She had a point. “Fine. We’ll rule her out. For now. But I reserve the right to reopen our investigation if she asks my sister out. What’s your next class?”
Vero turned her schedule toward me. “That’s why I came up here to find you. Check out the seminar in the auditorium. It starts in thirty minutes.”
I read the title of the class aloud as we walked. “Crime Scene Forensics: Impressions and Pattern Evidence.”
“No, the instructor.” She tapped the names listed beside it. Dr. Mohammed Sharif, Tool Marks Examiner, and Peter Kim, Lab Technician. “Isn’t that the same Pete you met at the lab? The one who reads your books?”
I drew the schedule closer and read the brief bio under Peter Kim’s name. I’d never asked Pete for his last name, but how many Peters could there be in one lab who worked in soil analysis and impressions? “It must be.”
“Still have that bullet with you?” Vero asked. I nodded. “If we hurry, maybe we can catch him before his lecture starts.”
Vero and I drew open the door to the auditorium and peeked inside, relieved to find most of the seats were still empty. A projection screenrested on the stage between two podiums. Pete looked up from his notes as the door clicked shut behind us. He nearly tripped, his note cards scattering to the stage floor in his rush to get out from behind his podium to greet me.
“Wow! Finlay, I didn’t know you were going to be here.” He met us at the side of the stage, took my hand, and shook it enthusiastically. “I mean… that’s not entirely true. Nick told me you’d be here this week. I just didn’t know you’d be at my lecture.” He did a double take as he noticed Vero beside me.
“Sorry,” I said at his dumbfounded look. “This is my nanny, Vero.”
“Accountant,” she corrected me.
“Oh, wow, an accountant,” Pete said, reaching to shake her hand, too. “Numbers are great. I like numbers.” His eyebrows shot up. “I mean, notyournumber, because that would be inappropriate. And probably awkward. You know, for both of us. I just meant numbers in general.” Pete took his hand back, clamping his arms tightly against his sides, probably to hide the damp rings that had begun forming under them. “You’re the first ones here,” he said, ducking to retrieve his note cards from the floor. I knelt and scraped up a few stray cards for him. “We’re not supposed to start for another ten minutes, but you’re welcome to sit wherever you like. Preferably somewhere I won’t be able to see her…” He shook his head. “I mean you, because sometimes when I get really nervous, I sort of freeze up, and once it was so bad, I even—”
“Pete,” I said, bending low to catch his eye as I handed him the cards. “We came early because we were hoping to ask you for a favor.” The instructor at the other podium—presumably Dr. Sharif—glanced over at us between stern looks at his notes. I lowered my voice, gently pulling Pete aside into the shadow of the thick red folds of the stage’s curtain. Vero followed, tugging it closed behind us as Pete gave his armpit a discreet sniff. His arm fell back to his side as I retrieved the bullet from my backpack. It didn’t look like a bullet—at least none I had ever seen. It was shaped more like a wilted flower, but Pete seemed to recognize it immediately.
He reached for it, squinting at it under the low lights. “Where’d you find it?”
I looked to Vero. We hadn’t come up with a story. “We… didn’t. A friend of ours did. We were curious if you could tell us anything about the weapon that might have fired it.”
Pete looked skeptical. “Where did your friend find it?”
“She…”
“Found it at a school playground,” Vero improvised. Pete nodded, as if this didn’t surprise him. “I told Finlay it would make an excellent opening for her next book. A suburban mom finds a key piece of evidence while her kids are playing innocently on the playground, and she takes it upon herself to investigate where it came from.”
“Whoa.” His eyes ping-ponged between us. “That would make a great story. She wouldn’t be able to uncover much on her own though. She’d need a professional to examine it. You know, a firearms examiner.”
“Like Wade?” I asked.
“Wade Coffey? The firearms instructor?” Pete looked stung. “No, he just teaches people how to shoot. She’d need a forensics expert, someone who knows how to analyze tool marks.”
“Someone like you?” Vero asked eagerly.
“Yes. I mean, no,” he corrected himself. “Not exactly—”
“Can you tell us anything about the bullet?” I asked as the auditorium began to fill with the hum of voices.
“I’m really not an expert in this sort of thing,” he said, trying to hand the bullet back. Vero slipped a piece of notebook paper from her backpack and scribbled her phone number across it. His eyes flew open wide as she held it out to him. “But I might know someone who could take a look at it,” he said quickly, taking her number.
“Thanks, Pete,” I said, zipping my bag shut. “And let’s keep this between us, okay? I’d rather no one else know about it.”
An awed wonder dawned slowly across his face. “Oh, I get it. You don’t want this to get back to Nick because the hero in this book is going to be the lab guy and not the cop. Because everyone in the department knows the hot cop from the first book was modeled after Nick, and his ego would be bruised if he thought he was upstaged by a hot scientist!”
Vero stifled a snort. I pinched her before it could escape.
Pete’s grin was triumphant. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he said, holding up the bullet. “That’s what heroes do. You know, save the day and… stuff.” He glanced sidelong at Vero. I could guess thestuffhe was imagining. He hitched a thumb over his shoulder, stumbling backward into the curtain. “I should put my cards back in order before the lecture starts.” The bullet slid from his fingers as he waved. It hit the wooden floor with a ping and he scrambled to pick it up. He slapped at the curtain, searching for an opening in the fabric.
Vero shook her head as he disappeared through it. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Finn, but I don’t think Pete is qualified to save us.”
“We don’t need him to be a hero. We just need him to tell us about the gun that fired that bullet.” And hopefully keep his mouth shut.
