Dominance

by Will Lavender

  “No,” Bern said quickly. “That wasn’t it at all. There was something about that word—something almost teasing. It was then that Morrow asked to be removed from the boy’s case. Charlie had come a long way but there was no question—for the first time, Morrow had failed one of his patients. But I also saw relief. He had gone inside Charlie Rutherford’s mind and had seen something truly ugly. Obscene. He wanted out.”

  “Did you ever see Charlie again?” asked Keller.

  “No. The boy’s mother came a few weeks later and removed him from Shining City. I heard she lived alone in Hamlet. A beautiful woman, so different from her son. The husband had died by then. But by then none of it mattered. We just wanted to be free of that child.”

  Bern walked them out. As she moved down the hall beside the doctor, she turned what he had said over in her mind. She thought of the Rorschach, of the photographs she had seen of the Dumant victims, of the word Bern had used: violence. Aldiss had wanted them to know these things about Charlie. He had wanted them to draw a line between the damaged man and the murders at Dumant.

  “The word,” Bern said now. They were at the exit, and outside the sky was darkening. Close to the end now.

  “What’s that, Doctor?” asked Keller.

  Bern looked at them with such intensity that Alex shivered. He was trying to warn her.

  “ ‘Daddy,’ ” Bern said. “Just that one word, the only one Charlie Rutherford ever said. “He was saying ‘daddy.’ ”

  Alex

  Present Day

  44

  Aldiss was here. He had somehow gotten into the mansion; he’d killed Frank Marsden and now Keller was in danger. She felt defenseless standing there alone in the pulsing emptiness, the only thing in the corridor the empty, looping wire. Everything else was dark.

  She took a step. Another. And where were the others? Why hadn’t Black or Christian Kane come to this wing to check on her, to save her? Why—

  There was a sound then, a ticking noise inside the blackness.

  Alex froze. It had come from the far end of the hall, beyond Keller’s room.

  Fear welled up inside her, forcing her to move. One step, and then another—she had to get to the far end of the hall. She had to get off this floor and down. The closest exit was there, not twenty-five feet away, and she had to get there.

  Another step. She was beside the window now where Frank had stood. There was blood stippled on the wall, and something else—heavy tracks on the corridor’s carpet. A black slither of blood sweeping away from her, as if Frank had been dragged away.

  Alex forced her eyes away from the stain. Moved on.

  She moved fast toward the steps, thinking, He could be downstairs right now. He could be on any floor of this house, waiting for me. She pictured Aldiss’s face, the grotesque smile greeting her in the darkness.

  Downstairs now. She took the flight of steps in two leaps and then turned, torquing her body with the rail, and pulled herself—

  Out. Out into the cold, where the wind sheared away her fear.

  There were people on the front lawn, a group of them standing over something on the ground. A clump of something, human-shaped. A thought screamed through Alex’s mind: No. Not Keller. Not Keller.

  Tentatively, she stepped forward into the crowd and looked down.

  It was Frank. Someone was doing CPR on him. Others were shouting, pointing toward a bundle of dark trees a hundred yards from the dean’s house. She saw Black gesturing wildly, organizing something. The man’s eyes fell on her.

  “Shipley,” he said. “What the hell happened up there?”

  “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  “We saw someone running,” Black went on. “Someone came out of the house and dropped Marsden, and then he took off toward campus.”

  “Keller,” Alex said. He must have been going after Aldiss.

  Black’s eyes flared in the half-dark. Then there was movement on the ground, and the paramedic who had been working on Marsden shouted, “I’ve got a pulse!”

  The detective turned away. The others in the circle all looked down at the man, who was still coughing blood and reaching out. Alex saw Lucy Wiggins there, crouching beside the fallen man. “Tell me what happened, baby,” she was saying. “Please tell me.”

  Black took a step toward the dying man. A wild thought burned in Alex’s mind: Go. Now.

  Another step by Black and Alex took off on a dead sprint toward campus.

  Toward Keller.

  Iowa

  1994

  45

  Night.

  Back in the hotel room they didn’t talk. Not about Charlie Rutherford, nor about Shining City or what it might mean. That was for later. Keller turned off the lamp and they lay together in the darkness. Finally, her voice searching for him, she said, “I’m scared.”

  She felt his gaze. Felt his touch on her. She closed her eyes.

  “I’ll protect you,” Keller whispered.

  He kissed her. She had a thought that it was ending. It had already ended, perhaps, on the night she walked into Aldiss’s classroom for the first time. Something would happen that would tear them apart. It was like driving a car in the dark, the feeling that something was plunging at them but they just couldn’t see what it was. Then Keller was touching her and Alex closed her eyes and gave in. Let go. He was the first man to have done this, to have gotten this far, this deep: here, then, it all flipped inside out. The guilt, the fear that she wasn’t doing something with what she had learned, that two girls were dead and she still hadn’t figured out why—it turned itself to a sharpness, an electric kind of pain, and she held on to him and lost herself completely.

  I love you, she said when they were finished. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it aloud but Keller pulled her closer nonetheless. He too saw that object in the distance. He knew what was bound to happen when the morning came and the night class ended, and so he held her. He held her but gently, cautiously.

  * * *

  She slept. She did not dream of Aldiss, but when she awoke in the postdawn gray, she felt as if he’d been there in that room. Guiding her. Pushing her. She slipped out of bed, gently enough to not wake Keller, and said to herself, Okay. Okay, Professor, I hear you.

  * * *

  Alex started the car and let the heat rush over her face. She wasn’t totally awake. Not yet. She’d spent the past few hours thinking, debating whether or not to go back to the house on Olive Street. After they left Shining City she wanted to return there, but it had been late. Keller felt it was too dangerous. There were too many unanswered questions, he thought, too many loose threads.

  But no. Alex knew that was wrong. So many questions had been answered now.

  She had dressed and showered, returned to the room and stared at Keller. He slept peacefully. It was just before seven in the morning. When are you going to tell him? she thought. When are you going to show him the book you found in the library?

  But she wasn’t ready. Alex was learning something about herself that maybe Aldiss had known all along. She wanted to win. She felt like the night class was hers. Hers and hers alone. The only way she could truly finish the class was to exhaust every angle. To go back to where she knew Aldiss was leading her. To return to Olive Street.

  Alone.

  46

  As she walked toward the front door of the Rutherford house, she thought of Shawna Wheatley and Abigail Murray, Richard Aldiss’s dead students. They had come this far; they had been this close. And then something had stopped them.

  What had they found? What had they uncovered to get themselves—

  Don’t, she thought. They made mistakes that you won’t. Aldiss has given you too much.

  She knocked.

  The door gasped open. Lydia Rutherford stood there with her robe cinched, her eyes suspicious. Something about her had changed. Does she know why I’m here?

  “Mrs. Rutherford,” Alex said, “I’m sorry for coming so early.”

  “What d
o you want?”

  Everything froze. This moment—Alex had practiced it in the hotel room that morning. Ran over it in her mind, got her lines exactly right. But now, standing before the woman, she could say nothing. She dropped her eyes to the porch.

  “Charlie had a bad night,” she heard Lydia say. “Got real sick.”

  Alex looked up. “I’m sorry.”

  Something in the woman’s glare broke. And as it did Alex saw that this woman only wanted an ally. She wanted someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay, that her son was going to make it. Pity shot through Alex and she said, “I know how it is. My father . . . he’s dying.”

  Lydia moved back, her gaze still on Alex. She looked to be battling with herself, debating on the purpose of this student with her bed hair and her sleepy eyes. Finally, the better part of her won out and she opened the screen door wider. Said, “Come in. I’ll fix you tea.”

  Then she was inside the house. There was a flash of light, a mad cartoon soundtrack. Alex turned and saw someone sitting in a corner chair.

  “Charlie?” Lydia said to the man’s back, and when he didn’t answer she said it louder: “Charlie!”

  Slowly he turned and looked at his mother. The television light bathed his face in sickly greens and reds. He opened his mouth slowly but said nothing.

  Lydia looked down at the carpet. Alex saw it in her eyes: she was afraid of her own son. “Charlie, we’ll be in the kitchen,” she said weakly. Then, to Alex: “Come on.” Alex glanced at Charlie, who had turned away now. She knew that she would have to get alone with him, find out what he knew. The impossibility of the task made her shudder, and she turned and followed Lydia into the kitchen.

  Alex sat at the table. Lydia moved around the kitchen, began slamming cabinets, muttering something to herself. Alex stared at the walls. It was 1960s Americana, unchanged probably since before Charles Rutherford’s death. Above the sink was a frame, and inside the frame was a needlepoint square: CHARLIE’S AND MOMMA’S KITCHEN.

  Alex looked at the woman. She thought of Charlie in the next room. Now or never. “Where’s your bathroom, Mrs. Rutherford?” she asked.

  Lydia pointed and Alex slipped out. Charlie was still sitting in his chair and watching his cartoons. She moved toward him slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, braced herself, and said, “Your dad—I bet you really miss him.” How idiotic, Alex! But it didn’t matter: the man didn’t turn, didn’t move.

  Alex shook her head and continued down the hall. It would have to be done sometime; she would just have to find the right words. Approach him somehow. Get him to tell her more about his father. It was the only way. The mysteries are one and the same.

  In the hallway she took in her surroundings. There were family photos on the wall, some of them of Charles Sr. Here was the man and a much younger Lydia, and in her arms was the baby. They were smiling, but Alex couldn’t help but read something in their gaze. Something of the future pain. She went on.

  Into the bathroom, where she stared at herself in a streaked mirror. What are you doing, Alex? Why did you come back here? She splashed water on her face and then closed her eyes. She saw Aldiss sitting in that cell, head in his hands, his books arranged before him. His new information there on the cold stone floor as he waited for her to return and—

  She opened the door and left the bathroom. She took one step and paused; something had caught her eye.

  A room. It was there on her right. A cluttered room, boxes and detritus slung everywhere. Down the hall she heard Charlie’s cartoon soundtrack blipping, and behind that was the teapot beginning to churn. Alex turned to look at the room again, wondering, Could I?

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  The room smelled like must. Motes spooled down from buckled shelves, and Alex pulled the cord on a bare ceiling bulb and looked at the junk. The boxes were old and feathered, a skin of dust lying atop them. Some of them were unlabeled, but others were marked Charles. She removed the lid on one of these boxes and looked inside.

  Books. Bound manuscripts, photocopied and laid perfectly inside the box.

  But there was something about these books. Hands shaking, she removed one of them and flipped through it. As she did, the knowledge dawned on her. The slow, horrible knowledge that she was looking at what Shawna Wheatley and Abigail Murray had found before they died. The last piece of the puzzle, the final clue in Aldiss’s literary mystery.

  The books were encyclopedias.

  Alex

  Present Day

  47

  Alex ran toward the dark campus. There was someone a good distance in front of her—a man. She called, “Keller!” but he did not stop. She moved on into the night.

  Then she saw where he was going, and it made her blood go cold.

  He was heading toward Culver Hall.

  Alex thought, This is where it ends, this is where it ends, this is where—her pulse roaring and the wind striking her face full on. She had no choice but to follow the man.

  At the front door now, where he had entered. She stopped herself, thinking of Black. But there was no time to call for help from the detective. If Keller was in this building with Aldiss, then she was the only person who could stop what was going to happen.

  She pulled the door open and stepped inside Culver.

  48

  The first thing she noticed was the light.

  It was a bleeding light, a slow strain of whiteness on the walls. Otherwise the classroom building was pitch-dark. Alex climbed the three steps in the vestibule and then turned the corner into a long corridor. When she did she saw a man. He was crouching just in front of her inside that pool of security light. Aldiss, she thought. But no. It wasn’t the professor.

  It was Matthew Owen.

  “He’s hurt,” Owen said. “Get someone.”

  Alex looked down. Owen’s hand was on Keller’s back. Keller lay on the floor, motionless. Injured. There was nothing in Alex’s mind but confusion. Why was the nurse here in this building? What the hell was going on?

  “Matthew,” she managed to say, her tongue thick and clumsy. She looked at him, tried to place him here. “What are you doing?”

  “I saw Aldiss running away from the house,” he said breathlessly. “I followed the professor in here and found Keller like this.”

  “Where is he, Matthew?” she asked. “Where’s Aldiss?”

  “I don’t know. I lost him in the hallway, but he’s still here. In the building.”

  She took a step toward Owen and looked down. There was a gash on Keller’s head, and the nurse was applying pressure to the wound. She saw how he looked at Keller, how concerned he seemed about the other man. It’s time to stop, she told herself. This is not the night class. This isn’t part of Aldiss’s game. He’s trying to help.

  Seeing her relax, Owen nodded. “Aldiss hurt your friend. I need help. Can you help me, Alex?”

  Slowly, carefully, she knelt beside Keller. She listened to the shallow keen of his breath, running her fingers through his hair as Owen inspected the wound. The hall was quiet.

  “We’re in danger here,” Alex said. “The professor—he’ll come back for us. For me.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Owen said without looking up. There was something distant about his voice. Something almost detached.

  “What are you talking about? He’s here, Matthew, in this building. You said so yourself. He’s going to come back and—”

  “Shhh,” he said, pressing harder, dark blood trickling out around his fingers.

  Alex stood up. “Well, I’m going. I’m the only one who can convince him to turn himself in. Stay with Keller until I get back, okay?”

  She began to move into the darkness. She knew her way through this corridor, even though there was little light. She’d walked here in her dreams many times.

  She moved down the hallway, keeping close to the wall. Emergency lighting bled onto the floor, and she followed the grid wit
h her hands on the cold stone. Counting steps, her heart roaring in her ears, she felt the terror replaced by a hopeless inevitably. Three steps, four. Before she could take another something stopped her. A slight hush from behind, a flit of shadowy movement. She stopped, listening. Go back. Go outside and get Black right now. This isn’t your job, Alex. But it was. It had been hers since the beginning, since she’d found the book and its hidden message. Now she had to finish it.

  Another step, and again something made her hesitate. Footsteps? She turned around and—

  —everything exploded into whiteness. She stumbled back against the stone wall, an arm blocking her vision. A powerful flashlight had been aimed directly into her eyes. She saw a man’s legs approaching, his dark shoes softly vibrating the tile beneath her. The upper half of him was invisible, sheared away by the manic light. Owen? Aldiss? She had no way of knowing. The world had simply winked out. “What are you doing?” Alex shouted, her voice a panicked and warbling screech.

  No response. The man drew closer.

  Her vision swam, tiny pinwheels spinning behind her lids. She blinked madly, her eyes watering, and felt the man there, in her space. Felt his heat. Smelled him. She still could see nothing but his dark slacks. There was something familiar about the way he stood, about the cant of his posture. But before she could figure out what it was the light pressed forward, blotting everything out again.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  No sound. He kept the light high. There was a kind of controlled violence in it; that light could have been a knife. An axe.

  “Professor, is that you? It’s over, Professor. They know all about you, about what you’ve—”

  Closer now. The light was almost pressed against her face. The bulb touched her cheek, stinging her skin. She slapped him away but he restrained her, pushed her back into the wall. And it was then, as he moved his hand toward hers, that the light shifted. Was knocked upward the slightest degree. And beneath it, in her blurred vision, she saw the man’s face.