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

down his pink antibiotic along with two aspirins and a prayer. God will look out for his soldiers. I will not be sick, he vowed. And that’s that.
    But as he returned the aspirin bottle to the drawer, Luther Abbottt had no idea he was soon to be sicker than he’d ever been in his life.
    After alerting Campus Police, Sammy gently set the cordless phone back in its cradle and walked over to the front door, unlocking it as the dispatcher had requested. She returned to Conrad’s desk and satdown, turning for a moment to look at the body. From this distance, she could almost convince herself he was peacefully asleep. But the jarring image of the professor last night, anxious and upset, flashed into her mind.
    The Ellsford Teaching Award is the kiss of death.
    Ironic.
    She turned from the body and felt a twinge in her heart as she scanned the cluttered desktop. Folders, envelopes, scientific journals, and papers were scattered in disordered piles over every available surface. A small bin on one end masqueraded as an outbox where several stamped bills waited to be mailed.
    Sammy remembered the large brown envelope addressed to Dean Jeffries that had lain on top. Marked CONFIDENTIAL, it must have been important to Conrad. She searched through the pile of letters. It wasn’t there. Curious, she examined the open desk drawers, but found only more reports and journals, all dealing with molecular genetics.
    She tugged at the lower left-hand drawer. It was locked. The center drawer was jammed with thumbtacks, paper clips, and rubber bands. Conrad had also accumulated a collection of pens, many sporting the advertising of hotels far away from St. Charlesbury’s row of homey bed and breakfasts. Fumbling her way through, her hand closed around a small glass object at the back of the compartment. Guiltily, she extracted what turned out to be a bottle with a #12 printed on the label. Inside were two white tablets. Quickly, she slipped the bottle into her pocket and resumed her search.
    Where was that envelope? Conrad couldn’t have mailed it last night. Not in his drunken state. One last pull at the locked drawer proved futile. She briefly considered prying it open, but the police would arrive soon. She didn’t want to be caught breaking and entering.
    Her roving eyes came to rest on the sleeping computer screen of Conrad’s Macintosh. Without thinking, she reached in back and turned it on, the pinging and whirring soon ending with the familiar heading of a file folder and its contents. What had Conrad beenworking on before he died? She sat, stunned at the answer. On the screen, under the folder heading “Games,” a ready-to-be-played version of “Hangman” opened.
    The jangle from the desk phone startled her and she jumped.
    A second ring.
    She stretched her hand toward the sound, then stopped.
    The stillness of the house magnified the shrill third ring. What should she do? Her hand hung motionless.
    Before she could respond to a fourth ring, Conrad’s answering machine intervened. A ghostly voice spoke from the box: “You’ve reached the machine. You know what to do, and I’ll get back to you.” The machine beeped.
    “Osborne here. Hey, guy, I’m worried about you. Let’s talk, okay?”
    Too late.
    For a long time, Sammy sat quietly as the machine clicked and whirred back into ready mode. Finally, noticing an orange button lighting the outlet chain at her feet, she closed the “Games” file, and kicked the button off with her toe, darkening the computer screen.
    Conrad’s silent guardian once again, Sammy thought as she leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.
    As graceful as a gazelle, Bud Stanton leapt four feet and deposited the ball into the basket. In the same seemingly effortless way, he’d fed countless layups and jumpers to the net this season, leading the previously unlucky Ellsford Eagles to first place in the Northeast NCAA conference.
    “Not bad.”
    The six-foot-seven sophomore pivoted to face