Will Lavender - Obedience

Mary went around to the back door. She walked up the landing steps and looked through the inlaid glass on the back door. The same thing from this angle: a normal house that looked positively lived in. She saw the kitchen, and beyond it the hallway that led to the Williamses’ bedroom.

You’re an idiot, Mary. You’ve let this get to your head. Now let’s go home. Let’s get as far away from this as we possibly can.

As she was turning to leave, something inside caught her eye. She could see a door at the front of the hallway. Williams’s study. The door was open, and inside was a desk. On the desk, something was glinting in the shifting evening light. Mary squinted to see this object, and just as she got her face to the glass someone was behind her, stepping through the fallen leaves in the yard.

“Can I help you?” the person said.

Mary turned and saw the woman.

Polly.

“I…I’ve…” Mary stammered. “I have Professor Williams in logic class, and he has a paper of mine that I need.”

“Didn’t the term end today?” Polly asked. She was wearing a pea-coat and she had her arms crossed in front of her, protecting herself from the cutting breeze. Polly didn’t look forty years old to Mary. She carried herself like a young woman, but her face was damaged from years of tragic worry. She had the dog on a leash, and she reached up and clipped the leash to the clothesline that ran between the two maples in the Williamses’ backyard.

“Yes,” Mary explained, “but I’ll get an incomplete if the paper isn’t finished before the Winchester term starts.”

“Oh,” said Polly. “Do you know where it is?”

“Yeah. I think he told me that he would leave it on his desk.”

“I’ll let you inside, then. Dad is off God knows where. He keeps everything important in his study, though, so I’m sure you’ll find it somewhere in his clutter.”

Polly unlocked the back door and the two women went into the house. As Polly went about cleaning up the dishes that were spread across the table, Mary found her way to the study. She checked to see if Polly was watching her, and then she began to search Williams’s desk.

What the hell are you looking for?

She didn’t know. She opened drawers and shuffled papers, still keeping her eye on Polly in the other room. Outside the clouds passed across the day’s last sunlight, and again an object glinted on the desk.

Mary located it, right there in the center. A paperweight.

The paperweight was sitting atop a manila envelope. As Mary removed the weight and picked up the envelope, Polly said from the other room, “Do you like his class?”

“Oh, sure,” Mary called. “He’s…interesting.”

“Other people tell me that his class is weird. He won’t tell me what he teaches, but I know he’s into puzzles. My father is the kind of guy who won’t tell you the answer to anything. He makes you figure it out for yourself. He’s always been like that.”

“Yeah,” said Mary, her tone distracted. Inside the envelope there was a note addressed to her.

Dear Mary,

I knew you couldn’t leave it alone. There were some things that I couldn’t tell you in the car. I have a feeling that you are one who will not rest until you know the whole story. Well, that I can’t give to you. But here is the rest of what I know. This is what Orman and Pig did not find in the storage garage. I hope it helps.

Sincerely,

Leonard Williams

Inside the envelope there were two photographs she had already seen: the red Honda Civic and the black Labrador. Nothing else.

“Did you find it?” Polly asked. She was standing at the door. She had taken off her coat and was drying a plate with a dish towel. She had long dark hair, and Mary looked in her eyes. She saw in them a lifetime of secret pain.

“Yep,” Mary said, holding up the envelope.

“Good. Dad keeps this room such a mess that you’re lucky to find anything in there. Every time I come home to visit I spend most of my time picking up after him.”

Polly led Mary out, this time through the front. There was much that Mary wanted to ask the woman, but of course she could not. As she was walking to her car Polly called, “Have a great break.”

“I will,” Mary said.

Polly closed the door and turned on the porch light. It was, after all, getting dark.

Across campus, Dennis Flaherty was in his room at the Tau house waiting for the phone to ring. He was thinking of Elizabeth, as he often did, wondering how it had come this far. On the bed beside him was the black garbage bag. He was having trouble opening it. They were at the end now, and it was difficult to finish it even though he knew he had to if he wanted to go on with his life-and if he wanted to find a way back to Elizabeth.

The phone rang.

“You ready?” asked the voice on the other end.

“Yes,” Dennis lied.

The man hung up, and Dennis sat in the crackling silence. He wondered if there was another way to do it. Another way to finish this thing.

But there was no use. He knew that soon he would have to be ready to go.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he crossed himself.

Then he opened the garbage bag and took out what was inside.

Mary pulled into the parking lot of the natatorium on Pride Street and studied the pictures again. The red car she had seen in the photographs Williams had sent, of course. But it had also come up in their time in Bell City. It was the car that Paul said was for sale at the house on St. Louis Street. Was Williams trying to lead her back there, to where he had once lived with Jennifer and Polly?

The Camry idled as night fell. She had to turn on the interior light to see the pictures. It was almost 7:00 p.m. and her mother and father would be getting ready, her father showering, her mother out of the tub with a towel around her wet hair. But Mary wouldn’t be meeting them at the restaurant. She still had business to attend to at Winchester, and she intended to finish what she had started. She called her mother’s cell. She would be home later, she explained, but don’t wait up. Yes, everything was okay. Yes, she had done well on her tests. No, she didn’t need anything. She would see them both later, and promise- Promise me, Mom -that you won’t wait up.

She closed her eyes and thought. How was she going to use these photographs, these “clues” of Williams’s, to figure out anything? There was a small roar in her ears, the roar of anticipation, and she knew that feeling would go to waste if she didn’t figure out what Williams was trying to tell her now.

I don’t think it was part of the game, Brian had said regarding the ride he’d given to Elizabeth Orman. I think she was serious.

Mary did a U-turn on Pride Street and went back toward Winchester. On the hill to her right, which the students called Grace Hill, she saw Dean Orman’s house. She turned into the drive and climbed the hill toward the cottage. “Cottage” really didn’t do it justice. It was essentially a mansion fashioned as a nineteenth-century country carriage house. Rising high into the trees was the house’s A-frame. The house, Mary knew, had four stories and was over five thousand square feet.

Mary got out of the car and went to the front door. She had no idea what she was going to tell Elizabeth Orman if the woman answered the door. That her husband was an accomplice in a murder twenty years ago? That she knew the woman had slept with Dennis Flaherty? Mary rang the bell and waited. She heard faint footsteps from inside, and the door cracked open to reveal Dean Orman.

“Can I help you?” he asked.