Holmes shrugged but she was clearly pleased. We sat there for a minute; in the distance, birds started calling to each other.
“You know,” she said, “that bastard has hit on me in every disgusting way since the day I arrived. Shouted at me, left notes under my door. He slapped my ass in the breakfast line the weekend my brother was visiting.” She shook her head. “It took some persuasion on my part, but Dobson wasn’t immediately napalmed. Or made the target of a drone hit. Actually, Milo quite wanted to play the long game, wait a few years and then just disappear him from his bed, make it look like aliens. Or so he said. He was trying to cheer me up. . . .” She trailed off; it was clear she’d said more than she meant to. “I should still be mad at you.”
“But you aren’t.”
“And we shouldn’t be talking about Dobson like this.” She got to her feet, and after a second’s hesitation, offered me a hand up.
“I didn’t think you’d be so respectful of the dead,” I told her. “Just a few hours ago, he was alive and kicking, and practically begging to be napalmed.”
The sun was rising in the distance, pulled up by its lazy, invisible string, and the sky was shot through with color. Her hair was washed in gold, her cheeks, in gold, and her eyes were as knowing as a psychic’s.
In that moment, I would’ve followed her anywhere.
“We shouldn’t be talking about Dobson,” she said, starting off across the quad, “because we should be examining his room.”
I stopped short. “I’m sorry, what?”
IT WAS ALREADY TEN PAST SEVEN, AND OUR HALLWAY IN Michener was on the second floor. I had no idea how we’d sneak by Mrs. Dunham at the front desk, not to mention the hordes of junior boys emerging from their rooms to shower before breakfast. I watched Holmes consider it for a moment, frowning, before she slid around to the side of the ivy-covered building.
She told me to stand back, then flung herself down on the ground, examining it inch by inch. For footprints, I realized. If we’d thought of accessing Dobson’s room this way, someone else probably had too. Nervously, I looked around to see if we were being watched, but we were shrouded by a cluster of ash trees. Thank God Sherringford was so damn picturesque.
“Four girls went by here last night in a group,” she said finally, getting to her feet. “You can tell by the stampede of Ugg boots. But no solo travelers, not even to smoke. Strange, this seems like a good spot for it.” She methodically brushed the dirt and grass from her clothes. “They must have entered through the front doors. Michener isn’t connected to the access tunnels, the way Stevenson and Harris are.”
“Access tunnels?” I said.
“You really should explore more. We’ll remedy that, but not now.” Holmes glanced at the first floor’s thick stone windowsills, at the windowsills above those, and bent down to untie her shoes. “Stuff these in my bag, will you,” she said, putting a socked foot up on the sill. “Yours too. And put your gloves on. We can’t leave prints of any kind. Come on, quickly, they might open their blinds at any moment. At least his roommate is away on that rugby tourney.”
“Don’t you need to find out which room is theirs?” I asked.
She tossed me a look, like I had asked her if the earth went around the sun. “Watson, just give me a lift.”
I cradled my hands for her to step into, and in seconds she had climbed up the ivy to Dobson’s second-floor window. Clinging to the sill with one hand, she used the other to pull a length of wire from her pocket, and bent one end into a hook with her teeth. I couldn’t see what she did next, but I could hear her humming. It sounded like a Sousa march.
“Right,” I whispered. “When I found you, you were just going to your lab.”
“Shut up, Watson.” With a slight hiss and crack, the window opened. Holmes eased herself inside, as delicate as a dancer.
Her head reappeared. “Aren’t you coming?”
I swore. Loudly.
Thankfully, all that rugby I’d been playing meant I was in passable shape. I had a good six inches on her too, so I didn’t need a leg up to reach the hanging ivy. When I scrambled into Dobson’s room, she patted me on the shoulder absently; she was already surveying her surroundings.
Dobson’s was the sort of room I’d seen all over Michener: he had that black-and-white poster of two girls kissing, and the floor was thick with crumpled clothing. Randall’s side wasn’t any cleaner, but at least his bed was made. Dobson’s sheets were a mess, kicked down to the end of his mattress. The coroner must’ve already removed the body.
There was a framed photo of him and what looked like his sister on the bedside table. The two of them were squinting into the lens, big smiles on. I felt an unexpected pang of guilt.