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164 20 In my car, I texted Vanessa that I’d found out it was Detective Quinn behind the last week of horror, and then I drove straight to campus to tell Stefan the astonishing story Quinn’s estranged wife had revealed to me. But could I believe Pat Silver? Hadn’t Stefan told me Casey said both his parents were harsh? Upstairs, when I exited the elevator on the third floor, I could see Stefan standing in the doorway of Celine’s office, off to the left across that small sea of low-walled cubicle partitions. There were only a few bent heads among the warren of desks, and once again, it struck me as a remarkable and bizarre reversal in my departmental fortunes that I wasn’t among them. But I knew from Shakespeare that Fortune’s Wheel could turn sharply, and hadn’t it done just that only days ago? Estella was dressed in clinging pink and black Lycra today like an aerobics instructor. She smiled absently as I passed, though whether at me or her smart phone where she was texting, I couldn’t say. Stefan waved, and as I skirted the cubicles and got closer, I could see he was talking to Celine who stood just inside the doorway of her office. I greeted them both. She was wearing a lime green cottony outfit almost like loose pajamas. She looked cool, but she said with an unusual hint of shyness, “A nephew of mine is in the Iowa writing program and a really big fan of memoirs, so he wanted me to get him a signed copy of Stefan’s book.” Stefan grinned as he always did (and probably always would) at any mention of his only best-selling book. He pulled a copy out of his black leather Ferragamo messenger bag. This was also the only book of his with an author photo plastered across the back cover, a sign of how well the publisher had thought the book would do. 165 “Are you sure I can’t pay you for it?” Celine asked him. He nodded. “Listen,” I said, voice low, since the echo on this newly redesigned floor was unpredictable, “you are not going to believe what I just found out.” I ushered them both into Celine’s office, and shut the heavy oak door behind me. It closed with a thud. Celine sat down behind her desk, Stefan on the deep, cushioned windowsill, setting his bag on the floor at his feet. I paced back and forth as I recounted everything Quinn’s wife had told me: their contempt for all of us at SUM, his abuse, her suspecting him of killing Casey, her conviction that he was our tormentor. Stefan was still, back straight, brawny arms folded, but his eyes got wider and wider. When I was done, Celine nodded almost as if she had suspected this revelation. “Nothing the po-po does surprises me,” she said. I knew that was African American slang for the police, like “5-0.” “I can’t begin to count how many times my eldest son has gotten stopped around here because his Daddy splurged and gave him an Audi A3 for his eighteenth birthday.” “Driving While Black,” Stefan muttered. Celine nodded. “And you two, no matter what somebody thinks you did or didn’t do, you’re gay and that puts you way down the totem pole no matter what happens. You can’t tell me that isn’t part of all this shit that’s been going down. It’s not just that you’re professors.” I’d never heard Celine use even mild profanity before, or slang. I was about to ask her more about her son when I noticed Stefan had turned and was staring out the window. “There are people running down there,” he said, frowning. “Something must be happening. A car accident?” We hadn’t heard any crash, so I doubted that. Celine and I moved to the window, and I realized that the people were running out of Parker Hall and scattering in all directions. But there hadn’t been any fire alarm, so what was going on? Some of them had stopped across the street and were on their smart phones, making calls and gesticulating wildly with their free hands. Others were pointing , taking pictures with their phones. But pictures of what? That’s when we heard muffled shouting from somewhere in the building and another...

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