“It's right up your alley. There's this instructor at GSU who's gone missing.”
“Don't tell me. Diana Millibank from physics?”
“How did you guess?”
“I'm stuck with her courses, and mine.”
“Ah.”
“Who is the client? Not her husband, I bet.” I'd seen her in tears, more than once, and been told politely but firmly that everything was OK.
“No. Wouldn't give his name, but he's someone in GSU accounts.”
“Oh no. I'm not going there again.”
“He'll call you. He wants to keep this quiet if he can so it should be safe.”
I paused and gave it thought. “You know this could lead into real trouble.”
“Yeah. But it will be fun.”
Three PM found me standing in front of thirty-odd odd college students. Room 203 was one of the new rooms with computers where the monitors retracted into the desk. They were all up and something told me that the students were on Reddit or facebook rather than the physics lecture notes associated with the course. I coughed to get their attention.
“Mrs. Millibank is unavoidably detained. I'm Dr. Sharpe and will be filling in.”
They watched, dull as the lumps of chewing gum on the street outside, while I gave them my contact information and went over what I thought the syllabus said.
“My apologies that I'm not as pretty as Mrs. Millibank, but maybe you'll learn some physics instead. According to her notes, we should be just about to start on the idea of force, mass and acceleration.”
I started to describe velocity as change of position and then acceleration as change of velocity, when a student put up his or her hand and asked me. “Yo prof. We haven't done anything like this.”
Oh well. I guess it was back to the beginning. “Where did you get to in the book?”
“Book?”
“OK have you had the first mid-term yet? The syllabus says it was done two weeks ago.”
“No.”
I was saved from a few infelicitous words when my cell went off. It was our client. I said, “Can you call me back in an hour or so? I'm teaching.”
He agreed and I got on with trying to elicit a response from the students. It was tough going.



An hour later my phone failed to ring. I figured, our client had cold feet. It happens.

Cooking the Books.

I walked out onto one of the many Peachtree streets, this being the one that was in front of Kell hall and noticed the flashing lights from police, ambulance and fire trucks by the new trolley line. The trolley, which was the size of two buses, ran a 2.7 mile loop through GSU and the Martin Luther King National Historical Monument. The trolley moved quickly and took a surprisingly long distance to stop, but since our mostly 18-21 year old students were on the spry side it hadn't killed anyone, yet.
It looked like this was its first.
It did mean I took a detour away from the direct route to get back to my office. The traffic was already backing up into another famous Atlanta gridlock. On the way my cell rang again. It looked like our client's phone number. I answered, “Argus detectives, John speaking. How can I help you?”
It was my friend detective Alvin Morrison. “John. For a start, you can tell me why your number was the last one Mr. James called.”
“What happened? He was planning to hire Argus to find a Diana Millibanks. He called when I was teaching so I asked him to call me back later.”
“He's lying under the trolley. We're not sure how to get what's left out from under it, but his cell flew free.”
“Pity. It sounded like an interesting case. Infidelity puts money in our pockets you know.”
“A witness says he was pushed.”
“Oh. By who?”
“That's not clear. It's also in the shadow of the street cameras, and at the time class changes.”
“How convenient.” There would be crowds of students, but no one would see anything. “All I know is he wanted us to search for Diana. Don't know why. Arthur might know a bit more, but I gather our late putative client was a secretive man.”
“You don't know anything else?”
“No, but has anyone talked to the husband? I would have thought he'd be an obvious suspect.”
“Can you find out who he is?”
“I'll ask at the department, someone might know.”
It actually didn't take long, one of the 'administrative assistants' knew. She even knew he worked as an auto mechanic at one of the classy car dealers near Peachtree and 285. Audi's or something equally unaffordable by an academic, at least one who wasn't independently wealthy or wanted to eat. I called Morrison again, “Got the information on the husband.”
“Give it to me.”
“He's a mechanic, works up at an Audi dealer near 285. They probably keep good timesheets.”
“John, that's out of my jurisdiction. I could start the paper work for it, but”
“You want me to nose around?”
“Yes.”
“Let me check with my attorney.”
Morrison chuckled, “See what Laura says.”
I called Laura to ask her. “Could you pick up Danny today?”
“Got a case?”
“A favor, for Morrison. Need to ask about the husband of someone who's missing. Almost a case, the man who was going to hire us to do it was pushed under the trolley.”
“Not freelancing?”
“Doing the police a favor is sometimes useful when you're a PI.”
“I'll get him, but try not to be too late. It's a pack meeting night and Danny wants you there.”
“I'll do my best.”
“Just make sure you obey the law of the pack.” We'd been practicing the cub scout oath.
I found my car and working around the blockages found my way out to the car dealer. Diana's husband was still at work. I showed him my card and explained, “Someone was hiring me to look for your wife.”
“So, I know where she is. Well at least that she bought trail food last week in Neel's gap.”
“The trouble is this someone was pushed under the trolley downtown.”
“If it's that bastard James, good. He was fucking my wife.”
He looked up at me and continued, “I know you, you're in her department. You haven't been fucking her too?”
“Me, no. I've only been married a year.”
“Doesn't mean anything.”
I showed him my ID as a private investigator again. “I am doing a favor for Detective Morrison of the APD. Have you been here all day? I mean you don't have to tell me, but it could be easier if you do.”
He waved a grease-stained pair of hands at me. “I've been redoing a transmission. Started at ten. Just finished as you came in.”
“No lunch break?”
“No, an important client. Needed his dam car fixed today.”
“and I'm sure you can document that if needed?”
“What do you think I am? Harry Potter? I was here all day, working on a car with another mechanic.”
“Great. I'll tell Morrison and that should be all.”
“Better be. Damn woman. Wish I hadn't met her.”

All Packed In.

I made it back home in time to grab a quick bite. Then I joined Danny and Laura on the way to a pack meeting. It was a huge pack which held its meetings in the youth area of a huge church near the school. Danny and his friends were 'tiger's' which was reserved for his grade. I watched the adult, nominally in charge, struggle to keep his 'den' in some semblance of order while they waited their turn to do a skit or a song or something equally painful – except to the proud parents – in front of the pack. I could see why they were asking me to help, it was that desperate.
I sat in the back with Laura and we watched as Danny's den trooped up in front of everyone. They announced they were doing the 'submarine skit', which was some complicated thing where messages would get passed from the captain to one end of the chain or the other. Halfway through the skit, which was excruciating even to Laura, a young woman, college age, came into the back of the room and started to scream at the den leader.
“There you are! You stood me up for this!”
She was rapidly hurried out of the room by a couple of the more seasoned scout leaders. I turned to Laura and asked “Do you know what that was about?”
“No, but look at her.” She pointed to the Den Leader's wife who was white with mortification and anger. “I think you might have a client if you ask quickly.”
While the cubmaster and his assistants restored order in the room, I took one of my cards, wrote “I'm Danny's step-father, call me if you need help.” on it, walked over and handed it to her. She quickly read it, and gave me a grime determined smile. Then she said, “I'll call you in the morning.”

2

Unfortunately, the morning didn't bring a call. I taught my way through class without a welcome interruption, saw my graduate students, and was packing up to go home when my cell finally went off. It was a police detective, from Dekalb county. He wasn't as friendly as Morrison, but this wasn't a friendly call.

“Will Sharpe?”

“Yes.”

“Of Argus detectives?”

“The same.”

“How well do you know Mary Hartree?”

“Not at all.” I paused, the name was vaguely familiar, “I think her husband is my son's den leader.”

“Then could you explain why she had one of your business cards on her?”

“I gave her one last night.”

“Why?”

“It rather looked like she might want to hire an investigator; for a divorce case you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was this young woman who came into the pack meeting last night and caused a fuss about Dan Hartree. Don't know more about it than that, but his wife looked highly upset.”

“So you gave her your card?”

“Of course. Why give the competition a chance?”

“So you wouldn't have any idea what she was doing at the disused rest stop where 985 splits off of 85?”

“None at all. Laura, Danny and I went home after the pack meeting, then I dropped him off at school on my way to GSU. I've been here all day.”

“Do you have any witnesses? It was a messy homicide. Ritualistic dismembering.” I thought, “Oh God, not again,” but answered him directly. “Only about a hundred students.”

He paused, unsure what else he should ask me, so I decided to give him some character references, “Do you know Alvin Morrison from the APD? I've worked closely with him on a couple of cases. My wife, Laura Brown, is a well-regarded state prosecutor. Both will vouch for me if need be. You probably know Arthur Ellis from Argos.”

“It seems you're in the clear then.”

“Let's just say I wouldn't last long if I went rogue.”

Start of the next

An Affair.

The small dark green car, an old model Ford escort pulled up on Courtland Street next to the entrance to G-Deck. One of the occupants, a woman, quickly kissed the other, a man. Then she said, “Next week my love?”
“Next week. Do you think he suspects us?”
“No, as far as he knows I'm at an administrative meeting.”
“Good. I like paperwork.”
She reached over and gave his crotch a squeeze, “I like latex work, myself.”
They kissed again and she slipped out. Then she walked along the sunny sidewalk to the pedestrian entrance on the fourth floor of the parking deck. There had been a holdup in the Atlanta traffic and she was late, but if she hurried there was still time to reach her car and drive to pick up her husband at work in time for dinner.
She didn't realize that anything was wrong until she sat inside the car and he was there.
“Sam!”
He pointed a paper bag at her. She knew what it contained. He hunted hogs and bear in the mountains. It was his .44 Magnum. If he pulled the trigger it would splatter her brains on the wall outside.
He said, “Drive.”
“Where? Can we talk? I didn't mean to hurt you Sam.”
“Too late. Get on 75 and keep going.”
“Sam?”
“I packed your pack. You always wanted to walk the AT. This is your chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Start walking. North.”
“Sam, please.”
“I have nothing else to say to you. When you get to Maine, you can call me.”
“But, Sam.”
“Laura, it's better this way. Right now I'm so upset and angry with you that I could do something awful. I need time. You need time. I'll pay your credit card, food, backpacking supplies only. You climb Katahdin, then we'll talk. If we still want to. You settle down somewhere, then I'll know it's over.”
“Sam, I love you.”
“Funny way to love me. Seeing that bastard accountant. How many others?”
There wasn't anything she could reply to that.
“Laura, this is cheaper than a f**king lawyer.”
She glanced at him, when traffic permitted. He sat there frowning. When he wasn't frowning his face was drawn. Sam had been so fun when they'd dated, and the first years of their marriage had been blissful. Then there was that awful word, infertile, that the doctor's had said. It wasn't even worth trying a donor egg. Marriage wasn't so much fun after that.

Ask Not for Whom the Panther Prowls is out on Kindle

Dr. Sharpe has returned to teaching and research in this short novella. Swearing to “go straight” and stick to academic pursuits, he is dragged into a series of polite poisonings after a student in his 'Physics for Poets' class dies of an apparent heart attack. When his son-to-be stepson's favorite kindergarten teacher, a student teacher from the university nearly suffers the same fate, he is forced to investigate. Someone is slowly knocking off the undergraduates. The only common feature of the victims seems to be their involvement in an on-line English course, but the truth is more complex.

Cover Image in progress

Still settling on a title. But this is the cover (sans title).

Latest draft of the next one.

I've been very pleasantly surprised with Smashwords. This is the current start of the next book. I'd love to hear which title is better, or if you can think of one (I'll send you a free copy if I use it).

This will be shorter than the last, simply because the story is drawing to an end. It won't be as bloody either. Though I intend to have as much tension as I can.
(It's only the first few chapters. The total manuscript is about 20,000 words).

 

Ask Not for Whom the Panther Prowls.

Panther Panther Burning Bright.

0. Prolog.

They met in a dark staircase, in the evening just past dusk, in one of the apartment towers near Donghua university in Shanghai. The stale smell of dinners past filled the air, just barely overwhelming the sulfurous smell from the coal smog.
The young man said in his most desperate voice, “I need to do well on the TOEFL to enter Harvard. My parents could not live with the shame if I fail.”
The foreigner coughed from the smog then quietly replied, in his strongly accented and not quite mastered Cantonese, “The money, you it have?” By his build, he was unmistakably a foreigner, despite his smog mask, dark glasses and hat pulled down over his eyes. Even though he wore clothes from the local department store.
“Five thousand dollars?”
“Six. Cash. Now.”
“Here.”
The foreigner counted it. “You're short. Not enough. More.”
“It's all we have, we'll pay you. I promise.”
“No. Not enough for Harvard.”
“UGA then?”
“OK.” The foreigner pocked the money. He then gave the young man a written sheet with his gloved hand. “This instructions is. Understand?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Now forget you saw me.” He left down the stairs and out into the deepening fug. He had long a series of appointments to keep that evening before catching his plane home.



Shen Yi carefully read the paper he bought. They contained detailed instructions on how to log into a site using a virtual tunnel through the 'Great Firewall of China'. He could hardly wait, and once home fired up his laptop and got started.
The most beautiful girl he ever saw was on the screen when he logged in. She looked very much Chinese, for an American. He wasn't expecting that. He sat there, agog at her, his jaw dropped with amazement. She began to speak, “Do you want to start with the English practice?”
He stammered, in Cantonese, “Do you speak Chinese?”
“A little,” she then continued in English, “I'm adopted and my parents insisted I learn my culture's language. You're here to learn English aren't you?”
“You're very beautiful,” Yi, continued this time in English. She blushed. “Thank you.” She looked down at a paper on her desk and asked him, “The first question is 'what is the difference between to and too?'”
“One means also. Can you give me your email address so we can talk later?”
The girl paused, “I'm not allowed to tell you that.” She wrote something on a sheet of paper and held it up in front of the camera. Yi hastily wrote down her address. She continued, “The second question is give me an example of using too.”
“I like know if you are a college scholar too.”
“Very good, but it would be better to say, 'I would like to know if you are a college student too'.”
“I would like to know if you are a college student too.”
“That's excellent. And I would reply, 'I am, I am a student at Georgia State University'.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Donghua. I want to graduate study in Georgia.”
“Good, but 'Donghua, I want to do graduate study in Georgia', is correct”
“Donghua, I want to do graduate study at Georgia State University.”
The girl blushed again, Yi was a fast worker. He seemed nice enough, but coming halfway around the world after a couple of minutes of an online chat was a bit excessive. “Don't be silly.”
“What's silly about it? What is your name?”
“Jane.”
“Jane I think I you love.”
“Now you are really being silly. The right way to say it is 'Jane I think I love you', which you can't yet. We've just met.”
“Jane I know I love you.”

1. Put Your Hand Up before You Die.

Spring semester found me back practicing academic physics. While it was not quite as spiritually rewarding as chasing down a network of serial killers, my sudden death was a lot less likely when I was standing in the front of a classroom blathering away. Even with the new concealed carry law, the chance that a student would take it into his mind to create a vacancy in the physics department was remote. It was a fair swap, especially since Laura Brown and I had hooked up. Having a reason to live changes your outlook on life. During summer, class breaks, and on the occasional evening, I still worked with Arthur Ellis, the head and sole full-time detective for Argus detectives. If I kept at it, I'd have my two years employment as a private detective and could become a certified private investigator. Given the status of funding and the way this university ran, that was looking more and more attractive each day. I'd drawn the short straw in the class assignment lottery for spring semester and was teaching PHYS 1101, non-calculus physics. Or as we liked to call it 'physics for poets'. It allowed the non-mathematical types to satisfy a science requirement for graduation, but far more importantly than that it brought credit hours and the tuition dollars that came with them to the department budget.
I'd finished lecturing a class of 50 freshmen and sophomores in Classroom South. They mostly sat there slumping in their seats almost as responsive as lumps of mud. Today's lot looked suitably glazed over, with their brains well cooked and at the limit of their endurance. While occasionally one would realize that this science stuff was interesting and worth the effort to learn it, there would be no such revelations today. One student in particular looked a bit more thoroughly glazed over than the rest. I told the class, “See you next time, and don't forget to at least try the homework.” which was followed by the bulk of them rising and running for the door. They were 'free at last'. The student who was particularly glazed over lifelessly dropped to the floor when he was jostled by the others. I ran to him, while someone screamed in the background. I shouted, “Call 911”, and watched as several students complied. Another student ran up, “I know first aid, CPR. Can I help?”
“You bet. Start on CPR while I go and get the AED from the hall.”
I dashed out into the hall, then down it towards the center of the building where there were AED's mounted on the wall. The alarm on the AED holder was already screaming, with its blue flashing light indicating the EMT's were on their way. Someone had just removed the device. Two heart attacks at the same time on the same day was not an event the building's planners foresaw.
Racing back to the room, I found the student pumping away as hard as he could. He shouted at me, “Where is it?”
“Already in use. When you're ready I'll spell you.” For the next few minutes we alternated for a minute each at pumping on the student's chest. CPR is exhausting work and the two of us were nearly shot when the EMT's finally arrived. We'd been doing our best to match the beat of 'Stayin Alive' which happens to have the right tempo for CPR. Unfortunately it was more a case of 'Another One Bites the Dust' which also has the correct tempo.
EMT's aren't allowed to declare a patient as dead, but it was pretty clear that after a few minutes of their hard work, there wasn't much hope for the student. As they were leaving I heard one say to the others, “Funny, that's the tenth one this week.” His friend replied, “Wonder what they're taking?”
It had been a while since GSU had a serious drug problem. Most of the students worked part-time to pay for college and didn't have the time or inclination to spend it high. Those that had the time tended to favor beer. It was cheaper.
2
That night at dinner Laura noticed I was distant. Ms. Laura Brown, former assistant DA for the city of Atlanta and now a rising star among the state prosecutors and I, decided to get married. As she now had full custody of her son, I was going to be an acting stepfather. It seemed wise to move in a bit ahead of time and let her six year old son Daniel get used to me. “Will, what happened?”
“Lost a student.”
“You don't usually get upset when one drops your class.”
“Hardy,” I laughed, “No, it wasn't that. He died from heart failure at the end of class.” At least that's when we found out about it. He could have been dead for a few minutes before without my noticing it. That thought only made it worse.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “That's awful.”
“I didn't think my lectures were that boring.”
“I'm sure they're not.”
Danny had a different take on things. By age six, he'd seen his parents divorced, then had his stepmother reject him when his father was put on trial. His father organized an embezzlement ring with murderous consequences at the university research foundation. Mind you, his biological father had just doped Danny's stepmother preparatory to chopping her up for smoked ribs and was extending his family in several directions sideways at the time. So she wasn't completely unjustified in dumping Danny into Laura's lap. My relationship with Danny wasn't helped by the fact that it was my efforts that put his biological father in prison. We had our good days and our not so good days. This was one of the not so good days. I was getting the silent treatment until he spoke.
“They are too.”
It was going to be interesting living as a new family.
3
Next morning I text messaged my TA. We had to discuss what happened yesterday in class and figure out a plan to deal with it for the next lecture. He showed up at my office and we talked about how to handle the death in a respectable and professional manner. I vetoed the ideas of talking about the heart as a pump and measuring the electrical impulses from its muscles. While those aspects of biophysics would be interesting, the time wasn't right. It would have to be an emotional and forthright discussion about feelings.
Since neither of us was particularly skilled at social or emotional intelligence this promised to be difficult and I was looking through the university website to see if there were counselors who could help the class. While we were searching, the undergraduate who helped me with CPR knocked on my door.
Even though he was one of the more alert ones, with 50, well now of 49 students I hadn't learned his name yet.
“Dr. Sharpe?”
“Hi, I'm sorry, I don't quite remember your name, but thank you for helping yesterday. It's a shame it didn't work.”
“Steve Jordan, well,” he paused, “we did our best. When I took CPR they warned us it didn't usually work.”
“Steve, I'm sure you've seen my TA and graduate student Tom.”
“Yo.”
“Anyway, the student who collapsed, did you know him?”
“Same scout troop. We were buddies.”
“I'm sorry. Did he have health problems?”
“No, we just did Philmont last summer. 100 miles in a week and a half at 8000 feet. Couldn't have gone if he had a weak heart.”
“He wasn't doing any drugs? Cocaine will sometimes do things like this.”
“Sam, no. He was a straight arrow. Wouldn't even drink a beer.”
“So nothing unusual?”
“Nah, he was even earning extra money by tutoring foreign students with their English. Great guy.”
“I'm sorry.”
“He'll be missed.”

2. Presidential Action.

The deaths of so many students was cause for consternation to the upper echelons of university administration. The president, Dr. Andrew Pace, the one faculty member whose salary approached that of the football coach, called a private emergency meeting with the provost, Dr. Alice James, the deans and the university legal counsel, Mr. David Wilcox. They met on the third floor of Dahlberg hall in a conference room off of the main corridor. A long reddish mahogany table ran from one end of the room to the other. It was surrounded by comfortable leather office chairs, and was the room routinely used for policy discussions and faculty senate committee meetings.
Carefully coiffed with an expensive haircut and a sharp Italian suit to match, the president firmly shut and locked the two doors to the room.
“Gentleman” He began, “are your cell phones off? There will be no record of this meeting.”
He waited while they checked their cells and then continued.
“Too many of our students are dying for unknown reasons. If this gets out into the press, especially after that lurid series of murders last year, 'Tech and UGA will see that we're shut down. Both Georgia Southern and Kennesaw are gunning to replace us as a research university. Gentlemen, and Dr. Pace, our collective asses are on the line.”
“What are we going to do about it?”

“There's this detective agency I've used. They're very discrete. Keep their mouth firmly shut.”

2

Arthur Ellis gave me a call. “Will, are you busy?”

“I could make some time.” Anything to avoid grading papers.

“Great, I need you to go to someplace at GSU as Argus's representative.”
“Sounds like fun, where?”
“330 Dahlberg Hall? Know where that is?”
“I can find it. What's the problem?”
“I don't know. I'd go myself, but I'm over past Panola Mountain on a stakeout and it would be impossible to get to GSU this afternoon. Traffic's bad. The thing sound's a bit fishy since the man I talked to wouldn't give me his name or any details over the phone. He said we'd met in the past. Had his secretary call me first, so he's pretty high up in the administration.”
“I guess someone in administration has been stepping out lately and needs some help.”
“Probably. It wouldn't be the first time. Oh, and Will?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure you take your recorder along. We'll need a record of the meeting.”
“Especially if it's supposed to be off the record.”
“Yup. Let me know what's up when it's over.”



I found my way to 330 Dahlberg. It didn't exactly strain my powers of detection as I'd been there before. The door was locked, but when I knocked it opened. The dean of the college of arts and sciences looked out. I bowed and said.
“Argus Detective agency at your service.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“You?”
“I'm the vice president of the company.”
The dean reluctantly opened the door and let me in. If I hadn't already developed a second career option I'd have been seriously troubled to see the president, the provost and several deans staring at me. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. As it was I produced my detectives license and business card.
“Aren't you Dr. Sharpe from physics?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Pace frowned at the dean of my college. “He's one of yours, isn't he. Can we trust him?”
“I suppose so.”
“But still using a professor. One of ours. Couldn't we at least get someone from 'Tech?”
“It could have its advantages.”
“Should we tell him?”
I interjected, “Look folks, I'm here as a representative of Argus detectives. I've filed my conflict of interest paperwork about it with the university. It was approved. Please don't waste my time.”
This brought them to a decision.
“It's just we've been losing students. I mean, they've been dying. It's affecting our recruiting.”
“I know, one of the students was in my class. I gave him CPR. Is there any reason to believe the deaths are related, or the result of criminal activity?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want Argus to do?”
My dean answered, “Make sure it stays that way.”
“Are you sure you understand what you're saying? We can find evidence, that's all. We turn it over to the police or the courts. We don't hide things. It could cost us our license even if we didn't end up in jail.”
Dr. Pace hastily replied, “No, that's not what we want. We need you to give us a heads up, a warning if it is criminal.”
“We can do that. What do you know so far?”
The provost replied, “Nothing.” This was not a helpful answer. He continued, “and as you're a GSU employee, we expect you will work for your normal salary as part of your normal duties.”
“Argus does not do pro bono work.” This was not strictly true, we occasionally would help out a poor client who was stuck in a bad situation, but never with something that was likely to be shady, and this already seemed mired deep in the shadows. Pro bono was absolutely out of the question when the client had deep pockets and could easily pay. My statement caused more than a little consternation. I continued, “I'll inform my boss, Mr. Ellis, of your interest, and see what he has to say.”
They quickly decided that would not be necessary, and told me to forget what I'd heard. I mumbled something that they could take as an assent, if they wanted to.
Once I was outside on Courtland street, I immediately emailed my recording to Arthur. Insurance was always a good idea, especially with such slippery characters.
I wondered what to do. Clearly the administration was worried there was criminal activity involved. Why else would they want Argus to investigate it? I wondered what they knew and weren't telling me. It wouldn't surprise me if impeding the investigation or conspiring to cover it up wasn't criminal in itself. But I had no dog in that fight and the costs might be severe. Cross one of the deans and you could find your laboratory shut down until another suitable space for it could be found. It wasn't as if they'd hurry to find it. As entrancing as private detection was, I still sort of liked teaching and research.
The sound of sirens as another ambulance from Grady rushed to campus made my decision for me. As much of a nuisance as teaching undergrads could be, there was no excuse for killing them. Laura, was scheduled to be in court this afternoon, so I knew I couldn't get in touch with her. I reached for my cell and called my friend Alvin Morrison, a detective at the APD. He'd know who I should talk to.
“Detective Morrison here.”
“Alvin, it's me Will Sharpe.”
“Will, it's been a while, thought we'd be seeing you and Ms. Brown in a few weeks at your party. What's up or is this business?”
“Business, sort of. Did you know that there have been a lot of students dying at GSU lately?”
“No. I guess the AJC hasn't paid much attention to you.”
“What else is new? But it's probably for the best. I had one die in my class day before yesterday.”
“Damn, Will. What did they die from?”
“I don't know. A student helped with the CPR, but it didn't help. There was at least one more at the same time because the AED was gone when I went for it.”
“Gone?”
“Gone and active. The alarm was going off.”
“Nineteen, twenty year olds don't have heart attacks very often, do they?”
“No they don't, and the EMT's said that there had been about ten of them in the last couple of weeks. Even discounting their natural story telling, there are many more deaths than there should be. There was one just a few minutes ago. I saw the ambulance.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Could you ask the medical examiner to take a look?”
Morrison paused. “Will, you aren't freelancing again, are you?”
“Sort of. The university president almost asked Argus to investigate, then backed away. There's something going on.”
“Talk to Laura. If she asks me I'll do it. You can't get involved without a client.”
I walked back to my office. The sixth floor of 25 park place wasn't that far away, but it seemed to take forever. I felt distressed, something was going on at GSU, and 'by the pricking of my thumbs' it was something evil.
About mid-afternoon Laura called.
“Will, the court has a brief recess. I'm going to be late. Can you pick up Danny?”
“Sure, no problem. I need to talk with you about getting some death records looked at.”
“What? Will you're not freelancing again, are you?”
“Not yet.”
“Don't. Talk with Arthur.”
“I will, but something is going one here.”
“This isn't related to that student who died in your class is it?”
“It is. He wasn't the first one nor was he that last. There are something like ten of them.”
“Oh. I see. We'll talk this evening, the judge is coming back. Love you.”
While Laura loved me, her son Danny's feelings were less favorable.
3
Danny's school had an after-school program for the youngest children. Since Danny's friends were there, we enrolled him in it. Danny was not pleased to see me, and wanted to continue playing for a bit. There was a student teacher supervising them, and I took advantage of a chance to learn a bit about child psychology from her.
“Are you Ms. Jane? Danny mentioned you a couple of days ago.”
“Yes, I suppose you're Will, the evil stepfather?”
“Not quite stepfather yet, but yes, and no I'm not evil. I've heard you're a student teacher.”
“Yes, at GSU.”
“Can I ask you for pointers about young children? I'm not exactly an old hand at being a parent, and Danny's had a hard time.”
We discussed things, but mostly it was a matter of patience and remembering who was the adult. Danny was still happily playing with his friends, so we continued to talk and inevitably GSU came up. She finished with “Danny will be fine, Dr. Sharpe, he's healthy and healthy children are tough. Just be patient.”
She was starting to tell me how excited she was about her courses and tutoring when she suddenly said, “I don't feel well.” She started to rise, then sat back and seemed to lose consciousness. I immediately called 911, and felt her pulse. It was there, but feeble. Fortunately schools are required to have an AED, and by the time I retrieved it from the main office it was needed. The children she was watching were standing, perplexed at what was wrong with Ms. Jane.
Ripping her shirt open and sliding her bra strap off of her shoulder, I applied the pads, on in the upper left and one lower right of her chest.
Danny starred at me in bewilderment, and asked, “Will, what are you doing to Ms. Jane?”
“I hope this will save her life. Now stand back.” The AED measured her pulse or rather the lack of a regular one, and in a mechanical voice said “Charging,” followed by telling me to press the red button. I did, and her body jerked, She began to breath a little, with a shallow gasping breath, then stopped. I tilted her head back, cleared her mouth and began rescue breathing.
The EMT's arrived and carted her off; leaving behind a confused and tearful set of children, a frightened and confused teaching staff, and yours truly trying to figure out what to do.
In the end Laura was home before we were.
“What took you so long?”
“Will took the teachers shirt off. Then he kissed her.”
“What?”
“One of the student teachers, Ms. Jane, had a heart attack. I used the AED, then I had to breath for her in CPR. She was still alive when the EMT's came.”
“Is she another GSU student?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like a night for pizza, wine and taking it easy.” Danny approved the pizza and made sure he sat between us on the couch while we watched a DVD. This was a big improvement. It used to be that he'd stand in front of the screen and glare at us.
After Danny's bedtime, Laura curled up next on the couch to me and asked, “What's this about the deaths?”
“Something is wrong. Healthy 19 year olds just don't die from heart attacks. I'd like the medical examiner to take a look.”
Laura thought for a few minutes, the replied like the lawyer she was, “Will, are you a qualified medical doctor?”
“No, you know that.”
“Then all you have are your hunches, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“That's not enough. You're probably right, but you'll need more evidence.”
“Which I don't have.”
“Which you don't have. So until you do, it has to wait.”
“Damn.”
She snuggled up closer and asked, “Any news about your money?”
“No, most of the funds were turned into gold, and the gold is buried somewhere in North Georgia. It's quite a treasure hunt. It's been written off as a loss so they're up for grabs.”
“Tell you what, after our honeymoon, let's buy a metal detector and go camping.”

Trying Smashwords

Other than their fiddly way to do table of contents, it was a straightforward conversion. Caught a few silly errors in the process so the book is a little tiny bit better. Still just as gory.

More Coming.

It's just mysteries are harder to write than you'd think.
Here's a teaser from later in the book.

#. Return of the Chemists.

Dr. Rogers watched the television in the nursing home. There wasn't much else to do. Nor was there much choice in what they watched. Fox news. It didn't help bring the psychiatric patients back into touch with reality. On the other hand it made the first months of his extended trip even more surreal. Unfortunately, the massive dose of nano-encapsulated LSD he took was beginning to wear off, and the news was changing from an enjoyable background to a simply annoying noise.
One local exclusive caught his notice. The dart murderers were caught. Well one was caught and the other had skipped the country for home. The news anchor was interviewing some APD detective or another about how this violent and lethal gang had been rounded up due to the cooperation of Georgia State University. He shouted “Like Hell.” Then he turned to the blue-haired woman in the reclining chair next to him and said, “Time to wake up. It's been real Ethyl, but I must be going.”
It wasn't clear that she understood what he said, and it wouldn't have mattered in any case. He pushed the lever on his chair, stood up and stretched. “God that feels good.”
The night nurse looked at him. “Mr. Rogers, John, what are you doing?”
“Sorry son, but it's time to leave. Can't say it's been the most pleasant of stays, but I'd recommend this motel to anyone who needs it. I'd say it rates four and a half bed-pans.”
It wasn't that easy of course, but as Dr. John Rogers was clearly in command of his faculties, the next week found him back on the street, blinking in the unexpectedly bright light of an Atlanta Fall.

Draft of another chapter.

Draft of Chapter 6. The plot thickens.

6. Flaws in the Hood.

“To have and to hold, say I do”
“I do”
“You may kiss the bride.”
We'd done it. For better or worse Laura and I were going to give married life another try. Though this time it was with each other which could only be an improvement over our past choices. With the service over, it was off to Jamaica for a honeymoon. Despite having Danny in tow we had fun. My cell didn't work, I stayed unplugged from the Internet, and nothing happened. Well at least nothing I would tell you about.
Eventually something did happen. On the way back to Atlanta, transferring through Miami, we ran into an old acquaintance on his way to a scientific meeting. Dr. Qieng Li, in the physics department at Bejing University was both a friend and a rival in the world of sensor physics. “So Will,” he began as we waited for our bags, “What brings you to Miami?”
“On the way back from my honeymoon.” I introduced him to Laura and Danny. He joked with Laura, “You have to watch this one, keep him busy and out of the lab so I have a chance to publish first.” They laughed. He then turned to me and said, “One thing, though, Will, would you tell the TOEFL-tutoring team at GSU how well they are doing?”
“How well they are doing?”
“Yes, our students have been using your service and it's made a huge difference for them. It's been well worth the money.”
“Money, I suppose they charge, how much?” If it was enough I could always have the more literate of my students supplement their stipends with a few hours work.
“Depends, can be as much as $10,000 a student. If they need a lot of help that is.”
“Wow. I had no idea it was so profitable.” Something told me the university didn't either.
“It really works too. One of my students, Xa Shen, could barely read English, but after two months, he scored well enough for MIT.”
I was speechless. It sounded too good to be true.
“There's my bag! Say 'hi' to Dr. Lee for me.”
2
I first noticed the Bengali contingent when we were transferring in Miami. International travel to the US goes through customs at the first airport where you land. There was some number, more than I could quickly count, of excited young women in matching brightly colored saris, chatting away over in the foreign passport line. I didn't think much of it at the time as Danny was asking where there was a bathroom and I wanted to make sure that we reentered the good ol' USA successfully.
It wasn't until we met again at the baggage claim at Hartsfield Jackson airport in Atlanta that they impinged more seriously on my consciousness. I chatted to one, who looked barely 16 and knew some variety of English, while we were waiting for the bags to arrive from the bowels of the airport.
“So is this a girl scouts or youth group outing?”
“No, we have jobs, in the US.”
“Oh, where?”
“Atlanta, maids. So exciting.”
A rather muscular man came over and interrupted us. He very brusquely told the woman “Don't talk to anyone.” and then warned me, “This is none of your business. Nosy people who ask questions tend to lose their noses.”
“I was just being sociable, welcoming them to Atlanta.”
“Don't.”
“Fine. Suit yourself.”
“I mean it. Stay away from this.”
After picking up our bags I told Laura about out conversation. “Sounds like you've run into one of the human trafficking rings.”
“Trafficking rings?”
She pulled up a photo on her cell. “Did the man look like this?”
“Yes, that's him.”
“Can't prove it yet, but those poor girls don't have a clue what they're in for.”
“Damn. They seemed nice enough. They seemed just like a bunch of excited freshmen eager for their first classes.”
“INS is on it.”
“Good.” I had other problems to pursue, and the Feds could look after that one.
3
The next day I caught up with my student Tom and found out how the class was going. The physics teaching was fine. Unfortunately the rest wasn't. “We're down to 48 students now, and not another dropout.”
“Damn. Did he survive?”
“She collapsed about halfway through the class. Might make it, at least she was alive when the EMT's left. Our friend Steve helped with the CPR.”
“I'm glad someone was there.”
“Yeah, he said it was much nicer with a pretty girl than the CPR dummy.”
“Let's not go there, shall we. Who was it?”
\\ will track down the victim. Find her with Steve? Anyway she wasn't “stung” but scratched. And yes she's involved with ESL online tutoring.
“Tamika Harris.”
“Which one was she?”
“She was the young black woman who always sat up in the front, the middle of the row.”
“Damn, one of the better student's wasn't she?”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Dunno, probably Grady.”
“When was this?”
“A week ago, just after you left.”
“Has anybody tried to contact her or her parents?”
Not surprisingly, no one from GSU had tried to find them. I opened up 'gosolar', the web-based grade tool we used, and found her record. There was a picture, her student e-mail address and little else.
My office phone rang. It was her parents.
Grady hospital, being only a few blocks away from campus, was an easy walk. I found Tamika and her family in her hospital room.
I was greeted enthusiastically, “Dr. Sharpe, we're so glad you could visit. Tamika was enjoying your class.”
“All part of the GSU service.” It wasn't, but this made for a nice story. “How is she doing?”
Her father answered, “As well as can be expected.” He paused, awkwardly, then continued, “Dr. Sharpe, we've heard that you're not just a physics professor, are you?”
My reputation preceded me. “No, I have 'other interests'.”
“One of those is an investigator, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know who did this to my baby.”

Draft of Chapter 4

4. Gate Crashing.

Dr. Vazio of the ESL department couldn't believe what he found. The discrepancy between overseas results and the tests he gave his foreign students when they took the ESL classes was beyond any statistically reasonable possibility of being an accident. If it were only one or two students, he could understand it. There were thirty of them, supposedly fluent in English, but barely able to make themselves understood. They were supposed to be GTA's, teaching undergraduates in the next term. There was simply no way that they could perform to expectation. He brought this to the attention of his chair and was told to ignore it. It wasn't his problem. He made an appointment with the Dean for tomorrow morning. As he exited the elevator for his floor in the G-deck parking garage and headed towards his car he felt a sharp sting but ignored it. The yellow jackets were active this time of year and he assumed one had caught him on his way to the car. He began to feel a little ill while sitting in his car, but started it and backed out of his parking spot. Swerving wildly he accelerated to the exit gate. He passed out, jamming the accelerator pedal open. The car leaped through the checkout gate, sending splinters flying and flew across Courtland street. Crashing through the pedestrian barrier it fell down into the parking lot on the ground level 30 feet bellow between the Athletic Center and the ROTC building. The autopsy showed that he died of a sudden heart attack, or as they labeled it spontaneous idiopathic fibrillation.
2
I stopped my chair's office to remind him that he was invited to Laura and my engagement/wedding party on Saturday. He was sitting with the department director of graduate students. They said that they would be at the party, and then asked, “Your student Tom, he's writing up isn't he?”
“Should be, especially if he expects to graduate at the end of Summer.”
“So you'll be looking for another student then?”
If I stayed, that is, but I replied, “Probably.”
“Anything against a foreign one?”
“As long as they're good. No.”
“Take a look at this one from China, named Shen Yi, he specifically asked to work with you.”
They handed me the student's file which had the standard mug shot, statement of interests and glowing recommendations. I glanced at his GRE's and TOEFL scores. “Why on earth would he want to come here, with scores like these he could go to Harvard or Yale?”
“He doesn't say, but he says he wants to work in your lab.”
“That's unusual.” I looked more carefully at the scores, his classes and recommendations. “His verbal TOEFL is phenomenal. There are always ways to fake the written ones, but faking the verbal test is a little harder. It's like there was a ringer.”
“I gave him a phone interview. His English is very good. He said he's been practicing with an American friend online.”
“Want to bet the friend lives in Atlanta; I wonder who she is? Well then, if he wants to come here, send him an acceptance letter.”
3

Class over, this time without any medical emergencies, I was preparing to leave for Northside. In the absence of any real evidence, I thought I would see if I could interview Jane. Either heart disease had become infectious or there had to be some common thread between the victims. Morrison called as I was headed to my car.

“Will?”

“Yes.”

“The medical examiner said his results were 'interesting'. He couldn't check all the cases, but what he found was unusual.”

“What's that mean?”

“Is there a drug problem at GSU?”

“There's almost certainly some drug use, but it doesn't make the newspaper.”

“One was an overdose on Adderol.”

“That happens at 'Tech¹ occasionally, I guess our classes are getting harder so it's bound to happen here.”

“Another looks like a potent mix of illegal drugs. Meth for sure, maybe some others.”

“Wouldn't surprise me,” with more than 30,000 students at GSU there was bound to be an addict or two. “That's two. What about the rest?”

“He said most of the bodies had been released to the families. When he very carefully went over the one he still had, there was something that looked like a recent injection site, maybe. It was just a pin prick.”

“People inject meth sometimes, don't they?”

“Yes, but this wasn't on the body where there were traces of Meth and the wound was much more superficial than he'd expect with a meth addict.”

“So I guess there's nothing to go on.”

“He said he's going to keep his eyes open. No clear evidence of crime, but he wasn't happy that these were all normal deaths. That's not bad.”

“Not good, either.”

“It's a start.”

4

Jane was sitting up in bed when I arrived. She had a heart/breathing monitor still attached, but was no longer in the ICU and was in a normal hospital room. I asked, “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

She nodded, “Beats watching game show reruns and soap operas.”

“A few of the questions I want to ask have to do with drug use. I won't tell your parents.”

“There's nothing to tell. I have the odd beer with my friends. That's all.”

“You don't take anything to do better in school? Some illicit Ritalin for example.”

“Absolutely not. Besides, I had to take a drug test before I could teach. I was clean. Why?”

“Good, that eliminates one set of leads.”

“Leads?”

“I'll fill you in after I've asked my questions, but I'm trying to see if there is any common thread between the students who've had 'heart attacks' lately.”

“Sweet.”

“Can you describe what happened the day you collapsed?”

“Well, I had class in the morning. Then lunch, and drove out to my school. Nothing unusual.”

“Really?”

“There was that insect sting.”

“Sting?”

“I was out watching the children on the playground when a wasp or bee stung me. It just flew into me, stung me and I brushed it off. It was a bit odd, there was a sort of 'pop' noise at the time.”

“Ever been allergic to bees?”

“No.”

“Can I see where it stung you?”

She bared her arm, but there wasn't much to see. There was possibly a small mark where she pointed. If there had been a wound, it was well-healed. That line of questioning wasn't going anywhere. So I tried another, “The other thing I need to do is look for a common social thread between you and the other possible victims.”

“Grilling me about my private life?”

“Not really, you just have to tell me if you know the person I mention.” I started with the boys from my class. “Sam Green or Steve Jordan?”

“I knew Sam, we both worked tutoring jobs for the online ESL service. He was a nice guy, for a Freshman.”

“Steve?”

“No. I don't think so.”

None of the other names I knew about were familiar. Before I left I asked her how she was doing, Danny wanted to know when his favorite teacher would return. She replied, “Pretty well, it's funny though, parts of me are still numb or don't work right. It's like I'm a robot and my wiring is wrong.”

5

I tried talking to the ESL lab to see if they would let me see the list of students who worked for them. They said there was this little issue of student privacy involved. This was a little odd, since the freedom of information act makes everything spent or done at GSU a matter of public record². So I asked again, and received the same answer, this time a little more forcibly. If I showed up with a police detective, a warrant and the down of an unhatched pterodactyl they'd let me know. Otherwise, would I please go and do something anatomically impossible to myself.

I gave Arthur a call. He asked me, “When are you going to get back on a case that pays?” Then he agreed to see what he could find out via informal channels. “I've helped a couple of people in personnel, they should return the favor.” I didn't ask any questions and he volunteered no further information.

6

Laura and I threw and engagement/wedding party, partially to celebrate our coming nuptials, and also to introduce our disparate friends to each other. It also meant that we could skip out right after the ceremony to have a honeymoon without a lot of fuss. I'd suggested we go somewhere safe, say Somalia or Columbia, but Laura insisted that the northern beaches of Jamaica would be best. In retrospect, she was correct, I don't think she'd look good in a burka.
The party started well enough, given the mix of professors, the occasional scared-looking graduate student, detectives and lawyers. Most of our difficulty was making sure that the mixture didn't self-segregate into knots of people who knew each other talking about things they mutually knew. It was in this spirit that I introduced one of the chemists, Isabelle Carling to a knot of detectives containing my friend Alvin Morrison. They were discussing shop, the status of the local drug trade, and I figured her interests in synthetic organic chemistry would fit right in.
One of the detectives was saying, “There's a new source of Meth in south side.”
“Really,” Dr. Carling observed, “How interesting.”
“It is,” he continued, “It's much cleaner than the usual stuff. Most of these Meth cooks produce a mixture of products that is not very pure.”
“What do you expect, it's hard to do a clean synthesis.”
“This stuff, it's clean, almost as if they used a real chemist to make it rather than cooking it up in some shack in the woods.”
Isabelle dropped her glass. “I'm sorry. Didn't mean to do that.”
While I was mopping up the mess I overheard a bit more. The detective was continuing to expostulate, “It's called 'blue panther' for some reason. Couldn't have anything to do with State could it?”
“No, no.” Isabelle quickly replied, “We have strict controls on our chemicals. It would be impossible to set up a drug lab at GSU.”
I wandered off to dump the debris and rinse my rags, by the time I returned the conversation was over. I also noticed Isabelle had made her excuses and left.

1Since the stimulants used to help people with ADHD will also improve performance for others there is a black market in them among college students at high pressure universities. Since their use carries a significant risk of causing or exacerbating heart problems, there is the occasional 'promising career' cut short.

2Seriously, if you want to see how much money is wasted on your professors salary, just ask. But before you write your state representative about it, check out the football coach, college president and various senior administrators.

Grammar checker for Libreoffice

I tend to use libreoffice for writing. Simple, easy to use, runs on linux and windows. What more could I want?

How about a working grammar checker? The languagetool extension fits the bill (mostly). It's easy to install and gets many of the simple errors. It's not perfect, sometimes gets confused, but I've been finding it useful. Everything it flags may not be incorrect, but is worth examining. Often what it flags is confusing, even if it is really correct.

I give it my five skulls for excellence.

Another trivia question

Anyone figure out whose statue I'm using for my picture? There's a connection to the book I'm currently writing. It's a bit tenuous, but real.

A Hidden, Almost Covert Blogger Channel

There is a simple way to use the comments on blogger-based blogs to communicate with a friend largely free from monitoring.

1. Set up. Exchange or generate a Google ID/password pair. The exchange doesn't have to happen over the net, it could be by a phone call or a physical mail. 
2. User 1 logs in and opens a comment on one of the many, many low volume blogs on blogger. (This is one, being connected with a beginning mystery author). He, she or it puts down part of the message and saves a draft comment.
3. User 2 logs in and edits the comment. He can either read and delete the comment or he can put his message in. If he isn't done with the communications, he saves the draft.

The reason I said he, she or it, is that you can automate the process. I suspect that an IRC channel could be constructed this way.

Prolog and revised chapter 1

The prolog gives the reader critical information about part of the mystery of the plot. The major actors in the book do not know about these events. This might be a 'red herring' or a 'red red herring' subplot. 

0. Prolog.

They met in a dark staircase, in the evening just past dusk, in one of the apartment towers near Donghua university in Shanghai. The stale smell of dinners past filled the air, just barely overwhelming the sulfurous smell from the coal smog.
The young man said in his most desperate voice, “I need to do well on the TOEFL to enter Harvard. My parents could not live with the shame if I fail.”
The foreigner coughed from the smog then quietly replied, in his strongly accented and not quite mastered Cantonese, “The money, you it have?” By his build, he was unmistakably a foreigner, despite his smog mask, dark glasses and hat pulled down over his eyes. Even though he wore clothes from the local department store.
“Five thousand dollars?”
“Six. Cash. Now.”
“Here.”
The foreigner counted it. “You're short. Not enough. More.”
“It's all we have, we'll pay you. I promise.”
“No. Not enough for Harvard.”
“UGA then?”
“OK.” The foreigner pocked the money. He then gave the young man a written sheet with his gloved hand. “This instructions is. Understand?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Now forget you saw me.” He left down the stairs and out into the deepening fug. He had long a series of appointments to keep that evening before catching his plane home.



Shen Yi carefully read the paper he bought. They contained detailed instructions on how to log into a site using a virtual tunnel through the 'Great Firewall of China'. He could hardly wait, and once home fired up his laptop and got started.
The most beautiful girl he ever saw was on the screen when he logged in. She looked very much Chinese, for an American. He wasn't expecting that. He sat there, agog at her, his jaw dropped with amazement. She began to speak, “Do you want to start with the English practice?”
He stammered, in Cantonese, “Do you speak Chinese?”
“A little,” she then continued in English, “I'm adopted and my parents insisted I learn my culture's language. You're here to learn English aren't you?”
“You're very beautiful,” Yi, continued this time in English. She blushed. “Thank you.” She looked down at a paper on her desk and asked him, “The first question is 'what is the difference between to and too?'”
“One means also. Can you give me your email address so we can talk later?”
The girl paused, “I'm not allowed to tell you that.” She wrote something on a sheet of paper and held it up in front of the camera. Yi hastily wrote down her address. She continued, “The second question is give me an example of using too.”
“I like know if you are a college scholar too.”
“Very good, but it would be better to say, 'I would like to know if you are a college student too'.”
“I would like to know if you are a college student too.”
“Great. And I would reply, 'I am, I am a student at Georgia State University'.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Donghua. I want to graduate study in Georgia.”
“Good, but 'Donghua, I want to do graduate study in Georgia', is correct”
“Donghua, I want to do graduate study at Georgia State University.”
The girl blushed again, Yi was a fast worker. He seemed nice enough, but coming halfway around the world after a couple of minutes of an online chat was a bit excessive. “Don't be silly.”
“What's silly about it? What is your name?”
“Jane.”
“Jane I think I you love.”
“Now you are really being silly. The right way to say it is 'Jane I think I love you', which you can't yet. We've just met.”
“Jane I know I love you.”

1. Put Your Hand Up before You Die.

Spring semester found me back practicing academic physics. While it was not quite as spiritually rewarding as chasing down a network of serial killers, my sudden death was a lot less likely when I was standing in the front of a classroom blathering away. It was a fair swap, especially since Laura Brown and I had hooked up. Having a reason to live changes your outlook on life. During summer, class breaks, and on the occasional evening, I still worked with Arthur Ellis, the head and sole full-time detective for Argus detectives. If I kept at it, I'd have my two years employment as a private detective and could become a certified private investigator. Given the status of funding and the way this university ran, that was looking more and more attractive each day. I'd drawn the short straw in the class assignment lottery for spring semester and was teaching PHYS 1101, non-calculus physics. Or as we liked to call it 'physics for poets'. It allowed the non-mathematical types to satisfy a science requirement for graduation, but far more importantly than that it brought credit hours and the tuition dollars that came with them to the department budget.
I'd finished lecturing a class of 50 freshmen and sophomores in Classroom South. They mostly sat there slumping in their seats almost as responsive as lumps of mud. Today's lot looked suitably glazed over, with their brains well cooked and at the limit of their endurance. While occasionally one would realize that this science stuff was interesting and worth the effort to learn it, there would be no such revelations today. One student in particular looked a bit more thoroughly glazed over than the rest. I told the class, “See you next time, and don't forget to at least try the homework.” which was followed by the bulk of them rising and running for the door. They were 'free at last'. The student who was particularly glazed over lifelessly dropped to the floor when he was jostled by the others. I ran to him, while someone screamed in the background. I shouted, “Call 911”, and watched as several students complied. One student ran up, “I know first aid, CPR. Can I help?”
“You bet. Start on CPR while I go and get the AED from the hall.”
I dashed out into the hall, then down it towards the center of the building where there were AED's mounted on the wall. The alarm on the AED holder was already sounding. Someone had just removed the device. Two heart attacks at the same time on the same day was not a foreseen event.
Racing back to the room, I found the student pumping away as hard as he could. He shouted at me, “Where is it?”
“Already in use. When you're ready I'll spell you.” For the next few minutes we alternated for a minute each at pumping on the student's chest. CPR is exhausting work and the two of us were nearly shot when the EMT's finally arrived. We'd been doing our best to match the beat of 'Stayin Alive' which happens to have the right tempo for CPR. Unfortunately it was more a case of 'Another One Bites the Dust' which also has the right tempo.
EMT's aren't allowed to declare a patient as dead, but it was pretty clear that after a few minutes of their hard work, there wasn't much hope for the student. As they were leaving I heard one say to the others, “Funny, that's the tenth one this week.” His friend replied, “Wonder what they're taking?”
It had been a while since GSU had a serious drug problem. Most of the students worked part time to pay for college and didn't have the time or inclination to spend it high. Those that had the time tended to favor beer.
2
That night at dinner Laura noticed I was distant. Ms. Laura Brown, former assistant DA for the city of Atlanta and now a rising star among the state prosecutors and I, decided to get married. As she now had full custody of her son, I was going to be an acting stepfather. It seemed wise to move in a bit ahead of time and let her 6 year old son Daniel get used to me. “Will, what happened?”
“Lost a student.”
“You don't usually get upset when one drops your class.”
“Hardy,” I laughed, “No, it wasn't that. He died from heart failure at the end of class.” At least that's when we found out about it. He could have been dead for a few minutes before without my noticing it. That thought only made it worse.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “That's awful.”
“I didn't think my lectures were that boring.”
“I'm sure they're not.”
Danny had a different take on things. By age 6, he'd seen his parents divorced, then had his stepmother reject him when his father was put on trial for organizing an embezzlement ring with murderous consequences at the university research foundation. Mind you, his biological father had just doped Danny's stepmother preparatory to chopping her up for smoked ribs and was extending his family in several sideways directions at the time. So she wasn't completely unjustified in dumping Danny into Laura's lap. My relationship with Danny wasn't helped by the fact that it was my efforts that put his biological father in prison. We had our good days and our not so good days. This was one of the not so good days. I was getting the silent treatment until he spoke.
“They are too.”
It was going to be interesting living as a new family.
3
Next morning I text messaged my TA. We had to discuss what happened yesterday in class and figure out a plan to deal with it for the next lecture. He showed up at my office and we talked about how to handle the death in a respectable and professional manner. I vetoed the ideas of talking about the heart as a pump and measuring the electrical impulses from its muscles. It would have to be an emotional and forthright discussion about feelings.
Since neither of us was particularly skilled at social or emotional intelligence this was promising to be difficult and I was looking through the university website to see if there were counselors who could help when the undergraduate who helped me with CPR knocked on my door.
Even though he was one of the more alert ones, with 50, well now of 49 students I hadn't learned his name yet.
“Dr. Sharpe?”
“Hi, I'm sorry, I don't quite remember your name, but thank you for helping yesterday. It's a shame it didn't work.”
“Steve Jordan, well,” he paused, “we did our best. When I took CPR they warned us it didn't usually work.”
“Steve, I'm sure you've seen my TA and graduate student Tom.”
“Yo.”
“Anyway, the student who collapsed, did you know him?”
“Same scout troop. We were buddies.”
“I'm sorry. Did he have health problems?”
“No, we just did Philmont last summer. 100 miles in a week and a half at 8000 feet. Couldn't have gone if he had a weak heart.”
“He wasn't doing any drugs? Cocaine will sometimes do things like this.”
“Sam, no. He was a straight arrow. Wouldn't even drink a beer.”
“So nothing unusual?”
“Nah, he was even earning extra money by tutoring foreign students with their English. Great guy.”
“I'm sorry.”
“He'll be missed.”