The plan is to throw Biggs’s hand over the fence, somewhere within range of the math department. Even during the break, enough people are around that a severed hand won’t go unnoticed. Soon it will be connected to Biggs’s disappearance, especially since his wedding ring is on it, with the engraving inside the band: LOVE, GABBI. After that, it’s a homicide investigation, which gives Thistle and I more resources. We’ll even have Biggs’s prints and DNA, if the lab hasn’t confirmed them yet.

But if anyone sees me do it, I’ll become the number-one suspect in the murder I’m supposed to be investigating. I have to be careful.

Soon I see shapes through the fog. Three young men, maybe on their way back to their dorms after a party. Two are staggering like zombies. Drunk. The other guy is practically skipping, still full of energy. Probably on Adderall.

According to Agent Richmond, my former partner at the FBI, practically every college student is on Adderall. It helps them study all night without losing focus. Some take it to get ahead, forcing others to take it to keep up. It screws with your liver and pancreas over the long term, and you need to take more and more to get the same effect. But by the time the negative symptoms show up, these kids will all have their degrees. They’ll be lawyers and politicians. People who can afford a drug habit, an up-market rehab facility, a liver transplant.

Some kids, though, don’t take it for study. They just want to be able to party all night and still hear what the teacher is saying in class the next day.

I think this guy is one of those. I hadn’t counted on seeing anyone sober enough to remember me later.

I don’t know if they’ve spotted me yet. I can’t turn and run, just in case they have. That would be so suspect that I’d have to abort. Go home.

Instead I bend over, as though I’m out of breath, or stretching. I surreptitiously pick up a dented beer can. Then I straighten up and keep walking towards the three men. Not stumbling, that would be too obvious. Just walking.

As the three men come within facial recognition range, I raise the can, like I’m saying, Cheers.

One of the two drunkards says, ‘Eyyy!’ like the Fonz. The other hasn’t seen me at all, and says, ‘What?’ The third guy just nods.

I keep walking.

I’m not sure exactly what tips me off. Maybe it’s the scuffling of feet behind me. Maybe the movement of the air. Maybe it’s what Thistle said about the jogger who got attacked around here. But I duck.

Too slow. A fist glances off the top of my skull, hard enough to send me stumbling. As I fall, my hands fly out of my pockets.