9:28 am

There was a reason Billy Keener never scheduled any of his classes before ten am. He considered that time prime sleeping hours. It was rare that he ever got up before nine or to bed before midnight. He’d been at the party for part of the previous evening, but returned to the dorm sometime after midnight and did some last minute studying. He’d finally got to bed between one and two in the morning and slept like a log the entire night. Part of his reason for considering the bulk of the morning sleep time is that he slept so heavily, it generally took a few hours of sunshine before he’d be able to drag himself out of bed.

Actually getting up and out by nine-thirty was such a feat for him that he almost bounced along as he walked toward the student union. He was feeling proud of the amount of discipline he had accomplished.

The Student Union was upstairs behind the faculty office building. He’d taken only about six or seven steps out of the dorm when he saw the edge of a crowd on the walkway ahead. The bulk of the group apparently was around the curve of the wooded area in front of the admin building. His first class didn’t start until 10, so he walked over to see what was going on.

The swarm of students was scattered into pockets of animated discussions that thickened as he rounded the curve of the walkway. Ahead, through the milling crowd, he could make out what looked like police tape stretched across the walkway. He smiled. This could be interesting, he thought. He made his way to the tape and looked around.

There was nothing there except a cop who looked really bored. Then he noticed three taped outlines. They looked like where three bodies had been leaned against the wall. Wow, he thought, three people dead; Dang, I sleep through the coolest stuff. He looked around and next to him was a guy he knew from his chemistry class. He tapped his arm with the back of his hand and asked, “Hey dude, who got whacked?”

“Man, where you been?” the guy answered back, “Professor Engstrom got his brains blown out last night.”

“Kyle!” the girl next to him said, scolding him, “my goodness, show more respect than that.”

“Yes, Mother.” Kyle smiled back, then stepping over, wrapped his arms around her from behind and lifted her an inch or so off the ground.

“Kyle let me go, you’re being silly.”

“So, Kyle.” Billy asked trying to get his attention, “Who else got whacked?”

With his arms still around his girlfriend, Kyle gave Billy a confused look. “Wha’d’ya mean ‘who else’?”

Billy pointed to the three taped outlines. “I count three bodies there, who were the other two?”

Kyle, his girlfriend, and several of the surrounding students laughed.

“That was Larry O’Brien and a couple of other guys who tried to give the cops a hard time.”

“Cool,” Billy grinned really big, “The cops blew ‘em away, huh. Wish I coulda seen it. That Larry’s a real pest.”

Not knowing if Billy was joking or not Kyle continued. “No, the cops didn’t blow ‘em away. They just made ‘em sit there for a long time then handcuffed ‘em and took ‘em to the police station. They did that tape outline as a joke, I think.”

“Man a cop with a sense of humor, that’s kinda scary.” Billy looked at the outline. “Most cops I’ve ever run into acted like they’d had their personalities inserted by a proctologist.”

Billy hadn’t realized how much his voice was carrying. Without turning his head, the officer inside the taped area said, loud enough for Billy and those around him to hear, “No, our department proctologist is way too busy removing our boots from smart-mouth college students.”

The crowd laughed again, this time much harder.