Title: Six Degrees Of Death
Author: Marian Exall
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Book Blurb:
The suspicious death of a much-loved English professor in a small Northwest college town connects six strangers. Is one of them the killer? “It’s always the husband,” declares the jaded detective in charge, but a rookie cop assisting him isn’t so sure. When the police investigation hits a wall, the former strangers come together to uncover unlikely links between the professor’s death, Central American political corruption, and a secret document that names the criminals. Now they are all in danger, as an assassin seeks to eliminate any witnesses.
Excerpt:
Detective Barry Fish went back to the dead woman’s office. This time he put on paper shoe covers and latex gloves. After shutting the door behind him, he walked behind the desk and half-crouched so his eyes were on a level with a person sitting there. Scanning the room carefully from this angle, Barry recognized that something was missing. It took a second for him to put a name to it: a computer. A battered leather briefcase stood under the desk. He looked through it: papers and journals, but the sleeve that accommodated a laptop was empty. He pulled open desk drawers for a cursory search, then moved over to the cupboards under the bookshelves that lined one wall. No laptop, iPad, or even a cell phone. Of course the phone might have been in the pocket of her clothes and gone with her to the M.E.’s office.
He returned to the desk. Although cluttered, it showed some system of organization: a pile of student papers to the left, some manila folders with lecture notes to the right, a leather- bound day planner pushed to one corner. He opened it. There were few entries, confirming his suspicion that Professor Harmon, like most people, organized her life digitally. A framed photo on another corner of the desk showed a couple on a beach. Hawaii, he guessed. The professor and her husband? In the center of the desk, where the dead woman’s head had rested, was the student essay she had been working on. A wet spot blurred the typed words. Fish leaned in closer, noticing faint scratches on the surface of the desk above the paper. Had Professor Harmon clawed the wood in a death spasm? Or was this evidence of a struggle with an aggressor, someone holding her face down? He took a close-up photo with his phone, in case CSI had missed the marks.
After stripping off the booties and gloves, Barry walked back to Anne Summers’ desk.
“Do you have Professor Harmon’s cell phone number?”
“Of course.” The secretary pulled up a screen on her computer. “Do you want her e-mail address as well?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Fish replied, and wrote them both down. As he left the building to walk back to his car, he tapped in the professor’s phone number. He had reached the police-issued Ford SUV by the time voicemail kicked in. He didn’t leave a message, deciding to wait until cause of death was established to get the tech guys on it. They would be able to access phone records and the professor’s e-mail account. But the absence of a computer in her office nagged at him, as did the marks on the desk. They were not in parallel lines, as might be expected from clawing nails, but sketched a rough triangle. If made by the dying woman, what did they signify? What message was she trying to send in her last seconds?
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Author Biography:
Marian Exall is an award-winning author of mysteries and historical fiction. She grew up in England, and lived in France and Belgium before moving to the United States where she raised a family and pursued a career as a lawyer. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Social Media Links:
Twitter/X: @marianexall
Instagram: @marianexall