True Grey

by Clea Simon

  She was breathless by the time she mounted the stairs to University Hall. Panting when she knocked on the dean’s door, the heavy, humid air only making her sweat more. It was probably her red face, she realized, that caused Dean Haitner to look at her with such alarm when she pushed the door open to find him at his desk.

  ‘Ms Schwartz.’ His eyebrows almost made it up to his unnaturally dark hairline. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘I’m sorry to barge in without an appointment, Dean. But—’ She didn’t get a chance to finish. Outside, a peal of thunder cracked the air like gunfire, and an answering growl caused her to turn. Behind her, beside the opened door, stood Detective Rogovoy, clearing his throat. Next to him stood Trista, who stared at Dulcie with an intensity that made her wish she really did have the familial psychic ability. ‘Tris, what is it?’

  Her friend opened her mouth, only to be cut off by another loud crack and bang. The room was growing dark, and the click of Dean Haitner turning on his desktop lamp brought all their attention back to the front of the room.

  ‘Thank you for dropping by, Ms Schwartz.’ The lamp, with its low green shade, cast stark shadows on the dean’s face. ‘I was just about to send Andrew out to look for you.’ He gestured, and the tall student stepped out of the doorway beside the desk, accompanied by a uniformed Cambridge cop. ‘He had another errand to complete first.’

  From the movement behind her, Dulcie guessed that neither Rogovoy nor Trista had known that the undergrad or the cop were there, just inside the open doorway. Another low rumble, and Dulcie found herself wondering just what sort of scene she had stepped into.

  ‘These two came to see me,’ the dean continued, the lamplight playing up the crags and crannies in his no-longer-young face. ‘They had quite a story to tell.’

  Dulcie turned back to her friend, but Trista was staring straight ahead – at Andrew. ‘Trista, it’s not what you think,’ she said. ‘It’s not Andrew.’

  ‘And you would know, Ms Schwartz, because . . .?’ The dean left the question open, turning to smile at the cop. Outside, the wind had picked up, whistling through some slight opening in the oversized windows.

  It was the smile that did it. ‘For the same reason you would, Dean Haitner.’ Dulcie swallowed the lump in her throat, determined to get this out. ‘I was doing research, and I found out something today.’ She paused. No matter what, she couldn’t get Thomas Griddlehaus in trouble.

  ‘Melinda Sloane Harquist’s thesis was a sham.’ There, she’d said it. ‘She had no original research, and was trying to piggyback on what I had already found. I’m not sure how she knew what I had uncovered. I’ve only published one paper thus far . . .’ She paused, caught up suddenly in an image of her computer screen, awake and moving. Of Esmé, agitated, batting at the mouse pad.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’ Rogovoy had moved up to stand beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. As I was saying, there are some things that I don’t fully understand yet. But I do know that I was the one who had been doing the research. I was the one who had made the breakthroughs. But Melinda Sloane Harquist was being promoted as the next great scholar of the Gothic novel. She was getting extensive support, including unprecedented – and, may I say, unwarranted – access to the university resources, all the while I was being shut out and shunted into some kind of outsider status.’

  ‘And you have proof of this?’ The dean’s voice was quiet, barely audible above the wind.

  ‘No, not really.’ She couldn’t betray Griddlehaus. She didn’t know if he still had his copy of the chapter. ‘But it fits with the pages . . . the pages . . .’ Another loud crack, this time followed by a flash of lightning, saved her. ‘The page that was found in my desk.’

  ‘The page that you stole from her, without shame.’ The dean stood, and a flash of lightning cast his shadow across the desk. ‘And that page is evidence, just as it may be evidence of your involvement in the more heinous crime, which was why I alerted the Cambridge Police to the evidence in the Mildon.’

  ‘No!’ Dulcie was sick of being interrupted. Outside the rain had begun in earnest, pelting the window. She raised her voice to be heard. ‘That’s not true! Melinda was stealing from me. She was copying my research.’

  She turned toward her friends. In the darkened room she couldn’t make out their faces. ‘That’s why she needed special access. Somehow, she knew about everything I had found, and she wanted to be able to refer to the same primary sources. Only she hadn’t had time to retype her manuscript and write them in. She quoted what I had before she ever had a chance to see the manuscript I got it from.’

  ‘That’s some story, Ms Schwartz.’ The dean’s voice was still soft, yet somehow he could be heard over the storm. ‘If anyone believes it.’

  ‘They will when they see the original material,’ Dulcie was shouting. ‘Melinda quoted only the one passage I had typed into my computer – and nothing from the rest of the very same page. You know the truth. You gave her access . . .’ Esmé. The laptop. The missing excerpt, corrupted, somehow, within her computer. Another piece fell into place. ‘You gave her access. I don’t know how exactly, but somehow you helped her to hack into my computer.’

  ‘I gave her access, of course. But to purely legal sources.’ The dean turned to the uniformed cop. ‘She was brilliant, and she would have done us proud. If you –’ he turned back to Dulcie – ‘hadn’t killed her.’

  ‘Me? No—’ But the cop was already moving toward her.

  ‘Ms Schwartz, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.’ She looked from him to Rogovoy, who stood still as stone.

  ‘You see, Ms Schwartz, you just confessed to knowledge of the missing manuscript.’ The dean waited while the cop came up beside her. ‘And it’s quite clear from what you’ve been saying, here in front of witnesses, that you believed yourself to be her rival, unfairly bested in some kind of paranoid fantasy. Which sadly explains your motivation—’

  ‘No!’ Trista jumped forward, throwing her arms around her friend. ‘It’s not her you want,’ she yelled and pointed to the stunned undergrad who was still standing beside the desk. ‘It’s Andrew! Andrew Geisner! He was stalking her.’

  ‘No,’ said Dulcie, everything suddenly becoming clear. ‘It’s the dean. He was helping her cheat, though maybe he didn’t realize it at first. Though why he would want to kill her, to kill his own daughter, I’ll never understand.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  All hell broke loose. ‘She’s a crazy woman!’ The dean was on his feet yelling. ‘Take her out of here!’

  ‘What?’ Even Trista looked confused. ‘Dulcie, what are you saying?’

  The city cop, meanwhile, had his hand on Dulcie’s shoulder and with steady pressure was moving her away, toward the door. Outside, through the rain-streaked windows, Dulcie saw the flashing light of a cruiser. She wouldn’t have a chance to call Suze this time.

  ‘Wait just a minute here.’ It was Detective Rogovoy who restored order, stepping in front of them both, crossing his arms over his not inconsiderable chest. ‘I want to hear what the girl has to say.’

  ‘We know she’s your favorite,’ the dean said, accenting that last word in a particularly distasteful way. ‘That doesn’t mean she—’

  ‘Officer?’ Ignoring the dean, Rogovoy turned to his colleague. ‘I think you’ll agree we’re in no great rush.’ As if to underline his point, another wave of wind and rain rattled the windows. ‘Spare me a minute here.’

  The city cop must have nodded, because Dulcie saw Rogovoy relax a bit. His hand remained heavy on her shoulder, however, and she realized this was the time to talk.

  ‘I didn’t read Melinda’s manuscript,’ she said. ‘Yes, I saw it in the suite library. Last Saturday, the day . . . the day . . . Anyway, I saw it, before it disappeared. But then two pages showed up, both from my desk. At first, I thought they were student papers. They were full of hyperbole, overwrought writing and such. Only there was one quote – one quote th
at she kept going back to. And it was the same quote I had found, in a handwritten manuscript.

  ‘Still, I didn’t get it. I thought, gee, she must have gotten there before me. Then I went back to the Mildon.’ She was talking to Rogovoy now. He probably didn’t understand the vagaries of research, but he nodded for her to continue. ‘Melinda Sloane Harquist had dropped by, for an hour before a lunch date. A lunch date with her father.’ Dulcie stared at the dean. ‘And she had gone right to the material I’d been working on.’

  ‘Of course she did.’ The dean’s voice was dismissive. ‘Despite your psychotic imaginings about her identity, you knew she was writing about the same subject you are. No wonder you attacked her . . .’

  ‘No, she was checking on something. Checking on a quote.’ She paused. ‘A quote that she already had typed into her manuscript, but that she couldn’t have seen before.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. As crazy as your claim—’

  Rogovoy raised one large hand and the dean shut up.

  ‘A quote from a handwritten draft. A quote from a manuscript that only exists in our library, and that she could only have known about if someone had hacked into my laptop for her.’

  Dulcie paused, partly to catch her breath and partly to consider how to continue. Dreams didn’t fit into this, nor did fiction. She had to be logical and clear, entirely in the here and now. ‘And the other side of it was how much the dean was involved. We found out Dean Haitner had Melinda thoroughly investigated. Not just her academic history, but also her family, her background. Everything.’ In the corner of the room, Andrew nodded. ‘We all thought he was – ah – interested in her romantically. But he has a sweetheart, an adjunct professor of semiotics over at BU.’ Now it was Trista who was nodding, disbelief on her face. ‘We all thought that, because we all know his reputation as a ladies’ man.’

  The dean reared back and opened his mouth to respond. Rogovoy’s paw came up again, silencing him.

  ‘But the one thing he cares more about than the ladies is his reputation.’ Dulcie looked around, as both Trista and Andrew nodded. ‘His legacy. Melinda Sloane Harquist was his hope for the future. That’s when I realized—’

  ‘Dulcie!’ She turned around. Everyone did. Standing in the main doorway stood Chris, soaking wet. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as he dripped on the rug.

  ‘Chris?’ Dulcie took a step toward him, but the hand on her shoulder restrained her. She turned. ‘Does anyone have a towel?’

  Andrew ducked back into the passage and came back seconds later with a small hand towel.

  ‘I’m here to see the dean,’ said Chris, drying his face. He looked around for a place to put the towel and, as he handed it back to Andrew, saw the puddle collecting at his feet. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Chris, what are you doing here? You didn’t know I was . . .’ She paused. Had her boyfriend come to rescue her? Or was he that desperate to break things off that he’d tracked her down to University Hall?

  ‘I’m sorry, Dulcie. I wanted to talk it over with you, I really did. But I just couldn’t live with it any longer.’ He had a desperate look, pale and drawn. The drop of water collecting on his nose didn’t help. ‘I simply can’t do it.’

  It was the latter. Dulcie felt herself swaying. Here, in front of all these people, this was the final straw. She closed her eyes, hoping for the dizziness to pass and waiting for the awful words. What she heard next made her jerk them open. Chris had turned from her to the man behind the desk.

  ‘Dean Haitner, I can’t take that job,’ Chris said. ‘I’m sorry. I really appreciate the offer, and I know I said I’d give anything to get off the overnight shift. But, really, this has been Darlene’s job, and she needs it too. You should keep her. I can train her to do anything she doesn’t know yet. But, please, give her the job back. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.’

  ‘Wait – job?’ Dulcie shook her head to clear it. ‘This was about a job?’

  Chris nodded, his dark hair still plastered against his forehead. ‘The dean set up a special project, and hired Darlene to do it. Data mining, surveillance – lots of fun programming. And I guess Darlene was having some problems, so he sought me out. I am her adviser, after all. And, Dulcie, I know how hard it’s been with me working nights. I know we never see each other. I just couldn’t take her job, though. She’s living on grants and fellowships, too, and I’m supposed to be her adviser, not her competition.’

  ‘Oh, Chris.’ This time the cop let her go, and she embraced her sodden beau.

  ‘But Dulcie.’ Chris looked around as if seeing everyone else in the room for the first time. ‘What are you doing here? What’s going on?’

  ‘We’ve been sorting through some issues,’ said Rogovoy, with a look at the city cop. ‘As always, your girlfriend has brought some interesting insights to the conversation.’

  ‘Dulcie?’ Chris stepped back and looked at her, then looked over at Rogovoy. ‘If she’s in any trouble, I demand to hear about it.’

  The burly detective shook his head. ‘This is for us to worry about, Mr Sorenson. That said, if you could tell us a bit more about this data mining you were asked to do for the dean?’

  ‘You should really talk to Darlene about that. I’d given her a few pointers, but that was it. Then again, the dean would be able to tell you more. Dean Haitner?’

  They turned. The dean was standing by the side door, where Andrew had been only minutes before. His face was ghastly white against the unnatural black of his hair, his eyes wide. Without a word, he faced them – and then turned and ran.

  ‘Damn,’ said Rogovoy, and motioned the young cop to go ahead. Following him to the doorway, the detective turned. ‘Hey, kid,’ he addressed Andrew. ‘What’s back here?’

  ‘Private bathroom. Storage closets.’ Rogovoy visibly relaxed. ‘Of course, at the end, it does open up again on to the main stairwell. I think there’s a fire door.’

  With a muttered curse, Rogovoy peered into the dim hallway. As he leaned in, a loud cry from outside made everyone turn. Dulcie joined the others at the window. Dean Haitner, flat on his back, lay on the pavement at the base of the stone steps. Leaning forward to catch his breath stood the young cop. Neither of them looked happy; the dean was holding his knee. Only Dulcie noticed a small movement, a few feet away on the wet grass. A squirrel, grey and so large as to be almost cat-sized, sat up on his haunches and watched the proceedings. As he turned to look up at the office window, Dulcie was almost sure he winked. Then he bounded toward the nearest elm, scurried up, and was gone.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Dulcie was a little disappointed that she could not follow suit. However, Rogovoy himself escorted her down to the Cambridge Police Headquarters, and had no objection when she called Suze on the way. Chris had insisted on coming along, too, despite Dulcie’s stated objections.

  ‘You’re soaked, Chris,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll be fine. You should really go home and change.’

  ‘Come on, kid.’ Rogovoy had held the door for him, as they both ignored her. Once they’d gotten to the station, Dulcie laid out her theory for the record, which took the form of Rogovoy and the young Cambridge police officer. Chris then tried to explain about computer access, about how his student had been told she was ‘testing security’, as she breached Dulcie’s private files. Rogovoy didn’t look like he got it, entirely, but he let them talk, until Dulcie, finally, asked if it might be possible to break for lunch.

  ‘I don’t even know if I can think straight.’ Dulcie didn’t feel like she was exaggerating. From the look Rogovoy gave them both, neither did he.

  But something must have clicked, and by the time they had finished with their sandwiches – Rogovoy had sent the young cop to the deli next door – the paperwork was nearly done. Somehow, between Rogovoy and the uniform, whose name was James, Dulcie was free to leave.

  ‘We have copies of all that Mildon stuff, which supports your testimony,’ said James. ‘But you know the routine: we may n
eed to speak with you again, and we would appreciate it if you did not leave town without checking with us first.’

  ‘I’ve got it, Officer . . . James.’ She paused, not sure what to say. ‘And thanks.’

  Esmé greeted them both as soon as they were in the door, letting loose with a chorus of chirps and mews that soon had Dulcie laughing.

  ‘What is it, kitty?’ She scooped up the purring cat. ‘You’d think she knew what had happened today.’ Chris only smiled. ‘What?’ she asked the cat. ‘Were you and he trading notes?’

  Esmé didn’t respond, but Chris did, taking the two of them into his arms. Before long, the young cat had wriggled free, determined to follow her own plans for the afternoon and leaving the young couple to their own pursuits.

  By the time they’d had dinner, Dulcie opening up the last of the dumplings for Esmé to lick at, Dulcie was ready to call it a day. Trista had been calling, however, and she and Jerry came over soon after. Curled on the couch, Dulcie declined the offer of a beer, and listened as her friends tried to piece it all together.

  ‘I get it,’ said Trista. ‘Andrew wasn’t stalking her. He was on assignment for the dean. But what happened? What went wrong?’

  ‘He was in too deep,’ Dulcie said. She’d had a lot of time to think this through, and the knowledge brought her no joy. ‘I don’t know if she really was his daughter or not, but he wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe he had a brilliant scholar for a child. He gave her access, he broke the rules for her, but I don’t think he realized just how little she had – and how much she was planning to steal from me. At some point, he must have confronted her, but by then it was too late. He had no choice. If he didn’t play along, she could blackmail him. Maybe he found out she was playing him, that she wasn’t the result of one of his old affairs. We’ll have to hear what Andrew says. All I know is he wanted to maintain his legacy, and he realized that she was not going to do it for him.’