Chapter 20: Exam Day (Part II)

Zach walked silently by her side without glancing at her. His companion fell back a few steps and let them walk together with some privacy and spent his time looking at everything else. As Elaine watched, Zach worked his jaw, frowning as if in deep concentration, but she could not discern what that might mean. He had slowed his breathing to match his pace, his eyes fixed on the buildings ahead. The office of the Dean was only a few blocks away. She wondered if he intended to stay silent the entire walk.

Perhaps it was better that way.

Distracted and flustered, she reached into her pocket, withdrew another stick of pocky, and went to work on it with her teeth.

“Do you think this is a joke?” His lips barely moved and his eyes didn’t even flicker in her direction.

“No,” she said around her pocky.

“You sure don’t act like it.”

Elaine didn’t say anything. She focused on the pocky and the weight of her backpack biting into her shoulder.

“Tom Barrett fainted because of an electrolyte imbalance,” he said. “The investigation into the potential assault—and the person who called rescue—has been dropped. You were lucky.” He trailed off for a moment, finally looking at her. “This time.”

“I know,” she said.

Zach shook his head his forehead crinkled. “How do you know?” He pursed his lips for a moment and threw his hands up. “Why is this so hard? What has to happen to get you to react?

“Out of your entire family you cause me the most trouble. High school, if there was something out of the ordinary, there was Elaine right in the thick of it. Fantasy detective. Except this isn’t Chinatown, it’s the real world, and you’re not Jack Nicholson.”

She hitched her backpack further up onto her shoulder. “My current case is not related to the business with the dean. In fact, I didn’t get involved with this case until after he had my lab ransacked. In a way, I accepted this case because of it.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing because I can’t help you there.”

“I don’t need your help.”

He moved ahead and pulled the door open for her. “Too bad,” he said as she walked inside. “One of these days avoiding responsibility like this is going to catch up with you.”

Elaine wondered what he meant by that. He said it almost as if he didn’t expect it to catch up with her today. His partner continued to maintain a casual distance from them, fiddling with the radio on his shirt. They passed through the shadows of a couple buildings as light crowds of students filtered past. Zach’s lips moved without speech as if he were chewing on an idea.

“Is there something else?” Elaine asked.

His shoulders went up for a moment and he breathed out slowly. “I don’t think it’s healthy for you spending so much time with Francine,” he said. “She was a bad influence in high school and she’s obviously a bad influence now. I don’t even know why you’re friends with her. She certainly couldn’t wasn’t loyal to you back then. Now I know—”

“What?” She stopped and tipped her head up. Zach loomed a full head higher than her so it was easy to square herself with his eyes from where she stood. “I get it. In high school the jocks and the cheerleaders were buddy-buddy. But, what do you know? She changed sides. You…” She gestured with what was left of her pocky at his uniform. “You didn’t. So maybe you don’t know her as well as you think. Oh, and she goes by Frog now. Not Francine. Get it right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “So she dyed her hair green and she changed her name, but she’s still the same bitchy drama-queen she was in high school. If you only knew the things she said about your group behind your backs you wouldn’t be so quick to keep her.”

“So what?”

“So, I think it’s obvious that you’ve been putting off your responsibility and I don’t think that Fran is helping. Her little rebel streak isn’t going to last, and when she has no more use for you, she’ll leave you high and dry. This thing with the dean is a good example of her kind of solution.”

“You sound like my brother.” Her older brother, Blaine, had made it well known that he didn’t like Frog, even after her remarkable change of attitude senior year of high school—and he certainly didn’t approve of their friendship. Although she was never certain as to why, perhaps he picked it up from Zach. It was certainly possible. “And it’s none of your business.”

Noticing the doors to the Engineering building coming up ahead, she slowed down slightly to allow Zach to reach them first. He reached for the glass doors and pulled them open. she brushed past before he fully opened the door, turning sideways to squeeze through and get ahead of him.

Engineering Center G didn’t look like much compared to the looming Physical Science buildings across the broad sidewalk. The walls were mostly glass at the ground level, a floor plan that called for empty lobby tiles sporting the odd leather sofa, with stairs and works exposed under glass like an anatomical dummy of a building. In spite of the dean’s high office in academic stature, his office was tucked away down a hallway into a modestly sized space, set apart from the other offices because it had an antechamber for a secretary and a pair of mahogany doors.

The secretary, a middle-aged woman with her dark hair pinned in a bun, looked up as Elaine and Zach entered the room, his partner was once again at their heels—she had almost forgotten about him on the walk over, he had managed to become so inconspicuous. He took Zach aside and they held a brief, hushed conversation.

“Elaine Mercer?” the secretary asked, looking her up and down with a bored expression.

“Present,” Elaine said.

“I have to go, kid,” Zach said. “You’re on your own. Good luck.” He didn’t wink, but she thought it would have been appropriate with that exit. He nodded to the secretary and walked out of the office, chatting with his partner.

Elaine suddenly found herself wishing that he didn’t have to go. As agitating as he could be, he represented something familiar, a comfortable presence.

“Mr. Harwood will see you now,” the secretary said. “Go on in.”

Thanking the woman, Elaine steeled herself and opened one side of the mahogany double-door.