Point Blank

drumming her pencil on a neat stack of papers in the middle of her desk, her eyes on the closed door to Dr. Holcombe’s office. Dix cleared his throat. “Helen?”
    “Sheriff Noble! You’re with all these people I don’t know. Well, er, all of you, sit down, please.”
    “Helen, could you please give us Erin Bushnell’s address?”
    “Why? I see, you don’t want to tell me. Just a moment, I have a directory of all the students right here. I hope she’s not in trouble. Not drunk and disorderly. Ah, yes, here it is.” Helen Rafferty wrote down the address and handed it to Dix.
    “Now we’d like to see Gordon.”
    “Oh dear, Dr. Holcombe is meeting with a student—but you know what, I’m sure he’s had enough of that. It’s time for Peter to hang it up for the day.” She rose to her feet and marched on three-inch heels to a lovely mahogany door and knocked loudly several times. Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door, stuck her head in, and said in a loud voice, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the sheriff is here to see you, Dr. Holcombe. He said it’s very important.”
    A man’s easy, deep voice said, “Thank you, Helen. I’ll be right out.”
    Dix said over Helen’s shoulder, “I’ve got three FBI agents with me, Gordon.”
    “One moment,” Dr. Holcombe called out.
    Helen stepped out of his office and turned to face them, her hand over her heart. “Oh my, you’re FBI agents? Really? Here at Stanislaus? Oh yes, you’re that woman Dix found huddled against his front door, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said.
    “Don’t worry about people staring at you, dear, you can barely make out that bandage beneath all that nice thick hair. You’re really FBI agents? All of you?”
    Sherlock said, “Would you like to see our IDs?”
    “It’s really not my place to, but I’ve never seen FBI badges before.”
    “They’re actually called shields, ma’am,” Sherlock said, “or ‘creds,’” and she handed over her ID. Helen studied it for several moments. “Oh my, isn’t this the neatest thing? Ah, could you please arrest the young man who will be coming out of Dr. Holcombe’s office very shortly?”
    “Sure,” Savich said. “Do you want us to haul him out in handcuffs, maybe rough him up a bit first?”
    “That would be a treat,” Helen said. She listened for a moment, then stepped back as a thin young man with a starkly ascetic face, a rumpled shirt, and close-cropped hair walked through the office door, his shoulders slumped. Dr. Holcombe followed him, saying, “There’s no such thing as name discrimination, Peter. You must rid yourself of this notion that if a conductor doesn’t like your name, he won’t hire you. Dix, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
    Peter didn’t appear at all interested, and continued in a loud voice, “Dr. Holcombe, you can’t overlook this. Two rejections. I’ve brought them to you so you can see the truth. The rejections are nice, certainly, but both of them don’t want me. Both! You know very well it’s because of my unfortunate last name. You put my two names together, and everyone busts a gut laughing, particularly conductors and those snotty folks on their boards. You have to read between the lines, but it’s there. No one wants a violinist whose name is Peter Pepper. Can you begin to imagine how many rejections I’ll get after I earn my Ph.D.?”
    Helen said in a helpful voice, “I know I’ll think you’re rich from all the money you make on soft drinks. That’s a good start, isn’t it?”
    “Enough, Helen, please,” said Dr. Holcombe, unable to suppress a small snort of laughter. “Peter, this has nothing to do with name discrimination; it has to do with their collective opinions that someone played better than you, nothing more, nothing less. I read both letters very carefully, there is no ‘between the lines.’”
    Ruth said, “Hey, why not change your name?”
    Peter Pepper stared over at her. “I can’t. My mother would kill me, cut me out of her will, then I couldn’t afford the tuition here.”
    “Okay then, use a different first name when you next audition, then everyone will be happy. What’s your middle name?”
    “Princeton. That’s where my mom went to college.”
    “Hmm. Okay, then, how about simply reversing the two names. You’d be Pepper Princeton. Now, that sounds extraordinary. They’ll love it.”
    Peter, aka Pepper Princeton, looked deeply thoughtful, then he began to nod