With Mike's help I clambered up the rest of the way.
He pulled me close and wrapped his arms tightly around me. I couldn't stop shaking.
"You're okay, Jen. I've got you."
I clung to him, burrowing my head into his chest. He reached with one hand to touch my face, then quickly put his arm around me again, as if he had sensed my panic when he let go. Instead of his hand, he used his cheek to smooth mine.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"Where is she?" I whispered. "Where's Maggie?"
"Don't know," he answered quietly. "Stay still. Listen."
There was a long minute of silence, then a sudden banging noise.
"The door," I said. "She's at the door at the bottom of the steps. She can't get out that way. It's chained."
"Chained?"
"From the inside," I told him. "How did you get in?"
"I tried the doors, everything was locked, so I came through Walker's window."
"Did you cut the power?" I asked. No.
"Then someone else is in the building."
He was silent for a moment. "Brian?"
"I don't know."
"Stay here," Mike instructed and carefully disentangled himself from me. "I'll see what's up."
When he stood, I grabbed his ankle. "Oh, no, you don't. Not without me."
"It's safer here."
"It's safer two against one," I argued.
"It could be two against two."
"All the more reason." I reached for his hand, pulled myself up, then grasped the restraining bar.
We climbed down the wall rungs, then tiptoed to the steps and paused to listen.
"I want you to stay behind me," Mike whispered. No way.
"Don't be heroic, Jenny. We just want to get out."
"Heroic? I'm faster and don't want to get stuck behind you."
He swallowed a laugh, then pulled me back against him. "If we get out of here alive, you've got a date for a race.
I wondered if he thought I was as brave as I pretended. "Did you leave Walker's door open?"
"That's what we're shooting for."
When we reached the bottom of the steps, we crept side by side down the hall. My ears strained to pick up movement. We had to be close to the turn, I thought, close to Walker's office. I prayed no one had shut and locked the door. Finally my hands touched the corner of the hall.
"Almost there," I whispered.
Just as we reached the office door, something fell, something in Maggie's office.
Mike pushed me from behind. "Go, Jen! Go!"
I rushed through Walker's office toward the open window. Mike shoved me through and I pulled him out after me. We sprang to our feet, ready to run, then heard commotion inside the building. Maggie screamed. The blinds in her window were flattened against the glass, as if something had crashed against them. Mike and I waited, holding on to each other, shivering.
After a long moment the shades swung inward ominously, the weight no longer pressing on them. They were pulled up and Arthur peered out. He opened the window, his face shining in the pale light, a dark streak on his cheek.
"I'm all finished," he announced.
Mike's arms tightened around me.
"All done. There's no reason to be afraid."
Mike walked backward, away from the building, pulling me with him.
"I won't hurt you. It was her I had to kill," Arthur said. "She took what was mine. She killed the girl and pretended to be me. You understand, don't you?
The watch and the bridge, they were mine. It's not right to take a man's identity. I had to kill her to get myself back."
He rubbed his cheek as he spoke, then studied the blood that had come off on his fingers, sniffing it, rubbing one finger against another. I thought I was going to throw up.
Gazing at us again, Arthur appeared relaxed, almost cheerful, as if a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders. "You run along and call the police," he said. "I'll turn the electricity back on."
The campus security office was small and smelled of Chinese carryout. I sat on a bench between Mike and Tomas, my wrist packed in ice. Walker stood by a window with a noisy air conditioner, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. Paul crouched in the corner of the paneled office, leaning against the wall, like a person folded up on himself.
According to Tomas, Mike had returned to the Student Union not long after I left with the sandwich for Maggie. He asked Tomas where I was, then raced off to the theater. When time elapsed and he didn't return, Tomas told Walker he was worried. On their way to Stoddard, they met up with Paul. The three of them found us outside Maggie's window, just after Arthur told us to call the police.
While Walker called on his cell phone, Paul climbed through the window to talk to Arthur, whom he had befriended. Paul had suspected from the beginning that Liza's murderer was someone who knew her and had sought the custodian's help in drawing out the killer by haunting the theater. He'd never guessed that as much as Arthur was helping him, he was helping Arthur find the person who had "taken" Arthur's identity. The haunting had succeeded in unnerving Maggie, precipitating her arguments with Brian, arguments that revealed to the eavesdropping Arthur that Maggie was the murderer.
Paul confirmed for us that Maggie was dead. Maybe he wasn't into violence as much as he wanted everyone to think: it was he who threw up, not me.
The police did not allow anyone else to enter the building. But they wanted to interview all of us, which was why we were gathered at the security office.
Arthur was being held separately for the FBI. He had cut the power and chained the doors, planning to kill Maggie that night, realizing too late that I had returned to the building. He explained carefully to the police and us that while he had "killed" Maggie, he had "murdered" only four people. In his deranged mind, Maggie's death was a form of justice, a way of erasing Liza's death from his list. Since Maggie's death "didn't count," he didn't need to kill her beneath a bridge.
The police were still seeking Brian. When security went to fetch him at the Student Union, he wasn't there. I kept telling myself that Brian didn't realize his mother had killed Liza till it was too late. If he had, he would never have told her who I was; he wouldn't have betrayed me like that.
But in my heart I knew otherwise. He had probed to find out what I remembered of the fire because he knew that the fire was his mother's motive for murder; he was trying to discover if I had pieced together the puzzle.
The door to the office opened and Brian walked in with a police officer. All of us looked up. None of us knew what to say.
Brian glanced around. "This is a happy-looking group."
"Where were you?" Walker asked. "I left you with our students. You were supposed to be in charge."
"I was in charge," Brian replied lightly, "until I went home. I had a few things to take care of."
He slipped his hands in his pockets and casually rested one shoulder against the wall, looking as relaxed as a guy waiting for his pizza order. It was as if none of this horrid situation shocked him. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was about his mother, but his coolness quelled my sympathy.
Mike spoke up suddenly: "What did you do with the boat?"
"What boat?" Brian replied.
"The rowboat your mother signed out the day Liza was killed."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do," Mike countered. "When Jenny told me Liza had been murdered beneath the pavilion, I wondered how her body could have been transported to the bridge without leaving a trail of blood. Then I realized that if a boat was floated in the shallow water close to the pavilion, a body could be carried out to it, even dragged. The blood left behind would be washed out by the tide. The boat, of course, would be stained."