He glanced over at the mousy girl. In truth, he was surprised that anyone would have paid enough attention to pick him out of the photo after the fact. Verraday ruefully realized that if the situation were reversed, he would not have been able to identify the student who recognized him. Five weeks into the beginning of the fall semester, he didn’t know most of his sixty-odd students’ names, only the ones who had come to his office to discuss the course material or who were talkative in class. This girl in the big sweater and baggy jeans was neither of those things, though she was clearly more observant and confident than he would have given her credit for. He had only ever noticed her at all because he remembered thinking that her surname—something Scandinavian sounding like Jensen or Janzen or Johansen—didn’t seem to match her black hair and olive skin.
Just then, Verraday noticed someone hovering outside the door of the lecture hall. That usually meant another professor was waiting to use the room. He checked his watch and saw that it was only a couple of minutes until the end of the period. As if on cue, he heard the telltale shuffling of books and papers and the zip of Velcro. He recognized their Pavlovian response. They’d interpreted his glance at his watch as the end of the class. He knew from experience that from this point on, they’d barely hear anything he said. He decided not to fight the tide.
“Okay, we will wrap it up there for today. The readings for next class are on the course outline, but just to remind you, it’s Daniel Yarmey, in Law and Human Behavior. He’s done some interesting research on the accuracy of eyewitness memory. And it’s time to start reviewing all the material we’ve covered so far, because the midterm is fast approaching.”
Verraday switched off the projection system and began unplugging the connections on his laptop. As the bottleneck of students filing out of the room began to clear, he got a better look at the person hovering in the hall. It was a woman—in her early thirties, he guessed. She was tall and attractive, with dark hair. A tailored black pantsuit complemented her slim, athletic build.
She wasn’t anybody from the psychology department. He knew everyone in the faculty and all the teaching assistants. And he didn’t think she was any of the new hires from admin—he wouldn’t have forgotten meeting her. She was too young to be one of those helicopter parents coming to complain that he should have given their kid higher marks. She carried herself with an air of authority, he noted. He considered the possibility that she was there from the dean’s office to request he bump up a student’s mark because the parents were rich and donated to the university. It was a request he always refused.
As the last student exited, the woman slipped into the room and approached him at the lectern. She had intelligent eyes and a thoughtful expression. He really hoped she wasn’t here to ask him to pull a favor for an undeserving student.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Professor Verraday?”
“That’s me.”
She held out her badge. “I’m Detective Constance Maclean, Seattle Police Department.”
Verraday immediately bristled. This was worse than if she had been a flunkey from the dean’s office. Much worse.
“If you’re here to try to talk me into dropping the lawsuit, you can forget it,” he said.
“I’m not here to talk you out of anything, Professor.”
“And if the Seattle Police Department thinks that they can send someone to my place of employment to hang around the halls in front of my students and try to intimidate me, I can assure you and your bosses that is not going to work.”
“That is not my intention. I—”
“Good,” snapped Verraday, cutting her off, “because I don’t appreciate being pepper-sprayed, then having some two-hundred-pound lunkhead throw me facedown onto a sidewalk, crack my ribs, and then wrongfully detain me.”
Six months earlier, Verraday had been working on a research project about the psychology of crowd behavior. He had been legally video recording an Occupy Seattle demonstration when a riot cop by the name of Bosko had blindsided him. Bosko had tackled him from behind, knocking Verraday to the pavement, then handcuffing and arresting him. The refusal by the city or the police department to offer any sort of explanation or apology had prompted Verraday to file a suit to get their attention.
Before she could speak, he continued indignantly. “Know what? Maybe I should just call my lawyer right now.” He reached into the lower right-hand pocket of his blazer for his cell phone. It wasn’t there. Then he checked his left pocket. It wasn’t there either, and he was annoyed to realize he couldn’t remember where he’d put it.
Flustered, he noticed that she seemed to be suppressing a smile.
“Look,” she said, “I know about the Occupy thing, and I can see that you’re very upset about it. But I didn’t come to get you to drop any lawsuit.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I need your help.”
“You need my help?” he asked incredulously. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Okay, I’m listening.”
Maclean glanced out into the hall and noticed a few students lounging on benches nearby.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“My office. The department secretary will be just outside the door. But don’t worry—she won’t hear anything we say . . . unless I call for help, which she’ll be able to hear just fine.”
CHAPTER 2
His office was small and crowded, just the way Maclean imagined a professor’s office would be. It smelled like books. He gestured to a visitor’s chair facing his desk.