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got off that couch? But Simon decided to abandon existential musings for the time being and opt for feeling better. So he took his pills, and he did feel better—sort of.
    As Simon inspected the last lump of cherry vanilla yogurt at the bottom of its container, he contemplated loss and thought about Anne Bloodworth. Did she have any notion that she was about to die and forfeit all the joys and sorrows of another fifty or so years of life? She had been shot in the back of the head, so the odds were that she had no inkling that she was going to die, and thus no opportunity to say good-bye, even to herself.
    Simon walked out of the house and went over to his black Thunderbird. He had bought it when he was flush with royalties from the paperback edition of his book. Driving around town with the air conditioner on high and Paul Simon on the stereo was about the only activity that gave him any pleasure these days, so he figured the car was a worthwhile investment from a psychological standpoint. He got in the car, started the engine, shifted, slipped Graceland comfortably into its accustomed slot, and drove off toward campus, reveling in percussion all the way.
    WHEN SIMON GOT back home from his class Thursday evening, he found a message from Sergeant Gates on his answering machine, asking if he could come to see him. So Simon arrived earlier than usual at the office the next morning. Judy Smith looked up at him in surprise when he walked into the departmental office to check his mail.
    "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I'm glad to see you, too," Simon replied.
"You know I didn't mean it that way. Besides, I was going to call you. Dr. Jones has called a departmental meeting for eleven o'clock."
    "No kidding," Simon said. A departmental meeting during summer school was very unusual. For one thing, most of the faculty weren't in town. They vanished to the beach, mountains, abroad, or to a research site from early May, when the second semester ended, to the middle of August.
    The faculty took turns teaching four courses, two in each summer session, every year. This year Simon was teaching North Carolina History, Alex Andrus was teaching The Civil War, Vera Thayer was teaching European Imperialism and Colonialism, and Marcus Clegg was offering his controversial History of Science.
    "Got any idea what it's all about?" Simon asked.
"No," she replied. "But Dr. Walker and Alex were in crisis mode yesterday afternoon." "What do you mean?" Simon asked.
    "They spent two hours in Dr. Jones's office, and when they came out, both of them looked furious. Dr. Jones asked me to call all the faculty I could reach and tell them that there would be a departmental meeting this morning."
    Simon was fascinated. What crisis could he have missed that would cause an emergency faculty meeting to be called when the rest of the faculty couldn't be on hand to enjoy the fracas? Of course, Alex Andrus could cause trouble about anything, anytime.
Simon walked on down the hall toward the lounge and the coffeepot, where he hoped to pick up some scuttlebutt about the meeting.
    The history department was located in one of the original college buildings built in 1834. It was faced with hand-carved stone left over from the State Capitol's construction, and like the Capitol, it was early Greek Revival, complete with dome and pedimented portico. Every bit of the building was built by hand. There wasn't a right angle in the entire place, but the halls were wide and the windows were as tall as a man and could actually be opened during the spring and fall. The hand carved woodwork, wood banisters, and moldings were maintained meticulously by a fund specially set up for the purpose of preserving the four original campus buildings. Although the history faculty complained about the erratic heating and cooling and the unreliable plumbing, not to mention the mice, most would not have dreamed of forsaking the old building.
    The lounge had once been the original library for