S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (15 page)

A streetlight shone through his window, almost like a spotlight centered on his bed, distracting his sleep. He hadn’t noticed it on his previous, passed-out-drunk nights. He got up to lower the blinds, but there were none on the wall’s empty brackets. They must have forgotten to put them back up when they painted and wallpapered the room before his arrival. Across the Quad, a bright light beamed from the top arched window of Shapard Tower, like a beacon for the campus. It looked like a lighthouse, except the light was immobile and, unfortunately, hitting Rebel’s Rest too squarely.

Cody thought he could rearrange his room and drag the bed to the other side, which was darker. He moved his desk and drawers and found the bed was bolted to the floor. It struck him funny that an unlocked, all-access school with bags, purses, and computers lying about would nail down a tiny, barrack-style metal bed with sagging springs.

Tomorrow he’d ask about the blinds or hang his spare flat sheet across the window at night, and hopefully the ringing in his ears, which he thought was gone but now was back because it was so quiet in here, would go away for good, and although his mind was still racing with excitement from the past few days, the sensory overload was taking its toll because even with the light shining in on him, the bed felt like a rocking crib, and suddenly he was very sleepy…

•   •   •

Later, Cody wouldn’t recall what woke him up. It wasn’t his alarm or any sound really; it was just a ransacking energy and sense of panic, like a fire, and he still felt fuzzily in a deep sleep, when in fact he was outside, walking fast, almost running, toward Abbo’s Alley with Banjo leading the way and Elliott bringing up the rear. “It came from this way,” Banjo said, huffing, and for once there was no sarcasm and no humor. It was still mostly dark, on the edge of dawn, and they were all barefoot and in T-shirts and underwear, having rushed right out of bed. Farther across the field, by an octopus-armed giant oak, a woman yelled, “Please! Please!” and then a string of words in Spanish.

She was standing alone, in her white food service uniform, less hysterical than desperate. On Banjo’s lead, they broke into a sprint across the thick clover and tall daffodils toward her, their calves and feet wet with dew. Elliott slipped and stumbled but caught up as they neared the live oak.

“You okay, ma’am?” Banjo called out, the first to reach her. Her long black hair was pulled in a bun, hair net–ready. She clutched the straps of her big brown purse and had stopped talking, just shaking her cell phone hand at the cluster of daffodils in front of her, like a scold. Cody wondered if she might be crazy.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong, ma’am?” Banjo asked, approaching her carefully, maybe thinking she was nuts, too. As if she’d been holding strong until help arrived, the servicewoman suddenly collapsed into sobs that were curiously mixed with high-pitched whines. Banjo stepped gingerly and followed her frantic pointing, Cody right behind. “Oh man,” Banjo said, had he finished his thought. Fletcher lay faceup in the daffodils, his head cocked back, his throat torn out through his neck.

Cody recalled, from nowhere, a term he had learned in high school biology and never thought of since: “viscera.”

“Geezus,” Elliott said, and Cody said nothing because he wasn’t entirely sure he was awake and had never seen a dead person before. Fletcher’s eyes looked up at the oak, and they were calm, and his tongue lay from the corner of his open mouth. The skin of his face and flayed hands was a shade lighter than Cody remembered.

Nesta lay next to her master, prostrate and agitated, whining as she pawed the ground, crawling in place and getting nowhere. The black fur around her jaws and chest was shiny with dew, and there was dull terror in her eyes, and between whines she pushed her snout against the ground and made a retching hack. She hoisted her hind legs, and her stomach billowed, but the retch was unsuccessful, and she went prostrate and ground-pawing again.

Strewn about nearby were dark and glistening clumps and shreds that Cody instinctively knew used to be part of Fletcher’s neck. Cody watched his step carefully.

Pearl was moving quickly toward them in silence, arms swinging, in her flowered robe and pink slippers. Her hair was coiffed as usual, but it sat crooked on her head, like an off-kilter hat. Behind her in a calm march came Dean Apperson, tied in a paisley robe over blue striped pajamas, his white hair disheveled and almost hip. The sky was turning a lighter blue, and a few birds had started singing.

“God help us,” Pearl said under her breath when she saw Fletcher and then instinctively turned to shield her boys. “You don’t need to see this. You don’t need to see this.”

“Well, now,” Dean Apperson said, calmly inspecting Fletcher from above. Pearl went to console the food service woman, and Nesta followed, stooped low with her tail down. The woman yelled “No!” and Nesta backed away and circled around to Cody. She nosed his hand, and he stroked her head without thinking. He was still mesmerized by the body and Apperson’s detached, analytical reaction. He might have been inspecting a flat tire.

Nesta lifted her head so Cody could stroke her jaw. His hand felt wet, and he looked down to find it coated in thin, watery blood. He yanked it back, and Nesta whined and backed away and ran in small, cowered circles.

“Nesta, Nesta, Nesta,” Dean Apperson repeated in a hypnotic rhythm, as the worried dog circled farther from him. “Come, Nesta. Stay, Nesta.” His voice carried a soothing command as he got closer.

Ross was running toward them across University Avenue, from the other side of campus. He had thrown on last night’s clothes, and Cody wondered if he had spent the night at the lab or maybe in Tuckaway Hall, even as his own hand still glistened dewy red. “I just got your message,” he called to Dean Apperson, who waved him away. He had cornered Nesta against the tree trunk. He grabbed the dog’s collar and yanked him up to his side and held him there.

“Be careful, sir!” Banjo said.

“Ross, get rid of them,” Dean Apperson snapped. With the dog in hand, he now seemed irritated and disgusted by the whole situation. He looked like he needed a cigarette.

“Let’s go, guys.” Ross herded the trio away from the tree.

“Pearl, please,” Dean Apperson said more gently, nodding toward the servicewoman. “Let’s take you home, child,” Pearl soothed, stroking her hair bun as she led her back toward her lodging beyond the woods.

Nesta opened her throat and, with a sharp hack, regurgitated a dark, wet clump onto the ground. She lapped her tongue through her mouth to clear the taste. “Just go now,” Dean Apperson ordered Elliott, who stood frozen. Banjo took him by the elbow. “C’mon, man.”

Halfway through the silent, wet walk back to Rebel’s Rest, Cody saw a white delivery van speeding down University Avenue. It detoured over the sidewalk and across Abbo’s Alley. Two men in blue surgical scrubs sprang from the cabin and hurried toward Dean Apperson, carrying a coil of rope and what looked like a noose on the end of a long pole.

“Cody?” Ross beckoned him.

Cody turned from the front porch. The men, under Dean Apperson’s direction, were carrying the bound and muzzled Nesta back to the van. She had given up thrashing, but her woeful squeals silenced the morning birds.

“Come on, Tiger.” Ross motioned him inside.

“What’s going on?” Sin asked in the foyer, still in her nightclothes and holding an empty coffee mug. Ross led her back down the hallway, talking in her ear.

From upstairs, Cody heard his iPhone beeping, waking him for his morning run.

S
’wanee canceled the first day of class, by a brief mass e-mail. The iPads dinged at 8:37 a.m.

As the university attends to an unforeseen situation, please find attached additional assignments from your professors. Classes will begin tomorrow on their normal schedule,
it read.
Thank you, and have a great S’wanee Day
!

“Guys, we need to keep this quiet for now,” Ross counseled the trio in Cody’s room. “I mean, it’s a tragedy, of course, and it’s gonna get out, and everybody will be talking, but just let the university get to the bottom of it first.”

“That dog killed that man,” Banjo said. “That’s the bottom of it.”

“Banjo, just be cool. For now,” Ross pleaded. He seemed exhausted. There was a knock at the door, and Caleb stuck his head in.

“Ross, is everything okay, man?” he asked, and Ross said, “Yes, Caleb. I’ll talk to you about it later.” “Do you need me to do anything?” Caleb persisted, and Ross paused for a breath and said, “No, Caleb. I don’t need you to do anything.” Caleb left, and Ross rolled his eyes.

“Tool,” Elliott said quietly. “The toolest,” Banjo concurred.

“The university will, I’m sure, offer counseling if…you need it,” Ross continued in hushed tones. “But for now, please, just keep this under wraps. Deal?”

Fat chance. By noon, Rebel’s Rest knew every detail, without embellishment or exaggeration, since the truth could hardly get more gruesome. “The dog ate his throat?” “I heard he was throwing up parts of his neck.” “A worker found him dead and started screaming.” “What did they do with that fucking dog? Did they kill it?” The leaks had to come from Banjo or Elliott, since Cody had not spoken a word, at all, since the night before.

“Guys, guys, guys.” Ross called everyone together in the dining room. “Yes, an awful thing happened early this morning.” He explained what he knew and said, “The university finds these dogs, these rescues really, and gives them homes with professors and others, and they’ve always done it, and it’s never been a problem. This one, obviously, was a problem.” He shrugged at the simplicity of it all. “It’s a freak accident, and a tragedy, and it doesn’t make any sense. All we can do now is get back to our work. I, for one, have a ton due tomorrow. So do you.” There was really nothing else to say.

“Yeah, it woke me up,” Banjo explained to Sin in the front living room. “I’m a light sleeper.” “We found him together,” Elliott told Houston in the hallway. Bishop and Vail, hands clutched, listened in from the dining room. Now that the word was out, Banjo and Elliott told the tale freely, repeatedly, cathartically. Cody spoke to no one.

Pearl closed herself in her room when she returned. “They were friends for years,” Ross explained. The kitchen staff supervised themselves. Slowly and quietly, after an uneaten lunch, Rebel’s Rest got back to work.

“
Dewd!
” Banjo moaned at his iPad. “What the frick is up with this homework?”

There were three additional short stories—Poe, O’Connor, Cheever—with a five-page writing assignment on any one, two introductory chapters from the biology textbook, an essay from ancient history, and an Econ 101 problem set with six questions that made no sense whatsoever. This was not a snow day.

“Ross,” Cody said later, quietly, finding his voice dry. “Do I still go to work? To my job?”

Ross looked up from his laptop and thought. “Yeah, buddy,” he said, checking his watch. “Yeah, we both should. Just, you know…what we talked about earlier.”

“I won’t say anything,” Cody said, meaning it.

The Domain was active with Frisbees, footballs, flirting, anything but study. A boy strummed a guitar in front of a small circle of female admirers. Up on the roof of Carnegie Hall, which rimmed the Quad and connected to All Saints, a group chanted a strange, spoken song whose chorus revolved around the word “shark.” Students came and went from the domed Observatory, which crowned the building and housed the school’s telescopes—a must-visit, Cody thought, preferably at night, on a date, with Beth. A shaved-head kid wobbled down the sidewalk on a unicycle, his own version of the I-need-attention hard hat. The campus was laughing and carefree. Nobody knew what Cody knew.

Several groups of professors crisscrossed the lawns, in adult casual, without gowns. In the distance, Dean Apperson, dressed spiffily, walked briskly and solo past the Burwell Garden fountain, talking on his cell phone.
Not Saving S’wanee
. Cody smiled. Given the dean’s position and the day’s challenge, he’d give him a pass.

The DuPont Library was both serious and welcoming, a nonthreatening and manageable place for quiet study. Today, it was empty. “Are you Cody?” Mrs. Simpson, the head librarian, asked with a cocked head when he creaked the swinging front door. According to Ross, everyone called her the Widow Senex because she looked like a cartoon from a long-defunct Dick-and-Jane–esque Latin primer about a fictitious Ancient Roman family. She earned the nickname in the seventies, and subsequent generations kept passing it along. It didn’t seem to matter if you called her this behind her back or to her face, as she appeared to live in her own parallel universe anyway.

The Widow Senex had the same globe hairstyle as most old women, but hers was impossibly blond. She was dressed in layers, despite the heat, in a pink cardigan sweater over a scalloped blouse and a flat khaki skirt that thwacked at the knee. Permanently attached to her hand was a wadded and dingy handkerchief, as if for chronic nasal drip. She walked with a lope that could have been old-woman stiffness or the lasting effects of polio. It was difficult to get a sense of her at all because she had a wonk eye that roamed independently in her head. Even her good eye, whichever one it was, scarcely looked where it was supposed to.

“Yes, ma’am. I wasn’t sure I should come in,” Cody said, and the Widow said, “Why wouldn’t you?” to his shoulder/ear. Apparently, she didn’t know what Cody knew either. It was equally possible she didn’t know the month of the year or the state she lived in.

Her voice was a combination of a chortle, a warble, and a gargle. When she semi-trained her watery bug eyes on him, he couldn’t tell if she wanted to swat him or undress him. Ross had pegged it: She was batty.

“You sit here,” she said, spinning the high stool behind the front desk. “You sit here and you do this.” She picked up the scanner gun wirelessly connected to the desk PC and zapped a S’wanee ID card and then zapped the bar code on the back of a library book. “That’s what you do, Cody.”

“I check out books, right?” he asked, to clarify.