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Stan. Wow. Rachel sure is getting chummy with the boss.
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
“I was just heading into the cafeteria for a refill before tackling Gavin.” Rachel holds up her American Association for Counseling and Development coffee mug. “Anybody care to join me?”
She says it to both of us, but her gaze is on Cooper.
Oh my God. Rachel has just asked Cooper to have coffee with her. My Cooper.
Of course, she doesn’t know he’s my Cooper. He’s not my Cooper. And the way things seem to be going, he’ll probably never be…
Say no.I try to send my thought waves into his brain, like on Star Trek. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say—
“Thanks, but I can’t,” Cooper says. “I’ve got work to do.”
Success!
Rachel smiles and says, “Maybe some other time, then.”
“Sure,” Cooper says.
And Rachel click-clacks away.
When she’s gone, I say, showing no sign that I had, seconds before, been using Vulcan mind control on him, “Look. I gotta get back to work.” I hope he isn’t going to bring up what we’d been talking about in the elevator. I don’t think I could handle it. Not on top of the announcement of Jordan’s engagement. There’s only so much a girl can take in one day, you know?
Maybe Cooper senses this. Either that or the fact that I won’t meet his gaze tips him off.
In any case, all he says is, “Gotcha. I’ll see you later, then. And Heather—”
My heart gives a lurch. No. Please, not now. So close. I’d been so close to escaping—
“The ring,” he says.
Wait. What? “Ring?”
“Tania’s.”
Oh! Tania’s engagement ring! The one that looks exactly like the one I threw back in his brother’s face!
“Yeah?”
“It’s not yours,” Cooper says.
Then he leaves.
14
You think she’s got
So much sophistication.
I think she’s just
In need of medication.
Why’d you pick
Her instead of me
When she’s in so much
Need of therapy?
What’s she got that I don’t have?
What’s she give you that I can’t?
How did she become your girl
Instead of
Me?
“What’s She Got?”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by O’Brien/Henke
From the album Staking Out Your Heart
Cartwright Records
It’s actually kind of appropriate that the student government decides to throw a lip-synch contest at Fischer Hall. Because, let’s face it, New York College is primarily filled with kids who, like me, love to perform.
Which is probably why they asked me to be one of the judges, an honor I readily accepted. But not because I needed to—as Cooper had suggested—feel the thrill of performing again, but because I figured if I were ever going to find the mysterious Mark/Todd (if he existed at all), it was going to be at some Fischer Hall social function, since the guy evidently lived in the building.
And possibly worked there, as well, as Detective Canavan had—teasingly, I know—suggested to me.
It seemed pretty impossible to believe that any of the people I work with could be a killer. But how else to explain the apparent access to the key cabinet? Not to mention the fact that both of the dead girls had had files in the hall director’s office. Not that that necessarily had anything to do with their deaths. But, as Sarah would no doubt put it, both Elizabeth and Roberta had had issues…
And those issues had been recorded in their files.
The thing is, all fifteen RAs, as well as the maintenance staff, have keys to the office Rachel and I share. So if there really is some guy cruising the files for potentially fragile, inexperienced girls he can easily seduce, then it has to be someone I know.
Only who? Who did I know who could be capable of doing something so awful? One of the RAs? Out of the fifteen of them, seven are boys, none of whom I consider real particular swingers, much less psychopathic killers. In fact, in the tradition of RAs, all of them are kind of nerdy—the sort who actually believe their residents when they insist they were smoking clove cigarettes, not pot. They seriously can’t tell the difference.
Besides which, everybody in the whole building knows who the RAs are. I mean, the staff performs safer sex skits and stuff at dinnertime. If Mark or Todd had been an RA, Lakeisha would have known him by sight.
As far as the maintenance staff is concerned, forget it. They’re all Hispanic and over fifty, and only Julio speaks enough English to be understood by someone not bilingual. Plus they’ve all worked in Fischer Hall for years. Why would they suddenly start killing people now?
Which, of course, leaves just the women on the staff. I should, in light of diversity awareness, include them on my list of suspects…
Only none of them could have left that condom in Roberta’s room.
But I guess I’m the only one who considers it odd that two girls—who each had a file in my office, and who each happened to have found a boyfriend within a week of each other—both happened randomly to decide to go elevator surfing, then plunged to their deaths at around the same time the key to the elevator doors went missing, only to reappear shortly after the discovery of at least one of their bodies.
Which is why at seven o’clock that night, I slip from the brownstone—I haven’t heard a peep from Cooper since the elevator incident that morning, which is fine with me, because frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to say to him when Ido see him again.
It’s also why I consequently walk right into Jordan Cartwright, who is just coming up the front stoop.
“Heather!” he cries. He has on one of those puffy shirts—you know, like the kind they made fun of on Seinfeld — and a pair of leather pants.
Yes. I am sorry to have to say it. Leather pants.
What’s worse is, he really does look quite good in them.
“I was just coming to see how you are,” he says, in a voice that drips with concern for my mental health.
“I’m fine,” I say, pulling the door closed and working the locks. Don’t ask me why we have so many locks when we also have a burglar alarm and a dog and our own Rastafarian community watch program. But whatever.
“Have a nice evening,” one of the drug dealers urges us.
“Thank you,” I say to the drug dealer. To Jordan, I say, “I’m sorry, I really don’t have time to chat. I’ve got somewhere to go.”
Jordan trots down the steps behind me.
“It’s just,” he says, “I don’t know if you’ve heard. About Tania and me. I meant to tell you the other day, but you were so adversarial—I didn’t want you to find out this way, Heather,” Jordan says, keeping pace with me as I tear down the sidewalk. “I swear. I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jordan,” I say.Why won’t he go away? “Really.”
“Hey.” One of the drug dealers blocks our path on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you that guy?”
“No,” Jordan says to the drug dealer. To me, he says, “Heather, slow down. We’ve got to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I assure him, in my most cheerful voice. “I’m good. Everything’s good.”
“Everything’s not good,” Jordan cries. “I can’t stand to see you hurting like this! It’s tearing me up inside—”
“Oh, hey,” I say to the drug dealer who is trailing after us. “This is Jordan Cartwright. You know, from Easy Street.”
“The dude from Easy Street!” the drug dealer cries, pointing at Jordan. “I knew it! Hey, look!” he calls to his friends. “It’s the dude from Easy Street!”
“Heather!” Jordan is swallowed up in a crowd of autograph seekers. “Heather!”
I keep right on walking.
Well, what exactly was I supposed to do? I mean, he’s engaged. ENGAGED. And not to me.
What more is there to say? It’s not like I don’t have more pressing concerns right now, too.
Rachel seems kind of surprised to see me walk through the doors of Fischer Hall at night. She’s standing in the lobby just as I come in, and her eyes get kind of big.
“Heather,” she exclaims. “What are you doing here?”
“They asked me to judge,” I say.
For some reason, she looks relieved. I realize why a second later. “Oh good! Another judge for the lip-synch! How great! I was hoping Sarah and I wouldn’t have to judge on our own. What if there’s a tie?”
“Heather.” Jordan comes bursting into the lobby.
And all around us, breaths are sucked in as he is immediately recognized. Then the whispering begins:“Isn’t that—no, it couldn’t be. No, it is! Look at him!”
“Heather,” Jordan says, striding up to Rachel and me. His gold necklaces rise and fall beneath the puffy shirt as he pants. “Please. We’ve got to talk.”
I turn to Rachel, who is staring at Jordan with eyes that are even bigger than when I’d walked in.
“Here’s another judge for you,” I say to her.
Which is how Jordan and I end up sitting in the front row of about three hundred cafeteria chairs, facing the closed-off grill and salad bar, clipboards in our laps. You can imagine how difficult this makes it for Jordan to talk to me about our relationship, as he is so desperately longing to.
But this is just fine by me. I mean, the truth is I’m only here to hunt for the mysterious Mark and/or Todd, and my being a judge isn’t exactly helpful in this capacity.
But if it keeps me from having to listen to Jordan as he tries to make excuses for his behavior—though why he should care what I think of him, when he’s made it so perfectly obvious he doesn’t want to be with me anymore, I can’t imagine… maybe Sarah can explain it—it’s fine.
The kids are all in a dither about Jordan. They hadn’t known there was going to be a celebrity judge. (I don’t count. The few kids who’d recognized me at check-in could not have cared less. Tonight, it’s all about Jordan… even though I’m afraid some of them are making fun of him, on account of the puffy shirt and Easy Street and everything.) Jordan’s presence does seem to give the contest an air of legitimacy it lacked before.
It also seems to make the competitors even more nervous.
There’s an elaborate sound and light system set up over by the salad bar, and all sorts of students are milling around, chatting and noshing on free soda and chips. I look for couples, trying to single out any boys and girls in close conversation, thinking that if Mark or Todd is going to strike again, there is a bevy of fresh women here for him to choose from.
But all I see are groups of kids, boys and girls, white, African American, Asian, you name it, in baggy jeans and T-shirts, screaming happily at one another, and tossing back Doritos.
Mmmm. Doritos.
Sarah, seated next to Jordan, can’t take her eyes off him. She keeps asking him searching questions about the music industry, the same ones she’d asked me when she’d first met me. Like, had he felt like a sellout when he’d done that Pepsi ad? And hadn’t he felt that performing at the Super Bowl halftime show had been degrading to his calling as a musician? And what about that calling? Did it bother him that he knew how to sing, but not how to play a single instrument? Didn’t that, in a way, mean that he wasn’t a musician at all, but merely a mouthpiece through which Cartwright Records could deliver their message of corporate greed?
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