Page 114 of Long Way Down

A prickling sensation at the back of Melissa’s neck made her hesitate, but then she realized that she would want to know the same thing in this scenario, and for the same reason. “Yeah.” She pushed back one half of her jacket to show her hip holster, right beside her badge. “I’ve got one.”

Lana’s gaze dropped to it, and she nodded again, shoulders visibly relaxing. “Have you ever used it?”

“Dixon,” Contreras said, a warning.

“No. But I will if I have to.”

“Dixon.”

“Come on.” She steered Lana forward. “You don’t want to be late.”

The classrooms they passed on the way up were all originally meant to be gallery spaces, and some didn’t have doors. The soothing, lilting fall of lectures floated out into the hallway toward them, and Melissa glanced inside to see heads bent over easels; heard the scratch of pencils or the rustle of paper. A few professors stood waiting for classes, greeting students at the door. A woman with a lanyard, tousled gray hair, and a Bohemian dress put on a small, sad smile as they passed, and Melissa put an arm around Lana, wanting to shield her.She doesn’t need your pity, she thought, savagely, and had to check herself.

Contreras caught her eye, once, on the stairs, and his firm look told her to cool it. She avoided his gaze after that.

When they passed Tobias’s painting, that haunting, blurred swampscape that so flawlessly captured her childhood, her stomach lurched. Would his face betray him when Lana entered the classroom? Would he flinch?

They weren’t late, yet, but had purposefully arrived just before the hour struck, to ensure the other students were already present. The shock of seeing Lana was something they needed to witness firsthand, to gauge everyone’s guilt or innocence. Kneejerk reactions were hard to fight.

Melissa expected Lana to hesitate again, outside the door of the classroom, but instead, she stepped well clear of Melissa, kicked her chin up, and strode confidently into the room, her face elegantly composed. A half-step behind, Melissa sought the reactions of the men in the room.

Professor Dubois, fiddling over at his desk, actually gasped. He jerked upright as if pulled on a string, and then hastened to compose himself. His round, kindly face evidenced surprise…and then was flooded with something like pride. It seemed too warm and genuine to have been faked.

Daniel Loraine did a comical double-take, the pencil clenched in his teeth dropping to the floor and rolling away to fetch up against another student’s suede bootie.

Doug Waxman, sitting lethargic and droopy-eyed with his foot on the rung of his stool and his chin on his upraised fist, glanced at Lana and then away again, indifferent.

But Melissa’s pulse was elevated as she catalogued and then dismissed all these reactions in favor of the one most concerning. Her gaze went to Tobias, and found that he wasn’t looking at Lana, but ather.

He’d been in the act of arranging pencils across the lip of his easel, and still held one in a hand that had gone tight and white-knuckled. His face looked pale, hair, brows, and chin scruff shockingly black by contrast. His expression was one of badly-repressed panic, and the bottom fell out of Melissa’s stomach.

An ugly feeling overtook her. A knowledge.It’s him. There was nothing concrete, and they’d have to interview all four of the men here again, but sheknew, now, instinct kicking in late but vicious.

Lana walked on ahead, making for an empty easel, and Tobias blinked, and followed her progress visually, shrinking down a little into his shirt collar in a way he hadn’t the last time they’d been here. Like he knew he’d been found out.

~*~

“Detectives,” Professor Dubois greeted in a whisper, when he’d set the class to sketching the day’s model and came to find them where they stood over by the window. “Are you back with more questions? I see that” – he twisted to look over his shoulder, briefly, and his voice was laced with admiration – “Miss Preston has rejoined us.”

“She has,” Melissa agreed. “We’re just observing, for now.”

“We’ll want to interview some of the students when class ends,” Contreras said. “But we’ll stay out of your hair for now.”

“Very good.” He seemed the sort of person who would say ‘very good’ if you told him his house had caught on fire; pleasantries were a shield of sorts. He twisted his fingers together and said, “Will you…have any questions for me?” The tilt of his head said he prayed the answer was no.

“We’ll let you know, thanks,” Contreras said, polite but firm dismissal.

They got another “very good,” and the professor flitted away to peer over his students’ shoulders and make helpful suggestions.

When he was gone, Contreras leaned in close. “We’ll question him again, for the records. But between you and me–”

“Yeah, it’s not him,” she agreed. Her gaze had gone to Tobias again. He worked at his canvas, gaze flicking up over the top of it again and again to rest on the model: a young man tonight, dressed in thin, white boxers, standing with a decorative glass gazing ball held aloft in one hand, muscled and smooth as a Greek statue. Tobias’s hand moved in fast, aborted strokes across the paper; she couldn’t see his sketch from where she stood, but she could see the lines of tension between his brows, and didn’t think they were solely the result of concentration.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and her heart gave an unpleasant flip when the screen read COLE.

“My old partner,” she murmured to Contreras. “He’s with Homicide now.” She turned around to walk into the deepest corner of the room, screened from the students by a row of what looked like wheeled bun racks, the trays full of charcoal drawings rather than cooling pastries. She thumbed the screen, pulse thumping hard, part dread, part anticipation. “This is Dixon.” Screw him; after earlier, he wasn’t getting a personalized greeting.

“Melissa,” he said, his deep voice made even deeper by the gravitas he’d tried to lever into it. Key word:tried. It set all her fine hair on end, anyway. “About your request before. I think we’ve found your missing girl.”

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