Just One Bite

by Jack Heath

  The woman glances at me, then quickly looks away, alarmed. We’re about the same age, but I’m withered by hard living and missing a thumb—I feel suddenly guilty for even occupying the same dimension as her.

  Thistle and I walk past her. When we’re out of earshot, Thistle says, “Was she your type?”

  She keeps her voice level, but I don’t think I’m imagining the bitterness in it. I’d much rather be with Thistle than with the blonde, or with anyone. But I can’t tell her that.

  “She didn’t look like a teacher,” I say instead. “Or a student, or a cleaner, or a parent. You think this place gets many visitors from outside?”

  “You think a teacher can’t look that good?”

  “I think a teacher can’t afford those clothes.”

  We’ve reached a door with a sign on it: Shannon Luxford, Teaching Assistant.

  “Is it normal for a TA to have his own office?” I ask Thistle.

  She shrugs, and knocks on the door.

  I didn’t expect him to be in—most people don’t close the door if they are—but he is. The lock clicks, and Shannon Luxford appears.

  Up close, he looks less like a superhero. His eyes aren’t quite symmetrical, and he has a pimple under one ear. But he’s taken care with his appearance. His hair has a perfect curl at the front, and it’s short enough at the back to indicate that he’s had a haircut within the last two weeks. He smells of expensive aftershave and fabric softener. I’d guess his age at twenty-two or twenty-three.

  “Can I help you?” His eyes flick from me to Thistle, and a smile spreads across his face. His gaze lingers on her breasts. “Agent...Thistle, right? Nice to see you again.”

  “This is my associate, Timothy Blake,” Thistle says. “We just had some routine follow-up questions. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure.” Luxford opens his office door wider and steps back. “Mi casa es su casa.”

  There’s a new stiffness in his neck, and the tendons are standing out in his wrists. This could mean that he’s nervous. Maybe he’s expecting bad news about his boss. Or maybe he’s always nervous around cops, like I am.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”

  “No thanks,” Thistle says. “We—”

  “I’ll take a coffee,” I say.

  Thistle grits her teeth.

  “Uh, sure,” Luxford says. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Both, please,” I say. “And salt.”

  He blinks. “Salt?”

  “Just a pinch,” I say.

  He nods. “Reduces the bitterness, right? They drink it that way in Japan. I go skiing there every winter.”

  I only like salted coffee because it tastes like blood. I doubt that people drink it in Japan. But he came up with the story almost instantly. Either he’s a practiced liar, or someone in Japan has played an excellent prank on him.

  He calls out the door: “Liz, can you grab a Japanese coffee for my guest? Sugar, cream and salt. You heard me.”

  He closes the door without waiting for a response. I assume teaching assistants don’t have secretaries—he might be in the habit of using students like servants.

  He sits down on the other side of his desk, which is too big for the room. His office is on the second floor, and his window overlooks the courtyard we just walked through. A Wi-Fi router blinks in the corner. There’s a bookshelf, the books themselves hidden behind trophies and tchotchkes. A small, tacky statue of a fish with dull red scales looks particularly out of place on the top shelf.

  Thistle and I sit on two squishy swivel chairs, possibly stolen from other departments. Mine has Journalism scratched into one of the arms. The framed photos on Luxford’s desk—him with some skis, him getting a trophy in high school—are all facing outward. They’re designed for visitors. No family in them. A Zippo lighter with a satin finish sits near a silver ashtray, despite the nonsmoking signs all over the building and the smoke detector right above.

  There’s a strange wooden device on his desk next to the printer. A horizontal rod with thirteen discs impaled on it, capital letters carved into the outside of the rims.

  Luxford sees me looking.

  “You like that?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “It’s called a wheel cipher. Thomas Jefferson invented it in 1795. Each disc has all twenty-six letters in a slightly different order, and a unique number. So you can spin the discs to make a row of letters that spells a message. Then you write down the letters from a different row, which will look like gibberish. Only someone else with the same discs in the same order will be able to decode it.”

  “Interesting,” Thistle says convincingly. “Where’d you get it?”

  “A thank-you gift from the professor.”

  “Thanking you for what?”

  He smiles modestly.

  “Seems like a lot of work,” I say. “Couldn’t you do the same thing with a pen and paper? Just write down A equals F, B equals X, or whatever?”

  “That’s the clever part,” Luxford says. “With a wheel cipher, A can equal a different letter each time it shows up. So you can’t just look for the most common letter and assume that it’s E. Although if you sent enough messages using the same sequence of discs, a computer could still use letter frequency to crack it.”

  Now that I understand, I automatically scan the letters on the discs. Just nonsense, in its current configuration. I look away when I realize I’ve started memorizing the rows. Wasting brain space.

  “Who has the matching one?” I ask.

  “Nobody,” he says. “It’s decorative.”

  “Oh.”

  The light fades from Luxford’s eyes as he realizes we’re not going to ask any more questions about the cipher.

  “So,” he says. “Any progress on the case?”

  “We’re still interviewing witnesses,” Thistle says. “I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything else about Professor Biggs’s movements on Tuesday?”

  “Sorry,” Luxford says. “Like I said, I was helping students all day.”

  I glance at Thistle. She nods slightly—she’s confirmed this with the students.

  I let the silence linger for a moment, to see what he fills it with. Maybe he’ll ask how Biggs’s family is doing. Maybe he’ll ask which angles we’re looking at.

  He does neither. “It’ll just be brewed coffee, I’m afraid,” he says finally. “I have an espresso machine at home. Nineteen bars of pressure.”

  So he’s rich, and keen to show it.

  “Those girls you were talking to this morning...” I say. “Were they your students?”

  “Which girls?” He looks honestly perplexed.

  “In the cafeteria. You gave them business cards.”

  He laughs. “Oh! No, I don’t know them. I was just being friendly.”

  “You try to befriend all the students?” I ask. “Or just the girls?”

  He shrugs, not looking embarrassed. This could mean that he’s honest to a fault, not caring or unaware how he comes across to people. But the aftershave, the hair and the outfit don’t fit with that. It’s possible that he’s not embarrassed because hitting on students isn’t so bad compared to other things he’s done.

  A knock at the door. Luxford says, “Come.”

  A young woman walks in, holding a cup of coffee. It’s the same student I saw talking to the blonde beauty in the study nook outside. She has braided hair and a nose ring, and is in a summer dress despite the weather. She wears black leggings underneath, like a dancer. She looks faintly confused, as if Luxford has never instructed her to get coffee before, and she’s just now wondering if it was in the job description.

  “Thanks, Liz,” Luxford says without getting up. He points at me. “Right here.”

  Liz hands me the coffee with a glare, apparently deciding that this is all my fault.
Then she leaves without a word.

  I sip the coffee, watching Luxford. Most people wince when they see me drinking coffee with salt in it. He doesn’t.

  “Do you know what Professor Biggs does on the weekends?” I ask.

  Luxford looks as though he’s never really considered it. Like his boss just ceases to exist between Friday and Sunday.

  “Just reads books, I guess,” he says. “About math.”

  “What area of math does he specialize in?”

  “Geometry.”

  “Does he go hiking?” I ask, still looking for a connection to the body in the woods.

  A smug smile. “That’s geography.”

  “Oh.” I let him pretend that I misunderstood. “The wheel cipher doesn’t look like geometry.”

  “Geometry was his job, cryptography was his hobby.”

  “Did he have friends who shared this hobby?” Thistle puts in. “A club, maybe?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What about shooting?” I ask. “Has he ever talked about hunting buddies, or trips?”

  Thistle shoots me a sidelong glance. Maybe I’ve been too specific. I need to find out why Biggs was in the woods without revealing that he was there.

  “I don’t think so,” Luxford says.

  I put the coffee down, and chew a fingernail. Then I deliberately rip a chunk out of it, and suck some air through my teeth. A show of pain. “Ow.”

  “What’s wrong?” Thistle asks.

  “Just broke a nail. See?” I show her my finger, where the missing piece has left a small part of my raw flesh exposed. Then I show Luxford.

  Again, he doesn’t wince. “Nasty,” he says.

  Blood starts to well up. “You got a Band-Aid, or some gauze?” I ask. “I don’t want to bleed on your carpet.”

  That gets him moving. “I’ll find something,” he says, and hurries out the door.

  Immediately I go around to the other side of his desk and start opening drawers.

  Thistle jumps up. “Blake—what are you doing?”

  I keep rummaging through Luxford’s stuff. Pens. Notepads. Two keys on a small ring. Phone chargers. Glossy photo paper for his printer. An address book, probably for passwords. “He’s a sociopath,” I say, “and he’s hiding something.”

  Thistle grabs my arm. It’s been so long that her touch feels electric. “Stop! You can’t do this without a warrant.”

  “We won’t get one. Do you want to find Biggs, or not?”

  I’ve found a bottle of vodka. Probably against the campus rules, but not illegal.

  “I can’t let you do this,” Thistle says.

  “Then arrest me.”

  She hesitates. And in that moment, I find what I’m looking for.

  CHAPTER SIX

  What was the first invention that could be used to see through walls?

  One of the drawers feels wrong. It’s heavier than it should be, and shallower than the others. There’s a little groove on one side of the bottom, just wide enough for a thumbnail.

  All my nails are bitten to the quick, so I use one of Luxford’s pens to lever out the false bottom. Underneath I find a photo, printed on glossy paper. It’s a photo of Luxford’s office. A young woman is sprawled across Luxford’s desk, chestnut hair fanned out, skirt hiked up, panties around her ankles.

  Again, Thistle tries to stop me. “Blake, you—”

  I hand her the photo, and she stops talking. There are more pictures underneath. The same young woman in different positions. She’s not supporting herself in any of the photos. She looks half-asleep, or drugged.

  Underneath those pictures, there are even more—a different woman this time. Asian, naked except for high-heeled shoes. After her, there’s a redhead with a torn dress exposing the freckles on her stomach.

  I hand the photos I’ve found to an increasingly alarmed Thistle and keep digging. There are dozens of women in hundreds of photos. All the women look semiconscious, and all the pictures were taken in this office from the same high angle.

  I look around the room and walk over to Luxford’s bookshelf. The fish on the top shelf catches my gaze. The glass eye is swollen and dark. I can see the camera lens behind it.

  The lens expands as I get closer, adjusting to the changing light. I look back at the photos in Thistle’s hands. I don’t think they’re photos—I think they’re screenshots. This is a video camera. And it’s running.

  In the corner, the lights on the router are flickering furiously. Information is being transmitted.

  And Luxford should have been back by now.

  I glance out the window just in time to see him walking across the courtyard toward the parking lot.

  “Thistle! He’s on the move.”

  “On it.” Thistle runs out the door.

  I don’t follow her. By the time she gets down the stairs, he’ll be gone, and we won’t see which way he went.

  The window is locked. I open one of the desk drawers, where I saw the two keys. One of them fits. I push the window open and climb out onto the ledge.

  The drop is maybe fifteen feet. No time to think about it. I push myself off the ledge and plummet down toward the garden of shrubs. There’s a moment of sickening weightlessness, the air rushing in my ears. I hit the ground hard and collapse, the shock numbing my legs. The branches take deep gouges out of my arms. I scramble to my feet and take off after Luxford.

  He has a head start, but he’s not running as fast as I am. He doesn’t want to call attention to himself, and he doesn’t yet know he’s being pursued.

  He turns a corner into a wide tunnel between two buildings, breaking my line of sight. When I turn the corner, there he is again, headed for the parking lot. Faster now.

  At first I’m fifty feet behind his back. Then forty feet, blood dripping from my arms. Thirty. My heart is going to burst. I’m not in the best shape.

  He hasn’t noticed me yet, but someone else has. “Yo, Shannon, watch out!”

  Luxford turns his head, sees me and says, “Oh, shit!”

  He puts on a burst of speed. I’m older than him, and malnourished—I don’t have a hope of catching him. Especially when somebody comes out of my blind spot and crash-tackles me.

  I hit the cold concrete, hard. The impact pulps the flesh of my left shoulder, but my head doesn’t hit the ground.

  My attacker keeps me pinned down. He’s a student, big, white, with close-set eyes and bleached hair in a Caesar cut.

  “Stay down,” he snarls.

  His thick, veiny neck is within reach of my teeth. Blood pulsing just beneath the surface. So many vulnerable tubes in there. The carotid, the jugular, the trachea, the esophagus. Instinct takes over. Without thinking, I open my mouth and—

  “FBI. Get off him, right now.”

  The guy looks over at Thistle, who has a stun gun leveled on him. He climbs off me and raises his hands. “Whoa! I didn’t do anything. I was trying to help.”

  The bloodlust recedes back to low tide. I stand up, shaking. I almost killed that guy.

  A crowd of onlookers has gathered. A few are filming with their phones from a safe distance. Luxford is gone.

  “Shoot as much video as you like,” Thistle shouts, “but uploading even a single second of it will be considered obstruction of justice. You got that?”

  It’s a misdemeanor at worst, punishable only by a fine. But the grumbling students put away their phones. No point filming something if they can’t show it to anyone.

  “You all right, Blake?” Thistle asks.

  “He went that way,” I say, and start to run toward the parking lot.

  Thistle overtakes me quickly. Her breathing doesn’t sound as ragged as mine; FBI agents have to pass a fitness test where they run three hundred yards in fifty seconds.

  When she gets to the
parking lot, she doesn’t pause to scan the parked vehicles—she keeps running up the campus driveway, maybe hoping to spot a retreating car.

  I can taste my own blood at the back of my throat, so I stop running when I reach the lot. I look around at the parked cars. No one in any of them. I flop down on the asphalt. No one hiding behind or underneath. I can’t see any clues to identify Luxford’s vehicle.

  This is a disaster. If the police don’t catch him, I never get to find out what he knows. If they do, they’ll find out his secrets before I do. He might take them to where Biggs died, which might lead them to me.

  Assuming he knows anything at all. I can’t see a connection between his collection of homemade porn and Biggs’s death.

  Thistle’s coming back. “He’s gone,” she said.

  * * *

  We’re halfway to Biggs’s apartment and I’m bandaging up my forearms when my phone starts buzzing.

  It’s the burner Charlie Warner gave me. The one I’m supposed to keep on my person at all times.

  I don’t want Warner to know that I’m working for the FBI again, and I definitely can’t let Thistle realize that I’m working for Warner.

  “You gonna get that?” Thistle asks.

  “No.” I pull the phone out of my pocket. Private number, but it can only be Warner or one of her goons. I reject the call, pocket the phone and hold my palms in front of the heater. Cold like this brings back painful memories of when I was homeless. Some days I worried about losing fingers to frostbite. Seems ironic now, since the room I lost my thumb in was plenty warm.

  “When we worked our last case together,” Thistle says, “you told me you didn’t have a cell phone.”

  “It’s new,” I say.

  “Sure.”

  I change the subject. “Did you put a BOLO out on Luxford’s car?”

  “I can’t,” she says. “Not without probable cause.”

  “None of those young women looked like they knew they were on camera. They barely looked conscious. Some might even have been underage. That’s probable cause of three crimes right there.”