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Pullman, Washington

D eola Adetunji, a WSU criminal justice undergrad, is puzzled when she looks at her end-of-semester grade.

She sees that Professor Snyder’s TA Bryan has posted that she got a B.

He’s wrong, she thinks. He added up her scores wrong. She deserves an A. So she emails him and tells him he needs to fix it.

She’s never had a one-on-one interaction with Bryan before. She’s seen him in Professor Snyder’s class three or four times, but not recently.

It seems that he has stopped coming to class. She doesn’t know why. She assumes he’s got his own stuff to take care of.

When he was in class, he was strangely restless and flitted around unnervingly. One time Professor Snyder asked him to move because, the professor said, he didn’t like people standing behind him while he taught—so Bryan hovered somewhere by the door. It was awkward.

At 10:58 p.m., Bryan emails Deola back. “I have adjusted the settings to only count your ten highest scores. This should have a positive impact. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Good, she thinks. That’s taken care of. And she doesn’t think about Bryan Kohberger anymore.

Until she sees his mug shot a few weeks later.

And then she thinks that if he committed the murders he’s been accused of, it’s both odd and interesting that he bothered to answer her email about her grade.