CHAPTER 7: THE STILL HOUR
Anyi sat in her office at Panti, the hum of the overhead fan the only sound in the room. Femi dropped a clear evidence bag onto her desk. Inside, the cheap metal of a wristwatch glinted under the fluorescent light. The glass was spider-webbed, and the leather strap was stained with salt and grime.
"Amara's roommate confirmed it," Femi said, pulling up a chair. "It's hers. The labs finished with the prints—nothing but the victim's. It's clean, Anyi. Too clean."
Anyi picked up the bag, turning it over. The second hand was paralyzed. "3:17."
"Water damage from the bridge or the impact when he positioned her," Femi said. "It stopped dead at the scene."
Anyi didn't look away from the numbers. "And the autopsy?"
Femi opened the file, his expression shifting to something more clinical. "That's where the math breaks. The ME says her core temp and the state of the blood suggest she died much earlier. Somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. By 3:00 a.m., her body was already cooling significantly."
Anyi looked from the watch to the report. The discrepancy was a physical weight in the room. "So the watch is a lie. If she died by 1:00 a.m., but this says 3:17, someone manually moved those hands. They wanted us to think she was alive for two more hours. They're feeding us a false timeline to mess with our window of opportunity."
Anyi stood up and walked to the map pinned to her wall. "Look at the campus footage again. She vanished at 8:31 p.m. If she died by 1:00 a.m., he didn't have seven hours. He only had four. He's throwing out fake numbers to keep us looking at the wrong part of the night."
Later that evening, Anyi returned to the university. The campus was under a soft curfew, the air thick with the smell of diesel from the distant generators. She walked the path from the Science Building toward the Engineering hostels, her shoes crunching on the gravel.
Five minutes. That was the walk.
She stopped exactly where the shortcut narrowed. To her left sat the heavy, silent bulk of the Science Block. To her right, the towering wings of the Boys' Engineering hostel. She pulled out her notebook and wrote three numbers: **8:31**, **1:00**, and **3:17**.
The watch was a distraction, a signature meant to lead her away from the truth of that first four-hour window. She looked up at the hostel, her eyes scanning the rows of windows. Most were filled with the blue light of laptops or the warm glow of reading lamps, but her gaze lingered on the dark gaps in between.
George sat in his room, the lights off and the curtains drawn just enough to leave a sliver of the outside world visible. He was watching Anyi. He saw her stop on the path. He saw her look at the Science Block, then slowly turn her head toward his building.
He sat perfectly still, his hands resting on the wheels of his chair.
He had left the watch on Amara because 3:17 was the moment of completion. To him, the biology of the body was just a decaying clock, but the watch was the record of his achievement. He didn't care about "time of death"; he cared about the time of the art.
But seeing Anyi standing there, comparing the watch in her mind to the ground beneath her feet, he realized she had spotted the fracture in his logic. She didn't see the art; she saw a tactical move. She thought he was trying to buy time, and in doing so, he had accidentally pointed her right at his front door.
Across George's window, Lina was leaning against the balcony railing of the Girls' Hostel. She was watching the lights. In a wing where almost every window was a beacon of student life, one window on the second floor stayed dead.
Total darkness. Even when the detective's headlights swept across the brickwork as she turned her car, nothing moved in that room. No shadow crossed the glass. No phone screen flickered.
Lina didn't need to see his face. She knew someone was there. She looked at that single dark square and then back at Anyi. She understood. The person in that room wasn't just hiding; they were creating a void. And in a crowded hostel, a void is a signature.
Anyi closed her notebook and walked back to her car. She had the list of names. She was looking for someone who worked with precision—someone who would think a two-hour lie was a clever way to manipulate an investigation.
George reached under his floorboard and felt the plastic container. He needed to move it tonight. The watch had been his stamp of pride, but it was acting like a beacon.
His next stage required the **Lab Curator's master key**. The Curator was a man of habit, an old staff who kept the heavy brass ring in a locked drawer in the Science auditorium office. That key opened the chemical cold-storage where the industrial-grade preservatives were kept. Without them, his next arrangement wouldn't survive the heat long enough for the city to see it.
He watched Anyi's car pull away, the red taillights disappearing into the darkness. Saturday, 2:00 a.m., the Science Block would go dark for maintenance. He didn't just need the key anymore. He needed to make sure Anyi was busy chasing the 3:17 ghost while he worked in the 1:00 a.m. silence.
He opened his notebook to a fresh page. He didn't draw a body this time. He began to map the Curator's walk from the staff quarters to the auditorium. It was time to clear the board.