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“You ever wish you couldgo back to college?” Frost asked as he and Jane descended the stairwell of the campus parking garage. The concrete echoed with their footsteps, multiplying the sound into the boots of an invading army.
“Not me. I couldn’twaitto get out of college,” said Jane, “and get on with the rest of my life.”
“Well, I miss it,” said Frost. “I miss sitting in class, soaking up all that knowledge. Imagining all the possibilities lying in front of me.”
“Yet here you are.”
“Yeah.” Frost sighed. “Here I am.”
They pushed out through the ground-floor exit door and stepped onto the Northeastern campus. The summer session had started three weeks ago and this warm spring day had brought out shockingly skimpy outfits. Since when did halter tops and short shorts become suitable campus wear? Jane thought of her daughter, Regina, fifteen years from now,strolling this campus half naked like some of these girls. No, not if Jane had anything to say about it.
Oh god. I really have turned into my mother.
“If I could do it over again,” said Frost, watching students stream past, “if I could go back to college…”
“You’d still become a cop,” said Jane.
“Maybe. Or maybe I would’ve gone in a completely different direction. I could have gone to law school like Alice.”
“You’d hate it.”
“How do you know?”
“Sitting in some courtroom all day when you could be out on the hunt with me?”
“I’d wear nicer suits.”
“This sounds like Alice talking.”
“She thinks I’m not living up to my potential.”
“How many lawyers do you think are practicing in this country?”
“I don’t know. A million? Two million?”
“And how many homicide detectives?”
“Not so many.”
“Wayfewer. Because not many people can do what we do. You tellthatto Alice.” She stopped, stared at the map on her phone, and pointed. “It’s that way.”
“What?”
“Harthoorn’s office. And we’re late.”
Twenty minutes late, in fact, but Prof. Aaron Harthoorn did not seem to notice their tardiness when they walked into his office. He was so preoccupied by the papers on his desk that he merely glanced up and waved them toward two empty chairs.
“I’m Detective Rizzoli,” said Jane. “And this is—”
“Yes, yes, I saw you on my schedule. I’ll be with you in a minute. First let me finish grading this atrocity.” He flipped to thenext page. In his late seventies, he was old enough to have retired a decade ago, yet here he was, a seemingly permanent denizen of an office crammed with books. Twin towers of stacked volumes loomed on either side of him, like chess rooks guarding his desk.
He gave a snort of derision, scrawled anFon the page, and tossed the paper into his out basket.
“Was it that bad?” said Frost.
“Ishouldreport that student for plagiarism. Did he really think I wouldn’t recognize a paragraph from a book that I myself edited? The first time they do it, I give them an F. But the second time?” He cackled. “There’s neverbeena second time. Not after I’m through with them.”
And that’s why he hasn’t retired, thought Jane. Without his students, who would he have to terrorize?
