The Revelations Erik Hoel (finding audrey .TXT) 📖

nodding to her, texts the entire roll to her own phone number.

“I’m keeping these as evidence against you, should we ever need to use it.” Carmen looks up at her. “Do you back up your phone, Skylar?”

“I . . .”

“What’s the password to your cloud account?”

“No!” Skylar says. Carmen is still holding her phone.

“Tell me or I use this phone to call the Dean of Arts and Sciences and then Professor Williams. And your parents.”

Skylar responds—“And I’ll tell them how you bullied me and restrained me and stole my phone!”

Carmen just laughs at her. “And who are they going to believe, two adult scientists or a kid who illegally took pictures of the research animals, which I now have evidence of?”

Silence. Skylar tells her the password. Carmen logs in and wipes the cloud, then reboots and resets the phone, handing the whirring thing back to Skylar.

“And taking those photos is all SAAR was doing that weekend?”

“Yeah.” Skylar looks genuinely confused but also emotionally exhausted.

“What about the night before? Friday night. The night of the storm.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really remember what I was doing.”

“And the rest of SAAR?”

She makes a face like—what? “They weren’t doing anything. That I know of. I mean, SAAR doesn’t do like, things all the time. They plan stuff for a while.”

“Did SAAR murder Atif Tomalin?”

She looks up at Carmen with what seems like genuine shock. “What?! Murder? Wait . . . Who’s Atif?”

“One of the Crick Scholars. He got hit by the subway. He did primate research.”

Nodding in recognition, but also gripping her sweatshirt in a plea—“That guy! You think SAAR murdered him? No! Listen, as far as I know SAAR didn’t even know about him. And Students Against Animal Research isn’t . . . It’s not violent against people.”

“What about the time a SAAR member dressed up as a monster and chased a researcher?” Kierk says accusingly.

“No! We don’t do anything like that!”

“What about the fucking box of bomb materials outside Melissa Gold-man’s house?”

Skylar looks guilty, struggling with something internal.

“Tell us, Skylar,” Carmen says softly to her. “We already know it was SAAR.”

“We didn’t . . . They didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, like it was. It was supposed to be a joke. The idea was like, to just, you know, show that we could be way worse. It was Allen who made up the box of stuff. But then he was totally freaked out because the response was like, really big. But I didn’t . . . I didn’t have anything to do with that box.”

“Oh really?” Carmen says. “So who got Melissa Goldman’s home address, Skylar? It’s not public but it’s sure as hell on file here.”

Skylar starts crying. “I’m not . . . I don’t meet with the group, I didn’t do the box thing, I didn’t know why they needed that address and believe me, Allen is like, really freaked out and I’m freaked out and—”

“Skylar. Did SAAR leave that fucking mannequin outside my apartment?”

Skylar furrows her brow, throwing her hands up.

“Did they call me? Did they leave that thing? DID THEY?”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Kierk says. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

Skylar nods, sobbing too much now to talk.

Carmen considers for a moment. She gets on one knee in front of Skylar, catching her gaze.

“You’re never going to tell anyone about this. Are you?”

Skylar emphatically shakes her head.

“You mention anything to SAAR, we tell everyone about your involvement. Your education will be effectively over.”

Skylar emphatically nods her head.

“Well, then you’re free to go.”

She bolts from her desk, muffling a cry, and they hear her hurried flight out into the labyrinth of the CNS.

“Well, that’s that.” Kierk says, watching where she exited.

“So it wasn’t them.” Carmen shakes her head. She’d been so sure . . .

“Well, we still don’t know for certain.”

“She wasn’t lying. I mean, she’s underplaying her involvement with SAAR but she’s not lying about the lack of connection to Atif. Or what happened to me. Like with Atif . . . If you had anything to do with murdering someone on Friday, why risk a break-in the next day just to get some photos? No, it doesn’t make sense . . .”

“Someone could have taken things into their own hands,” Kierk offers, hesitant. “And the mannequin . . . I mean, maybe the same person?”

“I don’t know . . .” she says, still gazing at the doorway. She looks down at her phone and its new gallery of photos. “No. I don’t think so. But at least we falsified one theory. That’s progress.”

In her mind she’s reordering what she considers possible, probable. Both of them are silent for a long moment, considering.

“I have your notebook, by the way,” she finally says, turning her attention to him, one finger going out to catch in his jeans.

“Oh really.” He raises an eyebrow. “Are we done investigating for the day?”

“Well, we could make our way back to my hotel room.”

“Well . . . Maybe we should go there.”

“Just to pick up the notebook?”

“Oh sure. Of course. Why else?”

In the Lower East Side they stop to get dinner and soon they are tipsy, not just on the emotions of the day but also on the combination of sharp white wine and the textures of oysters, and now both enter again into a kind of merging, two streams conjoining in a conflux, a brief meeting point where there is a mixing of waters, each drinking, and then, sated and rejuvenated by the alien other, each brachiate off again. But once two waters have mixed there is no unmixing them, they are changed forever in their constituencies and courses.

MONDAY

Kierk wakes up to a slight touch, then something brushing his lips, a dream leaving him by his mouth. Carmen is kissing him awake.

“Hey,” she says, smiling.

“How bad is my breath?” he replies.

“Pretty bad.” She throws back the covers laughing.

“What time is it? Can’t we sleep?”

“No. I’ll stay with my mom outside the city and