Keenan steepled his fingers and gave them both a direct look. “I’m not sure what I can tell you that I haven’t discussed already. This seems rather like a waste of time, and I am a very busy man.”
“Well, Professor, Detective Bradley told me you were the expert on the case, but if you feel like you can’t contribute...”
Keenan put up his hands. “I didn’t say that.” He leaned back. “Ask your questions.”
Noah smiled to himself. Sophia had read the man perfectly and had played to his vanity to gain his cooperation. By all accounts, she was a very successful reporter, and he enjoyed seeing her in action, despite the circumstances.
“How well did you know Ms. Spencer? I mean, I realize she was your research assistant, but exactly what did that entail?”
“We worked together on several projects during the last two years and met nearly every day to discuss the status of the various issues that arose. I was supervising her work on her dissertation, as well. She was a bright girl, but she needed quite a bit of guidance.”
“Were you friends outside of work? Ever have dinner together or go out socially?”
Keenan narrowed his eyes. “Absolutely not.”
“Tell me about the day she disappeared.” Sophia didn’t miss a beat. Noah noticed she had taken out her phone and was making notes on a special app. She appeared totally unruffled by the professor’s hard demeanor.
“Ms. Spencer was actually a bit upset that day. She had made some mistakes on one of my research projects, and I’d had to correct her and put her on the right track. She argued with me, vehemently, but finally saw the wisdom in my advice. She told me she was going to start fresh the next day. As you probably already know, that was the last time I saw her. It was around 5:30 p.m. I don’t know where she went after she left my office.”
“Besides being frustrated about her work, did she say anything else that concerned you? Like she’d had an argument with a boyfriend, or something like that?”
“Ms. Archer, have you ever worked on a doctoral degree?” His tone had a bit of a sneer to it, but to Sophia’s credit, she didn’t react.
“No, sir.”
“My research assistants don’t have time for anything beyond chemistry, believe me, and Ms. Spencer’s work was suffering lately. She surely didn’t have time for a boyfriend or a social life. We had even decided to postpone the defense of her dissertation. Her work had been substandard, and she needed to refocus her energies.”
This was news to Noah. He wondered why Professor Keenan had never mentioned that about her dissertation before. Noah leaned forward. “If you had to guess, why was she distracted?”
“Financial difficulties, I presume,” the professor answered. “She was distraught about staying in school another semester and wasn’t sure how she was going to pay for it.”
“Was she in danger of losing her scholarships?” Sophia pressed.
Keenan’s eyes narrowed. “I do not work for the financial aid department, Ms. Archer. You’ll have to ask them.”
“Well, would she have remained your research assistant if she had stayed another semester?”
Keenan shrugged. “That hadn’t been determined.”
“Even if she wasn’t dating, did she ever mention any problems with anyone?” Sophia asked. “A fight with a roommate, an argument with a friend?”
“Not to me. We talked about chemistry and chemistry alone. Our relationship was purely professional.”
Sophia nodded, finished writing her notes and stood. “You’ve been very helpful, Professor. We really appreciate your time. If you think of anything else that might be pertinent, please don’t hesitate to contact Detective Bradley.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Before we leave, we’d like to take a look at her office, if you don’t mind?” Noah said, standing, as well. He was glad the interview had been short. His legs were cramping from being at such an awkward angle in the little chair. Being six-two and nearly sitting on the floor was not a comfortable proposition.
Keenan stood. “Be my guest. Detective, I imagine I’ll see you in court.” He nodded. “Ms. Archer, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thanks for stopping by.”
Noah and Sophia exited the room and Keenan closed his office door firmly behind them.
“Feel like we’ve been dismissed?” Noah whispered.
* * *
Sophia cringed. “What a pompous, arrogant man,” she whispered back. “I can’t imagine working for him day in and day out.” They turned and headed back to the elevator.
“Me, either. I didn’t even like interviewing him during the initial investigation, but he did tell me something new today that he’d never mentioned before—Maggie was going to have to come back for another semester, and her assistantship was in jeopardy. That must have been devastating news to her, especially if she was having financial problems. I’m not sure how it fits into this case since her murder seemed like a crime of opportunity rather than something premeditated, but still, it’s interesting that he never mentioned it before.”
Sophia’s thoughts swirled as she contemplated what she had just learned. Unfortunately, her ruminations only brought up more questions. “How was she supporting herself if her whole life revolved around chemistry? She must have been paid a stipend or something for her research work, but it couldn’t have been much.”
“She was earning about thirty thousand a year as Keenan’s assistant, and she was taking out loans to pay her school costs. She’d had some pretty heavy debt waiting for her once she graduated. It’s a common theme I’ve seen before. People get the loans to go to school, and then their entry-level salaries barely cover the costs of repayment and a tiny little apartment.”
Noah’s phone rang right as they stepped out of the basement-level elevator, and he motioned for Sophia to wait. “Hold on. I need to take this.” He said hello and then told the caller he was switching to speakerphone so Sophia could hear. “Go ahead, Sergeant Kittinger. Kylie’s sister, Sophia Archer, is here with me.”
“I just wanted to touch base and give you my preliminary report. I’ve spoken to Kylie’s roommate and interviewed some of her friends. She was last seen around 7:00 a.m. this morning. Last night, she had dinner in the cafeteria, worked in the library until around 10:00 p.m., spoke to a few people and then went to her dorm. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.
“This morning, she got up and had breakfast in her room, then grabbed her backpack and headed to class at around 8:30 a.m. Her roommate was the last person to speak to her. The class is a large one, and no one I’ve talked to can confirm whether or not she attended.”
Sophia’s eyes welled with tears.
Noah took her hand and squeezed it gently in a motion of support, then released it.
She felt so powerless. She hated the feeling and pushed it away, letting determination take its place.
“Thanks for the report, Sergeant. Please continue searching and keep us informed. We’re investigating on this end, as well, and I’ll let you know if we get any leads.”
“Copy that. We’re doing everything we can to find her.” Both men hung up, and Noah stowed his phone. He turned to Sophia. “Are you okay?” When she nodded, he motioned toward a hallway. “Let’s go see Maggie’s desk.”
They followed a maze of corridors until they came to a nondescript door propped open with the broken end of a broom handle. There was a tag with a room number, but no window, names or other information about what the room contained.
Sophia glanced around the office. “Isn’t it a bit strange that this building is so empty? We haven’t seen a single student down here in the basement or in the hallways.”
Noah shrugged. “It’s quieter than I remember, but this floor never had many people around during the investigation. Maybe all the students are in class. And graduate assistants aren’t given the primo offices.
They’re lucky to even have desks in the building, especially if the other professors share Keenan’s view of their worth. It’s probably par for the course to keep them tucked away in the basement and out of sight.”
Despite Noah’s words, Sophia thought it was strange that research assistants weren’t housed closer to their professors’ offices. This particular room held four desks, each occupied by one of the science graduates. There was another room nearby that held another group of four. According to the nameplates on the desks, only one of the remaining graduate assistants who shared this office worked in the chemistry department. The rest were assigned to different disciplines.
“I’ve interviewed the other three that shared this office, and none remembered seeing her the night she disappeared,” Noah said in a matter-of-fact tone. “As best as we can tell, Maggie met with Professor Keenan, came down here to grab a few things and then left. Security has her leaving the building alone around 6:00 p.m. Her body was discovered in the park around 11:00 p.m., and the coroner estimated that her time of death was between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. We think she was walking in the park, and Arlo Prensky saw the opportunity to rob her and took advantage of it.”
Sophia walked over to the desk surrounded by yellow crime tape. “Was anything missing from her desk?”
“Nothing anyone noticed.”
“What about her phone?”
“We never found it. We figured she had it with her in the park, and it was stolen by the perp. We did get a list of her calls, though, and we didn’t see any red flags.”
“What about her laptop?”
“We never found that or the blue hard drive her roommate claimed she used instead of cloud storage. We assume she had both with her in her computer bag, as well.”
Sophia frowned. “So how do you know what she was working on?”
Noah shrugged. “Professor Keenan gave us a thumb drive with her latest projects. We had them analyzed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”
“Did she normally walk through the park with her laptop at night?” Sophia asked.
“Apparently, she liked to walk, and the park was one of her favorite places to go. Her roommate said walking helped her clear her head. It makes sense that she’d want to walk off some steam after her argument with Professor Keenan. She must have been so upset that she didn’t think to store her computer somewhere safe before she left. Her laptop was fairly new, and it was an expensive lightweight model with a lot of bells and whistles. We checked the pawnshops and other outlets where we hoped the computer might show up, but it was never recovered. We searched for it at Prensky’s residence, too, but like I said, we never found it.”
Sophia absorbed the information as she studied the items on Maggie’s desk. “Is it okay for me to touch a few things?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
She opened a few files and then started going through the drawers. She raised her head and turned as footsteps sounded outside the doorway. “Finally, another live person. I was beginning to wonder if anyone else ever came in this building.”
Strangely, the footsteps started running, and then suddenly there was a loud bang as the broomstick was removed and the heavy metal office door slammed closed. Noah put his hand on his pistol, motioned for Sophia to stay behind him and walked cautiously over to the door.
Abruptly, more loud noises sounded from outside the door, as if someone was hammering. A sense of dread washed over Sophia as Noah pushed against the door. Fear sent tingles down her arms and legs, and it was suddenly hard for her to breathe.
The door wouldn’t budge. They were locked inside. And it was no accident.
FOUR
“We’re locked in?” Sophia asked, surprised. Noah nodded, and she felt a ball of panic start to rise in her throat. She swallowed hard. They couldn’t be stuck in here. She already had precious little time to investigate this case, and every passing minute without answers kept Kylie’s life—and her own—in jeopardy. She joined Noah at the door and studied it critically. The hinges were on the outside, and she couldn’t see any way to force it open from the inside. There was also no window in the door, so it was impossible to know what was going on in the hallway, if anything. The loud noises had stopped; they heard nothing but silence now.
Noah pushed against the handle, but the door didn’t budge. He dropped to the floor and tried to look underneath it. But the large rubber seal attached to the outside blocked his view. “The door isn’t locked, but it won’t open. It looks like someone hammered wedges under the door and around the sides to keep it from opening. Somebody definitely wants us to stay in this room. The questions are, why and for how long?” He pulled out his cell phone, and Sophia did the same as she felt the panic start to rise in her chest.
“I don’t have a signal. Do you?” she asked, hoping the anxiety wasn’t making her voice sound as desperate to him as it sounded to her own ears.
Noah shook his head. “Nope. This is probably a really bad area.” He pocketed his phone and glanced around the room. “There’s not a single landline in here, either.”
Sophia’s mouth went dry as a sense of desperation overtook her. She swallowed, hard. How was she going to find Kylie’s kidnapper if she was locked in this room? Even losing a few hours could put her sister’s life in jeopardy. She went over to the nearest desktop computer and pushed a few keys. It jumped to life but the screen immediately asked for a password.
“It’s protected. I imagine all of these will be.” She went to the next desk and tried that one, then to the third. Riffling through the contents of the various desks yielded nothing of value, either. She was hoping to find a password scribbled under a keyboard or taped to a drawer in one of the desks, but she found nothing that would help. A thought suddenly hit her. “Was Maggie’s computer taken for evidence?”
“Yes, but apparently she rarely used the desktop except to access a few university databases. She worked primarily on that missing laptop.”
Sophia’s hands started shaking. She couldn’t stop them. She ran the few steps that it took to get to the door and started pushing against it. Nothing happened. She took a few steps back and then threw her entire body into it, trying to force it to open. It didn’t move.
Noah held up his hands. “Whoa. Keep that up and all you’re going to get is a sore shoulder. That door won’t budge.”
She looked up at Noah but slammed her body against the door once again anyway. She had to get out of there. Now. When she moved to shove it again, he got in the way, gently took her arms and held her steady. “Please don’t. That’s not going to help. You’re wasting your time, and you really are going to hurt yourself.”
“You don’t understand!” She pulled away from him and started hitting the door with her fists, hoping to make enough noise that someone would come. She could feel the panic taking over and she was helpless to stop it. “I have to get out of here. Kylie’s life is in my hands!”
“No, Kylie’s life is in God’s hands. And we don’t have to waste the time in here. We can talk about the case and run through the details until something pops. Meanwhile, the lab is doing its job, and Charlie, Roman and Sergeant Kittinger down at Flint Rock are all trying to find out where Kylie is and who’s responsible. The investigation will continue even if we’re not at the helm, I promise you.”
He took her hands again. “I don’t think banging on that door is going to help, either. We’re way at the end of the hallway, and as you’ve already noticed, there aren’t a lot of people in this part of the building to hear you. My team will realize I’m missing pretty soon, though, and they’ll come looking. They knew we were heading over here.”
She pulled away again and started pacing. He was right. Her shoulder did hurt. But he still didn’t seem to understand the danger. “Look, Noah, the man who took Kylie threatened my life—and yours, too. There could be a bomb in the building or—”
He
held up his hands again, and his tone was soft and calming. “Let’s use the time to talk through the case, not worry about possibilities,” he suggested. “Who would want to keep us prisoner in here? It doesn’t make sense. The person that sent you the box wanted you to investigate. It’s counterintuitive.”
“I agree,” she said, matching his tone. She was grateful for his quiet demeanor. Without it, she would positively be going nuts right now. She pulled aside the yellow crime tape and sat in Maggie’s chair.
Noah was right. If she had to be stuck here, she could at least make good use of the time. Methodically, she sorted through the contents in and around the desk. There was the normal variety of office supplies, several folders filled with chemistry formulas and notes, and several reference books, a few with library slips sticking out the top, showing they were due on various dates. “There’s not much here. Most of her research and work must have been on that missing laptop and hard drive.”
Noah nodded. “We sorted through the desk like you are doing today and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. We double-checked the cloud, as well, and we didn’t find any accounts or files registered to her on the sites her roommate suggested. Of course, without the laptop, it’s hard to know which sites she visited on a regular basis and which projects occupied the majority of her time. The desktop computer was linked to the library, and it seemed like she used that machine mostly for work email and for research and checking citations.”
Sophia’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “What about the files Keenan provided?”
“The work was bare-bones, and all seemed rather mundane. Nothing that pointed to murder, anyway. The emails also revolved around chemistry and work assignments. We didn’t find any smoking guns.” He paused momentarily. “The crime seems to be one of opportunity, like I said before. Maggie was walking through the park and had an expensive laptop with her. Arlo Prensky killed her and then robbed her. It was a crime of opportunity.”
Held for Ransom Page 3
