“I don’t remember the title and I don’t remember the author. All I remember is that the book came in a big, wooden box and we had to wear gloves to look at it. We weren’t even allowed to take it out of the reference library. She looked at it for about an hour, put it back in the box, and gave it back to me and that was that.”

“So you were with her when she went through the pages?” McAdams asked.

“I was there but I wasn’t sitting next to her. I sat at a different table across the room.”

“Why was that?” Oliver asked.

“She didn’t want me around! I sat next to her at first. But then she told me it made her nervous to have me peering over her shoulder. I wasn’t peering over her shoulder. I wasn’t even paying attention to her. I took out my computer and was playing a video game. So then the bitch told me I was making too much noise, which was ridiculous because I had the sound on mute. When I pointed that out, she had the nerve to tell me that the typing was too loud. So I moved to another table. I woulda left altogether but I had to return the damn book. The area is in a cage and you can’t get out unless someone unlocks it.”

“That’s true,” McAdams said. “You didn’t think that her behavior was strange?”

“She was always acting strange . . . hot one minute, aloof the next. I have no idea why I didn’t tell her to fuck off. I suppose I was hoping for another go-around. But obviously she only fucked me to get to the book. I swear I don’t know who murdered her, but I’m sure that it musta been someone she pissed off!”

McAdams said, “And after my experience, I’d say he’s still pissed off.”

Terry blanched. “Sorry.”

McAdams said, “Not your fault.”

To Tyler, Sobel said, “Are you gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Decker said, “Lance, can you walk us through the day she asked you to check the book out for her?”

“Uh, I’m assuming you’re not interested in the sex part.”

“I want a timeline for you. If you two had sex, I want to know when and where.”

“This was a while back.”

“Take your time,” Decker said.

“I guess we hooked up around eleven. I remember because I skipped my class. It took about an hour. Afterward, she said something about working on her senior thesis and that she needed to go to the library.”

“And you said?”

“I said okay. See you later or something like that. Then she must have asked me if I was busy because I remember asking her what she wanted.”

Decker was taking notes. “Okay. Go on.”