Chapter 21

Charles is following Julian out the door of Fatima’s office when both their phones buzz. Julian glances at his and then stops. He shows it to Charles.

It’s a photo and a text from Piper. In the photo is a small black rectangle made of plastic or metal or something like it. There’s a panel taken off the back that shows what looks like a miniature circuit board. The text below says, Is this what I think it is?

Charles looks quickly to Julian. “What…” he begins, but Julian quickly puts a finger to his lips. Charles falls silent.

That’s a listening device, Julian texts. Where did you find it?

Charles sucks in a gasp.

The text comes back immediately: Antonio and I found it on the underside of one of the bookshelves in my office.

Julian writes, Stay there. Don’t talk. I’ll be in touch soon.

“Is something wrong?” Fatima asks from her desk. Julian and Charles turn around.

“Could I have a piece of paper?” Julian asks.

Fatima blinks. “Sure. What…”

Julian reaches for the paper she offers and scribbles on it, then pushes it across the desk to Fatima. Charles reads it upside-down: Listening device found in Piper’s office. Can we look for one in here?

Fatima stares at the message. “What the—” she says, then catches herself. Doubt passes across her face, but then she nods, slowly.

Julian places a hand briefly on Charles’ shoulder, communicating that he should look too, and a rush of absolutely inappropriate joy surges through Charles for a moment. He suppresses it, but it leaves him with an elevated heartbeat and an unreal sense of the world around him. He turns away from the detective, looking for places to hide a bug, and tries to steady himself.

Fatima watches them warily. Julian is quick and efficient, moving from highest point to lowest, skimming his long-fingered hands behind stacks of books and under shelves and, crouched low to the ground, on the underside of Fatima’s desk. Charles moves more slowly, sliding his hands over the edges of picture frames and the backside of the radiator. He can’t help but feel that he is not only looking for the device, but also memorizing the textures of this moment: the dust on the tops of the frames, the radiator’s peeling paint, the precise sensation of Julian at his back, searching, searching.

His finger snags on something. A sharp little corner. He scrabbles in the space between the radiator controls and the wall, managing to dislodge the object. He pulls it out.

“Julian.”

Julian looks. Fatima inhales sharply. She opens her mouth, then closes it. She pulls the paper to her and writes furiously: Get it out of here.

Julian carefully takes the device from Charles, his fingers brushing against the other man’s. The silence in the office is crackling, tension so thick Charles almost thinks the device will pick it up.

Julian glances at Fatima, whose hands are clenched and who is staring at the device as if it is a poisonous spider or a false accusation of plagiarism. He picks up a half-full coffee mug on her desk and drops the bug into it.

“There,” he says. “It’s off.”

Fatima exhales. The sound lets some of the tightly-wound tension out of the air. Charles sits heavily, winded.

“This has gone too far.” Fatima’s voice is shaking. “This has to stop.”

“What does?” Julian asks. His voice has almost no tenor to it: quiet, neutral, as unobtrusive as possible.

“All of this. The infighting, the politics. This is taking it too far.” Her eyes widen. “The things they’ve heard. Shit, what if—there’s one in Isabel’s office, isn’t there? And Sarah’s and Jordan’s and who knows how many of our students’—” She shakes her head. “We have to end this, god, what an absolutely toxic learning environment—it’s unconscionable the things our students go through—” She puts both hands on her face, pressing down as if she can suppress her emotion that way. She breathes. She doesn’t say anything else.

“You think Francis Pace is responsible for this?” Julian asks quietly.

Fatima nods. “Of course. This is how they knew we were gunning so hard for that promising new admit, Elena Gutierrez, how they knew to get her to decline our admissions offer—how long have these been here? What else have they heard?” A thought seems to strike her. “I want to see Piper and whomever they’re with. Now.”

Julian nods and types into his phone. Charles, who is standing perhaps slightly too close to him, reads, Come to Dr. Amir’s office. Bring the device.

Piper texts back their assent and the three of them fall silent, waiting.

“This has to stop,” Fatima mutters again, under her breath, not really to Julian and Charles at all.

There’s a knock at the door and then Piper and Antonio enter. Antonio is holding the bug, hand outstretched, as if he doesn’t want to get it too close to his body. Julian picks up the coffee cup and holds it out.

Antonio drops the device. It falls into the mug with a dull clink.

Piper looks in, making sure the bug is fully submerged. Then they look a second time.

“Is that another one?”

“Yes,” says Julian. “We found one in here too.”

Charles watches the reaction of both students closely. Antonio looks shocked, then furious. Piper looks…Piper looks frightened.

“Listen,” says Fatima. “I need you to think back. We don’t know how long these have been there, but I need you to try and remember if you’ve said anything in the last few months that might be a problem for you if it were recorded.”

“We’ve said all sorts of things,” Antonio replies, voice heated. “Plans for open house, stuff about the possible new hire for next year—”

“Not that kind of thing,” says Fatima. “Something that, if Pace or any of them wanted to get serious about getting you to, say, leave the department—” Charles senses Julian shift, listening even closer—“might put you at risk. Something that they could use to damage your career or your place here. Gossip about your students, maybe. Really negative language about teaching, or about Schenley. Even—even a verbal takedown of a major scholar, maybe, that you wouldn’t want circulated—”

Piper and Antonio go very quiet. Worry flits across Antonio’s face, now, tempering the anger.

“We’ve definitely said a lot of shit about Pace and his people,” Antonio says.

Fatima nods. “I’m not too worried about that. Departmental infighting is one thing. I’m more concerned about what you might have said about undergraduates or administrators.”

Piper swallows. “Um,” they say. “I—a student kept misgendering me. I was pretty sure it was on purpose. I got pretty upset about it a couple weeks ago, after class. I don’t—I don’t think I said anything that would be inappropriate, but…”

Fatima reaches out and squeezes Piper’s wrist. “Okay. I…don’t worry about that, all right? We’ll go to bat for you if we need to. But I think you’ll be okay with that one.”

Piper nods. “Thanks.”

“Who else is likely to find these in their office?” Julian interjects. All heads turn to look at him.

“Isabel,” says Fatima. “Sarah, Jordan. Probably Katie and Phoebe—do they share an office?”

“No,” says Antonio. “We should check both.”

“Katie’s in the same office as Karen Gavras,” Piper adds. “Karen could have easily…well. Hidden one there.” There’s a strained silence.

“Who has the keys to these offices?” Julian asks. “Would Dr. Pace, or any of his colleagues or students, really be able to access all of them?”

“Grad students share offices with three or four other people,” Piper says. “It probably wouldn’t be that hard to find a time to get in. But professors’ offices would be harder.”

Fatima sighs. “Not that hard, really. The maintenance staff all have keys to the offices. Bianca, our program coordinator, does as well. Her desk is in the English department administrative office, where the faculty mailboxes also are. It wouldn’t be impossible to get the key out of it somehow.”

Julian nods. “A bit tricky, but it sounds doable. It’s possible someone saw whoever it was take the keys if they got them from there. That’s a pretty public place, right?”

“But how long have the bugs been in the offices?” Charles asks. “Do you have any idea? Has there been any indication that someone has been listening in? You said something about a new admit who declined—”

Fatima’s brow creases. “Yes. If they are indeed responsible for the email that caused our top admit to decline her admission, they may have known from our conversations in various offices that we were really invested in her.”

“It’s possible,” Julian says slowly.

Fatima looks at him sharply, hearing the doubt in his voice. “What?”

“It wasn’t a very good plan, was it? From what I understand, admits on both sides have cancelled their plans to come to the grad open house.”

Fatima sighs. “Yes. It seems to have backlashed rather badly.”

Julian glances at Charles, as if to say: don’t let me forget the thought I am having right now. Charles receives the message like a dart to the chest. He gives a tiny nod.

Antonio speaks up. “We should tell Isabel.”

For a moment, Charles thinks Fatima looks reluctant. But she nods. “Yes,” she says. “You’re right.”

Isabel arrives barely five minutes after Fatima sends her a text. She comes in out of breath and red-cheeked, winter hat in hand and mass of hair wilder than usual. Charles wonders if she’s just always somewhere on campus, waiting for the next move in the endless fight they are all caught up in.

“Those fucking bastards,” she says, opening her clenched fist to reveal a listening device resting on her palm. The small black object is crushed and cracked into several pieces. She tips her hand and let the shards fall on Fatima’s desk. “I smashed it with The Arcades Project. Talk about flashing up in a moment of danger—the angel of history is pissed—”

She finally looks around and notices Julian and Charles. “Oh for—” She sighs. “You’re here.” Shooting a displeased glance at Fatima, she asks them, “Why are you here?”

Julian opens his mouth, but Charles sees a tiny flash of something on Fatima’s face: is it—fear?

“We, uh,” Charles says, more loudly than needed. “We were here asking some questions and we saw Piper and Antonio come out of their office with the device. Dr. Amir was in the hallway at the time.”

Isabel stares at them. Then something shifts in her expression. Her eyes narrow. “You know about these things,” she says. “Surveillance. You use that kind of thing yourself.”

Charles glances at Julian. He can’t exactly claim that he knows about these things; he’s barely had a chance to observe any ordinary P.I. work since he started working for Julian. “At times,” he says noncommittally.

“Tell me about these,” Isabel says. “How do they work?”

Julian speaks up. “Audio only. They’re not on all the time, just when a sound triggers them. This particular kind of device transmits to a computer or phone, which is likely set to record. So someone can listen live or later on.”

“How close does the other device have to be to pick up the signal?”

Julian shakes his head. “Not very close. It wouldn’t have to be in this building, but probably at least in one of the ones nearby.”

Isabel purses her lips. “What about price?”

Julian shoots her an approving look and Charles feels—oh, god. He feels jealous.

“Expensive,” he says. “This model isn’t full of complicated features, but it’s high quality and easy to use, so it runs for several hundred dollars. Each.”

Isabel exchanges a glance with Fatima, who looks disturbed as she counts off: “My office, yours, Piper’s. That’s three. Plus, probably, Antonio’s, Sarah’s, Jordan’s, Katie’s, and Phoebe’s. Seven. And we may want to check other possible offices.”

“Whose would those be?” Julian asks.

“Other grad students, earlier in the program, who are likely to work with one of us but not fully committed yet,” Isabel says. “They’re not in the loop enough that it would be helpful to listen in on them, probably, but then again maybe they’re easier targets…” She runs a hand through her messy hair. “The point is. That’s more than a thousand dollars, maybe two. So.” She looks at Julian a little challengingly.

“So it’s likely someone with disposable funds purchased the bugs,” he says simply. “How well are grad student instructors paid here?”

A noise, more or less a humorless snort, erupts from the two grad students in the room.

“Not that well,” Isabel says.

“So…” Fatima swallows. “So that means it’s unlikely that this was some sort of…misguided and unsupervised effort on the part of overzealous graduate students.”

“Overzealous,” Isabel says dryly. “That’s charitable. But yes, it does appear to be the case.” She straightens up and looks Fatima, Piper, and Antonio each in the eye in turn. “Okay. Here’s what we need to do. We need to ascertain where else bugs have been planted. Piper, Antonio, you contact Katie and Phoebe and report back to me, and Antonio, you check yours and Lu’s office. I’ll check with Sarah and Jordan and take a couple potential others aside after my seminar. Then we need to have a meeting to decide how to move forward. Somewhere we know is safe—we’ll check for bugs before all our meetings now.”

Piper and Antonio nod. Charles looks at Julian, who is watching all this unfold with narrowed eyes.

“I—” All eyes turn to Fatima. She hesitates. “It’s just…Isabel, don’t you think maybe…” She sits up a little straighter, as if steeling herself. “Maybe this has gone too far?”

Isabel’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yes, of course it has. This is really beyond the pale.”

“Right. Exactly. I just—I mean…people in this department, probably faculty or students operating with faculty approval, are surveilling graduate students. That’s—that’s…” Fatima shakes her head. Isabel watches her, waiting. “At what point does this go beyond us? At what point do we take this up the ladder?”

Isabel is quiet for a moment. Charles notices that Piper and Antonio have gone very still.

“To the dean,” Isabel clarifies.

“Or someone like him.”

“And what makes you think that anyone in a position of power at this university will sympathize with us? That they won’t blame us for this situation, too?”

Fatima nods. “Yes. I know. They might. But surely…surely this is bigger than that, Isabel. The ethics of this are…it’s staggering. The effect it will have on students’ ability to learn—the faculty’s ability to teach—”

“It is staggering.” Isabel’s voice has gotten slightly cooler. “That’s why we need to deal with it.”

Fatima wavers. Her eyes flicker down to her desk, then the grad students, then Julian and Charles. “I’m not sure we should be dealing with this on our own.”

Her voice is quiet, with, Charles thinks, a sort of pleading note in it. Isabel is silent for another long moment.

“We’ll talk about it,” she says finally. “We’ll discuss it. Once everyone who should be here is here.”

Charles can’t help but wonder if some of that is directed at their unwelcome presence.

Fatima nods. She doesn’t look satisfied, exactly, but she does seem relieved to end the conversation. “Okay.”

Charles and Julian split off from Piper and Antonio in the hallway as the two of them go to check the other offices. Fatima remains in her office, leaving them alone with Isabel. Charles’ instincts are telling him to remove himself from the uncomfortable silence building up between them and the professor, and he can tell by the twitch of Julian’s eyelid that Julian’s are too, but the detective stands his ground, so Charles stands his as well.

“Do you have any news of Lu?” Isabel asks abruptly.

She looks as tired as Francis Pace had. Her fine branching crow’s feet have sunken deeper into her skin, etching a map of stress and weariness into her face. She’s the third faculty member who has showed signs of wear not present at their first meeting. Is it due to Jack Hart’s murder? Lu’s absence? Or the ever-intensifying conflict between the two sides of the departmental schism?

Isabel is waiting for their answer. Her expression is hard to read. She doesn’t look worried, exactly, but Charles thinks maybe she is. There’s something about the stubborn jut of her chin that hits him, just a little, in the heart.

But Julian’s assessing silence reminds Charles that Isabel’s behavior has not exactly prioritized concern for Lu before now.

“We’re working on it,” Julian says finally. He doesn’t say anything about threats or lockers or murder. He just watches Isabel’s reaction.

She nods slowly. “Do you think these listening devices could have anything to do with her?”

Julian cocks his head. “Why do you say that?”

“Well. I don’t think they do, frankly. But it’s possible that someone heard Lu say something that she wouldn’t have wanted overheard—” Suddenly, she stops. Color drains from her face. She stares, but not really at them.

“Did you just remember something?” Julian asks quietly.

“I—” She swallows. She darts a glance around, like she’s checking the exits. Or checking the corners for spies.

“What did Lu say that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to hear?”

Isabel blinks. All at once, she seems to gather herself up. “I just realized more people know about the book contract than we knew.”

Charles and Julian exchange glances. “Book contract?”

“I assume Piper’s told you about it. They and I are the only ones Lu told about the offer—well. I thought we were.”

“Can you tell us about this book contract?” Julian asks carefully. “Uh…from your perspective?”

For a second Charles thinks Isabel isn’t going to answer Julian. She still looks a little shell-shocked under the mask of competence she’s reassumed.

“It…” Isabel sighs. “Well, you must know the basics. A commercial publishing company wants to do a sort of pop scholarly book about fanfiction. They asked Lu to turn the parts of her dissertation about fanfiction into something accessible to the general public. Lu hadn’t decided whether she wanted to do this, and I recommended she keep it quiet until she’d made up her mind.”

“Why is that?” Julian asks.

“Because certain members of this department are very skilled at twisting everything we do against us. I don’t know if they’d have tried to stop Lu for fear that the publicity would put us in favor with the dean or encourage the project because they think a commercial rather than scholarly publication will make Lu and therefore all of us look bad, but…it wouldn’t have been good. Listen, I have a lot to do right now. I have a crisis to manage.”

She looks more likely to collapse in her office than spearhead an investigation, but Julian acquiesces anyway.

“Please do let us know if you think of anything else that might be useful.”

She nods. “Likewise. That is—if you find out more about the bugs in our office, please update me.”

They part ways. Julian and Charles wait till they’re outside the building to react.

“Holy shit,” Charles says.

“Holy shit indeed.”

“Listening devices. What is this, the Cold War?”

“Spying on one’s colleagues in case they harbor the wrong political opinions. Sounds about right.”

“The book deal, though,” says Charles. “What the hell?”

“You mean why didn’t Piper tell us?”

“Yeah.”

Julian shakes his head. “I don’t know. But we’d better find out.”

“Piper couldn’t…they don’t…” A thought is forming in Charles’ head, one that makes him very uncomfortable.

“Could Piper have more to do with Lu’s disappearance than they’re letting on?” Julian shrugs. “It’s a long shot. They took quite a risk hiring a detective to poke around in the aftermath if that’s the case.”

“And they…” Charles struggles to put it into words. “They love her. They do. They care about her. I think they’re genuinely upset.”

Julian surveys him for a moment and then says, almost gently, “It’s very possible to love someone and hurt them. It’s also possible to be upset about something you yourself made happen.”

Charles hates this idea. Not that loving and hurting someone can go hand in hand—it’s true, of course it is, and once Julian says it he feels foolish for his naive objection—but the possibility that Piper could have participated in Lu’s flight somehow and then lied about it.

“I don’t think it’s likely.” Julian watches him for a moment. Charles feels scrutinized, and strangely transparent. He squirms internally. He’s getting emotionally attached to someone who could be a suspect. Julian will be disappointed in him. Julian will realize he’s not as much of an asset as he’d thought—

“Isabel was lying just now,” Julian says. “She wasn’t thinking about the book deal at first. Whatever she realized had been overheard, it was something much more urgent than that.”

Relieved by the change of subject, Charles quickly puts his mind to work. Not to impress Julian, just to help him. Well. Maybe to impress him a little.

“Or she wasn’t telling us everything about the book deal. Maybe it’s more important than it sounded.”

Julian nods. “That’s possible.”

“She did mention the dean. How do you think he’d react? Would this book contract put the presentists more in favor with him, or less?”

“We’ll have to see if we can find out.” Julian taps his finger against his lip. “Ask Piper,” he says. “And find out from them why they didn’t tell us about the book deal.”

Charles blinks. “You mean—you mean you want me to talk to them? By myself?”

“If you’re comfortable doing so.” Julian doesn’t look him directly in the eye—his gaze hovering somewhere around Charles’ forehead—when he adds, “You’re good at talking to people. They tell things to you.”

Charles flushes. There’s not a chance in hell that his face hasn’t just turned bright red. Something warm and urgent fizzles inside him, eager and pleased and anxious all at once.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah, I—I’ll talk to them.”

“Good,” Julian says. “Now let’s head back to the office. I have some research I want to do on listening devices.”