Chapter 8: The Hearing

"Copy it," I said. "Right now. Before anything."

Fitz already had a thumb drive out of the till drawer.

He copied the file to the drive.

Then he emailed it to himself, to me and to Jodie.

The welder had come out to see what the fuss was.

He watched the progress bar.

Fitz clicked.

The party room door swung wide.

Inside, a man climbed onto a chair, a laptop over his head, a phone filming him.

The welder leaned in close to the screen.

"Where are you, doc?"

"In the back," I said. "With you."

"Huh," he said. "Then where's he?"

"On a chair."

He started laughing, and he didn't stop for a while.

Lecture hall one-oh-one had two hundred seats.

On Monday at ten, a hundred and sixty of them were full.

The dean sat at a long table on the floor with three faculty members from the honor council.

Judson sat at one end of it with his father beside him.

His father was a tall, silver man in a dark suit who looked at his phone the whole time.

I sat at the other end with Jodie behind me, and a manila envelope in my lap.

Fitz and the welder were in the back row.

Judson went first.

He was good.

He talked about his fourteen programs, his research, his years of work.

His voice broke in exactly the right place.

Then the dean called Tatum.

She came down the stairs in a pale pink blazer and sat in the chair facing the panel.

"At approximately eleven-forty," she said, "I saw Maura Archer at Judson's laptop. In the party room."

"You're certain of the time?" the dean asked.

"Yes. I remember because everybody was chanting."

"And of the person?"

"Of course. I've known Maura for four years."

The dean turned to me.

"Ms. Archer."

I stood up.

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