Bobby bleeding.
Bobby dead.
The faces would change in front of her eyes. Interchangeable as Halloween masks. The awfulness playing over and over. Other horrors too. And her not being able to say anything. Not being able to scream. Not being able to help herself at all.
And through all of it, a dark shadow would be standing in the doorway, silently watching. And then gone, gone, gone.
When would he be back?
What would he do then?
And what would become of her if he never came back at all?
Sylvie
After shooing Louis back to his own apartment, Sylvie and Bryce raced the few blocks to the psychology department’s temporary digs. Bertram said he worked every day of the week. Sylvie hoped that wasn’t an exaggeration.
They reached the top of the stairs and headed down the hall. The air felt different. Colder. They walked past the office where Sami Yamal had shown them the photographs of the women killed by Ed Dryden. Sylvie peered inside. Two people worked at desks in the large room, but Sami wasn’t one of them.
Too bad. Sylvie would like to get his take on the professor’s relationship with Diana. If there was any impropriety at all where the professor was concerned, she was sure Sami would have noticed. And with no love lost between him and Bertram, he certainly wouldn’t worry about keeping the professor’s secrets.
The door to the professor’s office was closed, just as it had been the first time they’d visited. But unlike the first time, a light glowed from underneath the door.
Bryce knocked. The door swung open under his knuckles.
Professor Bertram stood in the doorway. Dark circles cupped reddened eyes. Razor stubble sparkled silver over his jaw and shadowed the hollows of his cheeks. A spot of coffee about the size of a half-dollar marred his wrinkled blue shirt.
“I thought only students pulled all-nighters, not professors,” Bryce said.
“I wish it was as simple as that.” Bertram walked back around the desk and collapsed into his desk chair. He ran a hand over his face and looked at Sylvie. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your sister.”
Her stomach tightened into a knot. “Why?”
“I talked to Detective Perreth. He said he was waiting on an....” He shook his head. “An identification. It never occurred to me she would be in danger. He’s in prison. I couldn’t have known…”
“Hold on. Hold on,” Bryce said. “What exactly did Perreth tell you?”
“He thinks Diana’s disappearance might have something to do with Ed Dryden.”
Strange. Perreth hadn’t even given them a clue that he knew about the link between Diana and Dryden. “Did he say what made him think that?”
“No. But he seemed pretty sure.”
Had Perreth found something? Or had he learned that Dryden was Bertram’s weakness and he was using the serial killer to get under the professor’s skin?
Sylvie glanced at Bryce.
As if he sensed her unvoiced question, he pulled out his cell phone along with Perreth’s card and punched in the number. Stepping into the doorway of the tiny office, he cupped his hand around the phone and started talking in a low voice to whoever had answered the phone. Judging from his polite tone, Sylvie would bet it wasn’t Perreth. Maybe the detective’s voice mail.
She turned back to Bertram. He really did look stressed. Was guilt over getting Diana involved with Dryden to blame? Or was he stalking her? Or could it be something else? “What was going on between you and Diana?”
Bertram’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”
“Diana’s neighbor said you were at her apartment about a week ago.” Louis hadn’t said it was the professor. Not exactly. But after the scenarios Sylvie’s imagination had conjured on the trip over, coming right out and accusing Bertram seemed like the fastest way to get answers.
“We were working together. I stopped by her apartment a couple of times.”
“He said he heard you crying. Sobbing, actually.”
Elbows on the desktop, he cradled his forehead in his palms.
“What were you upset about?”
He let out a shaky breath. When he looked up, tears sparkled in the corners of his eyes. “It’s not what you think.”
“You have no earthly way to know what I think.” She didn’t even know what she thought. Not anymore. It seemed everything she thought she knew about her sister had been turned on its head. “What is it?”
“It happened many years ago. Probably not very long after you were born.”
Not long after she was born? How could his explanation possibly go back that far? She waited for him to continue.
“I had a daughter. Beautiful girl. Brilliant girl. She was only sixteen when she graduated from high school.”
“What does your daughter have to do with Diana?”
He swallowed hard, as if trying to pull himself out of his memories, trying to control his emotions.
“I’m asking you about my sister. I need to know about my sister.”
“You asked why I was at her apartment. Why I was upset.”
“Yes.”
“I’m telling you, if you’d stop and listen.” Sad no longer, his dark eyes flashed with temper.
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
“My daughter was a student here. I was an assistant professor. I was so proud that she chose to come here. I can’t even tell you.”
Sylvie forced herself to nod politely even though she felt more like wrapping her hands around his throat and strangling the truth out of him.
“She used to have this book club. Just for fun. She and her friends would get together at a restaurant on State Street and talk about the latest releases. One summer, they drove up north for a weekend, stayed at a girl’s parents’ cabin. She never made it home. She was found a week later… murdered by Ed Dryden.”
Sylvie gasped.
Bryce stepped up close behind her. She hadn’t been aware that he’d finished his phone call. But he was there. As soon as she’d gasped, he was there. Before the horror could even take hold.
“That’s the real reason I got involved in studying Ed Dryden years later, when Risa Madsen started the program. I had to know why. How he could have done those horrible things to my beautiful little girl. And you know, in all my study, I’ve never gotten an answer. Not one that made sense. I never found…”
His voice cracked and he buried his head in his hands.
Sylvie let his words sink in. Suddenly his constant work hours made perfect sense. His wife’s strange behavior too. Her fear. Her comment about her husband’s obsession fit too. He’d been obsessed with Dryden. So obsessed that he’d shut everything else out of his life, including what was left of his family. “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“I know what you thought. That I was a horny old professor hung up on a woman less than half my age.”
What could she say? That was what she’d thought. That and worse.
“If you’re looking for someone who was hung up on your sister, check with my assistant.”
“Your assistant?”
“Sami Yamal. I don’t think Diana ever actually dated him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. She asked me to have a talk with him a couple of weeks after she started working with us on the project.”
“A talk?”
“To suggest that he back off.”
Sami? When Louis had told them about the man who’d aggressively pursued dates with Diana and the man who was crying in her apartment, he’d said he couldn’t be sure they were the same person. Maybe they weren’t.