Tunnel Vision by Brenda Adcock Page B

becoming uncomfortable.
    Maggie knew she had been at least partially responsible for Brodie’s resignation from the Austin PD. Now fate had put her on a collision course with her former lover. She didn’t doubt her own abilities to become a good investigator. She just had to convince everyone else, and she couldn’t do it without going through the woman now standing in front of her. Pushing away from the car, she cleared her throat, unable to look into Brodie’s eyes any longer.
    “Nothing, Lieutenant. Should I meet you and Detective Nicholls back here?”
    “In an hour,” Brodie snapped, stepping away from her. “We’ll contact you if we find anything and you do the same.”
    Maggie walked away from the car and pointed at two officers standing near the steps leading into the building. “You two, come with me,” she ordered in a firm voice.
    As she watched Maggie and the two officers reenter the building, Brodie saw self-confidence and assertiveness she hadn’t seen in a younger Maggie Weston.
    THE DETECTIVES, ACCOMPANIED by a dozen
    uniformed officers, combed the grounds around the Biology Building, as well as the other buildings in the Science Quadrangle for the better part of an hour. Nothing seemed out of place. Brodie spoke to a number of students, none of whom seemed aware of anything unusual happening over the weekend. The campus was spread out over a large area, giving the appearance of spaciousness. None of the buildings, other than the dormitories, was over four stories. The grass and gardens around each of the Spanish-style buildings were immaculate and she figured that it must take a battalion of groundskeepers to keep everything mowed and trimmed. The university had been in Cedar Springs for more than fifty years, but hadn’t caught on with people outside the county until ten years earlier. Then, like everything else in Cedar Springs, it experienced a sudden rapid growth cycle. She looked at the buildings around her, and everything looked perfect. She had taken a few graduate classes in American Lit in a building across the long grassy mall from the Science Quad. There didn’t seem to be as many students around as usual, but the university was preparing for its spring break.
    “Find anything?” she asked when they met
    Maggie and her team making their way down the front steps of the Biology Building.
    “Nothing,” she answered. “We’ve been through every lab, storage closet, toilet, and office in there and didn’t find a thing.”
    “Looks like our forensic friends have finished up,” Brodie said, nodding toward the building. As the lab team exited the building, the man in yellow coveralls stopped and spoke to the other members of the team and then bounced down the steps to speak to the detectives. He smiled as he reached them.
    “Who’s the fox, Brodie?” he asked, looking over his glasses appreciatively at Maggie.
    “Maggie Weston, trainee,” Brodie answered.
    “Detective Weston, meet Frank Cardona, head ghoul. What’d you find, Frank?”
    “About what you’d expect for a classroom. Got fingerprints from every damn person in the state. So, needless to say, it will take a month, minimum, to match them all up to their owners.”
    “What about the victim?” she continued.
    “Male. Hispanic. I’d guess around thirty or thirtyfive years old, but it’s hard to tell with Hispanics. We age well, you know,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at Maggie. “Full set of teeth with no apparent dental work. Probably gnawed on a few thousand tortillas over the years. Hard to tell anything about his height and weight considering that he’s now a shadow of his former self. I’ll know more when you locate the other three-fourths of him.”
    “How long has he been dead?” Nicholls asked.
    “Who the fuck knows? Coulda been in there a week or an hour before he was found. Formaldehyde is a great preservative, you know. His companions in the aquarium are in pristine condition and they’ve been