Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Another walk with Phallic, and again he was silent partner. Surprisingly. Nothing but heavy breathing and the sound of extra wide shoes slapping brick as we headed back towards Drexel. Almost like walking through woods in a snow.

I made a mental note to walk more once I got back on the force—with him as a partner it might be the only quiet time I would get. Would be good for him, too. Poor guy huffing and puffing across Hill Square, trailing me a few feet like an embarrassed echo, avatars of youth itself passing us easily by all the while: these kids chatting on cell phones, laughing with one another, life rolling out ahead of them as if a road that may yet lead to them to palaces of wisdom.

Avatars of youth itself. Palace of Wisdom. Where had that come from? When was the last time I had crap like that running through my head in my head while waving funeral traffic through the light at Broad and Moyemensing?  I needed to get clear. The longer this narrative went on, I knew, the harder to draw it to its logical conclusion.

Narrative? Christ. I was getting sucked back into the seminar room. This was no narrative. Narratives get wrapped up, or they don’t. There’s an ending, or there’s not. Perhaps a definite action, but maybe a point at which we’re compelled to draw our own conclusions or recognize the irresolvable conflict of competing ideologies. Maybe a sequel—they didn’t die in the explosion after all. The author does what the author wants, or at least what the author can get away with.

But this was a case, a mystery. A crime. Not something to be “wrapped up,” but something to be stopped, ended, done away with. There was at least one killer out there, and if I still knew one thing from my days on the force, it’s that a killer doesn’t care shit for what you make of the story. The killer does what the killer wants. A killer kills until you make the killing stop.

I had to act, and fast. Enough abstraction. The facts were there, I just needed to read them. Perhaps the reader has the last word after all.

Ashes of charred books, blackened snow. Blood hardening into the cracks of the frat house floor. Weird look on that Rowling’s face might be something, but why wouldn’t he look a touch off with a wizard’s wand sticking out of a gash in his neck? And—I reached into my pocket, touched it to make sure it was there—the shiny white spork, the wisp of hair. It had been sitting there, clean amidst the wreckage—it was waiting for me. Someone had returned to the scene. Delivered it. A note of hair threaded through it. What was the message? Ginny, maybe. A trick? I could see the sweeping arm of Riggs, the furious signing, him conveying her to me across the seminar room. Conveying her to everyone, but mostly to me.

Damnit if every time I saw Ginny I didn’t lose the thread. Did the Paginator anticipate this? Was this the spork-message? A red herring that would get me to follow that idiot Phallic to Drexel even thought Penn was closer? Get me thinking about Ginny instead of working the case? Maybe Ginny was right, and the books were meaningful to someone else. Maybe the books were meaningful to me.

Except if I was right, they didn’t mean anything at all. I was all tangled up—first cause and clean up crew. Author and interpreter. Reading meaning into something that was created to mean nothing other than what I made of it. If this was true, the facts were flimsy. Nothing was solid. There was no center and no certainty. The killer was going postmodern.

Henry James would have cringed at such arbitrariness, such a precise donnée spinning into a messy web that held nothing but loss—what could be learned, what is the picture, what will be illustrated in such a story?  What is the story about?

Fuck. Again.

I had to snap myself out of it. Not story, murder.

Isn’t every story though, in some sense or another, a murder? Apostrophe murders the dream of professorship, a staple straight to the heart. Dead. Memoirist murders his past. The murdered ghost of my love for Ginny, directing traffic in South Philly, invisible.

Good god, though. Wheezy, panting Phallic was right, and this in and of itself was a painful thought.  I did bring everything back to Ginny, couldn’t stop myself. But I had to stop. A dead body—a trail of dead bodies—is what mattered. The ribbon of blood running from the throat of Powelton kid mattered. These things were solid. And now, while I had been gratifying myself, orchestrating the useless speculations in the seminar room, another pile of books burned. Another murder coming up. Stay with the facts, Schnoz.

The fire was sloppy, rushed. Had someone left the seminar room? Couldn’t remember. No picture of it. I missed it, or missed at least knowing for sure that no warm body left that room—I missed it the second I stopped seeing what was right in front of my nose and allowed myself to be seduced by the murdered fantasy of the academy. The sooner I got away from this campus, the better off I’d be.

But we needed information, so I reached back, yanked Phallic’s coat sleeve, and pointed across the street. “This way, Willy, we’re going to the library.”

Phallic flashed his badge at the door, and we pushed through the turnstile. Not as crowded as it used to be, but a good amount of students scattered around the place. Although, at second glance, it didn’t look like much work was going on. Used to be claustrophobic in here, the long low rooms packed with kids getting paper cuts and sweating over coming exams. Hagerty had been the nightly pulse of the university.

“What are we looking for?” Phallic said. “You think the killer is in here? Or took the books out of the library? They got a surveillance cam?”

I shook my head. “Names, Willy. Go ferret out a local directory and see how many Steel’s we’re worrying about.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to find out what kind of book Palomino is. If I know what it’s about, I’ll know what the Paginator wants us to think.”

“Mr. Literary doesn’t know a book?” Standing still, Phallic had the breath to rib me.

“Fuck would I know about Palomino for?” I winked at him. “Get moving, try the basement—that’s where libraries usually keep the directories.”

Willy lumbered down the stairs, and I headed over to the circulation desk, nodded to the girl there. If I was lucky, I could get my hands on a dry copy of the book and see what the next message was.

“Title,” I said, “Palomino.”

But no luck. The girl read the computer screen, shaking her head. Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories? Yes. Palos De Nueva Invencion, O, Carta Que Dirige D. Jose De Arango A Don Jose Gonzalez Superintendente. Sí. But no Danielle Steel at Hagerty Library.

In a way, I could be happy about that.

I still had to see what was in the book. You burn Conrad and I can tell you what‘s up. Twain, I get it. I know the stuff, even the King and Rowling. Give me a Steel novel called Palomino, though, and who could even say if there’s a horse.

I headed back towards the stairs, where some undergrads sprawled on the couches like the library was their parent’s rec room. Pissed me off, and I could’ve laid into them, but as long as they were sitting around with a laptops, they might as well be useful. This was no seminar room, and the kids scattered around the place didn’t look like they were interested in anything, which was good. No messing around with theory and big ideas, I just wanted to know what the book said.

“Police business, buddy,” I said to one. “Here’s the situation: you’ve got to write a English essay about Palomino – it’s by Danielle Steel – what do you do?”

He looked lost, like he had never been asked to write an essay before. But he bit on the question.

“What do you mean?” he asked. Probably a nice enough kid, just wanted to help, but man he looked like he needed a good night’s sleep.

“It’s an essay, pal. What are you going to say to your reader?”

“So it’s like a report on a book?”

These kids were sluggish. The library was the new place to nap. He looked at his friends for help, but they all had headphones on.

“It’s not a report,” I hissed. “An essay. You get to know something about a something, and you tell the reader what you know.  Connect the dots, sleepy. Danielle Steel. Palamino. Tell me about it.”

“So, I just write what I think about it?”

“What do you think about it?”

“I don’t know?”

“So then what do you do?” I kicked his foot. This kid was pissing me off. No motivation. “C’mon – this paper’s due in 20 minutes. You need this grade. This essay needs to be done, now. What do you do when you need to know?”

“Are you really a—”

I kicked again. “A kid just died over on Powelton,” I growled. “Tell me something about the book.”

The kid broke. He scared easy. The kids in the seminar room would have been coming back at me with all sorts of questions about theoretical orientation, purpose, critical lens. But this kid clicked out of Facebook, launched a Google page, and got to work.  And when he did, something deep inside of me started to well up in protest. I knew I was outsourcing my work, forsaking the primary text, allowing someone else to create a meaning that I would be responsible for—but I didn’t have much time, and I needed to act. The kid scanned through pages, hit a few keys, looked at me, and looked back at the screen.  A few more keystrokes and he stopped.

“Okay,” he said. “I need an introduction, right?”

“It’s a start.”

“Okay.”

“So? The clock is ticking.”

“Okay, I got an introduction—“

“What do you mean? Already? Give it to me.”

“Yeah. Um. Introduction. New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel continues to captivate audiences with tales of love found, lost, and found again, against seemingly impossible odds and amidst a plethora of human drama.”

Right then I knew two things. The first was that this kid is no English major. Second was that I was a god damn fool. There’s no way the Paginator could be this devious.

Phallic was coming up the stairs. His cheeks were red, he was puffing, and he looked like he might explode. I looked the kid, who was looking up at me, waiting to see if I wanted to hear a supporting paragraph. “Cite your work, kid,” I said, “or you’re just looking for trouble.”

I turned to Willy. “Let’s go, Phallic. We’re gonna get run over again if we don’t move.”

“Nothing,” he rasped. “I don’t even think there’s any god damned books down there.”

“Forget that,” I told him. “Save your breath. And hurry—we’re idiots.”

Poor Phallic had been through it today, and it was taking its toll—hoofing it all over campus, sitting through that seminar, running off again. And things were only going to get worse for him.

We were out the door and onto 33^rd: Phallic trying to ask what was up, me pulling his arm saying, “c’mon, c’mon.” I hustled him across to the Mario statue, and pointed towards Center City. “Listen,” I said, “Head down Market, cut through to Main Building. Go straight to 422 Randell. Got it?”

“Right, 422, but—“ he wheezed, couldn’t even finish.

“Go! You’re looking for Prof. Donald Steel. Steel. Fourth floor, you’ve gotta take the steps.”

“But how—”

“Go.”

“Hey, Schnoz?” He stopped, bent over, hands on knees.

“What?”

“You’re back, Schnoz. It’s good to see you on it. It’s in your eyes.”

I winked at him.

“You just find Steel in Randell, fast as you can.” Phallic smiled at me again, pulled himself up, and turned to go. “And Phallic,” I called, stopping him. “When you get there, remember to take the stairs. The elevators never work.”

I headed south on 33^rd. The pieces were falling into place, and, if I was right, I had a unifying theory. But first, I needed to get another look at the scene of the Palomino fire.

I had just crossed Chestnut and was about to head back across Hill Square when I felt someone tug on my jacket. It was the kid with curly hair, Segedin.

“Hey detective,” he said. “I know you’re probably busy detectiving, but we’re about to have another seminar upstairs. Dr. Porter is leading the discussion.”

“Sorry, Segedin, but I’ve got work to do.”

He looked embarrassed, and I felt bad for being brusque. The kid probably just wanted to be helpful.

“It’s okay,” he said, “it’s not even like I like the book, I just thought you’d be interested in it.”

I looked down, and in his hand was a dog-eared copy of Rabbit, Run.

Dan Driscoll is an Associate Teaching Professor of English and Associate Director of the Writing Center at Drexel University. He is also on the editorial board for the Painted Bride Quarterly, an independent literary magazine.

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