Obedience

by Will Lavender

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I think I have some information you’d like to know about Professor Leonard Williams,” Mary said. She was flying blind now, talking off the top of her head. It was an exhilarating feeling, and she went with it.

  The man’s eyes took on a dark and knowing tint. “Come in,” he said.

  Mary followed him inside. Orman had his newspaper spread out on the floor next to the couch and ESPN was on the plasma television that loomed in the corner. “Forgive my mess,” he said, pushing some of the paper beneath the couch. He gestured for Mary to sit, and she took a seat on an antique lolling chair beside him. Orman was more disheveled than usual. He was wearing a Winchester U sweatshirt with jogging pants. There were holes in his socks, she noticed. His orange hair was matted and tufted on one side, as if he had just risen from a nap.

  “Talk,” he said.

  “I was in his logic class this semester,” began Mary. “And some of the things that he told us were—let’s just say they were highly unusual.”

  “What sorts of things?” Orman was interested now. He was leaning forward, toward Mary, with his bifocals clutched between his interlaced fingers.

  “Things about Deanna Ward.”

  The man did not move when Mary said the name. She searched him for something, some tic of recognition, but he was stock still.

  “Things about the disappearance of this girl,” Mary went on, “and another girl, named Polly, who he claimed you knew.”

  Orman laughed. It was a deep and guttural chuckle, barely registering as an exterior noise at all.

  “Leonard says things all the time,” Orman said. “He’s been talking off and on for twenty years. Here at Winchester we tend to ignore his theories. Most of them are innocent, but some of them are in bad taste, let alone potentially dangerous. I have talked to Leonard about this more times than you can imagine. He tells me, each time, that he will do better. But he doesn’t. Empty promises, you see. And we think this is why Leonard left.”

  “Because you spoke to him about his teaching practices?” Mary asked.

  “Because he was tired of playing by our rules,” said the dean. “Well, when you are part of a business you have to read the company line sometimes. It’s the American way, you know. Leonard couldn’t abide by that, so he left in the night and will never teach here again.”

  “You’ve fired him?” she asked.

  “Of course not. We don’t fire professors with tenure. But we can make it so that Leonard has no course load. Or that he is reading research grants for a living in the basement of Carnegie. Anything to get him out of the classroom. There was a time when he was a brilliant lecturer. But not now. He’s too worried about the nonessential, the clutter of our daily lives, to teach students well.”

  “Who is Deanna Ward?” Mary pressed him.

  The dean looked at her. Again, there was no stir or awkwardness that told her he knew about Deanna. “A Cale girl who went missing years ago,” said Orman lightly. “Leonard wrote a book about the case, and for years since then he has been trying to sell his crackpot theory to anybody who will listen.”

  “What was his theory?”

  And then: an almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. Was she taking it too far?

  “I don’t know,” Orman told her, resignation in his voice. “I never read the book. It was, as far as I was concerned, a penny dreadful.”

  She decided to let it rest for a moment. They talked about the class, and how she would get credit for it. Mary feigned anxiety about getting proper credit for Logic and Reasoning 204. Orman walked her through the steps and gave her a timeline in which the grade could be expected on her transcript.

  “I’m just trying to keep my GPA,” she said. Now, Mary realized, the tables had turned. Now she was doing the acting, and she found herself strangely enjoying it.

  “I’m aware of that, Ms. Butler. Winchester is going to do all we can to make up for your lost time.”

  She stood, then, and Orman stood with her. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom before I go?” she asked him. “It’s a long drive back to Kentucky.”

  He showed her down a hall off to the right, and she stepped into a spare bathroom that contained only a toilet and a sink. Mary paced the bathroom, trying to get straight in her mind what she was going to ask Orman when she came out. Think, she demanded of herself. You’re close to breaking him. Push him about Deanna Ward. As she was standing in front of the mirror, she heard the back door open and close. Then a feminine voice was just outside the bathroom, in the hallway leading to the kitchen. Elizabeth Orman.

  When Mary came out of the bathroom, the Ormans were in the kitchen. The woman had brought in grocery bags, and the dean was putting some vegetables in the refrigerator.

  “I’ll just be going,” Mary said.

  Elizabeth turned and saw her. Dean Orman said, “Lizzy, this is Mary Butler. She was just talking to me about Professor Williams’s logic class.”

  Elizabeth nodded slightly and went back to her groceries. Mary searched her face for abrasions but saw nothing. Could she have healed so quickly? Was she simply, as Brian had wondered, putting on a performance that night in the woods?

  Dean Orman let Mary out, and she returned to her car. She hadn’t gotten the information she needed, but she knew she couldn’t push Orman about Deanna Ward without him becoming suspicious.

  Outside, the night was complete. She fell with a thud into the driver’s seat and sat with the heat blowing onto her cheeks. She was, finally, at a dead end. She put the Camry in reverse and started carefully backing down the hill. But as she was pulling down the drive, she saw something in her periphery. When she looked more closely, she saw that the Ormans’ garage door was still open and the security light was on. Mary put the Camry into park and got out of the car. She crept around the side of the house and looked into the garage at Elizabeth Orman’s car. The car cracked and hissed, its chassis still settling from Elizabeth’s trip to the grocery store.

  It was a red Honda Civic.

  The car’s back door was open, and Mary could see grocery bags stacked in the backseat. There was a bumper sticker that read SCIENTISTS MAKE THE BEST LOVERS. She turned to go back to her car when—

  “I just don’t understand why she came here,” said a woman’s voice from inside the door that led from the garage into the house. Mary hunched low, so low that she was almost underneath the back end of the car. The woman wouldn’t be able to see her, Mary knew, unless she came outside the garage.

  As Elizabeth Orman descended the steps, Mary scrambled completely beneath the car. She watched Elizabeth’s feet, felt the click of her heels vibrating against her ear. She must have been talking on her cell phone.

  “But why?” Elizabeth continued. “I don’t understand it. I think we might be losing her.” Again, she stopped to listen. Mary heard the voice on the other end, but she could not make out the words. It was just a scratchy, distant, masculine buzz. Elizabeth exhaled loudly, and then said, “I hope you’re right. It’s just—it’s just that we’re so close now. I would hate to lose her and have to start all over again.”

  At that moment, a can of tomato soup dropped onto the ground. It was just two feet from Mary’s nose, rolling under the car in a little arc toward her. Mary recoiled, tried to wriggle back toward the opposite side of the car without making a sound. Elizabeth’s hand came into Mary’s line of vision. Elizabeth knelt without looking beneath the car and felt around for the soup. When she found the can she rolled it toward her with her fingers, and Mary heard her place it in the sack.

  “You’re right,” she was saying now. “I shouldn’t worry. It’s always like this. I always worry about things that are out of my control. If she goes home, then we’ll find a way to get her back. If she does what she’s supposed to do and shows up at the other place, then it ends tonight. Thanks. You’ve been a big help. I’ve got to get back in to Ed now. We’re fixing dinner tonight before the thing, if it goes through.
I know, I know. When. When it goes through. Anyway, I’ll talk to you later tonight.”

  With that, Elizabeth snapped the phone shut. She climbed the steps and went inside, shutting the door behind her. Thankfully, she had left the garage door open. Mary slid from under the car and, in a hunched-over run, went around to the front of the house and climbed back inside her Camry. After a moment of composing herself, she started back down Grace Hill.

  It wasn’t until she was at the bottom that she reminded herself to breathe.

  46

  Deadline

  Mary drove along Highway 72 thinking about what she had seen—and heard. Who had Elizabeth Orman been speaking to? Williams? Were they in this together? It certainly appeared that way. But that was inconceivable. Perhaps—and now her mind was racing, careening in a thousand different directions at once—perhaps Professor Williams had gotten to Elizabeth Orman and convinced her that her husband was an accomplice in Deanna Ward’s disappearance. That had to be it. That had to be the reason Williams had given her the photograph of Elizabeth Orman’s car—to try and show Mary that Elizabeth Orman was in with them, that she was part of their effort.

  She came here before she went to the other place, Elizabeth Orman had said.

  The other place.

  If she does what she’s supposed to do and shows up at the other place, then it ends tonight.

  Where? Where was this other place? Was it in Bell City? In Cale? Was it Professor Williams’s house?

  Mary couldn’t stop thinking as she drove down Pride. It was getting dark, and she turned on her headlights as she pulled up to the corner of Montgomery.

  Other place.

  And then she knew. The link had to be Pig Stephens. He was the only character in the play that she hadn’t spoken to. She knew nothing about him other than what Williams had told them in the car. He was dangerous, she knew that, and he was in league with Orman. Perhaps the dean had found out about Elizabeth and Leonard Williams, and he had sent Pig to punish his wife.

  Find Pig Stephens, she thought.

  But where? She needed a place now, a location to go to. She needed to follow Williams’s script so that it could, as Elizabeth Orman had said, “end tonight.”

  Where could she find Pig Stephens? Where had Brian House found Elizabeth Orman that night?

  The light turned green, and she turned right onto Montgomery. Brian had found her just down the road from here. Afterward, he had driven straight to Mary’s dorm. He had been to the public library, and had taken the bypass back to campus. So he must have passed on his way—

  That’s it, she thought. Has to be.

  The Thatch River. They were trying to point her toward the boat. Ed Orman’s yacht.

  According to Dennis, Pig Stephens, the former cop, took care of Ed Orman’s weekender. Brian had found Elizabeth Orman out where Montgomery Street overlooks the Thatch, about three miles from campus. Mary was sure, suddenly, that Professor Williams was leading her there.

  She took a right on the bypass and made her way toward the Rowe County Marina. The marina appeared out of the foliage at the bottom of a hill just below Montgomery Street. The lights of the slips were on and dotting the cove. A few men walked here and there across the dock, mooring their boats. Mary found a parking space and walked down the slick, mossy steps to the slips. She had never seen Orman’s boat, but she guessed that it was probably the biggest one in the marina. There were four docks that intersected out on the water, and there were close to a hundred slips along each dock. It would take her an hour to traverse the whole thing.

  She walked out onto one of the docks and found the office. She knocked on the door, and a man’s voice told her to come in. The man was brown from the sun, and he was smoking a chewed cigar that was frayed on the end like a gag gift. He was sitting at a cramped desk in the office, stuffing paychecks into envelopes.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Pig Stephens,” Mary said.

  “Pig comes by around about 10:00 p.m.,” replied the man. “Keeps an eye on Ed Orman’s yacht.”

  “Ah,” Mary said. “The Ancient Mariner?” She knew that Orman would name the boat after a line or a title from the classics.

  “Naw,” said the man. “His is The Dante.”

  “Thanks,” Mary said, and she went back out on the docks and began her search for the boat.

  It didn’t take her long. The mast of The Dante rose high above the marina. The boat was close to the bank, Mary assumed because it would be easier for Pig Stephens to pull down and spotlight the docks to see if anyone was vandalizing it.

  She stood in front of the rocking boat. The wind was pitching higher, sending spray off the top of the water and onto her cheeks. It was bitterly cold by now, and almost completely dark. Mary had no idea why she was here or what she was looking for, but something of interest had to be here somewhere. Elizabeth Orman was the link to Pig Stephens, and this is where Pig came every night to take care of his client’s investment. Was she supposed to wait until 10:00 and talk to Pig personally?

  Mary sat on the dock, her legs pulled up into her chest. The Dante’s mast rattled in the heavy wake. She closed her eyes, as Williams had instructed them to do so long ago in Seminary East, and tried to make sense of all she had found. The only photograph she hadn’t explained was of the dog, the black Labrador. But there would be no dogs here, of course.

  The dock rocked gently, and she pulled herself farther into her coat, until almost no skin was exposed. She thought about Deanna Ward, wondered where she could be, all these years later. Deanna, and Polly, and Professor Williams. So many questions answered, but still so many left. She thought about that day in 1986, when Polly was brought mistakenly back to Wendy Ward. What must Wendy have thought when she saw Polly? Was she being punished for her tryst with Dean Orman? Did she feel, in that moment, as if she had deserved that fate?

  “Ma’am?” said a voice above her.

  Mary sat up and blinked at the man. It was the man she had seen earlier, in the office.

  “You were asleep,” he said. “We don’t really like people to sleep on the docks. Afraid they’ll roll off into the water. It’s happened a few times.” The orange eye of the cigar pulsed and then swung down to his side.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Mary said. She scrambled to her feet. It took her a moment to orient herself, but then it came to her. The marina. Then she thought, Pig. “What time is it?” she asked the man.

  “It’s about nine forty-five,” he said. “You been out here for a good while. I bet you’re about froze to death.”

  Now that he mentioned it, Mary was numb. Her feet were stiff and aching. Her hands, which she had squeezed tight into the sleeves of her coat, were sore from where she had clenched her fists so fiercely.

  She thanked the man and walked away from him toward the bank. In the parking lot, she sat in her Camry with the heat on, waiting. How would she know Pig Stephens? Maybe he was the owner of the black Labrador. Maybe he kept it in his truck, a sort of companion on his rounds at the marina. She assumed he would pull up and stop, get out of his vehicle, and approach The Dante. She waited, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. What would she do when he got here? She had no idea. She might approach him, possibly, as she had done to Dean Orman. She figured by now, after playing the game for so long, that she would be used to acting on instinct. At least she hoped so.

  To her right, she heard a truck pull into the lot. The truck swung close to the river and stopped. A man got out. He was carrying a heavy flashlight, and he shined it down on the docks. Mary got out of her Camry and walked toward the man. “Pig?” she called, but her voice caught on the wind and was carried away. She called his name again, and the man turned. He swung the spotlight at her, and momentarily she was blinded.

  “Who’s that?” he asked. His voice was deep, inflected with a thick Southern accent.

  “I just want to ask you some questions,” she said, the light still piercing her eyes.

&nb
sp; “Kind of questions?” he asked.

  “Some questions about Ed Orman.”

  He lowered the flashlight. “Go on,” he said.

  “What do you know about him?” she asked.

  “I just know he cuts me a check every month. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Do you know that he fathered a child with one of his students?”

  The man shifted. Mary still couldn’t see his face, but she could see that he was overweight, his stomach bulging out over his belt. “What business is it of mine?” Pig asked.

  “It’s just that your name has come up in some of Ed Orman’s doings.”

  “Doings?”

  “The disappearance of a girl named Deanna Ward, for instance.” Mary was pressing on now, trying to reach something. Whatever inhibitions she had at the beginning of the day had now dissolved, and there was something enlivening about standing in front of him and talking as if she were the one in control of the situation.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said.

  “Ed Orman thinks you do.”

  They let that hang between them. Down the bank, the Thatch rocked and swayed, and the boats banged in their slips, making a cacophony of sound in the night. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the flashlight exploded on again and she lost her vision. Mary held her arm up to her eyes, and she was able to see his feet—just his boots, walking toward her. She scrambled away from him, but he was grabbing her, forcing her back toward him. Still blind, she smelled his breath, musty and thick and strangely earthy.

  Mary pulled away from him and ran. She felt him, felt his heat, close behind her. She saw her Camry, its door still open. There was a ringing coming from inside it: her cell phone. It seemed like a thousand miles away, but the car could have been no more than a hundred feet in front of her. Oh God, Mary. What have you done? Somehow, she made it to the driver’s seat and shut the door. Pig was a step behind her, and when she tried to slam the door his hand was inside. “Arrrrrll,” he growled, falling back onto the car beside hers. Behind the wheel, she backed out onto Montgomery Street and gunned the engine toward Winchester. By the time she was out on the highway, she had forgotten the phone.