“Not unless some other more compelling evidence of your guilt comes up,” the chief said. He stood up to usher her to the door.
“Wash your face in cold water,” Kathy called after Alice. “And go lie down for a while. They might need you for rehearsal.”
“Fat chance,” Alice said as she closed the door behind her.
The chief sat down again. He glanced at me and then fixed his gaze back on Kathy.
“So, Ms. Borgstrom. Do you also want to confess having handled the statue?”
“No,” Kathy said. “I wanted to give you this.”
She handed him the file folder. The chief opened it, leafed through the first few pages, than glanced up as if asking for an explanation.
“I’ve been keeping a dossier of things Dr. Wright has done to various drama students,” Kathy said. “Actions that might be illegal and certainly were unethical. Losing their papers, grading them more harshly, refusing them extensions and other accommodations that she routinely granted to other students.”
“For what purpose?” the chief asked.
“Who knows?” Kathy said. “The woman had a pathological hatred of the theater.”
“I meant why were you keeping this file?” the chief said.
“In the hope that we could use it against her,” Kathy said. “Even a tenured professor shouldn’t be allowed to get away with some of this stuff.”
“So you were hoping to get her disciplined?” the chief asked.
“I was hoping Abe could use her misconduct in his campaign to liberate drama from the English department,” Kathy said. “It needs to be an independent department. So I started documenting everything. I figured one or two incidents she could easily explain away, but not a pattern documented over several years’ time. And when I heard about what she was pulling now, trying to ruin Ramon’s career, I thought maybe it was time to confront her.”
“So you brought this file out here to give it to Dr. Sass?” the chief asked.
“Actually, I planned to confront Dr. Wright with it,” she said. “And maybe put her on the defensive before the meeting with Abe, Art, and Michael. It sounded as if they were going to bring up the idea of secession.”
“She gave me the copy she brought for Abe,” I said, holding it up. “Is it okay if I give it to him?”
“Let me see it first,” the chief said, holding out his hand.
Kathy and I watched as he flipped page by page through both files. At some point I realized I was holding my breath, so I stopped and took a few deep, calming breaths. The chief took out his notebook, glanced at it from time to time, and made a few new notations. No doubt he was seeing which of the people in Kathy’s evidence were already on his suspect list and which he’d have to hunt down. And, of course, making sure my copy didn’t contain anything extra.
Eventually, though, he handed one of the files back to me.
“Oh, one more thing,” I said. “It may not be relevant, but Kathy, you should tell the chief what you told Alice and me. About Dr. Wright’s health.”
“Her health?” Kathy repeated. “Oh, you mean that she was a diabetic?”
The chief froze, just for a split second, and stared intently at Kathy. But she was looking at me, waiting for an answer, and missed it.
“Yes,” I said. “Any medical detail could be relevant. Dad was telling me the other day about a crime that wasn’t solved until they figured out that the victim was a hemophiliac. Without knowing that, their time of death calculations were all off. So the chief—and Dad—might need to know about Dr. Wright’s diabetes.”
Kathy shrugged, and repeated her tale of interrupting Dr. Wright in the act of injecting herself with insulin. The chief continued to scribble for several minutes after she finished.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Kathy shook her head, and stood up to go.
“I have just a couple of questions,” he said. “Sit down, please,” he added when Kathy continued to stand as if poised for flight.
Kathy sat and composed her face into a friendly, helpful expression. Was she really that unworried or was she just a good actress? I felt a pang of anxiety and I wasn’t guilty of anything except barging in on the chief’s interrogation.
“What time did you learn about the proposed meeting about Mr. Soto’s dissertation?” the chief asked.
“When Meg and Michael called me,” she said. “I don’t remember the time.”
“Michael can tell you from his cell phone,” I said. “But I can tell you approximately. Right after Michael called Kathy, I called my brother for some help.” I pulled out my cell phone, scrolled down the list of calls I’d made that day, and showed the chief the one to Rob at 11:55 a.m. He nodded and jotted the time down in his notebook.