Animal Appetite

important. Say nothing to anyone about this. Not a word. Don’t even photocopy that dissertation, okay? Just give it back. Turn it in. I want it out of your hands right now. Until I tell you otherwise, you’ve never seen the thing in your life.”
    “Holly—”
    “Do it! I am not joking! Leah, Jack Andrews read Clark’s book when he was a kid. It was in the Haverhill Public Library. He must’ve used it for his report. For whatever reason, he also read Carey’s dissertation. He made the connection. But he didn’t tell Professor Foley. Maybe he didn’t have a chance. He was murdered first. Professor Foley didn’t make the connection, either. And when he finally did...?”
    “I get the picture. And you can sort of see why Professor Foley missed it to begin with, because advisors aren’t necessarily all that expert in whatever esoteric topics their students are doing research on. But how did Foley find out now? Why all of a sudden, after all these years?”
    “For one thing, one reason he missed it back then and for a long time is what you said yourself: ‘Widener has everything.’ That was probably his mentality, too.”
    “Correctly so.”
    “Almost. And that attitude is what Randall Carey took into account. He plagiarized a book that wasn’t in Widener and that academic types didn’t even know existed. Also, there’s something Professor Foley told me himself. He said that captivity is in these days. There are books, and there are conferences. Now there’s a field called ‘captivity studies.’ Professor Foley hadn’t read Clark’s book because it wasn’t an academic book—it was just a local curiosity—and because, eighteen years ago, captivity studies wasn’t his specialty, anyway, because it really wasn’t anyone’s. It practically didn’t exist.”
    “So why did Professor Foley read the book now?”
    “You never met him, Leah. He was interested in everything, I think. He was like a kid. He sparkled. Anyway, he’d just been to a conference where he’d been discussing Indian captivity with someone. That’s where he heard that there was a privately printed book about Hannah Duston. This is awful to think about, but, in a way, maybe it was partly my fault. After I asked him about Hannah, he must’ve called up whoever had mentioned the book to him and borrowed it from another historian or from a library somewhere.”
    “But if it wasn’t in Widener —”
    “Then, miracle of miracles, it might still have been somewhere else. In fact, it was somewhere else until Randall Carey removed it. It was in the Haverhill Public Library and at the Haverhill Historical Society. But it must have been other places, too. Maybe Widener located it for him. Or another historian let him borrow it. Leah, if Foley was Randall Carey’s advisor, wouldn’t he have had a copy of the dissertation?”
    “Probably. He’d’ve been given one. Whether he kept it is another matter.”
    “Obviously, he did. Or he got it just the way you did, from the archives. And he compared. He reached the same conclusion we have.”
    “Definitely about the plagiarism. About Jack Andrews’s murder?”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. In either case, I think Foley called up Randall Carey and invited him over to discuss the matter. Instead of blowing the whistle, he gave Randall Carey a chance to turn himself in. Professor Foley was a gentleman himself, and I think he offered Randall Carey a gentleman’s way out. Jack Andrews must’ve made the same mistake. It was fatal for him, and it was fatal for Professor Foley. Leah, Randall Carey has killed twice to keep his doctorate and his pride, and the second time to keep his freedom. He’s like Hannah Duston. He’s like the people who took her captive. His motives are just as practical as theirs, and he’s just as desperate. Promise me that the second you hang up, you’ll take that dissertation and return it instantly. And say nothing whatever to anyone.”
    “But what about you? What—”
    “Kevin will be home any second. I’m going to lock my doors and wait for him. I’m going to sit here and play the damsel in distress.”
    Reversing our roles, Leah warned, “Don’t open the door for anyone.”
    “Of course not. Not for anyone.”
     

Thirty-One

     
    I thought you meant your dissertation on Hannah Duston, I’d told Randall Carey. If it’s a copy of Lewis Clark’s book, I already have one, I’d also said. Now, as I waited for Kevin, I’d have given anything to take