The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

only about an hour and a half. I scrolled through them to prioritize. I deleted a few newsletters without opening them and flagged a couple from applied statistics students. I’d get to them later.
    On to my voicemail.
    I drew in my breath. A message from Virgil came in only a few minutes ago. I hoped no one was looking as I clicked on his voicemail before the one from Bruce and the three from Rachel. It might appear that I’d become a police groupie. One of the badge bunnies, as I’d heard Virgil refer to women who followed cops around.
    Virgil’s message was cryptic. “Heads up, Sophie,” he said. “Our conclusion was correct. Give me a call.”
    I pressed the phone against my warm forehead. Virgil could only mean one thing: that his expert had submitted his analysis and the handwriting on Rachel’s draft thesis pages was a match to Hal Bartholomew’s.
    I felt a wave of nausea and lowered my head, supporting it on the table with my sweaty arms.
    How did the results come back so quickly? What happened to the underfunded, understaffed police department where you had to wait three months for fingerprint analysis? I realized I was now angry at the efficiency of the Henley PD.
    A callback to Virgil wasn’t going to cut it. I had to get to the police station and see and hear for myself what Virgil had learned.
    Ariana was busy with the mother and daughter pair. I was glad to see that they’d amassed a considerable amount of supplies. I blew Ariana a kiss and motioned with my hand to my ear that I’d call her, a lot easier than explaining anything right now.
     
     
    Driving to the police station, I parsed Virgil’s message. First, did “heads up” mean he’d told only me and not the rest of the Henley college family? Had he told Rachel? Her three messages might be shouts of joy that she was no longer in danger of losing her freedom. I couldn’t handle “joy” at the moment, not even Rachel’s if that was the case.
    And “conclusion” could have meant anything. Virgil and I had drawn many so-called conclusions, including the fact that the handwriting analysis might shed no light on the killer. I played the message again in my head. Aha, Virgil had not actually mentioned the word “handwriting.” Also, Virgil had sent samples from others’ along with Hal’s. I asked myself would I be less rattled if the results had come back “Fran Emerson’s handwriting is the match?” Or Pam’s or Judith’s? Of course not.
    When Virgil ended the message with “Give me a call” he might have meant there’s nothing new, just let’s Bruce and you and me get together.
    I reminded myself of my students, many of whom stayed up at night analyzing the last thing their boyfriends said that evening.
    “Do you think ‘see you later’ means he will or will not call me back?” was a common question in the dorms.
    I could hardly wait to hear what Virgil meant by his message.
     
     
    Too anxious to walk at a normal pace, I jogged part of the three blocks from where I parked my car to the police building, fast becoming home to me. The heat had let up by five o’clock, but not so much as to matter to me in my soaked shirt.
    Mercifully, Virgil did not make me wait this time. I was ushered back to his desk by a uniformed officer as soon as I arrived, maybe because I looked scary. Or maybe the trick was to arrive unannounced.
    I accepted a glass of iced tea, nothing so exotic as lemon zinger, and sat once again in front of Virgil’s desk.
    “How did you get the report so quickly?” was my first question. I knew it sounded like a reproof, that perhaps the analyst’s work had been done too hastily, the results shoddy, therefore.
    “We didn’t. It is too soon for the results from our handwriting expert. But we don’t need him. Your friend Dr. Bartholomew confessed.”
    I nearly choked on the generic iced tea. “What?”
    “We called him and asked him to come down to answer a few more questions.”
    I wanted to ask if Hal were tortured. If so, I was sure it would have been Archie. I held back. “Just questions?” I asked. “He wasn’t arrested or anything?”
    “Not arrested, but we did have the thesis pages handy and placed them so he could look at them. One ‘does this look at all familiar?’ from me and he broke down.”
    “And confessed to murdering Keith Appleton?”
    Virgil nodded. “And confessed to murder.”
    “Why would he do that? He’s smart enough to know that some scribbles on a few