The Black Hour (9 page)

The library stank of modernity, a large, sharp concrete ordeal that looked like a prison. I had passed it once already, but the only signs on campus were small and understated to the point of invisibility. Inside, all of the study carrels stood empty, all today’s newspapers hung neatly in place. I had the feeling that I was the only person in the building, that someone had mistakenly left the doors open and the lights on the night before. Or like I was the first person to wander into a crime scene.

Some kids played cowboys and Indians. I’d played crime scene. Sometimes I still did.

I found the periodicals department, the files, a row of microfilm viewers. Still no people, but I could hear someone in the room behind the information desk. I waited for a while, then started making incidental noises—fingernail tapping, throat clearing, paper shuffling. Nothing. At last I raised my backpack above my head and let it drop to the ground. A woman appeared in the doorway. She looked a lot like one of the women my dad had taken to dinner since my mom died, cushiony and comfortable as a piece of furniture.

She looked at her watch. “Early bird, eh? Can I help you with something?”

“I’d like to see microfilm for October 11 of last year.”

“Which paper?”

All of them, but I couldn’t say that. “The major Chicago papers and then—what’s the Willetson paper called?”

“The
Courier
.”

“And the
Rothbert Reader
, too.”

She disappeared through the door again. I picked up my backpack. Someone else had come into the area, a girl with sleek black hair and glasses, who sifted through the day’s newspaper editions. This girl and I were the only students out of something like seven thousand who had come to the library this early in the morning, this early in the semester. I felt a sort of kinship rise up—was it enough to start a conversation? The girl picked up a Chinese-language paper and studied the headlines.

The postcard I would write to Bryn:
My girlfriend speaks three languages and did her Fulbright in Beijing. What’s new with you?

The librarian came back with a set of long, thin boxes under her arm. “Here’s the first installment. Go get settled and I’ll bring you the rest. You know how to use the system?”

“Of course.” I turned my head a little toward the other student and adjusted my volume. “I’m a grad student. In sociology.”

“Congratulations,” the woman said. She stacked the boxes in front of me and tapped them one at a time, doing some sort of calculation. “OK, I still owe you the
Reader
and the
Willetson Courier
.”

The girl hadn’t even looked up. I took my things and went to the film readers. In actuality, it had been a while since I’d used one of these hulking dinosaurs. But if you wanted to do newspaper research, it remained the closest thing to looking at the old papers. Newsprint being thin and cheap, it disintegrated quickly. There was no such thing as a complete newspaper archive, but when I pictured myself digging in the stacks, that’s what I saw: me, rising up from a leaning tower of newsprint with the evidence I’d been looking for in my hand. Eureka!

Or no. Nobody said that.

I pondered the right phrasing, fumbling to thread the film reel through the machine and onto the empty spool on the other side. I started with the
Tribune
, the city’s largest circulation paper. A blue button progressed or reversed the reel. After a few minutes, I had the system working and had wound through the dates leading up to October 11, the day Dr. Amelia Emmet’s assailant shot her. Except there was nothing. No notice, not even a brief paragraph.

The librarian walked up with more boxes. “The
Reader
, and then here’s the
Courier
. What’s wrong? Is it jammed?”

“No. I just—” I wasn’t sure what to say. A secret project was supposed to be secret. “I was searching for a news item, and it’s not here.”

“Maybe the
Tribune
didn’t report it. Did it happen in Willetson?”

“The
Tribune
reported it,” I said. I had the marked-up clip in my backpack already. I’d been hoping for a fresh copy.

“Well, that’s not even a year ago,” she said, looking over the top of her glasses at my screen. “What’s the story you’re looking for?”

“Never mind. I’ll find it.”

“Why waste your time? If it’s that big a deal, I’d remember—”

She did. She remembered October 11 precisely.

“Did you say you studied sociology?” She didn’t wait for me to answer but reached for the blue button and sped through a line of pages until the
Chicago Tribune
nameplate showed itself again, and we were reading the headlines on October 12 instead. “The
Tribune
is a morning paper, hon. Professor Emmet was shot in the evening. The news—” She gave me an uncertain look. “The news didn’t get printed until the next day.”

“Of course. Thank you.” I hoped to put a dismissive tone into my words, but the librarian only reached in and framed the image better. There it was: the scene outside Dale Hall and the small square photos, side by side, of Dr. Emmet and the student, whose face I knew almost as well as my own.

“That poor dear,” the librarian said.

“She’s fine,” I said. And then felt my cheeks go hot when the woman turned to me. “I mean, she’s as good as can be expected, considering. She’s back to teaching—”

“I didn’t mean her.”

“But—”

“The Chicago papers didn’t spend much time on this,” she said. “Certainly not enough to get it right.”

Her anger made me think maybe I was getting things wrong, too. I had most of the facts already. Maybe instead of library research, I should be out among the people, interviewing and watching. Out among the chimps, Jane Goodall-like, talking to people like this woman, who had clearly lived through the ordeal and had opinions. I would have to rethink my methodology.

I couldn’t think fast enough to switch the conversation with the librarian around to information gathering. She stood up and started back toward the desk.

“Wait,” I said. She didn’t. “Wait. Who got it right then?”

I saw the student with the Chinese paper look up and notice me at last, just as my voice turned pleading.

The librarian reached her desk, pausing on the patron side. “In my experience, no one ever gets it completely right,” she said. “Probably no one ever will.” She didn’t turn around but kept walking until she’d disappeared through the doorway, hidden once again.

The first task of the Sociology of Deviance and Crime course was to negotiate the sociology of the room. First to arrive, I had this one chance to decide how I would view Dr. Emmet and the rest of the class for the semester. The sociology of proximity and space—someone else could do that dissertation, but it was still interesting.

I studied the setup of the room. Long table, ten chairs. Not a lot of elbow room. Dr. Emmet would probably sit at the head of the table near the door.

I’d just chosen the perfect chair—three away from the head of the table for scientific distance—when another student walked in, glanced around, and dropped his bag at the very seat I’d allocated to Dr. Emmet.

“Hey,” he said, reaching over with a confident handshake.

“Hey.” I could hear more people coming down the hall and maybe, underneath their voices and footsteps, the tap of Dr. Emmet’s cane. “I guess I thought Dr. Emmet would sit there,” I said.

“Oh, we don’t have to go in for that nonsense, do we?”

“Which nonsense?”

“I’m just practicing. Deviance, get it?” He sat down and promptly put his feet up on the table. He wore beat-up motorcycle boots, the kind of thing I would never be able to wear without looking as though I’d just stepped off a community theater stage. He leaned back, settled in.

He only had to wait a minute. The group walked in and behind them, Dr. Emmet. She looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. She looked really good, actually. Her eyes went straight to the boots. She used her cane to scoot them off the table. “Handicapped parking only,” she said.

Do not park in the handicapped zone, if you know what I’m saying.

I swallowed hard and glanced around. Among the other students: the two nearly indistinguishable girls and the guy from my methods class, exchanging looks as they sat across from me. Motorcycle Boots found another seat.

Dr. Emmet lowered herself into her chair and set her cane on the floor. A flash of something passed over her face, but she sat up and took out a pen, a sheaf of papers. We were all trying not to watch, but of course she must have known that. She tapped the stack of papers on its edge for a second too long.

“All right, it’s time,” she said. “I’m expecting six of you and here you are—five, six. I like it when the math is easy. We’re going to spend most of our time tonight setting out the course for the semester and getting started with a little deviance. Theory, that is.”

I could see what kind of teacher she must have been—the kind who could be playful even in complex conversations, the kind who could make a joke at her own expense to make the greater point. Now, the smile she managed was tight.

“We’re going to talk about the distinction between formal deviance and informal deviance a bit, get you started on some theory to see how you think.” She shot a lidded look down the table at the guy in the boots. “If you think wrong, then I’ll just have to remold you until you think right.”

I laughed. No one else did. Everyone turned to stare, but Dr. Emmet found me and gave me a small smile, a real one. “Nathaniel. Thank you. Good to see you again. Now before we get to the formalities, let’s lay waste to the elephant in the room.”

The room went still.

“I study and teach the sociology of crime,” she said. “Recently I had the chance to do some detailed field research. I almost can’t imagine a scenario in which you haven’t already heard this—I was shot last year. That’s why I have the cane. That’s why I need the seat near the door. That’s why about halfway through class tonight, I will have to get up and go take pain medication.”

No one said anything. Dr. Emmet gave every one of us a chance to look her in the eye.

“Some of you will know about this, and I expect the rest of you will be looking it up on the Internet before we meet again. Let’s cut to the proverbial chase. I haven’t taught this class since—in a while. You’re all graduate students. You’re all adults. I hope that you act that way, that I’m not placing undue respect on you that you will not earn. I hope that you’re all here for the right reasons.”

Her eyes landed on me.

“But let me be honest with you: I’m no longer sure what I think about violent crime as a social construct. I’m no longer sure what I think of criminal deviance. In the past, I’ve started this course letting the students pick apart terms like ‘senseless violence.’” She gestured into the air, then hid her hand away. It might have been shaking. “I’ve come to understand that most violence is senseless, or at least it should seem that way.”

I wished I’d brought a recording device. No one took notes. No one breathed.

“I can tell you one thing about the topic I didn’t know last year,” she said, glancing around the table. “Getting shot
sucks
.”

This time everybody laughed.

At the break, Dr. Emmet got up with some obvious effort. “Twenty minutes,” she said. “Or as much time as I need.”

The guy in the boots immediately took up the nearest girl’s attention. I stood, stretched, and headed for the vending machine. I was deciding between an orange soda and a candy bar when I heard someone behind me. The cute girl from my other class. Cara.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” I decided on the candy, ripped it open, and shoved half the bar into my mouth.

“How’s your special project going?”

I chewed and chewed, realizing how idiotic I must look. She smiled and reached past me to drop some quarters into the machine. A sleek can of diet soda rolled out.

“Good,” I said finally. “I mean. I don’t know.” I considered the rest of my candy while Cara sipped her drink. “Where’s that other girl?” This was the problem with conversation. I didn’t have time to think things through.