an instinctive reluctance to approach any of her department colleagues on the subject. It wasn’t paranoia, really, but she didn’t want someone co-opting her project, even though she didn’t exactly have one, yet.
And there was no one yet that she could talk to, anyway. She’d seen Brendan Cody around campus, of course, in the halls of the Psych department, holding seminars outside on the lawn under the trees. It was impossible to miss his constant whirl of energy and exuberance.
He was always surrounded by coeds, psych students who obviously had more interest in the young professor than in the study of the mind. And the sight of Brendan surrounded by sighing females made Laurel even more determined to avoid him, for her own self-preservation.
She turned on the path and glanced toward the circle of oaks where she often saw him with his study groups, but on this chilly day the lawn was empty, dotted with little white daisies.
She was not aware that she herself sighed, as she turned away from the tree.
It’s fine. I can do this by myself. She stood for a moment, looking at the buildings around her, then she started off through the drifting gray fog across to East Campus.
It was unmistakably the same building.
She stood on the rough marble of the portico, looking up at the building from the Leish film, an elegant copper-domed structure, Greco-Roman, with four tall white columns on the portico.
Laurel stepped forward and tried each one of the heavy double doors. Locked. She moved back to look up at the building again.
The sign above the doors read BALDWIN AUDITORIUM, and it was not the kind of building she would have expected to house an academic department. So, had a building of original classrooms that had contained the parapsychology lab been converted into an auditorium? Or had she made some sort of mistake? Perhaps the shot of the building from the old film she had seen had been an aesthetic choice rather than the actual building that had housed the Rhine Lab?
She was fighting an almost crushing sense of disappointment as she walked down the steps. But what did you really expect to see? It was a lab, not a haunted house, she told herself.
It was a cold day, overcast and misty from the night’s rain, a hint of winter before fall, and the drifting fog made Laurel feel even more alone in the vast and strangely deserted quad. Most of the former academic buildings had been converted to freshman dorms, and compared to the constant activity and traffic of West it seemed like a ghost campus—only an occasional student going in or out of the residence halls.
At the foot of the grass circle below the auditorium was a towering bronze statue of Duke University founder Washington Duke, seated in a bronze easy chair. Only “seated” was not exactly the correct word. The founder was more precisely “slouched” or “sprawled” in the chair, cigar in mouth, bronze hands loosely gripping the rounded armrests of the chair, legs flung carelessly wide apart, with the ease and arrogance that only comes with vast wealth, and looking pretty much as if he still owned the place. Laurel circled the statue in a sort of awed admiration; she’d never seen a statue with quite such … attitude.
A voice spoke behind, her, a low, lazy drawl. “Thinkin’ of climbing up?”
She turned, startled—and was even more startled to see Tyler Mountford standing on the grass, watching her.
“Everyone does it.” Tyler’s eyes flicked up to the statue of Washington Duke, then back to Laurel, with insolent amusement. “That ol’ dog has had more sorority girls in his lap than three generations of lacrosse teams.”
Laurel almost laughed. “I’m sure,” she said, willing her face not to redden under the boy’s sly smile. She suddenly wondered if he had followed her from class. “I think I’ll pass, though.”
He glanced around the deserted quad. “What are you doing all the way over here on East? Nothing but freshman and theater geeks over here.”
I might ask the same thing of you, she thought. While she was annoyed at his intimate and knowing tone, she realized she might be able to get information out of him, so she smiled as she answered.
“I’d seen photos of that building”—she turned and indicated the domed auditorium—“and I wanted to come take a look … but it’s locked. Do you know—was it always an auditorium? Or did there used to be classrooms there?”