Page 17

CHAPTER 17 VI?T

Jittery legs, heavy sighs, mumbled swears.

Viet didn’t sense any of the test-taker-suffering signs coming from Evie, who barely let her pencil rest. Maybe she absorbed things through the benefit of being roommates with someone whose quirk was thinking out loud.

Ilyasah, at the front of the room, cleared her throat, and Viet saw her gaze on him. He ducked his head, focusing back on the questions, thinking that they’d gotten this far. They couldn’t let the ex win.

At the sound of Ilyasah’s voice telling them to stop, all the pencils dropped. Club members groaned to let loose their tight shoulders. The grad students—four including Ilyasah—went around to collect the tests, telling everyone to go outside—“Touch grass or something,” Ilyasah said—and come back in fifteen. The crime scene would be staged by then.

The moment the group spilled into the hallway, Lis back-hugged Evie, like a young koala to her indulgent mother. “What kind of ice cream do you want? Mint? Chocolate chip? Plain vanilla?”

Evie shrugged her away with a laugh. “Really, it’s no big deal! I just hope I’m not going to make it harder for you guys.”

Alex’s group stuck to the other end of the hallway, but a pair broke off—Sally, a girl with thick curly hair and red glasses, and Nishant, a boy with shoulders as wide as a swimmer’s. They each carried snacks and slowed when they got closer to their group.

“We know what happened. With Kyle,” said Sally.

“But we didn’t hear about it until five minutes before you showed up,” Nishant said earnestly. “Alex didn’t tell us what he was planning, we swear.”

“Thanks,” Lis replied after a beat. But she still had her arms crossed.

“Back when we were freshmen, the group was so small that the members had to go and rep the school. That’s how I ended up in the competition, but I think it’s time for other people to have a chance.”

“Not sure why Alex doesn’t see that,” Nishant said. He held out a bag of Starburst. “Want any?”

It seemed like a peace treaty, and Lis ended up accepting it.

They were called back in.

In the next room, larger than the one before, the grad students had moved the tables against the wall, opening up space in the middle. The crime scenes were bisected by a black curtain; Alex’s group went one way, theirs, the other.

The scene recap was given to them.

On Saturday morning, December 8th, a trio of UC Davis alumni visited the Forensic Science Graduate Program to do mock interviews with six promising graduates nearing the end of their schooling. One worked at the Oakland Police Department, one at the San Francisco Police Department, and the other was an adjunct lecturer at UC Davis’s Forensic Program.

The interviewees were the adjunct lecturer’s students. The interviews would take place in the building’s largest classroom, at one long table. They received two interviewees each and were expected to start at 10 a.m., and end at 1:30 p.m., with a lunch break between noon to 12:30 p.m.

After the panel, two witnesses spotted the Oakland alumnus, the adjunct lecturer, and the U of SF alumnus arguing in the hallway, but thought nothing of it and walked away.

At 3:15 p.m. the adjunct lecturer stepped back into the room, then screamed after making a gruesome discovery: The U of SF alumnus was found dead, sitting in the spot where he conducted his interview, head on the table. His lunch was abandoned in front of him, a peeled clementine lodged in his throat.

When the police arrived, they noted the items found at the crime scene and everyone who had been in the room around the time of discovery. However, they would need forensics to figure out what had happened to the U of SF alumnus, whether his death was accidental or suspicious, and if any of the students and two other alumni had anything to do with his death.

The group of suspects included the alumni and the six students who came in for their interviews, and all but two remained in the building around the time of the lecturer’s death. The adjunct lecturer, after the argument, said he’d walked to the cafeteria to get lunch, then came back to discover the body. The other student had forgotten to take his allergy medicine, so he ran back to his dorm for it, but in the time he was gone, the lecturer died.

Everyone else remained in the building, but all claimed that they had no contact with the lecturer during lunch.

The group was given the suspects’ bios, from their physical descriptions to friends’ testimonials about their daily habits and personality, to their psychology and motivation as students of the forensic science program.

The crime scene was localized to the seat where the victim was found. There was an open can of Coke, a half-eaten tuna sandwich, and the clementine peel. But the evidence that was bagged included note cards in place of the physical items—hair strands, fingerprints, and such.

They would need to consider all of this in order to find the culprit. Viet exhaled loudly; there was a moment of silence as they finished their reading and looked at each other—uncertain and overwhelmed by the information.

And yet Lis stepped forward; Viet noticed that during the time everyone was reading the bios and the scenario, she had scribbled notes. She became a different person, so serious, so intense—not the same person who would goof around with Kale and Tate.

Lis said, “Okay. Theories?”

And that was when Viet knew that they would be okay.

About an hour later, their group spilled out from the building, fresh air replacing the sterile scent of the lab. Viet took in the cool fall air like this would be his last time outside, but really, he was savoring the feel of it. Was the air different? Something just felt different . New, almost.

Lis and Kale walked ahead of him again, but now they had Evie trapped between them. The two chanted “One of us, one of us!” They passed a pair of students who eyed them as if they had completely lost it.

Miraculously, and in ways that Viet wouldn’t dare to question, their group had won the mock competition, ensuring their spot to represent UC Davis at the Northeastern competition next year. When their results were announced—fifty points more than Alex’s team—no one moved. No one could believe it. Then the grad students were clapping, and soon enough, Kelly and Nishant from Alex’s group joined in, and suddenly Lis had tugged the team into a group hug. Kale lasted five seconds before threatening Lis to release him: “You’re suffocating me!”

Viet had won team sports before. He was a runner, and he always loved it when the final teammate crossed the finish line and a mass of limbs dashed forward to surround that runner, and they’d cheer and laugh and think, Finally! Knowing that every excruciating practice had all been worth it.

He felt that now, but it was somehow so much better than winning a sports competition.

There were two culprits, they discovered. The adjunct lecturer and Suspect #3, though the latter was more directly linked to the crime.

The key was the clementine, which supposedly the victim had choked on. But a clementine must be peeled, yet the victim’s fingers were entirely clean. This only meant that someone else had peeled the clementine, and made it look like the victim had eaten it.

The motive came down to jealousy and desperation. The adjunct lecturer envied his former classmate’s storied career at the Oakland Police Department while the student had a history of wanting to outsmart authority, including the lecturer, who had initiated their plan. He thought he could get away with it; nothing visible on him could connect him to the crime. He even washed his hands. But after examining each suspect’s clothing, traces of pith—the white tissue found on citrus fruits—still clung to his clothing fibers, linking him to the crime scene.

Apparently, the grad students told them, the culprit had confessed. After all, he hated all authority figures, even the one who recruited him in the first place.

Viet was the one who connected the dots. He remembered how his mother loved citrus fruits while his father was sick of them. One time, after peeling an orange, she told his dad to open his mouth and he did, without looking, thinking she just wanted him to taste something. The moment his mother fed him the white string, his father spat and whined about how disgusting and ??ng it tasted.

“You really know this stuff, huh?” said Evie, who slowed down to walk beside Viet. She gave him a look, and he felt that she probably finally understood why he liked all of this. Solving something that was right in front of him. “You were brilliant.”

“Me? What about you? You basically aced the test for us.” She managed to score higher than Viet, and just a few points below Kale and Lis; impressive, considering she’d only been on the peripheral of forensics—at least, not as obsessed as Viet and the others.

“Looks like all that time Lis talked my ear off when we shared a room paid off,” Evie said. Which Lis heard, then jokingly pushed her away by the shoulder.

The group quieted for a few beats, taking in the relative silence of the campus as people were out to dinner.

Viet spotted Evie frowning at her phone. He’d noticed that she’d done the same thing on their walk to the qualifiers. “You okay?”

“Of course, I’m fine.” A smile quickly appeared. Viet knew better but he didn’t want to pressure her.

Kale announced that there was a party at her friends’ place at the La Casa de Flores apartments. “Let’s celebrate! We deserve it!”

Evie’s steps had slowed as she glanced down at her phone again.

“A party sounds like a good idea,” Lis said. “After all, we should do something to celebrate Evie!”

She looked up quickly as Lis’s and Kale’s voices jumbled together in agreement. A small smile appeared on her face, and it was aimed right at him.

Viet’s stomach turned.

Friend. He was just her friend.