Dominance (15 page)

“Sally Tanner arrived home that night around nine,” Black said. “Found the place wrecked like this. Then she made her way to the library.”

“My God,” said Alex.

“Of course no one heard anything. No struggle, no racket. The students who rent across the street were having a party to celebrate the end of midterm exams—nothing. It was like the killer was never even here.” Black shifted in place. “Except for the disturbance in the kitchen. And this.”

He led her down a hallway. A couple of techs stood at the far end, speaking in low voices. Their eyes flicked to Alex, held for a second, then dropped away. Everything was a secret in the house of death.

Black entered a room at the far end of the hall, and Alex followed.
He thinks I'm ready for this,
she thought.
He thinks what happened during the night class prepared me.
She wanted to say something. To tell him she wasn't ready.

She wasn't at all ready. But she was there, inside that horrible room.

The bloodstain. It was the first thing she noticed. The police had chalk-circled this as well. The Rorschach butterfly wings, the burning fire spreading away from the shape's edges—so meticulous, as if someone had used a paintbrush to put it there. But also so simple that it could be the work of a child.

“Notice again how precise he was,” Black was saying, his voice spinning up from a great depth. “It's identical to the Dumant apartments, down to the shape on the wall. And the books . . .”

Alex studied the books. At first there was a chaos to them, but when
she looked closer she saw how careful the pattern was. They had not merely been dropped to the floor but had rather been
placed
there painstakingly, like the instruments on a surgical tray. But she couldn't focus, didn't want to focus—the books were worse, somehow, than if she had seen Michael Tanner's body.

“The one covering his eyes,” she said, her voice strangled. “What was it?”

“Fallows,” Black said. “
The Coil
.”

Of course.

“He wants us to be thinking about Dumant,” Black went on. “This thing is a carbon copy, a kind of rehashing. A revision. Will you help us, Dr. Shipley?”

“Yes,” she said weakly. This apartment, this room particularly—it had convinced her. Her throat was bone dry, her hands clenched and nails digging into her palms. Before, it had been a tragedy; now, standing here in the middle of these books, the tide of them around her, she saw it for what it was: a revulsion. Anger, quick and tight, rushed to the surface. She wanted to spit, to tear the covers off the books and demand answers from them, to hide away the terrible meaningless image of the inkblot on the wall that seemed to be an eye now, a camera staring at her. Into her. “Yes, I will.”

Black nodded and Alex stood up, sweeping over the damage in the library one last time.
How could no one have heard him struggling?
she wondered as she stepped past the detective.
Why didn't anyone save him?

Black glanced up from where he crouched. “Where are you going?”

“I have to see someone.”

“And who would that be?”

“Richard Aldiss,” Alex said, and then she left that awful room and the ghosts it refused to give up.

When everyone was ready, Aldiss sat forward and scanned the lecture hall, as he often did at the beginning of his classes. His faceless guards, as always, stood watch behind him. The black legs of their trousers were slick and pressed.

“We have fully begun our journey now,” he said at last. “We are on our way toward discovering who Paul Fallows really is.”

“Why don't you just tell us?” Melissa Lee wore a Pixies T-shirt and tattered pants slung with a man's necktie for a belt. The girl's black lips glistened, her dark, oily hair hung over piercing olive eyes. “If you know his identity, as you claim you do, why don't you just reveal it to us?”

“I agree with her, Professor,” said Michael Tanner, who sat beside Lee. He was a skinny, frail boy made frailer because of his baggy sweater and sharp features. There were rumors about Tanner and Lee—in fact, there were rumors about Lee and almost every guy on campus, and a few women as well—and Alex noticed how close their elbows were, how near they sat to each other. “Just tell us who you believe he is. This charade, this . . .”

“Game.”

It was Keller who had offered up the word, and no one objected. Not a mystery, as the class title suggested, but something much more complex. Something dictated by the whims of Aldiss himself.

“That's right,” Daniel Hayden said. “This is a
game.
And it's becoming a bit tedious, don't you think?”

“I disagree.”

There were only three women in the class, Alex and Lee and Sally Mitchell. It was Mitchell who had just spoken. A quiet, mousy girl—not as opinionated as Alex nor as scandalous as Lee, Mitchell was the forgotten star of the English department. She was a Burlington girl, and like Alex she was branded because of this fact. But unlike Alex she was often invisible on the campus, absent from the frat parties and the spontaneous Front Street gatherings the English profs often put on. She, as much as anyone in the lecture hall, maybe even as much as Daniel Hayden, was an enigma to the rest of them.

“And why don't you tell us what you think of my methods, Ms. Mitchell,” Aldiss said. He remained frighteningly composed.

“I think giving the information would be too . . . easy,” the girl said.

“Who agrees with her?”

Aldiss waited. Three students raised their hands: Alex, Lewis Prine, and Frank Marsden, the actor, in the front row. Almost everyone agreed that to see Marsden act was to see a boy who fell completely into his role, who
became
the character he was playing. Tonight he was fresh from rehearsals; he sat wearing full makeup, his eyes dark with shadow.

Aldiss looked at the boy. “Do you enjoy my class, Mr. Marsden?”

“Very much so.”

“And what exactly do you like about it?”

“I like the fact that it's so unexpected. That anything can happen.”

Aldiss was pleased by this. “Mr. Prine?”

“Call it intrigue,” the boy said.

Aldiss scanned the room, and his eyes fell on Alex. “And you, Ms. Shipley,” he said. “You also enjoy this chase I have you on?”

She didn't exactly know how to answer.
Enjoy
—it wasn't the word she wanted. “I understand why you're doing it this way,” she said.

Aldiss cocked his head. “Do you?”

“I think so, yes. To just give us Paul Fallows's identity, to hand over the information you've uncovered while you've been in Rock Mountain—that would not only be too easy, it would be wrong.”

“I think you understand my methods quite well,” Aldiss said. “I
have waited for twelve years to get to this point, I believe I can hold out for a few more weeks.”

He laughed, and a few in the class did as well.

“Plus, I do not know for a fact that the person I believe to be Paul Fallows is really him.”

The class buzzed. No one quite knew how to take this announcement.

“What do you mean?” Tanner asked. “I thought you had new information, Professor. Stuff that has never been seen before.”

“That's right,” Aldiss said. “But what we are working with here are possibilities. Equations. You may come to the end and find that my information was flawed. That the person I believe to be Fallows isn't him at all. It has happened to the Fallows scholars again and again over the years. I believe I am right this time, but . . .”

For some reason, this admonition scared Alex. Terrified her. How could he not be sure?

“Does it even matter?” It was Lee again. The girl looked at Aldiss with a challenge in her eyes.

“Does what matter, Ms. Lee?”

“Finding Fallows. Will the world change if we do find him? Will it mean anything?”

“Of course it will. It will mean everything.”

Alex nodded, then stopped herself. She mustn't get too close to him. How dangerous it was to join his side, to form a relationship with this man. The image from Dean Fisk's newspaper articles flashed through her mind, the libraries of those dead girls . . .

The professor went on: “If you find Fallows, then you will have solved one of the world's greatest—”

He stopped. “Professor?” Hayden asked.

There was a quick, choking sound, and Aldiss lurched forward onto the table where his camera must have been mounted. The speed of his movement startled Alex. Aldiss's face banged off the metal surface. His eyes opened impossibly wide and then he slumped down out of view, the camera jostling and twisting downward in the movement. Now the lens held on Aldiss's one open eye. It was as if he had seen something beyond words, something so terrible or beautiful that he could not understand its meaning.

“I'm . . .” he gasped, and then nothing.

The guards bent forward, batons tipping downward. They were still mostly hidden, but one of them stooped now and the camera caught him. The line of a jaw, a downy tuft of pale stubble, one frantic eye caught in the frame—and then he was gone.

The TV went black.

“What the hell?” Christian Kane said.

“Not again,” said Keller.

Alex held her breath. She didn't want to be left like this. Not after the information she'd gathered from Dean Fisk. Not after those photographs of the crime scenes. She felt as if she was close now, as if the message in the book was finally real.

“Are we supposed to wait for him?” Lee asked, annoyance in her voice.

But before someone could answer, the box screeched and the image reappeared. A different man was sitting at Aldiss's table. He wore a gray suit and tiny glasses that shrunk his face. The man stared solemnly into the camera.

“My name is Jeffrey Oliphant,” the man said in a slow, looping voice. “I am the warden at Rock Mountain Correctional Facility. I regret to inform you that Dr. Aldiss will not be able to continue tonight. He has been taken back to his cell and is being checked by our medical staff. He suffers from a rare neurological condition, as he has told you. Certainly nothing to be alarmed about. If he is able, you will continue your course on the next scheduled night. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Again, the screen went black.

Now what am I supposed to do?
Alex wondered.

*   *   *

She walked home with Keller.

The air was not as cold as it had been the previous week. Students were out now, walking the quads, some of them sitting out on the campus benches. It didn't get much better than this in January in Vermont.

“Still think he's lying?” she asked Keller. She was already feeling close to him. Silly, yes—she admitted it. A girlish game she was playing
with herself. It had only been one walk through the snow. But she felt like she could trust him.

Almost.

“Hard to say,” Keller said. The snow had begun to melt and the walkways had turned to slush, the drifts pooling out and soaking down the quads to a dark, viscous mud. “I actually feel sorry for the poor bastard.”

“You shouldn't,” Alex said. “He murdered . . .” She stopped herself.

“I know, I know. Those dead girls. It's just that he's so pathetic, trapped there in that cell with his guards. And what happened tonight. Can you imagine?”

“No.”

“Me either. I think I would just off myself. Just get it over with.” Then Keller stopped, seemed to consider something. “Let me ask you something.”

“Have at it.”

“Which one of us is Aldiss's favorite?”

She thought about the book back in her room. “I don't know,” she said.

“I think it's Daniel Hayden.”

“You can't be serious.”

“Look at the kid, Alex. He was never really going to leave the class. He's just like Aldiss—he enjoys playing these games and seeing how many people he can get to go along with him. It's all an act with this guy. He's the only one there who . . .”
Isn't like the rest of us,
she knew Keller wanted to say.

“I guess.”

“You're still not convinced.”

Alex thought, imagined the faces of the students. Of the way they interacted with Aldiss and of the way he manipulated them. A strong word, but this was the feeling she got: that he was playing with them somehow, keeping them going with his promise of Fallows. His carrot on a stick. “I just get the feeling that Aldiss doesn't like any of us,” she said. “Not really. The whole class creeps me out.”

“You mean Unraveling a Literary Mystery isn't your very favorite class?” he said in a mock-serious way, his accent thick and proper. Alex had to laugh.

“It's not that,” she said. “It's
just that I feel weird when I'm in that room. I don't know. It sounds stupid.”

“No,” he said. “Go on. What?”

“I feel like Aldiss is toying with us,” she said. “Like he's the puppet master and we're his puppets.”

“You can stop any time, Alex. You know that.”

She looked away. “I know. And I guess I'm just being paranoid. But there's still something underneath it all.
Simmering
.”

“Simmering? What's this, Julia Child 101?”

She shoved him, felt his muscle beneath his flannel shirt. Felt something else flicker deep in her belly.

A moment of silence spooled out. She saw Philbrick Hall ahead.

“We should study together sometime,” Keller said.

“Yeah,” she said.
Yeah? Dumb-ass!

“What about tomorrow night? We can read Fallows together. The magnificent, mysterious
The Coil.
We can unravel the mystery together.”