The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [533]
She walked over, uncoded the seal, opened the door. “Other classes are in session, including the second vic’s. Here.” She walked over, opened the door on Williams’s classroom. During the second fifty-minute segment when Foster’s classroom was unoccupied, Williams leaves his classroom for about ten minutes. Used the bathroom, he claimed.”
“Which gives you a segment line, from point to point. Opportunity and motive.”
“Yeah. Means is yet to be proven. I can’t tie the poison to Williams. How’d he get it, why would he choose it? Meanwhile, there’s some foot traffic. There’s a janitor in the students’ bathroom—male. He’s clean and clear. No record, no motive, excellent work record, married, father of three, and two grandkids who attend this school.”
“But he’s another intersection.”
“Yeah, yeah. He sees, and is seen by Mosebly, Hallywell, Williams, and Dawson. Then by Rayleen Straffo and Melodie Branch. Each pass by at some point, with Dawson, um, intersecting again with the two students. On the lower level, Hallywell intersects with two other students.”
“There’s also your unknown.” Following her equation, Roarke added to the data. “The possibility someone not identified ran a parallel line. A segment that didn’t intersect with another segment, but arrived at your center.”
“The outsider. Allika or Oliver Straffo, for instance, both of whom could—with forethought and planning—have bypassed the security check, arrived at the center when Foster was out—known information—doctored or replaced, and left. Under six minutes to come in, walk up, go in, do it, walk out. I’ve timed it.”
She stopped again, turned a circle. Puffed out a breath. “It’s possible it could have been done by one of them without being seen. Low risk, as if they had been seen, their kid goes here. Any handy excuse or reason to be on site would have passed without a blink.”
“But they weren’t seen.”
“No, they weren’t. Straffo was in his office off and on that morning, door closed. Did he slip out, get over here, and do it? Possibly—very tight, but possibly. Allika was shopping. Same deal. However, Allika was seen on the day Williams was killed. Signed in, hung around.”
Again, he followed her reasoning. “If she decided to eliminate teachers, why run the parallel line with one and intersect on the other?”
“Exactly. I’ve got other reasons for and against, but that one sticks on me. Nobody’d have thought anything about it if she’d come into the school the day Foster was killed. Any excuse would’ve worked.”
She crossed to Foster’s classroom. Saw him again, lying on the floor in pools of his own waste. “These killings aren’t passionate and impulsive, and they’re pretty damn smart. Smarter for her—Allika—to have come in clean. I don’t like her for it, and she’s too emotional to have pulled this off. Straffo, now, he’s got the control and the focus, but not his wife. And still…”
“Something bothers you about her.”
“A few things. But I need to turn it around in my head some before I lay it out. Meanwhile, Foster comes back, goes in, closes his door for his daily lunch/lesson-planning deal. Drinks really bad hot chocolate. If he’d got medical attention in the first few minutes, he might have made it. But the killer’s banking on it going as it did.”
She stepped in for a moment, and again saw Foster. Alive now, going through his habitual routine. “He sits. Shoots off a cheerful little e-mail to his wife, gets working on the pop quiz he has planned. He drinks, he dies.”
“Painfully,” Roarke murmured, knowing what she was seeing.
“Painfully. Then the two kids, sprung from their study session on the main level, come up, see the janitor, speak with Dawson, show their passes, go to the classroom.”
“Question? Why is it Dawson doesn’t seem to blip on your radar?”
“No motive, no sense, no buzz. Teacher for twenty-odd years, fifteen right here. No current around him. He’s the…What is it?