His interest was not in the gaping hole in the street, but the two people drinking coffee and eating rolls in the diner across the road. The woman ate rolls, actually. The man ate his worries.
By the time their little social meeting ended, the woman had contacted some of the man’s worries. Yet, when she got in the taxi, there had been a curious light in her eyes.
She didn’t matter, though. At least, not yet.
It was the man, the professor, that he was after. So he followed the man’s car on a Ducati bike parked in a nearby alley.
What the strange man saw on Olivia’s face was the afterglow of an idea.
The said idea was to go back to Tom Garcia. She had to see that tape again. Criminals often stalked the cops who investigated them. In this case, Olivia could be attracting such interest. She would simply watch that tape a couple more times, memorize the way he walked, his appearance, and then let him fall into the description when she caught sight of him.
There was a further idea, a natural progeny of the first idea; as long as those professors have refused to be sensible, she was entitled to a few drinks that afternoon.
First, she called Tom Garcia. He said he was on his way out of the office but he’d wait a few minutes for her to arrive.
“Aw, shit,” she cussed.
“What?”
She wanted to get her drink along the way. She said instead, “Nothing serious, I’ve been talking with Peter. Plans for the expedition aren’t looking good.”
“My suspicions too.”
“And I need a drink—”
“Olivia, don’t.”
“Okay. Give me ten minutes.”
“Five.”
“Seven.”
“Okay then.”
The University of Florida.
Peter Williams drove onto the campus about noon, twenty minutes after drinking half a cup of coffee downtown with Olivia Newton. Behind his black Porsche followed a Ducati bike.
The rider kept about half a mile distance so the professor didn’t notice he’d been followed from the diner. And when the biker came in through the iron-wrought gates of the institution, security assumed he was a repairman.
Indeed he was a repairman, sort of.
He parked his bike at the edge of the lot, away from the professor. He watched him walk up the steps into the Faculty of Humanities. The man counted to ten before bringing a cellphone to his ear.
“Sir, he is in now.”
The voice on the other side growled, “Watch him, I want to know who else he sees, where he goes. Just stay on him.”
“Right sir.” The man hesitated a bit. “He is clean, sir.”
There was silence on the other side.
“Squeaky clean, sir,” the repairman said, waiting for his master.
“I know. I just need to be sure.”
The man flipped his cellphone closed and quickly pocketed it. A burly security guy was approaching.
“Hey, may I know what you’re doing here?” the security guy asked, his hand on the butt of the stick attached to his hip.
“I’m a repairman.”
“Oh, what do you repair?”
Habits, he almost said, but he raised his toolbox and spread uneven teeth. On it was written Telephone Lines.
The security guy walked away.
Sheriff Tom Garcia pulled Olivia into his office and shut the door. A few heads turned in the pool. Policemen were busy people, first by profession and generally by nature. Tom had waited for Olivia for one hour.
He was livid.
“What took you so long?!”
“Hey, cool out, Tom.” She gestured at the officers out there. “They are gonna think their sheriff is molesting a citizen.”
Tom sniffed the air around her. Satisfied that Olivia hadn’t been drinking, he calmed down. But he watched her suspiciously.
“How long are you going to be?” he asked.
Olivia saw that the sheriff had already set up the rig in the corner of his office. There was a VCR and a monitor on a small table and nothing else.
“Maybe fifteen minutes,” Olivia said as she sat down.
“The tape is only two minutes, why do you need that long?”
She turned to him. “Have you ever had a feeling someone was watching you, following you?”
Before Tom could respond, Olivia continued, “Of course you have, you’re a cop. I think I’m being followed. I’ve seen no one in particular but I’d like to know what they look like—”
“You think Harald’s killer may be coming after you?”
“I don’t know, Tom.”
Tom Garcia sighed. He went back to his chair. Olivia frowned. “Did I say something?”
The sheriff regarded her with tired eyes. His face was rough with bristles of hair, days old. He pulled his tie, unhooked his collar.
“Betty needs a kidney transplant.”
On the monitor, the killer was walking down a lighted hall, but Olivia wasn’t looking anymore.
“I’m sorry, Tom. Oh Betty.”
“We need six thousand dollars that I don’t have.” Tom added, “I was going to go see Internal Affairs. I need a loan.”
Olivia clicked off the tape. She had seen enough.
“Will you get it?”
“I don’t know, but I want to try.”
Her thirst for a drink had been severe but now she suddenly lost all desire for it. In the past few days she’s been realizing that the world was a big fucked up place. She had troubles of her own, but so did others. Yet, people went about their days as though they didn’t need a loan, a kidney, or even to catch a killer.
She wanted to ask how the investigation was going on Harald’s case. She had been so engrossed in her angle of the case that she had forgotten that Tom had responsibilities to the city and to his family.
“I hope you get it, Tom. How’s Betty holding up?”
“She’s in a daze. We just can’t just believe it.”
Olivia breathed deeply. The past months had been like a dream for her too. She could relate.
To change the mood, Tom asked, “What about the professor, any news?”
“We are stuck.”
“I guess stuck is something going around now.”
Olivia nodded, thinking about her own predicaments. Maybe she should not get that drink after all.
Three days had passed since his botched presentation to the Dean of the Faculty and his cohorts. If Barry Dutch was having second thoughts about Peter’s request, he wasn’t showing it. He’d been genial at the quarterly meeting the previous day, even making blithe allusions to Peter’s accusations of Ted’s indiscretions.
“You sure got the man reaching for his balls,” the dean had laughed.
What that meant hadn’t been clear to Peter and he didn’t care one way or the other.
Ted Cooper had been there too. Ted was anywhere he could make an impression. They had been polite to each other. Then they met again at the school staff club last night. Ted had not been his usual imperious and contemptible self.
Craig Bozeman had pulled Peter aside in the faculty room earlier, congratulated him for doing what he had always wanted to do, which was, “shit on Ted.”
He had then bludgeoned him into coming to the club. They had taken a seat far from Ted and his friends, a couple of guys who smelled of plenty of money. Ted had said hi, with the corner of his mouth, and went back to drinking water.
“I’m looking for someone to fill in for me, Peter. For a couple of days.”
“Why? Are you dying?”
Craig laughed. “No, man. I’m not. I’m getting married next month.”
Peter was drinking a Bud Light, which was the only alcohol allowed on the campus. He twirled the green bottle at Craig. “Why would you do that to yourself, Craig?”