The Professor

by Alexandria Clarke

  As we approached the library steps, I slowed Wes with a soft hand on his chest. “Donovan Davenport was here when I left,” I said. “He might still be inside.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s a member of BRS. If he’s in the clubhouse—”

  “If he’s in the clubhouse with a dead body, I’ll arrest him,” finished Wes, holding open the library door for me. “Where to?”

  I led Wes to the Rapere Wing. He gazed around in awe as we wound our way through the bookshelves. It occurred to me that I’d never really shown Wes around Waverly before. It was a shame that the first time he got to experience the wonder that I felt every day, we were under such stressful circumstances.

  When I showed Wes how the onyx ring fit into the false wall to set the bookcase in motion, he swore audibly. The expletive floated away, echoing back from the stained-glass dome. I shushed Wes and motioned for him to follow me down the deep stairwell.

  There was no sign of Donovan as we reached the marble entryway. Everything was as I had left it, dark and undisturbed. I flipped on the light switch, illuminating the BRS logo and the raptor on the wall. Wes examined the mantle but made no comment.

  “Their meeting room,” I explained, pointing out certain rooms as we moved into the corridor. “The library. I found their charter in there. It has all the names of their previous and current members.”

  “You’d think a secret society wouldn’t have stuff like that just lying around,” commented Wes, glancing through the window of the library.

  “I don’t think they ever expected a nonmember to break in here.”

  He shook his head. “Arrogant.”

  We reached the door to the art room. With a deep breath, I shoved it open.

  “Whoa,” said Wes, taking in the expanse of paintings and sculptures. “Is this all—”

  “Rare and illegally obtained?” I finished. “Probably. O’Connor’s over here.”

  Together, we approached the freezer. I swallowed, feeling bile rise at the back of my throat. Seeing O’Connor’s body once was quite enough for me. I didn’t think I’d be able to take it again.

  “Can you open it?” I asked Wes, turning away from the freezer. “Honestly, I might vomit if I have to see that again.”

  Wes steeled himself with a deep breath then lifted the lid. “Uh, Nicole?”

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not that. There’s—there’s no body.”

  “What?”

  I whirled around and leaned over the open freezer. Sure enough, O’Connor was nowhere to be found. The freezer was empty and sterile without any indication that there had been a dead body in it just a couple hours before.

  “Are you sure—” began Wes.

  “Yes, I’m sure! Donovan must’ve moved him.”

  “On his own? That’s a lot of dead weight. Oh, God, that was a terrible choice of words. I’m sorry.”

  I smacked Wes’s arm, glaring at him. “I was right about this whole underground cubbyhole, wasn’t I? But a dead body down here is too much of a stretch?”

  “Okay, okay,” conceded Wes, raising his hands in defeat. “It’s just that I don’t know what to report to Wilson.”

  “That this place actually exists might be a good place to start,” I said. “At the very least, they could start an investigation into BRS.”

  “And what do you plan on doing about O’Connor’s missing body?” asked Wes. “I know you won’t just let that go.”

  “I have an idea.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What kind of idea?”

  “I want to do what O’Connor couldn’t. I’m going to report on all the shit BRS has done.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?”

  “By writing my thesis paper on the society.”

  In the days following, I spent every spare moment at the library. My stakeout position, a desk partially concealed by a portion of the nonfiction section, had a convenient view of the entrance to the Rapere Wing. As I began to outline the specifics of my thesis paper, beginning with the history of the Black Raptor Society, I kept an eye on every single person that passed between the pillars. Surveillance was dull work, but there was no other way for me to determine who was actively involved in O’Connor’s murder. I’d spent hours putting together a booklet of all the current BRS members, complete with pictures from the faculty and student ID cards that O’Connor had collected. It was a reference tool mostly, so that I could easily identify whoever walked into the Rapere Wing. To my great annoyance though, I hadn’t caught any members of BRS on the move yet. After days without a single sighting, I began to question my previous knowledge. Perhaps the clubhouse wasn’t utilized as often as I originally thought.

  By the end of the week, I’d made significant progress on my thesis. The outline was finished, from beginning to end, and I’d started to write my first draft. Finally getting the work out of my head and into the real world was like emerging from the sea, having fought off a set of waves that kept me under, and taking a deep, desperate breath. Unfortunately, the catharsis didn’t last long. I still hadn’t figured out a way to propose my thesis topic to my advisor. Catherine Flynn would certainly not approve of an exposé detailing the illegality of a secret society that she helped to run.

  On that Friday, I decided that my stakeouts in the library were fruitless. I would spend one last day at the desk in my secluded corner of the library, but if my bad luck stuck and the BRS members remained AWOL, I would have to find a different way to confront them. The library was a little noisier that morning, full of students trying to cram in some last minute studying for their end-of-the-week tests. The babble of conversation didn’t bother me, so I made my way toward my desk near the pillars.

  I dropped my bag on the table and drew out the desk chair, but as I plopped down into it, the entire piece of furniture collapsed beneath me. I hit the floor of the library with a muffled thud, bashing my elbow against one of the splintered armrests.

  Though a few heads had turned at the sound of my mild accident, no one bothered to come to my rescue. My cheeks burned as I cradled my bruised elbow and examined the broken chair from my position on the burgundy carpet. It was only when I turned over the seat of the chair that I realized someone had removed all of the screws that were meant to hold the legs in.

  Officially pissed off at the fact that a college-level student thought it would be funny to pull such a cruel, immature prank on someone, I tossed aside the chair pieces and tried to stand up. My elbow wouldn’t support my weight, and with a sharp gasp, I thunked back to the carpet again. I sighed, thinking that I might as well work from the floor today. The view wasn’t so bad; it mostly consisted of the bottom halves of other Waverly students and the underside of my desk… where a neon-yellow sticky note waited for me to notice it.

  I plucked the note from the particle board and flipped it over. The sight of BRS’s logo, drawn in red permanent marker, made my stomach turn.

  My phone vibrated, displaying a text from Wes. All week, he’d been checking in with me on a regular basis. Ever since his conversation with Officer Wilson, the force had kept Wes in the dark about the O’Connor case. He was uneasy, at work and at home, and I knew that my constant lurking in the library did nothing to soothe his nerves.

  His text said: Still alive?

  I texted back: 10-4.

  I crumpled the sticky note with BRS’s logo on it and used the edge of the table to propel myself back to my feet. If the Black Raptor Society thought they could scare me off with a schoolyard prank, they were going to be disappointed. I refused to give up so easily. My elbow was sore but no worse for wear. I shook it out, stretched, and glanced around for another chair to use.

  Across the room stood Jo Mitchell, peeking out at me from behind an outdated collection of encyclopedias. A moment later, when she realized I’d noticed her, she turned on her heel and vanished around the corner of a bookshelf.

  I threw my messenger bag over my shoulder and jog
ged toward the encyclopedias, ignoring the students who glanced up from their homework to give me dirty looks. The row that Jo had disappeared down was empty.

  “Damn!” I whispered. I hurried along the row, looking left and right for Jo. When I emerged from the shelves, I finally caught sight of her. With a nervous look over her shoulder, she scurried quickly out of the library and into the lobby.

  I followed Jo from the building and out into the courtyard. There it was more difficult for her to lose me, so I put on a burst of speed, the soles of my boots slipping a little on the icy ground, and caught up with her.

  “Jo!” I called, panting.

  She spun around. She appeared no less stressed than the last time I’d seen her. She had tied her hair up in a sloppy knot at the top of her head as though she’d given up on it entirely, and her eyes flitted to whatever student was closest to us in the courtyard, never focusing on anything for more than a couple of seconds.

  I extracted the sticky note from my pocket, smoothed it out, and held it up so that she could see it. “Did you rig my chair?”

  She shook her head. “I told you not to get involved with them.”

  “You figured it out,” I said, furiously shaking the note in front of her. “What you wrote on my hand. Nec plus ultra. You knew about the Black Raptor Society.”

  “Shh!” She snatched the yellow sticky note out of my hand.

  “Tell me what you know,” I demanded.

  “Nothing!”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Jo insisted. Like before, she kept her voice low. I stepped closer to ensure I heard every word. “I got the same note once, when I was trying to figure out why my grades had plummeted. I made the mistake of ignoring it. Shortly after, they tried to have me committed.”

  “You told me they forced you to see the school psychiatrist,” I reminded her. My mind flashed back to Lauren Lockwood’s journal entry. According to Lauren, Jo had been “contained.”

  “Yeah, they did,” said Jo. “And I went along with it. Then, during one of my appointments, Dr. Thornton left the room. His computer was logged on. I couldn’t help it. I snooped through my file.”

  “And?”

  “My entire file was made up,” she said. “Thornton had written all sorts of notes, claiming I’d said and done things during our sessions that definitely didn’t happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like coming on to him inappropriately and other wonderful shit.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, a lump forming in my throat. “That’s sick.”

  “Mm-hmm. And when Thornton caught me looking at my file, I accused him of making up half the crap that he had written. Want to know what he did?”

  “Not really.”

  “He called security. I lost it. I was yelling my head off at Thornton and trying to convince the security guard to check the computer. They sedated me, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in a damn hospital room.”

  A gust of wind howled through the courtyard, and a whirlwind of dead leaves swept between me and Jo.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked Jo.

  “Because I was hoping you’d keep your nose down,” she replied. “They’ll ruin you. They’ve had a lot of practice, if you haven’t figured that out already.”

  “I’m starting to realize that.”

  My phone vibrated again. I looked down at it, expecting another text from Wes. Instead, I saw that I had a new email. I swiped the message open.

  Miss Costello,

  I trust that you are well. I hope that you have put some time and effort into your thesis. I regret to inform you that in order to graduate at the end of the spring semester, you will need to have completed your work in two weeks’ time. Know that you have already been awarded quite the extension, as the other graduate students have already defended their dissertations to their advisory committees. With this in mind, I would like to meet with you again as soon as possible to discuss your progress. Please report to my office on Monday at 9 a.m.

  Regards,

  Dr. Catherine Flynn

  Dean of Arts and Humanities

  Waverly University

  “She’s one of them, isn’t she?” asked Jo, peering over my shoulder to get a glimpse of the email.

  I locked the phone so that the screen was no longer visible. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Listen, Jo,” I said, squeezing her shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. “I can’t promise you that I’m going to stay out of this. If anything, I’m already neck deep. You should steer clear, though. I won’t fault you for that.”

  She gave me a hard look then nodded. “Give them hell.”

  “I intend to.”

  I avoided the library over the weekend in the hopes that BRS would think I’d dropped my investigation. Wes was more than pleased about me stepping out of the line of fire. He was just as motivated as I was to figure out what was going on behind closed doors at Waverly and had put in more effort at work to get in on O’Connor’s case. Wes thought that a discreet approach would be more beneficial to us, but no amount of eavesdropping at the station revealed anything else about how Officer Wilson or other members of the force might be involved. Wes was frustrated, as was I, and it made for stressful days and restless nights.

  On Monday morning, I reported to Research Hall for my scheduled meeting with Flynn. I was early this time, with a good fifteen minutes to spare. As I lifted heavy feet up the carpeted staircase, my stomach fluttered with anxiety. The details of BRS’s dreadful affairs circulated through my mind. I was not looking forward to coming face-to-face with one of the society’s highest-ranking members again. On the fourth floor, I took a deep breath and knocked lightly on Flynn’s office door.

  The door swung open, and I instinctively stepped back. A tall man, in his late fifties or so, stood in Flynn’s office, a benign smile plastered across a handsome face that I recognized at once. I’d seen him countless times in black-and-white newspaper photos, the adjoining article always praising him for some positive societal impact or another. Behind him, Catherine Flynn sat at her desk. Together, they looked like the sort of power couple most of us could only dream of being a part of: both tall, dark, and thin. The man beckoned me inside with a flourish of his hand and a polite inclination of his head.

  “You must be Nicole,” the man said. He offered me his hand. “Dr. Flynn’s told me all about you. My name is Orson Lockwood.”

  I forced myself to shake his hand. His palm was smooth, as if he’d never done a hard day’s work in his entire life, and he barely squeezed my hand. It was an annoying gesture. I always thought men who refused to give women a firm handshake were trying to subtly convey that we were somehow inferior to them. To counter his passive greeting, I gripped his hand tighter and for a moment longer than necessary.

  “I can’t imagine Dr. Flynn would chat about me,” I said, nodding at Flynn. She smiled coldly back. “I’m not exactly her most promising student.”

  “Well, we already disagree, Miss Costello,” Lockwood said. His accompanying grin was easy and practiced. It even reached his dark-blue eyes, which shimmered in the sunlight that had managed to pierce through the veil of clouds outside and illuminate the office. “I happen to take special interest in promising students, and you’ve caught my eye.”

  I now understood how Lockwood had such an impact on society. He could get anything he wanted with his benevolent demeanor. He spoke casually, his hands in the pockets of his pressed slacks, and he leaned over a little bit as he addressed me. If I were a child and he offered me a lollipop, I wouldn’t hesitate to pop it in my mouth.

  “Have I now?”

  He tilted his head in an amiable nod. “Indeed.”

  “Mr. Lockwood is a Waverly alumnus, Miss Costello,” piped in Flynn. She rose from her desk chair to stand next to Lockwood. “I thought he might be of use to you. The Lockwood family is one of W
averly’s most prestigious. If you’ve decided to do your thesis on the history of our university, Orson Lockwood is the man you need to interview.”

  “And I would be more than happy to oblige,” added Lockwood, flashing me yet another stunning smile. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, drawing out a business card. When he handed it over to me, I noticed how similar it was to Donovan Davenport’s. “I do have some time constraints though. Call my office. Speak with my secretary, Dawn. She’ll get you all set up.”

  I’d been backed into a corner. A one-on-one meeting with Orson Lockwood was sure to end poorly for me, but I couldn’t refuse the interview in front of Flynn. I nodded and pocketed the business card. “I’ll be sure to do that. Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” he said, buttoning up his suit jacket. “I’m afraid I can’t stay and chat. Duty calls. If you’ll excuse me, ladies.”

  With that, Lockwood pardoned himself from the room, leaving me alone with Flynn. She returned to her desk, gesturing for me to sit down in one of the leather chairs across from her.

  “Well, Miss Costello?”

  “Sorry?”

  “What kind of progress have you made on your thesis paper?”

  This was another roadblock. There was no lie authentic enough to convince Flynn that I had actually done any work at all for my thesis. Though Flynn was my primary advisor, I was still holding out hope that one of the other professors on my thesis advisory panel wouldn’t be a member of BRS. That way, my attempt at exposing the society’s misdeeds wouldn’t get immediately buried beneath yet another falsified story of a Waverly student gone insane. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to hide the contents of my paper from Flynn until it was time to present it to the board. It was a feat that would not go smoothly.