Chapter 2

IN THE STAIRWELL, I opened the face of my watch and felt the minute hand. Seventeen minutes late. Londell Bakker’s soft baritone barely carried into the hall. Two years ago, during the flu scare that never reached Grayford, we voted Londell third in command behind Simkins and his assistant dean, Delilah Bibb. Rounding the last aisle of desks, I passed Delilah’s wheelchair. She was the only one crying, as far as I could hear.

“Tate, I don’t know if you saw the police car outside.” Londell handed me a copy of the agenda, which I scrutinized with my eyes in a left-to-right facsimile of reading. Most of my colleagues knew the extent of my impairment, but I rarely passed up a chance to
seem normal.

“Don’t say it,” said Delilah Bibb in a dim voice. “I can’t hear this again.”

Silence lasted ten seconds while the room honored her request. “Write it down for him.” This came from Duncan Musgrove, the five-times-married, four-times-divorced professor of the course formerly called Biology—in the latest curriculum, it had been repackaged as “Scientific Skills.”

“Will he be able to read it?” asked Benjamin Tweel.

“I think he will,” I said.

Tweel’s wife, Mollie DuFrange, in whose bed I awoke regularly while the two of them were taking a break three years ago, passed me half a sheet of paper. Knowing what it would say and not being fond of reading in front of an audience, I slid my loupe across the tiny words and said, “How did he die?”

Delilah wept. The rest of us—eleven if we were all there— didn’t make a sound. Outside the building, a car door closed.

“I’m sure our students, like us, will want some time to grieve.”

Londell Bakker was a half-black, half-Scandinavian professor of what we called “Societal Studies,” with dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. Nothing he had ever said onstage was as funny as the thought of our students, or the faculty minus Delilah Bibb, shedding a tear for someone who insulted our intelligence more frequently than we thought was legal.

A tiny breeze rattled the aluminum blinds. A door creaked on the first floor. Someone started up the stairs. None of my colleagues seemed worried. I followed their lead. Not worrying had come naturally since I turned sixteen, the age my optic nerves announced their early retirement. Because danger might forever lurk beyond my meager sight line, I had to decide whether to worry constantly or never at all. The latter seemed like less trouble.

The hard-soled shoes clicked into the classroom. “Good morning,” said our darkly clad guest speaker. “Maybe not for what’s-his-name, I guess. Anyway, I won’t keep you as long as I understand he would have.” He laughed in the deeply satisfied way that doesn’t invite you to join in.

Duncan Musgrove joined in. “I like this guy,” Duncan said. “Excuse me, officer.” Delilah located her voice beneath a sob. “Detective,” he corrected her. “Detective Stashauer.”

“Detective,” said Londell. “What can you tell us about the cause of death?”

“We’ll let you know what we know when we know it. In the meantime, I’ll let you fine educators tend to your pressing matters while I give your dean a lift to the morgue.” Detective Stashauer approached Mollie’s desk and picked up what must have been the agenda. “Think, Pair, Share: Ideas for Conference on Interdisciplinary Assessment.” The words were stretched by his expanding smile.

“Well,” Londell said when the detective’s footsteps reached the stairs. He spoke in a low, defeated voice, which is to say his natural voice. “In light of recent events, Delilah, perhaps we can table some of these items on the agenda. Yes, Duncan.”

Duncan Musgrove stood up from his desk. His head wasn’t much higher than when he was sitting. In his voice like scratched glass, he said, “Am I going to have to be the asshole?”

Silence seemed to serve as a yes.

“Our jobs, goddammit. What’s going to happen to our jobs?”

As much as we resented Scoot Simkins for the power he held over us, his talent for ruining days with never-ending meetings, and his passion for paperwork, he also had been our advocate to the school’s trustees, the secretive group who authorized our paychecks. Small as the paychecks were, there were always adjuncts, numerous graduates from the state university across town, willing to work for even less.

“I’ll let you know what I know when I know more than you know,” Londell said. “At present, I’m just a man holding the same sheet of paper you see in front of you. Delilah, any thoughts?”

Londell clicked his tongue, what sounded like the William Tell Overture. “I’ll take that as a no. Oh, I almost forgot. Carly has some good news.”

Co-coordinator of the writing course with Mollie DuFrange, Carly Worth was a nervous blonde who spoke at meetings more sparingly than I did. She cleared her throat. “I sold my novel,” she said, sounding embarrassed.

“A novel?” said Mollie, who was a poet. “What’s it about?”

Carly cleared her throat again. “Vampires.”

Carly’s was a pretty voice, something you’d keep on a high shelf so kids couldn’t break it.

“Hmmm,” Mollie said, one part “that’s interesting” and two parts “go to hell.”

“Congratulations,” I said and clapped slowly, giving others the chance to join in. No one did.

To honor the memory of our late dean, we decided to, in the words of Delilah Bibb, “put our students first.” My own students, as usual, expressed their disappointment upon seeing me enter Suddreth Hall. I wasn’t much of a teacher, as Simkins liked to tell me during my annual reviews, and I didn’t disagree. I was a box checker and gatekeeper of the industrial complex. I taught financial literacy and rudimentary math, courses deemed practical enough to remain in the curriculum, which Simkins revised each fall after returning from another conference on the depressed campus of a small Midwestern college.

Past the fog of urine stretching around the corner from the men’s room, Carly Worth said my name. “It’s Carly,” she added in that soft, far-right-side-of-the-piano voice.

“I see that,” I said. I knew it was her as soon as she spoke. Friendly gestures, like people I knew telling me who they were, always struck me as condescending. This might have been why I had few friends.

“Thank you,” she said. “For congratulating me earlier.”

“I assume this is your last semester with us,” I said. “Published authors don’t have to teach at mediocre colleges.”

Carly shushed me as a pair of students filed past us into her classroom.

“They know it’s a mediocre school,” I said. “Ask them.”

Carly got close enough for me to see her smile if I glanced a foot above her head. It’s nice sometimes to see such things, however briefly, before returning to the art of feigned eye contact. Her mouth was very close to my ear, presumably to tell me something, when the student seated closest to the door started laughing.

“Dr. Cowlishaw. How did Simkins like his present?”

Wade Biggins was not what we used to call “college material.” At this point, neither were most of his peers. He had an unhealthy penchant for mischief, a mild form of autism, possibly undiagnosed, and a future no brighter than a sock drawer slammed tight-shut. Even so, the odds that he had killed the dean seemed remote. One would have to progress from stink bombs to bullets, it seemed, and not the other way around.

“I don’t think he’ll need the gift receipt, Wade.”

Carly led me away from the door. She continued to smile. She continued to smell like sweet, expensive perfume. She said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you this for some time. I’m doing research for my next novel. When are you going on your rounds again?”

In addition to teaching duties, I was also required to patrol the campus twice a month, performing what could nominally be referred to as rituals. When Simkins felt a meeting had not lasted long enough, he called on me for an update on the college’s paranormal health, and I would describe what I had “encountered” on my most recent tour. With no teaching experience prior to this job, my hire came directly at the behest of F. Randolph Parshall, trustee and grandson of the school founder. In his expert, possibly senile assessment, I had a singular ability to detect and communicate with apparitions, the displeasure of whom, Parshall believed, was causing the decline of our quaint school.

“In light of our dean’s untimely demise,” I said, “I should probably go tonight.”

“Can you have company? I mean, do the ghosts mind?”

“I’ll introduce you. Wear something low-cut,” I said. “They like that.”

Carly had a laugh that made me want to cancel class. Many things had this effect on me. She said she’d call me and disappeared inside her classroom.

“Does this count for a grade, Dr. Cowlishaw?” one of the Ashleys wanted to know.

I was passing out the exams and bubble sheets Simkins had placed in our boxes the week before. Nearly half of all instructional time consisted of tests to obtain data, longitudinal studies Simkins used to measure the efficacy of whatever we were or weren’t doing.

“I took this in another class,” said one of the Brittanys.

“Just do the best you can,” I said in response to both questions. Ten minutes had gone by when someone knocked on the classroom door. I carried one of the tests to the door. The individual made no efforts to come in. He was the size and shape of a twelve-year-old boy. He gave the exam a once-over and handed it to the much taller figure to his right.

“Are you Cowlishaw?” asked the short one.

“I am. Who are you looking for?” I stepped aside to invite them in.

“Can we have a word with you in the hallway?” asked the taller one, whose voice I recognized as Detective Stashauer. He placed the exam in what sounded like a Ziploc bag.

I left open the door of my classroom. Detective Stashauer closed it. He asked, “What were you doing in the dean’s office this morning?”

I turned the truth over in my mind. I didn’t like how it felt. Before I could think of an alternative, I felt the taller detective’s hands around my arms. He spun me around, held my cheek against the wall. His partner, I presumed, in a gentler but no less decisive manner, fitted my wrists with cold metal.