Grey Zone (8 page)

Sleep. Dulcie knew her nerves were too jangled, but the idea of crawling into bed with the kitten beckoned. Or maybe just a cuddle on the couch, a mug of hot cocoa, and warm, clean socks. Thinking of Esmé, of how her cat could distract her, was comforting. Maybe it was time to unveil the felt mice Lucy had sent, the ones stuffed with home-grown catnip.

Lucy. Dulcie had a sudden strong urge to call her mother. To tell her everything. But, no. Lucy's heart was in the right place, and Dulcie knew her mother loved her. But she'd muck this all up with her mongrel mysticism. What Dulcie didn't need right now was the kind of advice her mother would give, about karma and the circle of life. Likewise, there was no way she was going to gather sage and charcoal now, not to make a circle around the Poche Building. Not to exorcize a spirit who had, she hoped, already gone on to better things.

Speaking of moving on, Dulcie noticed how the damp of the curb had begun to seep through her jeans. Her nausea had abated. It was time to get going. Home. The kitten. Cocoa. One of the emergency vehicles drove past, no lights, no sirens. Well, there was little need for them now. Still, when her cell phone rang, Dulcie jumped.

‘Hello?'

‘Dulcie, glad I caught you.' She should have looked at the number. She'd hoped for Chris, or some other friend. For Corkie. Even, she admitted, Lucy. Instead, she had Norm Chelowski, her thesis adviser. ‘Are you on campus?'

‘Well, I was on my way home.' For once, Dulcie wished she found it easier to lie. ‘You see, I stepped in a giant puddle and—'

‘No problem, then. I've just had a breakthrough that I think might help you with your work. Might help you get back on track. Why don't you come on by now?'

‘But, my feet—' She couldn't tell him about the body. The blood.

‘I bet Nancy has a towel. Maybe even some extra socks. See you in a few.' He hung up, leaving Dulcie with no recourse except to call him back and explain – or to meet with him. Neither had any appeal, not when home and a kitten waited.

But the little clapboard building had been her shelter before, and it was closer than her Central Square apartment. Besides, Dulcie told herself as she plodded down the street, even Norm Chelowski couldn't make things any worse. Could he?

NINE

A
t least Nancy got it. As soon as Dulcie walked into the departmental offices, the motherly secretary took one look at her and bustled her into a chair. She had heard the news – a university-wide text blast had gone out announcing the closure of the building, and the student network had quickly filled in the rest.

‘You poor dear.' She pushed a mug into Dulcie's hands and wrapped her own sweater around Dulcie's shoulders. From where she was sitting, Dulcie could just see the note board. A flier advertising a futon had gone up in the last twenty-four hours, its banner headline – pillows included! – covered the bottom of Carrie Mines' face.

‘Thanks, Nancy.' Dulcie grasped the mug tightly, hoping to still her shaking hands. On the wall, Carrie Mines' eyes looked out, wide and surprised.

Nancy tut-tutted. ‘I'm only sorry I don't have something stronger to add to that.'

‘There you are!' Norm Chelowski appeared in the doorway, ducking his head as he always did to avoid hitting the lintel. ‘You wouldn't believe what I just saw.'

The phrasing, his voice, sent a wave of nausea over Dulcie. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair.

‘Norm, can't you tell she's had a shock?' Nancy's warm hand made Dulcie aware of how cold she felt, as well. ‘She's shivering.'

‘A little distraction will be just the thing.' Norm smiled as he shrugged off his own coat. It was an odd smile, slightly too wide to look natural. ‘Shall we?' He held out one pale hand, and Dulcie winced.

‘Norm.' Nancy hustled the balding man off into a corner, leaving Dulcie to nestle into the sweater. It smelt of Nancy's perfume. Sweet, a little old-ladyish, and comforting. From the opposite side of the room, she overheard the word ‘shock' again, along with ‘witness' and ‘incident.' When Norm looked back at her, his interest seemed more genuine. At least the weird grin was gone.

‘Oh my, you have had a day, haven't you?'

It wasn't a question, but Dulcie nodded.

‘But since we're both here . . .'

If Nancy could have leveled the man with her eyes, she would have. Dulcie felt her gathering her resources for a fight.

‘I'm OK, Nancy.' She stood up, still cradling the mug. ‘I'll be OK.' She handed the scented sweater back to the secretary and immediately regretted it.

‘You keep that.' Nancy pushed it back. ‘You can give it back to me when you leave.' With a parting shot at Norm, she relinquished her charge, and Dulcie followed her adviser up the stairs.

‘I've been in the library all day, but Nancy told me what happened.' He'd settled into his seat. Behind him, Dulcie could see the Poche. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe.

‘Sorry, sorry.' He got up and pulled on a cord. The shade stuck halfway down, and he fussed with it for a moment, finally bunching his coat up on the sill.

He was hopeless, Dulcie realized. Forget the weasel. This man had the social graces of a reptile, but he was her thesis adviser. For the first time in a while, she thought fondly of her first adviser. Professor Bullock had had his own problems, and plenty of them. But at least the ancient professor had a kind of old-world gallantry. ‘Pretty bad, huh? Have they released any information?'

She shook her head, avoiding even an explanation. If he wanted information, he could join the twenty-first century and get text updates like everyone else. ‘You said you found something that would relate to my thesis?'

‘Oh, I did. I do.' He reached into a canvas book bag and pulled out a handful of Xeroxes. ‘It's lucky I caught you today.'

She really was going to lose it, but he pushed the papers toward her until she made herself reach for them. They were copies of broadsheets, the type smudged and archaic. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Chelowski. I don't understand.'

‘The New World, Ms Schwartz! That's your missing piece!' He pointed at one of the pages and pushed it closer to her.

She shook her head slowly. The papers in front of her weren't that hard to read, not for a scholar. She just had to focus. She read the masthead, making out the words:
Philadelphia
and
Evening Standard
.

‘Your radical theories? Your missing author? You've just been too narrow in your focus. Read those. Look at the dates.'

She did: 1801, 1802. ‘These are later, and they're American.' Her head was not working. ‘They're not by the author of
The Ravages
.'

‘Of course they're not by her!' Chelowski shook his head at her confusion. ‘But they're not that much later, Ms Schwartz. And if you check out what they say, you'll see many of the same ideas.'

Dulcie tried to read –
A woman, when educated, gifts to her children a bounty more to be priz'd than jewels –
but Chelowski kept talking.

‘It's all the same ideas, Ms Schwartz, and they are all over the American press. The period after the Revolution and before the War of 1812 saw a flowering of ideas – all those radical émigrés, all that New World opportunity as trade reopened. Your author may have had some minor literary merit in her day, but as you can see from these essays, she was hardly a revolutionary thinker. Her colleagues across the Atlantic were writing along the same lines, more freely even. Therefore, your author would not have been murdered or hushed up or what have you. There'd be no reason! She probably lost her publishers as the New World became ascendant, and then faded away.
Quod erat demonstrandum
!'

He wasn't making sense. None of this was making sense. And to top it off, her chills were getting worse. She closed her eyes and felt the building sway. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Chelowski. I don't understand.'

‘Of course, of course. The day you've had.' He was standing beside her now, pulling the papers toward her and patting them into a pile. ‘I shouldn't have pressed you to meet with me today, but I wanted to finally put that silly idea to rest. Are you capable of walking home? Should we call a taxi for you?'

It was an out. But if the author of
The Ravages
wasn't exactly original, she also didn't believe in fainting heroines. ‘I'm fine. It was just the shock.' She would leave with dignity. She put the papers into her bag and stood up. The room regained its mooring. Still, she let him help her on with her coat.

‘Must have been horrible. Horrible,' he said as he held the door. ‘I guess it's not a surprise, though. Psychology and all.' Curiosity got the better of her, and she turned to face him. He was grinning again, that weird, self-satisfied grin. ‘Nobody in
our
department ever defenestrated themselves.'

Dulcie made it to the curb before she lost what little lunch she'd eaten, the shadow of the Poche Building adding to the late winter chill.

TEN

S
ometimes the modern world simply wasn't worth it. All Dulcie wanted was to get home, to crawl into bed, and to dream of nothing but cats. If Mr Grey was looking for a moment to comfort her, this would be it, she thought as she dragged herself toward home.

Instead, her phone rang. It was Suze, calling from work, but at least she provided Dulcie with a chance to unload.

‘It was horrible, Suze. You can't imagine.' She wanted to think that the silence on the line was sympathy, but her room-mate had been so busy recently, she couldn't be sure. ‘You there?'

‘Yeah, I am. It does sound awful. I wish—' Dulcie heard voices and knew what was coming next. ‘I wish I could get home and see you.'

‘It's OK.' For all her misery, just hearing her friend's voice helped. ‘At least you're not gloating, like Chelowski.'

‘Why did he insist on seeing you right then anyway? You don't think—' Suze said something else, but it was eaten up by the sound of traffic. Dulcie didn't want to stop walking, and so she put one hand up over her ear.

‘I don't know, Suze. He's just an odd duck, and when he wants to meet with me, he calls. But it was weird, like he felt superior because it hadn't happened to someone in English. Like it was something that would reflect badly on the department.'

‘It might, actually. I mean, from what I heard, Fritz Herschoft was a rising star in developmental psyche. Everyone expected him to get tenure, and I gather most of his students loved him.'

‘Love—' Dulcie sidestepped as a couple, oblivious to their surroundings, made their way down the sidewalk. ‘Just goes to show, love isn't always enough.'

‘Uh oh.' Suze knew Dulcie well enough to ask. ‘Is this about Chris's hours?'

‘It's not just the hours, Suze.' Dulcie paused. It had been only a short while since she'd seen Chris with his student. His tall, slim, red-haired student. Her head began to spin again.

‘I wonder why he did it.' Suze's voice broke through the fog.

‘Maybe it was just lunch. I mean, I'd said I was busy.'

‘What?'

Dulcie shook her head to clear it. ‘Sorry, you're talking about Herschoft?' In some ways, it was easier than thinking about Chris.

‘Uh huh, and about what your jerk of an adviser was saying. Maybe it
was
something to do with the department. I mean, maybe he was in some kind of trouble.'

Trouble. ‘Would have to be pretty bad to push him that far.' What had people been talking about? ‘Suze, you think maybe he was the Harvard Harasser? Maybe somebody knew and was threatening to expose him?'

‘Could be.' Suze sounded thoughtful. ‘Or maybe it was getting worse, and he couldn't stop himself.'

Dulcie cringed, and as she did, she remembered a pair of eyes wide set – perhaps in fear. ‘Suze, did you think this has anything to do with the missing girl, Carrie Mines?'

‘Carrie who?' With a start, Dulcie realized that she hadn't talked to her room-mate since the night before. Their dinner together – and their warm apartment – seemed light years away. Picking up the pace, she filled in her room-mate on the morning meeting and the flier on the departmental bulletin board.

‘And the photo – I'm pretty sure it was the girl I saw yelling at that guy, under the arch.'

‘Well, what did the cops think?' Dulcie didn't answer, and Suze knew her friend well enough to know what that meant. ‘Dulcie,' she said with a bit too much emphasis. ‘I thought you were going to go tell the cops what you saw.' Suze sounded a bit short. She was at work, after all.

‘Suze, please.' Dulcie was embarrassingly close to tears. ‘I just didn't have time, and the way my day went . . .' She paused, remembering. ‘Actually, I was about to, but then I'd seen this student of mine, who had sort of blown me off—'

‘So, you haven't.' The line grew noisy, and Dulcie heard someone calling her room-mate's name. Suze was losing patience. ‘Did you say anything to them, you know, at the Poche?'

Dulcie paused on the sidewalk to catch her breath. ‘Suze, I left. I mean, before the cops got to me.'

Silence. Dulcie wasn't sure if her room-mate was disgusted or just dealing with another emergency. ‘I mean, they don't know who I am.'

‘Didn't the guard log you in?' Suze came back loud and clear.

‘Well, he looked at my ID.' Dulcie tried to recall if the guard had written anything down.

‘I know that guy, he's a gorgon. You better go; you don't want them thinking anything.

‘But I was in the lobby when he— When it happened.'

‘You were in the lobby desperately trying to get upstairs.'

Dulcie swallowed, the weight of the day sinking in. ‘Suze, would you go with me?'

‘Oh, honey, I wish I could but . . .' It was the same story she'd been hearing for months now. Work, work, work. And besides, she was an adult, wasn't she? As Dulcie passed through Central Square, Suze rang off, leaving her alone in the center of the city.