Page 36 of Cyn
Cyn pulled her Range Rover into a spot in the faculty parking area and turned the engine off. She paused and studied the buildings before her. There were a lot of iconic colleges and universities in New England, but hers wasn’t one of them. The campus was lovely—spread out with lots of green space—but the buildings were squat utilitarian blocks of concrete, metal, and glass. The library was the only exception and it soared above the rest of the campus in a glorious show of modern architecture. It may not be pretty, but she loved it. She loved teaching and, in particular, she loved teaching the students at her university because most of them were hungry. Most of them came from families who couldn’t afford the private schools but still valued education, and the students, with the rare exception, worked their asses off.
Exiting her car, she reached into the back and grabbed her bag. She was teaching two classes this semester and supervising a master’s thesis. It wasn’t an overly heavy load and would leave her time to do some research she’d been wanting to finish up on a settlement found in eastern Turkey. But before her day got started, she had a visit to make.
After dropping her bag in her office and locking it back up, she made her way to the campus newspaper rooms. A few minutes later, she was chatting with the senior who’d written the story on McElroy’s death. He’d interviewed a few of McElroy’s friends and quoted them in the article, but hadn’t attributed any names and it was those names she sought.
The young man was happy to oblige when he learned that it was her house where the body been left and, being the good journalist that he was, he sniffed a story but didn’t press. Instead, he asked for an exclusive once the police figured out why her house had been chosen. She didn’t disabuse him of his belief that the police were involved, but she did promise him a story if she had one. A handshake agreement later, she left the office with the names of three of McElroy’s friends: John Waters, Travis Persons, and Michael Harrow.
Heading back to her office, she logged onto her computer and looked at her class lists. She smiled to herself when she saw that both Michael Harrow and Travis Persons were students in her intro level class. Not only would it give her an opportunity to observe them, but it gave her an excuse to be looking at their records. And when she did, she was pleased to discover that they shared the same address, an off-campus apartment in town, not far from the university.
Shutting her computer down, she grabbed her teaching notes and laptop, then headed to her first lecture of the day, an upper-level course on Mesopotamia. Her intro course was after lunch and she’d have to wait to meet her two new students.
Her first class passed in a flash, the small group of archeology and anthropology majors engaged in a spirited discussion of the importance of Mesopotamia, and its rise and fall. She spent a few minutes afterward chatting with a couple of seniors about post-graduation options and she promised to keep an eye open for any dig opportunities to pass on.
After grabbing a sandwich on the way to her office, Cyn hunkered down to prepare for her next class. She desperately wanted to dig into McElroy’s friends but didn’t want any trace of her activities to be recorded on the university system so it would have to wait until she returned home that evening.
By the time she entered the lecture hall, she’d memorized what Harrow and Persons looked like—both lanky with dark hair, although Harrow was several inches taller than Persons—and easily found them sitting in the second to last row, Harrow on the aisle seat and Persons right beside him. Being an intro class, it was much larger than her morning one and all forty seats were filled. She smiled at the group. She wasn’t one for false modesty and she took pride in being a professor that students liked to take classes from. This class satisfied general education requirements, but so did a lot of others and there was always a waitlist for it.
She did a quick intro of the course, then asked the students to introduce themselves. The first years were still a little hesitant when it came to their turn, but the second years tended to be more comfortable. With the exception of Harrow and Persons. They both introduced themselves and named their major, but unlike most students, they conveyed the information with an air of impatient irritation, all the while keeping their faces burrowed into their hoodies.
As Persons spoke, the student beside him shifted away a touch, as if she didn’t want to be associated with him. Cyn hid her knowing smile. It seemed she hadn’t been the only one to notice the attitude. Maybe it was directed at her, but it could have as easily arisen from having been asked to speak at all, or perhaps from the fact that they were taking her class which was as unrelated to their math and chemistry majors as a student could get.
Ignoring the obvious disdain the two young men oozed, she finished the introductions and launched into her lecture, going over the syllabus, assignment schedule, and what to expect from the quizzes and exams. In a stroke of genius—she’d already admitted to not being humble—she assigned a quick, impromptu project that wouldn’t take each student more than thirty minutes but would require they use the library. Neither Harrow nor Persons had classes the next day, so she anticipated they’d want to get the project done that afternoon rather than have to come back to campus. If she happened to run into them while they were at the library, well, that would be exactly what she wanted.
Dismissing the class at the end of the hour and ten minute lecture, she watched Harrow and Persons bolt from the room as the other students lingered, some talking, some eyeing her. After the last student left, Cyn quickly made her way to the library, not wanting to miss Harrow and Persons. Pushing through the front doors, she paused a moment to take in the winter light streaming through the soaring windows of the lobby, then she walked to the stairwell and up the two flights of stairs that would take her to the archeology section.
Once there, she started walking up and down the aisles, as if browsing for something. She saw a few of her new students already beginning the small project she’d assigned, and she offered little smiles of encouragement. She was about to round a corner up another aisle when movement in one of the study rooms caught her attention. It was only a glimpse of an arm and blue shirt sleeve, but the color was identical to the sweatshirt Harrow had worn to class.
Pulling out her phone, she walked by the room and paused in an area about ten feet from where Harrow and Persons sat with John Waters. Popping her earbuds in, she pulled up a special app on her phone that amplified voices through walls. It was little more than a sophisticated listening device, but a handy one to have, especially because to anyone who noticed, it would simply look like she was on the phone.
Casually leaning on the low shelving, she pointed the microphone toward the room and listened.
“That’s fucked up,” Harrow said.
“No shit,” Persons responded.
“And that’s why we have to do something about it,” the third voice, presumably Waters, said.
“Wearedoing something about it,” Persons said.
“Yeah,” Harrow joined in. “Why the fuck you say something like that? Like wearen’tdoing something.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Waters responded. “We need more people though.”
“Not for Boston we don’t,” Harrow countered.
Boston? Cyn didn’t like the sound of that.
“Shut the fuck up, Mike. Boston is just the beginning. Remember what James talked about? You want his life to be in vain? Weneedmore people if this is really going to be a movement,” Waters said.
“Yeah, well, maybe you can focus on that while Mike and I do the dirty work,” Persons said, volunteering himself and Harrow for whatever that may be.
“Fuck, I wish James were here,” Waters said. “Hegotit. You two just want to play with your guns and bombs.”
“Watch what you say, John. It won’t look like playing when it’s turned on you,” Harrow all but growled.
“That’s not what I fucking meant,” Waters said. “James knew this was amovement. It’s a cause and a calling. There’s nodirtywork. You call it dirty, you undermine the cause.”
Harrow and Persons both made noncommittal noises, but that seemed to defuse the tension that had built. Though Cyn was feeling anything but soothed.
