By early afternoon Southern Michigan University was slowly returning to normal.

There were exceptions, of course; the Community Services Center was still closed, blocked off by yellow crime scene tape and officers guarding the doors, but partway across the campus the dining hall was open as usual.

Stacy Foster had accomplished her goal of sleeping late, and didn’t wake up until after the shooting was long over with and most of the victims were taken from the building. She got up, got dressed, and wondered where her roommate Laura was, before remembering that Laura had mentioned going over to the Activities Day tables to check things out. It wasn’t until she got downstairs and found several students in the dorm lounge talking about the events of the morning that she discovered what had happened, or at least the rumors about it.

That soon clarified for her, because a TV in the lounge had the reports from the national news on, and she saw the interview with Chief Bascomb and Dr. Thompson. Whatever excitement there had been seemed to be over with.

When noon rolled around she went to lunch in the dining hall. It was busy as usual – perhaps even a little busier than normal – and the events of the morning were the main topic of discussion. There were several students there who had been in the Community Services Center at the time of the shooting, and even a couple who had escaped from the room. Right at that moment, Stacy was glad she’d decided to sleep in, but still wondered about her roomie.

She was on the way back to her dorm when her cell phone began to chime, I’m a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world, life in plastic, is fantastic. She wasn’t sure why she kept the rather irritating song as a ring tone, except for the fact that when she heard it she was eager to turn it off. She pulled the cell phone from its holster on her belt, thumbed it on and said, “Hi, it’s me.”

“Stacy!” she heard her mother say. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she replied, easily figuring out what the call was all about.

“We’ve been seeing stories about that horrible shooting at your school!” her mother said frantically. “We’re hearing that there were a lot of people killed. Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want us to come pick you up?”

“Oh, that,” she said casually. “It was no big deal, and from what was said afterward the only person that got killed was the guy with the gun. A couple of kids got hit, I guess.”

“Are you sure?” her mother said. “Oh, how I wish we hadn’t let you go to that horrid place. Stacy, we can be there in a few hours, and you can go to the community college like we wanted you to.”

“Mom, no,” she said firmly. “It’d be too late to start classes there anyway, and I’d lose out on what I’ve already learned. I really like this place, I’ve made some friends, and this is where I want to be. I’d lose a semester, maybe a year, if I went to the community college, and I wouldn’t get the education I can get here.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” her mother said again, showing that she hadn’t heard a word that Stacy said.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Stacy said. “I wasn’t anywhere near the place. In fact, I decided to sleep in this morning, so I was sound asleep when everything happened. I just found out about it maybe an hour ago.”

“Oh, that’s a relief, but I’m so worried about you. How can we be sure you’re safe?”

“Mom, I’m as safe as I can be. Something stupid like that could break out anywhere, and you never know.” Gee zow, she thought. I am sure as hell glad I never mentioned anything about the guy who tried to break into our room and rape Laura and me. God, they would never believe how that turned out, and I’d have been dragged out of here by my ear …

“Yes, dear, but you’re so far away and we don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. Oh, how I wish you were home where we could know you’re safe.”

“Mom, everything is all right,” she said. “I’m fine, things are quiet here now and there are cops all over the place where the shooting was. I just finished lunch and I’m headed back to my room. I’ve got to get some homework and studying done, and maybe tonight I’ll hang out with Laura again. She’s getting to be a pretty good friend.”

“Well, it’s nice that you’re making friends, but your father and I really wish you were home. Are you sure you don’t want to transfer to the community college?”

The discussion went on in that vein for some time, and much of the time Stacy was rolling her eyes. Getting away from that kind of thing, especially from her mother, had been her main goal in coming to Southern Michigan University, and she’d accomplished that. Now, the trick was going to be to stay away. She really didn’t want to go home next summer and had hopes of coming up with some kind of summer job. Laura had teasingly suggested that she could maybe find her a job at the place where she’d worked the previous summer, someplace up north, thought Stacy wasn’t exactly sure where. Right now, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. A nudist resort was one thing – but at least her mother would never show up there to drag her home! It might have its points …

Maybe she ought to talk to Laura about it. Boy, if she did get a job there, her mother would shit a brick! That might be worth it, and besides, she ought to be able to get one hell of a tan.

*   *   *

Brenda finally got off the 757 at Midway. When you’re in a hurry to go somewhere it always seems like it takes forever, she thought. As soon as she was off the jetway and in the terminal with her small carry-on, she pulled out her cell phone and called Bob Phillips in New York. “Any update on the situation?” she asked.

“What we’re getting off the big nets is that the situation is under control,” he told her. “The local police chief and the university president held a news conference, oh, half an hour ago. The shooter is dead, a local cop got him. No students dead, but one is in the hospital in pretty bad shape, could go either way. It’ll probably be a big story over the weekend unless Obama says something stupid again.”

Brenda didn’t want to get into that, with Phillips especially. She was eternally glad she’d been able to mostly stay away from political reporting, even if it had taken her some work and drag to do it. God, the bullshit could be ass deep … “You think I should go on?” she asked to cut him off.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” the news director replied. “The breaking news has broken, but there’ll still be plenty to cover. You might want to get a move on, there’s supposed to be a follow-up news conference at four local time, I don’t know if that’s Eastern or Central.”

“I ought to be able to make it either way,” Brenda told him. “If I can meet up with the camera people, I’ll cover it, and see what I can do for a follow-up from there.”

“Sounds like the best we’ll be able to do. Why can’t things like this happen in New York where we can cover it, rather than the middle of damn nowhere?”

“Nine-eleven, Bob, nine-eleven. You were there, and so was I.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he replied. “Sometimes if this stuff has to happen I’m just as glad it’s there rather than here. Take care, Brenda, and keep in touch.”

“If you get any updates from the big networks, let me know,” she told him. “I’m off the plane now so available on my cell.”

*   *   *

“All right, now that that’s taken care of,” Dr. Thompson said to the now-smaller group. “We’ve got to start getting a handle on the rest of this mess. Susan, I need to start working the phones to some of our real backers and donors. That’s my main concern at this time and I need to put out some fires there before they get started.”

“One question,” she asked. “I may come from a newspaper family but I’m not sure how to handle the press in a situation like this.”

“Since you come from a newspaper family you’re one step ahead of the rest of us,” he replied. “Do the best you can with it, Susan. I don’t expect Barry back for a few days, and by then the worst of it should have blown over. I’ll come down for the news conference this afternoon if you want but it might be better if you handled it. I might say something about that deRidder character that I really shouldn’t say.”

“It’s going to be difficult for me, too.”

“Well, yeah, but you’re not the university president and I am, so if you do slip up it might not cause as much damage. But I doubt that you’re going to slip up. Just tell anyone who asks that deRidder is no longer with the university and you’re the acting Dean of Students.”

“What?” she said, surprised at the announcement. “Me? Acting Dean of Students?”

“You’re the best person for the job who is available at the moment,” he told her. “I realize you have other work to do, but the international stuff is going to have to go on the back burner for a few days until we can get everything else sorted out. Besides, your student relations job probably puts you as close to the Dean of Students job as anyone, anyway. DeRidder may have been right on that, you might have been too close, but you about had to be with the ombudsman position.”

“I have to agree on that.”

“Yes, and a lot of the problems have come from the fact that he never even tried to understand this place. You did before you started working here. Anyway, we’ll sort this out in a few days, once all the fallout from shooting mess dies down a little. For right now your main concern has to be public relations, but the Dean of Students title gives you a little more weight. Try to downplay what that idiot deRidder did, just that it was an error caused by lack of information or something.”

“All right, I’ll do the best I can,” she said. “But please, don’t try to promote me to university vice-president or something, at least not in the next couple of days.”

“You know, there’s an idea with potential,” he grinned. “Seriously, we’re all running a little blind on this. Let’s get to work.”

*   *   *

In calling around on Dr. Thompson’s orders Susan had easily managed to get hold of Dorothy Bennett, and she proved to be both the right person to talk to about the old Hawthorne College records and able to come in to help.

Susan had told her that was great, and police officers would be waiting when she got there. That was right also – Chief Bascomb, and another officer. “We have everything given to us by the former trustee,” she’d told Susan. “It’s all on paper, stuck in a couple of old file cabinets in the back room. But it’s a lot of paper, and it would help to have some idea of where to look.”

“What little information we have from his wallet doesn’t say much,” the chief said. “All we know is that he had a driver’s license that said he was fifty-one.”

“That’s a start,” Dorothy told them. “If he graduated normally, he would have been about twenty-one, so that’s thirty years ago. The best idea would be to go to about 1981 and work forward from there.”

Dorothy’s guess proved to be just about right. It turned out that Reed hadn’t graduated in 1981, but 1982, so it didn’t take much extra looking. They hauled the file folder out into the front office, and the officers started looking through it. “Not really a whole lot here,” the younger officer said.

“It’s more than we had before,” the chief told him. “Home address, parents. The information is almost thirty years old but someone might still be alive.”

“Probably it’s older than that,” Dorothy pointed out. “Parent information and that sort of thing would have been on file from when he was a freshman, which would have been 1978, most likely.”

“Yeah, but still,” the younger officer said. He pointed at a section of the records that included Reed’s transcript. “Not exactly the most stellar student, I see. A 2.32 GPA, and a lot of C’s and D’s. Mostly religious courses of one kind or another.”

“Yes, he was apparently on a ministerial track, since he wound up with a degree in theology.” she said. “Different denominations have different requirements for being certified as a preacher, and independent congregations may have none at all. You don’t need a license to be a preacher.”

Bascomb was still looking at the personal information. “Good grief, member of the Disciples of the Savior,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those who didn’t have a screw loose somewhere.”

“There are some of them around,” Dorothy said. “I mean, it’s not exactly Catholics or Methodists, but some. I haven’t spent a lot of time with these records or with the Hawthorne College history, but I seem to recall the college had some sort of affiliation with the Disciples. In fact, don’t hold me to it, but it strikes me that Reverend Tottenhaven, who founded Hawthorne College, was one of them.”

“Well, somehow that makes sense,” the chief replied. “Can we get you to run off copies of these records real quickly? I don’t think we’re going to need the originals, but we’ll know where to find them if we need them.”

“Sure, it’ll only take a couple of minutes,” she told him.

The officers were still waiting for the copies to be run when deRidder and Wilt came into the room. “I tell you, this is an insult,” deRidder said. “I’m not some little boy who will steal anything he can get his hands on.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Wilt told him. “Dr. Thompson told me what he wanted and that’s what’s going to happen. You really shouldn’t have much stuff in your office anyway. I’m not going to push you, but I’m not going to screw around here all afternoon, either, so get your stuff and get out of here.”

“The thing I can’t understand,” deRidder said, “Is how Archer could be a policeman in the first place. He’s a killer, after all. He shot those two down in cold blood. God, whoever hired him here had to be out of their minds.”

Chief Bascomb shook his head. This had to be the deRidder character that Dr. Thompson had been ranting about over in the Community Services Center! “In case you’re wondering,” he said firmly, “I was the one who hired him as an officer.”

“Then you had to be out of your mind. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Charles Bascomb, the Hawthorne police chief,” he replied.

“You don’t look like a police chief.”

“I came here directly from the golf course, and I have to tell you I really don’t appreciate your insinuations about either Officer Archer or me. When he was interviewed Archer was very up front about the incident four years ago in his home town, and I investigated it, talking to the local police chief and the prosecutor, among others. Everyone involved agreed that Archer was a fine young man, that he regretted having to shoot those two punks, but everyone also agreed he didn’t have any alternative, other than letting the girl and himself get killed. Archer proved today he still has the right stuff, and I particularly resent your slandering him like that.”

“But how can you let a killer like him run the streets?”

“I particularly resent that,” Bascomb said. “I have never had to draw my weapon as a police officer. But in my younger days I was an infantryman in Vietnam, and I assure you I had to use it there. Sometimes doing your duty involves things you’d rather not do, but have to do anyway.”

“Then you’re crazy to let a man like that on your department.”

Bascomb drew himself up firmly, and turned to Wilt. “I understand you’ve been sent to supervise him getting his things out of here. Does that mean he’s been relieved of his duties?”

“Yes, Dr. Thompson did that a few minutes ago.”

“Then, Mr. deRidder, you’d better get to grabbing your stuff. I’d say you have about ten minutes to get out of here before you’re under arrest.”

“Arrest? What for?”

“I don’t know. Littering. Assaulting an officer. Trespassing. I’ll think of something, maybe several somethings, and firm it all up while you’re on ice down at the lock-up.” He glanced at his watch. “Nine minutes and forty-five seconds.”

“You know, chief,” the younger officer said casually, “It might not be the dumbest idea I ever had if you were to go home and put a uniform on.”

“I’ll do that if I’m not busy making an arrest in about nine minutes and thirty seconds.”

*   *   *

Since not much was happening around the campus right now, Kristy Baumgartner decided it might be worth a trip over to the hospital to see if there might be anything there. She’d pretty well mined out what could be said from outside the Community Services Center. Hospitals were usually pretty chintzy about the information they would release, but at least it might make a different background for a stand-upper, so long as they got back to campus in time for the four o’clock news conference.

She got luckier than she expected; while they were getting set up for the stand-upper outside the ER door, a nice-looking young couple came out, very cuddly. He had part of his shirt cut away, and his arm was in a sling. She could see a bandage around his upper arm – so could this be one of the victims who had gotten out of the building before she arrived? “Hi!” she said. “Were the two of you at that business over at the college?”

“Yeah, we were in the room when the shooting took place,” Logan told her.

“Would you mind talking to me about it for a minute?” I’ve not yet been able to talk to people who were inside for the whole thing.”

“Sure,” Logan replied, “but on one condition. We need a ride back to campus, and there don’t seem to be any taxis in this town.”

“I’m sure we can provide that,” Kristy told the kids. With other stations now in town, to get a good on-camera interview with a victim without any other reporters also shoving mikes into faces would be a real score. She’d managed to be ahead of the other TV stations on almost everything so far, so this could be a nice feather in her cap. Even though this interview would go to tape, not live, it still might be used.

Given a chance to set things up, they wound up doing the stand-upper in front of the “Emergency Room” sign. The girl, Nancy, a pretty decent-looking kid, wound up next to Logan, hugging his unwounded arm.

Really, Kristy didn’t learn a great deal that was new – the shout from the shooter, whoever he was, about dishonoring the Hawthorne College religious tradition, then pulling the gun and starting to shoot at the next table.

“I didn’t really see a lot of it,” Nancy admitted. “When my boyfriend Logan realized what was going on, he grabbed me, threw me on the floor, and got on top of me to protect me from the bullets,” she said, then gave Logan’s free arm an extra squeeze. “He saved my life,” she added in a voice that absolutely dripped love and awe.

There might not be any new information there, Kristy thought as she wrapped up what was really a rather routine interview, but that’s going to make a great reaction shot. You could just feel the love …

*   *   *

By now, the police had wrung out of Jack, Vixen, and Laura just about all that they were going to get, and they’d done it several times over. “You might as well get out of here,” one of the officers said. “Go get some lunch or something, but I know the chief wants you over at that news conference at four.”

“I could stand something to eat,” Jack said. “And honestly, I could stand some time to just sit down and chill out for a few minutes.”

“We could go to the snack bar,” Vixen said. “We might get something to eat, but you know what the main topic of discussion is going to be, so there’s not going to be any chilling out possible.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” he agreed. “Probably the best bet would be to go back to the apartment. At least it’s not going to be such a madhouse there. Laura, would you care to join us?”

“You know, that sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Both the eating and the chilling out. If you don’t mind I’ll tag along.”

“Sure, might as well,” Vixen replied, lying through her teeth. She desperately wanted to lie down, all right, but with Jack – she needed the touching, celebrating the joy that both of them were alive, the mutual consolation, the affirmation of what they meant to each other and just how good it felt to be alive – and especially the making love. Somehow it had never seemed more important than at that moment. But Laura had been there too, been through everything with them … and, well, it was hard to say no to that.

The three of them made the long walk down the hall and went out of the building. By now the crowds had dispersed and there was no one waiting for them, which pleased them. It was only a walk of a couple of hundred yards to the Spearfish Lake House.

All three of them were exhausted when they got into the apartment. It was a little surprising to not find Alan and Summer there. Although the two couples hadn’t been walking together, Jack knew Alan and Summer were in the room just before the shooting broke out.

“You know,” Laura said. “While the thought of something to eat sounds good, looking at that couch makes me think about just how bad I want to lie down and rest for a few minutes. I don’t know if I can get to sleep, but I’m so exhausted it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jack said, squeezing Vixen’s hand – although he had said nothing, he had pretty much the same feelings she’d been having. “Tell you what,” he went on. “Why don’t you just use the couch. Vixen and I can go in our room. I’ll set our alarm clock for an hour and a half or two hours, and then we can get up and have something to eat before we go to the news conference.”

“Jack, that sounds like one of the best plans I’ve heard in a long time,” Laura replied. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“No, lying down sounds like a good idea to me, too. Go ahead. We’ll try to not bother you.” He looked down at Vixen, who gave him a wink; he winked right back at her. They watched as Laura sat down on the couch, and lay down. A mild snore within seconds indicated both Jack and Vixen that she really was asleep.

“Let’s try to be quiet,” Vixen said. “But Jack, I want it bad and I want it now.”

“You think I don’t?”

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