by Lev Raphael
Teaching was what I loved, what I was good at, so it didn’t seem I’d be making any changes soon unless they were forced on me.
Late Friday afternoons were lovely on campus. Staff and faculty had cleared out or were on their way off campus, students were gone for the weekend or certainly not crowding the bridges and paths. Today the air was cooler than it had been; still, the promise of a terrific spring was obvious in the glowing redbud trees and the burgeoning magnolias.
But if I’d expected not to run into anyone at Parker Hall at the end of a Friday afternoon, I was wrong. Just as I was pulling in, Lucille drove past, stopping to roll down her window and ask if Stefan and I wanted to see a movie with them that weekend. “Call me,” she said, and headed out into Friday traffic.
Getting out of my car behind the building, I saw Dean Bullerschmidt and Harry Benevento chatting directly in my path to the closest back door of Parker. Benevento walked off to his car, but Bullerschmidt saw me. With the florid bulbous-nosed face of an alcoholic and dead piggy eyes, he reminded me of Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon, but without a scintilla of charm, even the fake variety.
As always, he was dressed like a fashion plate, today in an expensive-looking pin-striped suit, oxblood wing tips, blue shirt with white collar, and a gleamingly beautiful tie and matching pocket square, in burgundy and black vertical stripes. But the elegant clothes did nothing to disguise his bulk except to give him a kind of regal looniness: King Farouk for a Day.
The dean didn’t move a muscle, just waited for me to approach as if I were a courtier crossing an intimidatingly long audience chamber to bow to my liege lord. I thought of the seventeenth century Banqueting Hall in London as I approached.
“Professor Hoffman,” he said in his colorless deep voice. “I would shake your hand, but I’ve just washed mine and they’re still damp.” His lips twitched in a half-smile.
I shrugged.
“I have heard good things about the mystery course you’re planning to teach.”
The dean had barely ever nodded to me before, and this unexpected compliment left me puzzled. Was he mocking me, and how could I tell?
Bullerschmidt stared blankly at me, waiting for a reply. “Thank you,” was what I managed, keenly aware that this was the man who had ultimate say over whether I got tenure or not. Technically, the provost made those decisions, but the current provost was only in the position temporarily, which meant the dean had more power than usual.
Bullerschmidt blinked a few times and may have said, “Well,” before turning to lumber off to Crepe Hall, I assumed, where his office and car were. What had he been doing in Parker, if that’s where he’d been? And why was my course suddenly so interesting to people? Coral Greathouse hadn’t officially offered me the course yet, and already it was “my” course. This didn’t make sense. I glanced after him and thought, as always, that he didn’t seem like the kind of person who was fat because he couldn’t stop eating; rather, there was something deliberate and menacing in his weight. It was a weapon.
I got out my key to open the door, which was locked at five on Fridays since the night classes in Parker ran only Monday through Thursday. I’m surprised there were any night classes at Parker; it had to be the gloomiest, most decrepit building on campus, a perfect nest for vampires. Just as I was stepping through the door, someone shouted, “Could you hold it!” and Bill Malatesta came loping up, thanking me profusely. “Forgot my key,” he said, several times, apologizing as if I were his supervisor or something. He descended the stairs to the basement where TAs had their cramped and smelly offices, and I climbed to the third floor, aware that Bill hadn’t hit me with any of his perpetual lightbulb jokes.
Carter Savery and Iris Bell stomped down the stairs past me, barely saying hello. Damn, those two were inseparable. On the second-floor landing Juno Dromgoole barreled through the stairwell door, hurrying past and barking out, “Sorry! Late!” the stabbing of her heels and the fog of her perfume filling the air.
Was she following Iris and Carter? Why?
I let myself into the mercifully deserted EAR office, emptied my surprisingly full mailbox, and made my way upstairs to my office to sort through it. There was a light on in the History Department office, whose door was half glass just like the door to the EAR office. I assumed Polly Flockhart was working late as usual; perhaps she felt guilty about her affair with Benevento? Unless she was channeling some distant workaholic….
The grim hallway wasn’t as dark as it would later become after sunset, but it was creepy enough, and I moved quickly down to my office, unlocking the door as swiftly as I could and turning on the lights. I settled down to sorting my mail, separating out requests from Wharton scholars, announcements of conferences, invitations to write essays for anthologies or submit papers to panels. As I did so, I was aware of how lucky I was that I never pored through my mail with the intensity Stefan did combing through his. Even in his forties, he still had the stirrings of hope that one letter would be there to change his life: the offer of a film deal on one of his books, maybe.
I could still remember the time back in Massachusetts when the long drought was broken and he placed a story with a more than respectable literary journal; his excitement as he ran up the driveway from the mailbox, his wild stare and hollering. These days, good news was likely to come through his agent if at all, and so Stefan often was deflated after sorting his mail even if there was no bad news.
I put some letters in a pile to take home with me, filed others, and turned on my computer to write a few quick replies before I forgot about them. After about an hour of work, I thought I heard a crow somewhere near the building, its strident war cry echoing through the silence. God, those cocky large birds unnerved me. The way they swarmed across campus and town, sometimes you’d think you were watching a new species flex its muscles. What was most off-putting about them for me was their fearlessness. They barely moved out of your way even if you were driving right toward them, whether they were transfixed by some juicy roadkill or simply lurking with intent to commit some raucous bird mayhem.
It was warm enough for some windows to be open, so I figured maybe the cawing was drifting in from a tree near Parker, or even a window ledge. Though bats got into the building all the time and even swooped down on people, crows hadn’t been sighted indoors yet. Nevertheless, I confess I waited until I couldn’t hear any more cawing to head down the hall to the men’s room. But when I opened the heavy dark old door, there was a strange rustling or flapping.
As I stepped nervously inside, the first thing I saw was a huge black crow glaring at me. It was planted on the forehead of a man who lay faceup near the urinals, his arms and legs at weird angles as if he’d been dropped like I Ching sticks. His face was covered in blood, and he was surely dead.
After a soulless glance at me, the crow went back to picking at one of the man’s open staring eyes. It was Delaney Kildare—I could tell from his clothes and the once-powerful shoulders. I staggered back against the closed door, and the impact sent the crow flapping out the wide-open window. I made out lashings of blood on the wall right opposite me.
Stunned, disgusted, I hauled open the door and stumbled back into the hallway. I stood there, commanding myself to think, to think clearly. Police. Call the campus police. But like a dreamer whose feet stick to a floor that’s turned hostile and muddy, I walked heavily back to my office, flashing on the blood, the crow, the eye. The blood, the crow, the eye. That horrible flapping. His arms and legs, so twisted and unnatural.
The nightmare continued as I fumbled with the lock, somehow unable to make the key work. On the point of tears I said, “Please, please let it open.” It finally did, and in a daze I dialed 911, which connected me to campus police. I gave the operator my name and said there was a dead man in Parker Hall. Third floor. Even as I said it I thought, Unreal. A joke. A prank. It couldn’t have happened.
Hanging up the phone, I kept my hand on it, staring at both of them as if I were cas
ually thumbing through a catalog, noting the interesting details. Push buttons. Numbers and letters. Fingers.
When the phone rang, my hand flew off the receiver as if it’d been burned. It rang several times before I picked it up gingerly.
“Hey, Nick—you’re still there!” It was Stefan, and he rattled on about having started preparing for Shabbat, which was coming later as the days grew longer.
“Delaney’s dead,” I told him, and saying it made the fact of his death more palpable. Yet I felt unreal, both involved with something gruesome and distant from it.
“No! Where? How? Are you okay?”
When I said I was fine and it was down the hall, Stefan yelled at me to close and lock my door and shove a chair under the knob. I followed his urgent instructions without question. Back on the phone, I asked him why.
“God, Nick! First Jesse Benevento, now Delaney right there in Parker Hall—you could be next! I’m coming right over.” He hung up.
I registered Stefan’s fear for me but felt oddly untouched by it. In lots of contemporary books, especially mysteries, it seems that when characters are shocked or horrified they throw up or somehow experience the distress in their guts. I felt nothing like that. What I did feel was cold all over, and I wished I’d brought a warmer sweater with me, though how could I have known I’d need it? For a moment I pictured my closet at home, wondering idly which sweater would have been just right.
I must have fallen asleep somehow, because the pounding at the door startled me so much that I almost fell off my chair.
“Professor Hoffman? It’s Detective Valley.”
I rose unsteadily, pulled the chair away, and opened the door. The lights were on in the hallway behind him, and I could see other campus police at work. From where I stood I could see the men’s room being sealed or marked off with yellow crime scene tape.
“We’ve closed the building. Nobody gets in or out until everyone’s been questioned. You’re first.”
Surprised I hadn’t heard any sirens, I backed up, bumping into the chair, which I shoved aside. I sat at my desk, and Valley looked around. “Do you have any booze?”
I was so startled I almost laughed. “You want a drink?”
“No—it’s for you—you look like hell.”
I guess that counted as consideration, so I thanked him, but said I didn’t have anything.
“Don’t all you profs keep Scotch around?”
“On my salary it would be Diet Coke.” The idea of a drink was so wonderful, though, that I was tempted to check Lucille’s desk. While Valley sat in the comfortable chair my students used, I got up and opened Lucille’s large file drawer. Sure enough, she had a bottle of Harvey’s Shooting Sherry. Reaching for it, I dislodged a bunch of letters that had been folded in half. I made out the signature on the top one: “Love, Delaney.”
I grabbed the bottle and slammed the drawer shut, convinced now that Delaney and Lucille had been lovers.
Valley nodded, obviously taking my haste for relief. “I thought you needed a drink.” He shook his head when I offered to pour some for him into a paper cup. I sipped from my own and felt myself calm down instantly. Was it the alcohol itself or simply the feeling that I was tending to myself?
“He’s dead, right?” I asked. “And it was Delaney Kildare? His face was—it was horribly messed up. You checked his ID?”
Valley nodded uncomfortably, clearly unhappy with being questioned.
“I mean, I figured he was from the way he was lying there, and the crow—”
“The crow,” he repeated flatly.
I started to explain, but Valley cut me off. “Tell me everything you saw from the beginning,” he said, taking out his notebook Slowly, woodenly, I started with arriving at Parker, and took him through everything that had happened, everyone I ran into, shuddering when I came to the point of describing the body and the crow.
“The call came in at six-ten. How long were you in Parker Hall before that?”
I looked at my watch. “The building was locked when I got here, so it was at least five. I worked for about an hour.”
“Doing what?”
“I told you already. Going through my mail.” I poured myself some more sherry.
“You do that every Friday at this time?”
“No. Sometimes I don’t come in until Monday.”
“Then why today?”
I shrugged. “I was done at home and thought I’d stop by.”
“When did you last see the deceased before you found his body?”
“The last time I saw him?” I coughed, damning myself for sounding nervous.
“Take your time,” he said, head down, writing.
“Earlier this afternoon.”
Valley’s head snapped up, his eyes suspicious. “Today? Where?”
“At my house. He wanted to talk about a course I may teach next year.”
His face registered that he thought it was unusual. “Couldn’t he have called you?”
“Delaney’s—He wanted to be my TA for a course, my teaching assistant. He’s been pursuing me about it.”
Now Valley was leaning forward. “He was stalking you?”
“No, not at all. I mean—” God, everything sounded wrong when someone was dead.
Leaning back, Valley said softly, “Did you two have an argument?”
Maybe I’d had too much sherry too quickly, but I shouted at him. “You’re crazy! You think I killed Delaney and then waltzed down to my office to report it? I didn’t hate him, he didn’t hate me. He wanted to teach a course with me!”
Unperturbed by my outburst, and jotting something down, Detective Valley moved on. “I met him here a few days ago, when there was that hate incident with the postcard. He was acting, let’s say, protective toward your officemate.”
I nodded and said, “Lucille Mochtar,” but of course Valley knew her name, since he’d questioned her.
“What kind of relationship did she have with the deceased?”
“He was her advisee,” I said, determined not to say more.
“Anything else?” Valley wondered, with a leering tone of voice.
I shook my head, thinking of the letters just across the office in her desk. “I won’t speculate about a friend.”
Something in my demeanor must have given me away; he said, “Is there a husband? How’s the husband feel about all this?”
“I want to go home. Why don’t you question me there?”
“No way. I want to know everyone who might have had a reason to kill Delaney Kildare, if he was killed.”
Incredulous, I said, “If he was killed? What do you think happened to him? He couldn’t get the paper towel dispenser to work, yanked on it too hard, and gave himself a fatal concussion?”
With no irony, Valley noted, “You’ve got a lively imagination. But you’re not an ME, and the body hasn’t been examined yet.”
Suddenly it hit me. “Jeez. It’s Friday again,” I breathed, making the connection with last Friday’s riot and Jesse’s death. “There’s a serial killer on campus, killing people on Fridays.”
Valley put his pad down. “Listen to me,” he snapped. “Delaney Kildare could have had a stroke, a heart attack, whatever. Last year an SUM cheerleader died running to catch a bus, remember? She was an athlete, in perfect condition. So don’t spread rumors about what could or could not be going on.”
I don’t know why I felt so calm then, unless it was my typical pleasure seeing Valley at any sort of disadvantage. “You know it’s too late. This is going to be all over campus, it probably is right now, and all over the media soon, even if I don’t say a word to anybody.” A stocky campus cop knocked, leaned in, and said, “There’s a professor downstairs says he wants to see this guy.” He pointed at me.
“That’s Stefan,” I said. “I want to go home.” Valley held up a finger and told the cop to wait: “I’ll let you go after two more questions. Who else did you see in Parker or nearby before you picked up your mail?”
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I raided off the names while Valley copied them down: Iris Bell, Carter Savery, Juno Dromgoole, Harry Benevento, Bill Malatesta, Dean Bullerschmidt.
“Who would have a reason to kill Delaney Kildare?” Exhausted, stunned, I said, “Ask them. I have to go home.” Valley relented and told the cop to escort me outside. Did he think I would go anywhere else? Valley shut his pad and stepped into the hallway, waiting. I replaced the sherry bottle without opening Lucille’s desk drawer all the way, closed the lights, and locked the door. Then I trailed downstairs after the cop, determined to ignore the activity at the other end of the hallway. For some reason, he tried to make conversation. “Dangerous place, SUM. I thought this would be easy work after being a state trooper.” I don’t know if I even acknowledged him by anything more than a grunt or two. Staggering outside into the welcoming night, breathing freely, I fell into Stefan’s arms.
“I’m so sorry,” he kept saying as he led me to my car. “Are you okay to drive? Because we could go in my car and pick yours up tomorrow.”
Through half-shut eyes I made out an ambulance, several campus police cars, and a growing crowd of gawkers. I suppose I got into my car, fastened the seat belt, and followed Stefan’s Volvo home, because a few minutes later we were in our driveway, and Stefan was opening the front door for me. I looked around as if expecting everything in the hallway to be shattered, ruined. But the Regency-style console table and mirror gleamed their typical bright welcome. I drifted into the living room, sank onto the couch, and curled up.
“What do you need?” Stefan asked. “Tylenol? A drink? Hot bath? Valium?”
As if I were reading tea leaves, a line from Play It as It Lays floated up through my consciousness: “In the whole world there was not as much sedation as there was instantaneous peril.”
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked, as Stefan sat by my side. “Why does this keep happening to me? Am I being punished for something? What did I do to keep running into death? It used to be something I only saw in movies or on the news. I grew up in New York City and never even saw a car accident, but I come to Michigan and it’s a Stephen King novel. I thought life was quiet in the Midwest.”
