Dr. Turner had hung up his phone, and he stood staring at the Gothic arches in front of the science building, frowning at them.
“Please, we have to at least take him to his office. He has grandkids, a family.” She pushed away from me. “We want to take you to your office, okay, Dr. Turner? We’ll explain once we get up there.”
“I’m afraid you can’t. I have to get to a meeting shortly.” He tucked his phone into the pocket beside the buttonhole that held the carnation. The bright pink, perfectly fresh carnation.
“Don’t worry,” Emerson said. “We’ll be speedy. Just come with us.”
She reached out to take his hand.
He dissolved.
Denial came first. A white-hot burst of adrenaline in our chests that flooded out to our arms and legs, making us weak and dizzy.
Reality kicked in, the image outside reconciling with our brain. Panic sped up our breathing, broke us out in a sweat, made us shake.
I’d never felt another person’s emotion so strongly in my life.
“Dr. Turner?” Em turned to me. “Kaleb? Was he…”
“No,” I said, reaching out for her before she turned around. I knew where she was going.
“Rip.” Her breath heaved in her chest. “Dr. Turner was a rip. He was a rip, and he didn’t recognize us.”
“It could have been a future rip,” I said, trying to stall her, calm her down. Work out a way to stop what I knew was about to happen.
She shook her head in protest. “No. Michael and your dad said they haven’t seen any future rips since all this started.”
“That doesn’t mean-”
“Kaleb, he was wearing the exact same thing he had on yesterday. He had the pink carnation in his buttonhole. It was fresh. He should have recognized us. Oh no.”
“Emerson, don’t.”
“Oh please, God, no.”
She didn’t wait for me, just took off running at top speed. My legs were longer, but she ran distance and had fear as a chaser. “Stop! You don’t know what happened up there-stop-Em!” She skidded through the entrance to the science building. I was two seconds behind because of the time it took to open the door she let slam behind her.
Her footsteps echoed up the stairwell. I heard her wrench open the door to the second floor. I caught it right before it closed.
The receptionist from yesterday sat at her desk, her mouth opening to ask us where we were going. We were too fast for her.
Em opened the door to Dr. Turner’s office and stood, frozen, just outside. I stopped in time to keep from running into her.
The fedora he’d worn to meet Teague was on the floor.
The pink carnation was wilted in the pencil holder.
The pipe was cold.
Dr. Turner lay facedown on his desk in a pool of blood, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Chapter 27
After we’d found Dr. Turner, I’d called campus security, and then Michael and Lily. We split the day between the college and the police station, watching the coroner’s office employees enter and leave the building as they did their investigation, and then as the police brought in possible witnesses for questioning.
The wound had been inflicted fourteen hours earlier, with a six-inch blade, from behind. The killer had slashed from left to right. The same way Poe cut Emerson.
There was no doubt in my mind he was the culprit.
I kept seeing the knife slice across her throat at the Phone Company, her lifeblood leaving her body. The next second, it was Dr. Turner, a man with grandchildren and a pink flower in his jacket, slumped over his desk, blood dripping to the floor.
Since the moment we’d found him, I hadn’t been able to get a grip on my own emotions. Guilt, fear-other things I couldn’t name. It all added up to something so out of control my heart kept skipping beats.
Em wasn’t any better. We’d returned to the Peabody, where she’d taken a forty-five-minute shower. Now she sat on the couch, wrapped in Michael’s arms, a complete wreck. Lily was in the shower, and I sat in a chair in the corner, trying to block everything out. Finally, I couldn’t take any more.
“Em.” I reached for her hand. She looked at me blankly. “Let me take it.”
“Take what?”
Her voice was loud, as if she’d forgotten how to modulate. I pointed at her heart.
“The pain. You want to take the pain.” Her words weren’t a question. More like an accusation. I didn’t expect the laughter that came next, or her short answer. “No.”
She was in no shape to handle her emotions on her own, especially when she didn’t have to.
“I feel it either way, whether I take them or not,” I said, attempting to persuade her.
“I’m sorry my pain is inconveniencing you.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant.” The words came out harsher than I intended. Michael sat forward in his seat. I needed to temper my response. “Don’t shut me out when I can make it better.”
The bathroom door opened, and Lily emerged with wet hair and pink cheeks. I didn’t want her to hear any of this.
“Taking my emotions won’t make it better, Kaleb.” Em acknowledged Lily but didn’t lower her voice. “If you don’t like them, get out. Go in the bedroom.”
“The bedroom isn’t far enough.” I’d be able to feel her on the opposite side of the equator. At least if I took her emotions, I’d be able to control them.
“Then go somewhere else. Leave. Go ahead!” Her shouting caught me completely off guard. The Em I knew was violent with her fists, not her words. I’d never seen her be irrational. Michael’s worry and his expression of concern told me he hadn’t, either. “Make me worry about you, as long as it makes you feel better.”
“How far away do you want me to go?” I asked. She was spinning like a top on the edge of a table.
“Oh, that’s right. You can leave the situation behind without even leaving the room, can’t you?” She cut her eyes in the direction of the minibar. “Just crack a few open. All kinds of teensy little bottles in there that should numb everything right up.”
Her refusal to let me help made me angry for reasons I couldn’t name. “I offered because I care.”
Michael tried to pacify me, “She’s just mad. You don’t need to take care of her. I will.”
“Like you take care of everything, right?” I asked. Something broke loose in my chest, and my rationality flew out the window, right behind Emerson’s. “You always swoop in and save the day. You saved my dad. I could have prevented his death if I’d been more in tune with Cat and Jack. If I had, my mom would be awake and healthy. And if I’d taken the files out of Dad’s safe when I was supposed to, Jack would have never known about Emerson. So it’s all my fault.”
From the other side of the room, I felt Lily weighing whether or not to intervene.
Michael stood up. “Don’t do this. Don’t make today about you.”
“Oh okay,” I scoffed. “Because that’s totally what I’m doing, Mike. No, wait. I wasn’t making it about me. You did that.”
“You did that all by yourself,” Michael said.
Our emotions reminded me of a hurricane that stayed in one place, churning up destruction and then churning it up again. But there was no eye in this storm.
“I know how Dr. Turner’s family feels,” I said. “He will never go home to them. He doesn’t have a second chance like my dad did. There’s no rewind or easy out for a slit throat. There was a body. A slit, bloody throat. Someone had to identify him. Someone had to claim him. And now someone has to bury him.” I laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of mirth in it. “So, yeah, go ahead and say today is all about me.”
“Stop.” Em covered her ears. “Stop it. Listen to yourselves. You’re making it about both of you, and Kaleb’s right. A man is dead.” She burst into tears, sobbing like she’d never be whole again, and started to slide to the ground.