The Guilty - Jason Pinter [36]
"You know, I did go to a pretty good college," I said.
"According to who, U.S. News and World Reports? Please.
They know as much about academia as I know about horticulture. Most Ivy Leaguers are the kind of students who work
twenty hours a day to make a three-point-eight, then get hit
by a bus on your first day of work because you don't have
enough common sense to know that red means 'stop.'"
"I've never been hit by a bus," I replied.
"Right. You just got shot."
She had me there.
Amanda had taken a class with Trimble, Professor of the
Humanities, Professor of nineteenth-century American Cultural History, during her junior year. She claimed Trimble was
brilliant, slightly loony, but if you wanted to know anything
that took place between Maine and California between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, you could be sure it was
rattling around in her brain.
Hopefully we could jar something loose, because aside
from my employer losing ground to the print princess of
darkness, three people had been killed and a murderer was
still on the loose.
I'll let them know what bad means.
It was early May, and Trimble had just finished up finals
week. According to Amanda, she was spending her final days
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in the city packing up the office before heading off to Malibu
for the summer. I wanted to ask more about this Malibu trip,
but Amanda shushed me.
"Better you don't know," she said. "Let's just say her favorite movie is Point Break. "
I hadn't been back to NYU since several people had
wanted me for murder. That coincided with how I met
Amanda. Needless to say, the school held some memories for
me. Traded pain for pleasure, took a bullet in the leg in
exchange for a lover at night. Fair deal, but if the bullet had
been a few inches higher I wouldn't be thinking that.
The NYU College of Arts and Sciences had a storied
history, and what was now known as the Brown Building was
formerly known as the Asch Building. The Asch Building was
the site of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The
blaze, which occurred on March 25th, 1911, began on the
eighth floor and quickly spread. Due to cramped working
conditions and a lack of exits (including one that had been
locked ostensibly to prevent workers from stealing), the fire
killed a hundred and forty-six workers before it was put out.
It was purchased by real estate magnate Fredrick Brown,
who donated it to the University where it became the Brown
Building of Science. I didn't want to ask Amanda about it,
but I don't know how I would have felt taking classes in a
building where nearly a hundred and fifty people had died.
"Ah, home sweet home." Amanda sighed as we entered the
CAS building. Despite the fact that summer was nearing and
most sane students would have fled the campus weeks ago,
there was a line twenty people deep waiting for an elevator
that looked like it'd been erected by people who still wore
shirtwaists. Amanda, though, seemed completely unsurprised.
"It's always like this," she said. "The elevator goes about
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a floor an hour. It's an excuse for students to be late to class.
Professors can always tell who the serious students are
because they're the ones who are panting and sweating when
the bell rings. Come on, let's take the stairs."
Agnes Trimble's office was on the third floor. I was hardly
panting when we arrived. I felt a small amount of pride at
that. Then I felt ashamed for being proud of walking up two
flights of stairs.
I followed Amanda down a whitewashed hall. Most of the
doors were closed, the faculty having all adjourned for the
summer, the corkboards adjacent to them holding naked
staples and thumbtacks and occasional notices whose posters
had neglected to take them down.
As we turned down one corridor, I heard loud noise coming
from the end of the hall. As we got closer, I could hear the strains
of the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones" playing at full blast.
"That'd be her," Amanda said without an ounce of irony.
"She's a huge deadhead."
We followed