Pilate's Cross
Page 5
CHAPTER SIX
Trevathan warmed to Pilate a little, and one of the first things he did was gently warn him to “Stay clear of President Lindstrom for a while,” and then he thanked him for coming so quickly. Next, he went over a few procedural details, then accompanied Pilate to lunch at the cafeteria. “We’ve had some, uh, quick exits recently,” Trevathan said, drinking coffee washing down his two bites of sweet potato pie with a gulp of coffee. His glass eye continued to wander when he looked at Pilate.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and coughed, then ran a hand over his short, steel-gray hair. “Lindstrom has been on sort of a remodeling kick, so to speak.”
“I see,” Pilate said, now feeling even worse about his run-in with Lindstrom and the great butt-tossing fiasco. He pushed his half-eaten chef’s salad away.
“He never forgets a slight, and once he gets it in his head that you’re against him or not 100 percent on his team, you’re truly and forever screwed,” Trevathan said. “That said, don’t worry. I think you’ll get a pass on the cigarette thing, being new here.”
“Sorry about that. I was tired from the drive, and—”
Trevathan looked up at the clock, interrupting Pilate’s lame excuse. “Just be more aware in the future.” He drummed his hands twice on the table and smirked, a pained expression that failed miserably to suggest mirth. “Come on. I’ll show you your office.”
Pilate’s “office“ was about the size of a large walk-in closet, part of a warren of six similar rooms down the hall from numerous old classrooms. An ancient desk with an old matchbook under one of the legs, along with a coffee-stained cloth chair, comprised his workstation. An institutional hard plastic chair for visitors adjoined the desk.
Pilate hauled a box of books and a few odds and ends over from his apartment after Trevathan gave him the keys and showed him how to use the e-mail system. He placed the books haphazardly on a small, scratched oak shelf that matched the desk in color and condition. On the side was a small metal tag that read “Property of Cross College.” After placing a framed photo of his parents on the desk and wiping what appeared to be lipstick and makeup residue off his telephone, he called his parents collect.
His mother asked about his missing tonsils; his father asked if he was getting along with the new boss.
Oh yeah, Dad. Primo.
Pilate ended the call with a promise to call every Sunday. Then, he picked up the syllabus for his first class, scheduled to start that week, Introduction to Creative Writing. He grunted at the formulaic class structure and tired notes from the last instructor, who had the improbable name of Donna Reed. Great. I’m inhabiting Donna Reed’s office, about to teach her course load. “It’s a wonderful life,” he said and then chuckled at his own lame joke.
“Yeah? See if you still feel that way after you’ve been here a while,” said a husky female voice.
Pilate looked up and saw the pretty woman he’d seen at the grocery store, the one with the dirty blonde hair and unforgettable ass. Startled, Pilate rose to his feet. “Um…hi. I didn’t know anyone was around.” On closer inspection, he saw that the woman’s face, with only traces of makeup evident, was pretty but tempered with what Pilate surmised as a more than passing acquaintance with sorrow. Her arms were loosely folded across her chest, which filled out a pale blue sweater that matched her eyes. “John Pilate,” he said, extending a hand.
She took it, and finally, since the time he’d arrived, someone had accepted his handshake. “Nice to meet you, John Pilate,” she said. “Welcome to our little slice of heaven.”
Pilate paused a moment to ponder the encounter. Her soft hand felt natural, warm and somehow comforting in his.
“I’m Kate,” she said, looking him in the eye. “Kate Nathaniel, English and library science.”
“Oh yes, Kate,” Pilate said, pretending he’d heard of her. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”
She nodded. “I suppose you could call it that, though it wasn’t a proper introduction. At the store. My daughter found your lucky ticket.”
“Right, thanks. It was lucky,” he said. “Perhaps I should split the winnings with her.”
“Your winnings?” she said, sounding skeptical.
“Well, a fifty percent cut would be a whole whopping dollar.”
Kate smiled. “I hear you’re from down South,” she said, her arms uncrossing, her hands sliding into the pockets of her tight Levi’s.
“Yes, yes I am. I’m from—”
When he was interrupted by the ringing telephone, they both looked at it.
“I wonder who could be calling me,” he said.
“One way to find out,” she said. “Talk to you later.” She waved with her fingers and walked out as Pilate reached for the phone.
It was Sheriff Scovill. “Mr. Pilate, we need you to move your car,” he said. “We’re finishing some demolition of a structure next door to your apartment. The trucks need your space for the day, if you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all,” he said. “Sheriff, if you don’t mind me asking, what are they tearing down?”
Scovill paused.
Pilate imagined the man taking a toothpick from his mouth like a guard straight out of Cool Hand Luke.
“It’s the old Bernard house. Been vacant a long time. The college bought it last month, and President Lindstrom wants it gone,” he said.
Pilate moved his car from the path of trucks and equipment as they demolished the white two-story home next door to his faculty apartment. He loitered a moment to observe the heavy equipment as it pulled down the wooden skin and frame of the shabby residence.
“Sad in a way,” said a man who had, during the noise of demolition, sauntered up to Pilate unobserved.
“Huh?” Pilate said, startled. He turned and saw a disheveled tie, sweater, baggy pants, and moth-eaten overcoat wearing a gangly man with prematurely gray hair. “Sad? How so?”
“Well, that house has to go, I guess, but there is so much history tied up in the old place,” he said.
“Really?” Pilate said.
The man extended a hand. “Yes. I’m Derek Krall, school librarian and amateur town historian.”
“Oh. Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m—”
“John Pilate, our smokin’ new instructor,” Krall said, smiling.
Pilate rolled his eyes. “Crap. Has everyone heard that story?”
“You’ll soon find you can’t fart around here without someone smelling it across town,” he said with a wry chuckle. “How the hell did you end up out here in the middle of nowhere? If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look, uh…the type.”
“Oh, you know—the usual series of missteps,” Pilate said, smiling. “Man plans, God laughs.”
“I hear ya,” Krall said.
“So what big history is tied to this place?” Pilate jerked a thumb at the crumbling walls.
“The Bernard place? Where do I start?” Krall’s eyes widened. He clearly loved the stuff, whatever it was. “That is—alas was— the scene of the most famous suicide in the history of this town.”
“Oh,” Pilate said, though he was surprised a self-homicide even stood out. Pilate frankly couldn’t see much argument against suicide in the desolate winters of this burg. “Someone name Bernard offed himself?”
“Yup. Bullet to the brain.” Krall put his finger to his temple and made a crude bang sound. “He was a professor too.”
“That’s encouraging,” Pilate said, shrugging in his overcoat against a cold gust.
A monotonous beep issued from one of the heavy loaders as it backed up with a full load of debris.
Krall looked down at his feet for a moment, then at Pilate. “Yes, well, it’s pretty extraordinary, considering.”
“How so? Did he go psycho from the lonely winters here? Mentally ill?” Pilate realized the cold gust he felt was not a breeze at all; it was his old friend Simon. He saw Simon over Krall’s shoulder, glaring at Pilate from th
e window of his apartment.
“Well, maybe. He sucked a bullet out of the barrel of a gun after he murdered his boss and the college president,” Krall said.
“Oh, I see,” Pilate said, his gaze torn away from the window and back to Krall’s face from the grim account. “Tell me more.”
Pilate followed Krall back to his cramped and, Pilate thought, laughably stereotypically messy office. Stacks of papers, dozens of school annuals, and what had to be at least fifty Post-it notes littered the large oak desk that ate up most of the room.
“Sorry for the mess,” Krall said, bursting into a humorless staccato laugh. He bent over a filing cabinet and pulled out a large brown envelope, the kind you might use to mail a manuscript or magazines. When he offered it to Pilate, John saw label scrawled haphazardly in black marker across the top: “Assassination File: November 1963.”
“Uh, thanks, but I went through my JFK conspiracy phase after the movie,” Pilate said, offering a polite smile. “The Cross College incident, remember?”
Krall looked pained. “That’s what this is,” he said, leaving the “moron” unsaid.
“Sorry. November 1963, huh?”
“Yeah. It happened just a few days after President Kennedy was assassinated. Cross College lost its president to an assassin too. Ironically—or maybe not—Kennedy was the name of the dean killed along with the president.”
Pilate found that interesting detail almost as weird as all those Lincoln-Kennedy assassination coincidences that had fascinated him as a child. Lincoln had an assistant named Kennedy who warned him not to go to the theatre. Kennedy had an assistant named Lincoln who warned him not to go to Dallas. Pilate had a figment of his imagination that warned him not to go to Cross.
Pilate opened the envelope. Inside were at least 100 pages of documents, photocopies, newspaper clippings, and graphic crime scene photos of the double murder-homicide. Aesthetically speaking, the one saving grace was that the grotesque images were not in color. One showed an almost comically surprised-looking President Keillor, his right eye a ghastly black hole, sprawled in his chair; another showed Kennedy, his puppet strings cut, a third eye bored in his forehead. Pilate flipped through a dozen or so other photos showing different angles of the same horrors. When he came to one of a portly man lying on a hooked rug, his arms extended like a tweedy Christ, a gun loosely spilling from one hand, he held it up to Krall, who had watched Pilate take in the gory photos wordlessly. “This Bernard?”
Krall nodded.
Another photo showed a close-up of Bernard’s face, a crease where his glasses pinched his nose still apparent, his mouth a trickle of blood. A garish mosaic of dark, inky blood and brains oozed out from behind his head.
“God this is awful,” Pilate finally said, thumbing back through the photos.
“Yes, it was.”
“Humph. Why?” Pilate said, looking up a moment at Krall, who had his feet on his desk. “Why would somebody do this?”
“Well, he left a note.” He dropped his feet to the floor, leaned over, and pointed to the photo, where a typed letter and fountain pen lay beside the body. “See?”
Pilate nodded.
“He left instructions for his burial, along with a postscript.” Krall smiled, sat back down, and raised his eyebrows mischievously, clearly relishing the opportunity to tell the tale to a new listener.
“And?” Pilate prompted.
Krall gestured toward the envelope. “Gimme.” Pilate handed the packet back to him.
Krall fished through the papers until he found a copy of the letter, then handed it to Pilate. “Here’s what the police transcribed from the original letter. Not sure where the actual letter is— probably lost in a box or hole somewhere.”
Pilate took it, glanced at it, and immediately asked, “Who was Dr. Benton?”
“Hmm? Oh, the guy he asked to look after his affairs? He was a prof here, one of the few who could stand the guy.”
“I see. So Bernard was…” Pilate was going to say “misfit“ or “loner,” until he read the postscript:
P.S. Wally tried to fire the wrong person.
“Wally?”
“Dr. Walker Keillor. Nobody but his missus called him Wally to his face, and personally, I think Bernard meant it disparagingly. Walker had told Bernard a few days earlier that Dean Kennedy had agreed it was time for Bernard to move on,” Krall said, putting his feet back up and laying the file on his desk.
“Oh. So they fired him?”
“Yes, as people sometimes do in academia. They just declined to re-up his contract…after twenty-four years.” Krall whistled, making the sound of a bomb dropping, holding his hands behind his head to support himself while he leaned back. “Real bummer.”
“Yeah, apparently so.” Pilate chewed on his fingernail. “Sounds like the most interesting thing that’s ever happened here.” “Maybe,” Krall said, “though I hear the flood of ‘43 was a pretty big deal.”
Pilate spent a restless couple of days leading to New Year’s, fighting the urge to go back home for the holiday. He had no money to make the trip, though, so he was forced to ring in the New Year in a rather lonesome fashion amidst a freshly fallen foot of snow.
He walked to the town bar on New Year’s Eve. As gregarious as he liked to think he could be, he was nervous. The numerous pickups, Jeeps, and SUVs out front, coupled with the honky-tonk laughter from within, put him off. Pilate lit a cigarette with slightly trembling hands. As he glanced up, clouds obscured the wondrous blanket of pinpoints that had so moved him during his first few nights in town. He puffed on the smoke, still debating as to whether to go inside or go home. Snow started to fall again, and Pilate was startled by the sound of vehicle ignition and the glare of the floodlights from the sheriff’s truck hidden in an alley across the street. Pilate gave a brief wave to the sheriff, though he did not notice any effort from the sheriff to acknowledge him. “Well shit,” Pilate muttered. Busted. He couldn’t just toddle home without going in.
He opened the bar door and was blasted by the music and laughter of the revelers. Pilate edged his way through the crowd that jammed into every bit of space. He recognized some of the regulars from the college: a toothless janitor, a couple of grizzled groundskeepers, and the de rigueur art professor with the gray ponytail and granny glasses. To his surprise, he also spied Dean Trevathan among the throng.
Trevathan was holding court with a couple of the groundskeepers and the plump short order cook from the college’s fast-food style café. They sat around a small table, boilermakers parked in front of them, Trevathan’s mirthless glass eye wandering as he gestured and spoke.
Suddenly, Pilate felt a painful blow to his right side, where a very large man with a party hat on his round head had bumped into him at full force.
“Sorry, friend,” the man said, though the word “friend“ seemed like it wanted to come out as “asshole.”
“Beg pardon,” Pilate said, reflexive of many such accidental meetings in more bars, clubs, and discos than he could count.
“What did you say?” the man said, though he was so drunk it sounded more like “Whadyusay?”
“I said I beg your pardon,” Pilate said, turning to order his drink.
The large man’s face became very red; his piggy eyes bored into Pilate. “No, I beg your pardon, dickhead,” he said, poking Pilate hard in the chest, spilling his beer down Pilate’s leg.
Like most people, Pilate didn’t like to be pushed, but he checked his first response, which was to push back; he was in a very bad place to look for backup. He held his hands up, as if he surrendered, and tried to back away from the man. Backing away, however caused him to inadvertently place his Size 12 hiking boots on the feet of another man’s date.
“Ouch! Get off!“ the woman cried.
The woman’s date shoved Pilate directly into the large man with the party hat.
Pilate felt the man’s flabby belly give a little and heard him make an oomph sound. “Sorry, I—”
He awoke in the back of the sheriff’s SUV and overheard Scovill talking to someone.
“I saw the whole goddamned thing, Scovill,” it was Dean Trevathan, a tad drunk. “John Pilate was minding his own business when Haystack Calhoun slugged him.”
Scovill’s voice broke through the blackness, and Pilate opened his eyes. He saw Trevathan weaving a little as he stood beside the driver’s side window, barking at Scovill.
“I’m sure you’re right. Look, I’ll make sure he’s all right and take him home, okay, Doc?”
“Well, uh…you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?” Trevathan said. “Naw. It’s just a bruised jaw,” Scovill said.
“What are you going to do about Craig Olafson?” There was a pause.
“Oh,” Trevathan said. “The usual, huh? Not a goddamned thing.” Pilate sat up and saw the dean stagger back to the bar.
Scovill farted loudly in the front seat.
“Man,” Pilate moaned. “Not sure what’s worse, my jaw or that fart, Sheriff.”
“Count your blessings,” Scovill said. “It coulda been a lot worse for you tonight.”
“You mean it could smell worse? I seriously doubt that. I bet they really can smell that one across town.” Pilate looked at Scovill’s half-closed eye through the rearview mirror and took note of his expressionless face.
“I mean that guy could have put you in the hospital if Trevathan hadn’t run out here to get me,” he said.
“Sheriff,” Pilate said, rubbing his jaw, “I didn’t provoke that guy on purpose. I just—”
“No doubt,” he said as he finally developed a facial expression. Pilate thought it was one of understanding, but the inscrutable sheriff was tough to read.
“Well, am I—”
“Free to go?” Scovill said, his eyebrow raised. Pilate nodded.