Dominance (24 page)

“Daniel killed himself,” Sally said flatly. She was standing alone in a corner, lips pursed and eyes hot as coals; grief had untethered her from the rest of the group. “He was upset about a case he was working on. He put his service revolver in his mouth. He was a detective in New York City, under enormous stress—let's not complicate Daniel's death just because of this.”

“Melissa says Daniel was happy,” Frank put in, his voice soft and even. “She says—”

“Melissa
says
a lot of things,” Sally said, glaring at the man. “Let me ask you this: did you trust her when we were students?”

The man shifted uncomfortably.

“Well?”

“No,” Frank said softly. “No one did.”

“The woman has a psychological problem. Michael told me that himself.”

Alex sat forward. “Sally, do you think Melissa committed these murders?”

The woman regarded Alex coolly. Her arms dropped to her sides and she looked at Alex as if to say,
How dare you ask me that question. You of all people . . .

“It's a good question,” Dean Fisk said quietly from his chair. “Do you suspect her, Sally?”

The woman straightened. She was turning something over in her mind, trying to get her words exactly right. Finally, her voice measured and cool, she said, “Michael told me that Melissa called him sometimes. She was having problems in her marriage. I—well, of course I got jealous. I remembered her reputation when we were in college. I mean who doesn't? But she kept calling, and Michael kept taking her calls. He would disappear to his library to talk, and I would put my ear to the door to listen. They would talk for hours sometimes. We got into these terrible fights about it.” Sally shuddered, whether at this memory or at what had happened in the last seventy-two hours, it was unclear.

“What did he say about her?” Christian asked. He had suddenly brightened, glad perhaps that the group's focus was shifting now to Melissa and off the horrible sight of Lewis Prine.

“He thought the woman needed professional help,” Sally said. “He'd called Lewis about her, and Lewis shared the same thoughts: they believed she struggled with reality. That she was a compulsive liar.”

“You can't be serious,” Frank protested.

“She isn't right, Frank. Melissa wasn't like the rest of us, and you know that's the first thing Aldiss—”

“Aldiss?” Alex couldn't help herself.

Sally glared. “You asked me if she could have done this, Alex. The answer to that is no. I do not think Melissa did this. I think—and have thought since I saw . . . what I saw in my husband's library three days ago—that Richard Aldiss killed my husband. But Aldiss couldn't do it alone, so he got one of his ‘protégés' to help him.” She looked at them all in turn, jabbing a finger at each person in the locked room. “The professor has put things in motion and now we're all dying, one by one.”

“Enough.” They turned to Fisk again. Powder ran in streaks down the man's face as he perspired, and his milky eyes roamed the room
blindly. He clasped a bony fist around the sunglasses in his lap. “You need to stay together now. To believe in one another. To fall apart and blame each other for what has happened—that will not help anyone.”

Alex turned away and looked out the window. Reporters were milling down there, watching the windows of the mansion for movement.

“Crazy, isn't it?”

Keller moved beside her. All the anger she had felt about the missing manuscript suddenly dissipated. If she had an ally here, she knew it was him.

“Maybe we screwed up,” he went on. “Back in Iowa.”

“We didn't, Keller. You know that as well as I do.”

“I know that this looks like something Aldiss would dream up,” the man said. “Some kind of human puzzle.”

Alex looked at him. “I don't want to talk about this anymore,” she said weakly. “I want to get my mind off all of this. Aldiss, Michael, what we saw down there. Let's talk about something else.”

“Not books,” Keller said.

Alex smiled weakly. “Okay, not books.”

“What about history?”

Alex turned back to the pane, saying nothing.

“Me first, then,” Keller said. “Her name was Jessica. My ex-wife. She taught math at the high school. We liked the same things, we showed up at the same places—it seemed natural. Right.”

She didn't look at him. Couldn't. “What happened?”

“She thought I was too secretive,” he said. “She wanted to know too much about Jasper, about the class. Of course that wasn't it. There were other things. Her toenails, for instance.”

Alex laughed.

“Since we split up,” he said, “I've been living in an old restored farmhouse and coaching football. We've got a good team. You should come down and see us sometime.”

Maybe I will,
she thought. Then she remembered Peter and—

Someone screamed.

Alex turned quickly and saw Lucy. She was attacking Frank, punching him and scratching at his eyes, her face contorted into a mask of rage.

“Liar!” she screamed. “This man is a fucking
liar
!”

The young cop rushed over and pulled the woman off, and she relented, kicking and thrashing, blond hair wild and teeth bared. Alex watched as Frank sat up, his ears red, a claw mark dotted with blood on his cheek. He smiled the charming smile that must have won him roles in so many auditions and said, “It's nothing. Ms. Wiggins is just having a bad morning. She's far away from home, and with all that's happened in this house—”

“Liar,” the woman said again. “Don't believe him. Don't believe anything he says.”

When Alex looked back at Frank, the man held her gaze. He was still smiling but his eyes said,
Help me, Alex. I've done something awful.

Before Frank could say anything aloud, the oak-paneled door opened and someone called Alex's name. Detective Black wanted to see her alone.

“Good luck,” Fisk said as she left the room. “And remember: you do not have to protect him now.”

*   *   *

Black was waiting for her in the dean's study, the lights on and every volume on the shelf starkly lit. Instinctively, her eyes ran across the books.

“Sit, Dr. Shipley.”

She did.

Black cleared his throat and said, “I will ask you what I am going to ask the others. Where were you this morning just before the memorial service?”

“I went out.”

The detective cocked an eyebrow.

“Nothing to do with Aldiss,” she said. “I just wanted to see my old campus again. I hadn't seen much of it since I came back. I needed to clear my mind. For my eulogy, of course.”

“And what do you think of the place?”

“It's changed,” she said. “All is evolution.”

“And that was it. You just went out.”

“Yes.”

He looked down at the desk, made a show of shuffling papers. “Lewis Prine . . . had you spoken to him recently?”

She didn't have to think. “I spoke to him briefly a few months ago. The last meaningful conversation we had was four years ago. I remember it well.”

“What did the two of you discuss?”

“Lewis thought he'd found a page from an unpublished Fallows and he wanted me to check the writing. To make sure he was correct.”

“And was he?”

Alex said nothing at first. She was thinking of the empty space, her hand clutching at the darkness, Keller's innocent smile when she saw him later.

“Dr. Shipley?”

She raised her eyes to the detective. “Yes. I think so.”

“And did you talk with Lewis about anything else?”

“We spoke about a lot of things, Detective. We were old friends, after all.”

“Did you speak about a game that Lewis Prine had been playing?”

So he was involved in the Procedure. Shit.

“No,” she said. “I stayed out of that.”

“But you have played the game before.”

She held his eyes. “I have. When I was in the night class.”

“And were you good at it?”

“Good?”

The man waved his hands. “Games are supposed to have winners and losers, Professor. Did you win?”

She looked at the cluttered desk, at the row of Fisk's pill bottles there. Then she sat up and said, “Not at first. At first I was terrible. But in time, yes, I became very good.”

Black scratched a note to himself. “Let's talk about this morning. What time did you leave?”

“Around eight.”

“And was anyone else awake?”

She thought of the house, the smoldering fire in the empty great room, the darkness of the kitchen. “Not that I could see,” she said. “It's a huge house, Detective.”

Black nodded. “I believe Lewis Prine arrived around nine a.m., just as everyone in the house was leaving for the memorial service. He was running late. A witness tells us that his car had broken down, and out here it's common for cell service to be out. So he arrived possibly just as the last people were leaving the house and—”

“We were all at the service,” Alex said, a memory stopping her short:
Frank and Keller were late.
She scolded herself for going there, for allowing her mind to turn on itself. Suddenly she was breathless, reaching for something that she knew was just out of her grasp. “We were already gone by the time Lewis got here.”

“Someone might have returned,” Black explained. “Someone might have stepped back into the house just long enough to commit the murder and still make it to the service. For that reason we must keep you all under surveillance until we exhaust the possibilities and rule out everyone who is inside this house.”

Someone in the night class did this,
she thought, remembering Aldiss's words.
Someone who was there.

“But this murder,” she managed to say. “Nothing adds up. If the killer is the same man who killed Michael Tanner, then he's changed his methods. Everything is different except the book.”

“Sometimes,” Black said, “that means nothing.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“The killer might not have had enough time. He might have needed to move quickly, and a gun could have been his—or her—only option.” The detective paused, breathed in deeply. “Do you know of anyone who might be carrying a firearm in this house, Dr. Shipley?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not.” Could he tell she was lying?

A second passed, then two. Black finally nodded and said, “Let's talk about Richard Aldiss.”

“What about him?”

“You returned to his house last night.”

She nodded.

“And?”

“And he offered nothing about Michael Tanner. He claims he is innocent.”

“Of course he does,” Black said. “Aldiss's problem is that he lives so
close to campus. It would have been easy for him to come here, murder Lewis Prine, and then get back to his house before the memorial service broke up.”

“He didn't do it.”

Again Black arched that eyebrow. “So sure, Professor?”

She shrugged. She wished she could go on, give the detective something that would convince him, but there was nothing. Nothing but her gut.

“You were out there such a long time,” he said. “The others in the house say you were gone for almost three hours. What did you talk about, you and Aldiss?”

“The past.”

“Aldiss is a smart man. Surely he must have theories as to what is happening on this campus.”

She looked past him, at the skirt of the campus in the distance through the window. Wondered if it would ever be the same, if it had ever been the same since the night class. “He thinks it's someone from his class,” she said.

Black plucked at an ear. There was a scar she had never noticed on his jaw, red and irritated. She thought of her father. “And do you agree with him, Dr. Shipley?”

“I think it's been proven that Aldiss is usually right.”

With that the room fell silent. Black's jaw worked. He clicked down the nib of his pen.

“You can return to the room,” he said. “Send Keller in.”

Alex rose and left the study. She passed her bedroom on the way down the hall, and since the hallway was empty, she stepped inside and furtively shut the door behind her. Went to the bed and lifted the mattress, careful not to make a sound, and found the Fallows novel there. Quickly she opened the fake book and looked inside and—

The gun was there. It had been undisturbed.

She exhaled and turned to leave. As she did she noticed something on the nightstand. It was the card from before, the one Aldiss had given her at their dinner.

To Alexandra.

She picked up the envelope and tore it open.

It was a simple greeting card.
To Old Friends,
it read.
We do not get together as often as we should, but when we do it is bliss to me.

Alex shook her head and opened the card. Aldiss had written something inside.

My Sweet Alexandra,

They will be coming for me soon. You have to believe that I had nothing to do with what is happening now in that house. And also know this—

Alex's eyes ran over the rest of the note, and when she saw what Aldiss had written next, her breath caught in her throat.

—the Procedure has begun. Everything they say, everything you hear could be part of the game. Trust no one.

Your teacher,

Richard

The morning they were to leave for Iowa, she visited her sick father.

The house was heavy with his illness—water ticking in the sink basin, her mother's radio burbling in a back room. The house was cold because his medication made his body scream with heat, and Alex pulled a coat around her as she crossed into the living room. Her father sat in his favorite chair, sweating, his teeth chattering. He wore a shirt that read
MY DAUGHTER IS A JASPER COLLEGE TIGER
.