Influenced by Eva Robinson (best free ebook reader TXT) 📗

home was his refuge, a tidy place of calm—but he felt off today.

From his phone, he turned on Spotify, playing a song from Miles Davis. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a corkscrew. Thunder rumbled outside, and rain started pattering against his window.

He’d interviewed Peter’s colleagues today, but had gotten nowhere. Peter lived alone, and he’d been expected to go on vacation that week. The professors he worked with hadn’t even realized he was missing. It seemed Peter didn’t see friends often, and he spent a lot of his free time playing video games or jogging by himself. He was like a ghost, with nothing on social media, few close contacts.

With his stomach rumbling, Michael poured himself a glass of wine. But if he didn’t fill his stomach with food, he’d find his head swimming fast. As his mind slid over today’s fruitless interviews, he filled up a pot with water, then dropped it onto the stovetop.

Because there were now two dead academics with missing laptops, the autopsy had happened fast—but it didn’t give them much to go on. Four or five days ago, Peter had died of unknown causes, then he’d been dragged into the pond. He hadn’t drowned.

The autopsy had showed his stomach was nearly completely empty. Either he hadn’t eaten in a while, or he’d thrown up what he had. From medical records, Michael knew that Peter had a life-threatening peanut and tree nut allergy. If he’d died of anaphylaxis or a poison, he likely would have vomited before death.

The body had been in the pond too long to know if his throat had shown any signs of swelling, but the real question was if he’d been poisoned with thallium. Or maybe another toxic substance. It’d be another two weeks before they learned what had happened.

Not a single person Michael had spoken to knew of anyone who’d want to harm Peter. He’d broken up with a boyfriend months ago, but the boyfriend was now overseas.

Two dead academics within the span of a few weeks, both with missing laptops. Cambridge had a few murders per year, but this was deeply unusual. Michael had a sinking feeling that if they didn’t figure out what was happening—fast—they could soon be stumbling over another academic’s corpse.

But what had really crushed Michael that week was having to tell Peter’s mom that her son had been found dead. The look on her face was now seared into his brain—her stillness as some part of her mind took it in, but the rest refused to believe it. Her expression had made Michael feel desperate to find out exactly what had happened to her son, who had dumped his body in a pond.

Michael pulled out a pan and doused it with a bit of olive oil. As he started slicing up an onion, he thought of what he’d once read long ago—that soldiers called for their mothers when they died—and wondered if he’d think of his mum when his time came.

But in most of his memories it was the other way around, wasn’t it? She called him for help.

Sixteen slices of onion, no more, no less. They were a bit bigger than he’d like, but they’d have to do.

Whenever he started to think of his mum, a storm of emotions clouded his mind—sadness and regret so murky that it was hard to think straight.

While the onions sizzled in the pan, he grabbed a head of garlic and started peeling the cloves. Four cloves, cut into fours, crushed in with the onions. As it fried, a delicious scent filled his apartment. He opened a can of tomatoes, steam from the heating water curling into the air.

He let the sauce simmer and sat at his table to pull out his laptop.

It was unfortunate that not everyone conveniently catalogued every moment of their lives like Rowan did.

Peter Sylvestro… The name kept niggling at him. He was sure he’d seen it recently.

Did he have something to do with Rowan?

He opened her Instagram feed, where he found an artful sunset photo of her standing on a plot of land, shot from behind. The text beneath it was all about the Cambridge Teen Center, how they’d gotten the funding they needed, how it would help educational outcomes… It all sounded much more professional and academic than what Rowan normally wrote. It didn’t quite seem like Rowan at all, in fact.

Michael scrolled to her bio, then clicked the link to the teen center page. And that was where he’d seen the name. There was Peter, smiling behind his glasses.

Michael would be paying Rowan another visit.

And where was the real Rowan? Because this golden image of Rowan saving the world wasn’t it, nor was the text about the fundraising.

The real dirt was on the blog discussion sites.

When he opened TOI.com, he found that no one there seemed particularly interested in the teen center. He switched the view, so that the “hot” posts shifted to the top. One was an ongoing discussion about whether or not she’d murdered Arabella, filled with complete conjecture about a jealousy motive.

The other two were deleted photos that Rowan had apparently posted a few nights ago. They’d been up only a few hours before she took them down, but of course they’d already been catalogued.

The first image was a dark, glimmering pool of water. The location tagged it as Fresh Pond. The text read, I havejt snaped..; Im perfecly san;e. I didn’t kill any one.

His pulse started to race, and he scrubbed a hand over his mouth, staring. Holy shit.

He pulled out his phone, calling Ciara.

When she answered, she sounded breathless. “Michael? You’re not at work. Where are you?”

“No, because it’s nine thirty on a Friday, and I haven’t eaten. What’s up?”

“Oh. I forgot dinner. Anyway, I found something.”

“Want to come by? I can add extra pasta.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She hung up without another word.

Michael rose, pulling a chili pepper out of the fridge. With Ciara coming, he’d make it as hot as he could stand, until