“Nicole!”
Engrossed in these new revelations, I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be on a stealth mission. Wes stood in the doorway, one hand still grasping the pair of oily tongs from the kitchen as he stared open-mouthed at the sight of me leaning over his work computer.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, tactfully maneuvering through the files and papers of O’Connor’s research that I had left on the floor to join me at his desk. He caught a glimpse of the pages that I was looking it. “Oh, God. Nicole, you didn’t.”
“Wes, I’m really sorry, but look at this—”
“No!” Wes spun me around so that I no longer faced his desktop. “I understand that you’re immersed in this. I get that you want to figure it out, but you are now officially dragging me into some really illegal shit, and I didn’t ask for that, Nicole.”
“I know.”
“I told you. I won’t stop you from doing your own thing. Go through O’Connor’s shit. Fine. But this is a whole new level.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you want me to lose my job?” he went on, moving around me to click out of the folders that I had singled out from the database. I failed to mention that I’d already taken screenshots of the cases that had piqued my interest.
“Of course not.”
“Good.” He took a deep breath. Now that he’d logged himself out of his work account, and its contents were no longer visible to me, he deflated a little bit. He sat down in his desk chair, reaching out for one of my hands. As he played with my fingers, he said, “Look, you can’t do this to me, okay? I have always had complete and utter trust in you. Please don’t make me start to question that.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” I mumbled, “I feel like an asshole for doing it.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips.
“But—” I continued.
“Oh, there’s a ‘but.’”
“Wes, I found a bunch of cases that involved Waverly students,” I said, rushing through the words before he could stop me. “Some of them were pretty serious. For instance, Robert Buchanan—he’s a freshman—was just cleared of a reckless driving charge, but he put the other driver in the hospital for months. Anastasia St. Claire—she’s Stella St. Claire’s daughter. You know the professor who teaches next door?—she just got out of a one thousand dollar charge for hazing.”
“Nicole—”
“And Donovan Davenport keeps popping up too,” I interrupted. “He got busted for possession. He was pulled over for speeding and had a couple grams of weed on him. And guess who he was with when it happened? Lauren Lockwood.”
Wes rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. “What’s your point, Nicole?”
“My point is, why are these particular students being given special treatment?” I said, kneeling down to collect a stack of papers from the floor. The top page was a letter of recommendation for Robert Buchanan from Dean Hastings. “The same names keep popping up. Davenport and Lockwood, for instance. Donovan told me that he didn’t have any connections to the Lockwoods, but according to police records, he’s rolling doobies with this Lauren girl.”
“Please don’t ever say doobies again.”
“Stop joking around. I’m serious, Wes.”
“I know,” he said with a tremendous sigh. He brandished the kitchen tongs at me. “That’s what scares me.”
“Look, I know you don’t want any part of it,” I said. “But is there any way you could just, I don’t know, nonchalantly ask Daryl why those cases were thrown out?”
He regarded me for a moment. The last bit of evening light filtered in through the blinds on the window, bringing out the flecks of gold and green in his eyes. I waited, though I hoped his answer would come soon. The acrid scent of burning oil wafted into the bedroom from down the hall, and I feared for the state of our dinner.
“I suppose,” said Wes after what felt like eons, “that if I have the opportunity, I could mention it to Daryl.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“Don’t expect much,” he warned, and once again, the tongs came dangerously close to breaching my personal space. “I’m not promising anything.”
“Okay.”
Wes stood up, his desk chair creaking, and started to head back toward the kitchen. “I’m going to see what I can salvage of dinner,” he announced. “Put a shirt on, woman. You’ll freeze to death.”
As he retreated down the hallway, I unearthed one of his old state college sweatshirts and drew it on over my head, smiling as I listened to Wes mumble about a perfectly good chicken parmesan gone to shit.
After a decent night’s sleep, I decided to take Flynn’s advice, as rudely delivered as it was, and headed to the library to put some work in on my thesis. I set up shop at a secluded table near the Rapere Wing then browsed through the section of the library that was dedicated to the university itself. Ensconced between the shelves, it was easy to get lost in the numerous volumes outlining Waverly’s history. I selected three or four that caught my eye, but as I knelt down to reach for a fat, faded maroon book with the title Legacies of Waverly University stamped on its spine in gold lettering, I noticed a neat stack of yellowing newspapers at the end of the lowest shelf. Shuffling over, I reached for the topmost edition.
It was an issue of The Daily Bird, dated 1898, and from what I could tell, it was Waverly’s old student newspaper. I’d never heard of it before. Our current student paper was called the Waverly Daily, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it hadn’t been established until the 1930s. I appreciated how well preserved The Daily Bird was, turning its crispy pages with a delicate hand, but when my eyes landed on a note from the editor, I clicked my tongue in recognition. Theodore Lockwood, senior editor, had been a student staffer for four years. His
