Death by Dissertation

by Dean James

  Rob flinched from the mockery in my voice, but he blazed right back at me. “Geez, Andy, give me a break! I was seventeen years old, I grew up in rural Mississippi, and I didn’t know anything about being queer, except that it was wrong. How did you expect me to react?”

  He took a deep breath and continued. “You scared the hell out of me. I thought I had hidden those feelings from everybody. I freaked out when you kissed me, and because I liked it, I thought I was one of those filthy perverts the preacher used to talk about.”

  “Don’t you think I was scared, too?” I demanded. “I gave in to an impulse because, for once in my life, it felt like the right thing to do. And then I felt like the gates of hell had opened up, just for me, when you reacted like that. I didn’t deserve that, and it took me a long time to realize it.”

  “I didn’t know you were still so bitter. Though why I’m surprised, I don’t know.” Rob shook his head. “I still see your face—the hurt and the pain—that afternoon, and sometimes I can’t sleep. I’ve wanted so many times to talk to you about it these past two months, but I could never find the words, or the right time. I thought that running into each other all the time here in graduate school would make it easier, but you’ve made your feelings clear. You never have a conversation with me; you either say something rude or start some harangue.

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Andy. I wish that you could, but I know, more than you may be willing to admit, what I did to you. To a lesser extent, perhaps, I did it to myself as well.” His eyes pleaded with me to understand.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, looking away from him.

  “It took me a long time to face the truth, but when I did, I realized I hurt someone who meant a great deal to me, someone who had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. I pushed away someone whose affection, concern, and support... Oh, the hell with it!” Rob said wearily. “I might as well say it, I don’t have anything left to lose.” He took a deep breath. “I hurt the person I loved most in the world, the one person who glimpsed the real me and didn’t turn away in disgust. I’ll never stop wondering what a difference that would have made, if I hadn’t been such a fool.” He was crying, the tears flowing silently down his face.

  “Damn you!” I said, as I, too, started to cry. I wanted to beat him and scream at him for the ten years of heartache and doubt, the sleepless nights and the daydreams. Hating myself for the daydreams, but unable to expunge him from my memories. A while back, I’d been involved in a relationship that lasted three years, but Rob was always there, like a ghost at the wedding. I had never gotten him completely out of my system, despite what he had done to me.

  “I’m sorry, Andy, there’s no point to this.” He stood up. “I’ll get out of here.”

  “No, wait!” I said, reacting before I thought about it. I paused. I didn’t know what I wanted. My anger drained away, leaving me dazed. I looked around for Maggie, but she had disappeared. “Don’t go yet. Please,” I said as I got up and stumbled for the kitchen.

  Exhausted, Rob sat down on the couch again.

  Maggie was in the kitchen, crying quietly. She grabbed me when I came through the door and hugged me until I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe again. “Oh, Andy,” she said, “I never imagined this. Are you gonna be okay?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I told her, disengaging myself from her arms. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bulldozer.” I went to the sink, laid my glasses aside, and started splashing my face with cold water. Then, feeling slightly more coherent, I dried my face with some paper towels and peered nearsightedly at her.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Geez! I don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes. “I feel like getting in my car and driving away and not coming back. I don’t think I can face him day after day, in class after class.”

  “Yes, you can,” she said, her voice clear and strong, her tears forgotten.

  I put on my glasses and stared at her. “What makes you so sure?”

  “You didn’t work hard for four years, teaching high school history, scraping and saving every penny to attend graduate school, to give it up because of this.”

  That’s what you got for confiding in so-called friends. They used your words, threw them back in your face, when you tried to weasel out of something.

  “Thanks a lot,” I told her sourly.

  She smiled patiently at me. “Andy, I know you’re hurting. You’re bewildered and don’t know what to think. I’m not sure what I’d do in these circumstances. Frankly, you have every right to be pissed at him, now and forever. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “He does care about you.”

  “Oh, really? And what makes you the expert?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her response. Couldn’t I just make her—and him—go away and get out of my life?

  Maggie ignored my rude tone. “I’ve noticed him watching you. A lot. I don’t think he’s aware of how much he does it, but it’s one reason I was sure he’s gay. I didn’t realize that you two had known each other so well, but I could tell that he had strong feelings for you. He’s a lot more vulnerable than you think, and he’s risked a lot, telling you what he did.”

  “Oh, you think so?” I definitely didn’t want to hear this.

  “Yes, I do think so. Andy, don’t you see what he’s done?” She was almost pleading with me. “He’s reversed the situation of ten years ago. He’s exposed himself utterly to you. He has no defenses left right now, and if you turn on him, the way he did on you, he won’t blame you. A lot of people wouldn’t. But you’ll always have to wonder what might have been.”

  “And so you think I can go out there, kiss and make up, and we can ride off happily into the sunset forever?”

  Maggie smiled at my derision. “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s only one way to find out.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t handle that kind of risk right now.” I fought the rising tide of panic in my mind and in my gut. “I can’t go through that again."

  “But you won’t be alone this time. I think Rob is prepared to risk just as much as you are, and at least this time, you’ll have the home-court advantage, so to speak.”

  “Spare me the lame sports analogies, please.” I frowned at her, even while a certain organ did a flip-flop or two.

  “When you get that sarcastic with me, I know you’re starting to feel better.” She had the nerve to grin at me.

  “Bitch,” I said, without rancor.

  She took my hand and led me out of the kitchen. “Yeah,” she replied, “and you’re the one who told him not to leave.”

  As we came back into the living room, Rob looked up, hope naked in his eyes. He stood, and I held out a hand to him. I simply meant to shake his hand, but he, perhaps willfully, misinterpreted the gesture and threw his arms around me instead.

  The warmth of his body coursed like an electric charge through me. I returned his hug, almost by reflex. I had to admit that he felt good in my arms.

  I let go of him, and he understood. He dropped his arms and moved away. His eyes bored into mine.

  “Can we start over, maybe?” he asked, his voice husky.

  I nodded. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything more than that. Let’s work on being friends, okay?”

  He smiled. “At least you’re talking to me.”

  “You may have cause to regret that.”

  “I’ll take a chance.”

  “Good!” Maggie said briskly. “Now that we’ve done the drama-queen bit for the day”—Rob and I both threw her a look—“suppose you tell us, Rob, what the police had to say to you? Why did they think you and Charlie were lovers?” She sat down on the couch and patted the space beside her. Rob sat down, and I got comfortable in my chair.

  “Someone in the history department told the good lieutenant that we were,” Rob said flatly.

  Maggie and I looked at each other and said simultaneously “Azalea!”

>   Rob nodded wearily. “That was my guess, too. I know the woman despised Charlie, and she doesn’t seem to have much use for me, either, though I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’ve ever done to piss her off.”

  “She knew you and Charlie were sharing an apartment,” Maggie said. “That was enough.”

  Rob shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “So how did Lieutenant Herrera broach the subject with you?” I asked. “Was he accusatory?”

  “Not at first,” Rob answered. “He started off in a mild way. But the more we talked, the more insistent he became that I was deliberately misleading him about the true nature of my relationship with Charlie.” He shook his head. “I kept insisting that we were friends, roommates who shared the expenses, but Herrera just kept pushing at me. He didn’t seem to believe that two men in Montrose could live together and not be spending all their time in the sack.”

  “Did he say that?” Maggie asked, appalled.

  “Yes, more or less,” Rob said.

  My hands clenched in my lap. Herrera had been polite to me. But now that he knew where I lived, he’d probably take the same tone with me if he questioned me again.

  “I even offered to take him upstairs and show him our separate bedrooms,” Rob went on, “but he wasn’t interested. I could tell he didn’t believe me. Or else he’s intentionally misunderstanding the whole situation. I think he’s found his chief suspect, and he doesn’t want to look any further.”

  “But what motive would you possibly have had for killing Charlie?” Maggie asked. “It makes absolutely no sense to me. You told me you and Charlie weren’t lovers, but I’m not sure how you can prove that to anyone else!”

  Rob smiled sadly. “I did love him, in a way, as a friend, because he was the first person I came out to, five years ago. You’d be surprised how supportive and, well, almost tender, he could be. He cared about me, and he did his best to help me, even though he was ambivalent about his own sexuality. He could be nasty to almost everyone else, but he and I had a different kind of relationship. I didn’t try to make excuses for him. I know he could be awful, but I cared about him in spite of that.”

  Maggie seemed willing to accept everything Rob said at face value, but I’d known him longer, and I wasn’t completely convinced. There was something hard to read in his expression when he denied having a physical relationship with Charlie.

  Nevertheless, Maggie and I were both moved by his simple declaration of feeling for his friend. Charlie had been a difficult person to like, even to tolerate on occasion, and I doubted he’d have a more feeling or compassionate eulogy than the one Rob had just given him. I looked at him with a newfound respect. If he was being completely honest, he had most definitely changed, and I had to make myself realize it. I, too, had changed in many ways in the past ten years, and in my blind rage at Rob, I had denied him the capacity to grow and learn and to mature.

  “Since I knew Charlie better than anyone,” Rob said, “and because everyone seems to think the two of us were having a relationship, I think I’m going to be an attractive suspect for the cops.” He took a deep breath. “And then there’s the fact that we had a big argument a few days ago, and more than one person must have overheard it.”

  “What did you argue about?” Maggie asked.

  Rob looked at her; he wouldn’t look in my direction. “I don’t think the subject of the argument is all that important. What is important, from the police’s point of view, is that I was just about ready to haul off and hit him, when someone walked in. Charlie could be a jerk, and he made me really angry that day. We were in the grad student lounge, not the best place to have an argument, but, of course, he probably did it on purpose, just to provoke me.”

  “Oh, Rob,” Maggie said. “Did you say something stupid like, ‘I could kill you?’?”

  He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Of course I did. You and I know that it doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s the kind of stupid thing you say when you’re upset. And it won’t be long before the police collect that little tidbit and come talk to me again. It’s not bad enough that someone I cared about has been killed. There’s all this other stuff to deal with, too.”

  Watching his face and the defeated slump of his body, I wanted to do something to help him, in spite of my reservations. Deciding to go with my heart and not my head, I reached over and squeezed his arm. “Maggie and I will stand by you. You didn’t kill Charlie, and they’re not going to be able to charge you with it and make it stick. If we have to, we’ll figure this out ourselves.”

  Maggie echoed my words. As she spoke, I realized that this was what I had been thinking all along. Ever since reading that first Nancy Drew book when I was ten years old, I’d had a hankering to play detective. Reading hundreds of adult mysteries hadn’t changed that notion. I had always been curious about people and what makes them tick. That’s why I became so interested in history. I wanted to know more about people who’ve been dead for more than six hundred years.

  Rob cheered up slightly. For the first time, his smile looked hopeful. “Well, then, where do we start? I owe Charlie that much.”

  I leaned back in my chair and tried to appear as if I knew what I was doing. I looked to Maggie for assistance, but she wrinkled her nose and left me to pole the barge alone. “We should start with a motive,” I suggested, “although the police will probably start with opportunity. Who had a motive to kill Charlie? Admittedly, he made a lot of people angry. The things he would say sometimes and then get away with, just because people were afraid of him.” I shook my head, remembering. “But that’s not enough to kill him. So what other reasons could there be?”

  Rob’s face clouded over.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “I think Charlie was blackmailing somebody.”

  Blackmail! The word reverberated in my mind. Rob waited warily for a reaction from Maggie and me. Charlie could be loathsome, but blackmail was farther than I thought even he would go.

  “Who was he blackmailing?” I asked.

  Manifestly uncomfortable, Rob shrugged. “This is kind of hard to explain, partly because I haven’t had time to think it all through, but I think Charlie could have been blackmailing several people.”

  “Why do you think that?” Maggie asked.

  “This is where it gets complicated, I’m afraid.” His face scrunched up as he organized his thoughts. “There are probably a few things neither of you know about Charlie. He wasn’t easy to get close to.” Rob paused, sensitive to his understatement. “I felt sorry for him. He didn’t know how to make friends, with his attitudes and that godawful acid tongue.”

  “But you, at least, got beyond that with him,” Maggie said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I did. When we were undergraduates together, even though he was a couple of years older, Charlie told me enough about his so-called family life that I could understand why he was like he was. His parents are wealthy, and he was the youngest of four sons. The other three all took business degrees and went into the family’s businesses, but Charlie was always the one who was different—a gay, liberal, brainy type from a conservative, wealthy Southern family.

  “He came out to them when he was about eighteen. They had sent him to an exclusive prep school in Boston, and I got the impression from Charlie that something happened that forced his hand while he was at the school. He was never comfortable with being ‘out,’ though, and he never talked publicly, as far as I know, about being gay. If you cornered him, he might admit it, but most of the time, he just ignored the subject.” Rob shook his head. “I went through that stage myself, but Charlie was still stuck in it.

  “Well, when Mom and Dad and all the big brothers discovered that baby Charlie was a faggot, all hell broke loose. For about a year, Charlie said, his life was sheer misery. Then, one of his grandmothers stepped in and somehow made the family see a little more sense, at least so they could get along. When Charlie decided he wanted to attend graduate sc
hool, after failing miserably at working in the family’s businesses, they finally gave in. After all, even they had to admit that being a college professor was respectable. And, of course, the fact that he was several states away didn’t hurt,” Rob observed ironically.

  “Charlie never seemed to be short of cash,” I commented, “unlike the rest of us. It must be nice to have a rich family.”

  Rob laughed. “Charlie didn’t need the fellowship he got to pay for his education. His monthly allowance was incredible. You should see his expensive computer system. And a fancy CD player, a VCR, and a video camera you could have used to film Gone With the Wind.”

  When Rob stopped to take a breath, an idea surfaced, and I expressed it aloud. “But if he had a wealthy family and a generous allowance, he surely wasn’t blackmailing for money, was he?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think money was that important, because the people I suspect were his targets can’t afford large sums of money.” He paused. “No, what Charlie liked was the power trip, getting an edge over someone. That was the part of Charlie I disliked, and he knew that, so he tried to keep what he was doing from me.” He splayed his hands in an interrogative gesture. “I don’t know why, but I was the one person he actually tried to have a real friendship with.”

  I wondered whether Charlie might have fallen in love with Rob, but now wasn’t the most tactful time to ask.

  In an effort to console him, Maggie said, “You may never be able to explain these contradictions to yourself, Rob. Hold on to your memories of your friendship, and keep that separate from whatever else Charlie may or may not have done.”

  Rob seemed comforted by Maggie’s words. “I suppose you’re right,” he sighed. “But the situation’s a real bitch.”

  I nodded in commiseration, and Maggie squeezed his arm. I moved the conversation back toward motives for murder. “Rob, what proof do you have that Charlie was blackmailing someone?”

  He rubbed his forehead with both hands before he answered. “That’s the problem, Andy. I don’t have anything substantive.” He clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap. “Everything is impressionistic, subjective.”