by Frankie Bow
“Why didn’t you point the thing out to Donnie when you saw it on the ground? You don’t trust him now?”
“I don’t know. His backyard is really big. The neighbors are pretty far away. It was just the two of us back there. No one else was around. Maybe it was a dumb thing to do. I should have just let the police do their job.”
“Well, what’s done is done.” Emma had gotten past her sleepiness and seemed invigorated by her new task. “Now this first part will take a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours? That seems like a long time.”
“Yeah. That’s just the DNA extraction. Then we wait overnight to get the sequence.”
“Let me go get you some breakfast.”
“How about some coffee from your office? That would be awesome.”
She took one last gulp and handed over her freshly emptied travel mug.
“With cream,” she added. “Plenty cream.”
I got Emma her coffee and left her in her lab. I managed to make it to early Mass and then spent the remainder of the restless day at home, trying to finish up my grading. I missed a call from Donnie. I didn’t return it. I was going to wait for Emma’s results to come back before I talked to him.
Pat had spent the entire weekend up at his house fixing his water pump, so on Monday morning I had to catch him up on the weekend’s events while we shared a coffee break in my office and waited for Emma. Emma didn’t want us to meet at her lab. “I’m not really supposed to have looky-loos hanging around contaminating things,” was her gracious explanation.
“It doesn’t matter if Emma finds that it’s a match, or what she finds,” Pat said. “You messed up the chain of custody when you took it from the scene. It’s not admissible in any court of law.”
“I know that, but what were my options?”
“You should’ve called the police.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they would have taken me seriously.”
“You should’ve called me.”
“I tried calling you.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “This is going to turn out the same as when you guys tested that pork dish. You’re going to get all excited, and then it’ll turn out to be nothing.”
“I was not excited at the thought of Donnie serving up Jimmy Tanaka at my potluck,” I said. “How did a human bone get into Donnie’s backyard in the first place? Maybe the dogs found it, on one of their hunting trips?”
“Already thinking up excuses for Donnie?” Pat said.
“Mercedes has that goat-slaughtering operation. I know Nathan and Margaret use it. Maybe her organic farming interns . . . she said Bill Vogel’s ex-wife was one of them.”
“My guess?” Pat said. “It’s not a human bone at all. You two are just letting your imaginations run wild.”
My office door flew open.
“And here she is,” Pat said.
Emma pulled the door shut behind her, sat down, and closed her eyes. We waited.
She opened her eyes. “Well,” she said, “it was a match. Now what?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“So Donnie did it,” Pat said. “The elbow joint in Donnie’s backyard matched the DNA from Jimmy Tanaka’s toothbrush.”
“That can’t be right,” I protested. “Donnie didn’t have any rational motive for murder.”
“Yeah, speaking of irrational,” Emma replied, “Molly, you were the one who asked me to run the test! Now you don’t wanna believe the results?”
“Pride and spite are pretty common motives for murder,” Pat said.
“Donnie has too much to lose,” I objected. “He wouldn’t do something stupid and life-ruining out of spite.”
“Oh, and don’t forget denial,” Emma added pointedly. “Something else that supposedly rational people do.”
I tried to remember what Donnie had told me about his mysteriously absent wife. He claimed that she had left years ago, just disappeared, and he hadn’t pursued her. Did I still believe that? I felt wobbly on my yoga ball and gripped the edge of my desk to stabilize myself.
“You should call the police tip line,” Pat said.
“Does Molly have to give her name?” Emma asked.
“No. It’s anonymous. There’s a third party that assigns a random ID.”
“Well,” I sighed as I picked up the phone. “I guess that was too good to be true.”
Pat and Emma stayed with me through my office hours, which I appreciated, even though it cost me a lot of coffee. We hunkered down to our respective tasks, none of us in much of a mood to talk. Emma had her chair pushed back against the wall and was studying an article reprint. Pat hunched over in the cracked plastic chair doing something on his phone.
“Pat, you’re not writing about this, are you?” I said.
He shook his head no. “Normally I’d post it as a blind item, but I don’t want to tip Donnie off that you were the one who ratted him out. You’re in enough danger as it is.”
“Wait, danger? Why?”
Pat just shrugged, and I went back to trying to complete my report for the Student Retention Office.
My Teaching Philosophy forWeek Five: In light of the fact that my life has just fallen apart, I will drag myself to class and go through the motions. What more do you expect from me, you heartless monsters?
I didn’t have it in me to concoct a fresh and enthusiastic-sounding teaching philosophy. I pulled up my Week Four form and copied and pasted the Statement of Teaching Philosophy from there. If the SRO didn’t like that, I’d hear about it soon enough.
Rodge Cowper poked his head into my office.
“Hey Molly, ya going up to the parade? Oh, hey, Emma Lou, didn’t see you there. Hey, bro.”
Emma didn’t acknowledge Rodge’s greeting. Pat gave him a curt nod.
“The parade?” I asked. “Oh, that clapping thing?”
Today was the grand opening ceremony for the Student Retention Office’s new Student Explorations Lounge. Faculty members were instructed to line up on either side of the walkway and “clap in” the students as they walked into their new space. They would raffle off a new tablet with an Internet connection (which the winner would most certainly use to goof off during class). Refreshments awaited students inside the lounge, but of course faculty members were not allowed to enter. We were supposed to remain outside, clapping in the blazing sun.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,” I said. “I was really hoping to go, but I have so much to do. Are you going?” Rodge said he was, and made sure to make some not-worth-repeating pun involving the phrase “clap in” before he left us. When she was sure he was out of earshot, Emma made a rude guttural noise.
I must have made it through class that afternoon, although I don’t remember anything about it. On the way back to my office I felt my phone humming in my bag. I pulled it out to see a new voice message. The caller had managed to leave the message without activating the ringer. I dialed voicemail and listened as I walked.
“Hi, Molly, this is Donnie. Listen. Some things have come up. I’m going to be very busy and—you’ll know more about it soon, I suppose. I’m very sorry, Molly. Take care.”
I felt a brief pang of guilt, and had to remind myself that this wasn’t my fault. Human elbow joints don’t just turn up randomly in people’s backyards. If this was all a misunderstanding, or some kind of bizarre coincidence, it would get straightened out soon enough. I trudged up the stairs and down the hall to my office. The door was ajar, and I pushed it open. Emma and Pat looked up quickly, as if I had caught them talking about me.
“Hey, you guys,” I said, trying to sound chipper.
“I just got back from the police station,” Pat said.
“You mean you left Emma here unsupervised?”
Emma didn’t retaliate with a barb of her own, a sure indicator that something was wrong.
“Your tip was a big break for them,” Pat said. “They acted on it right away. I was kinda surprised to see them move that fast.”
“Fantastic,” I sighed.
“Molly, maybe you should sit down.” Emma’s uncharacteristic gentleness rattled me more than if she had punched me in the arm.
I seated myself on my yoga ball. “You know what I forgot to tell you?” I said, “I guess this slipped my mind with everything else that was going on. Donnie’s married. Or was. You guys already have your coffee?”
They nodded.
“One for me then.” I pulled a new box of coffee pods from my drawer, opened it, and set it up.
“He’s married?” Emma asked.
I told them the story as Donnie had explained it to me.
“I wish he’d been a little more forthcoming about that,” I said. “He doesn’t really volunteer much information, unless he’s talking about work. Then I get to hear all about the shelf life of cooking oil and how to keep sliced potatoes from turning brown.”
“I think Donnie Gonsalves’s interpersonal communication style is the least of your worries right now,” Pat said.
“What is it?” I asked.
Pat and Emma looked at each other.
“I’ll tell her,” Pat said. “Molly, they found blood in Donnie’s car.”
“His Lexus? With the leather interior? I can’t believe that. He keeps that car spotless!”
Pat and Emma watched me quietly, looking concerned.
“I was just in that car,” I said. “I hope I wasn’t sitting on any horrible stains.”
“Not unless you were lying down in the back,” Pat said. “That’s where the blood was.”
“That was so fast,” I said. “We only called in the tip this morning.”
I had a flash of hope.
“Now wait,” I said. “They found blood in the car, right? But they haven’t ID’d it, have they? It could have been from something else. It might not even have been human. Maybe he bought hamburger meat at the grocery store and it leaked through the bag.”
“No, Molly. Donnie confessed.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Pat said. “This is hard for you to process. But Donnie Gonsalves confessed to murdering Jimmy Tanaka.”
Emma was avoiding eye contact with me.
“Molly,” Pat said, “you should be proud of what you did. They never would have thought of looking at the Gonsalves place if it weren’t for your—Ow!”
Pat rubbed his shoulder. “Geez, Emma, what’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?” Emma punched the same shoulder that she had just pinched. “You trying to make Molly feel even worse about this?”
“The guy’s a confessed murderer! With blood in his car! And human bones all over his backyard! Why should she feel bad?”
“Yeah, what do I have to feel bad about? I should be feeling great right now. Did you say they found more bones?”
“Looks like it,” Pat said. “Sorry about that, Molly.”
“Do you think Donnie killed his wife too?” Emma asked.
“I’d bet money on it,” Pat said.
“Well. I can take comfort in one thing,” I said. “At least this day couldn’t get any worse.”
Then my office phone rang.
The call was from Dan Watanabe, my department chair. He had something important to discuss with me, and could I come down to his office as soon as it was convenient? I hung up, picked up my bag and my coffee cup, and went down the hall to Dan’s office, wondering what particular flavor of pie Fate was going to squash into my face now.
Dan was in the middle of a meeting with a student when I walked up. He saw me and quickly brought the meeting to an end.
We watched the young man slouch out of his office.
“Locus of control,” Dan said once the kid was out of earshot. “A locust is an insect. Why do I have to explain that every time? Anyway. Thanks for coming down. Have a seat.”
I dropped glumly into a chair.
“This is it, Molly,” he said. “It’s happening. You’re on.”
“What am I on?”
“You’re taking over as Interim Chair. I’m moving to Interim Dean.”
“Wait, what?” I cried. “That’s not possible! He confessed!”
“What are you talking about? Who confessed?”
“Are you telling me Bill Vogel was the murderer?”
“Molly, what are you talking about?”
Dan wasn’t following very well. He must have a lot on his mind, I thought.
“Bill Vogel must have murdered Jimmy Tanaka,” I said. “That’s why he’s not going to be dean anymore, right? Because he’s going to jail. Everyone suspected it was Vogel all along.”
Dan looked completely nonplussed.
“How on earth would a rumor like that get started?”
Now that I thought of it, maybe the only place that that rumor had gained traction was among Emma, Pat, and me.
“Oh. I don’t know,” I said. “I guess people can be really irresponsible with their gossip.”
“Molly, I’ll be the first to admit that Bill Vogel has his faults, but he’s not a murderer!”
Dan had a point. Bill Vogel’s wife had turned up safe and sound at Mercedes’s place. Donnie’s wife, on the other hand, who knew where she was? If Donnie had murdered his wife . . . I supposed my mother would be relieved to know that at least I hadn’t been dating a divorced man.
“. . . starting next Monday,” Dan was saying.
“Sorry, what?”
“You’ll be starting next Monday. That gives you almost a week to get up to speed.”
“So I’m really going to be department chair? Even though I don’t have tenure yet?”
“Interim department chair.”
I sighed. “So why is Bill Vogel going out on leave? Can you tell me?”
Dan nodded. “Sure. I guess so. This is from back when Bill Vogel was provost.”
“Oh! That situation with the student?”
“I’ll tell you what I know. You know that the provost, as the chief academic officer of the university, is responsible for signing off on degree completions.”
I nodded.
“You also know that our legislature has started to fund us based on our completion rates. How many of our students graduate with a degree. I know, it’s a classic case of ‘rewarding A while hoping for B,’ and I wish I could make everyone in the Ledge read that. Anyway, as provost, Bill Vogel was supposed to oversee academic quality, but in practice he was only rewarded for quantity.”
“So what was he doing?” I asked. “Was he just handing out degrees?”
“It was a little more subtle than that. He’d let students make substitutions so that they could graduate faster. If calculus was too hard, he let them take history of mathematics instead. If they had trouble with that, they could substitute a photography class. Students were receiving degrees based on . . .” Dan grasped for the right phrase “. . . a dog’s dinner of random courses.”
The phrase “dog’s dinner” made me wince.
“Bill might lose his job over this,” Dan said.
“So it’s still possible to get in trouble for cheating,” I said. “I’m kind of glad to hear that.”
“Not everyone’s glad. Some people around here are complaining that the student whistleblower cost us a lot of money.”
“Seriously?”
“Our completion rates are sinking again with Bill out of the provost’s office. Bill was well on his way to meeting our Stretch Goal graduation numbers. If he’d succeeded, the Ledge would have given us funding for deferred maintenance.”
Dan gestured up at his ceiling, where a rotted-out acoustic panel revealed the raw framing and ductwork above it.
“That’s happening in my office too. Pat says I should just take down all the ceiling tiles and act like I’m going for some kind of industrial aesthetic.”
Dan shook a small pile of antacid tablets into his palm, then offered the bottle t
o me.
“Sugar-free,” he said.
I followed Dan’s example and popped three in my mouth at once. I instantly regretted it.
“There’s enough evidence now to place Bill on administrative leave,” Dan said. “Which brings us to where we are now. Molly, are you okay?”
“I don’t like these,” I said, wrinkling my nose as the cloying chemical odor permeated my sinuses. “They taste like what a gas station bathroom smells like.”
“I know. But that’s the only flavor they have that’s sugar-free. Listen, do you have a few minutes?”
“Right now? I guess.”
“Sure this is a good time? You seem a little preoccupied.”
I gulped down the last chalky fragments of the antacid tablets.
“I’m not going to be any less preoccupied tomorrow,” I said.
“Good. I can start catching you up on the department’s active grievances.”
Dan wheeled his chair over to the putty-colored file cabinet that occupied the entire back wall of his office.
“So this drawer contains all of the grievances filed by Hanson Harrison . . .” he began.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I knew I should be preparing for my new duties as interim department chair, but I wasn’t even sure I could manage to get through class. I felt weighed down with regrets. I believed that if I hadn’t picked up that bone in Donnie’s backyard, life would have gone on as normal. I knew that made about as much sense as when a dog hides its head under the couch and thinks it’s invisible. I tried to remember what Dan had told me yesterday, but very little of it had stuck. I remembered talking about stretch goals and completion incentives and active grievances. There was also something about an entire file cabinet devoted to Rodge Cowper.
The class was starting in two minutes and most of the students were already seated. There was one thing I had to take care of before I started my lecture. I made my way to the back row, where Joshua Benson was plugged into his phone.
