Grey Zone (23 page)

‘I've been reading totally the wrong sort of books,' she said to the still air, the sound of her own voice comforting in the silence. ‘But I
am
a trained researcher.'

With new resolve, she turned back toward the center of the room – and gasped. Suddenly, she knew what all the fuss was about, and why members of her department were frankly envious. Herschoft's office was not only on the top floor, but also faced the river, and beyond his desk, tall windows looked on to a vista like something from a postcard: the blue steeple of Memorial Church off to the right. The red dome of Dunster to the left. The sparkle of the Charles beyond. It was gorgeous.

It was also dangerous, Dulcie realized. She'd moved to the window without meaning to, and behind the desk she saw that what she'd thought only another window was, in fact, a French door, which opened on to the tiny platform. Up close, she could see that the namesake ‘porch' was actually more of a fire escape. Barely two-feet deep by the door and curved like a crescent to meet the office wall at the ends, there was nothing of the practical porch about it. With its repeated scallop shapes across the front of the building, and the retro wrought-iron railings, it was a design element; that was all. Something to break up the glass and steel. But the temptation to open the door, to stand outside in the sunlight, would be irresistible.

Nearly, but not entirely. Even the gorgeous view, the shadows of the clouds sliding over the rooftops like so many ghosts, couldn't erase the memory of what else she'd seen in this building, down at ground level. The wrought-iron railing looked tough, and from where she stood, she could tell that it came up to at least waist level. Forcing someone over would be difficult.

She tried to picture Corkie enraged, her round face red with fury. She imagined her student rushing at the teacher, arms outstretched to push. No, it just didn't scan. Shaking her head, Dulcie turned away from the window and found herself perusing the professor's desk.

Someone had been here. Smudges of dark powder still marred the desk's surface. Fingerprint powder, she realized, just like the movies. A leather pen holder stood to the side, empty of its pen, while its mate, tan with light stitching, held a pair of gold-toned scissors. Just like Suze's, Dulcie realized, only its matching letter-opener was gone and dark powder had already dulled the scissors' grip. More splotched the desk calendar, which must have been photographed, Dulcie realized, as it lay open to the month of March. Professor Herschoft was missing a dentist appointment this afternoon; she wondered if anyone had bothered to cancel. Those dark dashes highlighted what had happened. A man had worked here, had ordered his life from here. And he had been killed. The marks also served to darken Dulcie's resolve. There was nothing here for her to see. The police clearly had everything in hand. This was a crime scene. Serious business. She should call Detective Rogovoy and tell him everything she knew. She should leave.

But the sight of those dark splotches stirred something else in her memory. Esmé. The kitten's misadventure with the fireplace, and Suze's sooty sweater. Dulcie smiled at the memory; despite the mess, those little footprints had been so perfect and adorable.

That was it. She could have smacked herself. Esmé could communicate. She knew that. Only, the little black and white kitten didn't always use language, like Mr Grey did. Maybe it had something to do with still being active on this physical plane. Maybe it was simply the growing kitten's style. But what had Suze said?
Everybody leaves tracks
. These powder smudges were here for a reason. They reminded Dulcie of her mission – to find out what was going on with her beleaguered student.

But what could she contribute that the university detectives wouldn't have already found? Could they have missed something entirely? Unlikely. But maybe there was something, some clue that only another academic would notice – or that only another academic would be able to interpret. The desk was bare, except for the calendar and that leather desk set. So she looked down at the calendar, to see what her trained eyes would find. Well, the first clue was clear enough. A scrawled series of letters:
TEN MT @1
. The detectives might not have been able to interpret that, but to Dulcie it was clear: a meeting with the tenure committee, scheduled for the Friday after he died. Making another leap of logic, she deduced that the professor must have been a little tense: the letters nearly pressed through the paper. Had he been expecting bad news about his tenure, or were nerves simply part of the process?

For a moment, she wondered if the police had gotten it wrong. Perhaps Herschoft
had
committed suicide, the pressure of expectations too much for him. But, no, they had to have their reasons, even if they wouldn't share them with a civilian. And besides, Herschoft hadn't had the meeting yet. If he had been suicidal, wouldn't he at least have waited until the committee had ruled?

The earlier part of the week looked much more fun.
DEPT LNC
for Monday. Well, that sounded good, didn't it? A shared meal with his colleagues. Then
DISC COMM @3
. Well, if he was trying to curry favor, serving on the department's disciplinary committee probably made sense. And then she saw it, the same day. Monday.
CM.
The initials were so small, Dulcie almost missed them. But there they were, in the corner of the day before he'd gone out into the beautiful view, before someone had launched him into the sky.

CM
. The initials could be Carrie Mines. She'd been dating a member of the department. A regular on the floor. But they could also be Corkie McCorkle's. Or could they? Corkie wasn't a psych major, and her full name – the one most professors were likely to know – was Philomena. Carrie Mines. Corkie McCorkle. One had gone missing. But the other, Dulcie knew, was likely to have been the professor's last visitor.

No wonder the police wanted to talk to Carrie. If those really were her initials, she would have been the obvious suspect. Fishing a pencil from her bag, Dulcie used the eraser to turn the page back. There, again, small but visible, were a series of initials:
CM, CM
. Two per week. The page before had them, too, as did most of February. In fact, the initials occurred so frequently that Dulcie began to wonder. Did she have it right? Maybe
CM
wasn't a person's initials at all. Professor Herschoft was a rising star. He must have been on committees – and committees had meetings. But something had aroused the police's interest in Carrie Mines, and this was all she had to go on. Letting the calendar fall back open, she looked over the rest of the desk.

And then she saw it. Peeking out from the edge of the blotter, tucked beneath its leather edge, was a sliver of paper. Using the eraser, she teased it out until the sliver became an envelope – with a departmental logo. Someone from the English department had written Professor Herschoft. Someone had written a letter that he had wanted to save, that he had maybe tried to hide.

‘I'm being silly,' she said. The letter was probably bureaucratic. An exchange of grades or a request for a student from one major to audit a class in another. Besides, the cops would have seen this for sure. Unless her gentle poking about had only now dislodged it. Unless they'd read it and discarded it as useless, unaware of how high academic tensions could run. Unless . . .

Unable to resist, Dulcie slid the envelope out of its hiding place. Gingerly, hyper aware of the black powder coating everything, she pulled the folded sheet out of the envelope.

Dear Professor Herschoft,
it began.
Concerning the matter under discussion, it is vitally important that we meet again. Such grievances are not to be taken lightly, and I, for one, will not be dismissed
.

Dulcie looked at the date. It had arrived a few days before Herschoft's demise. And, despite the high-blown vocabulary, it sounded like a threat. She read on:
It is imperative that we resolve this matter. Sincerely, Norman P. Chelowski.

Chelowski? Had her thesis adviser been in some kind of feud with Herschoft? Dulcie thought back. Chelowski had been worked up about something. He'd been complaining about the Poche Building ever since construction had started. But certainly he couldn't blame Herschoft for it. Unless – Dulcie looked back at the calendar – Herschoft had been on some kind of steering committee. Maybe the young professor had been assigned the task of gathering community reaction. Maybe he'd downplayed the effect on the English department, hoping to curry favor with his own higher ups.

Dulcie only had to close her eyes to remember that entire horrible day. First Chris and Rusti. Then Herschoft. And then that strange, urgent demand from Chelowski. He'd insisted on meeting her in the departmental office right after that horrid, horrid scene at the Poche, but he hadn't called from there. He'd arrived after she did; she could clearly remember him taking off his coat. Maybe he'd called a meeting with her as an alibi. And that grin – that weird grin – came back to mind. Maybe Chelowski had truly hated the other professor. Maybe—

‘What are you doing in here?' It was Merv. He was standing in the open door, with Sally Rothberg right behind him.

THIRTY-TWO

‘
E
xcuse me?' If she'd had a moment, Dulcie might have shoved the letter into her bag. As it was, she dropped it to the floor.

‘Sally said you were looking for me, and when we couldn't find you . . .' To do Merv credit, he looked a little embarrassed.

‘Did you cut the police seal?' The receptionist, on the other hand, sounded angry, and Dulcie rushed to correct her.

‘No! It was already broken! I wouldn't have come in otherwise.'

‘So, why
did
you come in here?' Dulcie felt like she'd been tag-teamed, Sally setting up Merv's question. But there was no denying that she was in an office where she had not been invited. An office that had been closed and did have at least the remains of a police seal on the door.

‘I'm calling the police.' Sally turned toward her office.

‘No, wait.' Dulcie went after her. ‘Please, I can explain.'

Both Sally and Merv turned toward her, waiting. She had to give them something. The police already knew about Carrie. ‘I'm here about Carrie, Carrie Mines. She was my student.'

She didn't mean to look at Merv, but she couldn't help turning slightly. The pale redhead colored and set his lips in a tighter line.

‘So you said.' Sally Rothberg wasn't giving an inch. ‘And that brings you here, why?'

‘I'm worried about her.' It sounded lame. ‘She dropped a section I teach last year, and I'm afraid I let her down. I have reason to believe she may be in some kind of trouble. Even suicidal.'

‘A little late, aren't you?' The receptionist had crossed her arms and was regarding Dulcie with a stern look.

‘Yes, I am.' The confession helped. ‘And I feel terrible about it. But what happened was that I saw her only a few days ago. She was arguing with someone, and then she was reported as missing. And now, well, I'm hearing all sorts of things.' She'd been about to mention the note, but since it was private – and stolen – it made sense to keep quiet about it. At least until she knew for sure just what it meant.

‘So, that's why you've been chatting me up.' Merv's voice was cold enough to make Sally Rothberg turn to look at him.

‘No, Merv. I didn't know you two used to go out. Honest.' It sounded so lame. That couldn't stop her from finally getting some information. ‘Do you know if Carrie was here that day, the day that Professor Herschoft . . . died?'

‘What?' Merv sounded surprised. ‘Why?'

‘Well, they obviously knew each other. I might have seen her initials on his desk calendar. There might be a connection.'

‘OK,' Sally Rothberg broke in. ‘Enough of this. I don't know why you're really here, but you clearly aren't this girl's teacher.'

‘Why? What do you mean?' Dulcie hadn't even gotten around to the contagion theory, to Corkie or Dimitri. To half of what she wanted to say.

‘Because if you were, you would have known that Carrie Mines was a regular here because she was a psych major.' Merv explained. ‘That's how I met her.'

‘She should have been here that awful day,' Sally Rothberg said, picking up the thread. ‘I know she was working very closely with Fritz Herschoft, and last week was really quiet – a lot of us were using it as a catch-up week after exams. But he'd had me call her. He was too busy with his own work, he'd said. He told me to cancel all his appointments so he could have some time alone. I was down in the archives, filing. I thought—' She bit her lip. ‘If only I'd known why, what he was going to do instead. At least he tried to spare his student.'

She was lucky, Dulcie realized on the way down, that Sally Rothberg hadn't called the cops.

‘I just want you gone,' the receptionist had said. ‘No more cops, no noise. I'm sick of it all. I know what people say about us. I know everyone thinks the department attracts unbalanced individuals. But nosing around a dead man's office? That's just ghoulish.'

‘Creepy,' Merv had added as they had marched her to the bank of elevators. And then the elevator had arrived, and Dulcie had considered retreat the better part of valor.

It wasn't until she had exited the building and was walking across the white stone plaza that she stopped to think. Neither Sally nor Merv had been around to see who had been on the floor that fateful day. But Carrie Mines had had an appointment to see Professor Herschoft. No wonder the police wanted to talk with her. Dulcie flashed back to her own presence here that horrible day. She'd been chasing Corkie, who had just had some kind of argument with another woman – probably Carrie. And the woman in olive green – Carrie – had run off. If Corkie had been looking for her student, to make peace or one final point, maybe she'd come here, not knowing that Carrie's schedule had changed.