At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(2)

In the photo, happy-looking students were going about their business on the campus. Many of them wore the sort of outdoor gear popular in the Pacific Northwest—down-filled vests and rainproof outer shells over sweaters and jackets. In the foreground, a pair of pretty girls—one blonde, the other African American—were laughing over a shared joke as they made their way to class. Farther along the sidewalk, a smiling young man with a gray backpack was gesturing to a fellow student to emphasize a point. In the background, a man in his midthirties was climbing out of a taxi, his face partially obscured by the pillar of the sedan. A trio of students lounged on the grass nearby. One of them, a young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, was taking a sip from a travel mug.

It was the sort of pleasant but forgettable photograph you’d see in a university brochure, an effect heightened by a cheery-looking script, superimposed at the top of the frame, that read “Welcome to the University of Washington!” It appeared to be some sort of placeholder image in Verraday’s PowerPoint presentation, and none of the students were paying much attention to it.

Without a word, Verraday hit a button on his laptop and the PowerPoint image disappeared, leaving a blank white screen in its place.

“So the last thing I want to talk about today,” he said, “is something called the short-term memory decay theory. In that image that was just up there behind me, what color was the down-filled vest of the girl taking a sip from the Starbucks travel mug?”

As usual, no one in the hall volunteered a response. Even with second-year students, Verraday almost always had to pry an answer out of them.

“Okay, let’s just have a show of hands instead. How many people think that the girl was wearing a maroon vest?”

He waited and in response received a small, tentative show of hands.

“Okay, how many of you say it was purple?”

More hesitation, then a larger number of hands went up.

“All right. So more of you think it was purple than think it was maroon. Anybody notice if it was red?”

There was silence in the room.

“Come on, you were all eyewitnesses,” he said archly. “You must know what color it was. Who thinks it’s red?”

A few students raised their hands hesitantly.

“Okay, so a small number of eyewitnesses think the girl was wearing a red vest. And some of you, a few more, think that it was maroon, right? You sure about that?”

There were embarrassed, uncertain grins.

“So clearly, most of you remember the vest as being purple.”

He observed the nods of the students who voted purple, confident at being in the majority.

“So those of you who said maroon or red, do you want to change your mind? Be with the majority?”

There was more nervous laughter, and a couple of hands went up.

“All right, so you thought it was something else, but now that all these other eyewitnesses said purple, you’re not so sure. Do you all recall seeing the man getting out of the taxi?”

There were more nods throughout the room. This was something they all felt much more certain about.

“Good. Looks like everybody remembers that,” said Verraday. “So now I want you to pick that man out of a lineup, or, as our friends in the police department like to call it, a six-pack.”

He clicked a button on his computer and the screen lit up with mug shot–style photos of six men. All were in their mid-to-late thirties. All of them had similar medium-length brown hair. One was on the thin side of average. Another was slightly heavyset. The rest were variations in the middle. Verraday smiled at the groans and laughter as the students realized the difficulty of the task he’d given them. He went through the men in the photos one by one, again asking the students to raise their hands to select which of the men they thought they had seen getting out of the taxi. When he was done, he noticed that one student, a mousy-looking girl in a bulky sweater and baggy jeans, hadn’t responded to any of them.

“Now, I believe there is someone who didn’t raise her hand,” said Verraday. He looked at the girl. “Am I right?”

The girl shook her head affirmatively.

He challenged her, using a mock-bellicose tone of voice: “But I just showed you a lineup of six men and told you to pick one. Are you going to let some crook get away with murder because you can’t be sure of what he looks like? Why aren’t you picking one?”

“Because it wasn’t any of them,” the girl replied, gazing at him through nondescript, wire-frame glasses. “It was you.”

“It was me?” asked Verraday, acting like it was the most absurd notion he’d ever heard.

He mugged to the rest of the class.

“She thinks the man in the taxi was me. Can you believe it?”

His comment, his stifled laugh, and his comically skeptical expression elicited snickers of disbelief throughout the lecture hall. He turned back to the girl.

“You really think it was me?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied.

“And if I told you that I’d deduct ten percent of your term grade if you were wrong, would you still say it was me?”

“Yes, I would,” she responded, quietly but still without hesitation.

“Ooooh, a risk taker,” said Verraday, getting a rise out of the other students. “Well, let’s find out then.”