At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(13)

“How long did it take you to find the Copper Hills murderer?”

“A week,” Evan admitted.

“I see.” Lieutenant Criver’s voice turned sharp. “Well, take your time, Professor. It’s only a murder.”

“I’m sorry.” Evan squinted up at the lieutenant through the fine mist. “I was under the impression you wanted things done correctly. I am happy to offer idle speculation, if that’s your preference. Quick and cheap, as it were.”

Patrick made a sound that might have been a strangled laugh. Criver’s carefully neutral expression cracked to reveal a flash of anger.

“You’re a bit full of yourself for a man who can’t qualify to ride the roller coasters at Disneyland.”

Evan heard Addie suck in air, but he offered a mild smile. “A man in your position should know the importance of accuracy. At fifty-three inches, I am eminently qualified to ride anything I choose.”

“Is that so?” Criver studied Evan as if taking the linguist’s measure, then spun on his heel and strode off toward his vehicle. Billings rewarded Evan with a threatening sneer before he oozed after his boss.

Addie whirled on Evan.

“Not smart,” she hissed. “He’ll kick you off this investigation so fast, you’ll think you’re on a rocket. And then where will Patrick and I be?”

“I’m sorry.” Evan spread his hands. “I feel it’s my duty to educate.”

Patrick tugged an ear. “In the lieutenant’s case, that might be like trying to teach a pig to sing. It’s pointless—”

“And . . .”—she cringed as Criver’s car door slammed—“it has very much annoyed the pig.”





CHAPTER 6


Evan’s office in the Harper Memorial Library at the University of Chicago was his home away from home. The elegantly imposing building both inspired and comforted him, with its vaulted ceilings and coats of arms, its west tower modeled after the secularism of King’s College at Cambridge, while its Byzantine-styled east tower drew inspiration from Christ Church at Oxford. Built in 1912, the immense library suggested the realms of both the divine and the secular.

Evan’s gothic-style fourth-floor office suite, complete with bathroom and kitchenette, could be reached by the stairs, but he felt he could be forgiven for preferring the elevator. It was a question both of expediency and the desire to avoid getting run over during the stampede between class periods.

He let himself into his office and closed the door behind him. The traffic gods had been kind today, and he’d managed to get Ginny home and make it here in record time. Ignoring the immense windows that overlooked the quad—a tempting view every time he entered the office—he shrugged out of his parka, hung it on a peg near the door, and headed across the glossy wooden floors with their scattered Tuareg, Berber, and Persian rugs. In twenty strides, he reached his overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. His books were arranged in historical order, from the cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic on the far left, all the way to the semiotics of film and hip-hop on the right. He ran the attached ladder along its track until he reached the section dedicated to the Iron Age.

He knew an internet search might be faster. But he preferred the physicality of a book. And he knew his books well.

When he was three rungs up, a woman said, “You’re salivating.”

His grip on the ladder broke and he half jumped, half fell to the floor.

“Whoa, Professor,” the woman said. “You’ll break something that way.”

He straightened and summoned his dignity. “Damn it, Di. You’ll kill me one of these days, sneaking up on me.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was sitting at my desk doing the work you assigned me on the Sappho fragment when you burst in on me without so much as a good morning, lowly minion.”

Evan straightened, tried to glare, and failed.

Diana Alanis—a brilliant and ambitious postdoc, the only American woman with a PhD in Incan quipu—had been his research assistant for going on eight months, and in truth, he was too fond of her to quarrel. Plus—as he admitted in his most honest moments—he worried about what she could do to him if she ever got it in her head to challenge him. The woman was well over six feet—a giantess by any standards. On top of that, she was an extraordinary athlete.

She could, if he wished to be appallingly cliché, squash him like a bug. The gods did seem to be rather fond of irony, pairing the two of them.

Fortunately, she seemed to be as fond of him as he was of her.

At the moment, she sat behind the desk in a recessed corner with her laptop and a stack of printouts that she was in the process of marking up. She had a pen behind one ear and a highlighter in her right hand. Her biceps bulged beneath the short-sleeve tee, which boasted of her participation in an Ironman competition.

Evan had no doubt she’d placed well.

“Technically, it’s my desk,” he said. “Or did you get confused about which one of us is the tenured professor?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, I certainly couldn’t work at the main desk. It’s a disaster. Or at the table.” Her Cajun accent made the words roll out like the tide. “Look at it. I leave for a week and you’ve buried the thing.”

Evan followed the tilt of her head toward the immense library table that occupied the center of the room. He was in the middle of attempting to decipher the aforementioned Phaistos Disc, and the table reflected the chaotic state of his mind at the moment. Stacks of books on Crete and the Minoan Bronze Age were heaped next to a pair of open laptops and dangerously high stacks of writing pads. A scattering of half-empty teacups dotted the landscape, mingling with Boeotian figurines, fragments of Mycenaean pottery, and the wooden puzzles Evan was fond of using as a mental break from the harder work. In the center of the chaos, threatened by a leaning tower of bound folios, were a bottle of brandy and two snifters, only slightly dirty.