Summer Session (26 page)

She rode down the steep hill into Ithaca, passing tall trees and Victorian homes, trying to figure out when she’d last seen the paper, where she’d lost it. She’d had it in her bag continuously, hadn’t taken it out – of that she was certain. And it had been there when she’d found Monique’s body. So when could it have gone missing? Objects didn’t just walk away. So . . .

Someone must have taken it out of her bag.

But how? It had been with her; she hadn’t left it unattended.

Then again, maybe she’d been unable to attend it.

As in maybe she’d been unconscious on her front porch beside Monique’s body.

Of course. Whoever had killed Larry and Monique had knocked Harper out and taken the paper from her bag. Which meant that the numbers on the paper were probably what everyone had been searching for.

And that whoever had them was the killer.

As soon as she arrived home, Harper noticed the change. The house had always felt welcoming, its intricate Victorian design genteel and proud. But not now. Now, it felt altered, sinister. People had been killed here. Someone had ripped through the place, tearing apart its insides. Its charming nooks huddled shadowed and menacing; the creaking of its ageing wooden joints sounded like groans of pain.

Nonsense, Harper told herself. Places didn’t change, at least not that suddenly. The house would feel comfy again once the mess was cleaned up. And she’d begin right away, right after she called Detective Rivers.

When Rivers answered, Harper excitedly explained her news: that Graham’s list of numbers had gone missing from her bag while she’d been unconscious, so the killer must have taken it. If they found the list, they’d find the killer.

Instead of appreciating the information, Detective Rivers reacted with confusion and anger. What numbers? What piece of paper? Why hadn’t Harper mentioned it before? Why hadn’t she turned it over to the police with the rest of Graham’s property? What exactly were the numbers? What did Harper think they signified?

Harper righted a dining-room chair and sat, answering questions, feeling chastised. And afterward, she kept sitting, feeling that everything she did was wrong. Losing the numbers. Trusting Vicki. Reading Hank’s email. Kissing Ron. Not stopping the bombers. Surviving the explosion. But guilt, she knew, was a paralyzing force. If she let it, it would hold her in the chair, immobilizing her permanently. And she had work to do. A ransacked house to clean.

Righting the living room sofa, she realized she should call Ron; he’d want to know what she’d figured out about the paper. But, surrounded by Hank’s refinished floors, his books and photos, she couldn’t call Ron. Ron could wait. For now, she needed to concentrate on rebuilding her home, and she immersed herself in the physicality of cleaning.

Harper went around front, turned on the hose and washed down the front porch, swabbing off caked blood. Inside, she donned rubber gloves and cleaned every item before replacing it, not wanting a single trace of a killer’s touch to linger on a serving plate or wine glass, or even on a tin can. Throwing out shards of shattered porcelain, dumping thawed frozen foods, she numbed herself to the casualties of her kitchen, sweeping and mopping, refilling the broom closet. Finding Hank’s rifle there.

She worked in silence, sweating. Occasionally, thoughts intruded. Questions about what the numbers might mean, or why someone would kill to obtain them. Visual images of the page itself, or a fleeting snapshot of scrawled digits – first a one and after that – a six? Again, she thought of calling Ron, telling him about the six.

But no. Instead, she threw herself into scrubbing, dusting, polishing, disinfecting – washing away thoughts of Ron. Of risks she couldn’t afford to take, needs she couldn’t afford to acknowledge. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could trust Ron. He had, after all, hypnotized her. Had taken from her memory without her knowledge. No, she needed to take control, figure out what was happening between them. What she wanted to happen. Why she’d kissed him, why thinking about him made her knees dissolve. No, she wasn’t going to call him, at least for a while.

When she took a break from cleaning, she made a can of soup. Opened a bag of chips. Went up to the nursery and rocked for a while. Then, dutifully, she went to see Hank, staying for a mutually tense and conflicted, mostly silent, half-hour before she escaped back home. Inside, she avoided the computer but checked her phone messages. Her mom had called again, and Vicki, twice. Harper didn’t answer Vicki, but she returned her mother’s call, and, though she took pains to sound cheerful and light, her mother relentlessly questioned her about the deaths on campus and advised her to take vitamins, as she’d heard that depression was related to a lack of the Bs.

Finally, just before ten, Harper took another three-minute combat shower in the downstairs bathroom, wondering if she’d ever use the one upstairs; if she and Hank would stay together long enough to finish remodeling it. Scrubbing out her anger at him, counting the seconds, again she contemplated actual baths, relaxing and soaking like a civilian. She began to rinse off with forty seconds left to go and, as hot water cascaded over her head and shoulders, unexpectedly, she again thought of Ron.

In his office at the Neurological Center, Ron stared at the digits Harper had recited under hypnosis: 1671922072. He counted the digits. Ten, like a phone number. Maybe it was that simple. He picked up the phone and called it, got a computerized ‘The number you have dialed is not in service’.

OK. So it wasn’t a phone number. What the hell was it?

He leaned back in his desk chair, feet up, eyes closed, thinking. Probably it was a code, the numbers each standing for something. And probably the code wouldn’t be too complicated; after all, it had been put together by undergraduates. The key would be relatively obvious. Simple. He tried substituting letters for the numbers – A for ‘1’, B for ‘2’ and so on. ‘1671922072’ would be afgaibb . . .

Ron stopped transposing. Maybe the first letter wasn’t ‘1’ and ‘6’, but ‘16’? Then it would be ‘P’. Followed by ‘G’. Then either ‘S’ or ‘A’? OK. Neither combination spelled anything. Maybe the code was more sophisticated than mere substitution. Maybe the ‘1’s symbolized stops, like punctuation? Or maybe some of the numbers were dummies, meaningless fillers. He tried grouping the digits in clusters of three and fours, ignoring first the ‘2’s, then the ‘0’s, finally the ‘1’s. And got gibberish again.

He backed up, tried rearranging the letters as puzzle pieces. Figgbbgb? Pabbfigb? No luck. He began again, arranging the letters as written, substituting others as if they were a cryptogram. Impossible. He paused, reconsidered the way he’d transferred the digits into letters, and tried different ways of combining them: ‘1’ and ‘9’ could be ‘19’ or ‘S’; ‘2’ and ‘0’ could be ‘20’ or ‘T.’ P-F-S-V-G-B. Or A-F-S-T-G-B.

It wasn’t working. The cryptogram – if it was a cryptogram – escaped him. He simply couldn’t identify enough letters to make a clear pattern for decoding it.

Frustrated, Ron went down the hall to the vending machine, got himself a cup of awful coffee, filled it with too much awful non-dairy creamer and came back to his office. He stood, paced, sat, stood again, sat again. Sipped coffee. Looked at the original number again.

Maybe he could find help online. He logged on, Googled ‘codes’ and ‘cryptology’. He was still searching when Wyatt came in, frazzled. ‘So? Anything?’

Ron welcomed the help of another brain, even if it was Wyatt’s. ‘Wyatt. Good. Come take a look. I got this number when I hypnotized Harper Jennings. Maybe you can help me figure out what the hell it means.’

Friday morning, Harper stopped in to see Hank, but only briefly. He was walking with a walker, on his own, in the hall. A nurse watched from the station, waved as Harper passed. ‘He’s getting stronger every day, Mrs Jennings.’

‘Great.’ Harper forced a smile, continued down the hall.

Hank watched her approach and slowly stepped towards her. She greeted him with a hurried peck.

‘Mad. You.’ His eyes were wounded.

‘What would you expect?’

‘No. Hoppa. You.’

She didn’t even try to figure out his meaning. What was the point?

‘Look, let’s deal with one issue at a time. For now, that issue is your recovery. The rest, even the thing with Vicki, will wait.’ If only she meant that. If only she could wrap up her anger and hurt, and stuff them into a storage bin.

‘No. You. I.’ Or know you I?

Harper managed to meet his eyes. They were almost black, shining, twinkling at her. How could they twinkle, even now? Did he think their situation was funny? Or maybe it wasn’t a twinkle of laughter. Maybe it was something else, a glower?

‘You’re walking well.’ She changed the subject.

‘Go. Three. Times. Hall.’

‘Really? Three times?’

He nodded. ‘Now. Six. Will.’

Wow. Ten days ago, he could barely make it to the nursing station. ‘Soon you won’t need the walker.’

‘Now. Not. Need.’ It was true. He was gliding the thing along with his good arm, not leaning on it at all.

‘Use it anyhow. Just in case.’

‘Soon. Hoppa. Home. Come.’

Together, they walked up and down the hall three more times, each limping slightly on opposite sides. They talked politely about neutral topics. The endlessly hot weather. Hank’s need for a haircut. No mention of dead students or marital infidelity. The conversation continued tentatively, and Harper was so intent on keeping it neutral that she was out of the clinic and on her way to class before it occurred to her how much Hank was talking or how easy it was to understand what he was trying to say.

And she was climbing the stairs before what he’d said actually hit her: soon, Hank intended to come home.

A cop car coasted behind her. Annoying. The cruisers appeared at random times, watching her, making Harper feel invaded, maybe like Iraqis had felt, being watched by her security patrol. She resented the presence of the police. She wasn’t a suspect, didn’t need to be followed. And she was army, able to defend herself. Detective Rivers, though, thought differently, and the cop watched her, making sure she was safe as she made her way to class.

Class, of course, was pretty empty. Three weren’t there due to death. Only a handful showed. Anna was among the absent. Harper wondered how she was dealing with the news of more dead classmates. She pictured her lying somewhere, trapped in cataplexy.

‘Are we having class, Loot?’ Terence raised a muscled arm. ‘Nobody’s here.’

Wait. Hadn’t he heard? Didn’t he know? Harper drew a breath.

But Jeremy spoke before she could. ‘We’re all that’s left. Everybody else is fuckin’ dead.’

‘Yeah.’ Esoso’s eyes widened. ‘I swear, this class is cursed.’

‘We need to talk.’ Harper sat on her desk. ‘But, first, let’s make sure everyone knows what’s happened. Has everyone seen the paper or watched the news?’

‘The university sent out an email—’

Terence’s face was blank. ‘I didn’t look at mine. Not in a couple days. What’s going—’

‘Larry and Monique. They’re dead,’ Shaundra wailed.

‘Whoa, not funny, Shaun—’ Terence stopped in the middle of her name. He’d turned, was silenced by the stricken look on her face. ‘Damn. For real? They’re dead?’

‘First Graham; now them.’ Esoso shook his head. ‘I told you. It’s a curse.’

Terence looked from classmate to classmate, saw their identical morose expressions. ‘What – they killed themselves, too?’

As gently as she could, Harper explained that they’d been murdered, omitting any mention of her house. Some students would know that, but she didn’t need to advertise the fact. She did, however, give more information than they’d have heard on the news.

‘What I’m about to tell you is not public knowledge yet.’ She’d seen Esoso and Jeremy with Larry at the clinic, so she kept her eyes on them as she continued. ‘The deaths of your three classmates may have been connected to the theft of some experimental drugs from Cayuga Neurological Center, where some of you are research subjects.’

Esoso’s gaze fell to his desk; Jeremy’s moved slowly to Esoso.

‘Whoever took the drugs probably thinks they can be sold and used for recreational purposes. But I’ve learned from a doctor at the Center that the drugs are dangerous. They can have serious, deadly side effects. So if any of you know anything about them – anything about how to get them back – please let me or the police or Dr Kendall at the Center know. You won’t get in trouble. You can make an anonymous call—’

‘Hang on a minute, Loot,’ Dustin interrupted, eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you think any of us would know about stolen drugs?’

Harper paused. ‘I don’t. But Graham’s death and Larry and Monique’s murders seem connected to the drugs. And since some of you were close to them, it makes sense that some of you might know something.’ She didn’t look at Esoso or Jeremy.

‘What? Being close? That doesn’t mean I’d know anything.’ Terence crossed his arms. ‘I liked to look at Miss Pinkie’s backside, but that doesn’t mean—’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Harper ran a hand across her hair. ‘No one’s accusing anybody of anything. But this is serious. Whoever wants those drugs isn’t messing around. People have been killed. And I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.’

Silence. Someone shifted in a chair. Someone coughed.

Someone burst through the door. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Anna stood in the doorway, breathless and harried, carrying a lopsided white-frosted cake. ‘I wanted to bring this.’

She rushed in, setting the cake on Harper’s desk. Blue icing spelled out ‘Happy Twentieth Birthday, Graham’.

‘What’s that?’ Terence was on his feet, eyeing the plate.

Anna cleared her throat. ‘Today is Graham’s birthday. So my dorm has a kitchen. I baked him a cake.’ She was elated, a bit hyper. She pulled plastic wrap off the cake and the aroma of chocolate and sugar wafted through the room.