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“In Cold Blood,” Dr.Blake said.
“Of course. But there’s so much more diversity and nuance to the genre now, too.The Third Rainbow Girl. No Place Safe. The Fact of the Bodyis one of my favorites. And it’s not just murder,either. The narratives about white-collar crime can be really fascinating, likeBad BloodorThe Wizard of LiesorThe Big Short.”
We’d been walking for so long down the central bricked pathway through the campus that I’d barely noticed we’d reached a small white house with green shutters.
“Well,” they said, “as Dr.Nilsson probably told you, we donothave any job openings at this time. But I believe we will be opening up a visiting instructorship before next year, for a three-year contract in the English Department. As you said, it would be a lot of composition and other service courses, but there would be room for a class or two in the candidate’s specialty. I think a class in true crime would be quite popular. We would be doing a standard search once the job opens up, so this is by no means a guaranteed offer, but I hope to see your application materials in the pool. When the contract ended, there would be a possibility for the position to become more permanent, but that wouldn’t be guaranteed, either. What do you think?”
What did Ithink? “It sounds amazing,” I said, trying to play it cool but failing miserably.
They smiled at me, as if they sensed my enthusiasm but hopefully found it endearing instead of immature. “The English Department is in here,” they said, gesturing toward the converted house. “Come in, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
By the time I drove home, I was feeling pretty good about how the interview had gone, and almost hopeful about my future post–graduate school. I still had to finish the damn dissertation, which I preferred not to think about, and even letting my mind wander around the implications of a possible job within a reasonable commuting distance, what it could mean...
Well, that made me feel more melancholy than hopeful. It wouldn’t change anything significant, just because there was a slim chance that one logistical barrier would be removed in any relationship between me and Sam. That was all done now. I’d torched the bridge and I couldn’t torture myself wondering if there was any way back to the other side.
?THE NIGHT BEFOREI was about to leave to return to North Carolina, Conner came over. I’d invited both him and Shani out for one last dinner together, because there wasn’t much left in the house, and nowhere to sit except the desk, which Conner was supposed to help me strap back to the roof of my car. But Conner had said maybe it should just be the two of us for dinner. “We haven’t gotten to hang out as much as I wanted,” he said. “Which, I get. You were busy with school stuff, and I had work. My calls are under seven minutes, by the way. But this job sucks. I think I’m going to wait until after the wedding and then try to find something where they don’t make you lock your phone in a locker at the start of every shift.”
Conner and Shani were planning a spring wedding, and it was already shaping up to be a much more involved affair than either of them had thought, once some of Shani’s Indian relatives weighed in on the details of the ceremony and reception. Words were thrown around likeitineraryandsecond outfit change. Conner was psyched about the clothes he’d get to wear, though.
When Conner showed up, I was finishing up my last edits to theIn Cold Bloodchapter, which was way better now that I’dfocused more on Capote’s credibility and depiction of “truth” throughout his book, as opposed to whatever rambling mess I’d turned in before. I was a little behind now, and would have to write myStranger Beside Mechapter and the conclusion once the semester had already started, which wasn’t ideal since my defense was scheduled for late October. But I knew I could make it work.
“Listen to this,” I said, holding open to a page in the book. “He is uncomfortable in his relationships to other people, and has a pathological inability to form and hold enduring personal attachments. I’m tagged in this picture and I don’t like it.”
“What’s that from?”
“A psychologist’s description of Dick Hickock after he’d examined him for the trial,” I said.
Conner came over and took the book out of my hands. “You need to get out of the house. Come on.”
I said I’d drive, so we headed to my Camry. I paused for only a minute before I started the ignition, glancing over at Sam’s house. His truck was in the driveway, but I hadn’t seen him in days—not since before my interview. He must’ve been going somewhere and staying gone, because he didn’t stick to his old pattern of back-and-forth from his lessons at Jocelyn’s.
“Still haven’t talked to him?” Conner asked.
I’d filled him in a little on what had happened—just that we’d broken up, to the extent we were together in the first place. I hadn’t told him it had been at the park, right after the proposal. I didn’t want to taint that memory in any way. Conner was still forwarding me new video clips when they popped up on social media.
“Not really,” I said.
“I wanted to go over there, thank him again for everything he did for us,” Conner said. “If you want, I can mention—”
“No,” I said. “Leave it. Please, Conner.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Anyway, where do you want to go? My treat, just not anywhere fancy like Outback. I don’t have Bloomin’ Onion money if I’m saving up for a wedding. My ceiling is fast casual.”
“Actually,” I said. “There’s somewhere I’ve been wanting to go, and this might be my only chance. It’s a bit of a drive, though—at least an hour.”
“Let’s do it.”
We didn’t talk much during the drive, just listened to the local alternative radio station, which I realized with a pang I would actually miss even though it seemed to interpret its own genre as One Very Popular Band or, in the alternative, Another Very Popular Band. I could tell Conner was getting suspicious once we pulled off the highway in a rural area where there were miles in between gas stations or any other marker of civilization.
Finally, I pulled onto a street in front of a run-down old house, set back and seemingly abandoned, surrounded by an overgrowth of weeds. I parked the car on the side of the road and unbuckled my seat belt.
“This was the Sunrise Slayer’s house,” I said. “Nobody’s lived here for at least a decade, since the family moved.”
“Uh,” Conner said. “I was hoping for somewhere with curly fries.”
“We’ll find somewhere to eat afterward. I just want to check it out.”
As clunky and overwrought as the writing had been in the Sunrise Slayer’s daughter’s memoir, one thing she’d done well was to bring the home where she grew up to life. I’d felt like I could map its layout, could peel the stickers off her walls with my own fingers, could hear the sound of bacon sizzling on the stove one morning when her dad cooked a rare breakfast. Of course, later she’d realize he’d been up early because he’d already killed a girl off the nearby running trail, but otherwise it had seemed like a usual domestic life. It had reminded me a lot of my own childhood.
