Read Online Poison Most Vial by Benedict Carey - Free Book Online Page A

haggard and even heavier than usual. The entire forensics department had been shut down by the murder investigation, and no one knew when it was coming back.
    â€œRuby,” Dean Touhy said, “I do hope you are holding up, and I am sorry for everything.”
    â€œIt’s OK,” said Ruby. “We’re just trying to get back to class.”
    â€œPlease tell your father that when all this is settled and he is cleared—and I fully expect that to happen—he is welcome back here in his old position,” the man said. “He must be in a state. Please pass on my best to him, would you?”
    â€œHe’ll be cleared?” Ruby asked. The dean, now walking them toward class, nodded distractedly and said, “I have reason to believe so, and soon.”
    Ruby’s head swirled. “What? Why? Then who did it?”
    But that was all she got. Dean Touhy, arriving at the door of the Regular class, signaled to Mrs. Patterson—and with a wink to Ruby, he was gone, down the hall.
    Cleared?
She peeked at Rex, who shook his head in confusion. How could she possibly tell her dad that without knowing more?
    â€œAll right, Theodore, please continue reading where we left off,” Mrs. Patterson said.
    Relief. Rex was a smooth reader, and the story was getting kind of interesting. It was about a man living in a nice house with a pool who needed money so badly that he sneaked into the house next door—his friend’s house—and took money from his neighbor’s wallet.
    Rex was reading:
“In the dimness I could see the bed and a pair of pants and a jacket hung over the back of a chair. Moving swiftly I stepped into the room and took a big billfold from the inside of the coat and started back to the hall.”
    Half listening, Ruby slipped from under her arm the last thing she’d grabbed from the cubicles, the lining of a garbage can under Lydia’s desk. She almost laughed out loud when she saw what it contained. Victor’s tea bags. Pages with Grace’s doodles. Gum wrappers, two empty energy-drink cans, tissues (disgusting). Garbage. She thought of passing it all to Rex with a meaningful look on her face, just to see him claw through it.
    She found a Post-it note stuck in the folds of the plastic bag.
Come see me about this exam at your earliest convenience. Bring your ID
. Rama’s writing, his signature in green pen.
    Bring your ID
. Ruby had a feeling about what that meant. Her dad had told her that Rama’s students did not last long if they couldn’t master the material. The scores of Lydia’s two tests were 62/100 and 49/100. Not so good, those. Now he was asking for her ID?
    Rex stopped reading. “Now, why do you want to be taking cash money from your friends?” he said. “For real, now. Creeping around in their house, while they’re in there sleeping? The man lives next door. You can’t ask for a loan? I’m sorry, that’s just desperate.”
    Desperate. Lydia Tretiak seemed to be failing out. She was broke, Ruby’s dad said. All those late nights, working on the weekends—only to be failing. Was that really enough to makeyou want to kill someone? Lydia was crazy, in her way (they all were, Ruby thought). But was she really so desperate?
    Ruby had no way to know. The other grad students had motives, too. Victor clearly saw himself as capable of running the lab, and Rama never really let him. Grace was so anxious, maybe there was a drug problem. And Wade—he despised Rama’s rules, his coldness, the way he demanded that the students come in even on weekends.
    Too many possibilities. She let it go. The ID numbers she’d copied down—hmm, nothing much there.
    Now she sensed something else, not related to the evidence.
    What? A chill.
    She was being watched.
    Ruby looked around.
    Sharon. Sharon Hughes, the laces artist. The girl was watching her intently. Openly.
    Uh-oh.