Geoffrey couldn’t resist dropping the book’s title. Listening to him talk, I thought back to the way Dean had looked, saying those same words: eyes unseeing, face pale.
“Do you think it could be someone in the class?” Lia asked. “Your class?”
She was so good at changing the direction of the conversation that Geoffrey didn’t even realize she’d done it.
“If there were a student in this class with the potential for that kind of thing,” Geoffrey said, his tone saturated with smugness, “I think I would know it.”
My first reaction to those words was that of course he thought he’d recognize a killer. But my second reaction sat heavier in my stomach. He’d used the word potential.
Potential as in capability, or potential as in talent?
“What about the kid who’s setting the curve in the class?” Lia gave Geoffrey another verbal nudge.
“No way,” Geoffrey scoffed. “Gary something. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Gary Clarkson. As in Clark. I wouldn’t have pegged him as the curve-setting type, and that disturbed me. Maybe he was more of a planner, more type A, more organized than I’d realized.
Lia snatched the phone up and abruptly hung up. The sudden movement jerked me out of my thoughts and I tracked her gaze. Dean was standing in the hallway behind me.
He didn’t comment on what he’d overheard. He didn’t threaten to tell Briggs we’d broken the rules. Again. He just turned and walked, his footsteps heavy, toward the stairs.
I snatched my phone back. Lia didn’t stop me. It rang. I expected it to be Geoffrey calling back, but it wasn’t.
“There’s someone I need you to look up,” Briggs said, forgoing the customary greeting.
“Same to you,” I told him. “Gary Clarkson. He’s comfortable with guns, shared a high percentage of Emerson’s classes, and was setting the curve in Fogle’s class.” I hesitated just a second, then plowed on. “You should also check out the professor’s TA.”
The FBI hadn’t given us a file for Geoffrey, but that was an oversight on their part. He wasn’t a student in the class, but he was a student at the university—and it would be just like Dean’s father to get off on telling the FBI something misleading, but true.
“I’ll look into it,” Briggs promised, “but right now, I need you to see what you can find out about a Conrad Mayler. He’s a senior who took Fogle’s class two years ago.”
“Why am I looking him up?”
There was silence on the other end. For a moment, I thought Briggs wouldn’t answer the question, but after a second’s hesitation, he did. “He’s the one who posted the video of the crime scene.”
Briggs had a way of punctuating the end of sentences that shut the door completely on further conversation.
“Okay,” I said. “Conrad Mayler. Got it.”
Twenty minutes later, I’d discovered everything there was to online-know about Conrad Mayler. He was a journalism major. He claimed to listen only to indie bands. His favorite movies were documentaries. He had a blog where he wrote snarky recaps of a variety of reality shows. According to his profile, he’d attended a private high school and worked part-time at the student radio station.
His relationship status was “It’s complicated.” The girl implicated in said relationship was Bryce Anderson.
Your name just keeps coming up. I pictured the blond girl in my mind. I’d made the error once before of erroneously assuming an UNSUB was male. No matter what my gut was telling me this time, I couldn’t risk making the same mistake twice.
Scrolling through Conrad’s status updates and profiles, it wasn’t hard to see that he fancied himself a journalist. He’d probably claim that he’d taken the video of Emerson’s body and posted it anonymously online because the public had a right to know. I was half-surprised he hadn’t actually posted it to his profile.
Seemingly in answer to my thoughts, the page in front of me updated itself. Conrad had posted a new video. Preparing myself for the worst, I clicked play, but instead of a corpse, I saw rows of wooden seats, filled with students. The time stamp on the video read 7:34 A.M.
“Professor George Fogle once said that he scheduled his class for 7:30 in the morning as a way of separating the students who were taking his class on a lark from those who were serious about the study of criminology.” The camera panned the room, and I recognized the auditorium.
I’d been there before.
“Three days ago, three hundred and seven serious students took the first of three Monsters or Men exams. The three hundred and eighth student, Emerson Cole, was found dead that morning.”
“There’s no white noise,” Sloane commented, sidling up behind me. “Whoever taped the narration has decent equipment. The video, on the other hand, was taken by some kind of smartphone. At least 1080p resolution, maybe higher.”