The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page B

run into someone you knew.
    Someone you knew …was that the connection they’d all been looking for? If one of Gunther’s friends really was at Salem now, maybe the couples who had been attacked were all from Tobie’s hometown, people who knew and recognized Gunther’s friends.
    No. That wasn’t right. Tobie was from Riverdale, but Reed and Jake weren’t. They wouldn’t know anything about the case.
    Then what was the connection?
    When Quinn got back to the dorm, she took the stairs to the sixth floor. Just looking at the elevator where she’d found Simon, unconscious, was enough to make her sick.
    Simon was the only person to be attacked when he was alone. Did that mean anything?
    Tobie still wasn’t home. Quinn called Nightmare Hall, and Cath Devon told her she hadn’t seen Tobie all day.
    Where was she?
    Quinn didn’t want to stay in the room alone. She needed to talk to someone about what happened to Simon. No one knew yet.
    Ivy and Suze would sympathize. Even if they had been against Quinn being “involved” with him, they liked Simon. And while she was up there, she’d ask Suze why she lied that day.
    Quinn left Tobie a note, telling her where she was going.
    Ivy had just washed her hair and was in the bathroom, wrestling with pink foam rollers when she yelled at Quinn to “Enter!” Suze hadn’t come home yet.
    Ivy sagged against the bathroom door, her face chalky white, when Quinn told her about Simon. “There goes our theory about some maniac who hates all loving couples,” she said. “Simon might be perfectly loving,” sending Quinn a sympathetic gaze, “but he certainly wasn’t a ‘couple’ in that elevator.”
    Quinn collapsed into the chair beside Suze’s bed. “The doctor says he’s going to be okay. Have you seen Tobie?”
    Ivy shook her head. “Probably out with Danny.” She retreated into the bathroom, leaving the door open so they could talk while she finished her hair.
    “Ivy,” Quinn said, “I’m getting a little desperate here. Especially after what happened to Simon. Do you have any new theories? I still wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with what happened to Tobie and Peter Gallagher.”
    Ivy’s pink-dotted scalp peered around the corner of the bathroom doorway. “I don’t see how. Simon didn’t have any connection with that business.”
    Quinn frowned. “I know. I can’t make the connection, either. I talked to one of the policeman over at the infirmary. He’s checking on some names for me. They think there were other people with the guy who robbed Tobie’s boyfriend. The policeman said that Tobie got death threats before she testified against the guy, so someone must have been really angry with her. Maybe they followed her here, to get even.”
    “But why would they go after Simon?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” There was a small gold ring lying beside a delicate gold chain on Suze’s bedside table. Quinn a bsentmindedly picked it up and began rolling it around in her fingers as she talked. “If Gunther’s girlfriend or his pals followed Tobie here to pay her back for sending him to prison, why is Tobie still okay and every couple on this campus is afraid to go out at night? Maybe I’m reaching, making a connection where there isn’t any.”
    “You’re right,” Ivy called from the bathroom. “You are reaching. Mixing apples and oranges, if you ask me. I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other. We already decided it was someone who hates romance, who can’t stand seeing people in love. Maybe Simon wasn’t part of a couple when he was conked on the head, but he is in love. That’s enough explanation for me.”
    Quinn slid the small gold ring onto her pinkie finger and began nervously tapping out a rhythm on the wooden table. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of Tobie. Ivy might be horrified that she would even suspect her. She decided to go about it indirectly. “I keep thinking how angry