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ACCEPTING ATTICUS’ invitation to coffee seemed safe enough. The café was a short walk from my office, in the center of campus. It wasn’t like he had asked me to get into his car or anything. And he really did work for IT: I could read his name on the ID hanging from the lanyard around his neck.
I locked up my office and we walked up together to our campus café, a franchise of a popular coffee chain set among the cluster of concessions bordering our central quad.
As we walked, Atticus continued to beam as if he had just won the lottery. Odd, but also strangely flattering. He seemed to be enjoying my company. After my breakup with Donnie, it felt nice to get a little friendly male attention.
I hadn’t had a whole lot of positive reinforcement in my life lately. The Student Retention Office was constantly on my case about the faculty in my department not passing enough students (except for Rodge Cowper, who gave everyone A’s). Anonymous journal article reviewers could be downright venomous, especially if I hadn’t managed to figure out who they were so I could cite their work. Every time I turned on the news some politician or ed-tech entrepreneur was scoring points by denouncing college professors as lazy, overpaid, and obsolete. Even Mother Nature had been giving me a hard time. The new tomato plants in my backyard were perishing, while torpedo grass and Madagascar ragwort ran rampant.
“This is a nice food court,” Atticus said. “Everything here looks new.”
“It is pretty new. After the Student Retention Office convinced our administration to ‘streamline’ our general education requirements, some of the smaller departments had their enrollment dry up, and they ended up folding. History, philosophy, political science, and classics are the ones I remember; there may have been others.”
“You don’t have a philosophy department?” he asked. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. So we had all this newly-vacant space. We consolidated it and leased it out.”
“Wow. Capitalism in action.”
He pushed open the café’s glass door and held it for me.
“Exactly. So our students no longer have the opportunity to learn about Plato or Voltaire or Yalta, but you can get a slice of stuffed pizza and a caffè macchiato. This whole thing was one of the Student Retention Office’s proudest achievements. Some of the faculty are a little more ambivalent about it.”
“Well, I’m always hearing people say universities should be run more like a business. I guess this is what a campus looks like when it’s run like a business. A mini-mall with a registrar’s office.”
We took our coffees to a sticky little round table near the door.
“So, Mr. Marx. What kind of fancy computer forensics brought you to my office?”
“Call me Atticus, please.”
“OK. Atticus. And please call me Molly.”
“No fancy forensics necessary. You called, gave your name, and asked for the updated directory. Five minutes later there’s activity in an account that had been flagged for deletion. I searched on the user, Melanie Polewski, and the story about the haunted house death popped up, with your name in it. Pretty easy to connect the dots.”
“So you don’t have to report me or anything?”
He shrugged. “Not to my knowledge. My training here was pretty much, there’s the bathroom, here’s your desk, here’s your passwords. Anyhow, it’s not my job to turn you in. I wasn’t hired to do computer security, and for what they’re paying me—well, I didn’t come here for the great job prospects.”
“So why did you come here?”
Atticus took a sip from his paper cup and grinned at me. He really did have a nice smile.
“Why did I come here? To Mahina?” Atticus shook his head. “Pigheadedness. Delusion. Refusal to accept the inevitable.”
“Care to share specifics?” I was happy to divert the conversation away from myself.
“A woman. I dropped everything and followed her here.”
“From the mainland?”
He nodded, no longer smiling.
“I was infatuated.”
“Sounds like it.” Had I ever been that infatuated with anyone? I didn’t think so.
“But it’s over. It’s finally over. Years, Molly. It’s been years.”
“One of those situations where you’re on and off, but you never really get over them?”
“Exactly. So you know what I’m talking about?”
“In theory.” For some reason I thought of Stephen Park and his cape. “So what happened?”
“Funny story. She moves here.”
“For a job?”
“No. For, I don’t know, reasons. So I quit my job, I move here, I find this job, I actually find her, and guess what. Turns out she’s already hooked up with some other guy. The body wasn’t even cold yet. Oh, sorry, not the best metaphor under the circumstances.”
“It’s okay. Now that feeling, I’m familiar with. When the other person moves on so fast it makes you wonder whether they ever even...anyway. Are you going to try to win her back now, or what?”
He shook his head. “Win her back? No. She’s not a prize. She makes her own choices. I can’t tell her what to do. Bad enough I moved here. She probably thinks I’m a stalker already.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” I was not sorry to see Atticus Marx appeared to be momentarily free of romantic entanglements. “So do I need to do anything about this, uh, email thing?”
“Want my advice?”
“Of course.”
“I think you should keep snooping. Read through everything before the account gets deleted. Learning management system, plagiarism checker, all of the faculty tools. Download everything you can. Take screenshots.”
“So you’re telling me I should keep poking around? I thought you’d come by to warn me off.”
“I was going to. But now I’ve talked to you I know your heart’s in the right place. I trust you.”
“You do? Great. Where do we find eleven more of you for the jury?”
He laughed. “Oh, and as long as you’re snooping. Melanie Polewski was staying with you, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. Wait, I don’t remember seeing that detail wasn’t in the newspaper. Where did you read about this again?”
“Did you let her use your computer?”
“She brought her own. It was way nicer than mine.”
“If there’s any chance you can get to her computer before they take it, check out her search history.”
“I can’t. The police already have it.”
“Oh. Okay, then have your lawyer ask for the search history. They’re supposed to share everything with the defense, but sometimes they forget, know what I mean? You should ask for it specifically, just to be on the safe side.”
“You sound just like my lawyer. Atticus, how do you know so much about the criminal justice system?”