Chapter 20

Julian and Charles return to Schenley first thing on Monday. Julian wants to talk to some of the historicists and follow up with anybody else who’s around. Charles agrees and thinks that also, probably, it’s past time for him and Julian to follow up on their kiss. They should talk about their second kiss, and their first. Clarify some things. Converse, like adults.

In the car, Charles tries work up the courage to say something. But he doesn’t even know which words are the right words. He doesn’t know how to step off the tightrope upon which he is teetering.

The fact is, he doesn’t want to talk about kissing Julian. He wants to be kissing Julian.

That’s a thing that he knows, suddenly, all at once. It comes to him like a revelation, whole and new, though in truth it’s old information he simply hadn’t processed yet. He knows this: he wants to kiss Julian. He doesn’t know what else he wants, or how long he will want it, but he knows that, right now, he wants, quite badly, to kiss him.

Panic and joy collide in his stomach. Julian parks the car. Charles looks at him, and then—then—then he surges forward and does what he wants.

Julian lets out a startled noise. It makes Charles’ chest clench with affection and he keeps kissing Julian until Julian kisses back. Charles’ hand is suddenly somehow gripping Julian’s knee as he leans over the gearshift, fingers tight, and Julian’s skin is warm through the fabric of his pants and Charles puts his tongue in Julian’s mouth and he wants.

“Here’s what we need,” Julian says. They’re standing outside the humanities building fifteen minutes later. Julian’s pale cheeks are flushed pink. He is so tall, Charles thinks, gawky even, and his elbows are too pointy and his ears stick out and he looks everything and nothing like the thirteen-year-old version of him that Charles has imprinted somewhere deep in the folds of his brain. And Charles can’t help it, he’s giddy—Charles is giddy with it, with standing next to Julian Ellsworth and kissing Julian Ellsworth and solving a case with Julian Ellsworth and he’s falling and he knows it and he just wants to shut his eyes tight and pretend the ground will never arrive.

“We need to talk to as many people as we can,” Julian says. He is consulting a list in a small notebook. He is looking every now at then at Charles through his eyelashes. “I want to get in touch with Jack Hart’s crowd, the historicists—Francis Pace, the other professors, the grad students if we can. That’s our top priority. But if we run into any of Lu’s people, the presentists, we can speak with them too. Ask them what they think about the murder, the state of the department, Lu’s absence. I want to start pinning things down. We’ve heard a lot of general talk about conflict and controversy within the English program and not a lot of concrete details, either about Lu or about the conflict, for that matter.”

Charles’ heart races as Julian speaks. He rarely speaks at such length with such confidence. Not like he used to on TV. Charles wants him to keep speaking forever.     

“Piper doesn’t seem to think the other presentists would have done something so drastic.”

“No. But we shouldn’t rely too much on Piper. They’re only one person, and they’re certainly not an objective observer.”

“Right,” Charles says. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Piper isn’t necessarily correct about all things Lu. It’s a strange reminder: Charles and Julian have never met Lu. They’ve been seeing her through the lenses of those who know her, and it isn’t clear how foggy or fractured those lenses might be.

They start with Francis Pace, the man who read Tennyson at the vigil and who has been described as the unofficial head of the historicist contingent in the English department, a counterpart to Isabel Ortiz. His office door is cracked open and he answers their knock promptly.

“Oh,” he says as he looks up and sees them. “You’re not my students. How can I help you?”

Pace’s red hair is as bright as Charles remembers it, but the man himself looks faded. He’s still wearing a sort of stylish professor outfit, a suit jacket in deep brown and a cream-colored sweater underneath, but his heavy face looks puffy and tired. Charles thinks that his thumbs would probably fit snugly in the bags under Pace’s eyes.

“We were hoping to talk to you about one of your students,” Julian says. His voice is quiet, his gaze steady but resting just north, Charles thinks, of those tired eyes.

“About one of my…oh. If you’re media, I’m afraid I can’t talk to you about Jack Hart. You’ll have to go through the university’s public relations department, I have their card somewhere—” Pace roots around in a desk drawer as he speaks. Charles wonders if it’s to mask whatever emotion has arisen at the mention of his murdered student.

“Ah, no,” says Julian. “This isn’t about Mr. Hart.”

“Our condolences, though,” Charles adds quickly. “I’m sure you’re all going through a difficult time.”

“Yes, well,” Pace says, and passes a weary hand over his hair. “Thank you.”

“We wanted to talk to you about the disappearance of Lu Fairchild.”

For a second, Pace simply stares at Julian. “Excuse me,” he says. “The what?”

“Well, ‘disappearance’ might be a bit of a dramatic word,” Charles says. “Her absence, then.”

Pace shakes his head. “I’m sorry. What do you mean, her absence?”

Charles and Julian exchange looks, Charles’ eyebrows raising slightly and Julian’s contracting just a bit. “Her absence from the department,” Julian clarifies. “Since no one knows where she’s been since she dropped out, a friend of hers asked us to see what we could find out about why she left and where she went.”

Pace's elbow jerks and suddenly he’s bent over the floor, scooping up a container of binder clips he’d just knocked on the ground. “Are you telling me that Lu has dropped out of the program?” he asks, face red from sitting up too quickly. He replaces the container on his desk without taking his eyes off Julian and Charles, setting it down precariously atop a stack of half-graded papers.

“You weren’t aware?” Julian asks.

“No, I—when? Are you sure?” Pace shakes his head. “I’m sorry, who are you exactly?”

“Oh, sorry,” Charles says, smiling his friendliest former-journalist smile. “I’m Charles Shelley, and this is Julian Ellsworth. Julian…runs a service to locate missing people. Piper Awasthi got in touch with us shortly after Lu left a couple of weeks ago.” On instinct, he doesn’t say “detective.” That term didn’t go over so well with Dr. Ortiz; he’s not sure how Pace will react.

“A couple of weeks ago?” Pace looks genuinely shocked. “So—so you’re trying to tell me that Lu Fairchild left the department a couple of weeks ago, without telling anyone why or where she was going, and I haven’t heard about it?” He shakes his head. “That’s just not possible.”

“Why not?” Julian asks.

“Because…because you cannot tell me that Lu dropped out and disappeared without Isabel Ortiz raising heaven and earth to find her. She’d have been up in arms the second she found out. Shaking everyone down for information, pounding on office doors.”

Julian and Charles exchange glances again, the unspoken connection between them quick and tight. He looks back at Pace and says, as mildly as possible, “You’re sure you’d know? We’ve heard that the relationship between you and Dr. Ortiz is…delicate.”

Pace snorts. “Delicate,” he mutters. “Yes, I’d have heard. She’d probably be blaming me.”

“Why’s that?”

Pace hasn’t quite seemed to remember that he’s talking to two strangers yet. “Well. You know. I’m the devil.” He blinks, then says, more carefully, “It’s just that…Lu used to work with me. At one point I had planned on being her dissertation chair. When she was preparing for her orals, she realized her research was going in a different direction. I’m afraid I didn’t handle the news as gracefully as I might have. It’s not unlikely that Isabel would assume I had…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Persuaded her away from her current project, maybe.”

“But why would she have left? Rather than simply switching advisors again?”

“Well. I don’t know. It’s complicated. But it just doesn’t make sense. Are you sure—really sure—?”

Julian nods. “We checked with the registrar. She’s no longer enrolled at Schenley. And no one we’ve spoken to has seen her since.”

It’s only then that the news appears to really hit Pace. He sits back in his chair, hard, looking stunned all over again. Charles glances at Julian for direction; Julian is waiting quietly, as if to see what Pace will say or do next.

“But…” Pace murmurs. Then, suddenly, he looks at them, alarm rushing into his face. “Was this—was this after Jack—or before?”

“Before,” Julian says. “By about a week.”

“Is she…” Pace’s throat bobs as he swallows hard. “No. No, that doesn’t make sense. She’d be—if something had happened to her, something like—like—”

Charles wants badly to jump in, to comfort the man, but Julian is still and quiet so Charles stays still and quiet too.

“No,” Pace says again. “What happened to Jack was random. Sudden violence, an outsider. It wasn’t covered up, it wasn’t—” He rubs his hands over his face. “Lu dropped out. Under her own steam. She personally unenrolled.”

“She unenrolled, yes,” Julian confirms.

Relief ripples through Pace, leaving him looking more tired and haggard than before. “Right. Okay. Yes.”

“Dr. Pace,” Charles says, “were you and Lu still close?”

A shadow crosses Pace’s face. “Well. Not…” He falls silent. When he speaks again, a guarded note has crept into his voice. “Her work diverged enough from my areas of expertise that I was no longer a good fit for her committee. We haven’t worked together since she began her dissertation. But of course I would be disturbed to hear of anything going amiss with any student in the department.”

A wall is being erected now, word by word. Julian looks at Charles and then speaks, as if trying to reach through the gaps in Pace’s defenses before they close up for good.

“Is that like Lu?” he says. “To leave suddenly and not tell anyone where she went?”

Pace frowns. “I don’t know,” he says slowly. “A few years ago, when we were still working together, I wouldn’t have said so. But…” He sighs. “By now? I honestly don’t know.”

“That was interesting,” Julian mutters as they exit Pace’s office.

“Very,” says Charles. “Though I don’t know what to make of it, really.”

“Sounds like Dr. Ortiz has been acting out of character even more than Piper suggested.” Julian glances sharply down a corridor as they walk past it. “Wait a moment. Is that the young man who caused the disturbance at the vigil?”

Two familiar-looking students are talking to each other beside a diamond-paned window, leaning against the gray stone wall as they speak in low voices. One of them has curly dark hair down to her shoulders; the other is tall, with straight black hair. Both of them look drawn and tired.

“Kevin Ng,” Charles says quietly. “Yes, he’s the one who shouted at the vigil. And that’s Karen Gavras, I think. Piper said they were both close to Jack Hart.” His tone is matter of fact, but he can’t help hoping that Julian will notice that he has memorized the names of all the key players in the case. And their fields of study: “He does early modern, she does eighteenth century. Both historicists, of course.”

Julian nods. “Let’s have a word.”

If Charles had blinked, he would have missed the twitch of hesitation before Julian steps over to the pair. It’s possible that he’s imagining this—more than possible, really—but he thinks that Julian is more confident than when they first started out on this case. Maybe Charles just likes the idea, or wants to believe it, but it seems to him that Julian looks more like he did when he was on Young Sherlock. Something about his posture, or the spark in his eye.

“Excuse me,” Julian says to Kevin and Karen. “Could we have a quick word?”

An embarrassing little thrill courses through Charles at the word we. He really needs to get it together.

The grad students turn to look at them warily. Charles wonders if the media has been bothering them about Jack’s murder. “It’s about Lu Fairchild,” he says quickly, stepping forward, hoping to stem the refusal he senses is coming.

Kevin and Karen exchange glances. “Lu?” Karen asks. “Why?”

“Well,” Charles begins, but Julian stills him.

“Why do you think?” he asks.

Karen shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t talk to Lu very often. I don’t think I’ve seen her in weeks.”

“What about you?” Julian asks Kevin.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. That’s probably the same for me.”

Charles notes the shadows under their eyes, so similar to Francis Pace’s. Jack’s death has hit hard. Unless, of course, they are troubled by something else, or something more.

“You haven’t heard anything about her dropping out, then?” Julian asked. “Leaving the program, or Pittsburgh?”

“What?” That news livens them up a little. Karen leans toward them slightly. “Are you saying Lu is gone? Like, gone gone?”

“Seems that way,” Julian replies. “And it seems like she left without warning. No one knows where she went.”

Kevin looks at Karen, whose eyes are widening. “Are you telling me,” he says, “that Lu walked out on Ortiz without letting her know first?”

Julian nods.

“Finally some good fucking news,” Kevin mutters, and immediately, Karen shoots him a look.

“Why do you say that?” Julian asks.

“I—” Kevin glances at Karen. “That’s not…I didn’t mean that. Lu and I just don’t really get along.”

“Strong personalities don’t mix well in seminar,” Karen supplies, as if reciting from memory.

Julian watches them for a moment longer, and then his eyes flick very briefly to Charles. Taking up the baton, Charles searches for the right way to approach this.

“It’s just…it sounded like you were pleased she’d left Dr. Ortiz without telling her,” he says.

“Oh.” Kevin laughs unconvincingly. “No, not really. It wasn’t a very nice thing to say, sorry.”

“Oh my god,” Karen says suddenly. “That must be why she was crying. I saw her, a couple weeks back, maybe? Coming out of Ortiz’s office. She was, like, really upset.”

Charles feels Julian tense. “Did Lu say why she was upset?” he asks.

“We didn’t talk,” says Karen. “But if she didn’t tell Ortiz before she left—god, maybe she’d just made up her mind to do it.”

“We’ve got to tell Francis,” Kevin mutters to her. There’s a smile lurking around his mouth again, one he can’t quite seem to suppress.

“We’ve just spoken with him,” Julian says. “He was very surprised. Why do you think he’d want to know, by the way?”

“What?” Kevin asks blankly. “Oh. Uh. I don’t know. Just…no reason, really.”

Charles is waiting for Julian’s signal before suggesting that there was anything strange, or anything connected to Jack Hart, behind Lu’s disappearance. He wonders if Julian is holding back, just waiting for the right moment to drop the bombshell. Maybe he thinks their guards will go up the moment they hear.

Julian opens his mouth, but he says something else: “Why is it that everyone in this department is so determined to pretend it’s not wildly dysfunctional?”

Kevin blinks. “Um…”

“Excuse me.” A voice speaks from an open office door. Standing just inside is a professor Charles recognizes as Fatima Amir, one of the presentist cohort, a scholar of early modern diasporic studies and a member of Piper’s dissertation committee. “Do you think I could have a word?”

She’s talking to Julian and Charles. There’s a small frown on her face, and Charles feels a flicker of nervousness before remembering he is an adult and not a student called in for a scolding.

“Certainly,” says Julian. He looks again at Kevin and Karen. “Will you let me know if you hear anything about Lu?”

They nod—though not very convincingly—and Julian hands them each a business card. The two grad students watch silently as Julian and Charles follow Fatima into her office.

“Please, sit,” she says. She’s young—maybe around thirty—and appears, though not as exhausted as Pace, as if the last couple of weeks have taken a toll. Her eyeliner is a little smudged and the frown hasn’t left her face.

Julian doesn’t speak. Charles wonders for a second if his social anxiety is kicking in, if he’d like Charles to start them off, but he senses that, this time, Julian is just waiting for her to break the silence. He is more confident, Charles thinks.

Fatima taps a finger on her desk. “So. You’re the private detectives Piper Awasthi hired, is that right?”

Julian nods. “Julian Ellsworth.” He hands her a card. “And this is Charles Shelley, my…assistant.”

The brief pause between those last two words makes Charles’ stomach flip.

“Fatima Amir,” she says. “I teach in the department.” She taps her desk again, a quick movement with her pointer finger that seems to signify that she is considering what exactly she wants to say. “I want to get a few things clear for myself. Firstly, do you believe that Lu Fairchild left the university against her will?”

“Yes,” Julian says simply. “Or under significant pressure.”

“Why?”

“Certain things indicate that she was threatened. Told to leave or harm would come to her.”

Fatima’s eyes widen. “Are you serious?”

Julian nods.

“Was it…was it related to Jack Hart’s murder?”

Julian pauses. “It’s possible.”

A hand flies up to Fatima’s mouth. It rests there as she stares at Julian.

Julian’s eyes flick to Charles’.

Charles leans in, voice gentle but steady. “Dr. Amir, if there’s anything you know that might help us find Lu, please, it’s very important.”

Expression unchanging, Fatima looks at Charles. “She would have liked this, you know. Holmes and Watson searching for her.”

Julian flinches minutely. “I can assure you, we are taking this very seriously.”

“Oh,” says Fatima, “so would Lu. Detective fiction is serious business for her.”

Charles exchanges a glance with Julian, whose face still looks a little wooden. An idea about Lu, a possibility, starts to flutter in his mind. She would have liked this.

“Do you know her well?” Julian asks.

Fatima hesitates. She glances briefly at the closed door of her office. “Yes, I suppose I do. She’s not my student, really—I’m not on her committee—but I spend a fair amount of time with her and some of the other grad students.”

“And with Isabel Ortiz?”

Fatima looks at the door again. It’s as if, Charles thinks, she’s worried someone is standing outside, pressing their ear against it. “Yes,” she says finally. She bites her lip. “You asked Kevin and Karen why everyone tries to pretend this department isn’t dysfunctional.”

Julian nods.

Fatima sighs. Her voice lowers a little. “We’re on notice. From the dean.”

Charles’ eyebrows raise. “What sort of notice?”

“We’ve lost a lot of students over the years. Only about one in four incoming graduate students completes the Ph.D. It looks bad. And the conflict spreads sometimes—to broader committees, things like that. It’s gotten more visible to the rest of the university in recent years, and…well. Dean Hanley has made it clear that there will be consequences if we can’t improve our retention rates and play nicer, at least in public.”

“Consequences?”

“Promotions, tenure, funding. That sort of thing. We’ve already lost a lot of our funding for grad student fellowships, since awardees so often drop out.”

“Does the dean lean towards one side of the conflict or the other?”

“Well. He’s not happy with Isabel or Francis at the moment, to be honest. His background is actually in the humanities—history, I believe—but he’s not really invested in the substance of our…disagreement. He’s a pretty conservative scholar, from what I understand. If he’s close to anyone in the English department, it’s Christopher Maynard.” She pauses. “Our one wildly out-of-touch nineteen-fifties holdout.”

“So the dean’s been putting pressure on you to resolve the conflict between the presentists and the historicists.”

“Or pretend to.” Fatima sighs. “We’ve always tried to keep up appearances at conferences and that sort of thing—of course, there’s gossip, but it’s not a great idea for everyone in the field to know that your university’s English department is basically at each other’s throats on a daily basis. Doesn’t look good, and it certainly scares off a lot of potential hires and students.”

“And you think the students are aware of what the dean has said?” Julian asks. “Those involved in the situation?”

Fatima shrugs. “Francis Pace’s might be. I don’t know what he’s told them. Isabel hasn’t told ours.”

“Why? It seems like the kind of thing that she’d want them to know.”

“She has impressed upon them how important it is to keep up appearances this year. She just…” Again she looks at the door. She pauses. “This will really help find Lu?”

Julian nods. “Yes,” he says simply.     

“Okay. Right.” Fatima’s voice lowers again. “I think…I suspect that Isabel is holding it back because she wants to tell them at the moment it will make the biggest impact on them. Maybe right before open house. She’s…a strategist.”

Fatima looks—guilty, almost. She’s hunched a little in her chair. Charles considers for a moment.

“You’re not supposed to talk about this with us, are you?”

Slowly, Fatima shakes her head.

“Isabel doesn’t want you to.”

“We don’t talk to outsiders about these things,” she says. “And—” She looks at Julian. “She told us to be particularly careful with you.”

“Why doesn’t Isabel want Lu’s disappearance looked into?”

“I don’t know!” She startles them both with this minor outburst. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “I just…I don’t understand it. I think…I’m worried that…” She looks down. “I’m worried that Isabel cares more about protecting the department than she does about the wellbeing of any one student in it.”

“Even Lu?”

Fatima nods. “Maybe,” she says softly. It looks like it pains her to say it, but she says it. “Maybe even Lu.”