19. I Can Punch People I’m Not Dating, Though, Right?

Hernández parked next to a patrol car. As we got out, a pinched-faced man with dark eyes, a receding hairline, and a considerable stick up his butt came down the marble stairs from the oversized double doors.

"Really, Officer. I thought we were through. I don't appreciate having police cars in front of my school." He stood with his hands on his hips, taking up space with his Wonder Woman pose.

I ducked my head, not wanting to laugh in his face. He looked like his next move was to tell on us.

"Mr. Whitmore, need I remind you that a colleague is dead? It's my job to investigate." Hernández walked up the stairs.

"I thought we'd decided it was an accident," he said, stepping in front of her.

"Sir, I understand this can be difficult for a man used to being in charge, but this isn't your decision. I'm Detective Hernández, not Officer. This is my case and I'll be investigating until I'm sure of what happened. Now, if you could excuse me, I need to study the crime scene."

"There's no crime," he insisted.

Hernández stared him down. "Are we going to have a problem here, sir?"

He broke first. "I suppose I'll need to put in a call to the mayor about this. I'd appreciate when you girls are done that you clear out these cars and that horrible yellow tape. The children don't need to see that."

His gaze finally moved past Hernández to me. Looking me up and down, his face darkened as he took in the paint-splattered sneakers, overalls, and hair. "You're a police officer?"

I shook my head, desperate to hex the pompous pusbag for referring to us as girls. I hated petty little men like him.

"Ms. Corey is a consultant," Hernández said.

He turned on his heel and walked back through the main doors, neither holding them open for us nor giving the detective any more of his attention.

I caught up with her in the huge entry. "Are we sure that weasel didn't do it?"

One side of her mouth tipped up. She looked up and down the now empty hall and then pointed me to the right. "It would make my year if I got to slap my cuffs on him," she muttered. "Girls."

The wide hall had a thick rug in muted colors running down its center. The walls were a dark wood with carved details. Large, ornate pendant lights hung from the ceiling and every fifteen feet or so, there was a break for a classroom door. There were no glass panels in the doors, like the ones at my old schools. These were solid carved wood with brass plates in the center, giving the room number and the teacher's name.

The bright yellow police tape at the end of the hall stood out against all this darkness. This school clearly eschewed the use of brights and pastels.

Hernández checked her watch. "We have about twenty minutes until the next bell and the halls fill with students." She pointed to the base of the stairs. You can see the bloodstain."

I ducked under the tape and stared up the steps. Yep. This was what I'd seen. Stuffing my hair down the back of my top, I crouched and slipped off a glove.

"Do you want me to hold your backpack?" she asked.

Moving my shoulders, I gauged the weight and my balance. "Nah. I'm fine." I touched the bloodstained carpet with one finger.

"This discussion is over. Every student here signs an honor code. You know that better than anyone. Plagiarism is a clear violation of that code." The Dean of Discipline walks down the hall, angry he has to deal with the student's parent. Again. This is what's wrong with these students. The parents are always defending their children's poor behavior, all in pursuit of an Ivy League acceptance. Well, the student has already received a warning. He squandered it and now he'll have to deal with an F in his Government class. They're already bending rules, letting him retake a portion of his class, allowing him to resubmit his final research paper. His low C just became an F. There goes Harvard.

"It was an accident. I was working with him, tutoring him. We'd printed pages and pages of research so he could defend his argument. It was late. He was tired. I'm sure he didn't even realize he'd done it."

"Don't be ridiculous. He's seventeen years old. He understands what plagiarism is. He did the exact same thing in his World History class as a sophomore. Enough, now. I don't even know why you're inserting yourself into this. You're tutoring. Fine. The next time you tutor, make sure they know that stealing someone else's words and ideas without proper citations will earn them an F for the semester. Now, I'm done with this. I have work to do."

He turns to descend the stairs and a hand holding a large chunk of glass slams against the back of the dean's head. He pitches forward and goes flying down the stairs, breaking his neck.

The one who stands at the top of the stairs slips back into the shadows.

Opening my eyes, I saw Hernández holding out an alcohol wipe to clean the sticky blood from my fingers. Something pulled my gaze up and I found a pair of blue eyes staring down at me from floors above. Hopping over the bloodstain, I ran up the stairs, popped the police tape on the railing of the second-floor landing, and then ran up another flight. Classes were still in session. Who was watching me?

As I hit the top stair, I heard the soft shush of leather-soled shoes and the quiet snick of a door closing. I looked in every direction. The third-floor landing was empty.

Hernández came up the stairs right behind me. "What? What did you see?"

"There was someone up here watching us."

A tone sounded and doors opened, feet pounding in the halls, up and down stairs, though it remained quiet on the third floor. I moved away from the banister to look down the hall. Perhaps the faculty offices were up here. Looking to the left, I froze.

"What is it?" she asked.

I pointed. It was the corridor that had been haunting my dreams and finding its way into visions.

Hernández had a moment too before she began to walk down the corridor. "It's exactly as you painted it." She opened her phone and pulled up a photo she'd taken of my painting. She, no doubt, was comparing my painting to the real corridor, looking for differences that could be meaningful. She'd done the same with my painting of a path in the woods where a child had been taken on a previous case,

She hadn't gone more than a few steps when we heard a familiar voice.

"This area is off-limits. The accident was on the first floor. You can't wander around this institution without a warrant, and you won't get one. The mayor is even now talking with the chief of police."

"Are these faculty offices up here?" I asked.

"No. These are student residences. Cypress Academy serves as a boarding school for sixty percent of our student body. Really, I must insist. This officer—"

"Detective," Hernández reminded him.

"—may have the credentials to enter our campus, but you, as a consultant, do not. We don't allow strange adults to wander our school and certainly not in the residences. Now if you'll please follow me out."

Hernández had already said that her captain was pushing her to close the case as an accident. That was why I was here. So far, I hadn't found anything concrete to keep it open, so we followed him down.

On the second-floor landing, right where the conversation and bash would have happened, there was an antique table displaying various awards for students who had long since graduated.

"Headmaster?"

He paused on the first step down.

Pointing at the clean spot in the very light layer of dust, I asked, "What was here?"

Sighing, he came back up and looked where I was pointing. "I have no idea what you're talking about. It's time to go now."

"She's right. I see it," Hernández said, taking out her phone, leaning down, and photographing the spot.

"The cleaning staff may have moved one of the awards or a student took it as a prank," he said, turning toward the stairs again.

"Sir," Hernández said, "this is why you're a headmaster and not a detective. All of these awards are weighty. They're substantial blocks of wood, metal, and glass. And this is where the dean went tumbling down the stairs." She pocketed her phone, then took out her notebook and began scribbling.

"I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for—"

"Sir, I'm going to stop you there. Can you please find any custodians currently working and send them here to see me?"

"The staff is very busy," he said, bristling at the interruption.

"I'm sure they are." She looked from her notebook and shot him a look that would have had me backing up. "So are we. Is it your intention to obstruct this investigation?"

He blew a sharp breath out of his nose and then went down the stairs without another word.

"Ooh, he does not like you at all." I snickered, looking over the railing as the headmaster stalked out of sight.

"Color me surprised." She added notes to her book. "A Latina telling him what he can and can't do?" She looked up at me, eyebrows raised. "I will bet you five dollars that when he gets around to sending a custodian or two, they will look more like me than you."

"Do you think it's your gender or ethnicity that has him more worked up?" I asked, leaning on the railing and watching the stragglers run to beat the bell.

"Both, especially in combination. Men like him base their worth, their identity, and place in society, on being able to pee standing up and having skin too sensitive for the sun."

Laughing, I said, "We can pee standing up too. It's just messier."

Her perpetual poker face broke and she grinned, her brown eyes sparkling.

Shaking her head, she walked over and leaned on the railing beside me. "This place is another world." Gesturing with the notebook in her hand, she said, "And his problem is he's forgetting he isn't a part of it. He works here. His students may come from influence and money, but he's just a jumped-up school principal who believes he's gained power through proximity."

"Would you have wanted to go to a school like this?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not even a little bit." We both heard footsteps and looked down the hall to see two Latinas in matching black dresses walking our way. "You can give me the five on the way home."

"I don't believe I took that bet because I'm not stupid." Whispering, I added, "The killer hit him with a block of glass."

She nodded and then lifted her voice. "Hello. Sorry to interrupt your day. I'm Detective Hernández and I'm investigating the dean's death this morning. I assume you both heard about that?"

The women shared a glance and then nodded nervously.

"I just need to ask you a few questions. Can I get your names?"

The first woman cleared her throat and said, "Sofia Rodriguez." She wore her hair pulled back tightly in a bun and had small pearls at her ears and a gold wedding band around her finger.

Hernández smiled, trying to put the women at ease. "My name is Sofia too."

Tension in the woman's shoulders seemed to ease.

"Isabel Alvarez," the other woman volunteered. She wore no jewelry, save a cross at her neck. Her dark brown hair was short and threaded with gray.

"Can you both come over here?" Hernández led them to the top of the stairs. "I want you to look at the awards on this table."

The women did and then exchanged a concerned look.

"What did you notice?" the detective asked, her voice gentle.

Isabel pointed to the end of the table. "One's missing."

Sofia nodded. "It's glass and very heavy."

Isabel looked at Sofia with irritation. "Rosa didn't dust yesterday."

"That's good for us," Hernández said. "The clean spot tipped us off that something was missing."

Sofia's hand flew to her mouth. "The dean was hit with the award?" Whispering behind her fingers, she added, "He was murdered?"