Aldiss kept them riveted the entire time. He led them deep into the novel, weaving in and out of the obvious symbolism and the more indirect passages, talking about the book as if it were a breathing thing. He read pages aloud, bringing his voice up an octave to impersonate Ann Marie in such an exacting way that each of them would hear his voice when they read the book in their dorms that night.
At the end of his lecture he was out of breath, sweat glistening on his brow. Alex watched the man, amazed at how much meaning he had been able to wring from the text.
“So,” the professor said, glancing at the egg timer he kept on his table. There were only a few minutes left. “For next week, the following fifty pages of The Coil and any more on Charles Rutherford you can find. I would suggest you begin by taking a look at his hometown: Hamlet, Iowa. Such an interesting place. And of course there are so many references to Iowa in Fallows as well. Now, are there any questions for me?”
Alex watched Aldiss. She knew her time was running out, and he had given her precious little to go on. He’d told her nothing about what to do next, where to turn. If she was going to follow the message inside the book, then she needed help from him. But how? What questions to ask, and how to phrase those questions without the rest of the class—Do not tell a soul you have seen this—catching on?
Ninety seconds left. Ninety seconds until the feed was cut.
“No questions, then?”
Sixty seconds. She imagined Aldiss, his long walk back to his cell, those two faceless guards leading him, the bars closing him in. The professor’s life, shadows and words and the agonizing screams of other caged and damaged men. His excitement about finding something, uncovering new information, and all it had led to was this. A silent lecture hall, a scared girl. Alex imagined his disappointment in her, his anger.
Richard Aldiss is innocent.
Thirty seconds.
Go on, Alex. Say something.
Twenty seconds, and—
“What’s in Hamlet?”
Aldiss looked at her. The professor’s gaze changed, turned more serious. More intense. It was as if information was being passed only to her. As if she and the professor had entered into a conversation apart from the other students. She had the sensation that the lecture hall had fallen away and she was staring at the television screen in an empty, electric-blue room.
“I suggest asking my friend Dean Stanley Fisk,” Aldiss said. “He can tell you a lot about Hamlet.”
And with that the feed was cut and the professor faded out once again.
* * *
After class she walked home through the driving snow. In the distance, over the bowl of the west campus, the ice-heavy trees seethed in the dark. The campus was dead at this hour. No traffic crawled up Rose Avenue, no other students walked across the frozen quads.
Alex walked ahead of her classmates, rushing across Harper’s Knoll, the geographic center of campus, then down the hill at the administrative building called the Tower where the dorms sprayed out in a web of low-slung architecture. You could hear the freshmen boys whooping from here, could see smoke pouring out of the chimneys at the Greek houses. This is where I want to be, she found herself thinking when she made this walk across campus every evening. This is what I want to do with my life, to be a part of this. To teach literature at a place just like this.
“Do you trust him?”
She turned. It was her neighbor, Keller. He wore a down coat with a rabbit-fur hood, a patch on the chest that read JASPER COLLEGE FOOTBALL. He walked deliberately, his weight breaking through the snow, the crunch of his steps echoing off the Tower, which was now to their right.
“Aldiss?” Alex asked.
“Mmm.”
“Do you?”
He said nothing.
“He doesn’t look like a murderer,” she said.
“Murderers have a look?”
Alex smiled. “Manson did. Dahmer. Crazy eyes. Aldiss isn’t crazy.”
“Crazy like a fox, maybe,” he said. “Look.”
Keller showed her something. Caught in a security light, flattened by his palm so the wind wouldn’t yank it away, it was a piece of notebook paper. Tick marks, thirty or forty of them, tumbled out toward the right margin.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The number of times he’s lied.”
She looked up from the page. “And you know this how?”
“It comes from football. You block a guy, he shows you with his eyes what he’s going to do. This is what being an offensive lineman is about: going in the direction that the other guy goes. It’s a series of reading lies. Over and over and over again I do these little polygraph tests.”
“So what, you have blood pressure cuffs on Aldiss? The security in Rock Mountain must be lax, Keller.”
His turn to smile. “I’m serious. There are lots of things this guy does. In football you get good at knowing where to move before the play even happens: your man will look down, look off. He’ll say something to you across the line of scrimmage and his voice will break. These little . . . tells, you know.”
“And Professor Aldiss. He has tells.”
“A lot of them, just tonight.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means he knows who Fallows is,” Keller said. “He just can’t get to him. We’re like his legs. His legs and eyes. But to just give us the guy’s identity—that would be cheating. So Aldiss is leading us on, and we’re falling into it. That’s what these ‘riddles’ are about. Little pieces of the puzzle, one by one, until we know who really wrote those books. But there’s something else.”
Alex looked at him. “What?”
“I don’t know.” The jock shook his head, snowflakes wetting his cheeks. “I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’m working on it.”
Alex glanced off. Philbrick Hall was just ahead, the largest girl’s dorm at the college. She saw the silhouette of a girl on the top floor, stretched in a window, reading. She heard the squeal of someone’s telephone, and she thought of her sick father. Wondered when that call would come.
“Maybe you’re right,” she told Keller. “Maybe Aldiss is lying. Maybe he does know exactly who Fallows is and he’s playing this game with us. But I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” she said, “I like playing games.” And I like to win.
Alex
Present Day
9
One by one, the students from the night class began to arrive.
Alex was forcing herself to eat a bowl of soup that the dean’s nurse, Matthew Owen, had prepared for her when she heard a familiar voice calling from the outer room. She got up and pushed through the swinging kitchen door. More stilted progress and decay here in the great room. And standing in the middle of it all, dust twisting down around her, was Melissa Lee.
The woman had transformed from the sharp-tongued Goth girl she’d been during the night class. Now she was sensibly dressed with straight, black hair pulled away from her angular face; the only indication of the person she had been at Jasper was one diamond stud in her nose. She wore chunky, square-framed glasses and carried a high-end duffel beneath her arm. My God, Alex thought, she’s a soccer mom now.
“I hoped it wouldn’t be true,” Melissa said, and even her voice was different. Flat, almost affectless. A Stepford wife. “But then I saw the reporters over on the east campus on the drive in. My heart broke.”
“Mine too.”
She paused, something flitting in her dark eyes. Something mean and hateful. Here was the Melissa Lee from the night class. Then the look was gone and the suburban mother of three returned.
“Oh, Alex.”
They did not embrace. They had not been close during their time in the class.
“A student,” Melissa said. “Someone Michael had failed in one of his lit classes. That has to be what this is.”
Alex said, “Maybe.”
�
�Aldiss isn’t convinced.”
Alex blinked. Could this woman know of her assignment, of her visit with the professor that morning? If she did know, the others would as well.
“Dr. Aldiss knows very little,” Alex said. Might as well take the upper hand while she could get it.
“And the police? What do they believe?”
“I have a meeting with the lead detective of the investigation in an hour, and I’m afraid that I won’t have anything to report to him.”
“Perhaps you could tell him about Aldiss and Daniel Hayden.”
Alex took a sharp breath. “What about them?”
Melissa shook her head, a pitiable gesture: There’s so much you don’t know about the rest of us, Alex Shipley. “They had been corresponding with each other. This was not long before Daniel died.”
“Corresponding how?”
“Letters, puzzles—Aldiss kept in touch with Daniel. He wanted something from him. It was fucking weird, and I told Daniel that the last time we spoke.”
“Daniel was a former student,” Alex said, realizing how weak it sounded. How desperate. “It would have been normal for the professor to contact him.”
Melissa smiled. “How many times have you spoken with Aldiss since Daniel . . . since he killed himself?”
“Not since the memorial.”
“Exactly.” The woman put her arms around herself, drew in a great breath that made her body tremble. “God, Alex, how I would like to ask that man what he knows. How I would like to talk to him about Daniel’s death to see if he might—”
“Should I show you up to your room, ma’am?”
Alex turned and saw Matthew Owen standing just outside the foyer. She registered Melissa’s look when she saw the nurse, the spark in her eyes. Then Melissa composed herself and looked again at Alex.
“Strange, isn’t it?” she said.
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“For the dean to invite us all to stay here. It’s like . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t going to accept the invitation at first. But it is Dean Fisk, and no one wants to stay alone when something like this has happened. I don’t care how brave you are.”
“He’s a lonely man,” said Alex. “His health is failing him. I think he knows he doesn’t have much time left, and he wanted to put the class that had made him proudest back together one more time so that we could all grieve. That’s all.”
“Can I see him?”
Alex glared at her old nemesis, a thought tumbling through her mind: You will not find the manuscript. Not before I do.
“Stanley is resting now,” the nurse said from the stairs. “He will announce himself when everyone arrives.”
Melissa nodded, disappointment in her eyes. “Alex, we’ll chat more when I put my things away?”
“Of course.”
She turned and followed Matthew briskly up the stairs, shouldering her giant duffel as if it were filled with air. She was stronger than she looked. As Alex watched her go, she wondered, Could a woman have murdered Michael Tanner?
* * *
The second student arrived just minutes later. He’d brought a guest with him.
Frank Marsden was a character actor. Alex had seen him on episodes of CSI and NCIS and in bit parts in movies, recognized him from time to time as a villain’s henchman or, once, as the misunderstood cop who roughed up suspects in the interrogation room. He was thick and blond and ice-eyed, and he swept Alex into a one-armed embrace when she let him in the mansion. The woman at his side eyed her suspiciously, and Alex pulled away.
“My God, what’s happening to us all, Alex?” he asked, his breath hot. He’s drunk, Alex realized.
“I wish I knew, Frank.”
“This is Lucy Wiggins,” he said, motioning toward his guest. The woman stepped forward and offered her hand, and Alex shook. A cold grip, stiff and awkward. Lucy Wiggins—Alex recognized the name from some magazine or other, remembered one of her students going on about how gorgeous the actress was. Here, in this dark and musty mansion, the woman looked downright nondescript. She wore a black coat and a navy scarf and sunglasses pushed up into her professionally managed hair. It was probably the most Plain Jane she’d been in years. Alex watched as Lucy looked around the old house and trembled with the thought that she was going to have to stay the night in this godawful place.
Frank stepped into the great room and scanned the bookshelf in the corner. “I just talked to Michael not long ago,” he said, his back to Alex.
Alex’s pulse quickened. “And what did he say?”
“He seemed fine. He just wanted to catch up. Said it was too bad we hadn’t got together since Hayden. All that unholy mess. Said he thought about us sometimes. About how everybody said we hated each other when we took the night class.” Marsden stopped, focused on Alex as if he wanted this next piece of information to sink in. “I never had any animosity toward Michael, Alex. You have to believe that. The others invented this thing between us. That we were jealous of each other. I love—loved Michael. I never wished anything bad on him, no matter what any of the others tell you.” Then his gaze drifted off again, swept across the floor. “I was shooting a film in Canada when he called, you know, and didn’t have much time. But now—now I wish . . .”
She watched his bloodshot eyes drop, a hand come up to his brow. Lucy went to him and put her arm around him. They haven’t been together long, Alex thought. They just met. “Baby,” Frank said to her. “Baby, baby, baby. You don’t understand the history here. You don’t understand what I went through with these people.”
Alex waited. Then Frank turned around and smiled weakly.
“Our room,” he said.
“Upstairs. Melissa’s already gone up.”
Frank made a face and Alex said nothing. The gray afternoon clouds shifted outside, and sunlight poured in on him for the first time. She saw how drunk he really was now. Lucy practically held him upright.
“We’ll go on up,” he said. “Get some rest before we start planning the memorial service.”
“Of course.”
They walked then, arm in arm, out of the foyer. When he got to the foot of the stairs, Frank hesitated and turned back toward Alex. He’d changed suddenly, morphed into the actor he was. A fake face, a put-on grin—none of it was the truth.
“Alex?” he said.
“Yes, Frank.”
“Why are we all here together? Is it so you can watch us?”
Alex froze. She looked at Lucy again, and the woman too seemed to be waiting on an answer, some kind of explanation for being brought here.
Alex opened her mouth to speak but Frank interrupted her. He began to laugh—riotous, bellowing laughter. And then he ascended the steps, one by one, until his laughter was nothing but an echo.
* * *
After Frank and Lucy were gone, Matthew Owen came downstairs and entered the kitchen. Alex was there drinking her tepid soup, waiting for the rest to arrive. She turned and watched the nurse move to a bank of cabinets and remove a prescription pill bottle. He hadn’t seen her there, and because she didn’t want to frighten him she gently coughed. Owen quickly palmed the pills and turned around, his free hand to his heart.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said.
“Sorry.”
His eyes held on her for a moment, then he swiped his hand over his mouth and swallowed the pills. She watched his jaw work.
“This must be an intrusion,” she said. “For us all to be back here.”
“Not at all,” the nurse said. “Stanley’s wanted to have guests over for a long time. It’s just that we never thought it would be under these circumstances.”
“How long have you been employed by the dean?”
The man shook his head. “Employed by him? Hardly. Stanley doesn’t want me here. He just wants it to be over with. I go upstairs every day and expect to find him . . . Anyway, he’s talked about it many times, even asked me to do it for him.” Owen’s eyes drifted away, and Alex g
lanced at the cabinet behind his back. “I’ve been employed by the college for seven years now—I was here when you all . . . when Daniel Hayden died.” Alex vaguely remembered Owen, a floating presence through the rooms. She hardly remembered anything about that weekend. “I just wasn’t as necessary back then. I took this job after leaving a hospital in Burlington. Too much political bullshit. Here it’s just me and this old house.”
“And Dean Fisk.”
“Yes, and him,” Owen said flatly. “Sometimes I hear him at night in the hallways, his wheelchair sliding down the floors. That’s the only time he’ll come out of his study. He doesn’t want anyone to look at him, so he hides himself. He says it’s his age, his face—they tell me he was always a vain man. But I don’t believe it.”
“What is it, then?”
“I think he gets off on hiding. My bedroom is on the fourth floor. Sometimes he’ll call for me and I’ll go room to room, looking. Searching. It’s like a game to Stanley. I get tired of it, but at least I’ve learned every inch of this godforsaken house. And what could I say to him? He’s a legend around here and I’m nobody.” Owen’s eyes fell away, down to the chipped and scratched tile. “That’s why the place is so dark. Even when I bathe him he scolds me for looking at him.”
“Do you enjoy the work?” she asked.
“Enjoy,” the man scoffed bitterly, as if the word itself had a texture, a flavor. “Mostly I spend my days walking up and down the halls. It’s good exercise if you keep moving. And of course I read.”
“What do you read?”
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