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BY THE TIME THE EMERGENCY responders showed up, Emma and I were back in her car, quietly watching raindrops streak across the windows. Detective Ka`imi Medeiros rapped on the driver’s side window and signaled us to get out.
Detective Medeiros was a big man. Fortunately, he was equipped with a big umbrella. The three of us stood sheltered from the rain as a uniformed officer and a paramedic, both gloved, poked through the hacked-up papaya trees. Then they stopped. The officer took a photo, and the paramedic crouched down to do something. I turned away, not wanting to see what happened next.
“Professor Barda.” Detective Medeiros scowled at me.
“Detective.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
Ka`imi Medeiros and I had become acquainted the previous summer when a houseguest of mine met a nasty end. Medeiros has known my husband, Donnie, since second grade or thereabouts. Somehow, the familiarity wasn’t translating to any kind of warmth on his part. It was almost as if he believed Emma and I were responsible for the grisly scene in front of us. Our explanation, that we were conducting research, didn’t seem to thaw him.
“Who knew you were coming down here to interview Art Lam?” Medeiros asked.
“Our Institutional Research Board has a copy of our scheduled interviews,” I said.
“Art could’ve told someone,” Emma added.
“Do you know if Art Lam had any enemies?”
“Based on today’s events, my guess would be yes,” Emma said. “Who’d want to kill a papaya farmer, though?”
“Until we ID the remains,” Medeiros cautioned, “we can’t make any assumptions as to the identity of the victim.”
“Art Lam wasn’t in his hou—” I began, cutting it short when I felt Emma’s foot treading firmly on mine.
“Officer, we need to get back to campus.” Emma stepped toward her car. “Will this take long?”
“Just a few more questions,” Medeiros said.
Emma sighed.
After a good hour of relentless and, in my opinion, needlessly repetitive interviewing, I had to say something.
“Detective, my class starts in half an hour.”
“If you’re late to class because of a murder investigation,” Medeiros said, “I’m sure your students will forgive you.”
“Not her accounting majors,” Emma said.
“She’s right, Detective.”
Medeiros sighed.
“Okay, go. But don’t leave the island. We’re going to want to talk to you again.”
On the drive back, the wind intensified, bouncing branches around and pummeling Emma’s little car.
“What a morning. And now I get to teach for three solid hours.”
“Seriously?” Emma said. “What idiot gave you that schedule?”
“Well, I’m the interim department chair. So apparently I’m the idiot.”
“Oh. I almost forgot. What are we gonna put in our notes for today’s interview?”
“Shoot, I don’t know. Remember what Medeiros said? They’re not even sure it was Art Lam.”
“Yeah, hard to recognize him without his head.”
“Emma!”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you mind?”
“Fine. Hey, so how’s it going with your never-shuts-up student? You have him today, right?”
“Oh, Lars Suzuki. I don’t know what his deal is. Maybe he has some kind of condition.”
“Look it up,” Emma said.
I turned on my phone. “Still no signal. We’ll have to wait till we’re closer to town. Lars is probably waiting for me at my office already, ready to walk me to class and talk my ear off.”
“He does that every time?” Emma asked.
“Pretty much. He seems like a nice kid. He’s just so up. He wears me out. Like an energetic puppy. He would be great to have at a dinner party, though. You’d never lack for conversation.”
When Emma and I got to campus, I took a deep breath and switched to teacher mode, readying myself for an afternoon of what Arlie Hochschild calls “emotional labor.” I had to be upbeat for my students. It wasn’t their fault I’d almost tripped over a dismembered body earlier. They didn’t have to know how I yearned to drive straight home, take a hot shower, climb into my fluffy spa bathrobe, and wait out the storm with a lightweight mystery and a big glass of red wine.
Lars Suzuki was waiting for me at my office door. On the way to the classroom, he trotted beside me, talking without a break about his other classes, his approach to the assignments in my class, and his newest job, an internship in our fundraising office. To hear him tell it, Lars had a lot of different jobs. I supposed he managed to talk himself into them, and then talk himself right out of them again soon after.
Lars was one of those college kids who, at the age of twenty or so, still looked like a boy. He was just over five feet and slight. He wore his straight black hair about an inch long, exactly the right length to stick out from his head in a radial pattern like Nancy in the old comic strip. I smiled and nodded at appropriate intervals as we walked together, relieved I didn’t have to talk.
We reached the classroom building, a stained concrete block with a red metal roof. I found the room I was looking for and pushed open the swinging door. Lars followed me inside without hesitation, his nonstop chatter echoing off the green tiles.
“Lars,” I said. “This is the ladies’ room.”
He backed out and examined the area around the door. His face fell as he spotted the word “Ladies” stenciled in black paint on the concrete wall.
“I’ll see you in class,” I called out to him.
“Okay, Professor,” he called back. “See you in class.”
By the time my last class let out, I had a dull ache in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten all day, which only happens if I am very upset. I didn’t stop at my office. Instead, I went straight out to the parking lot, threw my laptop bag into the passenger seat of my 1959 Thunderbird, buckled in, and started driving. I should have stopped at the grocery store to stock up on coffee, but I didn’t do that either. As my two-and-a-quarter inch whitewall tires (just like in the original Thunderbird ads) splashed through muddy puddles and my vacuum motors struggled to push the wipers across the windshield, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be home and done with this horrible, horrible day. Driving up to the wrecked papaya orchard, and then spotting the single boot...all day I’d been struggling to push the image out of my head.
I concentrated on the immediate future: I’d steer my car into the shelter of my narrow carport, run inside, and pour myself a glass of wine. Maybe a hot bath next, but first things first. Then I’d send a text to Donnie inviting him to stop by after he was done at the Drive-Inn. Things would look better once I got home, and Donnie was with me.
My optimism, as it turns out, was premature.