Ask Not For Whom The Panther Prowls
Read Ask Not For Whom The Panther Prowls Online
Authors: Astor James Monroe
Tags: #crime, #humor, #university, #human trafficking, #drug trafficking, #mystery academic setting
Ask Not for Whom the Panther
Prowls
This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s deranged imagination or, if real, are used
fictitiously. The mention of products, organizations, or software
in the story is to move the drama along and add verisimilitude to
the story. Mention of a product, organization or software should
not be construed either as an endorsement or as a criticism of the
products, organizations or software.
Copyright © 2014 by Astor James Monroe
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without written permission from the author, except for the use of
brief quotations in a review.
Smashwords Edition
This novella is the sequel to “Murder on
G-Deck”
1. Put Your Hand Up before You Die.
8. An Experiment
in Basic
Gravitational Physics.
9. Argus Gets a Paying Client.
10. The Ugly Past Raises Its Head.
They met in
a dark staircase, in the evening
just past dusk, in one of the apartment towers
near Donghua university in Shanghai. The stale smell of dinners
past filled the air, just barely overwhelming the sulfurous smell
from the coal smog.
The young man said in his most desperate voice,
“I need to do well on the TOEFL to enter Harvard. My parents could
not live with the shame if I fail.”
The
foreigner coughed from the smog then quietly replied, in his
strongly accented and not quite mastered Cantonese, “The money, you
it have?” By his build, he was unmistakably a foreigner, despite
his smog mask, dark glasses and hat pulled down over his eyes. Even
though he wore clothes from the local department store.
“
Five
thousand dollars?”
“
Six. Cash.
Now.”
“
Here.”
The
foreigner counted it. “You're short. Not enough. More.”
“
It's all we
have, we'll pay you. I promise.”
“
No. Not
enough for Harvard.”
“
UGA
then?”
“
OK.” The
foreigner pocked the money. He then gave the young man a written
sheet with his gloved hand. “This instructions is.
Understand?”
“
Yes, thank
you.”
“
Now forget
you saw me.” He left down the stairs and out into the deepening
fug. He had long a series of appointments to keep that evening
before catching his plane home.
Shen
Yi
carefully read the
sheet of paper he bought. It contained detailed instructions on how
to log into a site using a virtual tunnel through the 'Great
Firewall of China'. He could hardly wait, and once home fired up
his laptop and got started.
The most
beautiful girl he ever saw was on the screen when he logged in. She
looked very much Chinese, for an American. He wasn't expecting
that. He sat there, agog at her, his jaw dropped with amazement.
She began to speak, “Do you want to start with the English
practice?”
He stammered, in Cantonese, “Do you speak
Chinese?”
“
A little,”
she then continued in English, “I'm adopted and my parents insisted
I learn my culture's language. You're here to learn English aren't
you?”
“
You're very
beautiful,” Yi, continued this time in English. She blushed. “Thank
you.” She looked down at a paper on her desk and asked him, “The
first question is 'what is the difference between to and
too?'”
“
One means
also. Can you give me your email address so we can talk
later?”
The girl
paused, “I'm not allowed to tell you that.” She wrote something on
a sheet of paper and held it up in front of the camera. Yi hastily
wrote down her address. She continued, “The second question is give
me an example of using too.”
“
I like know
if you are a college scholar too.”
“
Very good,
but it would be better to say, 'I would like to know if you are a
college student too'.”
“
I would
like to know if you are a college student too.”
“
That's
excellent. And I would reply, 'I am, I am a student at Georgia
State University'.”
“
You
are?”
“
Yes. Where
are you?”
“
Donghua. I
want to graduate study in Georgia.”
“
Good, but
'Donghua, I want to do graduate study in Georgia', is
correct”
“
Donghua, I
want to do graduate study at Georgia State University.”
The girl blushed again, Yi was a fast worker. He
seemed nice enough, but coming halfway around the world after a
couple of minutes of an online chat was a bit excessive. “Don't be
silly.”
“
What's
silly about it? What is your name?”
“
Jane.”
“
Jane I
think I you love.”
“
Now you are
really being silly. The right way to say it is 'Jane I think I love
you', which you can't yet. We've just met.”
“
Jane I know
I love you.”
Die.
Spring
semester found me back practicing academic physics. While it was
not quite as spiritually rewarding as chasing down a network of
serial killers, my sudden death was a lot less likely when I was
standing in the front of a classroom blathering away. Even with the
new concealed carry law, the chance that a student would take it
into his mind to create a vacancy in the physics department was
remote. It was a fair swap, especially since Laura Brown and I had
hooked up. Having a reason to stay alive changes your outlook on
life. During summer, class breaks, and on the occasional evening, I
still worked with Arthur Ellis, the head and sole full-time
detective for Argus detectives. If I kept at it, I'd have my two
years employment as a private detective and could become a
certified private investigator. Given the status of funding and the
way this university ran, that was looking more and more attractive
each day. I'd drawn the short straw in the class assignment lottery
for spring semester and was teaching PHYS 1101, non-calculus
physics. Or as we liked to call it 'physics for poets'. It allowed
the non-mathematical types to satisfy a science requirement for
graduation, but far more importantly than that it brought credit
hours and the tuition dollars that came with them to the department
budget.
I'd finished
lecturing a class of 50 freshmen and sophomores in Classroom South.
They mostly sat there slumping in their seats almost as responsive
as lumps of mud. Today's lot looked suitably glazed over, with
their brains well cooked and at the limit of their endurance. While
occasionally one would realize that this science stuff was
interesting and worth the effort to learn it, there would be no
such revelations today. One student in particular looked a bit more
thoroughly glazed over than the rest. I told the class, “See you
next time, and don't forget to at least try the homework.” which
was followed by the bulk of them rising and running for the door.
They were 'free at last'. The student who was particularly glazed
over lifelessly dropped to the floor when he was jostled by the
others. I ran to him, while someone screamed in the background. I
shouted, “Call 911”, and watched as several students complied.
Another student ran up, “I know first aid, CPR. Can I
help?”
“
You bet.
Start on CPR while I go and get the AED from the hall.”
I dashed out
into the hall, then down it towards the center of the building
where there were AED's mounted on the wall. The alarm on the AED
holder was already screaming, with its blue flashing light
indicating the EMT's were on their way. Someone had just removed
the device. Two heart attacks at the same time on the same day was
not an event the building's planners foresaw.
Racing back
to the room, I found the student pumping away as hard as he could.
He shouted at me, “Where is it?”
“
Already in
use. When you're ready I'll spell you.” For the next few minutes we
alternated for a minute each at pumping on the student's chest. CPR
is exhausting work and the two of us were nearly shot when the
EMT's finally arrived. We'd been doing our best to match the beat
of 'Stayin Alive' which happens to have the right tempo for CPR.
Unfortunately it was more a case of 'Another One Bites the Dust'
which also has the correct tempo.
EMT's aren't
allowed to declare a patient as dead, but it was pretty clear that
after a few minutes of their hard work, there wasn't much hope for
the student. As they were leaving I heard one say to the others,
“Funny, that's the tenth one this week.” His friend replied,
“Wonder what they're taking?”
It had been
a while since GSU had a serious drug problem. Most of the students
worked part-time to pay for college and didn't have the time or
inclination to spend it high. Those that had the time tended to
favor beer. It was cheaper.
2
That night
at dinner Laura noticed I was distant. Ms. Laura Brown, former
assistant DA for the city of Atlanta and now a rising star among
the state prosecutors and I, decided to get married. As she now had
full custody of her son, I was going to be an acting stepfather. It
seemed wise to move in a bit ahead of time and let her six year old
son Daniel get used to me. “Will, what happened?”
“
Lost a
student.”
“
You don't
usually get upset when one drops your class.”
“
Hardy,” I
laughed, “No, it wasn't that. He died from heart failure at the end
of class.” At least that's when we found out about it. He could
have been dead for a few minutes before without my noticing it.
That thought only made it worse.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “That's
awful.”
“
I didn't
think my lectures were that boring.”
“
I'm sure
they're not.”
Danny had a
different take on things. By age six, he'd seen his parents
divorced, then had his stepmother reject him when his father was
put on trial. His father organized an embezzlement ring with
murderous consequences at the university research foundation. Mind
you, his biological father had just doped Danny's stepmother
preparatory to chopping her up for smoked ribs and was extending
his family in several directions sideways at the time. So she
wasn't completely unjustified in dumping Danny back into Laura's
lap. My relationship with Danny wasn't helped by the fact that it
was my efforts that put his biological father in prison. We had our
good days and our not so good days. This was one of the not so good
days. I was getting the silent treatment until he spoke.
“
They are
too.”
It was going to be interesting living as a new
family.
3
Next morning
I text messaged my TA. We had to discuss what happened yesterday in
class and figure out a plan to deal with it for the next lecture.
He showed up at my office and we talked about how to handle the
death in a respectful and professional manner. I vetoed the ideas
of talking about the heart as a pump and measuring the electrical
impulses from its muscles. While those aspects of biophysics would
be interesting, the timing just wasn't right. It would have to be
an emotional and forthright discussion about feelings.
Since
neither of us was particularly skilled at social or emotional
intelligence this promised to be difficult and I was looking
through the university website to see if there were counselors who
could help the class. While we were searching, the undergraduate
who helped me with CPR knocked on my door.