Naylor said, ‘What time did she leave?’
‘Six. Maybe seven.’
‘Did she contact you again? Maybe call on your cell?’
‘No, that was the last time I saw or spoke to her.’
Naylor nodded and scribbled a few notes in a notebook, then after a while he looked up and continued with his questions. ‘How well did she get on with the other students?’
‘She was a popular girl. She seemed happy, well adjusted. The other students liked her, but I don’t think she had any close friends. She was a bit of a loner. The work we did was fairly intense, there wasn’t a lot of time for chit chat.’
‘That’s OK. I’m going to interview the students in your tutor group. Frank has printed a list. I’d like to talk to you again later if that’s OK?’
‘Sure, anything I can do to help,’ said Chris. He felt a little dazed as he watched Frank and the detective leave the room. Was he a suspect, he wondered. He certainly hadn’t seen that one coming. He would speak to Frank later and find out what the detective had said about him.
He went over to his desk and switched on his computer terminal. He wasn’t sure how he was going to focus on work today. He checked his emails. Among the thirty or so new messages there was one from Jasmine. It was sent on Monday morning. Chris wasn’t sure he wanted to read letters from the grave. Reservedly he opened it and read. It was a short message.
Chris, I have to see you before your meeting today, somewhere private. I’m going to the park for a run this morning, can you meet me there? -J
.
Chris stared at the screen, he was stunned.
That’s all I need
, he thought.
He looked through the other emails but all the time he thought about the one from Jasmine. Why did she send that? Why now? He finished dealing with the other items, then tracked back to that email and read it again. He deleted it. Then he opened his deleted items folder and deleted that. Gone.
The principal’s office made a reasonable interview room after Naylor had shifted some of the furniture out, leaving just the desk and a couple of chairs. Ben had watched Frank Myers fuss around like an old woman—he wasn’t taking this well. Frank wasn’t sure he should be letting him interview the students, but he’d managed to put his mind at ease by telling him he just wanted to get a feel for things; get an understanding of what kind of person Jasmine had been. In truth he wanted to see if any of the students had something to hide. He could always tell.
Naylor asked Frank to send in the first student on his way out. Things would go better without mother hen clucking around. He settled in to the chair and ran his hands over the leather-topped oak desk. It was a fine piece of furniture, not like the metal tables they had in the interview rooms back at the station. He wondered how much a principal got paid.
The door opened and in came a young man, tall and way too skinny with black hair that looked like it needed cutting. He was nineteen or twenty at a guess, but to Ben he was just a kid and yet he strode in with a confident swagger. How nice to be nineteen and to know it all.
Ben smiled and gestured to the chair and the student sat and slouched back with his arms and legs open. This kid had nothing to hide and didn’t seem to like cops. Ben examined him and tried to make sense of his clothes. He wore a striped shirt and blue jeans with some kind of design, like a horseshoe, painted on the front in white paint with red flowers dotted up the sides. Ben thought he must have painted them himself; surely no one would pay for clothes like that. The trouble with the kids of today, he thought, was they had more fashion sense than common sense.
They made some small talk and Naylor got on to the subject of Jasmine. The kid knew her but wasn’t a friend. He liked her well enough but they just had different interests. Besides, the coursework was tough and there wasn’t much time for socializing. Naylor jotted down notes. The kid thought that Jasmine had family in Maryland, she lived on campus and was a loner, always working as far as he knew.
Naylor set his pen down on the desk and pushed back, relaxing his posture. ‘What do you think of Mr. Sanders?’ he said, ‘Is he a good lecturer?’
The young man sat forward in his chair and brightened somewhat. ‘He’s great,’ he said. ‘He really knows his stuff. Everyone likes him. When it comes to cutting code, he’s awesome. You should see him work. It’s like watching Neo.’
‘Neo?’ said Naylor.
‘You know, Neo? From the Matrix? Oh come on, you gotta know the Matrix? It’s a classic.’
‘I’m sorry kid, I guess I must have missed that one.’ The student looked disgusted. ‘What about his relationship with Jasmine?’ Naylor asked.
‘What do you mean?’
This kid was intelligent, but not too bright. Naylor was going to have to spell it out. ‘Were they having an affair?’
‘No way man. I mean, they got on OK. She spent a lot of time in his office, but Chris is a cool guy. He wouldn’t do that. He was always working anyway.’ The kid grinned, like his opinion of Chris had just been elevated by two points. ‘But now you mention it, who knows? Maybe he was doing her. The dirty dog.’ He sat back in his chair, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat and nodding his head with a new-found respect for his tutor.
Ben sighed. It was going to be a long day. He handed a card to the student and told him to get in touch if he remembered anything that might be useful. He asked him to send the next student in as he left. He couldn’t wait to get these interviews out of the way so he could do some more digging on Chris. So far he was the best lead he had. Actually he was the only lead. There was something going on between those two, he could sense it.
The next student entered the room and Naylor sighed inwardly. The student was dressed according to the same ridiculous code as the others, with the addition of a trilby hat. As far as Naylor was concerned, there were three reasons for wearing a hat: because it was part of your uniform, to keep your head warm, or because you were trying to make a statement. He figured in this case it was the final option, but the only statement this kid was making was that he had poor taste in hats. He flipped his notepad over to a clean sheet and wrote “kid with hat” at the top. He wasn’t in the mood.
After four hours of bad attitudes and questionable fashion sense, Naylor finally got through the interviews with those that might have had dealings with Jasmine. The students had been predominantly male, which he guessed was due to the subject they were studying. They were hiding nothing. If Chris had been having an affair with Jasmine, he’d done a good job of keeping it a secret. From his experience of student-teacher affairs, and he’d experienced quite a few in his day, everyone knew. Everyone except the wife that was, and when she found out, that’s when the real fun began.
So far it was only Chris that showed any promise and he needed to gather evidence soon before he started to cover his tracks.
Chris sat at his desk and stared at his computer keyboard. He felt stupid; after all, he had just deleted evidence in a homicide investigation. He tried to think through his actions and the problems he was facing in an abstract way, logically, like he was programming. For every email received there was a record of the message that started at the originating computer and routed its way through several intermediates. In the case of an internal email, such as this, there would only be three computers involved: the originating owner of the mailbox, the mail server and the receiving mail box. By deleting the message from his computer, all he had done was make himself appear guilty. He could delete the message from the originating source, but to get rid of it from the mail server would be difficult, and getting caught hacking the university’s servers would make things look even worse. He decided to recover the deleted mail and let the cops draw their own conclusions. The data had been erased, at least at a superficial level, but Chris knew how to recover erased data and had even programmed a utility to help. There were commercial programs to do this, but Chris found the only way to be sure was to build it himself. He got the email back in a few seconds, but then started to think about why it had been sent in the first place. She’d said she needed to see him but she hadn’t said why.
Chris locked his terminal and walked towards the window. His headache was back. The pain started at his eyes, like they were tired, but it went much deeper, right into his brain. He put his fingers either side of his nose and pushed them hard into his sockets and that gave him some relief, although it was only temporary. He could take some pain killers, but he knew that in reality what he really needed was to take a break.
Chris thought about the email again, it wasn’t like Jasmine to be so cryptic. Could she have been worried someone else would read it? She should have just phoned, he thought, and then he remembered how his cell phone had been in his locker at the gun club and that the battery was now flat. Maybe she had been trying to call him. He walked over to his desk and grabbed his briefcase. It was a brown leather case that had been a present from Michelle when he’d started lecturing. She’d said it was to celebrate his first proper job. He opened it and rifled through the contents, which was largely useless junk and half-thought-out scribbled notes and drawings. He found his cell phone and pushed the power button but instead of coming to life it beeped and momentarily displayed a battery low message, then shut down once more. He pushed papers and cans around on his desk, looking for his phone charger. When he finally found it and was able to switch his phone on, he saw he had twenty-three missed calls. He brought up the missed calls list, but he hardly needed to look. All but one were from Jasmine. The other was from Michelle.
What was
she
going to make of this?
He dropped the phone on the desk and slumped into a chair. The cops would want to know about his relationship with Jasmine and here he was worrying about what his wife would think.
Chris grabbed the phone from the desk and punched the voicemail button. There were only three messages. The first was from Jasmine, the sound of her voice made him feel sad. She’d just left a message asking him to call back, she didn’t sound worried or stressed. The second message was from Michelle: she loved him and she was worried he was working too hard, she wondered why he wasn’t answering his cell, and she was going to call him on the office phone.
The final message was from Jasmine again. It was recorded at six in the morning—less than an hour before she died. The message was a little strange. She sounded upset. He played the message again.
Chris, this is Jasmine. Again. I guess you left your cell at home. Anyway, I’ve been trying to reach you. I really need to speak to you. I’m going for a run, if you get this in time, meet me in the park at around seven. The usual spot.
Chris stared into empty space, stunned, as he listened to the overly cheerful voice recording that gave him his next options: replay the message, delete the message, forward the message. What he really needed was an option to make the message disappear, to have never existed in the first place. He pressed the call end button and dropped the phone on the desk. He was screwed. It was only a matter of time before the voicemail, the email, the missed calls were found by the cops. Found by Michelle. He needed to figure things out, and fast.
* * *
Naylor knocked on the door to Chris’s office but didn’t wait for an invitation before walking in. Chris was standing by his desk staring down at his cell phone that seemed to be plugged in to a charger. He turned to see who had entered and he looked guilty. This guy was definitely hiding something.
‘I think we need to talk,’ said Naylor.
Chris said nothing, but his face told a story. He seemed to be trying to use his body to shield his phone. Naylor smiled to himself at the obvious body language. He might as well have said:
please don’t check my phone, I don’t want you to listen to my messages
.
‘It’s time for me to take your statement,’ said Naylor and as soon as the words were out he watched Chris relax. His posture changed, and the tension from his shoulders and neck seemed to lift.
I don’t know what your hiding
, he thought,
but it’s not going to take me long to find out
. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘Frank Myers needs his office back. I’m headed back to the station now. I could take you with me and we could get your statement out of the way. Is that OK with you?’
Chris still looked relieved. Most people would object to going to the station as an escalation from just answering a few questions in the comfort of their own environment. If this guy was so happy to go to the station, there was probably something here he didn’t want Naylor to see.
‘Sure, why not, I’ve got nothing to hide,’ said Chris. He grabbed his jacket and headed toward the door. He looked relieved, almost happy. Naylor wondered about the phone. He would need to take a look at the missed calls and listen to the messages. He walked over to the desk and picked it up, and then called out to Chris.