The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

hundred percent eager to cooperate,” Pam started out. She sat up straight, primly, hands folded on the table, in the chair opposite mine. It might have been a job interview, with Pam as the one doing the hiring.
    I pulled out my roster and slid the sheet onto the table between us. “Let’s start with your status in the applied statistics class,” I said, smiling. A pleasant countenance, but not an overly happy face, was my goal. Me teacher, you student.
    Pam’s shoulders slumped, her long light brown hair falling across her cheeks. It didn’t take much for poor posture to take over with the backpacker crowd. “I think . . . I hope I’m doing good.”
    “You’re doing very well,” I said. “You have an A so far. As you know, the administration has asked us all to make arrangements for ending the summer courses without holding any more formal classes.”
    Pam nodded, definitely more deferential, following my lead. “Uh-huh.”
    I explained my plan to Pam—that if she would submit a five-page paper, instead of the two-page reference report listed on the original syllabus, on a mutually acceptable topic, the exam would be waived. She did, after all, now have a week free of classes. Was that agreeable to her?
    “Totally,” she said, waving her hands to dismiss all doubt. “I’m thinking of switching my major to biostatistics and I already have a start on a paper.”
    This was news. My gut feeling said that students would be going in the other direction after Friday. I figured that those who were on the fence and afraid of the Entirely Too Demanding, Legendary Dr. Appleton would now be flocking to chemistry, not away from it.
    “You’re switching to the new interdisciplinary major?”
    Here was another area where Keith and Dean Underwood were in agreement.
    “I don’t like hyphenated names for classes, let alone major fields of study,” she’d said.
    “Interdisciplinary is another word for watered down,” he’d said.
    Keith and the dean had been outvoted by the new, hyphenated, watered down generation.
    Pam nodded vigorously. “I’m going to talk to my adviser this week. I have enough bio credits to make the switch, and I love that there’s more math in the new program.”
    The way to my heart.
    “Have you already come up with a topic that fits your new direction?”
    “I started my report on it and I can easily expand the table of contents and flesh it out. Eventually I want to work on a human genome project, so I’d like to do a paper on statistical genetics.”
    Impressive. I looked ahead a few years and saw Pam one day running a research institute or managing data analysis at a pharmaceutical company.
    “Okay, then. Have it to me two weeks from tomorrow.”
    “Done,” she said, and placed her hands to lift herself from her seat and be off.
    “No obligation, of course, but if you have another minute, I’d like to go over a different matter with you.”
    Pam let out a heavy sigh. “Sure.”
    Where was the one hundred percent eager to cooperate attitude?
    I lowered my voice though the reading room was nearly empty. “Remember yesterday when I asked your whereabouts on Friday afternoon, say, between noon and four o’clock?”
    Pam rolled her eyes, involuntarily I was certain, and nodded. “Mmm hmm.”
    “We never did finish that conversation.”
    “We were at the party for Dr. Bartholomew, like everybody else, then we went to the dorm.”
    “I’m asking where you were, not your friends.”
    “Okay. I was at the party for Dr. Bartholomew, like everybody else, then I went to the dorm.”
    Cute. “I thought there was some hesitation yesterday, or some details you’d left out. Inadvertently.”
    “No, that’s about it. Remember the three of us helped you clean up after the party? Then we all left together around two?”
    “The four of us didn’t exactly walk out arm in arm,” I said, with a chuckle.
    “We may have gone to the restroom,” Pam said. “Me, that is.” Her tone said she intended to stick to her story and she was pretty much done with answering any more questions about it. While she didn’t ask for a lawyer, I sensed the idea had crossed her mind.
    I foresaw the whole morning going this way, with Pam, Liz, and Casey alibiing each other.
    On the tip of my tongue were a couple of niggling phrases that didn’t fit what Pam claimed. Without forceps to drag the words out in the open, I was at a stalemate.
    I had no option but to send Pam off with a request to