I turned to look at Steve.
“She’s probably just there now,” he said. “Let me call in to the detachment to report it, and we can head over if you want.”
“Do I have any choice?” I sighed, but Steve was already dialing.
I shuffled off to get my knapsack and put my camera in it. If Denise had wanted pictures of the graffiti, she’d probably want photos of a fire. I already assumed it had to be arson. I couldn’t imagine what could spontaneously ignite in an office in the English department. Grace’s copy of The Satanic Verses?
Steve was off the phone.
“Karen and Kevin were still at the station. They’ll meet us. The arson squad at the fire department is all over the place, we hear. It’s not going to be pretty, but Karen says it’ll be okay if we meet them there. Are you up for this?”
“What do you mean? There’s no one dead, is there?”
“Not as far as I’ve heard. I just mean that your going over might be exactly what the caller told you not to do. Stick your nose in things.”
“So I’m supposed to ignore the plea of a good friend because I’ve been warned off by some cowardly creep?” I was getting mad.
“That’s better.” Steve smiled. “You’re getting some color back in your face. Let’s go.”
I checked around to make sure that nothing was plugged in on the tree before I left. Thoughts of fire will do that to you.
I was willing to walk, it was such a clear crisp night, but Steve vetoed the idea.
“It’ll be really late by the time we’re ready to leave, and by then you’ll be exhausted. Let’s take my car.”
So, in the end, we beat Denise to the parking lot. She pulled up right behind us and caught up with us after locking the door of her Tercel. We stopped there for a moment to absorb the scene.
Three huge yellow fire trucks were pulled up on the walkway to the Humanities Building, dwarfing the two-story circular wing that held the lecture halls I loved to teach in. On the third floor of the main part of the building, one of the windows along the east wing of the chevron shape was broken and black smoke poured out. A ladder and hose were set up near to it, although water was no longer being pumped through the hose. Icicles hung from the windowsill, and a humped ice dam sat on the sill itself. I realized that I was seeing all of this so clearly because a huge spotlight had been trained on the site, like an Artaudian stage light waiting for some twisted Juliet to make her cue.
We walked past firefighters in full regalia, some of them (who had probably already been inside) looking filthy and reeking of smoke. Steve approached one of them, showed his ID, and asked if we could be allowed inside. We were pointed to a man in a black raincoat near the door.
“That’ll be the arson squad,” Steve told us, as we neared the building.
The arson guy told us that Grace was already inside with his boss, and that he figured it was all right to go in. He warned us that the elevators had shut down. He didn’t have to tell us not to touch anything, but he did anyway.
Grace was standing in the hallway with the arson guy's superior. She looked very small and older than I’d ever seen her look. Crying can do that. She turned to us with tears rolling off her cheeks, making me think of the icicles dripping off her office window.
“Denise, Randy, thank you for coming. I didn’t know who else to call. It’s as if I’ve been raped; you don’t really want the world to know.”
The head arson guy, who introduced himself as Inspector Gibson, looked rather uncomfortable at Grace’s simile. Once he had assessed that Denise and I were there for Grace, he turned to Steve. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to close ranks on a professional basis or if it was some sort of guy thing, so I was amused by his reaction when Steve disengaged himself by admitting he wasn’t officially on the case.
“I’m here as a friend, Inspector Gibson,” Steve said, just as Detectives Simon and Anderson came down the hallway. Steve turned to include them.
“These are Detectives Simon and Anderson; they’re assigned to a murder case we think might be linked to these malicious events.”
Karen Simon took over, questioning Gibson as to how much the arson squad might have discovered. The four of us stood in a doorway alcove across from Grace’s office and listened to Gibson’s findings. No one seemed to mind us there, probably because Steve was with us.
“The fire was deliberately set, using an accelerant doused on materials set along the west wall of the office. Most of the office was flammable, and there are noxious fumes from the upholstery in the chair. We got the call from Campus Security at the same time as the alarms at the firehouse went off. We managed to cut the air circulation once the fire was under control, so most of the smoke will have dissipated by morning. The offices surrounding have probably sustained some smoke damage, but the main damage is here in Dr. Tarrant’s office.”
Grace whimpered. Denise put her arms around her and rubbed her back.
“What was the accelerant used?” asked Anderson, who seemed to be in charge of writing notes while Karen Simon poked her head into the blackened dripping grotto that was Grace’s office.
“Looks like starter fluid, but we’ll be certain once the lab work is done.”
Karen checked the doorknob of the office door. “They weren’t very careful about breaking in. Crowbar to the joist from the looks of it. Was the door closed?”
“Yes, but not locked. There are smoke detectors in all the offices, so the alarms went off likely about four minutes post-flashpoint.”
“How long did it take for anyone to get here?” Steve asked from our corner. Karen looked up and nodded her approval of the question. Gibson tried to calculate, but decided the safest answer would be to talk to Campus Security.
“The trucks were outside when I got here and the fire was out. I met two firefighters on my way up the stairs and there was a Campus Security cop at the end of the hallway to direct me. I’ve been here”—he checked his watch—“thirty-five minutes.”
I turned to Steve. “There wasn’t a Rent-a-Cop in the hall when we got here.”
“No, but maybe he was dispatched to crowd control. I think half of HUB mall is out in the parking lot by now watching the show.”
Simon and Gibson agreed to connect with reports by mid-afternoon, then the arson guy went back to work. After taking a couple of pictures, Anderson phoned in for a crime scene unit, then he and Simon asked if there was someplace they could talk with us, especially Grace.
Grace looked bereft, since her usual sanctuary was out of the question. Both Denise and I had keys to the grad lounge at the other end of the third floor, so we all filed down the narrow halls, saying little. It was weird to be in the department with only security lights on in the hallways, and the booming disembodied voices of firefighters echoing from time to time. I stopped in the staff washroom on the way and fumbled in the dark to the cubicle. On the way back out, I took a look through the window down on the circus scene outside. Steve was right, there were crowds of people standing outside the ring of yellow trucks, staring at the building. Several Campus Security cops, in their brown suits, were moving the crowd back. Some police cars were pulled up at the nearest edge of the parking lot, and I thought I saw a line formed near one of the cars. Someone got out of the car, and another person got in. Taking statements, I figured, and hurried out of the darkened anteroom to join the others in the grad lounge.
I found them sitting around the central table. Anderson was using a flashlight to write his notes. Simon was questioning Grace about the contents of her office, her movements in the past few days, and if she had a list of possible enemies.
“Anyone you failed recently? Maybe someone who felt put down in a class?”
Grace had enough spirit to look indignant. “I don’t put people down in my classes, Detective.”
Simon didn’t break stride. “We have to consider all possibilities. Think about it. The arson squad figure the fire started on the west wall. What did you
have on the table set against the west wall of your office?”
Anderson, who had sketched a quick diagram of the layout of Grace’s office, pushed his notebook toward her and pointed with his pen to the rectangle in question.
“That table was piled high with padded envelopes, a file box of mailing labels, and about two hundred copies of HYSTERICAL. There were another six boxes filled with two hundred books each stacked under the table.” Her voice broke. “Oh God, they’re all burned, aren’t they?”
“Hysterical?” questioned Anderson.
Denise stepped in, giving Grace time to regain composure. “It’s a quarterly magazine. We were coming in tomorrow to get it ready for mailout.”
“How many people know about this magazine? Would it have been a target?”
“Well, it’s a feminist quarterly, but it’s devoted to literature rather than polemic,” Denise saw the question in Simon’s eyes and rephrased her answer seamlessly. “It’s not really political except in the way that any women’s writing might be seen as a political statement. As for who knew about it, that’s not an easy question. Everyone in the department knows that Grace is the editor; I don’t know how many of them were aware of its mailing dates. I doubt if any undergraduates would even have heard of it, although it is sold at the university bookstore.”
“We were discussing the mailout at Grace’s party on Friday,” I contributed. “I suppose anyone there might have overheard that.”
“And I was in the general office on Thursday arranging some help from the department secretaries. People might have heard me,” added Grace.
Simon sat back and thanked us. Steve reassured them that we could get Grace home. Anderson explained to her that her office would be restricted to crime scene access for a few days, and Grace slumped even further in her chair. Just then the lights flicked on, startling all of us.
“I guess everything’s under control.” Anderson smiled. “We’ll be in touch later today, Dr. Tarrant.”
He and Karen Simon left the three of us in the Grad Lounge. Denise and I turned on Steve to explain what would be happening now.
“My take on it is that there’ll be two prongs of investigation, maybe three. They’ll want to determine whether someonoe has targeted Grace personally. If not, and I doubt it’s the case, they’ll look to see if anyone has an axe to grind against the magazine itself. Then, with all of that ruled out, they’ll try to tie it into the previous events. Access, availability, that sort of thing. With this being the third event of a distinctly anti-feminist nature connected to this department, we’re bound to shake out some connections.” He assured Grace that Simon and Anderson were the best there were, and we finally got up and pulled on our outerwear.
The crowds had thinned but not completely by the time we got to Steve’s car. We couldn’t persuade Grace to leave her car and come with us, so Denise drove Grace’s car and Grace home. She said she could pick hers up later, and left a note on the dash to explain its presence to the parking Nazis.
Steve and I drove home in silence. I would have liked him to stay over, but understood when he said he should head in and file a report.
“I thought this wasn’t your case,” I teased mildly.
“I might not want it, but it seems to want me. Are you going to be all right?”
“Sure, once I shower this smell out of my hair.”
“Put your clothes in a garbage bag and tie it off right away, or you’ll be deodorizing your entire apartment for a week. There’s only one smell worse than a fire scene to get out of your clothes.”
“Yeah?” I said sleepily. “What’s that?”
“A fatal fire scene,” he said grimly.
I didn’t feel sleepy any more.
41
I COULDN’T HELP IT; ON MONDAY MORNING I found myself walking past Grace’s office on the way from the House to my exam. Even though it was the way I normally walked through the department, it felt ghoulish, like crawling past a traffic accident. There was yellow crime scene tape across the entrance and a massive padlock keeping the damaged door closed. Black soot smudged the white, bumpy stucco of the adjoining wall in ominous shadows like I’ve always imagined the fallout from Hiroshima. I hurried past.
There was nothing special for me in my mailbox, so I went down to HUB after grabbing a stack of examination booklets. I bought a large Java Jive and a packet of Fisherman’s Friends lozenges for anyone who might get a coughing attack during the exams. I had half an hour to kill, but I intended to be at the lecture room ahead of schedule to reassure the worried students who might think they should be haunting one of the gymnasia instead. I was glad we in the English Department could hold exams in regular lecture rooms since our classes were, for the most part, manageable in size. Those rows upon rows of exam desks set on the tarps to protect the gym floors were so antiseptic I couldn’t imagine intellectual thought being allowed to surface in the air. I recalled a Woody Allen routine about cheating on a metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the student next to him, and chuckled out loud. A girl on a bench looked up at me, startled. I guess the sound of laughter before an exam is not widely heard.
I made it to the lecture hall by nine-fifteen and smiled at the three students already lounging near the door. I let them in, turned on the lights, and checked the hall for stray papers. Pristine. I set up my stack of exam booklets, exam papers, class list, novel and coffee on the desk, and started to write the various things on the board that I always tried to impress on my students.
“Read through the exam paper completely before beginning.”
“There are two sides to the exam paper.”
“Please put your name on your exam booklet.”
“Use as many exam booklets as you need, number them in order.”
“Write in pen.”
“DOUBLE SPACE.”
Students began to file in. I called the roll. There was one student missing, but I’d known about the absence already; something to do with four wisdom teeth being yanked. Deferment allowed in spades.
I passed exam booklets from left to right and papers from right to left. I closed both doors and went back to my chair at the front of the room. Although novel reading in the a.m. is best done in bed with a large quilt, I was soon well engrossed in Barbara Gowdy’s Mr. Sandman, a novel I had wanted to read as soon as it had come out but hadn't got around to till now.
After the one-hour mark, some of the students began to shuffle forward for more exam booklets. I am always torn between happiness that I’ve engendered such dedication and the sincere and fervent hope that they just write big. I gave up on my novel about twenty minutes to the hour, and began to sort through my papers. A few students were flipping through their booklets, looking for obvious clunkers and spelling errors. I stood up and wrote “Merry Christmas” on the board, and sat down again to time the final minutes of the exam. By the time the buzzer sounded at ten to the hour, only three people were still writing.
“Time’s up,” I announced, and they resentfully closed their booklets.
A few people wished me a Happy Christmas as they left, but most were too wrapped up in either what they should have written or what they now had to study for. They filed out to their next Herculean labor. I gathered up their offerings (my own personal Augean stable droppings) and headed upstairs to the office to see if the ten o’clock mail had brought anything interesting.
There was a Christmas card from Guy and a postcard from Candy, a former grad student in the department. Did I really want to know she was enjoying a trip up the Nile? If I knew her, she’d be surrounded by willing Nubian fill-ins, as well. A notice informed me that the next Popular Culture Association’s Conference would be held in Las Vegas, which seemed fitting, somehow. Maybe Disneyland would be the following year’s choice.
One of the secretaries spotted my load of exams and tried to place a bet on when the students would first come round to check their marks. She was feeling smug since she wouldn't have to deal w
ith them till April. Final marks were posted on official pink slips on two ring binders at the department office, and we could slip away from the hurly-burly then. It was up to us to try to get through hordes of mark-checkers at our office doors for mid-terms and mid-sessions.
I wondered idly where Grace would be posting her mid-term marks.
I was stuffing exams into the side pocket of my briefcase and checking on my afternoon exam papers when Chantal, Greg, and Thora breezed through the office into the copy room. They were heading into HUB for lunch and asked me along. I counted out sixty exam booklets, shoved them into the center of my briefcase, and announced I was ready.
Our choices were limited to the Korean restaurant or A & W, since Chantal smoked. The Korean place won hands down. It was pleasant to tuck into a bowl of bibimbap and listen to normal conversation for a change. The fire in Grace’s office was dealt with, and we moved quickly on to other subjects such as exams, Christmas plans, the weather and the theory that the Internet was simply a plot to keep us from getting valid research done. Thora admitted to having been sucked into it for seven hours while making a random search for literary tours of the Lake District.
SInce Chantal and I had exams to proctor at two, we left the other two to a third cup of coffee and made our way back down the mall to the Humanities Building.
My second exam was on the second floor in one of the long, wide classrooms. I went up and down the rows of tables, making sure only two chairs were placed at each table to allow for mid-exam spread.
Some students had filed in by ten to the hour, so I self-consciously wrote my pre-exam messages on the board, praying all the kimchi I’d eaten at lunch wouldn’t act up on me.
I scanned the heads bowed over the new, improved exam paper, searching for someone who might give away by body language that this was not the exam he or she was expecting. Sherlock Holmes might have noticed something, but I didn’t. I wasn’t really expecting to, anyhow. I was pretty certain that a student wanting to get away with stealing an exam wouldn’t leave my office looking like a bomb site.
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