Murder in the Dorm Read Free Page A

is that I didn’t know Kelsey and know almost nothing about him. I was hoping that you could fill me in on him, not about the academic side, but what he was like as a person. The detective I worked with last time wants me to ask around about Kelsey. All I’ve gotten for her so far is that Kelsey was close to an exchange student named Lawrence McDermott.”
    “I spoke briefly with a Detective Matson but couldn’t tell him much other than that I’d had Kelsey in two courses last term. He almost never spoke in class, got middling grades, and never approached me outside of class. I was aware he was friendly with Lawrie McDermott. They were both in one of the courses and I saw them together elsewhere on campus. I don’t recall seeing Kelsey with anyone else.”
    “Did you ever overhear anything between them?”
    “No, but their conversations were rather intense. It wasn’t as if they were arguing, but were serious about whatever they were discussing. I did several times see McDermott talking to someone else, though; a woman named Barbara Kline. She’s in third-year.”
    “Okay, this is a tricky question because it invites exaggeration or evokes invention, even if unintentional. Was there anything about Kelsey that struck you as out of the ordinary?”
    “I see the problem, but I think I have a couple of credible answers, one trivial, one maybe not so. The latter is that Kelsey never once looked me in the eye. He always seemed to focus on my forehead, so it seemed he was looking at me but wasn’t really. The other thing is that he always carried a copy of The Wall Street Journal and often read it in class. Most of the students have their laptops on their desks and I thought it quaint that Kelsey carried a paper around, though he also had a laptop. It was the eye thing that bothered me; he struck me as furtive, but perhaps he was only pathologically shy.”
    Charlie and Sommers finished lunch and headed off in separate directions after he promised to keep her informed on the case. He hadn’t learned much, but had reconfirmed the connection between Kelsey and McDermott and gotten Barbara Kline’s name. No point calling DeVries yet. He wondered how her interview with McDermott would go.
    When he got to his office, Charlie looked up Kline and jotted down contact details. He then spent the afternoon working on his paper and talking to a few students who had questions about his epistemology course. At four-thirty he went home to find Kate again sitting in the living room.
    “I don’t feel like going out tonight. Can you cope with a pizza?”
    “A pizza is fine. A bit later, though. Let me open a bottle of something good and we’ll talk a bit.”
    Charlie, who favored California wines, decided the upcoming pizza demanded a red and went for a zinfandel-based blend a friend had put him onto.
    “Okay, I know you don’t want me involved, but DeVries has asked for help. I want to fill you in on what I’ve learned; perhaps you’ll see something I’m missing. Kelsey was killed in what appears to be an unpremeditated way, probably by a man roughly his height. He was hit on the head with a bookend. He’s been connected only to an exchange student named McDermott. Kelsey was a mediocre student and didn’t take part in class discussions. Given the changes in dorm rules, pretty much anyone could have gotten in and out of Kelsey’s dorm room without being seen. The only odd thing is that one of Kelsey’s profs thought he was furtive or possibly very shy.”
    “Maybe Kelsey was peddling drugs to other students and owed his supplier.”
    “That’s one scenario. Drugs aren’t a problem at Meredith, but there’s undoubtedly some use and so there must be some suppliers. Anything else?”
    “I’ve read about online cheating schemes where students are provided with essays for money. Maybe Kelsey was a source and screwed up.”
    “I don’t know; I don’t see the money in something like that being big enough to involve