Fatal Knowledge
A Collegiate Murder Mystery
by
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“She’s still in there,” complained Vivian as she waited impatiently outside the women’s restroom. “She doesn’t care that someone has to clean.” I found the scrap of paper jamming the machine and removed it; the machine gave me the green light to resume copying. As I shuffled the papers to resume copying, the silence of the deserted floor was pierced by Vivian’s scream from the women’s restroom. Rushing down the hall, I pushed open the door to the women’s restroom to find Vivian frozen in the center of the room. “What happened?” “She’s dead!” Vivian panted as if trying to scream again. “Who’s dead?” “She’s on the toilet, in the third stall against the wall.” I looked at the stalls and saw a pair of legs behind the third door; the odor of stale urine hung heavily over the room. Slowly I pushed in the door to the stall with my elbow and found a young woman, fully clothed, propped up on the toilet. Her bulging eyes and contorted face indicated she didn’t die a peaceful death. Suppressing the urge to vomit, I helped Vivian, still in shock, out of the restroom. Once in my office, I seated her in my chair and dialed campus police. “This is Professor Stanard of the History Department. Send a police unit to the sixth floor of Russell Jordan Hall. One of the housekeeping workers has found a dead woman in the restroom. I think she was strangled."
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About the Book
Following the sound of a scream, history professor Andrew Stanard comes running. In the nearby departmental bathroom at Chesapeake Bay University, a woman has been murdered. She is quickly identified as Jenny Biggio, a graduate student, and she has quite obviously been strangled. The police are quick to suspect someone in the history department—most notably Professor Stanard’s protégé Brendan Healy.
Everyone knows Brendan was Jenny’s boyfriend, but it isn’t common knowledge that Jenny checked out three pregnancy books from the university library the day she was murdered. A very public confrontation between Brendan and Jenny early in the day, however, points at the boyfriend’s guilt, and Brendan does little to defend himself, admitting he once served time in a juvenile correctional facility.
Even so, Stanard knows there’s more to this case than meets the eye. He understands the cops want to solve the murder quickly to get it off the front page; in order to save Brendan, Stanard does his own digging. He comes upon several overlooked suspects, including a squirrelly pizza deliveryman, a homeless wino with a felony-prone past, and a philandering professor. The deeper he digs, the more dangerous things get; soon Professor Stanard may be the killer’s next target.
About the Author
Daniel P. Hennelly is an administrator at Virginia’s Old Dominion University who has observed higher education for twenty-eight years. In an earlier job, he rubbed elbows with criminals for two years. His wife, Mary Bride, is also employed in higher education, and they have three sons.