Graveland: A Novel (16 page)

Lizzie doesn’t like it here. She doesn’t feel comfortable on her own all day.

Not that it’s much better in the evenings.

But to be honest, what she’s really feeling right now is out of her depth.

And also a little stupid.

She takes a sip from her Red Bull.

The commercial break comes to an end, but instead of going back to the live feed from the courtroom, they start into a quick recap of the proceedings so far.

Most of which she has just watched.

She raises the remote control and flicks forward a few channels, stopping for a moment at a rerun of
House
.

“Sarcoidosis,” she shouts at the screen, then flicks forward again.

Nature documentary, insects.

She stares at it, not paying attention.

Out of her depth?

She takes another sip of Red Bull.

Stupid?

Why?

Because she doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, that’s why. And there’s only so much of this crap that she can put up with. It’s insane. No Internet access? No going out or talking to people? No using her cell phone? No TV?

It’s only supposed to be for a week—until tomorrow, in fact, and she did warn her friends about the impending radio silence.

But still.

Even the fact that she has slipped a bit—that wobbly call to her dad on the first night, putting the TV on this morning, and keeping it on—is surely telling her something.

That maybe she just doesn’t care as much anymore.

What she can’t believe is that she actually felt disloyal this morning
turning on the fucking TV
.

For almost a week now—in what has admittedly been the most productive period she’s ever spent as a student—Lizzie has been cooped up here in this apartment, reading, studying, but also assiduously abiding by these house rules, by this fucked-up paranoid off-the-grid communications blackout. And the thing is, she
gets
it, at least in regard to cell phones and social media. There’s a real danger there of personal data being monitored, sure. So don’t have them on.

Fine.

Being a fairly slack user of Facebook and Twitter herself, that aspect of it hasn’t actually been hard at all.

But Jesus H. Christ …
the fucking TV
?

This morning it just seemed too ridiculous. She’d finished a long paper and prepared a detailed set of notes for her next one, and …

Enough was enough.

She was only doing it, in any case, to keep her boyfriend’s
asshole of a brother happy
. So she turned on the goddamn TV, and started watching the first thing she came across, which happened to be live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial.

But now maybe she’s had her fill of that. For the moment, at least. Now maybe—and for the first time since last Saturday—she’s going to find a cable news channel and plug into what’s going on outside in the wider world, the one beyond this shithole of an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

*   *   *

Frank Bishop arrives in the small town of Atherton just before noon. The college is situated about a mile north of the town, so he decides to stop first and find a cheap restaurant or diner where he can sit for a while over coffee and gather his thoughts.

Atherton itself is pretty short on charm, mainly consisting of car dealerships, strip malls, fast food joints, and sports bars. He parks on a side street off Main and wanders around in search of what he soon realizes is probably an elusive dream—the classic small-town diner with its chrome fittings, soda fountain, and tabletop jukeboxes.

The nearest thing he finds is either a Wendy’s or a Chicken Pit. Two years ago when he came here with Lizzie they had lunch at the Great Lakes Grill and Bistro, an indulgence he can no longer afford.

He chooses the Chicken Pit.

The coffee is undrinkable, the blueberry muffin he got to go with it inedible, but at least he can sit in his little booth, staring out the window, undisturbed.

And now that he’s here, of course, he feels like an idiot. Because how uncool is this going to be for Lizzie … her old man turning up unannounced, and even—if he’s not careful, if he can’t keep a lid on recent developments—presenting as borderline unhinged?

At the same time, though, when he looks down at his cell phone on the table between his keys and coffee cup, Frank is reminded of why he decided to come up here in the first place.

It’s perfectly simple.

Lizzie doesn’t go this long without returning a call. It might be a chore, and
he
might be a pain in the ass—but she doesn’t go five days, not when her old man is so clearly anxious to talk to her. And that’s what he should have pressed home to Deb yesterday when they spoke.

That this has never happened before.

Not like this.

Formulating the thought makes Frank’s insides turn.

He shuffles out of the booth and gathers up his keys and phone.

Out on Main Street, it occurs to him that he could have just called the college administration people and had them check up on her, but he’s also pretty sure that Lizzie would have regarded that as a serious breach of trust.

Considerably worse than what he is about to do.

Because just showing up won’t necessarily compromise or embarrass her. Anyway, he doesn’t care, he’s here now, and at this stage he actually
needs
to see her. It’s an imperative. It’s become that way.

He drives north out of Atherton and within a couple of minutes is approaching the sprawling campus. To the left there are residence halls, three of them, known locally as the Projects, and to the right there is the more severe, clean-lines administration block. Get past these and you enter a sort of sylvan grove, mostly single-story buildings arranged on scenic, grassy quads and tree-lined courtyards that house the various academic departments, dining halls, libraries, and student health and community centers.

He parks in a visitor’s space in front of the Administration Building and gets out of the car. But standing there, he realizes something. He feels weirdly self-conscious. It’s as though he’s guilty of something, or is about to be.

He looks around.

Where should he go first?

The easiest thing would be to wander the campus for a while and just randomly bump into Lizzie. Then he could be out of here in five minutes.

But that’s a pretty unlikely scenario.

He looks over toward the residence halls, focusing on the middle one.

Is she in her rooms?

Maybe, but he can’t just go in there, not without a security pass.

He needs to take this slowly. No one else is in a panic here. So he shouldn’t be. Besides, it’s lunchtime. Everywhere he looks, people are … having lunch.

On benches, on lawns.

He decides to wander around for a while anyway. He passes the Science Building and the main dining hall. He crosses the central quad, walks along by the Van Loon Auditorium, and then makes his way over toward the tennis and basketball courts. At this point he stops at a bench himself and sits down.

But what is he doing?

Almost immediately he stands up again and walks back the way he came—quickly, straight toward the Administration Building.

He goes into the main office. There are two women working behind a high reception counter.

He feels he’s blurting it out, but the information seems to get across, and within a minute the woman he’s dealing with is on the phone. There’s a brief exchange, and then some waiting. Frank starts drumming his fingers on the counter, but stops himself almost immediately.

“There’s no response from her room. I’ll—”

The woman cuts herself short and hits another number. There’s a second brief exchange, which Frank finds it difficult to hear, because a separate conversation is now taking place next to them.

When the woman has finished, she looks back at Frank. “There’ll be someone over to see you in a moment.”

“Who?” Franks says, a little too quickly.

“It’s the house RA. She’ll be able to help you.” The woman pauses. “If you’d care to take a seat?”

Frank takes a few steps backward and sits down.

She’s not in her rooms.

That doesn’t have to mean anything. She could be anywhere. In the library. At a lecture. Having lunch, like everyone else.

After a short while, Frank looks up and sees a young woman approaching. She’s tall, thin, and pale, with long red hair. She’s dressed … half like a hippie and half like a corporate executive. This weird, mix-it-up dress code seems to be de rigueur on campus.

“Mr. Bishop?” she says, extending a hand.

“Yes.”

They shake.

“I’m Sally Peake, the resident assistant in Lizzie’s house.” She holds up her cell phone. “I’ve just spoken with Lizzie’s roommate, Rachel, and … she says Lizzie is away for the week.”

Frank looks at her. “Away? I don’t understand. Away where?”

“Er, I don’t know, Mr. Bishop. Just away. That’s all she said.”

“But—”

“Would you like to speak with Rachel yourself? I could take you over there right now.”

Frank pauses. “Yeah. Okay.” He nods. “Thanks.”

A few minutes later they enter the third-floor hallway of Lizzie’s residence. When they’re about halfway along, a door opens and Rachel Clissmann appears, a good-looking, sun-blushed, sporty type in a floral-print dress and thick black-rimmed glasses. Frank met her once before, in the city, at some celebration. She looked different then, and he barely recognizes her now.

“Mr. Bishop.”

“Rachel.”

She shows them in. Frank feels slightly out of place here, standing in this small room, with these two young women. But he glances around nevertheless, taking everything in—the bookshelves, the Shaker table and chairs, the candles and crystals and cushions, the implausible neatness, the scented atmosphere of wellness and moderation. He’s prepared to bet that not all of the rooms on the third or any other floor here are like this.

He’s prepared to bet that Lizzie’s
bed
room is not like this. He looks over. The door is closed.

“Rachel,” he says, turning to her, taking a deep breath, “Sally here told me what you said. Lizzie is away, is that right?”

“Yes, I—”

“I’m not checking up on her or anything. I—”

“No, no, I—”

“I’ve just been worried, that’s all. She hasn’t been returning my calls. Or texts.” He swallows. “Or anything.”

“I understand, Mr. Bishop, of course. She and Alex took off last Friday. It had been planned for a while, or … so it seemed.”

Frank stands there, looking into this girl’s startling blue eyes, uncomfortable in his sudden awareness of her perfume, of the tone of her skin … and he feels a rising sense of how indefensibly ridiculous what he’s about to say will sound.

“Alex?”

“Oh, oh, er … he’s—”

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. Please. Alex, Schmalex … whatever. But do you know where they went?”

Before she has a chance to answer he thinks, last Friday. That means that when he spoke to her on Saturday evening she wasn’t here, settling in to finish a paper. She was somewhere else, with someone else,
doing
something else.

She was lying.

But again, fuck it, that’s not the point. He sounds indefensibly ridiculous to himself now, when the only thing he’s interested in, the only thing he cares about is …
is she okay?

Realizing then that Rachel has already answered his question, and that he wasn’t listening, he says, “Sorry?”

“I don’t
know,
Mr. Bishop,” she repeats, obviously bewildered at having to do so. “Lizzie wouldn’t tell me. I got the impression they just needed some time on their own.” She pauses. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

As Frank turns away, he catches a glimpse of Sally glaring at Rachel.

“Let me try her,” Rachel then offers, but not sounding too hopeful for some reason. As Frank stares at a framed She & Him album cover on the wall, he senses determined phone busyness behind him. After a moment, he hears, “Shit, voicemail,” a pause, and then, in a concerned monotone, “Liz, Rach, call me.”

Frank turns back around.

A century on from two minutes ago, he looks at them both in turn, and says, “Okay, what do we know about this Alex guy?”

*   *   *

On the train to Albany, Ellen does as much background research on Atherton as she can.

A liberal arts college founded in the late 1870s, it was originally built on a twenty-five-acre site in the Sasketchaw Valley a few miles east of Atherton. The college moved to its present, much larger site a mile north of the town when it acquired the former Van Loon family estate in 1953. Most of the buildings currently in use on the campus were constructed in the 1960s, giving the place a curious feel, simultaneously contemporary and dated.

Atherton first admitted women in 1936, and today has a total enrollment of just under two thousand. It offers twenty-five majors leading to arts or science degrees, as well as pre-professional programs in law, medicine, engineering, and IT.

This takes Ellen as far as Yonkers. She then switches her focus to more practical matters.

As a school, Atherton is primarily residential, and most students live on campus. All of its three residence halls have common study areas, pantries, phone and cable connections, and Internet access. Suites are generally single-sex, but gender-neutral accommodation is available in the upper two floors of the third building. As an ex-Cartwright girl, Ellen is familiar with this kind of stuff, most of it, anyway—though she is certainly surprised by one thing, the range of food options available. Atherton’s main dining hall has five different sections, the Globe Café (serving a selection of cuisines from around the world), the Cabbage Patch (salads and vegan), the Spoon (burgers, pizza), the Deli-Zone (sandwiches, wraps), and the Juice Depot.

She looks up from the screen for a moment, and out the window.

Croton-Harmon.

And then back.

Atherton has all the usual other stuff as well, a Student Government Association that liaises with the college administration. It has an official student-run newspaper, the
Atherton Chronicle,
and a closed-circuit TV station (AthTV) that covers events on campus and in the surrounding area, as well as a highly respected and long-established college radio station (WKNT–92 FM) that broadcasts a mix of musical programming and various innovative talk-show formats.