Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure

by Joanne Dobson

  Once Cat had passed, I sat up again and noted that the previously lighted office windows were now dark. I felt ridiculous; it must have been the janitor in there, doing his regular cleaning. But then the front door of Dickinson Hall opened, slowly, and Clark McCutcheon stepped out and paused, glancing casually to the left and to the right. His gaze slithered over my car and moved on. God, I hoped to hell he hadn’t seen me, but he’d seemed to take no note of the Subaru. He descended the steps two at a time, a big man with long legs. Then he ambled away in the direction of the parking lot, his hands deep in the capacious pockets of his long rancher coat.

  McCutcheon? All I could think of was the afternoon he and I had been in Joe’s office together, his intense interest in our late colleague’s valuable Native artifacts. A sudden shudder ran through my body. That sleaze! Had he been casing the joint for a little academic burglary? Was he even now strolling away with that exquisite Pueblo Indian storyteller doll in his white man’s pocket?

  Chapter 25

  Saturday 10/31

  In Enfield’s academic hallways, Saturday mornings sometimes bustle, but by noon the weekend has set in for real, and no one is around. I got myself into Joe’s office with my unauthorized copy of the cookie key. I’d wanted in since last evening, when I’d seen Clark McCutcheon, with his hands in his pockets, leave the building. I’d lain awake wondering if any of the Native artifacts were missing. For some reason, I was fixated on the little storyteller doll—so easy to steal if you had big white-man pockets.

  But, no, the doll was still on the shelf, right where it had been when I’d left the office.

  Oh, well. Something must be missing. I checked out the walls and the shelves. The eagle-feather war bonnet was in its place. The whimsical kachina dolls. The fierce tomahawk pipe still hung on its brackets between the windows. As far as I could tell, nothing had been taken. Hmm. What then had Clark McCutcheon been doing in here so late in the evening? Simply satisfying his curiosity? I didn’t believe it.

  In order to get the larger picture, I stood in the center of the room and pivoted slowly around: colorful patterned blankets still on the walls; pottery bowls, glazed and unglazed, displayed just as they had been earlier. An elaborate turquoise and silver pendant spread out on a square of black velvet. The lack of disturbance in the light coating of dust on the shelves suggested that nothing had even been shifted. Even the rugged old tomahawk on the shelf by the door remained in its place. I remembered what Hank had told me about Native weapons, and I picked it up and hefted it, then whipped my wrist as if I were throwing the small axe. The motion felt natural, as if I’d been born to it.

  But something was different. What could it be?

  Then I saw: the mess of books and printouts that had been littered across Joe’s desk and floor was a mess no longer. Stacks of papers graced the desk in orderly rows, their edges squared as neatly as if they just emerged from the original quire. The scattered books had migrated to disciplined piles along the sides of the room.

  Perhaps the janitor had cleaned this up, I thought. But, no, on closer inspection I could see that the books were organized in categories he wouldn’t know anything about, stacked in disciplinary order and subject order according to their Library of Congress call numbers and then in alphabetical order according to author. The printouts, when I checked them, were arranged in clusters according to subject and website venue. Facebook documents together. MySpace pages, ditto. A particularly tall stack contained documents relating to the legend of Prince Madoc, the Father of the White Indians.

  Was it Clark who had organized this material? As I’d noticed, the man was a compulsive neatnik. But, if so—why? What could he have been looking for here?

  And had he found it? If so, he must have taken it. Certainly nothing here seemed to be of any import. But seeing the Facebook printouts joggled something in my mind: Joe’s oddly close relationship with some of his students. Had he himself been on Facebook? Did he ever write on anyone’s walls? It was worth looking into.

  Back in my own office at my computer, I failed to find a Facebook page for Joe Lone Wolf. Well, of course I did. What was I thinking; he’d been so Internet-phobic. I decided instead to go on my own account and access the pages of his students; perhaps one of them had mentioned something relevant about him. I checked out his class roster for names. The first, alphabetically, was Cat Andrews—an apt place to begin. But her page and postings said nothing about Professor Lone Wolf. Damn! I clicked on an icon that said pictures. Cat asleep in the library. Cat playing air guitar. Cat pigging out on hot dogs. Cat’s…bare bottom? Hmm. Cat sitting on a sagging couch somewhere with a couple of students from Joe’s Outsiders class—the girl with the waterspout hair and Elmore O’Hara, with the shaved head and goatee. They were all smoking. The stoned expressions on their faces caught my attention. I enlarged the photo, and it expanded not only in clarity and detail but, also, in scope. The cigarettes were hand-rolled spliffs, and two more people were sitting on the long couch with Cat and her friends, one on each end, just as drugged out as the students were.

  They were Professors Ned Hilton and Joe Lone Wolf.

  ***

  “Aha!” Earlene exclaimed. “Hard evidence!” I’d called her at home as soon as I’d realized what Cat’s Facebook photo meant. “That’s just what we’ve been looking for!”

  “We? Evidence?”

  “You’re on campus now? Listen, I’ll be right over.”

  “But it’s Saturday!”

  “I know. Meet me in my office in, oh, say, twenty minutes. I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Oka-a-ay.…”

  “Oh, and e-mail me a copy of that photo, will you, just in case Ms. Catherine Andrews decides to take it down.”

  ***

  Earlene was not alone when I arrived. A bulky man with a shaved head and a slim dark goatee sat in one of her student chairs, the all-the-comforts-of-home upholstered armchairs that had seen so much student advising. In his Enfield sweatshirt and dark jeans, he seemed at ease there. He was not white. He was not black. His caramel-colored skin, dark eyes, heavy brows, and assertive nose suggested Middle-Eastern ancestry, but I couldn’t get any more specific than that.

  When I entered he rose and smiled at me, in a manner that was somehow both formal and friendly.

  “Karen, I don’t know if you’ve met Fareed Khan yet. He’s Enfield’s new Director of Security—just started last month.”

  “No, I haven’t.” If I’d seen Mr. Khan before, I would have remembered. Believe me.

  “I’ve heard about you, Karen,” Fareed said. His accent was pure middle-class, educated American. “From Earlene as well as from others. It’s good to meet you finally.” His handshake was warm and firm.

  “And Sanjay will be here as soon as he can make it.”

  “Sanjay? On a weekend? Why? What’s going on?”

  A lot, it seemed. The college administration had suspected for some months now that Joe Lone Wolf’s students were far more likely to be involved in drug use than was the norm. Interviews with individual kids had been unsuccessful in eliciting any of the “hard evidence” Earlene had been looking for. When the new Director of Security had arrived on campus this fall, the investigation had heated up.

  Then Joe had been killed.

  I sat back, stunned. Yet another motive for Joe’s murder: he’d been providing drugs to students. Was there anyone left on campus who didn’t have a reason to want the man dead? In my mind I scanned the list of suspects—suspects, that is, as Neil Boylan would have seen them.

  Number One: well, okay, me—as Felicity Schultz had pointed out. I had a good, solid, substantial motive, but wasn’t in the habit of committing homicide in the interests of career advancement.

  Number Two: hmm? Ned, I guessed, for several possible reasons ranging from the departmental to the drug-related—as this new photo clearly showed.

  Number Three: well, Ayesha Ahmed. Or a member of her family. What had been going on between her and
Joe? And I hoped to hell that Boylan hadn’t found out she was pregnant.

  Number Four: Hank Brody. Did Boylan know Lone Wolf had threatened to fail the scholarship student?

  Number Five: Graciella Talltrees. Boylan had obviously gotten on to the blackjack dealer. What had he learned when he’d questioned her at Mohegan Sky?

  Number Six: there was no number six. Not really—simply vague speculations about some mob figure or, now, some drug dealer who might have had a beef with Joe.

  “Karen, are you with us?” Earlene asked.

  Sanjay Patel had entered the room and was studying the Facebook photo. “Jeez-zus Christ!” he exclaimed. “Not only Lone Wolf, but Hilton, too? What in God’s name is going down in the English department?”

  ***

  “It wasn’t like he was selling it to us,” Cat Andrews protested. We must have gotten her out of bed, because she was in full pajama mode. “Smoking shit was an integral part of our education. He called it ‘extracurricular experiential pedagogy.’ Formal education is too restrictive, he said, and it was necessary to widen the parameters of consciousness in order to grasp essential experience beyond the mere intellectual.”

  “In other words,” Fareed Khan said, “he wanted to get you high.”

  “Well, ye-a-a-ah. But it was spiritual experimentation.”

  “Spiritual, huh? And you all knew it was against the law.”

  “That was part of the experience—‘Out-lawing’ he called it. ‘Transgressive boundary smashing.’ It was for our spiritual fortification against the anesthetizing consequences of mundane social conformity. You know, this was all for the Outsiders course. Being an Outsider is good for the spirit.”

  “And you all knew,” Sanjay said, “that using illicit drugs is also against college regulations, and that you risked disciplinary procedures and possible expulsion. And you all did it anyhow?”

  “Not everyone. He only wished to initiate a select few, and even then, some wimps chickened out. Like that stuck-up Ayesha Ahmed.”

  Earlene and I exchanged glances. Ayesha!

  Cat began to fidget in her chair. It must finally be hitting home that all was not copacetic in la-la land. “Look, am I in trouble here, or something?”

  Earlene raised her eyebrows and nodded.

  Fareed Khan frowned. “How much trouble you’re in depends on whether or not you cooperate in helping us get to the bottom of this.”

  Cat went white. “Oh, cripes. I don’t think I should say another word. Am I under arrest? I want a lawyer. I want my daddy.”

  ***

  When I called Ayesha Ahmed and asked her to meet me in Earlene’s office, I was very careful to tell her that this had nothing to do with what we’d discussed the night before. I don’t think she quite believed me; when she showed up, her face was ashen and strained. She had Hank Brody with her, and he appeared equally distressed. They stood, hesitant, in the doorway and stared at the roomful of college personnel. “What the heck?” Hank said, his stance one of imminent flight. It must have looked to them like something out of the Spanish Inquisition: two deans and a police officer, as well as one of their current professors.

  Earlene rose and walked over to the baffled students, touching each one lightly on the arm. “Hank, how good that you’ve come, too. I’m certain that you can also help us with our problem.”

  “Your problem?”

  She smiled, reassuringly. “Yes, our problem. Neither of you is in any trouble, believe me.” She put an arm around Ayesha’s shoulders and led her to the chair recently vacated by Cat Andrews.

  Hank pulled up a side chair next to Ayesha. He was quite protective of her, confirming my suspicions that these two were tight. They weren’t a couple, of course, coming from such very different worlds. But they sure were close friends.

  Earlene laid out the problem at hand to the two students. Their eyes met, and they visibly relaxed.

  Ayesha was the first to respond. “So you know about Professor Lone Wolf and the drugs.”

  “Yes,” Earlene replied, “we know.”

  “Awesome!” My Muslim student was suddenly a different person, animated and talkative. “We were afraid to say anything to the authorities, because when Hank told the professor he wouldn’t participate, Lone Wolf—er, Professor Lone Wolf—threatened to fail him for the course.”

  That bastard! I thought. Earlene clucked her tongue. Sanjay wrote something in his leather-bound note pad.

  Ayesha continued, “and he couldn’t afford to fail because—”

  I cut in. “Because of his scholarship. Right?”

  Both students nodded, solemnly.

  Earlene shook her head in commiseration. “Most understandable. But you don’t have to worry about that now, Hank.”

  “No.” Hank let out a long breath.

  I saw Fareed’s eyes narrow, and I froze. Of course. Fareed was a cop. He saw motive here—motive for homicide. But Hank himself seemed oblivious to any threat, and he began to tell us about Joe Lone Wolf’s “extracurricular experiential pedagogy.” Joe and Ned, with some students, had been doing drugs together on a regular, but voluntary, basis since the beginning of the semester. “But then the professors came up with a truly wacky idea—an ‘Anti-Columbus-Day’ party.”

  Wh-a-a-at? But I didn’t speak.

  Ayesha broke in. “Professor Pelletier, that day you saw me with Professor Lone Wolf in Dickinson Hall, he was insisting that I attend his party. He said dropping peyote together was a legitimate form of protest against the conquest of the Western continent by European invaders. He said that I, as an Outsider to American culture, should understand. That many American Indians ascribed to the traditional peyote religion as an expansion of spirituality, and it would be disrespectful to Native culture if I refused to participate in the ritual. That as a Muslim I had more in common with Native Americans than I did with the white mainstream.”

  “Yeah, you see…” Hank’s words tumbled on top of Ayesha’s. “…He wanted to forge an ‘Alliance of Outsiders.’ Even though I’m white, he choose me to participate because I’m—” he used finger quotes, “‘disadvantaged.’ He was dead serious about this shit. ‘Authenticity, not assimilation,’ was his rallying cry.”

  Fareed Khan was listening intently to Hank, while Sanjay continued to take notes.

  “Yeah.” Ayesha again. “It was as if he considered all ‘Outsiders’ to be the same—and to be ‘wounded.’ I wasn’t buying it. I don’t feel ‘wounded’ at all. ‘Marginalized,” maybe, but not wounded. I thought he was very condescending, and I told him so.”

  “So, Ms. Ahmed,” the campus cop said, “you didn’t go to this…what did you call it? Anti-Columbus Day event?”

  She shook her head. “No way. Muslims don’t do drugs, and I told him it would be disrespectful of him to insist that I do.”

  The police captain turned to Hank and asked, “And what about you?”

  “Oh, I went, all right. I had to, if I didn’t want to fail. But I didn’t—”

  I tried to lighten things up with a laugh. “You didn’t inhale, right?” Sanjay and Earlene gave weak grins, but the students were too young to get the joke.

  Hank gave me an indignant glare. “Of course, I didn’t inhale. And anyhow, it was peyote. You don’t smoke peyote. But there were a few other students there—four or five. They participated.”

  Earlene casually reached for a pen. “Can you give me the names?”

  He frowned. “I’m no snitch. I’m not going to tell you who my classmates were.” He glanced at Ayesha, then looked back at Earlene. “But I will tell you something I overheard the two professors talking about. There was going to be an after-party, and I think it was only for faculty. They expected other professors.”

  Sanjay dropped his head in his hands and let out a strangled groan. “Professor Hilton was one of those two, wasn’t he?”

  “How did you know?”

  Sanjay didn’t respond.

  Fareed Khan leaned forward, elbows
on his knees. “Now, tell me the truth, Hank, did you use any drugs at that party?”

  Hank sat up straight. “No, sir. I did not use drugs in any form at any time at Professor Lone Wolf’s party. And, now, I think we’ve answered enough questions. C’mon, Ayesha, let’s get out of here.”

  “Just a minute, young man.” Fareed was up and out of his chair. He wasn’t tall, but he was at least twice the body mass of scrawny Hank. “One more little thing. When Professor Lone Wolf was found dead, did you inform the homicide investigators about this party and the ‘afterparty’?”

  “Are you kidding? And get myself arrested for going in the first place? You see, it was Catch 22. I was damned if I didn’t go, and now I’m damned ’cause I did.”

  ***

  “You know, we’re going to have to pass this info about Joe Lone Wolf’s involvement with drugs on to the state police investigators,” Fareed said, after the students left.

  I stifled the impulse to protest—these two vulnerable students didn’t need any more hassle.

  Sanjay and Earlene looked at each other, sober with the ramifications. A long silence ensued.

  Earlene sighed. “Yes, of course we do. But let’s keep the students out of it as much as possible.”

  Fareed opened his mouth, but Sanjay stopped him with a raised hand. “I’ll call the staties. I’m Dean of Faculty, and Joe was one of mine.”

  The security director regarded Sanjay soberly. “Hilton, too, I’m afraid. Has it occurred to anyone else but me that Ned Hilton is in this up to his eyeballs?”