The Infernal Heart by R.L. King

Author:R.L. King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Nine

As Stone suspected when he arrived at the Stanford campus, they hadn’t blocked off all the entrances. That would have been nearly impossible, as well as unnecessary: the campus was the size of a small town, so shutting down the whole thing due to a single murder would be overkill even for a high-profile case like this.

He’d tried to call Laura at the office on his way up, hoping to find out more about the location of the murder, but discovered to his consternation that the battery on his mobile phone had died. Damn it, this wasn’t the time to forget to charge the bloody thing! He wondered if anybody else had tried to reach him, but it couldn’t be helped now. He continued listening to the news broadcast, certain something this big would be repeated.

He was correct. As he turned onto one of the many side entrances to the campus, the reporter repeated the story and this time he got more details: the victims (victims? More than one?) had been discovered in a little-used lecture hall by a janitor who’d entered to clean it. The press had few details yet; the discovery had only been made a couple hours ago and the police were still working the scene. The reporter once again cautioned the public to avoid the west side of the campus, as cordons had been set up and no one was being allowed in.

Stone picked his way through roads snarled with the usual traffic: cars, hordes of bicyclists, and pedestrians crossing without regard for corners or crosswalks. He seethed at his slow progress, wondering if he should just ditch the car and set off overland, but that wouldn’t work any better. Parking at Stanford during the day was terrible, and his best bet was to get to one of the faculty lots where he’d have a better chance of finding a space.

Tapping impatiently on the steering wheel, he darted into openings, earning him angry honks from other drivers. He shot glares at the oblivious students meandering in the road as if they hadn’t a care in the world and wished he could use a nice wide-spectrum concussion spell as a cow-catcher to shove them all off toward the sidewalk. Hadn’t they heard the news? Didn’t they know what was going on?

What was going on was that Archie had been busy while he’d been away. And right here on campus? On his own home ground?

This was a message. He was sure of it.

A cold flurry of fear ran up the back of his neck as he thought about how it could have been worse: the location the reporter had named was on the other side of campus from his department office. Had Archie decided to hit close, but not too close, to make his point? Was he planning to strike even closer next time? Would he go after Mortenson, or Hubbard, or Laura? One of his students? He couldn’t believe Archie would kill on the Stanford campus unless he’d meant for Stone to take note of it.

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