puddles toward the lights. Mendel Pond I had always assumed was named for Gregor Mendel, the famous botanist and priest. Long ago, Myerson had been the science building. Botany students had probably messed around with plants in this pond in those days. Nobody did anything scientific with it now, at least that I’d ever seen. Plants did grow in it, waving their big leaves over the surface. Now in the fall, those leaves were gold, a gold turned blue and red from the flashing lights. The flickering lights showed where a canopy of large leaves had been torn. Some were scattered on the grass.
Mendel Pond was irregular, shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece, jutting in and out, wider at the end closest to Myerson, narrower where it came closest to the gate. It was about thirty feet across at the widest place and rimmed with a concrete wall, about two feet high. Not impossible to fall in, but how likely was that?
Police tape was strung around the whole pond. I spotted Margaret toward the gate, standing beside an ambulance. The medical team had obviously arrived, as had the city cops. I doubted any detectives had arrived yet. They’d be here, though. They’d examine the scene, and with the medical examiner’s report determine if it was accident, suicide or even a homicide.
“Margaret!” I called out.
Margaret started and then hurried over to me.
“Oh, Kristin! Thank you so much for coming.”
But her eyes narrowed as she took in my arm in a sling.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now, tell me what you know about what happened to Ah-seong Kim.”
“Well, what I know so far is that the sanitation guys drove in here at about 5:30 in the morning and they spotted a body floating in the pond. She was out toward the middle. One guy jumped in and pulled her out, tried CPR, while the other called the University Police who must have called the EMT’s. They were just over at the hospital ER and got here really quickly, they said, but it was no use. She was already dead and had been for some time. Our police called me after they got a look at the body. Guessed she might be a student. I suppose they called the city cops too. I got here just before 6. I looked at her face, saw it was Ah-seong and I called you.”
Margaret glanced at the ground beside the pond nearest the ambulance. A little mound under some kind of covering was visible.
I frowned at Margaret.
“That’s not right. That can’t be right, Margaret. The body couldn’t have been floating. She must have died sometime during the night and the water in the pond is fairly cool. She wouldn’t float for a couple of days. Besides, if it was a suicide, she might have weighted her pockets. Same with murder, really. This pond’s not that deep, is it? It doesn’t make sense.”
Margaret looked blank.
“What do you mean, she couldn’t have been floating?”
I spoke slowly.
“Dead bodies don’t float for several days. And that’s in warm water. In cooler water they stay submerged even longer.”
I needed more information. I looked around.
“Where are these sanitation guys?”
“Over there.”
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