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here!”
    After waiting for a response other than the continual scratching that emanated from the stairwell, big, bad, Tony “The Tank” Williams was on the way…on the way to deliver an ass-kicking to the mo-fo cutting into his study time—be it some small furry critter or some bored prankster from a nearby coed dorm.
    For a moment he thought about the terror he used to deliver to opposing SEC quarterbacks on Saturday afternoons—the kind that got him featured on ESPN’s Sportscenter twice in his sophomore year playing ball for the University of Tennessee. Things were looking up back then—way up. He even considered the possibility of turning pro early, say, right after his junior year. But then he tore his Achilles the last weekend at Vanderbilt that fall as the Vols’ starting weak-side linebacker, and ‘the rest’, as they say, was ‘history’ for poor Tony. No more fame, no big dollars, and no easy pussy.
    “ Hello-o-oh!!” He repeated again, this time even more forceful as he neared the back of the building.
    The annoying noises ceased when he reached the edge of the stairs. He turned on his flashlight and pointed it down the darkened stairwell toward its murky bottom. No sign of anyone or anything moving about, and no place to hide. Perplexed, he shook his head and looked around him, pointing the flashlight down the hallway toward the main entrance. A fluorescent glow from a long line of grime-covered overhead lamps illuminated the main floor.
    He moved back to where the guard station sat, which consisted of a small card table and metal folding chair, barely adequate despite their temporary purpose. The chair set right next to the front door and a large window that Vernon told him was original to the building when completed in 1918. As with any old building, it got real cold sitting there. Real damned cold, especially late at night.
    It sure as hell wasn’t the McClung Museum, which stood less than a hundred yards from here. The McClung was his normal gig every weekend and two week nights, eight o’clock to midnight. Right now, Matt Edmonds, the newbie who just joined the campus police, kept watch at the museum, along with whatever Knoxville police officer had been assigned to help out tonight. Probably sharing their opinions about the Vols’ upcoming bowl game over steaming coffee at the ‘real’ guard station, near one of two 10-foot Christmas trees decorating the front lobby of the museum. And, damn it if it wasn’t warm inside, too—unlike this frigging icebox, this old drafty building that no longer had an address plate since slated for demolition next summer.
    Langston Hall was one of the University of Tennessee’s oldest colonial-styled red brick buildings that once served as a woman’s dormitory until the mid-1970s. It now housed hundreds of boxes filled with transcripts and other documents, such as outdated student records and even older report cards from years long since past. Now just a storage place for such mundane items, the building hadn’t seen a guard staff keeping a 24-7 vigil over the place in more than two decades.
    But less than a week after Thanksgiving, Tony got the news from his boss, Vernon, the retired Knoxville police captain who now handled the security staffing for UT’s largest campus, that he and five other guards had been reassigned indefinitely to this less-than-desirable post. For the past three weekends John Campbell handled the evening shift on his own. But now he spent his eight hour shift divided between this post and a second ‘hot spot’ on the other side of campus. Starting last night, John manned the desk from 4 pm to 8 pm; Tony took over from eight to midnight; and then, Johnnie Mercer—another ex-Vols football star—relieved him at midnight. Tony could count on Johnnie to run three to four minutes late, since he’d always been like that when the pair worked connecting shifts at the museum.
    This was supposed to be Tony’s only weekend filling in