The Black Hour (34 page)

Jim sighed. “Yes, she probably would. But think about it.”

“I will.” I could certainly guarantee that.

I turned toward home, the lightning bolt in my gut promising a storm.

At the crucial turn toward home, I continued toward the Mill. To hell with awkward conversations. I’d already walked to work and headed off an odd overture from my boss. If Joe wanted a piece of this action, let him try and take it.

I leaned into the heavy door, feeling how far I’d walked, how far over my limits I’d gone.

Joe came from the back storeroom. “Hey.” He glanced at his watch. Early. He would have just opened the door. The breakfast crowd: me.

He said, “I think we should—”

“I think we don’t need to, OK? Bloody Mary, please.”

What could I expect if I let him go through with it? An apology at best. At worst, he could find something new and more insulting to say to me. Like: We’re going to build a new wheelchair ramp, and hey, you’re an expert. I didn’t expect or want anything at this point. I’d grow a little more scar tissue, that was all. The psychic kind. Thick skin. High defenses.

A little too late for that. How had I come to let Nathaniel Barber burrow so deep into my life?

I thought of that first day, my office, the excruciating pain up through my hip until I couldn’t see or hear or feel anything but panic. The tears, and then his prim little package of tissues. The tissues, probably. They were the product of a boy raised polite and concerned, a young man perhaps far too prepared for the worst to happen to him. All because of my desperation. If I hadn’t needed someone, if I hadn’t needed rescue that day, none of this would be happening. That little shit. That little Boy Scout and his twee package of hankies.

Joe tossed a napkin onto the table and thumped my drink down. He stood for just a moment too long.

“Start a tab.”

He left, shaking his head. The front door opened, both of us turning to see with whom we’d spend the rest of the morning.

McDaniel, of course. All my luck was bad.

He leaned over the bar and said something to Joe, then started toward me.

“You can ignore me,” I said. “You can do your serious drinking at another table. I don’t mind.”

He jangled the change in his pockets. “Not going to get anywhere drinking Bloody Marys.” He pulled off his big jacket, laid it across the top of a nearby chair, and slid into the booth across from me.

“This is healthy. The vegetable group is covered. Seriously, you don’t have to—unless you’re still following me?”

“I’m not following you.” He cut his eyes away. His thumbs flicked at one another on the table. “Anymore.”

Joe brought another napkin, another tall glass filled with tomato juice and a stalk of wilted celery, and left without a word.

“Sometimes I end up in the same place as you,” McDaniel said.

“Like, for instance, today. How about the day that will live in infamy? I believe you said you were already on campus that day. Just a coincidence, I suppose?”

“I—cover the university beat.”

I watched his thumbs flicking. Nervous tics made me nervous. “Sure, sure. And what
beats
were you covering that day?”

“Some event in the student center. Nothing—hey.” He sat back. “I’m getting a vibe here.”

Joe looked over at us and then reached for the remote. Sports news, around the clock, always available to drown out noisy drunks and conversations he didn’t want to hear.

“You’re not getting any vibes from me,” I said.

“I am. You think I had some warning? Do you think that someone called in a warning?” He patted at his pocket, then glanced at his jacket with longing. His pen, I realized. We were on the record. “What have you heard?” he said.

“What have
you
heard?”

He hid behind his glass, taking a long drink.

“You do have something,” I said.

“Have you heard from your little buddy?”

“What’s going on?” I sat forward in the booth and remembered that I hadn’t taken my pills. I’d rather pass out again than have McDaniel see me take them. And I’d rather die than have McDaniel see me pass out.

“I can’t talk about it yet,” he mumbled.

“What were you doing on campus that day?”

His face shifted. There was something there—he had the expression of a student who hadn’t done the reading for class. And then he brightened. “Oh, my God. You think I had something to do with the shooting.”

When he put it that way, I really didn’t. “Well, you have to admit—”

“That’s what you think? Jesus, what
do
you think? Was someone else involved? Is this what Nath’s digging up? Suicide pact or what? Who’s he talking to?” He reached for his jacket.

I had no idea what Nath had dug up—that was the problem. The bigger problem was that I’d started to think about every person I’d ever known as a collaborator. Over at the bar, Joe glowered in our direction. Could he have had something to do with this? Doyle, heartbroken after I’d finally asked him to leave. What if he’d thought he couldn’t live without me? Ben Woo, always angling to keep up with me, to pass me by. Well, he’d certainly done that. What if he’d constructed my downfall for his own gain? The problem with not knowing was that I could suspect anything and anyone.

I held my head in my hands and talked to the table. “Drop the pen, Scoop. What were you doing on campus that day?”

“If I tell you, can I get my notebook out?” He waited until I looked up and nodded, then spread his hands out on the table and looked at them a little too seriously. “It was a career fair in the student center—”

“Bullshit.”

“No, wait. Really. I went to the career fair that day.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “But not to cover it. I just—went.”

“You—went. To the career fair.” What did that mean? “You’re looking for a new job? So what?”

“Journalism is dying, in case you haven’t noticed. Not that I was ever Pulitzer material.”

The silence could have used a denial.
No way
or
your work is great.
I didn’t have it in me. “So you went to the career fair,” I said.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

I stared at him. “Explain it to me. What’s so awful?”

“
Public relations
. The guys at the paper would never let me hear the last, and you know I go to Rothbert journo classes sometimes, and I have to tell them, oh, yeah, come on out, the water’s fine. But it’s not. It’s a hard job, long hours and late hours and it pays like crap.”

I waved at Joe for two more drinks, gesturing toward the taps. “On me, then.”

McDaniel rubbed at his face. “What’s wrong with wanting more out of my life than eating dinners out of greasy bags and keeping a shaving kit in my Jeep? The guys talk it up like we’re saving the world. My life is—dropping everything because vandals tore a tire track through a rich dude’s lawn. Or trailing after Gretchen Wolitzer, hoping she might introduce me to someone doing something half interesting over in that ivory tower of yours. I follow the press releases, Amelia. I might as well be writing them. I—wanted more. I thought I could sustain the—you know?”

I knew. The fire in the belly. I had fire in my belly now, but not the right kind. And when the hell did we become girlfriends? I dug through my bag and found the pills. I popped two as Joe dropped the beers and retreated.

“What’s that?” McDaniel said.

“Headache.”

He watched me put away the pills. “The day you got shot, I thought I’d finally got my break.”

“Really nice,” I said.

“Didn’t know you, did I? You were just a story. A horrifying story—do you remember hearing about Virginia Tech or Columbine or, God, Newtown? Do you and your colleagues sit around at faculty teas and wonder, ‘What if so-and-so came in right now with a rifle?’”

I didn’t bother disavowing him of the tea concept. “That shooting at Northern Illinois—that one was close to home. We talked about it then.” The year I was up for tenure. Every move I made, I felt as though I were being filmed, and then I looked up from a lecture to see Doyle’s face in the slim window of the classroom door. We weren’t dating then; he was only my department chair, a charming guy I needed to impress. In the end, I cut class short and huddled in my office. In the early hours, we found out, you don’t know how isolated the event might be, if it’s one guy in the clock tower, or if it’s something larger. That’s what the 2001 terror attacks had done to the entire country, but on college campuses we’d been on edge for much longer. Something about the high-stress environment, the competition, the sitting-duck quality of a community within a community. “Ever since that University of Texas tower shooter. The one in the sixties? I don’t remember his name.”

“Charles Whitman,” he said, catching the heavy look I gave him. “Funny what you run up against in the research phase. He had a brain tumor, did you know? They found it in the autopsy.”

“How many did he kill?”

“Sixteen. Injured thirty-two more. He headed that column of history for a long time. Then Virginia Tech—”

“You have an interesting level of recall on the topic.”

McDaniel grimaced, downed his beer. “I’ve been—going over old notes.”

“No wonder you’re looking into another line of work.”

“I don’t mind hard stories. Hard stories sell papers, win awards, get you noticed.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Your story moved through too fast,” he said.

“Didn’t feel like it to me.”

“I tried to get in to see you at the hospital every day for six weeks, until my editor told me to drop it.”

“I wasn’t dressed to receive.” At six weeks out, I still visited the black room, in and out of consciousness.

He looked uncomfortable. “So . . . Nath.”

“You know, we don’t travel together in a pack. He’s just my student.”

The thumbs started flicking again. He looked as though he were doing sums in his head.

“Why are you concerned—” I remembered the sirens, the ambulance, firefighters, and stood, banging my thighs against the table. “Is he OK? What happened?”

McDaniel pulled me back down. “He’s not hurt.”

“Was it a fire? I saw the trucks, but I never thought—”

“How well have you gotten to know him?”

I swallowed the knot in my throat and reached for my beer to stall. “Not very well.” The real question: how well had he gotten to know me? “He’s been—helpful. While I found my feet—”

“He’s new to campus, isn’t he?” McDaniel said. “I mean—think about this for a minute before you dismiss it—could Nath have anything to do with what happened to you last year?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Joe turned the TV volume higher.

“Give it a minute,” McDaniel said. “Where was he last year?”

“He would have been in college in—I can’t remember where he’s from.”

“Indiana. A few hours from here.”

Something about his voice made me go still. I took the offered minute. Now I had to wonder if I’d ever met Nathaniel Barber before this year? I’d taken almost a year to find Leo Lehane hiding in my memory. I didn’t have the guts to try and locate Nath on that back shelf as well. “What is it?” I said.

“Nath’s roommate was found unconscious this morning. Not sure of his chances.”

“They think Nath—hurt him?”

McDaniel slumped against the wall. “My friend on the campus police force thinks he hurt himself.”

Relief fluttered through me. I mean, poor
kid
, but really—

There had to be more. “What does this have to do with me?”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small square. Unfolded, it was newsprint, roughly clipped and marked up. Underlines, circles, notes scrawled in the tight margins. I saw these notations first, then the page, the same page I had back in my home office, but with the photo intact. I could finally see Dale Hall and all the huddled masses keeping vigil out front. It was touching, really. I wondered why Corrine hadn’t wanted me to have it. Byline Rory McDaniel. Photo credit by Rory McDaniel, I saw now. “You brought a camera to the career fair?”

“I have a camera in my pocket right now. This is one of the many—let’s call it dozens—of clippings and prints found when the campus cops ran up to take care of that kid this morning.”

“Who is this roommate?”

“You aren’t following. They found this stuff on
Nath’s
side of the room. In his desk.”

The handwriting on the clipping came into focus. I’d let Nath handle some short-answer quizzes in the intro class. He’d done a good job with them, giving each student a thoughtful response in careful handwriting just like this. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, but something isn’t right. Amelia, it looks like Nath has been—I don’t want to use the word stalking, but the police will. And he has some rather disturbing images on his side of the room. Not to do with you, nothing like that. But disturbing enough to warrant a look around, and especially when you combine it with—with this.” He waved his hand at the article. The article he himself had researched and written. Information now playing out in a different dimension. I knew what he must be thinking: Reporting horrible stories was one thing, but clipping and preserving them, another.