Харлан Кобен - Run Away

“Or in other words,” Ash said, “you figured an angle to become ruler.”

“That’s your perspective. You’re entitled to it.” Dee Dee checked the time. “Come on. It’s almost time.”

She started up the hill. Ash followed.

“These jobs of ours,” he said. “They encouraged the Truth to form his new, uh, interpretation in your favor, didn’t they?”

Dee Dee kept walking. “God isn’t the only one who works in mysterious ways.”

Simon said, “Professor van de Beek?”

“Please call me Louis.”

Van de Beek looked like his bio page — young, pretty-boyish, waxy, toned. He wore the tight black T-shirt too, just as he had in the online photograph. His gaze flitted away as they shook hands, but he flashed a smile anyway, one — Simon couldn’t help but think uncharitably — that worked on wooing your co-eds. Like his daughter maybe. Or was such a thought sexist?

“I’m really sorry about Paige,” van de Beek said.

“In what way?”

“Pardon?”

“You said you were sorry. Sorry about what?”

“Didn’t you say on the phone she was missing?”

“And that’s what you’re sorry about, Louis?”

The man cringed at the tone, and Simon cursed himself for being too aggressive.

“My apologies,” Simon said in a far more genteel voice. “It’s just... my wife’s been shot. Paige’s mother.”

“What? Oh, that’s awful. Is she...?”

“In a coma.”

The color ebbed from his face.

“Hi, Louis!”

Two students — both male, for the record — had spotted him on their way up the Low Library steps. They stopped to be acknowledged, but their greeting hadn’t registered.

The other student said, “Louis?”

Simon hated when people called professors by their first name.

Van de Beek snapped out of whatever trance he’d put him into. “Oh hi, Jeremy, hi, Darryl.”

He smiled at them, but the bright bulb behind it was seriously flickering. The students sheepishly continued on their way.

“You wanted to tell me something?” Simon prompted.

“What? No, you left me messages.”

“Yes, and when you called back, it was clear you had something you wanted to say.”

Van de Beek started gnawing on his lower lip.

Simon added, “You were Paige’s favorite professor. She trusted you.”

This was, at best, third-hand information, but it was probably accurate and at the very least, flattering.

“Paige was a wonderful student,” he said. “The kind that we professors think about when we grow up wanting to teach.”

It felt like a line he’d said plenty of times in the past, but it also sounded like he meant it.

“So what happened?” Simon asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I sent you a bright, inquisitive young woman. It was her first time on her own, away from the only home and family she’d ever known.” Simon felt something rise in him, something he couldn’t quite describe — a blend of rage, sadness, regret, paternal love. “I trusted you to watch out for her.”

“We try, Mr. Greene.”

“And failed.”

“You don’t know that. But if you’re here to spread blame—”

“I’m not. I’m here because I need to find her. Please.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Tell me what you remember.”

He looked down from their perch above the commons.

“Let’s walk,” van de Beek said. “It’s too weird just standing on these steps like this.”

He started down them. Simon stayed by his side.

“Like I said, Paige was a good student,” he began. “Super engaged. A lot of kids come in that way, of course. They’re almost too fired up. They want to take advantage of every opportunity, and they start burning the candle at both ends. Do you remember your undergraduate years?”

Simon nodded. “I do.”

“Where did you go, if I can ask?”

“Here.”

“Columbia?” They crossed over College Walk toward Butler Library. “Did you know what you wanted to be when you arrived?”

“Not a clue. I started off in engineering.”

“People say college opens the world to you. In some ways, of course, that’s true. But for the most part, it does the opposite. You come in thinking you can do anything when you leave. Your options are endless. Point of fact though, your options dwindle every day you’re here. By the time you graduate, again, reality has splash-landed.”

“What does this have to do with Paige?” he asked.

He stared off, a smile on his lips. “She did all that quickly. But in the best way. She found her calling. Genetics. She wanted to be a doctor. A healer like her mother. She knew that within weeks. She started coming to office hours as often as I’d let her. She wanted to know what track to take to become my TA. I thought she was doing really well. And then something changed.”

“What?”

He kept walking. “There are rules, Mr. Greene. I need you to understand that. About what we can tell parents of students. If a student asks for confidentiality, we have to give it to them — up to a limit. Are you familiar with the campus rules on Title IX?”

Simon’s blood froze. Eileen Vaughan had said something when he’d visited her at Lanford, something about how Paige and Eileen’s mutual friend Judy Zyskind suspected Paige had been the victim of a sexual assault at a frat party. Simon had sort of blocked on that because one, it was too awful to even consider, but two, more importantly, Paige had dismissed it when Judy confronted her about it. That was the part that had stuck with Simon. Judy had pushed Paige, and according to Eileen, Paige had not only denied it but finally ended the conversation:

“She said there were problems at home...”

They veered off the path and reached the glass-enclosed structure called Lerner Hall. There was a café on the bottom floor. Van de Beek reached for the door, but Simon grabbed hold of his elbow.

“Was my daughter sexually assaulted?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Think so?”

“Paige came to me in confidence. She was distraught. There had been an incident at a campus party.”

Simon felt his hands tighten into fists. “She told you about it?”

“She started to, yes.”

“What does that mean, ‘started to’?”

“The first thing I did, before I let her go into details, was to inform her that I’d have to follow the Title IX guidelines.”

“What guidelines?”

“Mandatory reporting,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“If a student tells me about an incident of sexual assault, no matter what that student wants, I have to report it to the Title IX coordinator.”

“Even if the victim doesn’t want you to?”

“Even if, that’s right. Frankly I don’t love this rule. I get it. I understand the reasoning. But I think it makes some students less likely to confide in a teacher because they know, like it or not, that the teacher will have to report it. So they clam up. And that was what happened here.”

“Paige wouldn’t talk to you?”

“She more or less stormed out. I tried to follow, but she ran away. I called. I texted. I emailed. I stopped by her room once. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

Simon felt his fingers tighten up a little more. “And you didn’t think to tell her parents?”

“I thought about it, sure. But again there are rules about such things. I also checked with the Title IX coordinator.”

“What did she say?”

“It was a he.”

For real? “What did he say?”

“He talked to Paige. She denied anything happened.”

“And you still didn’t think to call her parents?”

“That’s right, Mr. Greene.”

“So instead my daughter, who was possibly raped, just suffered in silence.”