“Jesus,” Pilate said. “That’s gotta suck.”
“It does. You know, Grief’s dad, Marty, was teaching him the trade when the Keillor-Kennedy murders happened. He assisted with the funerals.” Krall burped.
Pilate’s mind harked back to the murder-suicide information Krall had shared. “Why do you suppose he did it?” Pilate asked.
“Who, Bernard?” Krall cracked his knuckles. “Like you asked about before, I think the guy went nuts, especially after he found out they were going to fire him after all those years.”
“That simple?” Pilate said.
“I think so,” Krall said, “but it’s a fascinating story nonetheless, and part of our town history, grim as it is. I figured it might be a nice introduction to this little town of ours for you.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Pilate said. “You know, there might be a good story in there somewhere—maybe a magazine article or even a book.” “Yes, I was thinking the same thing. What do you suppose? Kind of a look at this horrific event and the effects it had on a town? You writers. Always looking for new ways to fill my shelves.”
“Exactly,” Pilate said.
“Just the thing to keep you busy in this boring little town on cold winter nights when you’re sick of grading papers,” Krall smiled and stood.
Pilate grinned. “Well, thanks for looking out for my entertainment.”
“Don’t mention it…and when you write about me, it’s K-R-A-L-L.” He laughed. “But I do got a word of advice for ya.”
“And what’s that?”
“Um, just don’t publish it until you move on from here.” “Why not?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Perhaps the fact that you’ll embarrass the town by dredging up its pathetic Peyton Place murder story.”
“Good point,” Pilate said. “An exposé like that could drum up some publicity our ambitious college president would like to avoid, I suppose.”
“Yes, our president, among others.” He snickered as a buxom girl walked by wearing a Minnesota baseball jersey with the word “Twins” emblazoned across her chest. “Nice twins.”
Pilate smiled and sighed.
“So anyway, lay low with that murder stuff. Save it for later, after you’ve moved on. Then you can make it into a steamy mystery novel with lots of hot coed sex. You can use that bootleg porn channel for inspiration, so jot down some notes while you’re watching it.” Krall picked up his tray and walked away. Over his shoulder he said, “Besides, you wouldn’t want another strike against you, would you?”
The Lindstrom Renaissance: This was the unofficial name put to the $65 million capital campaign to bring rickety old Cross College kicking and screaming into the latter part of the twentieth century. A new science building, a new library, and enough fancy new computers to overwhelm Bill Gates were the main goals.
Pilate surfed the college website and clicked on the special section devoted to the campaign. Though he did harbor some personal distaste for the man, he had to admit that Lindstrom’s plan was ambitious, bold, necessary, and smart.
Cross College was one of the oldest schools in the state, yet it had very rarely been given its fiscal due from the legislature. Lindstrom was the first president in twenty-five years who had the backing and the will to move the school beyond mere survival into rebirth and full-scale growth. From what Pilate could glean from campus scuttlebutt and a quick Web search, Lindstrom had made his appearance at Cross about two years prior, after an apparently stormy term as a foundation executive at a Jesuit school in Pennsylvania. The man’s past was a tad sketchy: He counted failed novelist, noted professor of mathematics, and even insurance agent as past careers. Regardless of those broken career paths, Lindstrom really was good at raising money, and the days of academics leading small, financially troubled colleges like Cross were over. Now, it would take skilled politicians and talented public relations practitioners, fundraisers and friend-raisers. Bricks and mortar, elimination of deferred maintenance, and abolition of the tenure of lazy professors were high on the agenda.
Krall—who seemed to have the dirt on everybody at Cross and had no problem dishing it out to Pilate—had remarked that Lindstrom was “a ball breaker and a son of a bitch.” Cross College had appointed a new board of trustees after a rare Democrat governor cleaned house a few years earlier, and that new board demanded that someone to either fix Cross College or drive a stake through its heart once and for all.
Lindstrom was married, but his wife kept to herself other than giving piano lessons to townie kids out of her station in the president’s house. The closest person Lindstrom had to a confidant was the college’s foundation director, Dick Shefler, who’d arrived at Cross a few years after he did. A sharp-tongued young man, reputedly with an eye on elected office, Shefler was the smooth yin to Lindstrom’s brash yang. As Krall said, it was “not a bad combination when trying to squeeze contributions from complacent, rich alums.”
Lindstrom had fired (or “strongly encouraged,” as Krall emphasized) the retirement of more than eleven faculty and staff members during his short two years as president. He also had a history of ugly run-ins with students, parents, athletic teams, and boosters who failed to conform to his codes of behavior.
“Prude guy,” Krall said. “He finds outward displays of humanity distasteful.”
In the town, outside of the boundaries of the campus where he reigned, Lindstrom established himself as a game player: a no-regrets, kiss-my-ass carpetbagger and puppet master. When the town council refused his request to tear down a vacant, dilapidated house near the president’s home, he and Shefler used college foundation funds to buy the house and renovate it into their newest faculty parking lot. He hosted a cookout for faculty, staff, and students on his lawn as the wrecking ball flew. Most recently, the cursed old Bernard place had been turned into kindling without a fight; there was no need to stage a midwinter cookout over that one. Lindstrom wasted little energy ingratiating himself to the townsfolk. They were the ants crossing his lawn, as far as he was concerned, and if they became too annoying, he just crushed their anthills.
Krall also divulged that Lindstrom was one of the few who did not fear Mayor Olafson. More than one person had overheard Lindstrom threatening Mayor Olafson’s job. “He said something like ‘Mayor, play ball or I’ll get Dick Shefler to run against you, and he’ll win. Then we will get things done,’” Krall said with glee.
“Did he do it?” Pilate asked. “I mean, there’s no way he would win, is there?”
“Nah, unless Lindstrom could whip up the students to vote here in town for Shefler. That’d be a stretch, but it would’ve given Ollie some heartburn all the same. Anyway, it got the message across, and it was really ballsy.” He knitted his brows together. “Actually foolhardy, though, now that I think about it,” Krall said.
“How so?”
“Well, ya see, our man Olafson isn’t like his daddy, who was mayor back when the Bernard murders happened. Old man Olafson woulda cut Jack’s heart out for even speaking such a threat—or, at the very least, run him out of town on a rail. Our Mayor Olafson of today is a tad more, uh…civilized. He believes revenge is a dish best served cold or not at all.”
“So the violent gene skips a generation?” Pilate said, thinking back to the mayor’s son and his own bruised jaw on New Year’s Eve. “I wouldn’t say that, but I would say the thoughtless violence gene does,” Krall said, his eyes gone cold.
“Ollie will get Lindstrom one of these days. He’s got home team advantage, and Lindstrom is dancing on a razor blade over a pool of lemonade. You just wait and see.”
Pilate chewed that conversation over in his head a few times.
Lindstrom’s apparently got some strikes against him too.
The phone rang in the midst of Pilate’s placid remove of dreams. He risked opening an eyelid to check the time: three thirty a.m. Righteously pissed for at least two seconds, then instantly concerned—It could be bad news from home—Pilate groped for the phone. “Hello?�
�� he said, sounding much sleepier than he thought he would.
“John?”
He knew the female voice, but in his half-lucidity, he couldn’t place who it was. “What?” he said, shaking off the sleep.
“It’s me, Sam.”
Oh yeah. The British vowels. He sat up in bed as if a trumpet had announced the Lord’s second coming. “Sam? What the hell?”
“I heard you were sick, and then I couldn’t find you,” she
said.
“Sam, did you just leave the bar? Are you drunk?”
“For fuck’s sake, of course I am,” she said, exhaling the
smoke from a Benson and Hedges. “Do you think I’d call you while I’m sober?”
“What do you want? And how did you find me?” “I heard you have…cancer.”
“Cancer? What the fuck are you talking about?” Pilate reached for his pack of cigarettes.
“You had throat surgery for cancer, didn’t you? That’s what I heard.”
“Well…yes,” he said, not exactly a lie. He lit his cigarette.
“Why didn’t you call me?” She sounded genuinely pained. “Oh, I don’t know, Sam. Perhaps I assumed you were too busy screwing the bartender you left me for.”
There was silence for a moment, until Samantha coughed. “John, why did you leave?”
“Stupid question. Next?” “I’m sorry, John.”
A man’s voice in the background called to Samantha. She hung up.
Pilate stubbed out the cigarette, threw the phone on the floor, and spent the next hour trying to get back to sleep, to no avail.
Against her best instincts, Kate Nathaniel had become John Pilate’s friend. Over the course of the first three weeks of semester, she had broken down and joined him for lunch four times. Tonight, it was to be dinner. “Let’s not eat here in Cross,” she begged. “I don’t need the gossip. Let’s go over to Goss City. Besides, I have to pick up Kara at her grandfather’s after dinner.”
Goss City conjured images in Pilate’s mind of buildings with more than three stories and modern conveniences the town of Cross could not offer. Thus, he was sorely disappointed.
It was readily apparent that Goss City was actually not a city by the strict definition. Goss City had been Cross’s rival before the flood calamity and had added the word “city“ to its name in the vain hope it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a way, Goss did achieve those heights when the state highway was installed in the 1950s. At that point, the town became a way station for grain trucks, over-the-road supply trailers, and a minor farm equipment sales Mecca. Now, 3,422 people “and a few old soreheads” called Goss City home. It had a grocery store, dry cleaner, movie house, hardware store, several taverns, a decent prefab-metal bowling alley, Pierson’s grain elevator, and good public schools. It was not really a city, but there was hope.
Kate recommended Sulky’s Tavern for dinner. She described it as “dark and quiet, with huge steaks.” It was the sort of place with kitschy shit nailed up all over the walls, but Pilate got the strong impression that Sulky’s had been decorating that way long before the ubiquitous national chain restaurants had caught on to the trend that they tried to deny was a trend.
“Why do they call it Sulky’s? Is that a proper name?” Pilate asked as they slid into a booth beneath a metal license plate and an ancient photograph of a ghostly looking woman with dark hair.
Kate smiled and shook her head, pointing to the picture hanging over the bar of a very sulky man indeed.
“I see. The founder?” Pilate said, smiling back at her. She nodded.
They ate chicken fried steak, Sulky’s specialty, and chased it with ice-cold beer. Pilate had very little taste for beer; especially in the wintertime, but he didn’t want to order the hard stuff their first time out.
“How’s your jaw?” Kate said.
“It was fine until I had to chew on this steak,” Pilate said.
“Yeah, I guess it is a little rubbery,” Kate said.
“Sorry.”
“No problem.”
An awkward pause was broken by small talk about the snow and ice, which Pilate learned had been rather light for that time of year, relative to what they usually had to contend with. The discussion moved on to work and students for a while, then reverted to silence.
“Do you like it here?” Kate said in the middle of the lull.
“Um, it has its charms,” he said. “Nice people, good school.” Kate looked askance.
Pilate exhaled a long sigh, pushing his half-finished leathery steak and baked potato away. “No, Kate. No, I really don’t.”
Her face brightened. “Thank God! For a minute there, I thought you were completely insane.”
“But this is your home,” he said.
“No.” She put her fork down. “This was Rick’s home.”
“Well, it’s gotta be tough for you to stick around here,” Pilate acknowledged.
“It can be, yes, but Kara’s near Grif, and that’s important,” Kate said, smiling and waving at a couple who walked past their table. “But Grif’s wife Velma died a few years ago, and Kara’s nearly school age. I want her to go to a decent school.”
“I see. So you’re planning on leaving?”
“If I can find work,” she said, sipping her beer. “Besides, I don’t think I fit in with Jack Lindstrom’s new idea of Cross College.”
Pilate laughed. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, he has made some noise about getting rid of a lot of us adjuncts and using out-of-state teachers for Internet classes,” she said.
“You could teach those,” Pilate said. “I’ve done it.”
“And did you find it half as challenging or interesting as being an instructor in person?”
“Touché,” Pilate said. “However, I don’t think I’ll be in the teaching game for very long. I guess I don’t have such a passion for it.”
“Too many memories here, John,” she said, ignoring his last statement. Her husky voice had a wistful quality for a moment, but then it was gone. “But anyway, I plan to finish the semester and watch Olafson and Lindstrom fight it out over the Bartley place.”
“The Bartley place?” Pilate asked.
“Yeah. You haven’t you heard about that? It’s the huge farm on the outskirts of town. Ollie and all his Klansmen pals are trying to keep Lindstrom from buying it for the college. They want to put up a strip mall adjoining the highway and maybe a golf course—a nine-holer, I think.”
“What’s Lindstrom want it for?”
“He thinks he’ll need it for dorms for all the hundreds of new students his fancy new marketing guy is going to bring in.”
“Oh right. That guy,” Pilate said, thinking of the talented, high-priced marketing executive Krall had mentioned Lindstrom luring to campus.
“I hear he’s very good looking,” she said, smirking.
“And don’t forget the Jack Lindstrom student union,” she said. “I read the online prospectus for the capital campaign. I don’t remember anything about a new student union.”
“Oh. Well, Lindy thinks he’s going to overshoot the capital campaign goal. Then he’ll get Dick Shefler to say, ‘Lookee here, folks! Good ol’ President Jack did so well we should also build an Internet tech center and name it after our dear leader.’” Kate’s sarcasm was funny and surprising.
“You don’t much like Jack, do you?”
“I have my reasons,” she said, interrupted by the waitress with the check. She looked at her watch. “I need to go get Kara. Can you take me back now so I can get my car and get her.”
“I can take you over there. No sense in you going all the way back home then here again,” he said, laying money on the table.
“Well…” She looked up for a moment. “Okay, but we have to make sure Kara doesn’t think we were doing anything.”
Pilate smirked. “Like what?”
The Nathaniel Funeral Home had been in business for nearly a century, though the current
structure had only been built atop the basement some twenty years ago after a freak tornado ripped off the roof. Pilate had learned from Krall that the twister had snatched three bodies out of the structure and deposited two naked corpses from the embalming room onto the front lawn of the county tax office.
The third body remained in its coffin and flew nearly a mile, landing right side up with the lid open in the middle of the Bartley cornfield. Local lore had it that not a hair on the corpse of Dorothy “Dottie” Mostek’s head was out of place, and her hands remained clasped over her cancerous chest.
Just a few years ago, the structure had burned to the ground due to an unexplained fire. It was rebuilt again, right on the same spot.
Next door to the funeral home stood a lovely three-story Victorian manse, all white and gingerbread. A massive front porch hugged three sides of the first floor, complete with a porch swing.
A small Mercedes SUV pulled out of the drive as they entered, the headlights from Pilate’s car revealing Jack Lindstrom’s scowl.
“Isn’t that…?” Pilate said.
“Oh, what does he want?” Kate said. “I’ve had enough of him sniffing around.”
“What does he want?” Pilate said, parking the car.
“Lots of things he can’t have, but I’m assuming this time, he wants Grif’s help in getting the Bartley deal pushed through. Probably thinks Grif has dirt on Ollie. Let’s not talk about him, okay?”
“Suits me,” Pilate said, looking at Lindstrom’s taillights disappear down the road.
“That’s Grif’s house,” Kate said. “It’s been in the family a long time.”
“It’s nice,” Pilate said. He nodded at the mortuary. “And I guess that’s where the family business works?”
Kate nodded at the obvious statement. “Let’s get Kara. Come on.”
It was dark, though a partial moon glowed over the trees
that stood sentry over the cornfields behind the house and mortuary.
They hurried the way cold people do in winter, up to the solid wooden porch and into the house. Kate did not knock, instead sweeping in with Pilate in tow. He closed the screen and main doors to avoid letting the cold in.
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