The Kingdom of Dog

by Neil S. Plakcy

  As the three of us were leaving Fields Hall, a security guard confronted us and asked Sally and me for identification.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience, folks,” he said when we had showed him our campus ID cards. “We’ve increased security patrols because of the murder. You be careful walking around now. The police have been out back in the garden, but the rest of the campus is – well—whoever killed Mr. Dagorian could still be out there.”

  “We’ll be careful,” I said. “Both of us are parked right behind the building.”

  “Let’s face it, Steve, Leighville isn’t as safe as we’d like it to be,” Sally said as we stepped outside. “Sometimes I get really scared when I’m walking to my car if there’s no one around.”

  I remembered the homeless man who had menaced me and Rochester at the printers. Sally was right, the campus could be scary sometimes, especially at times like this when the students were off on break. And when there was a killer on the loose.

  We walked down the broad curving driveway toward the parking lot, enveloped by a velvety darkness. Rochester and I dropped Sally off at her car, and he stopped periodically to sniff and pee. Above us, thousands of stars twinkled. “Such a beautiful night,” I said. “It’s hard to believe something so horrible just happened.” A car with a noisy muffler rushed past us and I shivered.

  As I drove home, the streets were still and quiet, but I knew someone, somewhere in that peaceful town, or on the highways leading away, had blood on his hands. Joe’s murder was a puzzle, and since I decoded my first childhood rebuses and threaded my way out of cartoon mazes, I had been unable to resist an intellectual challenge.

  “I can’t figure it out,” I said to Rochester. “Why would someone want to kill Joe? And why tonight of all nights? I mean, think of the risks. Over three hundred people, and any one of them could have seen the killer go into the garden with Joe or seen him cut Joe’s throat. And come to think of it, if you were wearing a tuxedo, how would you get rid of a bloody knife?”

  I kept thinking about it as I got undressed. From an intellectual standpoint it made no sense. The risks were too great. Was the violoinst correct, that Joe had been killed by a disgruntled parent? Who would care so much about sending a kid to Eastern to kill over it? I mean, Eastern’s a good school, but despite what Babson believes it’s not exactly Harvard.

  Then again, if you wanted lots of other suspects, a big party was just the ticket. Ample opportunities for alibis. Joe had left the ballroom halfway through Babson’s speech, and anyone who had an eye on him could have followed him and come at him unawares.

  Or Joe could have gone willingly to the garden with someone. Any alumnus who needed a private word about an applicant, any faculty member or fellow staffer. Was Joe’s death something personal, something to do with his job, or a crime against the college? What if Joe had surprised someone out in the garden—a thief there to break into cars, for example? Or any other kind of criminal? And if I were Hercule Poirot, would I have an accent and a silly mustache?

  Rochester settled on the floor next to my bed and went right to sleep, but I couldn’t nod off. I kept thinking about Joe, and somewhere around three o’clock I decided I was going to find out who killed him myself. Though I trusted Tony to investigate the crime, I didn’t think anyone else at Eastern cared enough about Joe to help Tony out. My job might depend on my ability to make people feel safe on campus again and feel good enough about Eastern to open their wallets. I didn’t think I could feel good until whoever cut Joe’s throat was behind locked prison doors. Just the way I’d been.

  5 - The Eastern Experience

  When Rochester and I got to my office at nine the next morning, there were already a half-dozen messages from reporters who wanted to get the scoop on Joe’s murder. The morning papers came in, and, as I expected, “Eastern College admissions director murdered at gala party” made big headlines.

  The college had a press office which handled everything except issues related to the campaign, which fell to me. Even so, I spent the next couple of hours answering and returning calls, often from worried parents concerned for their childrens’ safety, and working on a statement for the College about Joe’s life and death.

  Around eleven, I walked down the hall to the admissions office, where I found Sally at her desk, reading applications on her computer screen. A stack of viewbooks teetered on the windowsill as I looked at the flag outside the building, flying at half-staff for Joe. The pile of glossy books, depicting “The Eastern Experience,” slid off the sill and scattered on the floor.

  “Leave ‘em,” Sally said. “God, do I hate viewbooks! Every time you go to a college fair or a high school or a candidate reception, you’ve got to carry hundreds of them, even though everything in there is on our website. Joe insisted. And they’re always heavy and slippery, too, so you can drop a whole box of them just when you’re late for a presentation and have them spill all over the linoleum in some God-forsaken high school in the boondocks. Fortunately, Babson thinks they’re a waste of money, so with Joe gone this is probably our last batch.”

  I sat down in a spindle chair with an Eastern seal on its back, picked one up and flipped through it. It was filled with glossy pictures of Eastern students studying, playing, eating, and resting on the lawn. Classrooms and teachers, local hangouts and the library, the computer room at midnight, filled with avid hackers. It was supposed to represent the sum of the Eastern experience.

  You never saw an ugly student in a viewbook, or one with pimples. You never saw students arrested for drunk driving, or shots of the campus birth control clinic or the suicide hotline, even though they were all part of the Eastern experience, too. And now murder was another part. That was guaranteed not to be in the next viewbook.

  “I’m sure you’ll be getting a visit from that police detective you saw in my office last night, Tony Rinaldi,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about Joe and what’s been going on in the office.”

  “Do you think I’m a suspect?” Sally asked.

  I laughed. Sally was just a kid, after all—barely out of college herself. I couldn’t see her cutting Joe’s throat.

  “Seriously, Steve. They always go around and ask who benefits from this death, and I guess I do, in a queer way. I’m responsible for admissions now. I met with Babson for a few minutes this morning and he gave me his vote of confidence. Of course they’ll have to post the position and accept applications, but he made it sound like I had the inside track.”

  “I don’t see Tony accusing you of murder just to get Joe’s job,” I said, standing up. “All he’d have to do is look around at all this chaos. Who’d want this job?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Sally said as I walked out.

  I ran into Tony in the hallway as I returned to my office. There were shadows under his eyes, and though his khaki shirt was neatly pressed he didn’t look as ready for action as he usually did. Rochester jumped up from his place in the corner to nuzzle him as we walked in. Tony ignored him, sitting down across from me.

  “You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night,” I said.

  “Nope. You get a crazy little thing like a murder, it tends to keep you working long after your bedtime.” He sat down across from me, laying his heavy coat and Russian wool hat on the chair next to him. “I went over all the witness statements and put together subpoenas for the victim’s cell phone and email records. Not a quick process, I can tell you. How about you? You get out of here at a reasonable hour?”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t sleep too well. I kept thinking about Joe.”

  “I’ve been trying to put together his movements last night,” Tony said. “When was the last time you saw him, before you found the body?”

  “Halfway through President Babson’s speech, about nine o’clock, I saw him leave the ballroom. I don’t know where he went.”

  “See anyone follow him?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about the garden? You se
e anyone out there, or anyone coming in?”

  “Yeah. The Rising Sons were out there before they started to sing.” I did the same thing Sally had done, miming smoking dope. Rochester looked up at me and cocked his head.

  “Crime scene guys found a joint stubbed out,” he said. “Anyone else?”

  I closed my eyes and thought for a minute. “Norah Leedom. Joe’s ex-wife. She came back inside as I was looking for Joe.” I felt a momentary pang of guilt. I didn’t want to be the one who sent Norah to the electric chair; she’d always been nice to me. But if she was Joe’s killer she had to be brought to justice. “I know she and Joe have had some spectacular arguments.”

  “Any idea what those arguments were about?”

  I shook my head. “When I worked in his office, sometimes I’d hear one side of a conversation, Joe yelling at her about some trivial thing like putting out the garbage. By the time I got back here they were already divorced. They were always nice to each other in public, but I know he still felt bitter about her.”

  “What time did you see her?”

  “Just before I found the body. I was talking to her when I saw Rochester run by.”

  When he heard his name, Rochester got up and came over to me. I picked up his rawhide bone from the floor and stuck it in his mouth, and he settled down to chew.

  “Wasn’t it strange for her to go outside like that? It was pretty cold last night.”

  “She smokes,” I said. “Cigarettes. I often see her sneaking outside between her classes. And I did mention it to her—she said something about being from Vermont, how the cold didn’t bother her.”

  Tony looked up from his note pad. “Let’s go back to the deceased. Tell me what you know about him.”

  “I’ve known Joe for years. He had just started in the admissions office when I was a high school senior, applying to colleges. I was in the first class he admitted, and I worked in his office for a year when I was an undergrad. When I came back to teach here last year, Joe was one of the people who was nicest to me.”

  The phone rang. “Excuse me.” Into the phone I said, “We don’t have an official statement yet. But all statements to the press have to go through my office, or the college press bureau.” I gave the reporter directions to the campus and the name of the guy in the press bureau. Then I turned back to Tony.

  “Sorry. Where was I? Oh, I was teaching as an adjunct last fall in the English department, and I used to have coffee with Joe now and then. He was the one who told me about this job, and he gave me a good recommendation when I applied. I really owed him.”

  Rochester chewed noisily on his rawhide, only stopping when I stood up. “The phone’s not going to shut up. You want to take a walk with me and Rochester? I have a few things I should tell you and it would probably be best to say them out of the office.”

  “Sure.”

  I grabbed Rochester’s leash and put on my coat, and he shrugged back into his coat, positioning his Astrakhan hat precisely on his head. Then the three of us walked out the French doors to the garden behind Fields Hall. “Joe was a guy with a big personality, very set in his ways. There are a couple of people around here who might have had a motive to kill him.”

  “Who?”

  “In the admissions office you’re bound to make enemies. We only accept one out of every seven applicants, and if my kid didn’t get in I might get pissed off. You should talk to a guy named Bob Moran, one of our alums. Joe rejected his son, even though Moran was willing to give us a hundred grand towards the capital campaign.”

  “Bob Moran? The electric car guy?”

  Bob had been on TV a lot over the past few months, advertising his cars and how far you could drive them on a single charge. He’d had himself filmed driving along the Delaware and going in circles around Leighville, and was talking about a cross-country trip.

  “Yeah, that’s him. He was at the party last night, and I know he was angry at Joe.”

  Tony scrawled some notes while Rochester sniffed and peed.

  “Joe was stubborn and old-fashioned, and he didn’t like change,” I continued. “He was always the one who stood up and complained about new technology in the classroom, cutting down on the language requirement, all the kinds of things only academics care about. He argued with a lot of faculty and administrators who were here last night, too.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have been at the party who didn’t like him? Anyone he had a particular beef with?”

  I hesitated. Mike had been good to me, letting me bring Rochester to the office and supporting me when I argued with Joe myself. “My boss,” I said. “Mike MacCormac. This campaign is all his idea, and Joe was very opposed to it. Joe thought the money we were spending on the party last night could better have been used for scholarships, and he resented the influence Mike has over President Babson.”

  “You see if Mike went out to the garden last night?”

  I shook my head. “I was running around a lot, talking to reporters, helping Sally look for Joe, keeping an eye out for problems. I assume Mike was working the room, talking to potential donors, but I don’t remember seeing him any time after the introductions.”

  The three of us walked around the corner of Fields Hall, and acres of Pennsylvania countryside stretched before us. In the far distance I could see a thin band of the Delaware River. Allentown and Easton lay to the north, Philadelphia to the south, and Trenton somewhere to the southeast, across the river in New Jersey. Rochester kept pulling on his leash, like he had urgent business to do, and I was getting tired of having my arm pulled out of my socket.

  “Don’t tell anybody you saw me do this,” I said to Tony. I reached down and let Rochester off his leash. “Go run, boy.”

  “You realize I’m an officer of the law. There’s a leash law in Leighville.”

  “Dogs aren’t even allowed on the Eastern campus. Rochester is an exception.”

  “I’ll say. But tell me some more about how Dagorian fits into the college administration. Is there anyone else around who might resent him?”

  I contemplated Rinaldi’s question as I stared out at the sweet, pastoral countryside, undamaged as yet by the encroachments of suburbia and civilization. Rochester had his nose to the ground like a bloodhound, sniffing a trail around the garden.

  “President Babson sets all the policy around here, and he’s both the chief academic and administrative officer. Joe had his set way of doing things-- he wasn’t very flexible-- and he was mad that we were spending so much money on fund-raising and public relations. He and Babson used to be good friends but lately they’ve been at loggerheads, though not about Joe’s office. So far, we’ve been getting more and more good applicants and the college can continue to be picky about who we admit.”

  Rinaldi took a couple more notes.

  “You know, I don’t think very many people liked Joe, but I can’t think of anyone who hated him enough to kill him, either. For the most part his life was centered around Eastern. He wasn’t the kind of guy who inspired a lot of passion.”

  “Yeah, and when you read the newspaper it’s always the honor student who was kind to little old ladies who gets killed,” Tony said. “But when you get right down to it, somebody offed him for some reason.”

  I wondered about that. Did Joe have hidden secrets? Was there something none of us knew about that had caused his death? Was his murder a random act, or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Rochester disappeared around the corner of the building, heading towards the ballroom. “Come back here, you dumb dog,” I called, hurrying after him. I didn’t want campus security to see him off the leash, or him to dart back into the building without me.

  “This is why dogs should be on leashes,” Tony said, following me.

  I rounded the corner and saw Rochester still on the trail, his nose to the ground. “What are you doing, you whack-a-doodle?” I asked. “You’re a retriever, not a bloodhound.”

  He ignored me and kept
sniffing, right up to the base of a pine tree. He looked up at me and barked once, then started digging in the dirt beneath the tree. “Rochester!” I said, rushing toward him. “Stop that! You’ll get the groundskeepers after us.”

  Tony followed me over to where he was digging. When we reached him, I grabbed his collar and attached his leash. He stepped back, then looked up at me, then Tony, and barked again.

  We looked down at where he had been digging. The handle of what looked like a kitchen knife protruded from the dirt.

  6 – Administrative Changes

  “You can’t tell me the dog knew that knife was there,” Tony said, as he pulled an evidence bag from the pocket of his insulated jacket.

  “I’m not telling you anything,” I said. “You saw it for yourself.”

  Tony leaned down and, using the bag over his hand, pulled the knife from the soil. There were brown stains on the blade, and though they could have been dirt, I was willing to bet they were blood.

  “Rochester did have blood on his nose last night,” I said. “And you saw the way he had his nose to the ground. It’s possible he was tracking that smell.”

  “Uh-huh. Recognize this?” Tony asked.

  “It looks like one of the knives from the kitchen in Fields Hall,” I said. “There were a lot of them out on the tables, to slice cheese and so on.”

  Tony made a note. Then he looked down at Rochester. “Anything else you want to show us while we’re out here?” I could hear an edge of sarcasm in his voice, but there was something else there, too, perhaps a resigned acceptance.

  Rochester shook his head and barked.

  We waited by the tree for Tony to go back to his car and get some yellow “do not cross” tape and a couple of stakes, and then I helped him isolate the area around the tree. By the time we were finished, a tech from the crime scene team showed up to look for more evidence, and Tony, Rochester and I went back to my office.