Page 40 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

“I’ll be honest with you, Sheriff.” Briscoe dropped his voice into the register men used when they wanted a thing handled quietly. Out past the glass doors, two news vans had already nosed into the lot, so the man’s wish for discretion was already lost. “We have never had anything happen remotely like this on this campus before. I’ve already had my assistant reach out to our insurance carrier so we can get ahead of it.”

“I’d hold off on calls like that, Dean Briscoe.” Nick kept his tone even. “We’re a long way from certain what happened here this morning. Anything you set in motion now, you may find you’ve gotten ahead of the wrong thing.”

Briscoe’s lips pressed thin at the suggestion that Roland’s death was something more than an accident or a private tragedy. Before Nick could decipher which, Hadley came to a stop at Nick’s side.

“Dean, this is Chief Hadley Dawkins, Whistlerun PD.”

Briscoe shook her hand with a wary look. It was obvious he was trying to work out why a police chief from another town was standing in his lobby. Annette spared him the trouble.

“You think this is about Roland’s research.” Annette’s gaze drifted off Hadley and settled past her, where two of Zanes’s people had begun easing the body into a black bag. “You think he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Briscoe’s voice climbed before he could rein it back in. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re not speculating on anything, Dean Briscoe.” Nick cut a hard glance at Hadley, in no humor to hold this discussion in the open with a dozen phone cameras forty feet off and Holt already squared up against a reporter and her cameraman at the doors. “We’re going to clear this building, let the doctor do his work, and finish taking statements. You’d help me considerably by assisting me in those things.”

“Of course. Of course.” Briscoe’s head bobbed, his shoulders loosening at the offer of a task that pointed him away from the body on his floor. “Whatever you need, Sheriff.”

Hadley didn’t take the bait.

“Did you happen to see or hear anything odd this morning, Ms. Belkin?” Hadley shifted her stance as she asked the question, angling her body so the woman had a clear line to the body bag. Nick figured the move was deliberate. “Your office is just down the hall. I’d think you’d have heard a heated conversation, if not witnessed it.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Annette straightened, the tissue disappearing into her closed fist. “I had a meeting with Dean Briscoe, and⁠—”

“Chief Dawkins, I’m sure we can conduct the rest of this inter⁠—”

“Our meeting wasn’t until ten, Annette.” Briscoe quickly turned his attention toward her, the confusion written plainly on his face, and she shifted under the correction. “You⁠—”

“I was getting our coffees, Fred.” Annette’s arms came up and folded across her chest, the answer landing a half beat too fast. It was the man’s first name that caught Nick off guard, and it was obvious that Hadley had caught the slip, as well. “You know how the cafeteria line backs up this early.”

Coffee a few minutes early made sense.

Coffee a half hour early was a woman accounting for time she’d rather not have to explain to the police.

“Deputy Holt will take your full statement, Ms. Belkin.” Nick stepped forward, planting himself a half pace in front of Hadley so there’d be no mistake in front of the dean about whose scene this was. He understood what she wanted from the woman, and he didn’t fault the instinct. He just wasn’t going to let her conduct such an interview here, in the open, with the press leaning on the tape. “Dean Briscoe, I’ll need access to your security system. The entire campus, as a matter of fact.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, though you should know the coverage isn’t comprehensive.” Briscoe turned to lead the way, glad of the direction. “We placed the cameras where the liability is, Sheriff. The entrances, the lots, the library, the cafeteria, anywhere money changes hands between our staff and the students. The upper floors of the academic buildings were never part of that. There was talk of expanding the coverage a few years back, but the money went where the risk was.”

“That’ll have to do.” Nick took a step after the dean, then paused to glance back at Hadley. “Chief Dawkins. Would you like to join us?”

Nick could already read it in her expression that she would turn down his offer. It was in her stance, and it was in the way her attention had hooked onto Annette Belkin.

“I’ll hang back, if it’s all the same to you.” Hadley’s gaze slid to Holt, who’d gotten the media out the doors and was turning the crowd after them. “I’ll give Deputy Holt a hand finishing the statements. Ms. Belkin, why don’t you and I take the elevator up to your office where we’ll have some privacy?”

Hadley didn’t wait on Nick to agree or argue.

Briscoe was already moving, and the answers to how Roland Mercer had come off that landing might be sitting on the dean’s security drives. If the professor had a hand in what happened to Reed Langley, there was a chance Nick walked out of this building before dinner with both deaths traced down to the same root.

17

Hadley Dawkins

September 2026

Wednesday – 3:48 pm

Nothing in Roland Mercer’s house was out of place. The television remotes had been set parallel on the coffee table, squared to the edge. The books on the hall shelves ran by height, then by color. In the kitchen, the spices faced label-out, and the canned goods stood stacked two deep, the oldest dates pulled to the front. The entire place could have passed for a real estate company’s model home, confirming the man’s obsessive nature.

Mercer’s private office told a somewhat different story.