Sham Rock

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Sham Rock
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For the redoubtable Hadley Arkes
BURYING THE HATCHET
FROM AN AISLE SEAT ON THE LEFT side of the plane, David Williams had an imperfect vision of the campus as they descended toward the South Bend airport. The lady in the window seat pressed her face to the glass, all but obscuring his view. No matter. He sat back with a wry smile, remembering all the times he had come along this flight path in his own plane, always taking the controls for the landing once he had feasted his eyes on the Notre Dame campus. He felt like a Roman general who had fought one too many campaigns. There would be no triumphal welcome this time. Only a memento mori.
The plane touched down; there was the roar of reversed engines as they decelerated along the runway. He had a glimpse of the tower across from the terminal and of a few private craft anchored to the runway. That was where he had always directed his own plane after landing, off among the elite, not like the rest of men. Another bead on the rosary of his personal sorrowful mysteries.
When the plane reached the terminal and drew to a stop, there was a long delay while the unchecked bags were removed and arrayed so that passengers could grab them as they headed inside. Meanwhile they stood with bowed heads in the aisle for ten minutes, impatiently looking ahead to see when movement would begin. All the aggravation of commercial flights would be familiar to him from now on, at least until … Hope flared, then died.
Inside the terminal, past seats filled with people waiting to fly out, he went with the others through the revolving doors and up the graded walkway to the baggage carousel. Expectant faces awaited the arrivals, and soon, all around him, there were reunions, passengers being greeted, the babble of happiness. Fifteen minutes went by before a light flashed and the belt began to move. He did not join the jostling group gathered to watch for their baggage. Now that he was here, he was in no hurry, no hurry at all.
When he had his bag, having watched it go round twice until it was the only one unclaimed, he rolled it to the rental counter to get a car. The clerk was a woman no longer young on whom incompetence sat like a lifelong curse. Her name tag read GLORIA. She drew her lower lip between her teeth as she sought his name on her computer, her expression doubtful.
“Williams?”
“Williams.” He half expected her to ask him to spell it.
When she found it, she glowed as if she had won the lottery. Meanwhile Dave, looking beyond her, could see the envelope with his name written on it with a felt-tip pen—but of course there were papers to sign.
He handed her a credit card, and she scanned it; her expression once more gave way to doubt. Gloria frowned and chewed on her lip. Her eyes when she looked at him were wide with confusion.
“It doesn't go through.”
“Try this one.” He slid another across the counter, and she traded for it with some reluctance.
The second card was accepted, thank God. He had started to feel a sudden kinship with the clerk.
While Gloria had trouble printing out the forms, he leaned against the counter and looked down the curved line of the terminal.
Nothing was familiar to him here. When was the last time he had flown into South Bend on a commercial flight? It was not a question he cared to dwell on since it called up the golden interval since that was no more.
He signed and initialed the forms which, in another lucky win, Gloria had produced.“Thank you,” he said when, at last, he had the envelope with his key in it.
“No problem.” A relieved smile. There were no other customers to disturb the even tenor of her ways. A large paperback with a multicolored cover lay open next to her computer like a downed bird. He made out the author's name in electric blue. Casey Winthrop!
“How do you like it?”
Gloria pursed her lips and wagged her head. “It's a living.”
“I meant the book.”
“If I didn't read I'd go crazy.”
“I know the feeling.”
But any rapport he had established was gone. Gloria had taken the mention of her book as an accusation. Guilt is everywhere.
 
 
He found his car, got in, and sat for a moment smelling its newness. When he turned the ignition key he saw there were less than a thousand miles on the odometer. What was the average lifetime of a car as a rental? Ah well, cars, like everything else, are temporary.
The road he drove along after exiting the airport suggested a city in decay; large, once desirable houses had been converted into insurance agencies, doctors' offices, a palm reader. He passed a storefront with a huge sign announcing that checks were cashed there. It seemed to be a pawnshop as well.
The downtown area was a slight improvement. He crossed the
St. Joseph River and after several blocks turned north, headed for campus.
The avenue that led to campus was now lined with newly constructed houses, designed to look older than they were, the university's effort to reclaim the area by building homes for faculty at attractive prices.
He was caught by the stop sign at Angela Boulevard. Already he could see ahead the great mass of the Main Building and the golden dome on which Our Lady looked ever southward. The sight stirred him, as it always did, as it stirred all alumni, as if they had spent four years staring up at the patroness of Notre Dame.
The guard at the gate gave him a wary welcoming smile when he failed to see a sticker on the window.
“Visitor?”
“I have an appointment with the vice president.” He adopted a reassuring smile. “Class of '89.”
Did the guard think he meant the vice president? The delay was pro forma; Williams was given a pass.
“Put that in your window.”
The bar lifted, and Williams, saluting, moved forward, onto the campus, past Cedar Grove Cemetery on his left with ahead the nine holes of Burke Golf Course that had not yet been claimed for new buildings. Despite the anguish of the past months, despite the reason for his coming, David Williams had the odd sense that he had come home.
IN HIS OFFICE IN BROWNSON, ONE of the oldest campus buildings, just behind Sacred Heart Basilica, Roger Knight was seated at his desk in a large chair, reading the note that he had found slipped under his door. He had moved it across the room with his foot so he could sit before attempting to pick it up.
Your days are numbered.
Of course they are, and in many ways. By the calendar, by counting from his date of birth or any other date arbitrarily chosen. The message had been composed on a computer and printed out in a 24-point font. No addressee.
A joke? In a recent class he had spoken of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, prompted to do so by the dates in Russian novels, New Style, Old Style, anno Domini in either case. How much give was there in computing the number of years that had passed since the birth of Christ? On then to the distinction between numbering number and numbered number. Many of the students looked numb.
The bane of a capacious memory is that it delivers up items at random, some important, most not. A mixed blessing for a professor. Afterward Jay Williams had said, “That was interesting.” There was the slightest trace of irony in the young man's voice.
Roger checked himself from giving the etymology of “interest.” “It doesn't add much to one's appreciation of Gogol.”
“The search engine?”
Roger winced.
“I wonder how old I would be by the Julian calendar, Professor?”
“The age you are.”
“But—”
“It's why I distinguished between numbers and the things they number. Not that it's my distinction.”
They had gone out of the building to Roger's golf cart, the vehicle in which he made his way around campus.
“How long does a charge last?” Jay asked.
“It depends on how much I use it.”
The smile came slowly, but at least it came. Jay Williams was the kind of student who cultivated professors, always ready with a question and sometimes, as now, staying around after class was over. Still, some glib students were intelligent.
 
 
Now, in the hallway outside, there was the sound of approaching footsteps, quick, young. They stopped, and Roger could hear the key put into the lock of the office opposite his own. The door slammed, a minute or two went by, and then the door opened and there were footsteps and a pounding on Roger's door.
“Come in,” Roger roared.
Still wearing her ankle-length coat, an alpine hat rakish on her head, Sarah Wiggins looked terrified. She was waving a sheet of paper.
“Don't tell me your days are numbered, too?”
She pushed a chair nearer the desk and sat, her eyes never leaving Roger's. “This is a joke?”
“It's hard to appraise a punch line apart from the context.”
She thought about that. She unbuttoned her coat and began to pull out a seemingly endless scarf. “They're meeting tomorrow!”
“They” were the appointments and tenure committee of the department Sarah hoped to join permanently. Her husband was in the sciences; there had been no opening in English when they came to Notre Dame, no tenure track position, so Sarah had agreed to teach a few classes as an adjunct, with the understanding that she would have an inside track when a position opened. A position had opened, but to her dismay a notice had been placed in the
Chronicle of Higher Education,
drawing a flood of applications; two candidates had been invited to campus and made quite a stir. She had been asked to make a formal application, but the need to give a talk had been waived. Not that she took comfort from that.
“They know me too well, Roger. I'm damaged goods.” She rattled the paper. “This is meant to prepare me.”
Roger picked up his own copy of the enigmatic phrase and showed it to Sarah.
“Where did you get this?”
“Someone must have slipped it under my door.”
A pretty face is seldom made prettier by a gaping mouth, but then the sparkle of relief in Sarah's eyes made up for it. She jumped to her feet, held the two sheets of paper side by side, and turned to the window.
“Are you looking for fingerprints?”
“There's a watermark.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Is it made?”
“I thought that you might—”
She made a face. “You need a wife.”
“You sound like God in Genesis.”
Roger's coffeemaker could produce two cups at a time, if two pods were used. It was a much easier system than the Mr. Coffee it
had replaced. It was the task of getting in and out of his chair that prompted Roger's suggestion. Sarah made coffee for them.
“Why would you think that message concerns your promotion?”
“Oh, you know why.”
“Friend or foe?”
“Braxton.” She made the name sound like a Bronx cheer.
Braxton was another medievalist, tenured, with whom Sarah had crossed swords.
“Isn't her speciality Provençal?”
“Roger, you don't understand medievalists.”
“That's true.”
“There's something else.” She said this softly, looking toward the window. “I'm pregnant.”
“Congratulations!”
“Can you tell?”
Roger was flustered. He had noticed no alteration in Sarah's appearance. “Surely you don't think that is an impediment.”
“In Braxton's eyes I would be that woman in
Brave New World
, lost among the savages.”
“Oh, come.”
“Roger, you don't understand a certain kind of feminist.”
“I don't understand any kind.”
“Nonsense. You understand me.”
“Are you a feminist?”
“Is the pope German? Of course I'm a feminist.”
“I hadn't noticed.”
Sarah had left the door open. At sounds in the hallway, she fell silent. They listened to shuffling feet, heard a door unlocked, waited. Some minutes later, shuffling steps approached, and then old Emil Chadwick appeared in the doorway. He was holding a sheet of paper.
“Your days are numbered,” Roger suggested.
Sarah took the sheet from Chadwick's hands and added it to the two she held. Chadwick seemed unsurprised, but then he was emeritus and was beyond surprise. Sarah studied the three sheets.
“What does it mean?” she asked, ceding the chair to Chadwick.
“Construction will soon begin.”
Sarah's mouth was once more agape; she turned to Roger and began to nod. “Of course.”
The suggestion seemed the basis of a consensus. A new building was scheduled to rise on land that had once been the laundry but for years had served as a parking lot providing convenient spaces for the motley crew who had offices in Brownson. At the beginning of the fall semester the announcement had been made, arriving to those affected like a judgment from Oz. A new ethics center would be built between Brownson and the Grotto. However surprising, the judgment was final, written in stone before a stone was laid.
Chadwick had counseled against raising a protest. “It will only increase their pleasure. Arbitrary power craves opposition.”
“Where will you park?” Sarah asked Chadwick, real concern in her voice.
He tipped his head to one side and then the other. “My days are numbered.” He took a package of cigarettes from his pocket, and Sarah, horrified, fled.
“Do you mind?” Chadwick asked Roger.
 
 
Half an hour later Roger was alone. The three sheets of paper lay on his desk where Chadwick had thrown them as if they were a poker hand. Three of a kind. One message and three interpretations.

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