by Glen Ebisch
DEATH OF A SURVIVALIST
BY
GLEN EBISCH
Copyright © 2019 Glen Ebisch
All rights reserved.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Chapter 1
Charles Bentley sat in his office at Opal College and gazed thoughtfully out the window at the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. It was late September, and in the distance he could see the subtle start of the color changes in the leaves that in another month would turn the landscape into a blaze of red and gold. Although he had sat in this same spot for over thirty years, he never got tired of watching the seasonal transformations of the countryside. In middle age he had found them vaguely distressing markers of the passage of time, time he should be putting to a more productive use by writing more and advancing in his field of American literature. Now he simply accepted it as a sign of inevitable change, something to be relaxed into and enjoyed.
Although officially retired, he had been talked into returning to teach one course this semester because the college was short-staffed in his field. The lack of adequate faculty was partially his fault since he had been instrumental in getting one of his colleagues arrested for murder, a result that he viewed with a mixture of satisfaction and regret.
Charles forced his mind back to his preparation for class the next day. He was teaching nineteenth century American literature, and preparing to lecture on James Fennimore Cooper. He was planning to begin with Mark Twain’s criticism of Cooper, which was rather nasty, but in Charles’ opinion some of the best literary criticism was a bit snarky. He was diving back into the Twain essay when there was a knock on his open door. A large man stood there wearing a red flannel shirt open over a black T-shirt.
“May I come in?”
“Of course,” Charles said. He’d been waiting for two days for the maintenance man to appear. “It’s the window behind me that sticks.”
The large man stepped into the office, appearing momentarily confused.
“I could take a look at it for you, but I’m not the janitor.”
“Oh,” Charles said nonplused. “Sorry, I thought you were because …”
“Of the way I’m dressed. I get that a lot.”
He walked up to the desk and stuck out his hand. “I’m Sebastian Locke.”
Charles got to his feet and shook the offered hand, which grabbed his in a firm, not to say painful, grip. The name was familiar to him, as if he had heard it recently, but it didn’t seem to him that it was the name of a colleague or a fellow scholar. Then his eyes fell on the sheet of paper on his desk advertising a talk being given on campus that afternoon, and there in large print Sebastian Locke was listed as the speaker in a presentation sponsored jointly by the English and Philosophy Departments. Relieved that he could identify the man, he motioned for him to take a seat. Locke reminded him of a middle-aged Hemingway with a full beard only flecked with gray, rather than pure white as Hemingway’s had been when people called him Papa. Locke also had something of the same swaggering, pugnacious air.
Charles took another peek at the flyer while the man settled into the chair, and noted that he was going to be talking about survivalism. That meant little to Charles except for conjuring up a vague picture of people living out in the woods preparing either for an attack by the federal government assisted by UN black helicopters or for the breakdown of all governmental order leading to a dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest scenario: paranoia writ large, in his opinion.
“I just came down from the Northeast Kingdom this morning,” Locke said.
Charles was enough of a New Englander to know that was the area of eastern Vermont right up against the Canadian border, a three-and-a-half hour journey north from the college. Although Charles had never been there, he knew it was beautiful and rustic. Not a bad place to sit around waiting for Armageddon.
“So you’re here to give a talk,” Charles said, wondering why the man had seen fit to visit him.
“That’s one reason why I’m here. But my daughter just started as a student at the college, so I’m also taking the opportunity to visit her. In fact, she’s in your nineteenth century literature course. Her name is Victoria, but she goes by Tori. Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to remember her. In my experience most professors don’t bother to learn student names. It’s beneath them.”
Charles bridled. “I always learn my students’ names by the end of the first week of class, and since, in this case, there are only ten students, I certainly know who your daughter is.”
Locke gave him a long look as if seeing him for the first time.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”
Charles nodded, wondering what else he could have had in mind. “Is your daughter enjoying it here so far?”
“She seems to be. I wasn’t keen on her coming to Opal, too elitist for my taste. In fact, I tried to convince her that going to college at all was probably pointless given what’s coming. But her mother insisted.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Yes, Amherst,” he said, naming Opal College’s most illustrious competitor in the central part of the state and at least as elitist. “That’s probably why she insisted on coming here. Most children rebel against their parents.”
Charles thought about his daughter Amy and her more quiet form of resistance.
“Will you be reading Henry David Thoreau in class?” asked Locke.
“Yes, in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. I’ve always thought of Thoreau as an early survivalist with his talk of men leading lives of quiet desperation and then his going off alone to live in a shanty he built next to Walden Pond. But I don’t suppose you see him that way.”
“Thoreau was actually very social. Even when he lived at Walden he frequently went home to his mother’s boarding house for meals. He didn’t live in a bunker with enough canned food for a year, an ocean of bottled water, and enough weapons to start a small war.”
Charles realized he as being deliberately provocative, but the man annoyed him with his snide comments.
Locke’s body seemed to tense and an expression flashed across his face that made Charles wonder for an instant if the man was going to take a swing at him. Then Locke smiled and seemed to force himself to relax.
“True, you have to be ready for when things fall apart, but there’s more to survivalism than that. It’s also about hanging on to what America wa
s like in the early nineteenth century before manufacturing and greed took over.”
Charles shrugged. “There was a time in human history before factories, but not before greed.”
“You’re a cynic.”
“Just a realist. Idyllic pastoral visions of a time that never was put my teeth on edge.”
Locke sat back in his chair and glanced around the room as if he expected it to tell him something.
“I checked you out on the internet. You’re in your late sixties. That would put you in your early twenties at the time of the war in Vietnam. How did you get out of serving?”
“I didn’t.”
Locke’s face registered surprise. “I’ll bet not many professors can say the same. How do you feel about having been there?”
Charles paused to reflect. “I have mixed feelings. Since I thought the war was wrong, I consider myself a moral coward for fighting there. On the other hand, I would have regretted missing the most important experience of my generation.”
“The violent experiences most often are. Your ambivalent feelings about your service just prove that you’re a conflicted liberal at heart. But I bet you learned a lot of valuable life lessons.”
Charles remained silent, and Locke suddenly leaned across the desk, an intense expression on his face.
“Do you know a Professor Russell Carlson?”
Charles nodded. “He’s in the history department.”
“What do you know about him?”
“That he’s a respected scholar and a popular teacher.”
Locke smirked. “He’s one of Tori’s teachers. He asked her out to dinner. I don’t think that’s appropriate for a scholar or a teacher.”
The man’s hands had bunched into fists, and the atmosphere was suddenly once again alive with his anger and the potential for violence. Charles was aware that Carlson had something of a reputation for having relationships with students, but he wasn’t about to share that and throw more fuel on the fire that was already obviously consuming Locke.
“Tori turned him down, but I’m concerned that there will be repercussions. He could always take out his resentment at being rejected by giving her a bad grade.”
“She could report him. There’s a committee charged with hearing those types of complaints.”
Locke snorted. “College, like life, is a series of power relationships, and I doubt that the student ever wins in the long run.”
Charles was about to say that times had changed, when Locke’s cell phone played a raucous military tune. He checked the number then stood up and once against extended his hand.
“It’s been interesting talking to you. If you have the time, perhaps you’d consider coming to my lecture this afternoon.”
“I’ll certainly think about it,” Charles said.
Locke smiled as if he didn’t think he would.
After the man left, Charles reflected for moment on what had taken place, then he picked up the phone to once again call maintenance about the stuck window.
Chapter 2
After eating a sandwich at his desk and simultaneously preparing class for the next day, Charles found, as one o’clock drew closer, that he was actually curious to hear Sebastian Locke give his presentation on survivalism. Meeting the man had piqued his interest. Conflicted liberal that he was, he though it always good to step outside one’s comfort zone and to consider ideas that one might normally reject out of hand. Carefully locking both his desk and office door, a practice he had taken to since recently finding a dead body in his office, Charles walked down the stairs and out the door of the English Department building, an ivy covered stone structure that went back to the early nineteenth century. He walked slowly across the quadrangle, nodding to the students and faculty he knew, and enjoying the clear dry fall air.
The library was a contemporary building constructed only a decade ago to replace the nineteenth century original, which, ironically, now housed the information technology offices. Several students were parading in front of the library door with signs reading “Shut Down Fascist Speech!” Charles recognized one of the marchers as Kevin Rhodes, a senior English major, and he wondered if he should find some time in his course to discuss the value of freedom of speech. Give the profanity students frequently used in their casual conversation among themselves, he was always surprised how sensitive their ears were to hearing ideas with which they didn’t agree.
Locke was giving his presentation in the library auditorium, which was just off the lobby. As he walked inside, Charles saw Yuri Abramovitch, chair of the English Department standing near the doorway of the hall shifting nervously from foot to foot, watching a thin trickle of people walk by.
“Hi, Yuri,” Charles said, approaching.
“Greetings, Charles. I would not have thought you would be interested in this sort of thing,” Yuri said.
“Survivalism?”
Yuri nodded. “In my old country we were all worried about surviving for one reason or another, but here I wouldn’t think it would be such a concern. In the land of the free, it seems a bit eccentric.”
Since he was a former citizen of the Soviet Union, Yuri’s political views could be unusual but predictable.
“Are we getting a good crowd?” asked Charles.
Yuri shook is head. “A few faculty and staff, and a smattering of students. I doubt they even know what the word “survivalism” means. We should advertise our events more extensively to the wider community. There is nothing wrong with blowing your own trombone.”
Although Yuri was a world-renowned interpreter of James Joyce, his grasp of American colloquialisms was spotty. It took Charles a second to grasp “blow your own horn.”
“Probably the protestors outside don’t help.”
“Yes. They need to spend some time under a truly oppressive government to learn the value of freedom.”
“It’s one o’clock,” Charles said, checking is watch. “Where’s our speaker?”
Yuri glanced around nervously, as if Locke were hiding nearby, being intentionally coy. “I left him in the lounge in the basement an hour ago. He said that he needed some time to prepare.”
“I didn’t know there was a lounge downstairs.”
“It was originally for the staff, but they objected to it because there aren’t any windows.” Yuri looked in the direction of the stairwell. “He said he’d come up on his own a few minutes before the talk.”
“Maybe he lost track of time.”
“I think I better go down and get him. Would you mind coming along with me?”
Charles gave him a quizzical glance.
“To be honest, he frightens me a little. He reminds me of a party apparatchik I once knew in Kiev who was in charge of making people disappear.”
“Sure, I’ll tag along.”
They went down the stairs and along a lengthy corridor until they came to a set of double doors. Being underground with no access to daylight was claustrophobic, and Charles could see why the staff had wanted their lounge elsewhere. Yuri paused before the doors and knocked. When there was no response he slowly opened the door partway.
“Mr. Locke,” he called.
Yuri froze in the doorway and refused to budge. Pushing past him, Charles stepped into the room. Fifteen feet in front of him, Sebastian Locke was lying on the tan wall-to-wall carpeting. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. A bloodstain had begun to spread across his chest. Four feet closer to the door in the center of the floor lay an automatic pistol. Charles moved cautiously into the room, knowing that he’d be in trouble with the police if he contaminated a crime scene. He quickly glanced around the room to see if anyone else was there. A folder was open on a coffee table in front of the sofa, as though Locke had been going over some notes. A lamp had been knocked off an end table suggesting there had been a struggle. Charles wondered if the gun might not be Locke’s own. As a survivalist, he could well have travelled around armed, even though there are strict gun laws in Massachu
setts.
“It appears that he has bought the pasture,” Yuri said.
“That’s ‘bought the farm,’” Charles corrected absentmindedly.
“Do you think we should notify the police?” Yuri asked.
Charles almost asked what the alternative might be—to shove the body behind the sofa and report that the speaker was called away on an emergency. He could understand why someone who came from the Soviet Union might want to avoid contact with the police, but this time it would be unavoidable.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and send the crowd home, while I call the police.”
“What should I tell them?” Yuri asked.
Charles paused. “Say that the speaker has been suddenly taken ill.”
Yuri almost smiled. “There is a nice irony in that. It comes close to the truth yet deceives. You would have held a high position in my old country.”
After Yuri headed back down the hall, Charles closed the door and took one last glance around the room. Having experienced the living Sebastian Locke, it was hard to believe that such a dynamic, even violent force could be so suddenly extinguished. Charles half expected the man to rise up from the carpet with a defiant laugh and stride across the room towards him with a clenched fist. When that didn’t happen Charles opened the door and went into the hall. Taking out his cell phone, he placed a call to Joanna Thorndike, the chief of detectives.
“Hello, Charles, how are you today?” she answered, recognizing his number. They had been on several dates over the past few months since he had last been involved in a murder.
“Not so good. Actually, I’m calling to report a murder.”
There was a pause on the other end as if Joanna was trying to determine whether he was serious or engaging in a tasteless joke. Finally, she must have decided that his humor didn’t veer to anything quite so bizarre.
“Who’s been murdered?”
“A man by the name of Sebastian Locke, he was on campus to give a speech. Yuri and I just found him in a lounge in the library basement. He appears to have been murdered.”
“Don’t let anyone touch anything. I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll also send an ambulance and notify the state forensics team. You said the body is in the downstairs lounge?”
