Ellsbeth #2
As soon as the theory sprouted in Ellsbeth’s mind, she could see it so clearly.
Of course, no one would want to ask too many questions; prevent a scandal, that was all that Newlyn sought to do.
And after the massive, public scandal of Maxwell Keene, another accidental murder of a fellow student would have been a disaster.
Dean Lennox had personally requested that the police not perform an autopsy: She more than anyone would have understood how calamitous another accidental murder would have been for Newlyn’s reputation.
Ellsbeth groaned when the search loaded: There were thousands of results in the archive for Banestooth.
There was an article on the front page of the Newlyn Courier from 1951 about the commemoration of Banestooth’s centennial celebration.
The accompanying photo featured three rows of stern-faced men in suits standing in front of the same house Banestooth still occupied, only here strung with a banner proclaiming One Hundred Years!
Ellsbeth scanned the article: It was fawning, congratulating the “fine men of Banestooth” on their collective excellence in “academia and sport!” Ellsbeth kept scrolling through the online newspaper scans: There was an article about a new chairman of the federal reserve who had been a Newlyn alumnus and a member of Banestooth.
Another Banestooth member won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.
Ellsbeth scrolled past three Rhodes Scholars and a handful of Fulbright awardees.
The only vaguely interesting thing Ellsbeth found was a poorly scanned blueprint of the building itself from the 1970s, hidden in an uploaded packet of all of the housing options on campus.
She zoomed in on the fuzzy image: The first floor had a large foyer, a dining room, a kitchen, and a handful of double rooms. The second floor had more bedrooms—mostly singles—and something labeled the club room.
The third floor had a game room and the largest bedrooms of all, mostly suites. There was no basement.
She printed out the blueprint, just in case, wincing at the whirring of the industrial library printer as it chugged to life, even though she was completely alone on the floor.
The problem was, she wasn’t finding anything nefarious.
The club itself had never been investigated for any wrongdoings.
There were no cheating scandals, no allegations of sexual assault or harassment.
For something akin to a fraternity, Banestooth had a shockingly chaste reputation, at least in the public record.
Ellsbeth searched “Banestooth + suicide” and was disappointed to find it yielded only two results: a glowing review of a 1991 campus production of ’night, Mother starring a Banestooth boy, and a mental-health advocacy program led by the Banestooth class of 2009.
Trying to find records of all of the suicides at Newlyn was even more unhelpful.
Several years ago, there was a student petition to put up a suicide net below the top floors of the science library to prevent possible jumpers (it never happened).
There were scattered obituaries, and though the obituaries themselves never mentioned the cause of death, there was always the telltale punctuation at the bottom of the article: If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide or self-harm, please call…
Newlyn was a small enough school that there was never anything like an epidemic, not nearly enough suicides that Ellsbeth could pin red string on a corkboard and gasp at the discovery of a mass murderer.
Just one, it seemed, every few years, usually a bright-eyed young girl who crumbled under the pressure of life away from home for the first time.
Nearly five years ago, there had been a girl named Catherine Teale who had jumped from an open window on the eleventh floor of the science library.
Her obituary was equal parts glowing and vague—Catherine was a brilliant girl, with a bright future, et cetera.
Only one aspect of the article caught Ellsbeth’s eye.
It was a quote from one of Catherine’s friends: “I’m still in shock.
I just never thought Catherine would ever do something like this.
Friday night, we went out together to a party on Governor Street. Saturday morning, she was dead.”
Ellsbeth lived on Governor. About half of the street was graduate student housing.
The other half was dotted with aging Victorian homes occupied by locals or junior professors.
It was not a street any undergraduate would ever trek to in order to attend a party.
Unless they were going to a party at Banestooth.
There were frustratingly few articles about Catherine Teale in the archives.
Her obituary had just two photos of her—what appeared to be a senior class picture, and a photo of Catherine in a tank top, her hair in a braid, sitting on a rock and grinning, face flushed having reached a mountain peak after a hike.
Ellsbeth needed more. She needed the police report. She needed photographs of the scene. The compounding clay seemed to vibrate in her pocket. She began making mental plans to go back to the police station, but as it turned out she didn’t need to.
While she scrolled, she found a link to a forum she didn’t recognize.
i was there the day catherine teale died. i was fucking there.
You saw her fall?
no, but i saw her body at the bottom of the library. fucking gnarly.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
She was in my freshman dorm. She was nice. RIP. don’t ask for pics of a fucking dead girl!!!!!
:’(((((( pics.
The last comment was a hyperlink. Ellsbeth held her breath and clicked.
The photos were taken on a cellphone, through police tape.
Catherine Teale’s body was bloodied and twisted like a circus performer on dark pavement slick with blood and blackened snow.
Her dark braid covered her face, but still, Ellsbeth had to turn away from the photos several times before her stomach settled enough to let her look in earnest.
There were cuts across her bare arms, and a sickening pool of blood so dark on the concrete that it looked brown, soaking into her jeans.
But there, in the third picture, she could see it—three cuts across her chest, deep and already scabbing over.
Three parallel cuts on a diagonal, from the clavicle to the breast.
The same cuts that Bertie had.
The buzzing sensation started again in Ellsbeth’s head, the feeling she got when she was about to complete a ritual correctly or solve a difficult problem.
Ellsbeth went back through the obituaries in the archives, looking for connective threads. She looked for girls, for freshmen, deaths that involved blood.
There was Bertie last winter. And Catherine Teale four years before that.
But four years before Catherine Teale, there was a young woman named Emily Kirkman who jumped in front of a train.
And there was Paula Rodriguez who leapt from the top of the library four years before Emily.
Ellsbeth couldn’t find a suicide four years before Paula, but there was a girl named Constance who was hit by a car while walking home from a friend’s house at midnight.
Every death was in the winter, at the top of the second semester.
Ellsbeth didn’t know exactly what connected the deaths, but she printed out all the obituaries anyway. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But if Banestooth was involved, she would find out how, and she would get proof.
As Ellsbeth returned to her computer station carrying pages still warm from the printer, she stopped in her tracks, a wave of shock flooding through her.
Sitting at the next station over, evidently waiting for her, was a dark-haired young man with hollow cheekbones she recognized in an instant. Maxwell Keene.
It felt strange seeing him in person, after having glimpsed his face in so many news articles and imagined him so vividly in the story Rawlins recently unfolded to her. It was like meeting a celebrity—or even more, like a fictional character stepping into the real world.
Max sat in a swivel chair, rotating idly back and forth, and gave a tight grin as she approached. “Ellsbeth, right?”
She nodded and swallowed hard, trying not to show her fear. “And…you’re Max.”
“I’m Max,” he agreed. “Sorry if I startled you, I just saw you over here, and…since we have something in common, or someone, really…I thought I’d come say hi.”
“You were…here, in the archive?” she said, glancing around. The large space now felt ominously vacant; she wished there was anyone else in sight.
“That’s not a crime, is it?” he replied, then looked back in the direction of the entrance—far enough away that Ellsbeth wasn’t even sure she’d be heard if she shouted for help.
“They’re certainly not very rigorous about security.
” He eyed the printed pages she carried. “What’s he got you researching?”
“Oh, this is…just a personal project, actually,” Ellsbeth said.
She took a breath and studied Max; seeing the similarity to Rawlins in his features, the nose and eyes of the man she loved, softened her toward him.
He frightened her, but she could also see the pain under the surface, and a wave of compassion rose up.
“You know, Max…I can’t imagine how hard it was, what you went through, but…
your dad really does care about you. A lot. ”
The remark was intended to disarm him, but it was instantly clear it had the opposite effect. Max’s features darkened. “So…he told you? Wow. You two must be very close.”
Ellsbeth’s skin prickled at the insinuation in his voice, but she decided to ignore his contempt and try to get through to him sincerely. “I just think you should give him a chance,” she said. “He’s made mistakes, like anyone, but he’s…a good person.”
Max’s lip curled into a mirthless smirk. “That’s what you think, because you’re still in it. I feel bad for you, really. I know how it feels, when his light shines on you. You feel like the most brilliant person in the world, I bet. Like you can do anything.”
Ellsbeth said nothing. His words rang a bell of truth inside her.
“It’s funny,” Max went on, looking away as he lost himself in memory.
“When he was working with me, it felt like I actually got the father I’d always wanted.
But…” He shook his head, fury showing through the pain, then locked his gaze on Ellsbeth.
“Whatever you think he’s giving you…it’s a lie.
All he does is take. So…fair warning: Get away while you still can. ”
With that, Max stood up, pulling on his coat, and headed off. Ellsbeth remained frozen in place for a long time, only realizing after he’d left that her fingernails were digging into her palms so hard they had left marks.
Though it was only late afternoon, the sky had darkened by the time Ellsbeth left the library.
She could see the spire of Rawlins’s Victorian house from the hill where the library was perched.
He was probably cooking dinner at that very moment.
But instead of walking south, she turned back toward her own apartment.
Part of her wanted to go tell Rawlins about the encounter with Max—to unload her anxieties and put her fears to rest, to be reassured that he wouldn’t actually do anything.
But she didn’t want Rawlins to worry about her.
She didn’t want to torture him further with more evidence of his son’s contempt.
The kindest thing here, she rationalized, was to keep this to herself.
Besides, she still needed to shower, and to think more about how she would prepare to interrogate the brothers of Banestooth without raising suspicions.
She needed to be alone, because if she curled up on Rawlins’s couch next to him that night, she knew she would want to tell him the truth about her investigation, and that was impossible.
The blue safety lights that dotted campus caused the bare trees lining the footpath to throw long and sinister shadows.
More than once, Ellsbeth felt a prickle on the back of her neck and heard the sound of footsteps behind her, but every time she turned, no one was there.
She kept her numbing fingers on her phone just in case, but the campus was empty.
Everyone else had gone to warm family homes to celebrate Christmas, and Ellsbeth was here, walking alone with only her theories and her ghosts.