Influenced Eva Robinson (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📖

At last, she pulled up outside the police department and parked her car. It had been her turn to get dinner for Michael, and the scent of the curry was making her stomach rumble. She hurried inside, imagining how gloriously the chickpeas would burn her tongue.

By the time she got to her desk, her mouth was watering and she could hardly think straight.

Michael rolled out his chair; he was one of the few people left in the office. “Guess what I found?”

“The murderer,” said Ciara. “The case is closed, and I can stop staring at the surveillance videos for hours at a time.”

“Not exactly.”

Ciara sat at her desk and pulled out the takeout containers. “Okay, but hang on a second. I skipped lunch, and I think I’m digesting my own brain for sustenance.”

“I’m not sure that’s medically possible.”

“Well, you obviously didn’t get that far in med school, because it’s happening.”

“Why did you skip lunch? You seem like you could get scary if you missed meals.”

As she pulled off the lid of the container, the scent of garlic, chilis, cumin, and turmeric hit her nose hard. “While you were out, I got access to the surveillance video, and then I spent a while searching it for anything that looked unusual. Whoever took her laptop is on that video. Unfortunately, no one was wearing a T-shirt that read poisoner to help me out.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I did see Arabella several times. I found her coming into work the day her laptop was stolen. I saw her in the lobby, frantically pacing back and forth on the phone. She was clearly upset.”

“Reporting the laptop stolen?”

Ciara nodded. “Exactly.”

“The person who stole her laptop might not have poisoned her. We don’t know for certain that her murder and the theft are connected.”

“True, but she thought they were, that she was in danger because of whatever she’d found. It’s worth looking into.” She spooned the vindaloo into her mouth, closing her eyes and falling silent as the jolt of fire on her tongue sent her endorphins rushing. She could already feel the sweat beading on her forehead. She swallowed, vaguely aware that she’d moaned quietly. “Sorry, you had something to tell me?”

“I found the source of the missing thallium. The lab where Adam works keeps records of the toxic substances. Every time it’s used, it’s measured. Like I thought, there’s a discrepancy in the amount there with the amount recorded.”

“So there was some missing?”

“Five grams, in fact. More than enough to kill someone fast.”

Very interesting. “How fast?”

“Typically thallium poisoning happens over days or weeks. A person’s hair falls out; their limbs go numb. But those signs make the type of poison more obvious. With an enormous dose like this, the symptoms would show up within a few hours. The poisoning progresses too fast for those unique hallmarks.”

“Okay, so she was probably poisoned the same day she went to the hospital. Her laptop was stolen the day before.” Ciara ate another spoonful, her nose tingling with the rush of chilis. “So when was the thallium taken out of the lab?”

“Well, that’s the problem. It’s not used very often. So all I know is that sometime between two months ago and now, someone took five grams of thallium and didn’t record it.”

Not very helpful. “And who has access to the lab?”

“Basically anyone. Despite the dangerous substances, it’s just like the psychology building. Anyone can get in the building, and the lab is only locked at night. Anyone could slip in if the lab was empty for a minute or two.”

A thread of disappointment curled through Ciara. “So we still have nothing definitive tying it to Adam, or to anyone. And literally anyone within a two-month span could have gotten it.”

“Anyone who knew it was there.”

Ciara scrolled through the footage again, freezing at the point where Arabella was reporting the laptop stolen. She watched Arabella thread her fingers into her hair. The woman was tiny, and dressed in a long T-shirt and tightfitting jeans. She looked younger than her age, like a teenager almost. From the footage, Ciara could see that Arabella was crying.

Ciara scrolled back again, to before Arabella’s computer had been stolen. She’d told the campus police she was only out of her office for twenty minutes.

Ciara rolled back the footage twenty minutes and started playing the video again, her mind going numb as she stared at the screen, the students’ faces blending together in her mind.

Except this time, something else had caught her eye. It was a woman so nondescript that Ciara hadn’t picked up on her before—particularly since she couldn’t see the face. The woman had walked in behind a taller man, a Red Sox cap pulled down over her face.

But that was no accident, was it?

“Hang on.” Ciara put down her spoon and scrolled back the video until the woman was out the door again. When Ciara hit play, in walked the woman in the Red Sox cap, her chin tucked down as she walked. The cameras had been set up to record people’s faces, of course, but looking down at the floor like that, she’d managed to stay hidden from view. “Look.”

Michael cocked his head. “You think that’s something?”

“Who walks around looking at the ground like that?” And there was something else about her gait—the purposefulness, the speed. Her shoulders looked tense up around her ears. “If you were going to be lost in a dream world, watching your feet, you’d move more slowly. More relaxed. She’s not relaxed. Her stance doesn’t look normal.”

“That’s obviously not Adam.”

Ciara narrowed her eyes at the image on her screen, watching it one more time.

She paused the footage to get a better look at the woman. She carried a laptop bag over her shoulder—like nearly everyone else. Most of her body was obscured, but for a moment, when the man in front of her shifted away, Ciara caught a glimpse of small white logos on her shirt.