“So explain this to me, you get a Ph.D. and get an entry level salary for seven years. Then what?” asked Pascoe as they made a final survey of the living room.
“You might get tenured if…”
“If what?” asked Pascoe.
“If you’ve done the right things professionally, if you haven’t screwed up politically, and if your department has the funding for a tenure position.”
“And what happens if you don’t. What was Sheila’s future?”
“Don’t know enough about Sheila to tell you. But, generally speaking, you might get lucky and find another tenure track position, usually at a smaller school. And the money would be less.”
“And if you’re not lucky?”
“People get one-year gigs covering for someone on sabbatical. Others do adjunct work. The pay is lousy, so they teach lots of sections at three or four different schools, live in their cars. A few get jobs at community colleges. And some, probably the smart ones, get out of academe and do something else. That’s probably better than being a gypsy professor for the rest of their working lives.”
“So this is life in the ivy tower. Given what she had to look forward to, I can see why she jumped.” She gave Elkins a wry smile.
Ray sat in his car for several minutes after Pascoe drove away, making notes in a steno pad. In the process of putting the ballpoint back into his shirt pocket, he noticed a folded piece of paper. He pulled it out and opened the grocery list that he had been adding onto for days. He remembered that before leaving for the office he had put it in his pocket thinking that he would stop for groceries on the way home. So much had happened since then, and he was in no mood to spend a half an hour or more in a crowded store. He would make do with whatever was in the house.
Later, standing in front of a near empty refrigerator, he thought perhaps he should’ve gone shopping. Other than condiments, some dead lettuce, and a near empty jar of thimbleberry jam, there was little to eat. He found a package of frozen enchiladas in the freezer and tossed them in the microwave. As they circled the interior, he pulled the New York Times from its blue plastic bag and scanned the front page. Eventually he carried the steaming enchiladas, now on the dinner plate, and a beer out to the deck. Picking at the food, he continued working his way through the paper.
Dinnertime had once been a major part of his life with Ellen. It was the period when they would catch up with one another. Ray did most of the cooking, something he enjoyed, while Ellen made the salad and handled the cleanup. Since her death he had almost stopped cooking.
By the time he had read through most of the national news, his dinner had gone cold. Next he turned to the international news, his concentration interrupted by the sudden appearance of Clifford Chesterton, slightly out of breath, carrying a bright yellow plastic cooler.
“May I join you?” he asked climbing onto the deck.
“Please do,” Ray responded.
“I know it’s rather late,” he eyed the mostly uneaten enchiladas, “but Stephanie was wondering if you’d like to join us for dinner. She’s made a crown roast of lamb, and says you’re a great fan of that.”
“I won’t turn you down,” said Ray. “She knows my vulnerabilities when it comes to food.”
“Well, she told me you’d say ‘yes.’ And she’s running a bit late, so I thought we’d have a drink or two while we’re waiting for her to finish up.” Chesterton opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of scotch, and one of soda, two Whiskey glasses, and a Ziploc bag filled with crescent shaped ice cubes. He added ice to both glasses, added three fingers of the amber liquor, splashed some soda in his glass, and passed the second tumbler and the soda bottle to Ray.
“I’m a couple drinks ahead of you,” said Chesterton. “Today was a hard day. I’m trying to figure it all out.”
“Any conclusions?” asked Ray.
“No, more questions than answers. I’m tired of thinking about it. I need to talk about something else and let it rest a while.” He pushed his feet out and slid down his chair. He surveyed the scene in silence for a long moment, then sipped his drink and looked over at Ray. “It’s very pleasant up here, isn’t it, the nicest place in town. The only bit of terrain in the whole region.” They sat in silence for a while, then Chesterton said, “You know, we’ve been neighbors for a good while. Our women were the best of friends. I think their schedules were more open. They spent time together during the day when we were off doing other things. We’ve never really gotten to know one another. I was thinking about that after our talk at the hospital, that we have never talked much other than the mostly empty chatter at social gatherings.” He finished his drink and set the tumbler on the table. “Ready for another?”
“I haven’t finished this one,” said Ray.
“Let me top it up for you,” responded Chesterton as he mixed a drink for himself. “How did you end up here, out on this vast prairie?”
“Like most people,” answered Ray. “I completed my graduate degree, and there was a job here. I initially thought I would move on after a few years.”
“Didn’t we all,” laughed Chesterton. “What were you doing before that?”
“The short history. I was in graduate school, before that I was a cop in Detroit for a few years. It was interesting work, but I couldn’t imagine spending my life there. And before that the army. I was in the military police, mostly in Europe. How about you?”
“Not quite ditto, the particulars differ, but a variation on the same story. I was finishing graduate school in Chicago. I had been sort of a wunderkind, three articles in the Shakespeare Quarterly before I even finished my dissertation. I thought I was on my way to a major school. My dissertation became a well-reviewed book. I was here by then. But I thought some large school would pick me up. Even then, the market in English was lousy, but I was sure I would get recruited to a pretty good place.”
“But how did you end up here in the first place,” asked Ray.
“Well, my dissertation advisor was a friend of Keith Beckner, who chaired this department back then. Keith was extremely entrepreneurial. He really knew how to work foundations: Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller. I think I mentioned this earlier today when we were at the hospital. Beckner had this dream about making this university the preeminent center for the study of English literature in America. Don’t ask me where that came from. But he had sold his dream to the grant officers from several major foundations and the university administration. The department was awash in cash. So my chair, looking around at the bleak job market for new PhDs, counseled me to come here. He thought it was an up-and-coming department, and that I could use it as a stepping-stone to my next job. And once I got here, Beckner mentored me like crazy. I got tenure and promotion quickly and became the associate chair within a few years. When he moved on to Provost, he paved the way for me to follow him as chair.
“How about the Center for the Study of….”
“It didn’t succeed. We built it, and they didn’t come. We were never able to attract the large number of graduate students that he anticipated. The money and the enthusiasm quickly went away.” Chesterton tossed the ice cubes from his now empty glass onto the lawn and retrieved several fresh ones from the cooler. He poured more whiskey into the glass and added a bit of soda, stirring the mixture with his index finger. He looked over at Ray. “Are you ready for another?”
“I shouldn’t. I’m already feeling smashed.”
“Then you should have another,” said Chesterton. He refilled Ray’s glass and pushed it across the glass-topped table. “Were you with Ellen when you came here?”
“No, but I met her soon after, and we quickly became a couple.”
“It’s none of my damn business, and you can tell me to go to hell, but why didn’t you two ever marry?”
“She was married when we met, not living with a him, but still married. He was some sort of crazy, a physicist. He had been fighting the divorce for several years. In fact, we did not move in together until
the divorce was final. And I wanted to marry her. I asked her many times. Her answer was always the same. ‘Why should we ruin a good thing?’ Near the end I proposed again, and she said she had always been happy with the way things were. She said the important thing was how we treated one another, not whether we had a contract to be together.” Ray swirled the drink in his glass. “How about you and Stephanie? She’s not your first wife?”
Chesterton looked at Ray and laughed. “You know, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we weren’t both a little bit tight. Ah yes, I was married to someone before, nice woman, someone from graduate school. The first few years here she wrote her dissertation. She was very qualified, but she couldn’t get a job in my department because there was an anti-nepotism policy at the university at that time. She went into the job market and got a job at Johns Hopkins. We had an airplane marriage for a number of years, much longer than we should have. She eventually found someone else. And I had a few romances before Stephanie. She was a graduate student. We’ve had good years together. My cancer a few years back changed things….”
“But there is medicine for that….”
“Too much damage, too much damage from both the surgery and radiation therapy. They gave me my life back, but there was a price. Stephanie is a vital young woman. So we talked about it.” Chesterton finished his drink and set it back on the table. “To outsiders it might look sort of peculiar.”
Ray said nothing. He just sat there holding onto his glass, gazing into his yard and beyond.
“Are you two men ready for dinner yet?” asked Stephanie as she emerged from the twilight.
“Well, we’ve settled most of the major problems in the world,” Chesterton responded. “But if we don’t get some food soon, I think we may pass out.”
8
Wednesday morning arrived too early. Elkins was always awake by six, so he was startled when he looked at his watch and saw that it was almost 8:00 A.M. He laid in bed for several more minutes, placing the cool palm of his right hand on his throbbing forehead.
He stood in the shower longer than usual, and forced himself to eat a granola bar with his coffee before leaving the house.
Elkins settled into a waiting room chair in the Professional Arts Building adjacent to the Medical Center a few minutes before 9:00. He rummaged through the pile of magazines on the end table next to his seat . His choices were limited to dog-eared copies of Time, Car and Driver, Sports Illustrated, Sailing, and Better Homes and Gardens—all three or more months out of date.
He had just started reading an article on who would win the NBA championship—a championship that had been decided several months before—when the door to the inner office opened and Dr. Margrave came out to greet him. Elkins had met Margrave when Ellen was in the final stages of breast cancer. The doctor led the death and dying group at the medical center. After Ellen’s death, Elkins had also been in individual therapy with him for months.Margrave ushered him into his consultation room. There were two chairs in the room, one facing a window that looked out over the back of the medical center, the other off to the side facing the first. As Elkins settled into the chair facing the window he said, “Since I’ll be asking the questions this time, perhaps we should change chairs.”
“This one was built for me,” said Margrave with a smile. “It’s bigger.”
Before he met Margrave, Elkins had a stereotypical view of what a psychiatrist should look like: a male, small in frame, with delicate features, burning eyes, and perhaps a goatee. Margrave didn’t fit that stereotype; he was a big man, tall, broad shouldered, with red hair and freckles. Although in his late forties, his physique had changed little from his college basketball days.
What had impressed Elkins in both group and individual therapy was Margrave’s ability to ask questions that focused the discussion. Ray felt that it would have taken him months longer to work through his grief without Margrave’s help.
Margrave pointed to a thick manila folder on the table next to his chair. “After you called, I reviewed Bensen’s file.”
“How long was she a patient of yours?”
“She started with me about five years ago.” He paused and rummaged through the folder for a few moments, “ Yes, it was late September, five years ago.”
“It appears that we’re dealing with a suicide. Anything that you can tell me about her that doesn’t violate your professional ethics relative to....”
“I can answer questions relative to dates and times, I can’t discuss anything relative to what was said during our sessions. I’m checking with our ethicist and attorney as to what I can tell you.”
“I appreciate that fact. When did she enter therapy?”
“As I said, I started seeing her about five years ago. It was in late September. At that time her mother was dying. I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“How long was she in therapy with you?”
“Almost constantly. And that goes against one of my major beliefs. I don’t want patients to be dependent on me. Sheila was, and I wasn’t very successful at extricating myself.” Margrave stopped and looked at Elkins. “I’m fairly eclectic in my approach. I try to get people functioning quickly. Even though my training was Freudian, I don’t find that approach useful for most of my patients; I’ll use it occasionally if I’m convinced it’s the only thing that’s going to work. I ended up involving Sheila in analysis because I thought that if I could get her through her childhood, I might eventually get her to shed that baggage so we could focus on her current problems.”
Elkins broke a long silence, “And?”
“And that didn’t quite work. It wasn’t especially effective. That baggage was too important to her. She wouldn’t let go. She needed a fix of it every day to rationalize the way she dealt with the world.”
“Did you see her recently?”
“I was gone most of July and early August, so we didn’t have our usual appointments. I did see her for forty-five minutes last week and the week before.”
“Was she suicidal?”
“This is one of those odd things. If I were in her situation, I would be suicidal, but I don’t think that she was.”
“I’m not following,” said Elkins.
“Here’s a woman in her forties. She’s in her last year here, her second last year if you know what I mean. They gave her an additional year because her tenure appeals dragged into the next calendar year. She’s burned all her bridges professionally. She would have had a difficult time ever getting another job in her field, a field where there aren’t a lot of jobs to begin with.” He lifted both hands in the air and gestured with agitation, “Yet, she wasn’t upset. I was. She denied the reality of her situation. I was concerned because she wasn’t dealing with it and wasn’t making plans about what she was going to do next. She was denying that there was any problem.”
“Could she have suddenly come to that realization and decided the only way out was suicide?” asked Elkins.
“I’ve speculated on that. I mean, who’s to say for sure. But in the years that I’ve known her, she never let reality intervene very much. So the question I have to ask is, why now? Of course, these things are not unheard of. People deny their reality for years and then suddenly take some action. But a suicide doesn’t seem right. Killing yourself in front of your colleagues, all theatre. Showing them what they’ve driven you to. Sheila was a master at inflicting guilt, but with language, not action.” He stopped and looked at Ray. “Have you found a suicide note?”
“No, not yet.”
“If she were going to kill herself, I would have expected a carefully crafted letter where she identified all those she thought had hurt her, a letter in which she elaborated on every incident where she felt she had been snubbed or harmed. But I have to give you this caveat. I’ve learned in this business to expect the unexpected. However, her suicide just doesn’t feel right.” He gave Ray a long look, “Changing the subject, how are you doing?”
“I’m
okay.”
“How okay?”
“Most of the time, during the day I’m fine. It’s just late at night and early in the morning when I get blue, especially in the morning. There are still lots of ghosts.”
Are you still taking the prescription…?”
“No, I stopped a couple of months ago. I don’t think I need pills.”
“Elkins, grieving takes time. Two or three years, sometimes more. Have you given any additional thought to moving to another house, a new environment? You might be able to leave some of the ghosts behind.”
“I’m comfortable there. It’s a beautiful house. Besides the thought of moving—I hate packing.” Ray was feeling uncomfortable.
“Have the place torched.” Margrave chuckled. “You can take the insurance money and buy new. No packing, no unpacking. You once talked about moving back to the area where you spent your childhood, northern Michigan as I remember it.”
“Yes, good memory. That’s a fantasy. I really love it there, but there are no jobs for someone with my credentials. Maybe when I retire.”
“You need some distance. What’s important to you? What will make you happy?”
“Let me go back to Benson,” said Ray. “From your professional view, a suicide is unlikely.”
“You’re forcing me to equivocate a bit, but it’s a prerogative of the professional. We’re almost as bad as lawyers. If she killed herself, I’m surprised. That said, this is a very imperfect science. You never know what someone might do.”
9
The heat of a late summer day was beginning to build as Elkins drove the freshly paved six-lane ribbon of concrete back into town toward central campus. He passed the several miles of new subs that had sprung up in recent years, circling the city like annual rings in a tree trunk. The fields of corn and soybeans had been pushed back, replaced with vinyl-clad two story homes on treeless lots. At the border of the original city limits, the highway abutted against the warren of roads and alleys that had been laid out more than a hundred years before. The once wide thoroughfares of the horse and buggy era were now the congested arteries of the densely populated town.
Medieval Murders Page 5