John Lutz - Pulse

“A coma. And now possibly a heart attack. Brought on by the way she was being terrorized.”

“Who was terrorizing her?”

“Thugs in the pay of Meeding Properties.”

“You know that to be true?”

“No. I only know it to be obvious.”

Sarah used both hands to rotate her damp glass on its coaster. “You might well be right, Jody, but if I were you I wouldn’t mention that to anyone around the law firm.”

“You don’t think they know?”

Sarah smiled. “I think they don’t want to know.”

“What isn’t said around that place seems more important than what is said.”

Sarah’s smile became a laugh. “That’s probably accurate. But there are some things that shouldn’t be mentioned. Some questions that shouldn’t be asked.”

Jody wasn’t sure if she agreed with that. She was considering asking Sarah what she was doing at Waycliffe College over the weekend, even though that might be one of those questions better left unasked. Like, what kind of secret something was going on at Waycliffe that only certain members of the faculty seemed to know about? She’d parted her lips to speak, when the waiter reappeared.

Both women ordered with only a cursory glance at the menu. A salad and sparkling water for Jody. Penne carbonara and a glass of house wine for Sarah.

As the waiter turned away, Sarah said, “I noticed you at Waycliffe College Saturday.”

Jody tried not to look surprised by the fact that Sarah had anticipated and broached the subject. So maybe Sarah hadn’t followed her to Waycliffe. Maybe Jody was getting a little paranoid. Listening to Quinn and her mother could make someone that way. Cynical at the least.

“I went back there to pick up some of my stuff,” Jody said. “How come you didn’t let me know you were there? We might have come back together.”

“It was from a distance,” Sarah said, “and I wasn’t sure it was you.”

“What were you doing at Waycliffe?” Jody asked directly.

“I have an old friend there. Elaine Pratt. We knew each other in college.”

“Professor Pratt?”

“She wasn’t a professor then.”

“I’m amazed sometimes by the people you know.”

Sarah chuckled. “Live a few more years, Jody, and you’ll build up a backlog of friends and acquaintances. I’m sure Elaine would be surprised if she knew you and I were friends, but she shouldn’t be.”

“Six degrees and all that. The Kevin Bacon thing.”

Sarah nodded. “Genealogy in the movies. Easier to track in a smaller universe.”

“Not to mention help from the credits.”

Sarah took a long sip of her martini. Watching her, Jody decided not to mention that she’d found Elaine Pratt’s e-mail address, along with encrypted messages, in Enders and Coil files.

“What do you intend to do about it, Jody?”

Jody didn’t know what she meant at first.

“Mildred Dash,” Sarah explained.

Jody sat back in the booth and folded her hands. “I’m not sure.”

“I have a suggestion.”

“What’s that?”

“Do nothing. Sometimes that’s best.”

“I’m not sure I’m that kind of person.”

Sarah laughed, reached across the table, and touched her arm. “I’m sure you’re not that kind of person. That’s exactly why I’m afraid you might step into something here you won’t like. You’re still in an unfamiliar environment. There are lots of wheels within wheels at a place like Enders and Coil. Things aren’t always as they seem. The obvious isn’t always what’s important.”

“Deliberate misdirection,” Jody said. “Subversion of the truth.”

Sarah leaned closer. “The truth is a damned slippery item, Jody. Open to a lot of interpretation. Sometimes it’s closer to you than you know, but you don’t want to see it. Sometimes it’s further away than you can imagine, and you’re holding on tight to something that only seems like the truth.”

“I couldn’t argue with that.”

“There’s reality and there’s emotion, and sometimes one’s mistaken for the other. It’s difficult to understand that at times you must ignore what’s in your heart and do what your head tells you. For instance, a small lie might prevent a larger, more damaging lie. That’s easy to say, but only a few select people really understand it.”

“The end justifying the means.”

“Of course. Even if it means going against your own instincts. Or learned behavior that seems like instinct. Look around you, Jody. You see it all the time. But it’s the times you don’t see it that make the world go round.”

“I suppose.”

“Then do nothing about Mildred Dash. Be a close observer. A learner. You won’t regret it.”

“Maybe you’re right. It hasn’t escaped me that I usually don’t regret following your advice.”

The waiter arrived with their orders and with practiced efficiency placed plates and glasses on the table, along with a wicker basket of warm rolls that smelled delicious.

Sarah sampled her wine, then raised her glass in a toast. “To the means and the ends.”

Jody used her martini to clink glasses. She wasn’t quite sure what she was toasting.

You were supposed to grow wiser as you got older, but it seemed to her that the world kept getting more complicated.

“Of course, sometimes you can become trapped in a lie.”

“How so?” Jody asked.

“How so?” Jody asked.

Sarah smiled. “I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.”

C hancellor Schueller stood on the red stone veranda at the back of his house and stared through sunglasses into a cloudless sky. He could see the campus and a distant carpet of green treetops from his vantage point, but he couldn’t see the grass airstrip itself. Off in the distance was a windsock on a tall pole, hanging limply in the still and humid summer air. That was the only indication that the strip was there.

The twin prop engines on his small plane sputtered to life, then settled into a soft drone. The chancellor knew the plane would soon be taxiing toward the end of the airstrip.

It was being flown by Hal Kelly, a ferry pilot the chancellor sometimes hired when he was too busy to fly, and carrying a guest speaker on pre-Columbian art back to his home city of Pittsburgh. Schueller thought it would be nice if he was also in the plane, flying away from lies and problems.

The police had never viewed anyone in particular on the Waycliffe faculty as suspicious in the death of Macy Collins, or in the similar deaths that followed, but the chancellor and some of his fellow faculty were no less accomplices in the crime of silence. They had lied to the police about their whereabouts and perhaps those of a killer. Then they had told the police more small lies, knowing they were probably covering for a killer. Nothing could help them now, or prevent them from getting into deeper and deeper potential trouble. Their silences condemned them. Each subsequent murder after that of Macy Collins served to tighten the noose around their necks.

And talking at this late date? Sending the police on a course they knew was wrong? That would serve no one and be a tragedy for many.

Everyone was trapped in the same isolated cabal, whether they liked it or not. No one could discuss the murder without the picture enlarging.

After a few minutes the plane’s drone became much louder, then softer again. Schueller saw the small twin-engine craft lift above the trees to the north.

It made a graceful, sweeping turn as it climbed, as if the pilot were considering starting an orbit around the sun. Still climbing, it disappeared in the east. The distant drone of its engines faded.

The chancellor wished again that he was on board.