"The case?" Blair asked incredulously. "What case?"

  "Blair," Jim said, reaching over to place his hand softly against his partner's arm. "Dr. Stoddard was hit by a car on his way to the loft."

  "What?" Blair exploded.

  "Just calm down." Jim squeezed Blair's arm then released him. "It was a hit and run. That's all we know at this point."

  "Hit and run," Blair repeated absently, his mind obviously working to accept what Jim had told him. "So, how bad is he? Did Brayden say?"

  "No, he didn't know."

  "Hit and run," Blair said again, shaking his head in disbelief. "Who could do such a thing?"

  "I don't know, buddy," Jim said softly, glancing over at his friend, "But we'll try to find out, okay?"

  Blair stared over at him, eyes wide. "Yeah, okay," he breathed out, then turned forward to stare out the windshield. He remained silent, but his shock and worry were almost palpable to Jim.

  "Jim?" Blair spoke again after several minutes. "I think it would be a good idea for you to put a guard on Dr. Stoddard's door at the hospital."

  Again, Jim glanced over at his partner. He knew Blair had been silently processing the news about Stoddard's accident, but a request for a guard on Stoddard's door was not what the detective had expected to hear when Blair finally spoke.

  "Why do you think he needs a guard?"

  Blair's eyes narrowed as he stared out the windshield. It appeared to Ellison as though he were trying to think of the best way to explain his request. After a few moments, Blair shifted in his seat, turning to face Jim. "This morning, when I went to remind him about dinner tonight, he was distracted. Really distracted... Like something was bothering him. He was studying some documents that looked pretty official, and it was almost like he hardly registered that I was there. And now this happens..."

  "...And you don't think the two things are coincidental."

  "No. Call it instinct, a hunch, whatever you want, but I know someone did this on purpose."

  "Okay. I'll call Simon."

  "You think he'll do it? Put a guard on Dr. Stoddard's door?"

  "I think he will. I'll tell him about your concerns and ask him to pull a uniform off desk duty. It's an easy fix."

  "He won't need more evidence in order to do that?"

  Jim shook his head. "Not this time. I'll insist." He looked over at his friend and winked, receiving a small, grateful smile in return.

  "Thanks, Jim," Blair said simply.

  Jim smiled back at his friend. "You bet, Chief. We'll make sure Dr. Stoddard is guarded until we can get to the bottom of this."

  The detective steered the truck into the hospital parking lot. Finding a space near the Emergency Room doors, Jim turned off the truck's lights and engine. Together, the two men walked through the ER entrance; Jim spotted Officer Tom Brayden as soon as they cleared the automated doors.

  "Sandburg," he said, turning to place his hand at Blair's back and give him an encouraging smile, "Why don't you see what you can find out about Stoddard's condition. I'm going to talk to Brayden."

  Blair nodded, moving toward the admissions desk. Jim crossed to Officer Brayden, glad that he had been the responding officer. Brayden was young--younger than Blair--but he had a good reputation for being thorough.

  "Brayden," he said, stopping beside him, "Any more news on the Stoddard hit and run?"

  The rookie looked up, an expression of surprise crossing his features. "Nothing new, sir." Brayden dropped his gaze, then glanced up at Jim again, regret lining his features. "I'm sorry... I guess you know the victim, huh?"

  Jim shook his head. "No, I've never met him. Dr. Stoddard is a friend of Sandburg's."

  Brayden glanced to the side, spotting Blair, before returning his attention to Jim. His eyes now held a knowing look. "And you want details."

  "Whatever you've got so far."

  "Again, it's not much." Brayden pulled a small pad of paper from his front pocket and flipped through it, finding his notes on the case. "No witnesses, no vehicle description. All we have is the victim, the victim's car, and a few tire tracks and pieces from a broken headlight."

  Jim narrowed his eyes. "You said the hit and run took place on Alder. That's a pretty dark and quiet stretch of road. What was Dr. Stoddard doing out of his car, in the dark, on a semi-deserted road? Was his car disabled?"

  Brayden shook his head. "I don't know, Detective Ellison. I checked the car for body damage, thinking maybe it had been hit as well, but there wasn't a mark on it."

  "Where is the car now?"

  "It's still at the scene. I was just about to call a tow truck."

  Jim shook his head. "Wait on that, will you? I want to go to the scene and take a look before the car is moved."

  "Yes, sir," Brayden said. "Just call me when you're finished and I'll put in the request for the tow."

  Jim smiled his thanks and turned to join Sandburg, then stopped. Turning back to Brayden, he asked, "Who found him?"

  "No one. There was an anonymous tip phoned in. Male voice, didn't leave a name."

  Jim nodded thoughtfully. "All right, Tom. Thanks for your help. I'll let you know when I'm finished at the scene." As Jim turned back toward Blair, he saw that Sandburg had been joined by a tall, dark-haired woman. Automatically, he focused his hearing in on the conversation.

  "He's unconscious, Blair. The doctor's said he took a severe blow to the left side of his head. He..." The woman bit her trembling lip, wiping at stray tears. "I'm sorry."

  "Hey, it's all right, Karen," Blair soothed. He reached out and pulled the woman into his arms, holding her close. "It's okay. He's going to be okay."

  Jim stood where he was, allowing Blair and Dr. Stoddard's assistant a moment of privacy. Karen had mentioned that Stoddard had sustained a head injury. Head injury. The detective rubbed at his forehead--he knew how serious that could be. The man could wake up tonight... or never again. Closing his eyes, he exhaled a long, slow breath. He knew what it would do to his partner if Eli Stoddard never regained consciousness.

  "Detective?" Brayden's voice came from just behind him, scattering his thoughts. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine," Jim said wearily, turning back to the young officer. "Listen, I'm going to call the station and get a guard assigned to the professor's door. Could you stick around until the officer arrives?"

  Brayden blinked up at Ellison. "You think this wasn't an accidental hit?"

  Jim ran his hand across his hair and stared over at his partner, who was still speaking quietly to Karen. "I'm not sure," he said softly, "But until I am, I don't want to take any chances."

  /

  /

  /

  Blair released his seatbelt as Jim pulled to a stop behind Stoddard's car. The professor's sedan sat abandoned on the side of the dark road. Just a few feet away, he could see the ribbon of yellow police tape marking off the area where his friend had been hit.

  "You think he broke down?" Blair asked as he exited the cab of the truck and followed his partner over to Stoddard's car.

  "No flat tires," Jim said, walking around the vehicle. He tried the driver's side door. It opened. "Unlocked, and the keys are still inside." Leaning in, Jim cranked the engine to life. "Seems to be working." He turned the engine off and straightened.

  "Then why was he out of his car?" Blair conducted a slow sweep of the area. The road was only about three miles from campus, a side street that he himself used all the time. It was quiet and sparsely populated, but it was the best shortcut available over to Prospect. And it's the route I directed Dr. Stoddard to use. Blair shook aside the self-incriminating thought and stepped up close to his partner. "Okay, Jim, what do we have? We know Dr. Stoddard was on his way to see us. So why stop on the way?" Again, Blair looked around him, taking in the darkened street, the distant lights of a few scattered houses. "And why stop out here?"

  "Maybe someone stopped him."

  Blair looked up at Jim. "What do you mean?"

  Jim indicated the other side of the road with a tilt of his head. "I see another set of tire tracks on the shoulder of the road over there. The car that was sitting there was parked in the opposite direction of Stoddard's."

  "You think someone flagged him down?"

  Jim shrugged. "Makes sense."

  Blair considered his partner's words. "Okay," he said, thinking out loud, "So Dr. Stoddard sees someone flagging him down. He pulls to the side of the road, gets out of his car, and then another car comes by and hits him?"

  Jim nodded. "I think that's exactly what happened. The question is--was the hit accidental or was it on purpose?"

  "If it was an accident," Blair began, "Then the person on the other side of the road would have stayed to help, don't you think? But they didn't. They took off."

  Jim nodded. "I agree. The person who was parked over there takes off, then an anonymous tip is phoned in to let the police know about the hit and run." Jim placed his hands on his hips and chewed absently at his lower lip. "This whole thing smells like a set-up."

  Blair stepped closer to Jim as the detective's words settled into his mind. It was beyond his comprehension that anyone would set up the kindly professor in this manner. Stoddard was a favorite among his peers and his students. Blair looked down the street a few feet, to the yellow police tape that was rippling lightly in the night breeze. His mind conjured up the image of his mentor standing there, of a car coming up in the dark, of the professor's body impacting with the vehicle. Blair imagined the cry of fear and pain, the sound of Stoddard's crumpled form hitting the pavement, the squeal of the tires as the car raced away. He shuddered slightly.

  "Sandburg? You all right?" Jim's concerned voice drew his attention.

  Blair looked up at his partner, then ran a trembling hand through his hair. "Sorry, Jim." He shook his head, dismissing the disturbing images. "Being out here, it's just so real..."

  "Hey," Jim said softly, reaching up to squeeze lightly at his shoulder, "We'll get to the bottom of this."

  "Yeah. I know." Sandburg took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "So what do we do next?"

  "Come over here." Jim started toward the taped-off area. "We'll start with the skid marks."

  Blair slipped under the police tape, staying close to Jim's side. Together, they made their way to the actual site of impact. Jim crouched down and slowly studied the ground, his brow furrowed. Blair stuffed his hands in his pockets as he waited, the night's chill creeping over him and making him shiver.

  "I think we were right to put a guard on Dr. Stoddard's door, Chief," Jim said finally, standing.

  Blair raised one eyebrow. "You found something?"

  Jim put his hand on Blair's back and guided him over to the other side of the road, where they could look at the accident scene from another angle. The detective pointed to the street directly in front of them. "Do you see any skid marks on the road here?"

  Blair squinted into the darkness. "Well, no, Jim, but it is dark, after all."

  Jim chuckled. "Doesn't matter, because there aren't any. Not here, anyway." He guided Blair down the road and pointed at a spot on the asphalt. "The only skid marks occur here, beyond the spot where Stoddard went down. It looks like the driver braked suddenly, then drove on."

  "So they didn't try to stop before they hit Dr. Stoddard?"

  "No, they didn't. And if there was a driver flagging Stoddard down ... well, I find it hard to believe that this second driver didn't see him. I'm more inclined than ever to believe it was intentional." Jim squinted, leaning closer to the ground.

  "What is it, Jim? Do you see something else?"

  "You got an evidence bag, Chief?"

  Blair reached in his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag, then handed it to his partner. "What'd you find?"

  "Let me have your knife, too."

  Blair complied, crouching down beside his partner but unable to see anything in the blackness.

  Jim scraped at the ground with the blade of the knife. "There's a white powdery substance in the tire tracks," he told Blair, holding the knife close so he could examine the light substance he'd scraped up with the blade. "Something that must have been embedded in the treads." He dumped his findings into the bag before handing the knife back to his partner. "I'll have it analyzed. Maybe it'll give us some clue we can use to find out who ran Stoddard down."

  Blair shook his head. "I just don't understand, Jim. Dr. Stoddard doesn't have an enemy in the world."

  "Apparently he does, Chief."

  "Yeah," Blair muttered as he stood. Taking the bag from Jim, he held it up, trying to see the contents in the moonlight. "Well, starting first thing tomorrow morning, I'm going to try and find out who."

  "Meaning?" Jim asked when his guide offered no other information.

  "Meaning I don't have classes until tomorrow afternoon, so I'm going to spend the morning retracing Dr. Stoddard's day."

  "You mean we'll retrace his day."

  Blair looked down at his partner, his brow furrowed. "You'll help me?"

  Jim stood and, folding his arms across his chest, smiled down at his friend. "I am your partner, aren't I?"

  "Of course." Blair handed the baggie back to Jim. "But since we don't know for sure yet that this is an official police matter..."

  "It's official enough for me." Jim stuffed the evidence bag into his jacket pocket. "Tomorrow morning, first thing, we'll pay a visit to Stoddard's office. Together. Okay?"

  "Yeah, okay," Blair agreed.

  Jim grinned down at him, and even in the minimal light, Blair could see the amusement on his partner's face. "However," Ellison drawled slowly, "Since there isn't anything more we can do tonight..."

  Blair smiled despite the circumstances. "Uh huh," he intoned knowingly. "Why do I get the feeling that you're thinking about that lasagna we left in the oven?"

  Jim slapped him soundly on the shoulder, then turned him toward the truck. "You know me so well."

  Part Three

  Blair sat in Dr. Stoddard's desk chair and glanced through the papers he had found in the professor's "in" box. Across the small room, Jim checked the file cabinets that stood next to the office windows. Blair sighed softly as he shuffled through the miscellaneous documents--most of the papers were departmental notices that Blair himself had received. He reached up to rub at his forehead; a headache was beginning to throb just beneath his temple.

  He hadn't slept well at all last night, waking every few hours, fighting the urge to call the hospital to try and get an update on the professor. But he'd managed to stay in bed until seven o'clock before shoving back his blankets and making the call.

  Condition unchanged. The two words still echoed through his mind. He had hoped Dr. Stoddard would wake sometime during the night. But he'll wake up today. I know he will.

  He leaned back in the chair and glanced down absently at the space beneath the old oak desk. A large Federal Express box sat there on the floor, propped up against the inside of the desk. Curious, Blair reached down and lifted it. The box was light in his hands, but he peeked inside anyway. As he suspected, it was empty.

  "What do you have there, Chief?"

  Blair looked up to see that his partner had moved over to stand beside him. "I'm not sure. It was underneath the desk."

  Jim leaned down and took a look at the weigh bill on the front of the box. "It's from Sabah, Borneo," he pointed out. "Does the sender's name mean anything to you?"

  Blair adjusted his glasses with one hand and gazed down at the sender's information. "Dr. Alfred Nahim, Universiti Malaysia Sabah," he read. He looked up at Jim. "I know that Dr. Stoddard's team was helped a lot by staff and students from the university in Sabah, but I don't know who Dr. Nahim is..."

  "He's a professor of Indigenous Studies." Both men looked up to find a tall, slim girl standing at the door. "He and Dr. Stoddard have been friends for years."

  "Karen." Blair pushed to his feet and, handing the Federal Express box to Jim, scooted past his partner and crossed to the young woman. "How are you doing today?"

  She shrugged one shoulder. Absently, she rubbed at her bloodshot eyes. "I'm worried."

  Blair reached out and placed a hand on her arm, rubbing lightly. "He's going to be okay, Karen. He's a fighter."

  She nodded, swallowing hard.

  "If you're up to it, Detective Ellison and I would like to ask you a few questions."

  "Detective?" Karen queried, looking over at Jim, then back at Blair. "You don't thing this was an accident, do you?"

  "Why would you ask that?" Jim asked, moving up to stand beside his partner.

  "Karen, this is Detective Jim Ellison. He's a friend of mine." Blair glanced up at Jim. "Karen is Dr. Stoddard's assistant. She was at the hospital last night."

  "Yes," Jim said, remembering the woman Blair had comforted. "Karen, why did you ask if what happened to the professor wasn't an accident?"

  She licked her lips, suddenly uncomfortable. "No reason, really. It's just... Dr. Stoddard seemed out of sorts yesterday. I know something was wrong, but he wouldn't tell me what it was."

  Blair nodded. "I noticed that, too." He glanced back at the Federal Express box Jim had left on the desk. "Karen," he asked, turning back to the young woman, "Did you open Dr. Stoddard's mail yesterday? Do you know what he received from Dr. Nahim?"

  "No. Dr. Stoddard opens all of his own mail. He always has."

  "We're trying to piece together Dr. Stoddard's movements yesterday," Jim told her. "We were hoping to find something that would give us a clue to who hit him."

  Karen shook her head, blinking back sudden tears. "I, um... I know he left around six. He told me he was having dinner with Blair. That's all I know."

  "What about his day yesterday? Any unusual visitors? People you didn't know?"

  Again, Karen shook her head. "No. Because he's just back from Borneo, his visitor schedule has been pretty light. He asked me to set up a 3:30 appointment for him and he acted like it was pretty urgent, but other than that his day was pretty quiet." She looked up at Jim. "Would it help you to see his calendar?"

  "Do you have it?"

  "It should be here." Moving to the desk, Karen took a key from her pocket and unlocked the desk. She pulled a calendar out of the center drawer and walked back over to Jim, handing it to him. "I need to get back to my office now," she said. "I'll leave his desk unlocked so you can look through it. If you need me for anything else, I'm two doors down on your left."