“Megan!” Katherine was helpless on the ground.
Megan spotted her, turned and faced the car, and stood between the oncoming vehicle and Katherine. She held up both hands and, as the sedan approached, seemed to throw it into the twisted trunk of the cypress where it impacted with an anticlimactic crunch and a series of loud pops.
She ran to Katherine. “So glad I’ve been practicing.”
“Did you just throw an entire car into a tree?”
“I more redirected it, but I was real pissed off. It’s a lot easier to use the psychic stuff when I’m angry.” She helped Katherine off the ground. “Maybe I owe Rodney a thank-you after all.”
“Are you okay?” Her ankle was so painful she’d forgotten to ask about Megan.
“I’m fine! Got my heart pumping, that’s for sure.” Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was flying around in the breeze. “Dropped my coffee though. Asshole.” She scowled at the busted sedan.
A small crowd had gathered around the driver’s side, and more people were running toward them. Dozens of bystanders were on the phone and at least three people had their phones up, recording the incident.
“Are you okay?” A man ran over. “I think that car was trying to run you two down.”
“Katherine?”
She spotted one of her neighbors waved a limp hand. “Hi, Ron.”
“My God, are you okay?” He held her other arm as Megan helped her to a bench. “That man was headed straight for you. I was walking Trudie and saw the whole thing.”
Ron’s golden doodle, Trudie, was wagging her tail with such vigor Katherine couldn’t resist the comfort of petting her fluffy blond head. “I really want a dog. I’m just going to get a dog and bring it home, and Bax will have to manage.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
Sirens were wailing on the highway.
Katherine gripped Megan’s arm. “Did you see who it was? Who’s the driver? Let me see.” She was betting it was another unsuspecting student from Central Coast State. She saw an ambulance racing up North Beach Drive. It was already near the coffee shop. “Megan, help me over there.”
“I think he’s out cold,” Ron said. “He’s stuck in the car, and all the air bags deployed.”
Megan and Ron helped her hobble over to see who was behind the wheel.
“Back up!” Ron yelled as they tried to get through the crowd. “Leave him alone. The EMTs are almost here. Back up.”
Trudie offered a few helpful barks in solidarity.
The crowd parted, and Katherine saw the man who’d been trying to run them down.
“Oh my God.” She didn’t think she could be any more shocked than she already was that day, but life was unexpected. “Megan, I know him.”
“Is he one of your students?”
“One of your students tried to kill you?” Ron was horrified. “That’s insane.”
“He’s not one of my students.” She turned to Megan. “That’s Greg Hammond.”
Chapter 29
Detective Drew Bisset watched the EMTs load Greg Hammond in the back of an ambulance. “So that’s the guy who developed the app?”
“With one of the professors, yes.” Katherine was parked on a bench.
Ron had called Baxter, who’d already left work and was on his way. Megan was standing next to her, calling Toni as Detective Bisset and Katherine spoke.
Katherine shifted her ankle, which was already swelling. “Tell me where you heard his name.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Is it part of an ongoing investigation?”
“That’s possible.” He frowned. “You know, I took this job because I figured that detective work in a little college town was bound to be pretty boring. I’d be able to coach my girls’ soccer team. Make dinner for my wife every now and then. Things like that.”
Katherine looked up and down the block. The crowds were now denser on North Beach Drive than she’d ever seen them. “Do you want me to apologize or something?”
He sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Maybe just explain all this to me like I’m a freshman at your college who’s majoring in physics instead of philosophy.”
She squinted. “Did you major in philosophy?”
“I did.”
“And you became a police detective?”
“I guess I read too much Hobbes.”
“The tiger?”
Detective Bisset couldn’t stop the smile. “The philosopher. The tiger’s pretty good too.”
“Agreed.” She scooted over and he sat next to her. “The principle of biofeedback is that you learn your body’s reaction to things in order to manage your stress responses. That part, the awareness, is done in a lab under the direction of a professional or, in this case, graduate students in psychology and behavioral sciences who were supervised by professors.”
“And Greg Hammond was one of those students.”
“Yes. He worked directly with Ansel Shaver, the lead on the study.”
“But you mentioned another name too. Alice Kraft.”
“Alice Kraft is another professor participating in the study. Her background is in computer science. She and Greg developed the app that sent notifications to the students who were affected by all this.”
“Only them?”
Katherine shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not privy to that information. But when I realized that this study was the tie that bound these cases together, I spoke to my husband, who spoke to Anita Mehta, another of the psychologists who was part of the study. Anita and her colleagues are now in the process of contacting all the study participants to delete the app off their phone before reporting all this to the review board at the university.”
“If there was something rotten in that app, why would Greg have used it?”
“What do you mean?”
Detective Bisset drew a clear plastic bag from his pocket. “Greg appears to have been under the same influence that Justin and Abby were.”
“What makes you think that?”
He handed her the bag. “Phone. Waterlogged, just like the others.”
Katherine stared at the phone in confusion.
But…?
How…?
“There must be some mistake. He was the administrator. It was a male voice reading the visualization exercises. Mario told us.”
“Maybe this Professor Kraft is the one we need to be looking at,”
