Surfing Detective 04 - Hanging Ten in Paris

Professor Van’s exams. That’s not fair to the rest of us. Do the right thing, brah.

    “Not fair to the rest of us” suggested that at this point only Scooter and Brad had the exams, which was corroborated by Van’s grade sheet. I checked Ryan’s inbox for an answer from Scooter. None. But I found one from Brad dated February 26th.

    If you know what’s good for you, Ryan, you’ll mind your own fucking business.

    I looked for more emails between Ryan and the two guys, but found none. If the battle of words had escalated, it must have been through verbal exchanges rather than emails.
    Next I checked Ryan’s laptop for documents. If the suicide note had been printed from his computer, the document still might be there. But I couldn’t find it, of course. Until I clicked the trash icon on his desktop. There it was:
Au Revoir, Marie
    The document had been created on March 1st at 2:13 am, Paris time (to which the laptop was still set). That was several hours after Ryan reportedly died. He couldn’t have printed the note himself. And whoever had trashed it afterwards had neglected to empty the trash.
    No wonder the Paris police had failed to mention these documents in their report. They may have given Ryan’s laptop a cursory look, but found nothing.
    The emails and the suicide note provided circumstantial evidence that Ryan had been murdered because he threatened to expose cheating in Van’s history class. That the cheating had become more widespread, involving every student except Ryan, meant all had a motive to cover up. What I needed was specifics—who did what and when. What I needed was somebody to talk. I didn’t expect Brad or Scooter would implicate themselves. And I didn’t expect Heather would let Kim talk to me again. With Marie accessible only by email, that left Meighan.
    Serena had given me her address: the Marco Polo, a once swanky seventies-era condo on Kapiolani Boulevard overlooking the Ala Wai Canal and Waikīkī. I drove there hoping to find her at home.
    It was late. You can’t get into the Marco Polo at night without a pass card, so I followed a resident in. Meighan lived on the 27th floor, in a studio apartment facing the mountains, rather than the water. I knocked. The blonde opened and didn’t look surprised to see me.
    “Meighan, I know now Ryan was murdered,” I said. “I’m here to give you one last chance to clear yourself. Some of your classmates already have.”
    She didn’t even blink. “Come inside.”
    Meighan led me into her tiny studio apartment. We sat on the edge of her bed, which also served as a couch.
    “Tell me everything,” I said. “And don’t leave anything out this time.”
    “Okay, I was telling you the truth when I said I found Ryan hanging in his room naked. I couldn’t believe he’d do that.”
    “He didn’t.”
    “I know he didn’t, but I didn’t know it then.”
    “When did you find out?”
    “Later that morning. When Heather, Kim and I got Brad and Scooter, they all acted shocked, like I told you, but I could tell they were faking. They were saying phony stuff like, ‘Oh, it’s so sad.’ None of it seemed real.”
    “What happened next?”
    “I finally said ‘I don’t believe this. Ryan wouldn’t hang himself.’ Then Brad snarled, ‘You better shut your face. You’re involved as much as we are.’ Brad could get violent when he was angry. I’d already seen that.”
    “What did you see?”
    “About a week before, Heather came to class one day with a black eye. She said she fell on the stairs. We all knew she was sleeping with Brad and we all figured he just went off on her, for whatever reason.”
    “She didn’t confide in you or Kim about it?”
    “Not me. Maybe Kim,” Meighan said. “But Heather usually defended Brad—made excuses for him. You know how it goes.”
    “Unfortunately,” I said, “the cycle of domestic abuse.”
    “Anyway, that’s why I was scared of him,” Meighan confessed. “That’s why I went along when he said we all had to stick together. He said if Ryan’s death looked suspicious, the cheating might come out. If it did, Brad might not graduate and his rich dad would cut him off. Brad was freaked about that.”
    “Did you already have the exam answers when Ryan died?” She bowed her head and lowered her voice.
“Yes.
They gave them to me a few days before. But I didn’t use them—”
    “Until afterwards.” I completed her sentence.
    She nodded slowly. Her eyes