Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) by Deborah Shlian, Linda Reid Page A

other hung down, fingertips just brushing the floor. It seemed an uncomfortable position for sleep, but recalling how much he’d imbibed last night, Sammy guessed he was feeling no pain.
    Clearing her throat, she tentatively called out his name to avoid startling him awake.
    He didn’t move.
    She pushed the window open so that she could climb inside, placing the thermos of hot coffee down on the floor. “Professor Conrad!” she repeated more loudly. “Sorry to intrude, but —”
    The slackness of his jaw made Sammy edge closer. “I thought maybe —” She flipped on the hall light.
    Something was terribly wrong. Even in shadow, the professor’s skin appeared a shade too pale. And it looked like — like blood splattered on the patterned sofa.
    “Professor!”
    Sammy stumbled into the living room and touched his dangling left wrist. It was cold. Frantically, she pressed her fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse. There was none. She moved his chin toward her and as she did, his jaw opened wide, exposing a ragged, round hole in the roof of his mouth. She gasped in horror. The back of his head had been blown off. Blood soaked into the cushion where his head lay.
    Sammy stepped away in revulsion, almost tripping over a gun lying on the floor. Next to it she saw a note, just a half sheet of computer paper with the typed message:
No use. C
.
    It can’t be happening. Not again! she thought.
    “Wake-up, dammit! Wake up, please!”
    But he didn’t rise up. Sammy was trembling all over.
    My fault!
    In an instant the years rolled back and she recalled the image of her mother lying on the daybed. Not quite seven, Sammy had come home from school one day to discover her, still warm, but long past life. On the end table she’d found an empty bottle of pills and a note, scribbled in her mother’s neat hand,
Sorry. I tried
.
    Sammy never cried that day so long ago. Even at the funeral hall as she knelt beside her mother’s coffin. Her father had not come. He’d already moved to Los Angeles, and was living with his new fiancée. Bubbe Rose would become both grandma and mother now — seeding Sammy’s tongue with Yiddish idioms, her soul with Jewish guilt.
    Over the years, Sammy strove to appear unflappable, self-assured, tough. Keeping all her emotions bottled up, the paragon of self-control.
    But, yesterday, news of a student’s suicide had created a tiny chink in her reservoir of unresolved feelings. Today, finding Conrad’s lifeless body had broken the dam. The child within her wept as she could never remember weeping.
    When she was done, she wiped the tears from her cheek, pickedup the cordless phone from the end table by the couch, and calmly dialed the campus police.
    Luther Abbott was exhausted. The throbbing in his hand had kept him awake all night. He’d been told to elevate it, but how was he supposed to accomplish that and still sleep?
    “Blasted chimp!” He unwrapped the loose gauze dressing and examined his wrist.
    “Lucky that monkey didn’t injure any tendons or joints,” the doctor in Student Health had declared yesterday as he cleaned the wound. “I’d have to put you in the hospital on IV antibiotics. This way you can go home on oral medication.”
    Now Luther was taking pills four times a day, though the angry red color of the skin surrounding the bite suggested they might not be doing any good. He extracted a bottle of aspirin from the drawer beside his bed. A couple of these, he thought, should do the trick. He rubbed his flattop. Might even help the headache just forcing its way into his consciousness.
    He didn’t have time to be sick, darn it. Today he had to crack the books for Monday’s midterms. And tomorrow he’d attend Reverend Taft’s Sunday service. In the afternoon the Reverend’s group would be planning the next campus mission of the Youth Crusade. He had to be there. After his outstanding performance in the last demonstration, they’d made him a group leader.
    He chugged