Chapter Ten

All in one place

I must have given him directions to my car in the end. Once we were there, I must have told him where I lived. I must have even set an alarm for myself, though I didn’t remember doing any of this, because at six-thirty the next morning, my phone alarm blasted me out of a dream.

I sat up, the room still half-spinning. My phone wasn’t in the usual spot. I staggered to my feet and walked into the living room, and there it was, right at the entrance to the kitchen, on the floor, alarm blaring at the highest volume, plugged into a random outlet just above the carpet that I didn’t think I’d even ever noticed before.

On the back of the phone was a yellow sticky note.

Hey Katie. Hope this works. Your car is outside. Left your keys in the kitchen. Kick some ass.

I shook my head. The room spun again, but this time I leaned into the spin and let it guide me to the stove. I switched on a burner and put a pot of water on to boil.

While the water was heating, I forced myself to check the house, just in case. The front door was locked—it was the kind you could lock as you left. I doubted I’d been the one to do it from the inside. My workbag was sitting right to the side of the front door. My laptop was still in there, just as I’d packed it before leaving campus. My wallet was in the inner pouch, just like always.

And then I checked myself. Same clothes as the night before. Same dried bloodstain on the knee of my conservative skirt. I shuddered and pulled it off, hurled it into a corner of the living room. Guess I was down a skirt for the time being; I couldn’t imagine picking it back up, much less trotting off to the dry cleaners with it and blithely informing the person behind the counter that it was just a little bit of blood, if they could please do whatever they need to to get it out. (Out, damn spot.) Same leggings underneath. Same underwear. Same bra. No damage, at least not that I could ascertain. Certainly no indication that Colin had taken any liberties, as it might have once been put. It wasn’t enough, not on one occasion, for me to put him permanently into the Decent Man category, but it got him a step closer.

All this before I realized that it was Saturday, and I didn’t actually have to get ready to go to work.

At the stove, the water quieted as it broke a boil. I poured it onto my instant coffee and leaned over the mug, my elbows resting on the counter, my face in the aromatic mist.

I could go back to sleep. I had time to go back to sleep. But I’d remembered Sasha. I should be crying, really, I reflected. The moisture on my face should be from tears, from grief or shock, not from the steam off of a cup of instant coffee.

So this was it, then, for real. Maybe I could have pulled it together after my breakup, maybe even after Maggie’s unexpected death. But after finding a dead body, literally forty-eight hours before my interview—I shuddered.

But then there, just next to my right elbow, by my collection of sugar packets on the counter, were my keys, sitting in the white porcelain ketchup cup.

I put the keys on the counter and cradled the cup in my hand. A faint scum of ketchup still lined the inside in a couple of places. Stranger things had happened. Stranger things happened all the time, especially in a community college setting. Maybe I wasn’t out, at least not yet.

“Fuck it,” I said. “It’s mine.”

I had the weekend. If I could just shove down any grief or panic, let shock work for me, I could still prep. But I’d need help.

Before I could even think about how it might be better not to ask for favors before nine am on a weekend, I grabbed my phone and texted Jess.

Hey. Are you free this weekend? I need help.

And as it turned out, she clearly didn’t mind, because I’d only managed to tear open a sugar packet and pour it in before my phone buzzed.

Katie. WTF. I heard about last night. Are you okay??

I gave myself half a second to stir and take a long, scalding, sweet sip before I picked up the phone again.

I’m okay. Sasha is not.

…yes, I heard. Very late last night, actually. Do you have to go talk to the cops again?

I don’t know? Probably? No one has called me yet. But I need your help.

Yeah, I thought you might. Honestly, how are you?

I’m okay. But I need to prep.

…prep?

For my interview.

Are you serious?

For maybe the thousandth time in my life, I paused, cursing the vagaries of tone over texting. Shouldn’t I be serious? Did she think I was just going to give up because I’d stumbled over a dead body?

Unless they’ve postponed the interviews, I’m serious. I’m scheduled for Monday.

Fine. You’re right. I’m sure they didn’t postpone anything. This fucking place. Sure, I can help. Want me to pick you up?

And go where?

Campus, idiot. You can find a classroom and I’ll listen to your demo and then we’ll behave like sane people and see what we can figure out about the insanity that’s been going on.

As long as you mean it about the run-through.

I mean it about the run through.

Fine.

I’ll be over at ten.

Ten. That gave me a few hours. Newly refocused, I finished my coffee, stood in the shower until the water ran cold, and did the few yoga stretches I could remember until the room calmed, my head began to ache, just slightly, and it was time to gather my things.

Jess was outside, as promised, at ten.

“Did I tell you where to find me?” I asked, as I slid into the front seat.

“No, but you told admin when you filled out your paperwork this semester, and you’d be surprised at what I can access when I need to.”

I wasn’t sure if that made me feel comforted or creeped out, so I decided to let it go. Jess’s car had seat warmers. It was better than driving myself.

“There’s a latte for you,” she said, waving a hand towards a paper cup in the center console. “Didn’t know if you take sugar, so I grabbed one of everything.”

“You are the best,” I said, prying off the lid, picking out the brown packet, and mixing it in. The coffee was still warm, and strong, and perfect. I put the lid back on and took a long sip.

“So you need to catch me up. I only heard about Sasha through back channels. This is going to be all anyone’s talking about by Monday, but I think we still have a day or so before it’s common knowledge. I’m really sorry if I can’t be sensitive, because I think I’d still be curled up in a ball in my closet if I’d been you, but this is starting to get out of hand. What happened?”

So I told her, the best I could, about how I’d been stood up, and then how I couldn’t Sasha to answer her phone, or her email, nor find her on campus, and so I’d managed to get her address and went down to her condo…

“And that was when I found her,” I finished. “She was dead. She was so dead, Jess. I called 911, and the EMTs came, and the police came, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do.

“Did they talk to you like a suspect?”

“Honestly, I’m not even sure I’d have known. I was so out of it. They took a statement, gave me some juice, and then let me go.”

Jess cut me a glare from the driver’s seat. “And they just let you drive yourself home? That’s bad.”

“I guess they would have,” I said, “but I didn’t actually do it. I realized I couldn’t.”

“So what did you do? Uber? I saw your car in the lot, though.”

“No, actually I called this guy I met the other day,” I said, realizing how that sounded as I said it. “It sounds sketchier than it was, but I don’t have my contacts and I couldn’t get online, so his card was really all I had.”

“Except for my number!”

I sighed. “Yeah, but it was still rush hour, and you would have had to haul yourself down to Los Gatos, and it would have taken forever.”

“So you called a near-total-stranger?”

“I do realize how this sounds, now that I’m telling you, but it made sense at the time. And it was actually fine. He seems like a decent guy. Works at the Company. We met at a Starbucks when he took pity on me and gave me a seat.”

“And he gave you a ride home?”

I felt myself flush, just a little. “Dinner first. Dinner and drinks. Lots of drinks.” I put one hand over my forehead to cool it down, momentarily remembering my hangover headache. “He got me and my car back, plugged in my phone, and left me my keys. Far as I can tell, no advantage was taken, except for maybe of him by me. That wasn’t a cheap place.”

“Hmm. Okay. I’m all for taking advantage of the engineering money. Just be careful,” she said, as she eased the car onto the freeway exit ramp. “Most of them are fine, but there are some that are dangerous. We really don’t need your body to be the next.”

I shuddered. “Please don’t even joke.”

She glanced over again, this time with pity in her expression. “Fair enough. But you know I kind of mean it.”

The campus on the weekend was quiet. It wasn’t raining, not yet, at least, but it was damp and cool, and the misplaced redwoods felt slightly more natural as we walked towards the administration building from the staff parking lot. Later in the semester there would be more activity—high school kids in ill-fitting suits and badges, ostensibly for model UN or debate, but really to flirt and balance on the edge of the fountain; shrieking kids in polyester soccer uniforms, running a sugar high from Gatorade, there to play a game on the big field; small groups of seniors doing tai chi, collectively serene amidst the chaos. But for now, on the first weekend, it was just us two.

“I need to log in and check a few things,” Jess told me, “and then we can figure out a good place for you to do a run through, and then we can really get down to what’s going on.”

I chose to ignore the last action item. If she wanted to play Jessica Fletcher, that was on her. I wasn’t joining in anything unrelated to my interview until the interview was over.

The mailroom was quiet and dark until our movement triggered the sensors, and the lights overhead flickered on. Jess walked back to her desk, and I wandered over to my mailbox.

“This should just take a minute,” she called from her cubicle.

I stopped at my box. It looked, thank goodness, the same as all those around it, with a pile of half-sheet neon fliers, random bulletins, and dust. I scooped the contents out and brought them over to the central table.

Most of what I had went directly into the recycling, but there was one business-sized white envelope with my name printed, in blue ballpoint capital letters, on the outside. Inside was a typed letter. “Dear Ms. Thompson,” I read under my breath, “Due to unforeseen events, we will be postponing the first round interviews initially scheduled to take place this Monday. Our representatives regret the delay and will be in touch as soon as possible to reschedule for next week.” It was signed, sincerely, from Harvey Zeilig, the Committee Chair, with an illegible scribbled signature above his typewritten name.

I felt tiny muscles around my jaw relax, just a touch, with the thought of a little more time. A little more time might not be a bad thing. A lot more time—well, then I would start thinking, and thinking about anything that had happened since I’d left San Francisco would be a horrible idea. But a week to put my head down and prep? That I could use.

I tucked the letter back into its envelope and the envelope into my bag just as Jess popped back into the main mailroom. “That’s it for me for now,” she said. “Come on. Let’s find a classroom so you can put on a show.”

We were halfway to the Language Arts quad, and I was still relaxing, piece by piece, when Jess’s phone began to buzz. “Hang on,” she said, and detoured towards a bench to pull it out from her bag. I let my gaze rest on the cafeteria building in the mid distance. Crows were hopping around by the bushes outside, snatching remnants of snacks from the dirt. A live-in clean-up crew, I thought to myself, and for some reason, that struck me so funny that I started to laugh.

“What?” Jess said, coming over to me and shoving her phone back in her pocket. “Did I miss something?”

“No, not really,” I said, trying to swallow my giggles. “I was just watching the crows and thinking about how it’s so typical of this place to have a native-fauna clean-up crew. Environmentally sound, great press, and they will literally work for peanuts.”

Jess raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad that you’re in a better mood,” she said, “but part of me thinks that I should be worried. If you’re losing your grip on reality, will you please tell me? Maggie will haunt me forever if I send you in front of this hiring committee when you’re delusional.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I think it’s just the relief of having more time.”

“Having…more time?”

“Yeah, there was a note in my box. Process has been pushed back a week.”

Jess didn’t say anything.

“I can show you,” I offered, and she held out a hand.

I paused to reach into my bag for the envelope. She opened it, took a quick look, and then turned back to me, eyebrows now firmly ensconced at her hairline. “Katie, this isn’t right,” she said.

My stomach iced over. “What do you mean, it isn’t right?”

“I mean it’s not right. I was just checking in with the room reservation matrix, just to make sure that things hadn’t been pushed back before we got too deep into your rehearsal. You’re still on for Monday.”

“Then what’s that?” I asked, gesturing at the letter in her hands.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

We stood there, in silence, for a moment.

“Let’s get to a classroom,” she said, taking hold of my elbow.

Jess was in possession of a master key, and the first room in the Language Arts quad was empty, quiet and dark, until we waved our arms and triggered the lights. We spread the letter out on the instructor’s desktop.

“I don’t remember what Harvey’s signature looks like,” I said. “This could be something he’d sent.”

“Check your email. And your voicemail. I know this campus is still halfway in the 20^thcentury, but there’s no way that they’d notify you of something like this via just a letter in your mailbox, over the weekend.”

I pulled out my laptop and phone and did both. “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing from the committee at all.”

“Send a note yourself then, to Harvey, and ask about this directly. If someone is forging his name on official letterhead, he’s going to need to know. And best-case scenario, you actually do get a delay.”

“You’d think they’d give out a delay without even thinking about it to anyone who finds a body,” I grumbled as I typed. “Especially when said body used to be a member of the department.”

“You know how this all works. She’s probably still tenured until she’s in the ground, and if the bureaucracy does the usual thing at the usual pace, they’ll be recording her committee meeting votes via Ouija board. And if she doesn’t get a break due to being dead, you certainly won’t earn a break when you’re still alive.”

“There,” I said, clicking the mouse. “Sent. What do we do now?”

“What do you mean, what should you do? Until you hear from Harvey, the interview is still Monday. I’m your audience. Get going.”

So I got going.

It felt strange, for the first few minutes, to be running through a demonstration lesson that I’d designed what felt like a lifetime ago, before I’d known that Maggie was gone, and definitely before I’d come face to face with Sasha’s body. But the routine was familiar—I’d designed it that way, to best showcase my strengths even if I was hit with a last-minute wave of anxiety—and soon I had nearly forgotten about the strange series of deaths and debilitations that was haunting the campus. I was in the zone.

I was in the zone, that is, until the classroom door slammed open and a male voice shouted “Identify yourself!”

Jess shrieked. I froze, dropping the whiteboard marker in my hand. It clattered on the floor.

In the doorway, dressed in his campus police intern blues and looking incredibly serious, was my student, Andy Nguyen.