Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

Bird nodded. He looked as scared as Trey felt. “They asked me a few questions.”

“Really? Why?”

Bird didn’t answer.

“They came around here, too,” said Jonesy. “This morning and again this afternoon.”

“Why’d they want to see you guys?” asked Trey.

Jonesy gave him a strange look.

“What?” Trey asked.

“They wanted to see you,” said Anthem.

“Me? Why would they want to see me?”

Nobody said a word. Nobody looked at him.

Trey said, “Oh, come on . You guys have to be frigging kidding me here.”

No one said a word.

“You sons of bitches,” said Trey. “You think I did it, don’t you? You think I could actually kill someone and tear out their frigging heart? Are you all on crack?”

“Cops said that whoever killed him must have gone apeshit on him,” murmured Bird.

“So, out of seven billion people suddenly I’m America’s Most Wanted?”

“They’re calling it a rage crime,” said Jonesy.

“Rage,” echoed Anthem.

“And you actually think that I could do that?”

“Somebody did,” said Bird again. “Whoever did it must have hated Kidd because they beat him to a pulp and tore him open. Cops asked us if we knew anyone who hated Kidd that much.”

“And you gave them my name?”

“We didn’t have to,” said Anthem. “Everyone on campus knows what you thought of Kidd.”

And there was nowhere to go with that except out, so Trey left them all sitting in the desolation of his room.

The cops picked him up at ten the next morning. They said he didn’t need a lawyer, they just wanted to ask questions. Trey didn’t have a lawyer anyway, so he answered every single question they asked. Even when they asked the same questions six and seven times.

They let him go at eight thirty that night. They didn’t seem happy about it.

Neither was Trey.

The funeral was the following day. They all went. It didn’t rain because it only rains at funerals in the movies. They stood under an impossibly blue sky that was littered with cotton candy clouds. Trey stood apart from the others and listened with contempt to the ritual bullshit the priest read out of his book. Kidd had been as much of an atheist as Trey was, and this was a mockery. He’d have skipped it if that wouldn’t have made him look even more suspicious.

After the service, Trey took the bus home alone.

He tried several times to call Davidoff, but the professor didn’t return calls or emails.

The day ground on.

The Spellcaster premiere was tomorrow. Trey spent the whole day double- and triple-checking the data. He found nothing in any of the files he opened, but in the time he had he was only able to view about 1 percent of the data.

Trey sent twenty emails recommending that the premiere be postponed. He got no answers from the professor. Bird, Jonesy and Anthem said as little to him as possible, but they all kept at it, going about their jobs like worker bees as the premiere drew closer.

Professor Davidoff finally called him.

“Sir,” said Trey, “I’ve been trying to—”

“We’re going ahead with the premiere.”

Trey sighed. “Sir, I don’t think that’s—”

“It’s for Michael.”

Michael. Not Mr. Kidd. The professor had never called Kidd by his first name. Ever. Trey waited for the other shoe.

“It’ll be a tribute to him,” continued Davidoff, his pomposity modulated to a funereal hush. “He devoted the last months of his life to this project. He deserves it.”

Great, thought Trey, everyone thinks I’m a psycho killer, and he’s practicing sound bites.

“Professor, we have to stop for a minute to consider the possibility that the sabotage of the project is connected to what happened to Kidd.”

“Yes,” Davidoff said heavily, “we do.”

Silence washed back and forth across the cellular ocean.

“I cannot imagine why anyone would do such a thing,” said the professor. “Can you, Mr. LaSalle?”

“Professor, you don’t think I—”

“I expect everything to go by the numbers tomorrow, Mr. LaSalle.”

Before Trey could organize a reply, Professor Davidoff disconnected.

And it all went by the numbers.

More or less.

Drawn by the gruesome news story and the maudlin PR spin Davidoff gave it, the Annenberg was filling to capacity, with lines wrapped halfway around the block. Three times the expected number of reporters were there. There was even a picket by a right-wing religious group who wanted the Spellcaster project stopped before it started because it was “ungodly,” “blasphemous,” “satanic” and a bunch of other words that Trey felt ranged between absurd and silly. The picketers drew media attention and that put even more people in line for the dwindling supply of tickets.

Bird, Jonesy and Anthem showed up in very nice clothes. Bird wore a tie for the first time since Trey had known him. The girls both wore dresses. Jonesy transformed from mouse to wow in a black strapless number that Trey would have never bet she could pull off. Anthem was in green silk that matched her eyes and she looked like a movie star. She even had nail tips over the gnarled nubs of her fingers. Trey was in a black turtleneck and pants. It was as close to being invisible as he could manage.

Davidoff was the ringmaster of the circus. He wore an outrageously gorgeous Glen Urquhart plaid three-piece and even with his ursine bulk he looked like God’s richer cousin.

Even the university dons were nodding in approval, happy with the positive media attention following so closely on the heels of the murder.

The as yet unsolved murder, mused Trey. The cops were nowhere with it. Trey was pretty sure he was being followed now. He was a person of interest.

God.

When the audience was packed in, Davidoff walked onto center stage amid thunderous applause. He even contrived to look surprised at the adoration before eventually waving everyone into an expectant silence.

“Before we begin, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I would like us all to share in a moment of silence. Earlier this week, one of my best and brightest students was killed in a savage and senseless act that still has authorities baffled. No one can make sense of the death of so wonderful a young man as Michael Kidd, Jr. He was on the very verge of a brilliant career, he was about to step into the company of such legendary folklorists as Stetson Kennedy, Archie Green and John Francis Campbell.”

Trey very nearly burst out laughing. He cut a look at Bird, who gave him a weary head shake and a half smile, momentarily stunned out of all consideration by the absurdity of that claim.

“I would like to dedicate this evening to Mr. Kidd,” continued Davidoff. “He will be remembered, he will be missed.”

“Christ,” muttered Trey. The stage manager scowled at him.

The whole place dropped into a weird, reverential silence that lasted a full by-the-clock minute. Davidoff raised his arms and a spotlight bathed him in a white glow as the houselights dimmed.

“Magic!” he said ominously in a voice that was filtered through a soundboard that gave it a mysterious-sounding reverb. The crowd ooohed and aaahed. “We have always believed in a larger world. Call it religion, call it superstition, call it the eternal mystery . . . we all believe in something. Even those of us who claim to believe in nothing—we will still knock on wood and pick up a penny only if it is heads up. Somewhere, past the conscious will and the civilized mind, the primitive in us remembers cowering in caves or crouching in the tall grass, or perching apelike on the limb of a tree as the wheel of night turned above and darkness covered the world.”