Cold Love

by Conell, Zach

  “Where you saddened by this?” he continued.

  “In a way, yes, maybe,” she sputtered while the twitching of her left eye intensified. “I mean, I was… uh, I’m sorry, but is this really relevant?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cillian replied cordially, while concluding to himself that Dr. Leamington may have had feelings for Professor Erdmann, since she had responded about as awkwardly as a teenager would to a question about a former crush. “I’m just trying to be thorough. That’s the least I can do for Miss McCormick,” he explained, sticking to the truth as much as possible.

  “Naturally,” she mumbled. “After all, we all do the best we can, right?” The comment seemed to be aimed more at herself than Cillian, as if she was trying to convince herself of something.

  “Certainly,” he affirmed mechanically as he got up from his chair. “Well, I guess that is it as far as my questions go. However, I would like to ask Dr. Mitchell some additional questions. Would that be okay with you?”

  “Of course, do what you have to do. Let me get you the address of her office,” Dr. Leamington answered coolly as she looked up the address on the university website and wrote it down for him on a piece of paper.

  “Thank you,” Cillian said as he took the note from her. “I hope to see you at the funeral. I will attend, of course, out of courtesy.” He extended his right hand to Dr. Leamington.

  “I will be delighted to enjoy your company once more,” she exaggerated as she got up herself. “Such a shame for that poor Miss McCormick. And you two looked so lovely together the other day, I was convinced that there must be a spark between you. What a pity.”

  When he heard the description of him and Rose as a couple, Cillian suddenly longed for her presence. He quickly dismissed the feeling, however, regarding it as a general need for agreeable company after this interaction with the insufferable dean. The latter was currently shaking his hand with so little force that it almost felt as if she was only holding on to him. This gave Cillian an idea for a final tactical maneuver.

  “Unfortunately I haven’t had a lot of luck in my love life recently,” he said with downcast eyes, not letting go of Dr. Leamington’s hand. Then he looked at her amiably and put his left hand on her the backside of her right hand, turning their handshake into a “handhug”. “What about you?” he asked kindly. “I don’t mean to pry, but just out of personal curiosity, have you found someone to share your life with?”

  The dean blushed. “Well,” she began. Then she paused and shook her head. “This is silly, but all I can say is that a lady does not kiss and tell.”

  And yet you just told me everything I wanted to know, Cillian thought.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he replied with a smile. “See you soon, Dr. Leamington.”

  “Gladly. And Cillian, please be careful in your interactions with Miss McCormick.” She gave him a worried look.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I suspect that she is not being completely honest about who she says she is. After all, she doesn’t resemble Erdmann at all, and she carries a different last name.”

  The remark confused Cillian, but he maintained his composure.

  “Thank you. I’ll be fine,” he said as he casually walked out of her office.

  After locating Dr. Mitchell and getting the same facts from her as Dr. Leamington had provided him, he went to the university cafeteria and found Rose sitting at a small round coffee table. When he joined her to tell her everything, she was dismayed to hear about the dean’s alibi, but she eagerly agreed with Cillian’s interpretation of the latter part of his chat with her.

  “So she had feelings for my father,” Rose whispered, leaning across the table, “which he apparently didn’t answer, and now she is smitten with Mr. X. What a lovely lady.”

  “Well, we can prove exactly none of it, but we can view it as a plausible working hypothesis. How was our friend, the punk princess librarian?”

  “She wasn’t there today, but her colleague told me to drop the book in the regular return slot, so I did that. I first erased the pencil marks and added some new dog-ears though. There was no real reason for that, I know, but I just felt better handing it in like that, without the clues left by my father.”

  Cillian nodded to demonstrate he was listening, even though he had trouble focusing on anything Rose said. On his way over to the cafeteria, he had quickly done some online search on his phone for pictures of Reinhart Erdmann, to look for similarities with Rose. Up until then Cillian had only seen one photograph of Rose’s father, namely the one briefly shown on the evening news segment that had informed him about the professor’s death. Now, as he observed Rose with the portrait of Erdmann clear in his mind, he was annoyed to discover that Dr. Leamington had been right. Rose did not resemble Erdmann even remotely. None of her defining features—from her delicate chin to her cute, pointy nose, subtle cheekbones, full lips, slender neck, deep-set gray-blue eyes, and ash-blond hair—were visible in the appearance of the professor. Cillian knew that she might take after her mother, but it nevertheless disturbed him that he was unable to contradict the dean and thereby dispel the troubled feeling that had taken hold of him upon hearing her ominous words about Rose. After all she had revealed to him earlier that day, was there still something she had not told him? Some secret about her past she didn’t want to share?

  His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed Rose staring at him with a questioning look on her face, as if she had just asked him something.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say? My mind wandered off for a moment. I am really starting to notice the fact that I slept so little last night. It is increasingly difficult for me to concentrate.” Cillian’s excuse was only partly untrue.

  “I hardly think last night was your first night without much rest though, was it?” Rose observed him caringly. “You seem to have accumulated quite some fatigue.”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “Not at all, but your eyes look tired, or troubled maybe, I can’t tell.” Cillian looked down at the coffee table. He found it difficult to face her now that she looked at him so affectionately.

  “It’s just exhaustion,” he pretended. “I honestly don’t even remember the last time I slept properly.”

  “I don’t know how you do it. I mean, for me sleep is sacred, and I need lots of it. Eight hours a night is the minimum amount I require to function properly, otherwise I turn into a zombie,” she said with a snicker. “What is your average right now?”

  “Maybe around four, because most nights I get between three to five hours of shut-eye.” Cillian purposely didn’t mention the occasional night that he didn’t fall asleep at all and just lay in bed, peering into the darkness.

  “Oh wow, that’s really not okay. You need to find a way to double that.”

  “Yeah, I’m working on it,” he lied. “Anyway, what was it that you said?”

  “Oh, I was curious if you were able to determine whether there are surveillance cameras in and outside Dr. Leamington’s office.”

  “Yes, there are. It’s even worse than I assumed. Not only are there cameras at all the entrances of the building which houses her office, but there is also at least one camera in the dean’s office, located in the far right-hand corner when you enter, making it impossible to get to her computer without being caught on CCTV.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Rose replied, frowning. “All right, let’s get back to the hotel. I would like to go through my father’s files tonight.”

  “Sure,” he said, happy that Rose seemed to have given up on the dangerous scheme of breaking into Dr. Leamington’s office.

  They agreed to split up once more and meet up at the subway station to rule out that Dr. Leamington could run into them together a second time. Rose left first to walk in a large circle around the campus, whereas Cillian waited for a couple of minutes and then took the shortest route over the campus to the station.

  Cillian entered the subwa
y platform where they had decided to meet and looked around for Rose. She was standing at the other end, absentmindedly staring at a young couple holding hands in front of her. He walked toward her, but when he reached the middle of the platform, his eye fell on a man with a black hat standing about a dozen feet away from Rose and watching her in a casual manner. Cillian froze. He recognized that hat: a black fedora covering long yellow-gray hair. It’s him, he thought, the chain-smoker with the furious eyes. But how do I get to her without him seeing me?

  Cillian thought of sneaking behind the shadow and poking the barrel of his .40 between his shoulder blades, but that would be a very dangerous move in such a crowded place that was being monitored by security cameras. A bystander might spot Cillian sneaking up on his prey and freak out, or the target himself might pull a gun on Cillian if he failed to approach him unnoticed. As a first move, Cillian took cover behind a pillar close to the edge of the platform, to prevent either Rose or her stalker from seeing him, because if the former would look in Cillian’s direction and recognize him, the latter would undoubtedly do the same.

  Cillian took out his new cell phone and sent Rose a text message:

  You are being followed. I’m close, but don’t look for me. Wait for the train in the wrong direction and stand in front of the doors, but don’t get in. C

  He studied Rose from behind the pillar. A few seconds after he pressed Send, she opened her purse and began rummaging through the contents with one hand as if she was looking for something. Cillian understood that she was probably checking her phone but had decided not to take it out of her bag so that her not-so-secret observer would be unable to ascertain what she was doing. After a short while, Cillian saw her taking a little tube and a hand mirror from her purse before carefully touching up her lipstick while subtly moving the mirror, first to the left and then to the right, in what he recognized as an attempt to locate her shadow. When the sound of an approaching train became audible, she put away her accessories and stepped closer to one edge of the platform, in the zone that indicated where the doors of the train would be once it had come to a full stop.

  Cillian moved to look around the other side of the pillar and perceived how the yellow-gray-haired man took position along the same side of the platform a few zones closer to Cillian. The train arrived and as soon as the doors opened, a swarm of people hurried out of the cars. Rush hour sure lives up to its reputation, Cillian said to himself. Once the human stream coming out of the train had diminished to barely a drip, the crowd of impatient, aspiring passengers occupying the platform pushed forward to enter the metal caravan. Except for Rose, who peacefully waited in front of the open doors, and her stalker, who appeared agitated now that he stood exposed on the virtually empty side of the platform. Cillian saw the man hesitating to enter the train, while restlessly eyeing Rose, who pretended to be blind to his progressively less subtle glances.

  Cillian stealthily moved out from behind the pillar and walked in the direction of the distracted pursuant. Upon hearing the beginning tone of the chime indicating that the train doors were about to close, he went into a full sprint and hurled himself against the yellow-haired man, projecting the latter into the car. As Cillian struggled to recover his balance after the powerful collision, he was just able to make out how the man cut through the crowd inside the train like a knife through butter, before the closing doors blocked the view and the train took off.

  “Cillian, that was awesome,” Rose exclaimed as she came running toward him.

  “I don’t know about that—awesome is one of the most overused words in the English language, but I appreciate the encouragement,” he replied with a proud smile.

  “I don’t give a crap. That move definitely justified it,” Rose asserted as she spontaneously embraced him. “Thank you! It really creeped me out to know that this guy was following me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he mumbled, feeling overwhelmed by Rose’s passionate hug.

  Just then the train going in the direction of their hotel arrived on the other side of the platform.

  “Let’s go home,” he proposed.

  “Do you think of our hotel as your home already, after just one night?” Rose asked teasingly as they made their way across the platform.

  “By heart I am a nomad; my home is wherever I am,” he stated, consciously ignoring the fact that for the last two years, he had considered himself to be mentally homeless, since his home used to be wherever Amanda was. But he wasn’t sure if he would ever find his way back to that home anymore, and he felt surprisingly calm about this prospect. For the time being, he was fine to make himself at home wherever he happened to spend the night, including the Windy City Waterfalls Hotel.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On their way “home,” Cillian and Rose stopped by a men’s clothing store, where he bought some new shirts and underwear. Afterward they got a takeout meal at a Vietnamese restaurant, which they ate in Cillian’s hotel room while exchanging a few smiles but no words. Cillian sat on the desk chair, and Rose on the edge of the bed. At the end of the meal, Rose’s face suddenly turned serious. She no longer seemed to notice Cillian and instead stared pensively at the ceiling.

  “What is it?” Cillian enquired.

  “When do you think he began following me, that man, the Fedora Freak?” she asked as she finally turned to look at him. There was a worried look on her face. “I feel so stupid that I didn’t notice it, even though I was being cautious, or at least I thought I was.”

  “He probably first spotted you on campus,” Cillian speculated. “Because I made sure we weren’t followed on our way from the hotel, and the Fedora Freak—if I may borrow your adequate description—didn’t seem to know that I was with you. I mean, if he was expecting me to be around, it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to surprise him at the station. So he may have been waiting for you on campus, hoping you would show up at one point to visit your father’s office. After all, since he didn’t know where you were staying, the two most likely places where you might show up were your father’s apartment and his university office.”

  “But I didn’t go to my father’s office today,” Rose replied, raising her shoulders and doubtfully shaking her head.

  “Well, you were close enough, it appears. Perhaps he had taken up a strategic position somewhere on campus, which gave him an overview of the social science faculty and also enabled him to monitor the entrance of the central library, since it is next to it,” Cillian suggested, not wholly convinced of his own hypothesis.

  “I don’t think that’s possible; my father’s office is located too far away from the library and the cafeteria for anyone to simultaneously keep track of who visits it and one of the latter two buildings.”

  “Maybe, you’re right,” he decided. “But what about the last email your father sent you which mentioned your ‘big brother in the library’ in German? Is it possible that he somehow got hold of that email and figured out that your father had left you some kind of message in the library? The last part wouldn’t have been too difficult if he knew basic German or used a translation website.”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t know how he could have seen that email in the first place,” Rose responded with a confused frown. “My father was the last one to access his university email account before I did this morning.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “When I checked the account after guessing his password, I was able to retrieve the sign-in history, meaning the information about when the account was accessed and from which IP addresses. The last log-in session was on Thursday morning around the time of my father’s death, so basically when he sent me the email,” she explained.

  “But didn’t your father’s testimony mention that he had already written that email on Tuesday evening and then scheduled it for automatic sending on Thursday morning?” Cillian recalled, not yet entirely realizing the implications of this fact.

  “Oh, that’s right!” Rose exclaimed. “I completely forgot
about that. So then maybe it wasn’t my father who used the account on Thursday, but…” Rose abruptly fell silent as the logical conclusion of her line of reason presented itself to her mind in full, with all its horrible ramifications.

  Cillian understood it as well. Rose had likely found evidence of her father’s murderer logging in to his email account from his computer in his office, right after the atrocious deed. And this discovery made it rather probable that the man whom Cillian had propelled into an “L” train only an hour ago was in fact Professor Erdmann’s killer, or at least the murderer’s accomplice.

  The unlicensed PI could think of only three possible reasons for Rose having been followed by the yellow-gray-haired man after visiting the university library. The first option was that he had passed by the campus without any intentions of finding her there and had spotted her completely by coincidence. This was inconceivable. Secondly, he may have expected her to visit Professor Erdmann’s office at some point and had been monitoring the social science campus for that reason. However, this didn’t make for a convincing explanation either because Rose had not actually set foot on the social science campus, but had merely visited the nearby library and canteen. And if the Fedora Freak had expected her to go to Erdmann’s office, he would have had to position himself somewhere on the social science campus, close to the office, in order to make sure that he could see anyone who passed by it, rendering it impossible for him to simultaneously keep an eye out on the entrance of the library or of the cafeteria. This left only a third explanation, namely that Rose’s pursuer had been watching the library rather than the social science campus, because he had a reason to expect her to show up there. And the only such reason Cillian could think of was that he had read and analyzed the email sent by Erdmann to his daughter on the morning of his death, meaning that he either was directly responsible for the professor’s death, or worked together with the killer.