Obedience (19 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, ask him. Tell him that the book’s a fake. See what he says.”

Mary would have never done it had she not been drunk with fatigue. She had spent her life sidestepping such confrontations, but tonight she was feeling bold, ready to tear down Williams’s game and get to the heart of this thing that had been plaguing her for the last month.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: One More Thing

Troy,

The book’s a fake. A friend and I have secured two copies, and both of them have text on exactly twenty-five pages, an introduction by “Leon Williams,” and then nothing for the rest of the book. When we Google A Disappearance in the Fields, we get nothing. No Amazon listing, nothing in the Library of Congress database. Winchester University Press hasn’t published anything for the last twenty-five years. We want to know exactly what this is and we want it to stop. You and Williams are playing a dangerous game.

M.

Now she felt sped up, her senses awake and aware and her heart mashing through her chest. Brian was pacing again. Outside, the orange flames of the Deltas’ fire licked up toward the sky. Mary stared at the screen. She refreshed. Nothing. She drummed her fingers, all the nails bitten to the quick, on her desk. Refreshed again. Nothing. Where was he? Maybe they had scared him off. Maybe they had driven him away. Was it possible that Troy was calling Williams right now and asking what he should do? She expected a call from the “campus police” any minute, another admonition to stop what she was doing. Maybe-

Another message appeared in her box.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: One More Thing

M.,

You and your “friend” don’t know what you are getting into here.

Troy

Upon reading it, Brian murmured, “Fuck him,” under his breath. With some force, he took the mouse from Mary and clicked Compose. Then he began to type.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: The Game

Troy,

Apparently you don’t understand. What’s going on here is a criminal enterprise. We have spoken to a woman from Cale High School who has told us the story about Deanna Ward. Leonard Williams has brought in a man impersonating a former police officer, and that man told the class a story about the same girl. Now we have found a book about that girl that was apparently “written” by this Leon character, and the book is a fake. We have already contacted Dean Orman, and he has personally told us that he is keeping Williams on a “short leash.” His words. You all do not seem to understand the complexity of this thing. You are dealing with real people, real events, and it doesn’t seem to faze you one bit. Now, I suggest you tell us what you know before I come over to Perkins Hall.

It took only a matter of minutes for the next message to appear in her box.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: The Game

M. (or whomever),

I assume that I am not speaking to Mary Butler anymore. It’s not the most feminine thing to do, threatening to beat someone up at 12:15 a.m. Anyway. As for your concerns:

This is not a “game,” as you seem to think. What’s happening now is bigger than anything you have ever experienced before. Suffice it to say that you or your girlfriend have NOTHING to do with any of this. You are just bystanders, mere extras. You will be used when your time comes, but do not think for one moment that you have any central role in this. Don’t fool yourselves. You are simply being played right now, and when these six weeks are over you will go back to your lonely, simple lives as college students. You say, “You all do not seem to understand the complexity of this thing.” No, it is YOU who do not understand the complexity of this. But you soon will.

As for Dean Orman, we are not the least worried about him. We have-how shall I say it-
dominion
over the dean.

Good night.

Troy

They both sat, staring at the monitor. Neither of them quite believed what they had just read. What was this “happening” that Troy had referred to, Mary wondered. But no sooner had she asked the question than Troy’s lightning bolt disappeared, signaling that he was offline.

Back in their beds again, Mary asked Brian, “Do you think we’re in danger?”

At first he didn’t answer. And then he said, “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

According to the clock, it was after 3:30 a.m. by the time she went to sleep. She knew that Brian was awake because he was still tossing above her on the top bunk, and even though she was afraid she closed her eyes and an impenetrable weight closed in over her. The last thing she thought was,
What if Brian is in on it?

Mary walked into Seminary East that Wednesday expecting to review for the exam that Williams was giving next week.

But Williams was late. As they waited, a few students talked about their other classes or gossiped about the goings-on around campus. Dennis Flaherty opened his briefcase and took out his economics text and began to highlight a chapter. The girl beside Mary filed her nails. Brian was still boycotting the class, and his back-row seat remained empty.

Five minutes passed, and there was discussion about how long they should give Williams before they abandoned the classroom. “Knowing Williams,” someone said, “he’s scheduled a field trip and hasn’t told anyone.” They all had a laugh over that. But Mary was concerned. She could not help but wonder if her and Brian’s discussion with Troy Hardings had something to do with the professor’s lateness.

At 4:20 p.m., Dean Orman walked into the room. As always, he was overdressed, with his three-piece suit and Cole Haan loafers. The wind had ripped him apart; his orange hair was disheveled and the ridiculous flower he wore in his lapel was almost shredded to nothing.

Orman took Williams’s place at the podium. He looked small up there, tiny. He sighed, as if he were about to deliver some devastating piece of news to the class. Mary could not help but think of the man’s wife and what Brian had said about her, and she wondered if Dean Orman had found out about what had happened to her.

“As a dean,” Orman began, “it’s never easy to inform a class that something will…impede the process of learning. ‘In delay there lies no plenty,’ as Shakespeare said. But what’s done is done, and it is now my duty to inform you about what has happened.”

Orman steeled himself. Mary thought, Williams is dead. They’ve killed him. But she had no earthly idea about who “they” might be, nor could she summon in her mind any possible situation that would pit
Williams
as the victim in this whole thing.

“Your professor is gone,” the dean said. Mary felt nothing. No fear. No confusion. She was void. Bankrupt of anything like empathy or wonder about why he had left. It, like everything else in Logic and Reasoning 204, was just a fact of the narrative, an irreversible plot detail that was simply a trope in the twisted, bizarre script Williams had written for them. “He was not in his office this morning,” said the dean, “and all his things had been cleaned out. This is a…a disturbing turn of events, to say the least. But rest assured we are trying to find Dr. Williams as we speak, and when we do we will get a full disclosure of why he chose to leave campus a week before the six weeks’ end.”

Now Williams had become a player in his own game. There was really no question. He was inside the drama, and Mary suddenly wondered if it was over or if it had just begun. She wished Brian were here to help her with this new turn of events.

“If you need anything,” Dean Orman was saying, “all you have to do is come to Student Services and talk to Wanda. She will be happy to assist you with any questions you have. And of course you will all be reimbursed for this class and awarded the full three credits.”

Afterward, Mary immediately went to find Brian. He was in the Orman Library, sitting at a table in the back. He was staring out a window, a textbook open in front of him. He had still not recovered from Monday night and their discussion with Troy Hardings, it appeared.

“Williams is gone,” she told him.

He blinked at her. “You’re kidding.”

“Cleaned out his office. Orman came to class to break the news.”

“Troy must have told him about our discussion.”

Mary didn’t say anything, but her silence betrayed her. She knew as well as Brian did that the two events could not be isolated. As Williams had told them so long ago, randomness was not the rule but rather the exception to the rule.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“We could find Hardings and ask him about it. Find out what’s going on. Threaten him in some way.”

“Already did it,” Brian said somberly. “His roommate said he went home for the week. I had a chat with him earlier. He wasn’t very…forthcoming.”

“Of course he wasn’t.”

They sat in the silence of the library, thinking about what they should do next. It seemed they were at the end now, at the apex of the game, yet neither of them was quite sure how to proceed.

And then something dawned on her, something so obvious that Mary wondered why she had not thought about it before now.

“Dennis Flaherty,” she said.

“Dennis the Menace?” asked Brian skeptically.

“Let’s go visit him. He owes me one, anyway.”

Dennis Flaherty was grilling hot dogs on the Tau house roof. He was wearing a tank top and rubber flip-flops, and Mary thought he looked like somebody’s dad. “Mary Butler!” he greeted her, with too much enthusiasm in his voice.

“We’re here to talk about Williams,” Mary told him.

Dennis looked at Brian, a puzzled expression on his face. “Yeah, what a thing, huh?” he asked, turning one of the wieners. “You gonna join us for dinner?”

“We don’t buy our friends,” replied Brian. There was a moment of charged hesitation between the two boys, and finally Dennis broke it by looking down, smirking at the grill.

Mary stepped between them. “What happened to him, Dennis?”

“Why are you asking me?” he asked, shock in his voice. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”

“I know you were talking to him. I could tell when we were-when we spoke at his house that night.”

“What are you talking about?” He shut the grill’s lid and hung his spatula on the side. The Taus had a gigantic Weber, a veritable legend on campus, and they had been forced to chain it to the house itself to keep the Dekes from stealing it.

“Cut the shit, Dennis.” Brian took a step toward Dennis, his finger jabbing accusingly toward the other boy. “We’re not playing a game anymore.” But of course that was the problem: they were playing a game. It was all part of Williams’s game, and that was what made it so confoundingly difficult to understand.

“I talked to him once,” Dennis said, looking off the roof, toward Up Campus, where some students were staging a protest about the tuition hike that was about to come into effect. The protesters walked slowly across the viaduct, their signs bobbing in the air above them. “Maybe twice. We just talked about Polly. About the class. It was nothing. Look, if you two think that I may have had something to do with Williams skipping town-”

“It’s not that,” Mary said sharply. “It’s just that there are other things. Things you don’t know about yet.”

“What other things, Mary?”

Brian produced the book. He showed it to Dennis carefully, as if it contained a terrible secret. Brian flipped through the book, pausing on some of the pages as if a story could be told in the nonsense language.

“What the hell is it?” Dennis asked.

“It’s Williams’s book about the girl, Deanna. The girl from Cale that detective talked about.”

“Except it’s not a book,” Dennis said flatly, as if he was still trying to grasp the concept of the two words-for the for the for the for the for the-on those pages.

“Right,” Brian put in. “This is why I believe-we believe-that this is all part of some kind of…
ploy
on Williams’s part.” Brian explained it all to Dennis: uncovering the detective, Brian’s trip to Cale High and his discussion with Bethany Cavendish, the cryptic phrase Mary had seen on that typed page in Williams’s office, Della Williams’s note to Mary on the night of the party, and finally his and Mary’s e-mails to Troy Hardings.

“Shit,” whispered Dennis. He opened the Weber and transferred the hot dogs to a plastic plate. For a few moments he was silent, contemplating what he had heard. “So you think Williams had something to do with this girl in Cale?”

It was the first time anyone had expressed it in words. Yet it had been there, unspoken between Brian and Mary, from the moment he had showed up at Brown late two nights before. Bethany Cavendish had told Brian,
It was as if he was there.
An innocuous admonition at the time, but now, looking back with all the information they had gathered in the last day, it carried an undeniable weight.

“I think so,” Brian said.

The knowledge of what they were involved with now fell on them, and they stood silently on the hot roof of the Tau house, contemplating their roles in what was happening.

“What do we do?” Dennis asked. His brothers were at the door asking for the food, and he passed the plate inside.

Brian and Mary had already spoken about it on the way to the Tau house. They had decided that there was no other way around it, that if they wanted this thing to stop they had to go the whole way, and to do that they must get to the root of it. They must find a missing girl, again, for a second time, and then Williams’s role might be revealed. Mary had already resigned herself to the fact that she would not be going home this weekend to study as she had promised; in fact, she had already called and told her mother. When her mom asked if Dennis was somehow involved in Mary’s decision to stay at school, Mary had neither confirmed or denied it.