Max was sleeping soundly when his roommate suddenly burst into the room. He was a pre-law student that Max liked more than the others. He was more grounded in reality than most college students.
“Dude, you have got to get up!” His roommate was flinging clothing at him.
“What?” Max rubbed his eyes and yawned while flopping over in bed.
“The SCTU is in town. I wanna go talk to them or at least see them.” His roommate’s name was Clark Strawn and sometimes he got carried away by Law & Order reruns.
“Who?” Max asked trying to convince himself to sit up.
“Remember we talked last year about the Serial Killer Laws being passed? One of the things it did was create an elite task force to hunt down serial killers called the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit. They are in town! My professor was talking about it this morning.”
“Do we have a serial killer?” Max frowned and finally put his feet on the floor.
“I guess so,” Clark answered. He was grinning from ear to ear. It made him look dopey, despite his being one of the smartest people Max knew.
Some part of Max that he kept separate from his conscious self wondered if he was the serial killer. However, he hadn’t seen anything in the news about the random shootings being connected. Surely if they had made that connection it would be on the news. Although, they had released the drug dealer they had arrested for his original crime. Maybe they just weren’t releasing that information on the news. He didn’t know if they could do that or not.
“Seriously, you gotta hurry, they’ll be on campus within the hour.” Clark’s smile had faded and he was tapping his foot on the floor. Max got up and got dressed.
“Why are they coming to campus?” Max asked.
“Not sure, I just know they are going to be in the Criminal Justice lecture auditorium at 4:30 and it’s 3:40 now.” Clark checked his watch to emphasize the time constraint. Considering they were going to be in a lecture hall, it seemed only reasonable that they were here to guest lecture on something. Something that was open to all of campus. The auditorium in the Criminal Justice department was the second largest on campus and could hold close to 5,000 people. It was mainly used for guest lectures that were open to all students. Max was an anthropology major and he’d attended a lecture in it last year given by a sociologist and his grad student on criminality and genetics. Max remembered the grad student more because he never made eye contact when someone spoke to him and he had been very blank for most of it, as if he were bored, even when he was speaking. Yet, his voice had held inflection and interest, belying his face. Max had thought there was something weird about the guy. He had also seemed young for a grad student.
Max was curious what these serial killer hunters had to say. This made him dress a little faster. Before long, he found himself bundled into a car with Clark heading back to campus. He had nothing but early classes so he could work and attend baseball practice. However, that meant catching sleep when he could and Clark had disrupted that. He’d try to catch a nap later.
Max worked as a security guard in a building at night. Sometimes, he could catch an hour or two of sleep during work. His colleagues knew he was working full time and going to college full time, so they were understanding. He really liked them and his job.
It took forever to find parking. The area around the Criminal Justice building was packed. Students stood in clusters, talking amongst themselves in quiet whispers, as if they were chatting at a funeral. Clark and he went into the building, worried about getting a seat.
They were right to be worried. The place was nearly packed. Their seats were near the back, even though there was still twenty minutes to go until the SCTU showed up. Clark made small talk with a few passing students, as did Max. It seemed no one knew why the SCTU was on campus, but every professor had made the announcement that morning and every email had contained notice of it. However, neither Max nor Clark had checked their emails that day. It was a phase that would pass, according to Clark. Max was a little less skeptical, it just needed to be faster. It took forever for the modem to connect and it tied up the phone. If these things were improved, Max could definitely see it rising in popularity.