Red Queen's Run

by Morris, Bourne

  “Okay, I get it. You get tenure, you keep your job, your family settles in and your reluctance to move becomes stronger. But why the anger?”

  “Because, after a while, you dig in. You resist the challenge of ideas that threaten yours. And you indulge in games of passive aggression.”

  “The aggression I saw in the faculty meeting yesterday was hardly passive. I was waiting for a fist fight or a riot to begin.”

  Henry had sighed and folded his hands on his desk. “Things should get better. New course plans impinge on budgets and make faculty crazy sometimes. We just have to outlive the resentment for now. Meanwhile, please know how grateful I am for your help in all this. You’re the one I trust most. You keep me sane.”

  That was the last time I had seen Henry Brooks alive.

  God, I would miss him.

  I was sitting lost in sadness when my phone rang again. A second cup of coffee in hand, I reluctantly answered on the fourth ring.

  “Ah, Meredith. So good to get you directly,” said Philip Lewis, the university president. “My dear, I appreciate how difficult this must be for you. Difficult for all of us. I am so sorry.”

  The president had seemed fond of Henry even though he once expressed dismay over the in-fighting in the school. “The students are aware of the faculty fights,” he had said to Henry. “That’s not good. You will have to find ways to ameliorate this situation.”

  “We will miss Henry greatly,” Lewis said. “I hope you and your faculty will be able to rally to the needs of the school at this tragic time.”

  “I hope so too,” I said.

  “Have you talked to them yet?”

  “Only to Edwin Cartwell who found the body and was at the school tonight. But my machine is blinking and I suspect the word is out.”

  “You’ll have to call each one, you know,” Lewis said. “A hard task but your leadership is important now. Let me know if you think I should talk to any of them tonight. Otherwise, I’ll plan on coming over to the journalism school just before noon to meet with everyone. Of course, I’ll need to see you and the provost beforehand. Can you be in my office at ten o’clock?”

  “I’ll see you at ten, President Lewis.”

  “After your calls, I hope you’ll be able to get some rest. I know this is a particular blow for you, but we must remember, Henry Brooks did have that heart problem a while back, so perhaps his death was not totally unexpected. Good night.”

  Not totally unexpected? For God’s sake, not expected either. Now what? What about the school, the faculty? What about me?

  I started making calls to the faculty. My first was to Max Worthington, the easiest to talk to, and one of my confidants on the faculty. Max taught online journalism and became my first friend when I moved here. He and his wife Trudy invited me to dinner twice a week during my first semester. By the time I reached him, he had heard about Henry’s death from three other faculty members.

  “I feel terrible,” he said. “How the hell did Henry fall down the stairs? He used those stairs every day.”

  “I don’t know, Max. And the police seem uncertain. Tomorrow morning I’m seeing the detective who was at the building tonight. Maybe he’ll have more information from the medical examination.”

  “How are you holding up, Red?”

  “I’m exhausted, but I have to call the others so I’m drinking lots of coffee.”

  “Henry was such a good guy. I don’t know how he put up with those clowns we work with. Terrorists, all three of them.” Max seemed seriously upset. I tried to comfort him.

  “Maybe Henry’s death will make people start to behave,” I said. “Maybe we will all see we should be engaged in mourning not combat. Besides, Henry was usually their primary target, maybe with him gone...”

  “Red, do you think his fall was an accident?”

  The implication of his question hit hard.

  “Jesus, Max, what else could it have been? President Lewis seems convinced Henry had a heart attack. Do you think it might not have been?”

  “No, Red. It’s just that the last faculty meeting was so brutal on Henry, I wondered...”

  “You see through a glass very darkly, Dr. Worthington.”

  “It’s my nature. But listen, I’ll let you go. You have more people to call. You might want to forget the coffee and switch to Scotch.” Max’s voice softened. “Take care of yourself, hon. I know how rough this is on you and it’s going to be particularly hard for a while. Let me know what I can do to help.”

  It was after midnight when I finished phoning and got to bed. I lay, curled in fetal position, trying not to think about how much I missed Henry and trying to erase the image of his broken body.

  It was not the first time I had seen a body on a staircase. One afternoon when I was nine, my mother drank an entire bottle of gin, then got up and pitched forward down the wooden stairs leading to our basement. I heard the sound of her fall from my perch on the window seat in the living room where I’d gone to avoid her. I raced to the basement door. My mother lay on the dark stairs, feet facing me, one shoe off. Out cold. I ran for help. The neighbors came and telephoned my father, who raced home from his classroom. They carried her up the stairs and put her on the couch. She had vivid cuts and bruises on her face and forearms. Her hands were bloodied and full of splinters. When we opened her shirt, we found more bruises on her breasts and belly. My father broke into deep, heavy sobs. “Oh Emmy. Oh Emmy. What have you done to yourself?” He looked up at me. His eyes fixed on me as his sobs continued. The neighbors watched me—their stares sympathetic but clearly horrified. Was I supposed to have stopped her? Was I supposed to have prevented her fall? Even then, people expected too much of me.

  Chapter 4

  I got up early the next morning, showered and washed my hair. I stood naked in front of the full-length mirror as I dried my hair. Long legs, full breasts, pale skin marked by a narrow cape of freckles on my shoulders. My hips seemed wider than the last time I had looked. I turned sideways. Another few pounds and my butt would be too big. But, on the whole, my body looked good. Except it felt empty. I was thirty-five and single. I was a virtual orphan. My mother was dead and my father so lost in senility he rarely recognized me. Sadie was right. I did need a man in my life. Particularly now that I had lost Henry, I needed a broad shoulder, arms around me, someone to cradle me in bed when I wept.

  Thirty minutes later, I was still in my bedroom when the doorbell rang at exactly eight o’clock. I took one more look in the mirror before I went downstairs. I had tried on a black dress, but decided Henry would have hated me in black so I put on a red wool suit. Red was my best color. It set off my hair. Red was a positive color. And I didn’t want anyone —especially Joe Morgan—to see me looking washed out and dreary.

  Joe stood on my doorstep in a heavy leather jacket, khakis creased so sharp I wondered if he had been military before joining the police force.

  We sat in my living room drinking coffee. I told him I had to see President Lewis at ten but I would tell him everything I could before then.

  “How does the journalism school fit into the university? I am more familiar with the term college than school,” said Joe.

  “The journalism school is just like a college,” I said. “It’s an independent unit and the dean reports to the provost.”

  “That’s Fred Stoddard, right?” Joe was writing notes. “So Henry Brooks reported to Stoddard and Stoddard reports to President Lewis?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are the Associate Dean who reported to Brooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Brooks”

  “Henry hired me, helped me get tenure, and then called me into his office a year ago and told me he wanted to groom me for administrative responsibility. I thought the senior faculty might resent me in that job. But Henry said I would be
good and he needed me. There had been a lot of fighting among the faculty about the curriculum and he wanted someone objective. He was also...a wonderful friend.” I fended off tears.

  “Did any of the faculty object to your promotion?”

  “A few thought they should have been asked to vote on it, but Henry said he could exert the dean’s prerogative and promote his own choice. A few complained, but most of them went along. Some began to lobby me to get on their side of the dispute about what courses we should teach.”

  “And did you take a side?” Joe’s eyes were as green as seawater and fixed on me.

  “No, I didn’t. Henry’s decision to promote me to associate dean allowed me impartiality.”

  Joe sat back in his armchair, turned the page in his notebook and looked at me for a long minute. “Tell me about the faculty, particularly the dean’s major opponents in this argument you all were having—those who would have been on his enemies list.”

  I started with George Weinstein, a former editor whose family once owned a large metro newspaper. George taught advanced reporting, editorial writing, and editing courses. After college, he edited his family’s newspaper. After the paper was sold, he went to grad school. He inherited a great deal of money.

  “So he doesn’t have to work?”

  “I think he likes being in charge of a class. It reminds him of running a newsroom,” I said. George is a big man with broad shoulders and a loud voice. He hates to be interrupted but consistently interrupts others.

  Next, Simon Gorshak, who taught news writing and loved traditional journalism and first amendment issues. Seventy-five years old but not inclined to retire. A perpetual grouch, Simon was once dean of the school years ago, long before Henry, long before Henry’s predecessor.

  “What Simon never mentions is that he lost the confidence of his faculty and was forced to resign as dean.”

  Joe looked up from his notebook. “Resign?” Green eyes widened. “If he resigned, why is he still here?”

  “Because when a dean resigns he often just goes back into the faculty as a tenured full professor. He doesn’t have to leave the university, just the dean’s position.”

  An ironic smile looked good on Joe’s strong face. “And how does that work out?”

  “Sometimes the old dean can be a real pain in the ass, especially for the new dean.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Joe, stretching his arms. “Okay. Who else?”

  “Edwin Cartwell, whom you met last night. Edwin’s a journalism historian who teaches freshman and sophomore writing classes and a graduate class in journalism history. History is also his research subject. Yale graduate, wrote for a literary magazine, then got a PhD from Georgia.”

  “Yeah, I heard a lot about Yale and the magazine last night at the station.”

  “Edwin’s very proud of his eastern heritage,” I said. “Edwin’s also a snob. A traditionalist and a snob. Still disapproves of The New York Times going from black and white to color photos on the front page.”

  “Hmm. I read the Times online edition every morning. It’s always been in color.”

  How about that. A Nevada cop who read The New York Times.

  “So, those are the three who fought with the dean,” said Joe, resuming his note taking. “Did Henry Brooks have any strong supporters besides you?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, thinking fondly of Max Worthington. “Most of us actually supported the dean. Max Worthington and Phyllis Baker were very vocal at meetings.”

  “And the rest of the faculty?”

  “They mostly observed,” I said, noticing the clock read twenty past nine. “I could say more about them, but I think I should be leaving for my meeting with President Lewis.”

  We stood up simultaneously and he reached out his hand. A warm, strong handshake. “Thank you, Red. I appreciate the background information.”

  “Why are you so interested in the faculty dispute? Does it have anything to do with what happened to Henry?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Joe, reaching for his jacket. He stuffed his notebook into his pocket and turned toward the door. “But any accident resulting in death requires investigation.”

  I felt a chill in spite of my warm wool suit. “Do the police think...?”

  “The police don’t think anything yet, Red. Except for me. I personally think I’d like to know a lot more about the journalism school if you can tolerate my curiosity.”

  “You’ll find I’m very tolerant, Detective Morgan.”

  “Joe, please. We did meet at Elaine’s,” he said, this time with a broader smile. He walked into the hall to my front door. “May I call you?”

  “Please do.”

  Please do.

  Chapter 5

  The day was crisp and cold, the campus covered with blinding bright snow. I walked from the journalism parking lot to the central quad. Huge elm trees lined the snowy lawn, their branches bereft of leaves, stout long-armed guardians of the center of campus marking the paths on either side of the quad leading to the administration building. A bell tower chimed, assuring me it was just ten o’clock as I climbed the stairs to Philip Lewis’s large office overlooking the quad below.

  “Good to see you, Meredith,” said Lewis, extending his hand. Lewis was in his late seventies, his skin as thin as tissue paper, but his grip firm. “Although I would have preferred happier circumstances.” He motioned me to a chair at the large oval table in the center of his office. The provost, Fred Stoddard, sat on the other side shuffling through some papers. He looked up.

  “How you holding up, Red?” Stoddard said. Did everyone think I was going to fall apart?

  “It’s going to be a hard day,” I said. I liked both of these guys, but I was still preoccupied with the image of Henry lying dead on the staircase, and not quite ready to engage in political niceties with university brass.

  “Well, at least you look well. I’m glad you’re not wearing black.” I felt like a bug on the table. Stoddard was a big, bald man and the morning sun was reflecting off the top of his head.

  “Did you reach all the faculty?’

  “All of them. I finished at midnight.”

  “How are they taking this?”

  I took a beat and smoothed my skirt. “They’re in shock and a few seem truly grief-stricken.” I thought of Edwin singing Ding Dong. “Others seem resigned to the loss and worried about the future.”

  “They will all need your leadership, Meredith. I hope you’re up for this,” said Lewis. “We cannot put a hold on things while we mourn Henry. We are close to Finals Week, and the faculty and students need the journalism school to keep functioning.”

  Naturally, that’s what this meeting is about. Maintenance work. Student needs first, personal grief second.

  “And the major donors and alumni need to be reassured that all will keep going without Henry.”

  Oh yes, donors and alums second. Grief third.

  “And you have an accrediting committee visiting next semester,” said Lewis.

  “All of which means we’ll need to appoint an interim dean,” said Stoddard.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Please God, appoint a good one. This change is bound to scrape the wounds. I looked away from them toward the window where the sun bounced off the snow and reflected white light into the room.

  “We think it should be you,” said Lewis, pulling his chair closer to mine.

  Oh, God.

  I should have seen this coming, but the thought of managing that cage of tigers made my stomach ache. “Thank you both. I know I am the Associate Dean, but I think the faculty might prefer someone a bit older, more senior.”

  “Some probably would like an old turkey,” said Stoddard. “But the fact is, you are the best qualified to get everyone through this semester and next semester’s search for a permanent dean. H
enry was very high on you.” He indicated the papers he had been shuffling. “I’ve been reading last semester’s evaluations and, Meredith, you are clearly the best choice.”

  I felt my face redden. “What about Simon Gorshak?” I said, pretending humility and hoping they would not take the suggestion seriously. “He’ll expect it.” Gorshak was, in large part, responsible for some of the more venomous statements in faculty meetings. But, he was also the most senior of the faculty.

  “Not a chance. Simon never learns. He is too contentious,” replied Lewis, much to my relief.

  “Too committed to his own dammed agenda,” said Stoddard. “Bad enough he’s tenured and we have to keep him on the faculty.”

  Interesting. I didn’t know Stoddard had been watching us that carefully. I started to appreciate the provost.

  “How about it Meredith? The school really needs you.”

  I nodded. I was flattered, even excited in spite of my sadness. “I may need some help from you,” I said. “Larry Coleman is going up for tenure and is terrified some of the senior faculty will sabotage him.”

  “I’ve got your back,” said Stoddard. “And Philip can help, too.”

  Lewis smiled and patted my hand. He made me feel like a little girl rather than an associate professor about to be interim dean.

  “I’ll be grateful to both of you,” I said, just starting to grasp the idea that I would be the top management of the journalism school until we hired a new permanent dean. George Weinstein would be furious. Edwin Cartwell would plot treason. Simon Gorshak would get up early to slash my tires.