“Sorry,” she said, her olive skin flushing slightly. “Fractures in brittle materials propagate—they grow and spread—in a consistent way, whether the material is a ceramic cup or a steel pipeline or a human skull.” Mona was an engineering major, so I suspected she knew more than anyone else in the room about fracture mechanics. “When an impact is severe enough to cause cracking, the crack, or cracks, will spread from the point of impact until their energy is dissipated, or weakened.”
I didn’t want her to get so detailed that she’d lose people. Using the laser pointer that I’d taken from Miranda, I traced the shortest crack. “Are you saying that something dissipated the energy of this crack? What was it? Why didn’t this crack propagate any farther?”
“Cracks don’t jump cracks,” she said, holding up both hands to form a big T, as if calling for a time-out. “The crack from the blow to the temporal bone stopped when it intersected this crack, which was already there—from the first blow, which the defendant delivered to the back of the head.” She held up an index finger to underscore a point she was about to make. “A blow he couldn’t have delivered if he was face-to-face with the victim, as he claimed.”
I nodded. “Class,” I told the group, “you’re the jury. Based on the testimony you’ve just heard, how many think this was murder, rather than self-defense?” All but two hands went up. “Good job, Dr. Faruz.” I checked my watch; as I suspected, we were at the end of our class period. “Okay, that’s all for today. Next time, we’ll talk about gunshots. Be sure to look at the cases ahead of time. I’m giving extra points for class participation next time.”
The students stood and started filing out, and I began boxing up the skulls we’d brought to class. As I closed the lid to one of the boxes, I glanced up and noticed a boy in the third row nudge his neighbor. Then, to my astonishment, he stuck his foot into the aisle just as Mona was passing him. She tripped and fell, her books and papers and purse and laptop flying, and the two boys snickered. “Oops,” said the boy who’d tripped her. He muttered something else; I couldn’t catch all of it, but I was sure I heard the word “rag.”
Before I could react, Miranda was on them like a shot. Grabbing the culprit by his shirt, she hauled him to his feet, then released him. I started toward them, half expecting her to strike him. Instead, she yanked her scarf from around her neck and wrapped it over the top of her head, like a hijab. “I’m Muslim, too, asshole,” she snarled. “You want to trip me? Go on. I dare you. I fucking dare you.”
As I started toward them to intervene, I heard a sharp popping sound from the back of the classroom, which made me stop and look up in alarm. Then I heard it again. One of the boys in the class, I saw, was slowly clapping his hands. A dozen other students had stopped on their way out, and now, one by one, they joined the first one in applauding. A girl hurried forward; she helped Mona to her feet and gave her a hug. Another gathered Mona’s scattered possessions. A third girl, who also happened to be wearing a scarf, joined the group, and—slowly and deliberately, her eyes full of challenge—she rewound her scarf to echo Miranda’s gesture of solidarity.
I admired their kindness, but I thought it best to defuse the situation. Laying a hand on Mona’s shoulder, I said, “Miss Faruz, are you all right?” She nodded, not speaking, tears streaking her face. “Do you have another class now?” She nodded again. “I don’t want to make you late for that. But come see me this afternoon, please. Will you do that?” I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she managed a faint smile as she nodded a third time, then turned to go.
I touched Miranda’s arm lightly; even through the sleeve of her sweater, I could feel the knotted muscles. “Miranda, can you carry these skulls back by yourself?”
She drew a long breath, then let it out slowly, and the tension in her arm eased a bit. “Yes,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.
“Thank you.” I squared off facing the troublemaker—Kevin McNulty was his name—and his buddy. Pointing to his buddy, I said, “You—out” and gestured with my head toward the doorway. Without a word, he scrambled to his feet and fled, leaving me alone in the room now with my problem student. “What do you have to say for yourself, McNulty?” I saw his jaw set and his eyes flash with defiance. He wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “Start talking, son. And don’t give me any crap about it being an accident. I saw the whole sorry business. Heard it, too. So if you bullshit me, I’ll call the UT Police so fast it’ll make your head spin, and I’ll tell them how I saw you assault a woman in my classroom.”
The boy blanched. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, and his hands began to tremble, but he remained silent. “You’re running out of time, boy,” I said. He still didn’t speak, so I took my cell phone from my belt, scrolled through my contacts until I found “UT Police,” and hit “call.” I angled the phone slightly, so he could hear that the call was genuine. “UT Police,” came a woman’s voice through the speaker. “Hello, this is Dr. Brockton, in Anthropology,” I said, looking into McNulty’s eyes. “Can you send an officer to the auditorium in McClung Hall, please?”