photocopied the page anyway.
The last paragraph written about Anne Bloodworth's disappearance stated that her picture and description had been placed in all the major American newspapers, as well as in newspapers in London, Paris, and Rome. Her father vowed to search for her forever if necessary.
The glare of the microfilm screen and the persistent hum of the machine wore Simon out after about two hours. With relief, he turned it off, rubbing his eyes and stretching back in his chair. He reread the photocopy he had made of the advertisement offering a reward for the return of Anne Bloodworth. What did "unusually interested in intellectual matters for a woman" mean?
Simon's eyes hurt when he tried to focus on the clock on the opposite wall. It would take a few minutes for his far vision to return after reading blurred newsprint. Then he spotted Bobby Hinton through the open doors into the seniors' study room, and his body tensed.
Might as well get it over with, he thought. He got up and walked out of the reading room and over to Hinton. The boy was stripping his carrel.
"Bobby, I want you to know that I believe the grade I gave you was fair, but I'm sorry about graduate school." The thin, longhaired blond boy stopped stuffing pens and papers into his backpack. Simon had never felt that he knew him as well as he did other students in the seminar. He often seemed to be somewhere else mentally. Now Hinton just grinned at Simon.
"Don't worry, Doc, Professor Andrus is more upset about that grade than I am. I knew I was just sliding through. I mean, I thought a B was automatic, but it was a stupid assumption."
"What are you going to do? Apply to a master's program, maybe?"
The boy slung his backpack over his shoulder. It was a nice backpack—black-tooled leather—definitely a cut above what most students bought at the student store. "I'm not sure graduate school is what I want at all, now. I'm not going to go anywhere, for a few years anyway."
"What are you going to do?"
"My mother owns a real estate firm in Charlotte. I figure all I have to do is sell one house a month to make ends meet. And I can go to the beach and play golf all I want." Damn Andrus, thought Simon as he watched Hinton walk away. The kid himself didn't care about the grade.
"I told you," Marcus Clegg said when Simon joined him for lunch at the student union. "It's not the grade at all; it's the chance to get at you that Andrus is after. You have to hang in there."
"It's going to embarrass me if this gets around campus, Marcus," Simon said. Clegg leaned over his bowl of chili so Simon could hear him over the din of student conversation.
"Be realistic. The academic community isn't any more discreet than any other small, intense, people-oriented environment. Everyone knows everything there is to know about you right now."
Simon's stomach began to react. "Like what?" he said.
"Like your wife left you to go to the bright lights of New York City, and that you're upset as hell about it. You think this is a scandal? Have you watched daytime television recently?"
"It's mostly pride, I guess. I hate to screw up my life in public."
"You didn't screw up your life," Carver said. "Your wife screwed it up. Let her go. And on that word of patronizing and unrealistic advice, I have to leave. My mousies need their next injection."
"Someday somebody from PETA is going to overhear you and you're going to wish you hadn't spent your career torturing small animals."
"Some torture. My subjects get all the food and sex they can handle just for pushing the red button instead of the green one. Our lives should be so good."
A MESSAGE FROM Julia McGloughlan was on Simon's answering machine when he got home.
"Guess what," she said. "The police department here didn't even have a filing system until 1950! There are some filthy old boxes in the back of a storeroom that might have something on our case, the file gnomes tell me. I'm going to riffle through them this
The last paragraph written about Anne Bloodworth's disappearance stated that her picture and description had been placed in all the major American newspapers, as well as in newspapers in London, Paris, and Rome. Her father vowed to search for her forever if necessary.
The glare of the microfilm screen and the persistent hum of the machine wore Simon out after about two hours. With relief, he turned it off, rubbing his eyes and stretching back in his chair. He reread the photocopy he had made of the advertisement offering a reward for the return of Anne Bloodworth. What did "unusually interested in intellectual matters for a woman" mean?
Simon's eyes hurt when he tried to focus on the clock on the opposite wall. It would take a few minutes for his far vision to return after reading blurred newsprint. Then he spotted Bobby Hinton through the open doors into the seniors' study room, and his body tensed.
Might as well get it over with, he thought. He got up and walked out of the reading room and over to Hinton. The boy was stripping his carrel.
"Bobby, I want you to know that I believe the grade I gave you was fair, but I'm sorry about graduate school." The thin, longhaired blond boy stopped stuffing pens and papers into his backpack. Simon had never felt that he knew him as well as he did other students in the seminar. He often seemed to be somewhere else mentally. Now Hinton just grinned at Simon.
"Don't worry, Doc, Professor Andrus is more upset about that grade than I am. I knew I was just sliding through. I mean, I thought a B was automatic, but it was a stupid assumption."
"What are you going to do? Apply to a master's program, maybe?"
The boy slung his backpack over his shoulder. It was a nice backpack—black-tooled leather—definitely a cut above what most students bought at the student store. "I'm not sure graduate school is what I want at all, now. I'm not going to go anywhere, for a few years anyway."
"What are you going to do?"
"My mother owns a real estate firm in Charlotte. I figure all I have to do is sell one house a month to make ends meet. And I can go to the beach and play golf all I want." Damn Andrus, thought Simon as he watched Hinton walk away. The kid himself didn't care about the grade.
"I told you," Marcus Clegg said when Simon joined him for lunch at the student union. "It's not the grade at all; it's the chance to get at you that Andrus is after. You have to hang in there."
"It's going to embarrass me if this gets around campus, Marcus," Simon said. Clegg leaned over his bowl of chili so Simon could hear him over the din of student conversation.
"Be realistic. The academic community isn't any more discreet than any other small, intense, people-oriented environment. Everyone knows everything there is to know about you right now."
Simon's stomach began to react. "Like what?" he said.
"Like your wife left you to go to the bright lights of New York City, and that you're upset as hell about it. You think this is a scandal? Have you watched daytime television recently?"
"It's mostly pride, I guess. I hate to screw up my life in public."
"You didn't screw up your life," Carver said. "Your wife screwed it up. Let her go. And on that word of patronizing and unrealistic advice, I have to leave. My mousies need their next injection."
"Someday somebody from PETA is going to overhear you and you're going to wish you hadn't spent your career torturing small animals."
"Some torture. My subjects get all the food and sex they can handle just for pushing the red button instead of the green one. Our lives should be so good."
A MESSAGE FROM Julia McGloughlan was on Simon's answering machine when he got home.
"Guess what," she said. "The police department here didn't even have a filing system until 1950! There are some filthy old boxes in the back of a storeroom that might have something on our case, the file gnomes tell me. I'm going to riffle through them this
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