Chương 8
Sergeant Patel stood near the elevator beside a sealed evidence bag containing my brown laptop case.
Through the clear plastic, I could see one zipper hanging open.
I had always closed that zipper.
Always.
Patel followed my eyes.
“Was it like that when you last had it?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
She wrote something down.
Then she said, “There’s another problem.”
My stomach tightened.
She held up a separate evidence sleeve.
Inside it was the black notebook.
The cover had been bent backward.
Several pages near the center had been torn out.
I stood so quickly the bench scraped the wall.
“Where are the pages?”
“We don’t have them.”
I reached toward the sleeve and stopped myself.
Patel watched me carefully.
“What was on those pages?”
The answer came before I could soften it.
“The names behind the transfers.”
The committee-room door opened behind me.
Professor Cho stepped into the hallway.
His expression gave nothing away.
“Mara.”
I turned.
He looked at the police officer, the sealed notebook, and then at me.
“We have reached a decision.”
Cho looked first at Sergeant Patel, then at the notebook sealed in plastic, as though he understood that whatever decision his committee had reached existed inside a much larger morning now.
“Come inside,” he said.
I followed him back into the auditorium.
The audience had been asked to leave, and the sudden emptiness made the room feel colder.
Only the committee remained.
Professor Ibarra’s face hovered on one screen.
Dr. Foster sat with her pen laid perfectly horizontal across her notes.
Hale gave me a small nod that revealed nothing.
I stood beside the podium because sitting felt impossible.
Cho closed the door.
“The committee has voted unanimously to pass your dissertation defense.”
For half a second, I understood every word individually and none of them together.
Then Hale smiled.
Not broadly.
Just enough.
“Congratulations, Dr. Mercer.”
The room changed shape around me.
My hand went to the edge of the podium.
I had imagined this moment for years.
In some versions, Julian had been sitting in the front row.
In others, my mother, who had died during my second year, had somehow lived long enough to hear the result.
Once, during a particularly ugly winter, I had imagined no one being there at all, just Cho announcing the decision while I tried not to cry.
I had never imagined police evidence waiting in the hallway.
“Thank you,” I said.
My voice cracked.
Professor Ibarra cleared his throat through the speaker.
“You still owe us revisions.”
That made Foster laugh.
“So don’t get sentimental.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You should,” Hale said.
Cho looked annoyed by all of us.
“The revisions are minor.”
That was his version of celebration.
He offered his hand.
I shook it.
My injured wrist protested when I squeezed.
Cho noticed the movement.
His expression changed, but he did not ask about it.
“You defended well under circumstances nobody should have been expected to work under.”
I nodded.
“If there are proceedings involving the dataset, your dissertation record will remain separate unless the university determines otherwise.”
The sentence pulled me back into the other problem.
“What does ‘unless’ mean?”
“It means we do not know yet whether the underlying data access raises compliance questions.”
“But my access was approved.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would my dissertation be affected?”
Foster answered.
“Because approved access to a dataset does not necessarily mean every record inside it was lawfully or properly generated before you received it.”
The distinction was familiar from my own work, but hearing it applied to my degree made my stomach twist.
“I didn’t create those transfers.”
“No one is saying you did.”
“Julian might.”
No one answered.
That silence mattered.
Cho took off his glasses.
“The doctoral result stands.”
His tone became sharper.
“Do not turn uncertainty into catastrophe before anyone has investigated it.”
I almost told him catastrophe had already happened in my kitchen.
Instead, I nodded.
The committee began gathering papers.
Hale hugged me.
She had never hugged me before.
She smelled faintly of coffee and the citrus hand lotion she kept beside her keyboard.
I stood stiffly for a second, then held on to her harder than I intended.
“You did it,” she whispered.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“That can also happen.”
She stepped back.
“You’re very pale.”
“I ate half a muffin.”
“Excellent doctoral nutrition.”
The laugh came out of me strangely.
It became almost a sob, and I swallowed it.
Hale pretended not to notice.
That kindness nearly undid me more than sympathy would have.
Five minutes later, I was sitting with Sergeant Patel in a departmental conference room while she activated a small audio recorder.
The university’s counsel had been contacted because of the research materials, but Patel made it clear my statement about the assault was mine to give or refuse.
I gave it.
Not elegantly.
Not in the sequence she wanted.
I kept remembering details out of order.
The smell of melted plastic.
Julian’s bare feet on the sidewalk.
The way Eleanor had said respectable panel as if academia were a dinner party I had crashed.
Patel redirected me gently whenever I drifted.
“Which hand was holding your left wrist?”
“His right.”
“You’re sure?”
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
“That’s fine.”
“No, wait.”
I tried to reconstruct the counter, the stove, Julian behind me.
“I think his left.”
“Then I’ll write that you’re uncertain.”
The permission to be uncertain was oddly difficult to accept.
I had spent years training myself to defend every claim.
Now accuracy meant admitting where memory had blurred.
Patel photographed the scratch on my cheek and the bruising around both wrists.
She asked whether I wanted medical attention.
I said no.
She asked again near the end.
I still said no.
Then she placed photographs of the bag on the table.
The main compartment had been opened.
The notebook had been removed.
May you like
A small envelope of old receipts had been emptied inside the bag.
Nothing else appeared damaged.
