by Dima Zales
I put on my slippers and open the door. Melody Katz is just coming down the hall towards me. “Bad news,” she says. “Rita’s not back yet.” Which means we all have to go downstairs and then outside into the freezing cold until Security gets here. “Come on, everybody,” she yells, knocking on doors as she continues down the hall.
I switch my slippers out for my snow boots, wrap my scarf around my neck and put on my coat. Beth’s doing the same thing, and we trudge downstairs. It looks like about half the dorm is here; there are still a lot of people who haven’t come back from break yet.
The last two people to exit the building are Kate Billings and her roommate Terrie, and the guilty looks on their faces answer the question of who was responsible for the fire alarm. I’m probably the only person here who isn’t angry with them – they spared me seeing the nightmare again, after all.
We all shiver together for twenty minutes before Security shows up, and it’s another ten before the alarm finally goes silent and we’re allowed back inside.
Sunday morning. Beth’s over at breakfast and I’m lying in bed, thinking unpleasant thoughts. If Brian’s right, I’ve only got seven days left now. There were no more dreams – or nightmares – when I got back to sleep, but I can’t put it out of my mind now that I’m awake.
There isn’t much time. Seven days is nothing. And I’m no closer to knowing one single concrete thing about the killer or where he lives or anything else than I was yesterday.
I need something. I’ve got a nagging feeling that there’s something familiar about him, that I have seen him somewhere before. I told Beth I hadn’t, and I’ve been telling myself I haven’t, but the more I think about it, the more I think that isn’t actually true.
Maybe – if I had a picture of him, one I could look at while I’m awake, in the bright light of day, maybe that would help. But how? How could I get – oh!
I’ve been stupid. There is a way. I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me before. I just need a little help, and there’s someone a couple of doors down the hall who can provide it.
I knock on the door of room 206, and a tired voice answers, “Come in.”
Terrie MacKenzie looks up at me from her bed. She couldn’t possibly be more of a contrast to her roommate Kate, sitting at her desk. Terrie’s really tall, maybe even six foot, and rail-thin with long, bright red hair. Kate’s a full foot shorter, with dark brown hair. Terrie frowns at me. “Look, we’re sorry about the fire alarm last night. What more do you want from us, blood?”
I shake my head. “No, Terrie, I don’t care about the fire alarm. Actually, I’m glad you set it off.” They both look at me suspiciously, but I just press on.
There’s another very important difference between Kate and Terrie. Kate goes to the music school, but Terrie’s a student at the Ohio Institute of Art. “I was just hoping to borrow your drawing skills for half an hour or so, if you’re free.”
She gives me a blank look. It is kind of a strange request. “I guess so,” she says finally. “What for?”
I tell her basically the truth, which still somehow feels like a complete lie. “Don’t laugh, but I’ve been having this dream, the same dream, for a month now. It’s driving me crazy. I know I’ve seen the guy in it before, but I can’t figure out who it is. I thought, maybe, if I had a picture of him to look at, it might jog my memory.”
She’s very skeptical. “You want me to draw somebody you’re dreaming about?” When she says it out loud, it does sound absurd, doesn’t it?
It probably is, but it’s also the only thing I can think of. “Well, yeah. If I describe him, can you draw that?”
“Like a police artist,” Kate chimes in. That’s it! That’s exactly it!
Terrie still seems doubtful, but she sits up and moves to get her sketchpad and a box of colored pencils anyway. “OK. If you want me to, I’ll try. Let’s go to the study room, there’s better light in there.”
I’m not sure how much better the light there can be; the sky outside is gray just like it’s been every day for the past several months. But she’s the artist; she must see something I don’t. She sits down across the little table from me.
“I’m not sure how to start,” I admit. It looks so easy on those TV cop shows when they do this.
“Me neither,” Terrie answers, screwing up her face in thought. “How about – OK, basically what’s the shape of his face? Round, or more of a long face?”
I concentrate; I don’t know why it’s so hard to summon up the memory of him when I want to see it. It comes often enough on its own when I don’t. I can almost see, though – there! There it is!
”Kind of a long face. More oval than round.” She starts drawing, and she goes on for a while. She got a heck of a lot from that one answer. She puts down her pencil, shows me the sketchpad.
“You already put the eyes and nose and everything in!”
She shrugs. “The basic proportions are pretty much the same for everyone. This way we’ve got something to work from.”
I guess that makes sense. “The eyes are a little farther apart. Maybe a half inch? No, less than that. And the nose is a little more pointed.” She erases and then draws again. I’m doing my best to focus just on his face, and not anything else about the nightmare. It’s very hard.
“What about this?”
Much closer already. Too close. I have to focus. I have to keep it together. Just remember his face, and nothing else. “You’ve got it. The lips are a little thinner, and he shouldn’t be smiling.” More erasing, more drawing. “You’re really good,” I say, with more surprise in my voice than there probably should be. She’s so caught up in what she’s doing that she doesn’t notice it, thankfully. She doesn’t notice either that I’m sweating, or that my hands are shaking.
“What about his hair?”
“Parted on the left. Not very thick.” The hair is adjusted. Then the ears. Then back to the eyes. “Blue. Kind of a dull blue, though. And maybe they’re a tiny bit more round.” Terrie draws some more. “The forehead’s wrinkled. Not a lot, though. Just barely.”
Finally she sets down her pencils and holds up the finished picture. “It’s him! You really did it.” I must have more willpower than I thought; what I want to do is tear the picture into a hundred pieces so I don’t have to look at that face and be reminded of what it means. Instead, I sit there quietly and smile. She smiles too, gives me a little bow. “Thank you so much,” I hear myself say. “I definitely owe you for this.”
She waves my thanks away. “No problem. It was really interesting, actually. I hope it helps you.” I hope so too.
I take the sketch and go back to my room. Now I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere besides the dreams. I just can’t remember where. I don’t know how long I sit there staring at him before I hear the key in the door and Beth walks in. She throws off her coat and looks questioningly at me. “What’s so fascinating?”
I show her the picture. She’s got an even more curious expression now. “Where’d you get a drawing of Dr. Walters, and why are you staring at it like that?”
Beth is sitting on her bed, and I’m sitting on mine. We’ve been sitting this way for at least ten minutes now. We’re just looking blankly at each other. I think both our brains may have short-circuited.
I’ve been asking myself, over and over, how did I not see it? How did I not make the connection? The picture is obviously Dr. Walters. There’s no scar on his cheek, but besides that it’s him exactly. How did I not realize it all along?
Beth is the first to recover her voice. “How’d you get – did you have Terrie draw it?” I nod. “You described the guy you’ve been seeing, and she drew – she drew that picture?” Another nod. “That’s the face you’ve been seeing since Thanksgiving?” And another. “Him. That face. The one that looks exactly like my advisor.” Still another nod.
“Former advisor,” I remind her. I go on, and I’m not really sure where the words come from, “who quit for no good reaso
n, and who’s probably been lying about where he’s been since September.”
Oh, God. It all fits. It really is him.
But how could it be? He’s a professor! Wouldn’t someone else in the department have seen something wrong?
Beth is thinking exactly the same thing. “I had two classes with him. I’ve been in his office I don’t know how many times. I’ve been to his house,” she takes a deep breath, and her expression is pained. “You’re saying that’s who’s been – that’s who you’re – he’s the one who…” She’s begging me to stop right now, to say that I’ve made a crazy mistake, that it obviously isn’t him. She drops her eyes, she won’t look at me.
I want to be wrong as much as she wants me to. But I’m not. “Yes,” I say, and Beth won’t look back up. “Beth, please. Look at me.” She still won’t.
I take a deep breath. “Damnit, Beth! You’re my best friend,” I say, my voice breaking. “You think this is easy? You think I want it to be true?” She starts to very slowly raise her head. “You know I would never lie to you. I would never hurt you. You know that. I couldn’t love you more if you really were my sister.”
She’s not quite looking me in the eye yet. “But you’ve been having the dreams for a month! Why didn’t you realize right away?” She’s looking for any way for me to be wrong. I am, too, but there isn’t.
“I think it’s been there all along. I just couldn’t – I couldn’t accept it. I guess I couldn’t believe one of our teachers could do – what he’s doing.” Now she is meeting my eyes. She knows I’m right. She knows it’s true, but she doesn’t say anything. I keep talking. “If I didn’t know it in my heart, if I didn’t know for sure, I wouldn’t say it. It’s true, Beth. I wish it wasn’t. But it is. I know it’s him.”
I see a tear leaking from her eye. I don’t know how she’s held it back this long. It’s just the one at first and then, suddenly, they start to flood down her cheeks. “No!” she yells, but I know it’s not me she’s yelling at. “I trusted him! I’ve been alone with him! And you’re telling me he’s a – a murderer!”
“I’ve been alone with him too,” I say, barely louder than a whisper, “I’ve had to watch him – over and over. All these nights.” And my tears start to flow too.
I go to her. We collapse into each other’s arms, and all either of us can do is cry until there aren’t any more tears left.
“So what the hell do we do about it?” We’re still sitting on her bed. We haven’t moved in what seems like forever.
I’ve been asking myself the same thing. As my father would put it, that’s the $64,000 question. “There’s no proof,” I say. “None. We can’t go to the police without something concrete.”
“We could just go to his house,” Beth points out. I’ve thought of that already.
“And do what? Break in and look for evidence?” Aside from the practical difficulties, breaking into someone’s house is a crime and it’s hard to see the police taking our word for why we did it. I guess we could stake out the house, and call the police when he shows up with his victim. Unless he’s already got her there. And what if he’s got a gun? It doesn’t seem like a good option.
Beth can see exactly what I’m thinking and from her expression she’s come to the same conclusions I have. “We’ll have to get evidence some other way, then,” she says, and there’s a hardness in her voice that I’ve only heard a handful of times in all the time I’ve known her. I understand it. She feels utterly betrayed. Which she has been. I hate that I’m the one who delivered the news.
“What are you thinking?” I’m a little bit afraid of the answer.
She gets up from the bed, paces a bit as she thinks. “People are going to be talking in the department now that he’s completely gone, right? Ray will hear everything. There’s got to be something that’ll help us. I’ll get him to tell me. I’ll get him drunk if I have to.” She laughs, but there’s no humor at all in it. “Hell, I’ll sleep with him if I have to.”
“Beth!” I’ve heard her say something like that a thousand times, but always in jest. She means it now.
“What’s the problem? We need to find out. And anyway, he’s cuter than Ron,” she says with a weak smile. I laugh, much more than her joke deserves, just to break the tension. She joins in and just like that we’re both hysterical. Neither of us can stop until I start hiccupping, and that just sets her off again. It’s a good five or ten minutes before we’re both finally calm.
A few minutes later, Beth stands up, a glint in her eye. “You know what? We should go by his house. Right now.”
“Why?” I can’t even guess what she’s thinking.
“I don’t want to do anything – really – but we have to at least be sure he’s still there. Better we do it now.” She’s going through her dresser, looking for something – one of her notebooks from last spring. “I’ve got his address. I knew I had it there.”
We’re in Joe Karver’s car, which Beth harassed him into letting us borrow. I’m driving, which he insisted on as a condition of letting us have it. Brian’s next to me in the passenger seat – I insisted on him coming – and Beth is in back.
She’s giving me directions and trying to control her impulse to be a backseat driver. I’m following her directions as best I can and trying to control my impulse to steer us straight into oncoming traffic just to shut her up.
We make a couple of wrong turns but, finally, we somehow end up in the right neighborhood with car and friendship still intact. It looks quiet, with tree-lined streets and nicely-kept houses. The cars in the driveways are mostly newer and in good shape. I can definitely imagine a professor living around here.
I see the sign for the street we’re looking for, and I start to tense up as I turn onto Songbird Lane. We’re looking for number 3911. “There’s 3605,” Brian says, so we’ve got three blocks to go.
I drive slowly, and we’re all silent as we go by one block, two blocks, and then we’re on his street. I’m sure it’s just my imagination, but I swear I can hear all of our hearts beating; I feel like mine is ready to jump straight out of my chest. “I’ll go by as slowly as I can, take a good look,” I whisper, and both Brian and Beth have their eyes peeled out the windows.
“That’s not right!” Beth shouts, and I’m so startled I slam on the brakes – not that we were going fast enough for it to make that much difference.
I whip around to face her. “What? What happened?”
“Look for yourself,” she says, pointing to the mailbox at the end of 3911’s driveway. I can see from here – in big letters, “The Kelleys” is written on the side.
“Maybe you had the address wrong?” Brian suggests, but, already halfway out the door, Beth shakes her head.
“No. That’s the house. I remember it.” She’s walking up the driveway now, and I don’t think this is a good idea at all but I can’t let her go alone. Brian’s out of the car as well. “That’s definitely the house. Except…”
She points to the car in the driveway. It’s not a Cadillac. It’s a four-door BMW, with a “Proud Parent of an Honor Student” bumper sticker. And on the lawn, just a few feet from the front door, is a skateboard.
“You said Dr. Walters lived alone.”
Beth nods. “Yeah, that’s my point. And look at the window up there – up on the second floor.” I can barely make out what I think are several stuffed animals sitting just inside on the windowsill.
Beth takes matters further into her hands; she marches right up to the front door, rings the bell. Even though it seems pretty clear that Dr. Walters doesn’t live here anymore, I’m still terrified. I won’t abandon her, though; I walk up behind her, Brian at my side. He takes my hand, and I feel him shaking just as much as I am.
The door opens, and a man and a woman stand there looking at us. He looks nothing like the man in the nightmares, nothing like Dr. Walters. They’re holding hands, and I see the wedding rings they both wear. I feel some of the fear drain right out of me; there’s
no question now he doesn’t live here.
“Hi,” Beth says brightly. “Is Dr. Walters here? Thomas Walters?”
They both look at us blankly. “You’ve got the wrong house – oh,” the woman says. “Walters! He was the previous owner, isn’t that right?”
The man – her husband – agrees. “Yeah. We bought the house in July, he’s been gone six months now.” The fear comes right back. Six months? How are we going to find him now?
Beth keeps her composure. “Oh! I’m sorry we bothered you. Just – do you know anything about where he moved to?” Please. Please! Give us something. Anything.
They both shake their heads. Of course they don’t know. They retreat back behind their front door. We go back to the car, tails between our legs, and it’s Brian who voices what we’re all thinking. “What the hell do we do now?”
The day is almost gone now, and we’re no better off than we were this morning. The three of us return the car and I can’t keep myself from giving Joe Karver a withering glare and a “For God’s sake!” when he feels the need to go outside and check for himself that it’s in one piece.
I know it’s going to be pointless, but I borrow a phone book from Mona, and of course it is pointless. The listing for Dr. Walters has the address we were at today. The phone number, when I call it, is disconnected. I call information, and there’s no listing at all for Dr. Walters. So that’s a total dead end.
Once that’s done, the three of us go over to Lardner for a thoroughly depressing dinner. Nearly everyone is back from break now. Under other circumstances, I’d be glad to see friends; happy to hear them talk about their holiday and brag about mine. But right now I’m feeling miserable and defeated and hopeless and it obviously shows. It seems like every time I look up from my plate someone is asking me if I’m OK, and did something awful happen to me over Christmas? Beth is getting a similar treatment, and Brian’s only spared because nobody in Carson House knows him all that well.