The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,91

front, brown eyes showing just a little crinkle at the edges.

“You said you’re a detective?”

“Private.” I nodded. “I’m consulting on a case in Atlanta that—”

“May I see some identification?”

“Sure,” I said. “APD can verify also. Lieutenant Aaron Rauser in Homicide.”

I scribbled Rauser’s cell number down for her. Since I was not here officially, I didn’t want her going through the police department switchboard.

She took the number and studied my ID. “You want to know about Anne Chambers?”

I nodded again. “Whatever records you have on her. Do you know anything about her friends, family, life off campus? I understand she was a sophomore when she was killed.”

“Sixteen years is a long time, Ms. Street. I’ve only been here five.”

“But you knew her name and why I’m here.”

“Yes,” she replied. I could hear the regret in her tone. “We’ve been expecting this since her murder was connected to the ones in Atlanta. Honestly, no one here was looking forward to it. It’s not the sort of thing one wants publicized.”

“I understand,” I said. “No one else has been here?”

“A detective from Jacksonville was here maybe six weeks ago after they connected Anne’s murder to the ones in Atlanta and the one in Jacksonville. But with all the news from Atlanta now, we knew someone would come back.”

“ ‘We’?”

“The staff here. We talk about it, of course.” She hesitated. “I can point you to yearbooks from her years here, if that will help, and give you some general information, but our records are private.”

“Uh-huh, well, a court order wouldn’t take long,” I said agreeably. “And right behind it comes a team of investigators who walk around campus looking very coplike. Or you could help me. I promise to be very unobtrusive and discreet.”

The corners of her mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “May I call you later? Where are you staying?”

“I haven’t made arrangements. I drove straight here from Atlanta.” I wrote my cell number on the back of a business card and handed it over her desk.

“I understand Anne lived on campus. Any chance I could see the dorms before I go?”

Mary Dailey rose stiffly from her chair. “I’ll have to find out which hall she lived in. It’s a very large campus. Would you excuse me, Ms. Street?”

I hurried around to her desk the second she stepped out. The Visitors’ Center had clearly called before I got here. There was a note on her desk pad with my name, Anne Chambers’s name, the years she’d attended the university, and the words murdered, Roberts Hall, W. Campus, which made me wonder why Mary Dailey had really stepped out of her office. I hustled back to the proper side of her desk and tried to look as innocent as possible.

“Will you follow me, please, Ms. Street? I’ll show you to Ms. Chambers’s residence hall. We’ve done quite a lot of renovations since she was here, but I don’t suppose that matters to your investigation.”

“General layout pretty much the same?”

“I can get you a campus map from that time, but, yes, it hasn’t changed that much.”

“So whoever you stepped out of your office to speak to told you—”

“To cooperate. That’s right,” she interrupted evenly.

“I’d love a map. Did Anne Chambers have a roommate?”

“Roommates,” Mary Dailey said crisply, then gave me their names. “Ms. Street, no one here wants to get in the way of a murder investigation. We just want to be certain the investigation isn’t something that could affect us in a negative way. The general public had forgotten all about Anne Chambers. The focus is on Atlanta. We’d like it to stay that way.”

We climbed in a golf cart and she drove us across the lush, tree-lined campus where a twenty-year-old Anne Chambers had lived and died a savage death. I thought about her family, the people who had loved her. They hadn’t forgotten, Ms. Dailey. One never forgets. I kept my thoughts to myself, though.

Mary Dailey led me to Anne Chambers’s old room and left me there alone. The walls were minty green. I wondered how many times they had been repainted in the last fifteen years and how many students had lived here. The two single beds and a bookcase were built-ins. There was a small desk, a tiny refrigerator, and a sink wedged into the twelve-by-fifteen-foot space. No bathroom. The room was littered with books and clothes and takeout cartons.

In the photographs I’d seen, it had looked much the same when Chambers, a fine arts major, lived here. Fine arts. Who