Everybody else.
Tim had always prided himself on not thinking like everybody else. Yet he could sense himself becoming an intellectual clone of Dr. Alston. The guy was a charming and disarming lecturer, true, but he wasn't that good.
...on the screen Peter Weller was holding up something he had found. A small dark object. He was examining it, turning it between his fingers. The camera moved in for a close-up...
Tim bolted upright in his chair.
"What the hell?"
The object in Peter Weller's hand looked startlingly familiar, like a tiny hockey puck on a pin.
"Hey, Joe," he said. "What is this?"
Nappo spoke without turning around. "Called Rainbow Drive or something like that."
"What's going on?"
"His partner got killed in the opening scenes and—"
"No. I mean now. What's he up to?"
"He just found out his apartment's bugged."
Tim stared at the screen in cold shock, then got up and hurried for the door. His thoughts swirled in a chaotic jumble as he trotted down the hall and burst into the chill December night outside. The sky was a clear bubble and the stars seemed to spin as he walked aimlessly along the paths between the buildings that made up The Ingraham. He jammed his hands into his pockets against the late fall chill.
A bug. His mind shied away from accepting the fact that his little stick pin had been an electronic pick-up. He'd heard of them, but he'd never expected to see one in real life. Not at The Ingraham. Certainly not in Quinn's room. The possibility had never even occurred to him.
Was The Ingraham bugged? Or more specifically, was the dorm bugged? The very idea seemed ludicrous. A paranoid delusion of the first order. Because why in the name of sanity would anyone want to monitor the blatherings of a bunch of medical students? The idea zoomed past the ludicrous to the laughable.
And yet...How come I'm not laughing?
Because in some way he couldn't fathom, it seemed to dovetail with whatever it was that was making him so edgy lately.
Okay, he told himself. Let's run this through and follow the likely scenarios to wherever they lead. Let's assume the dorm is bugged. Or more specifically, since I found the bug in Quinn's room, that Quinn's room is bugged.
Why?
Who knows? We'll leave why for later. For now, let's just get logical.
Premise: Room 252 is under electronic surveillance.
If we accept that premise, who would be in charge of that surveillance?
Obviously, campus security.
Who's in charge of campus security?
Mr. Louis Verran.
Who has been caught twice in Quinn's room when she was scheduled to be out?
Mr. Louis Verran.
Tim shook his head as the pace of his walking slowed of its own accord. This was getting scary. Syllogistic logic had its flaws, but this little syllogism hit a too close to recent events: If room 252 is bugged, and if campus security is in charge of the bugging, and if Louis Verran is in charge of campus security, then one would expect Louis Verran to display an inordinate level of interest in room 252. Which he had.
Tim stopped short and watched his breath fume in the cold air as his thoughts raced through his mental pantries, grabbing incidents and observations from the shelves and tossing them helter-skelter into the stew. He didn't like the aroma that was beginning to rise from the pot.
Fact: Louis Verran saw the bug in my lapel last month— that so-called exterminator with him had pointed it out. And twelve hours later I get rolled in A.C., supposedly for my winnings. But maybe those guys were after a different sort of chip. They put a lot of effort into ripping up my coat, and afterwards, my little stick pin just happens to be missing along with my chips.
He swung around and headed back toward the dorm. Normally the glow of the lights in the rooms would have seemed warm beacons beckoning him in from the cold. Tonight they looked like a multifaceted cluster of eyes, watching him.
Because if one room was bugged, why not more? Why not all the rooms?
He pushed through the entrance to the south wing and turned toward the stairs to the second floor, heading for Women's Country. He had to tell Quinn. She had to know.
Then he stopped, unsure. Was that fair? Between classes, labs, and tests, plus her research job, she had enough on her mind. This would make her as crazy as it was making him. And maybe all for nothing. He could be wrong. Why dump any of this on her until he was sure?
But how could he be sure, unless...?
If Quinn's room was bugged, there was a good chance his was too. Tim could think of only one way to find out: tear it apart.
He headed for his room.
*
"I really appreciate this, Kevin."
It had taken a fair bit of doing, but Tim had convinced his roommate to bunk in with Scotty Moore for the night. Moore's roomie, Bill Black, had gone home for a long weekend due to a death in the family. Kevin, a good guy but a congenital straight-shooter, wasn't crazy about the idea. He was afraid it was against the rules, but he hadn't been able to find a rule against it. So he'd agreed, reluctantly.
"Yeah, well, it's okay this time, but don't make a habit of it."
"This is the only time I'll ask this of you, Kev," Tim said. "I swear."
He'd told Kevin that he and Quinn needed "some time alone together" and that the inhabitants of Women's Country were too damn nosy to allow them any "real privacy." Pretty thin, but it was the best Tim could come up with on short notice. He didn't feel he could wait until Kevin went home for a weekend; he wanted to search the room now. It worked, mainly because everyone knew that Quinn and Tim had a thing going on. Kevin read between the lines what Tim had written there for him, and finally agreed.
"And you'll stick to your bed, right?" Kevin said.
"Stick? What on earth—"
Kevin's dark features darkened further. "I mean, you'll just use your own bed, right? You won't...do anything in mine?"
Tim held up three fingers. "Scout's honor."
"All right. But I've got to get back in here first thing in the morning."
"Have no fear, buddy. Everything will be exactly as you left it."
As soon as Kevin was gone, Tim ducked out and ran down to the parking lot. He took the tool kit from his car trunk and lugged it up to the dorm. Back in the room, he locked the door and stood there, looking around.
Where to begin?
He decided to try the bedroom first. After all, wasn't it in Quinn's bedroom that he'd stepped on the bug he mistook for a stick pin?
He started with the furniture. Flashlight in hand, Tim crawled around the room, peering into every nook, cranny, corner, and crevice. He crawled under his bed and Kevin's, and when he found nothing on the underside of the frame, he pulled off the mattress and box spring and inspected the frame from above. He couldn't move the bed around because it was bolted to the headboard unit which was fixed to the wall, so he unbolted the bed frame from the headboard and gave it a thorough going over. He emptied the closets, pulled out the nightstand drawers, cleaned out the bookshelves built into the headboard unit, took down the curtains and dismantled the curtain rods.
Nothing.
Then he remembered what he'd seen in the movie. He attacked the telephone, dismantling both the base and the handset. Then he removed the wall plates from all the electrical sockets and light switches. He dissected the desk lamp and the gooseneck tensor lamp atop the headboard unit.
Nothing.
Hours after starting, Tim stopped and surveyed the carnage around him. It looked like Nirvana had shot a video here. He'd torn the place apart. All for what? He was tired—probably the one of the last people awake in the dorm—and he was angry. There was something here. There had to be. Too many coincidences lately to be ignored. And he wasn't crazy.