I said. “You mind if Detective Miner grabs a chair from out in the hall?” “Not at all,” Professor Willson Fredericks said. He remained standing, so I did, too. The office was insultingly small. I’m thinking eight by thirteen, but the eight was closer to six because the cinder block walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, which crawled over the top of his battered gray steel desk like a speed bump. One wall was all window, looking out over the quad on campus. It must have been the break between classes because dozens of students were crisscrossing the quad, every one of them carrying a backpack. The girls could’ve been me twenty years ago, except I couldn’t afford Starbucks, I didn’t have a cell phone, and I kept my boobs inside my shirt. The sun was on High, and even though it was only fifty-five degrees, the girls were trying to get into it. Even from this guy’s second-floor office, I could see that this was the first day of Nipple Fest. When Ryan made it back with a plastic chair, saying “Sorry”
