The microfiche reader was antiquated and shoved to a back corner of the library. The light in the tiny, closet-size space streamed yellow and weak. Cobwebs glinted in the corners. Alex had the place to herself.
She fanned through the alphabetized strips. You have to start at the beginning, she thought. The shame she’d felt earlier at having botched the Procedure was all but gone now, replaced by the information Hayden had given her. It meshed perfectly with what Fisk had said—she had to go back to the root, to the two victims themselves. She had to follow Aldiss outward from there. She’d been doing it the wrong way, trying to use the text to solve the riddle. Now she saw her mistake.
A for Aldiss. F for Fallows. H for Hamlet. D for Dumant.
Dumant University. 1982. The murders of Wheatley and Murray. The beginning.
She took out the W strip and put it on the machine.
W for Shawna Wheatley, the first victim.
Alex had been able to find articles on Richard Aldiss, on the Dumant crimes themselves and on the man’s vast scholarship—but about his (No, Alex, she thought, catching herself, not his but someone else’s, the real killer’s) victims there was little. The only photos she’d found were the ones Fisk had shown her.
She moved the wheel through the sheets of microfiche, tracking words with her eyes. Killer. Investigation. Upheaval. Campus. Methodology. Aldiss. She stopped only now and then—on a photograph of a young Aldiss, an aerial shot of the Dumant campus with a black circle where Shawna’s body had been found—but mostly she moved through the information, looking for anything about Wheatley.
“Ms. Shipley?”
Alex, startled, turned to see the librarian in the door.
“Yes, Ms. Daws,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”
The woman left Alex alone.
She shook her head, clearing the exhaustion. It was nearing midnight now and so much had happened. She thought again of Melissa Lee, of her eyes in that false mirror, of Keller’s pitying hands on her back.
“Come on,” she said aloud, clearing the thoughts. “Focus, Alex.”
She thought of poor Shawna Wheatley. Everybody was searching for Paul Fallows, trying to uncover the identity of the writer, but no one was trying to find the truth about Shawna. No one was looking for an answer to what had really happened to either of those two students at Dumant University.
Alex closed her eyes, remembering something. It was something Fisk had shown her that day, a small piece of those terrible articles on the Dumant crimes.
You should look into Shawna Wheatley.
It was what Aldiss had said when they brought him in for questioning. She’d always felt there was something strange about it, something buried inside those words that might lead her to answers. Look into, she thought, pinching her eyes fiercely, nails digging painfully into her temples. Look into . . .
She almost missed the article by scrolling too quickly.
It had been written in the fall of 1981, just months before Wheatley was murdered.
A simple story about a graduate fellowship in literature at Dumant. A hometown-pride angle, the mother quoted. In the accompanying photograph Wheatley wore thick glasses and a turtleneck sweater, her smile wide and innocent. The microfiche reader whirred in the small, dust-filled room.
“Who are you?” Alex asked aloud. “Who are you really, Shawna?”
She looked at the story again. Read each word, her eyes stinging.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
But there had to be. She was on the last microfiche sheet now.
Goddamn you, Aldiss, she cursed silently. She was exhausted, getting loopy. Losing herself. Goddamn you for doing this to me. To her.
Promising herself this was it, Alex read the story one last time.
It was then that she saw it. Just a few throwaway lines at the bottom of the page. She leaned close to the screen, the cheap plastic chair scratching the floor beneath her.
Recently Shawna began her dissertation. Under the tutelage of her favorite professor, she has begun to read books in ways she never imagined. “Dr. Aldiss has taught me so much,” she said. “He wants me to go to Iowa for research, just like he did when he was a student here. If I can find someone to go with me, I might just make that trip.”
Trembling, Alex stared at the screen. The girl had fallen away; all the texture in the small, cramped room had dissolved. She was alone. Completely alone. Someone walked past the door, heels clicking. She barely heard it.
Someone to go with me . . .
Alex reached forward and turned off the machine and the room fell dark.
* * *
At just after one in the morning she knocked on Keller’s door. The football dorm smelled of pizza and vomit and aerosol deodorant. Someone had hung a jockstrap on the fire spigot. She waited, her mind racing with unanswered questions.
Keller pulled the door open, blinked into the harsh corridor light. His eyes were glazed with sleep, his hair spiked into tufts. He was shirtless and Alex made herself focus on his face, his bloodshot eyes.
“Alex, if this is about the Procedure, then—”
“The photograph you found,” she said. “The one of Rutherford. I think I know what it means.”
“What are you talking about, Alex?”
She told him in one breathless rush. She told him everything she had learned about Shawna Wheatley that night.
When she was finished, Keller asked, “What do we do now?”
She didn’t have to think. The answer was obvious, right there on the tip of her tongue. It had been obvious the moment she’d found the article on the microfiche reader, maybe even earlier than that—when she’d seen that strange photograph of Charles Rutherford in the bar, or when she’d read those time-withered newspaper articles in Fisk’s treasure room. All she’d needed was Daniel Hayden to push her in the right direction.
“It means,” Alex said finally, “that we have to go to Iowa. Aldiss is leading us there.”