Murder is an Art Read Free

satisfaction of her rushing over.
    After she had sorted some of her students’ homework into separate stacks, she stood up, made sure her blouse was tucked in, and walked into the hallway, which was practically deserted, as it always was during classes. Most of the faculty members who weren’t teaching at that hour were in their offices grading papers or surfing the Internet, and the students who didn’t have class were either in the cafeteria drinking coffee or in the game room shooting pool.
    Sally walked down the hall, the soles of her sensible shoes squeaking a little on the tiles. The only person in sight was Jorge “Rooster” Rodriguez, the only convicted killer of Sally’s acquaintance. He had just come out of his office, and when he saw Sally, he stopped to wait for her.
    â€œYou get a call from the Big Guy, too?” he asked.
    Jorge had a high-pitched voice that didn’t fit at all with his appearance, considering that he looked like a walking advertisement for steroid consumption. His upper body was huge and solid, tapering down to a waist so narrow that Sally had more than once regarded it with a twinge of envy.
    She wasn’t envious of the rest of him, however. He seemed about to burst out of the dark suit that concealed the elaborate tattoos on his arms. Sally had seen the tattoos in the summer when Jorge wore short sleeves. His arms were covered with snakes that coiled around his biceps; hearts pierced by daggers; weeping eyes; skulls; spiders.
    There was supposedly another tattoo on his back, the tattoo that had given him his nickname. Sally hadn’t seen that one. She’d heard about it from Troy Beauchamp, one of Sally’s English instructors, who had seen Jorge working out in the gym.
    â€œI swear to God,” Troy had told her. “It just about covers his back. It’s this huge rooster pecking on the eyes of a corpse. There’s no color in it except for the red in the rooster’s comb and the blood dripping from the corpse’s eye sockets. Creepy? Amen. And Jorge’s muscles? Jesus. You wouldn’t believe the way he looks. He’s like a Russian Olympic weight lifter.”
    Weights had a lot to do with Jorge’s appearance, all right. He’d done a lot of lifting while serving out his sentence in one of the high-security units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He’d also earned three degrees during his stay there: his associate’s, his bachelor’s, and his master’s.
    Jorge, in other words, had profited from the two primary things that the state legislators, and not a few of the state’s citizens, from time to time wanted to deprive prisoners of: weight lifting and education. He still worked out at least an hour a day in the college gym, and he was working on his doctorate at the University of Houston.
    â€œFieldstone called, all right,” Sally told him, “but he didn’t say what he wanted.”
    â€œOf course not. That’s part of his technique, a power thing. Keeps people off balance.”
    Sally silently agreed. Jorge had pretty good insights into people, a talent that had probably stood him in good stead while he was in the crossbar hotel.
    â€œDid he say anything to you?” she asked.
    â€œJust that he wanted to see me in his office. It must have something to do with the prisons, though, if I’m involved.”
    Sally nodded. Hughes Community College offered classes in several of the nearby prison units. The program had begun in a small way, but it had grown to the point that it required its own coordinator. That was where Jorge came in. Who better to deal with inmates, wardens, and prison educational personnel than a product of the system? The college’s personnel officer had begun recruiting Jorge even before his release.
    â€œAny lockdowns?” she asked. “Escapes? Problems in any of the classes?”
    Jorge shook his head. He had thick black hair