Chapter 62

At 6 AM I was sitting in the Suburban across the street from Patti's apartment. I wanted to see if I could find out what was going on with her that she looked so upset in the mornings. I had stopped off at the donut shop as I came through C-ville to get a couple of bagels and a giant cup of coffee. Coffee wasn't one of my favorite drinks any more. I had consumed gallons of in the Marines as it seemed to be the beverage of choice in the chow line and every ships galley I had ever been involved with. It was good for keeping you alert.

While I munched on the bagel and sipped on the coffee I worked my e-mails and text messages on the smart phone. I decided that I was going to get a cheap laptop to keep in the truck for times like these, along with a thumb drive. I could be working on serious stuff instead of filling my face.

I waited until Patti left for work in a cab. Nothing seemed out of the way this morning. That made me even more curious. I let several cars go by then I followed her to the office.

The construction was moving along at a good clip. The slate roof would be completed today. It looked like the brick work was also finished. The foam insulation was completed yesterday morning. They were unloading drywall this morning. My guess that they had plans to put it up today. I also noticed that two new heat pump units were sitting next to the building.

Ken Smith had started to explain the system to me yesterday before he was interrupted. He got as far as telling me that the outside units were the largest pieces of the system. There was no traditional heat exchanger and no duct work to install. There were just two copper lines to each room and a unit the size of two large shoe boxes attached near the ceiling on a wall. It did heat or AC; whichever you wanted.

The night shift had been busy. There had been two booze parties in the male dorms; both had gotten out of hand. Two male students had to be carried to the hospital for an overnight stay. No matter how hard you try, you just can not chug a gallon pitcher of beer without it getting into your lungs. Then to top that off, before the ambulance arrived two drunken students tried to take the kegs down the back emergency stairs. The unlucky students ended up at the bottom with a full keg of beer on top of them. That required another ambulance to take care of the broken shoulder and leg.To add a little humor to the situation, they were both naked.

The keg, 6 cases of beer, 6 bottles of wine, and 2 fifths of whiskey were being stored in the storage room until the owner came forward to claim it. The only problem is everyone that was there was under the legal drinking age.

That left me with a large investigation to do. Who bought it? Who brought it into the building and how many underage were there? The security tapes would provide most of the answers, plus there was the video camera and the two cell phones that Russ had confiscated. I was going to have a lot of fun watching underage students squirm while I was questioning them. It would be even more fun to watch them dump the booze down the drain. I would gain some experience with this one. The last time I had interrogated anyone by myself I shot them in the feet and kneecaps then two rounds in the head, after I got the answers I wanted.