PM. Zach leafed through her case file again, looking for someone with the initials PM, but didn’t find anything. Wednesday nights. English Lit. He’d need to get a class list from three months ago, see if anyone she’d attended class with had those initials. Maybe Miriam had met someone in her class who she hadn’t mentioned to her parents because she wasn’t interested in dating him, per se, but in a casual hookup. Not exactly the kind of thing a college girl tells her mom and dad about.
But wouldn’t she have told her friends? They’d all been interviewed and none had mentioned a boyfriend or a hookup of any kind during the months surrounding her abduction. Was it because they didn’t know, or hadn’t considered it important like Aria Glazer’s roommate? He’d need to interview them again, especially now that circumstances had changed. She wasn’t just missing, she was dead. Murdered in a heinous fashion.
His eyes again moved to the description of the sex from February 8, just a short time before she’d disappeared after leaving a campus bar earlier than her friends because she had an exam the next morning. She’d never made it back to her dorm. Never been seen again, until her body had turned up in that abandoned basement.
Sex on PMs desk, so hot. W. almost caught us. Oops.
Desk. Having a desk was not an oddity, especially on a college campus. Every student had a desk in their dorm or apartment. But . . . Miriam’s Wednesday night sex partner was obviously a secret—she hadn’t told her parents or her friends. And someone had almost caught them. Caught. W. Wife? The man’s wife had almost caught them? What if the affair was not with one of the students in the English Lit class, but with the teacher? PM. The Professor. Professor who?
That morning, Zach had requested class schedules from the university for both Miriam and Aria. He checked his email, but still hadn’t received anything. He’d need to call again and put a fire under their asses. How hard could it be to pull up an old class schedule? But in the meantime . . . Zach pulled up the Internet, looking up the English Literature professors at the University of Cincinnati. He scrolled, spotting the Wednesday night class that Miriam must have taken the semester before. It was still held during the same times, five to seven.
Taught by Professor Vaughn Merrick. PM. Professor Merrick?
Zach’s heart thumped, that sixth sense that he was onto something zinging through him.
He looked up her roommate’s number and dialed it quickly, his leg tapping with impatience as he listened to it ring.
“Hello?”
“Shannon Edwards?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Copeland with the Cincinnati Police Department.”
There was a pause. “About Miriam?”
“Yes.”
“It’s awful.” He heard a catch in her voice. “It doesn’t feel real,” she whispered as if it wasn’t, but if she talked too loudly, it might be.
“I know. I understand. I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Edwards.”
“Thank you, Detective. I answered lots of questions about Miriam when she disappeared. Is there something else? I’m heading to class and—”
“I know, and I may need to set up a time to talk again, but for now, I just have a couple of quick questions if you can spare three minutes.”
“Yes, okay.” He heard hurried footsteps and pictured her walking quickly across campus, her cell phone pressed to her ear.
“We’ve found evidence that Miriam may have had a regular Wednesday night hookup with someone. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”
“A hookup? No. Miriam wasn’t seeing anyone regularly from what I knew. And Miriam wouldn’t have lied about that. We talked about everything.”
“Would she have kept this from you if it was a professor?”
“A professor?” The footsteps stopped.
“Are you familiar with Professor Vaughn Merrick?”
Shannon was quiet for a moment and then she laughed softly. “Yeah, the whole female student body is. He’s hot. But . . . I think he’s married.”
“Could that be why Miriam didn’t mention it?”
“I mean . . . I guess. I . . . I don’t know. There are rumors . . .”
“What kind of rumors?”
“You know, about his office hours, how if you flirt with him, you might get lucky on top of his desk. I thought . . . I thought it was just talk, you know? Because he’s hot. Just . . . girls talking.”