In His Sights. Carol Steward

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СКАЧАТЬ wondering how the caller had gotten her contact information. Unless this was the person who’d hacked into the site and found Dee’s name as the administrator, she had no clue how she could have known. After another hour, Dee finally gave up waiting to hear back from the frantic woman.

      Grabbing her belongings again, she went down the back stairs of the administrative building, toward Kessler Library, noticing the new memorial garden that Cassie Winters had planted after her brother’s murder. She also noted the new emergency phones dotting the sidewalks across campus.

      Walking past the new library’s construction site, Dee felt an odd sense of stepping back in time, to her own college days again, when they’d all felt perfectly safe walking across campus any time of day. All that had changed with recent events.

      The air smelled like rain, bringing back memories of dashing to class, soaking wet.

      She felt a few raindrops and walked faster.

      She’d never liked studying at the library. Something about the huge old building gave her the chills. That feeling was heightened now, since a body had been uncovered on the library’s grounds.

      Maybe it was just that she was thinking so much about the skeleton lately, who the victim was, and what she’d gone through. Not fifty feet from where she stood, Dee realized. Glancing over her shoulder, Dee noticed a dark shadow behind the row of azaleas that Cassie had planted in the memorial garden.

      She picked up her pace, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. As a chill went up her spine, Dee looked to the left, then the right. The few students out walked in groups, ducking under trees to stay dry. All except one person—a short and slight figure wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt. The person turned away from her, then walked toward the music school. Dee let out a sigh of relief. Even though the campus was well lit, she still had an eerie feeling. Her imagination was probably getting the best of her, she told herself. Just in case, when she was done at the library, she’d call the campus security office and request an escort to take her back to her car, another of the changes the college had put into place recently.

      She replayed the phone conversation over in her mind, focusing hard to think of something she’d missed. The woman had had a very strong Southern accent and a formal speech pattern. But that was little help—Georgia was full of women with Southern accents.

      Dee glanced back at the music building as she went up the steps to the library. She didn’t spot anyone, though it was difficult to see much with the lush undergrowth of palmettos and Spanish moss hanging from the live oak.

      After stepping through the heavy oak doors, she passed the front desk. “Ma’am, would you scan your campus ID card?”

      Dee kept an eye on the entrance as she dug through her purse for her wallet. “I know it’s here somewhere.”

      The student working behind the desk said, “If you don’t have it with you, I need to have you fill out a community ID. It’s part of our new security policy.”

      “I just got a new card—I hope it’s in this purse.” With a sigh of relief, Dee pulled her staff ID card from her wallet and brushed it past the scanner. “Are the yearbook archives still in the basement?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Dee hurried downstairs. At a table in a quiet corner facing the exit, Dee piled decade-old school yearbooks and newspapers from when she attended Magnolia College around her and started through them, recalling events she’d almost forgotten.

      She laughed quietly at the costume contest pictures from her freshman year. The girls on her dorm floor had gone in the pajama party theme. She and Steff Kessler wore their freshly curled hair in banana clips on the back of their heads. Jennifer Pappas had her toothbrush tangled in dental floss hanging around her neck like a necklace; Josie Skerritt’s curling iron was twisted and dangling from her hair. That was her last name—Skerritt! Trying to place the other girls in the photo, she looked closer. Payton…Payton Bell and Alicia Whittaker.

      Dee knew from the e-mails that Josie hadn’t been at the reunion, but was Payton there? That was her only regret about the reunion: she’d spent so much time with Edgar that she hadn’t really talked to anyone else there, besides her closest friends. She smiled. It had been a wonderful night.

      Now, looking through the old photos, she couldn’t believe how much they had all changed. It took her a moment to find Cassie Winters in the group photo. Who was that in the baby-doll pajamas? Penny Brighton. And next to her, Kate Brooks dressed in footie pajamas and bunny slippers with her hair in knots all over her head. They’d nearly caused a riot on campus with their outrageous ideas. But they had won the gift certificate which allowed them to order pizza a couple of nights. Pure gold in those days.

      Suddenly she stopped reminiscing. The body had been buried ten years ago. The skeleton could be one of us, she realized. She pulled her PDA from her bag and started a list of classmates and who she’d known in the photos, along with the issues of the newspapers. She hoped someone’s picture or name would leap out at her and remind her of the mystery caller’s voice. She noticed another photo of Josie and Payton and added them to her lengthy list.

      After an hour of skimming through several old newspapers, Dee wondered if she should skip the search and call the police with her list. Then again, Detectives Anderson and Rivers had pretty much dismissed her when she reported the flames over their reunion picture. Dee was hesitant to go to them again without strong proof. She still couldn’t believe she’d accidentally deleted it from the server. Without actual evidence, the police didn’t have anything to work with.

      As she picked up another newspaper, her stomach growled. Dee checked at her watch and considered running to get a bite of supper, but decided that by the time she walked to her car, drove over to Burt’s Pizza, then back, she’d waste at least an hour. The library didn’t close for four more hours, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink if she didn’t figure out who had called. She hated to let this go even another day. She’d find a snack machine and see if they had something semihealthy to get her through another hour or two.

      Dee headed up the back stairs on her search for food. The hallway was dim and quiet, reminding her again why she’d never studied here. She liked noise, felt a sense of security in crowds. The soft voices and pages turning here did nothing to soothe her nerves.

      Neither did the dark-haired woman in the black sweatshirt standing outside the main entrance.

      Was that the same person I saw outside? From this angle, she couldn’t tell for sure if the woman’s sweatshirt was hooded. The woman didn’t seem to notice Dee, so she hurried back to the lower level—chocolate bar and a bottle of iced tea in hand, annoyed at her own paranoia.

      The research section seemed emptier than it had been when she arrived. The library assistant was nowhere to be seen, or heard. Dee clutched her purse a little closer and opened the next newspaper.

      Soon she was distracted by a feature article on Edgar. She forgot about the lack of noise and barely heard footsteps at the next table. She glanced up to see a young woman set a book on the table and sit down to read.

      Dee glanced quickly at the picture of Edgar with longer hair and moved on to the article. No wonder she’d never met him in college. He had come to the United States as a missionary of sorts. His church had sponsored his trip to the States and he’d lived off campus with the pastor’s family.

      She thought back to the reunion, when she’d finally met Edgar….

      “Lauren СКАЧАТЬ