Across the table from me, Cooper says, “That was fast.”
Then he opens up his laptop.
Wait a minute. His laptop? What kind of guy uses audiovisual aids to tell a girl what he thinks of her?
“How much do you know,” Cooper asks, “about Christopher Allington?”
“Christopher Allington?” My voice cracks. Maybe because it was hoarse from all the screaming I’d done earlier in the day. Or maybe because I’m in shock over the fact that what Cooper wants to talk to me about isn’t his true feelings for me, but his suspicions about Chris. Hello. Annoying.
“But it couldn’t have been Chris,” I say, to get Cooper off that subject, and back onto, you know, me. “Detective Canavan said he—”
“When I investigate a case,” Cooper interrupts calmly, “I investigate it from all angles. Right now, Christopher appears to be the common link between all the victims. What I’m asking is, what do you know about him?”
“Well,” I say. Maybe Vulcan mind control would work again. WHAT HAVE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT ME? “Not much.”
“Do you know where he went for undergrad?”
“No,” I say. WHAT HAVE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT ME? Then, glancing at his face, I ask, “Why? Do you know where Chris went as an undergrad?”
“Yes,” Cooper says. “Earlcrest.”
“Earl what?” I ask. Vulcan mind control does not appear to be working! Instead of telling me what he’s always thought about me, he’s blathering about Chris Allington. Who cares about Chris? What about how you feel about ME?
“Earlcrest College,” Cooper says. “Chris went there for undergrad.”
“What are you talking about, Cooper?” I wish the Indian food would hurry up and come. My stomach is growling. “And how do you even know where Chris went?”
Cooper shrugs his broad shoulders. “SIS.” he says.
“S.O.S?” I echo, confused.
“No, SIS. Student Information System.” When I continue to look blank, he sighs. “Ah, yes. How could I forget? You’re computer illiterate.”
“I am not! I surf the Net all the time. I do all your bills—”
“But your office is still antiquated. SIS hasn’t been extended to the dormitory director’s offices yet.”
“Residence hall,” I correct him, automatically.
“Residence hall,” he says. Cooper is a flurry of activity. He’s striking keys on the computer way faster than I can change chords on my guitar. “Here, look. I’m accessing SIS now to show you what I mean about Christopher Allington. Okay.” Cooper turns the screen to face me. “Allington, Christopher Phillip. Take a look.”
I peer at the tiny monitor. Christopher Allington’s entire academic record is there, along with a lot of other personal information, like his LSAT scores and his course schedule and stuff. Chris, it turns out, has been through a lot of prep schools. He’d been thrown out of one in Switzerland for cheating, and another one in Connecticut, reason for expulsion unspecified. But he had still managed to get into the University of Chicago, which I’ve heard is quite selective. I wonder what strings his dad had pulled to help him out there.
But Chris’s sojourn in the Windy City didn’t last long. He’d dropped out after only a single semester. Then he’d seemed to take some time off… a good four years, as a matter of fact.
Then suddenly he’d shown up at Earlcrest College, from which he’d graduated last year somewhat older than the rest of his class, but with a B.A., just the same.
“Earlcrest College,” I say. “That’s where his dad used to be president. Before he got hired at New York College.”
“Ah, nepotism,” Cooper says, with a grin. “As alive and well in the halls of academia as ever.”
“Okay,” I say, still confused. “So he got kicked out of a few places as a kid, and could only get into a college his dad’s president of. What does that prove? Not that he’s a psychopathic murderer.” I can’t believe I’m the one arguing for Chris’s innocence now. Is his mom really that much more appealing as a murderer? “And how did you access his file, anyway? Isn’t it supposed to be private?”
“I have my ways,” Cooper says, turning the computer screen back in his own direction.
“Oh my God.” Is there no end to this man’s fabulousness? “You hacked into the student system!”
“You were always curious about what I do all day,” he says with a shrug. “Now you know. Part of it, anyway.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “You’re a computer nerd!” This changes everything. Now we’re going to have to open a doctor’s office slash detective agency slash jewelry shop slash computer hacking service. Oh, wait, what about my songs?
Cooper ignores me. “I think there’s got to be something here,” he says, tapping the laptop. “Something we’re missing. The only connection between the girls seems to be Allington. He’s the only one we know about, but, given what I see here, there must be something else. I mean, besides the fact that both girls were virgins with residence hall records before Chris got his hands on them… ”
Mrs. Allington. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say What about Mrs. Allington? I mean, she had the motive. She obviously had—what was it that Sarah would call it? An Oedipus complex? Only the opposite, because she had it for her son, not her dad…
Well, okay, Mrs. Allington has that thing where she thinks her son is hot, and she resents the girls who pursue him. Resents them enough to kill them, though? And could Mrs. Allington really have made that bomb? The one on top of the elevator? I mean, if you could just go out and buy a bomb at Saks, I totally think Mrs. Allington would.
But you can’t. You have to make a bomb. And to make a bomb, you have to be sober. I’m pretty sure, anyway.
And Mrs. Allington has never once been sober—that I could tell—since she’d moved in to Fischer Hall.
I sigh and glance out the window. I can see the lights on in the president’s penthouse. What are the Allingtons doing up there? I wonder. It’s close to seven o’clock. Probably watching the news.
Or, perhaps, plotting to kill more innocent virgins?
The front door buzzer goes off, making me jump.
“That’s dinner,” Cooper says, and gets up. “I’ll be right back.”
He goes downstairs to get the Indian food. I keep on looking out the window while I wait for him to get back. Below the penthouse, lights appear in windows on other floors of Fischer Hall as the residents got home from class or dinner or their workouts or rehearsals. I wonder if any of the tiny figures I can see in any of the windows is Amber, the little redhead from Idaho. Is she sitting in her room, waiting for a call from Chris? Does she know he’s hiding out in the Hamptons? Poor little Amber. I wonder what she did to get in trouble with Rachel this morning.
That’s when it hits me.
My lips part, but for a minute, no sound comes out from between them. Amber. I had forgotten all about Amber, and her meeting with Rachel this morning. What had Rachel needed to see Amber about? Amber herself hadn’t known why she’d been scheduled for a mandatory meeting with the dorm director. What had Amber done?
Amber hadn’t done anything. Anything except talk to Chris Allington.
That’s all Amber had done.
And Rachel knew it, because she’d seen me with the two of them in front of the building after the lip-synch contest.
Just like she’d seen Roberta and Chris at the dance. And Elizabeth and Chris—where? Where had she seen them together? At orientation, maybe? A movie night?
Except that it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d told Julio to get me because Gavin was elevator surfing again.
Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d snuck onto the penthouse roof and tried to push that planter onto my head.
Like it didn’t matter that when the second girl died, Rachel hadn’t been in the cafeteria, like she was supposed to have been. No, I’d met her coming from the ladies’ room… around the corner from the stairs she’d
