Six Years

Chapter 15

When I saw the headlights, I let out a gasp and tried yet again to roll away. The headlights followed me.

“Sir?”

I lay flat on my back, staring straight up in the air. That was curious. How could a car be approaching me head-on if I was facing the sky? I raised my arm to block the light. A thunderbolt of pain ripped down my shoulder socket.

“Sir, are you okay?”

I shielded my eyes and squinted. The two headlights merged into one flashlight. The person pointing it moved the beam away from my eyes. I blinked up and saw a cop standing over me. I sat up slowly, my entire body crying out in protest.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You don’t know where you are?”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. It was pitch-dark. I was lying in shrubbery of some kind. For a moment I flashed back to my freshman year of college, that time I ended up in a bush after a night of too much inexperienced drinking.

“What’s your name, sir?” the cop asked.

“Jake Fisher.”

“Mr. Fisher, have you been drinking tonight?”

“I was attacked,” I said.

“Attacked?”

“Two men with guns.”

“Mr. Fisher?”

“Yes?”

The cop had that condescending-patient-cop tone. “Have you been drinking tonight?”

“I was. Much earlier.”

“Mr. Fisher, I’m State Trooper John Ong. You appear to have some injuries. Would you like us to take you to a hospital?”

I was trying hard to focus. Every brain wave seemed to travel through some kind of shower-door distortion. “I’m not sure.”

“We will call for an ambulance,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” I looked around. “Where am I?”

“Mr. Fisher, may I see some identification, please?”

“Sure.” I reached into my back pocket, but then I remembered that I had tossed my wallet and phone into the front passenger seat next to Bob. “They stole it.”

“Who?”

“The two men who attacked me.”

“The guys with the guns?”

“Yes.”

“So it was a robbery?”

“No.”

The images flashed across my eyes-my forearm against Otto’s neck, the box cutter in his hand, the tool chest, the handcuff, that naked, horrible, paralyzing fear, the sudden stop, the squelching sound as his windpipe collapsed like a twig. I closed my eyes and tried to make them go away.

Then, almost more to myself than State Trooper Ong, “I killed one of them.”

“Excuse me?”

There were tears in my eyes now. I did not know what to do. I had killed a man, but it had been both an accident and in self-defense. I needed to explain that. I couldn’t just keep that to myself. I knew better. Many of the students who majored in political science were also pre-law. Most of my fellow professors had even gotten their JDs and passed the bar. I knew a lot about the Constitution and rights and how our legal system worked. In short, you need to be careful about what you say. You cannot “unring” that bell. I wanted to talk. I needed to talk. But I couldn’t just blurt out admissions of murder.

I heard sirens and saw the ambulance pull up.

State Trooper John Ong shone the light back in my eyes. That couldn’t have been an accident. “Mr. Fisher?”

“I’d like to call my attorney,” I said.

I don’t have an attorney.

I am a single college professor with no criminal record and very few resources. What would I need an attorney for?

“Okay, I have good news and bad news,” Benedict said.

I had instead called Benedict. Benedict wasn’t a member of the bar, but he had gotten a law degree at Stanford. I sat on one of those gurneys covered with what seemed to be butcher paper. I was in the ER of a small hospital. The doctor on duty-who looked almost as exhausted as I felt-had told me that I had probably suffered a concussion. My head ached like it. I also had various contusions, cuts, and maybe a sprain. He didn’t know what to make of the teeth marks. With the adrenaline spikes ebbing away, the pain was gaining ground and confidence. He promised to prescribe some Percocet for me.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“The good news is, the cops think you’ve gone completely nuts and don’t believe a word of what you say.”

“And the bad news?”

“I tend to agree with them, though I add the strong possibility of an alcohol-induced hallucination.”

“I was attacked.”

“Yes, I get that,” Benedict said. “Two men, guns, a van, something about power tools.”

“Tools. No one said anything about power.”

“Right, whatever. You also drank a lot and then you got some strange.”

I pulled up my calf to reveal the bite mark. “How do you explain that?”

“Wendy must have been wild.”

“Windy,” I corrected him. This was pointless. “So what now?”

“I don’t like to brag,” Benedict said, “but I have some top-drawer legal advice for you, if you’d like to hear it.”

“I do.”

“Stop confessing to killing another human being.”

“Wow,” I said, “and you didn’t want to brag.”

“It’s also in a lot of the law books,” Benedict said. “Look, the license plate number you gave? It doesn’t exist. There is no body or signs of violence or a crime-only a minor misdemeanor because you, admittedly drunk, trespassed into a man’s backyard by falling down a hill. The cops are willing to let you go with just a ticket. Let’s just get home and then we can figure it out, okay?”

It was hard to argue with that logic. It would be wise for me to get out of this place, to get back on campus, to rest and regroup and recover, to consider everything that had happened in the sober light of familiar day. Plus, I had taught Constitution 101 one semester. The Fifth Amendment protects you against self-incrimination. Maybe I should use that right now.

Benedict drove. My head spun. The doc had given me a shot that had lifted me up and dropped me in the middle of Loopy Land. I tried to focus, but putting aside the drinking and drugs, the threat to life was hard to shake. I had literally had to fight for survival. What was going on here? What could Natalie have to do with all this?

As we pulled into the staff parking lot, I saw a campus police car near my front door. Benedict looked a question at me. I shrugged and stepped out of the car. The head rush as I stood nearly floored me. I made my way to a standing position and started gingerly up the path. Evelyn Stemmer was the head of campus security. She was a petite woman with a ready smile. The ready smile wasn’t there right now.

“We’ve been trying to reach you, Professor Fisher,” she said.

“My cell phone was stolen.”

“I see. Do you mind coming with me?”

“Where?”

“President’s house. President Tripp needs to speak with you.”

Benedict stepped between us. “What’s this about, Evelyn?”

She looked at him as though he’d just plopped out of a rhino’s rectum. “I’d rather let President Tripp do the talking. Me, I’m just an errand girl.”

I was too out of it to protest. What would be the point anyway? Benedict wanted to come with us, but I really didn’t think it would behoove my position to have my best friend visit my boss with me. The front seat of the campus police car had some kind of computer in it. I had to sit in the back like a real-life perp.

The president lived in a twenty-two-room, 9,600-square-foot stone residence, done up in a style that the experts called “restrained Gothic Revival.” I was not sure what that meant, but it was a pretty impressive structure. I also didn’t see the need for the squad car-the villa sat on a hilltop overlooking the athletic fields, maybe four hundred yards from the staff parking lot. Fully renovated two years ago, the home could now play host to not only the president’s young family but, more importantly, to a full potpourri of fund-raising events.

I was escorted into an office that looked exactly like a college president’s office, just sleeker and more polished. Come to think of it, so did the new president. Jack Tripp was sleek and polished and corporate with floppy hair and capped teeth. He tried to fit in by dressing in tweed, but the tweed was far too tailored and costly to be bona fide professorial. His patches were too evenly cut. The students derisively referred to him as a “poser.” Again I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it seemed apropos.

I have learned that human beings are all about incentives, so I cut the president some slack. His job, though couched in haughty terms of academia and higher learning, was all about raising money. Period. That was, and perhaps should be, his main concern. The best presidents, I had learned, were often the ones who understood this and thus came in with the least lofty agenda. By that definition, President Tripp was doing a pretty good job.

“Sit, Jacob,” Tripp said, looking past me to Officer Stemmer. “Evelyn, close the door on your way out, would you?”

I did as Tripp asked. Evelyn Stemmer did too.

Tripp sat at the ornate desk in front of me. It was a big desk. Too big and corporate and self-important. When I am feeling unkind, I often note that a man’s desk, like his car, often seems to involve, uh, compensation. Tripp folded his hands on a desktop large enough to land a helicopter and said, “You look like hell, Jacob.”

I bit back the “you should see the other guy” because, in this case, the rejoinder was in serious bad taste. “I had a late night.”

“You look injured.”

“I’m fine.”

“You should get it looked at.”

“I have.” I shifted in the seat. The meds were making everything hazy, as though my eyes were covered in thin strips of gauze. “What’s this about, Jack?”

He spread his hands for a moment and then brought them back to the desk. “Do you want to tell me about last night?”

“What about last night?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

So we were playing that game. Fair enough. I’d go first. “I went drinking with a friend at a bar. Had too much. When I came back to my place, two men jumped me. They, uh, kidnapped me.”

His eyes widened. “Two men kidnapped you?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“They said their names were Bob and Otto.”

“Bob and Otto?”

“That’s what they said.”

“And where are these men now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they in custody?”

“No.”

“But you’ve reported the matter to the police?”

“I have,” I said. “Do you mind telling me what this is about?”

Tripp lifted his hand, as if he’d suddenly realized the desktop was sticky. He placed the lower parts of his palms together and let the fingertips bounce off one another. “Do you know a student named Barry Watkins?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Is he okay?”

“You know him?”

“Yes. One of the men who grabbed me punched him in the face.”

“I see,” he said, as though he didn’t see at all. “When?”

“We were standing by the van. Barry called out to me and ran over. Before I could so much as turn around, one of the guys punched him. Is Barry okay?”

The fingertips bounced some more. “He is in the hospital with facial fractures. That punch did serious damage.”

I sat back. “Damn.”

“His parents are rather upset. They are talking about a lawsuit.”

Lawsuit-the word that strikes terror in the heart of every bureaucrat. I half expected some lame horror-movie music to start up.

“Barry Watkins also doesn’t recall two other men. He remembers calling out to you, running toward you, and that’s it. Two other students recall seeing you flee in a van.”

“I didn’t flee. I got in the back.”

“I see,” he said in that same tone. “When these other two students arrived, Barry was lying on the ground bleeding. You drove off.”

“I wasn’t driving. I was in the back.”

“I see.”

Again with the “I see.” I leaned closer to him. The desk was completely bare except for one too-neat stack of papers and, of course, the requisite family photograph with the blond wife, two adorable kids, and a dog with floppy hair like Tripp’s. Nothing else. Big desk. Nothing on it.

“I wanted to get them as far away from campus as possible,” I said, “especially after that display of violence. So I quickly cooperated.”

“And by them, you mean the two men who… were they abducting you?”

“Yes.”

“Who were these men?”

“I don’t know.”

“They were just, what, kidnapping you for ransom?”

“I doubt it,” I said, realizing how crazy it all sounded. “One had broken into my home. The other waited in the van. They insisted I come with them.”

“You are a very large man. Powerful. Physically intimidating.”

I waited.

“How did they persuade you to go with them?”

I skipped the part about Natalie and dropped the bombshell instead. “They were armed.”

The eyes widened again. “With guns?”

“Yes.”

“For real?”

“They were real guns, yes.”

“How do you know?”

I decided not to mention that one had taken shots at me. I wondered whether the police might find bullets near the highway. I’d have to check.

“Did you tell anyone else about this?” Tripp asked when I didn’t answer.

“I told the cops, but I’m not sure that they believe me.”

He leaned back and started picking at his lip. I knew what he was thinking: How would the students, their parents, and important alumni react if they knew that gunmen had been on campus? Not only had they been on campus, but if I were telling the truth-questionable at best-they had kidnapped a professor and assaulted a student.

“You were quite inebriated at the time, were you not?”

Here we go. “I was.”

“We have a campus security camera in the middle of the quad. Your walk was rather more of a weave.”

“That’s what happens when you have too much to drink.”

“We also have reports that you left the Library Bar at one A.M… and yet you weren’t seen weaving across campus until three.”

Again I waited.

“Where were you for those two hours?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m investigating an assault on a student.”

“That we know took place after three A.M. What, you think I planned it for two hours?”

“I see very little need for sarcasm, Jacob. This is a serious matter.”

I closed my eyes and felt the room spin. He had a point. “I left with a young lady. It’s totally irrelevant. I’d never punch Barry. He visits my office every week.”

“Yes, he defended you too. He said that you’re his favorite professor. But I have to look at the facts, Jacob. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Fact: You were drunk.”

“I’m a college professor. Drinking is practically a job requirement.”

“That’s not funny.”

“But true. Heck, I’ve been to parties right here. You’re not afraid to hoist a glass or two yourself.”

“You’re not helping yourself.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m trying to get at the truth.”

“Then, fact: While you are being vague, it appears as though after drinking you had a one-night stand.”

“We shouldn’t be vague,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. She was over thirty and does not work for the college. So what?”

“So after these episodes, a student got assaulted.”

“Not by me.”

“Still, there is a connection,” he said, leaning back. “I don’t see where I have any choice but to ask for you to take a leave of absence.”

“For drinking?”

“For all of it,” he said.

“I’m in the middle of teaching classes-”

“We will find coverage.”

“And I have a responsibility to my students. I can’t just abandon them.”

“Perhaps,” he said, with an edge in his voice, “you should have thought of that before you got drunk.”

“Getting drunk isn’t a crime.”

“No, but your actions afterward…” His voice trailed off, and a smile came to his lips. “Funny,” he said.

“What?”

“I heard about your run-in with Professor Trainor years ago. How can you not see the parallel?”

I said nothing.

“There is an old Greek saying,” he went on. “The humpback never sees the hump on his own back.”

I nodded. “Deep.”

“You’re making jokes, Jacob, but do you really think you’re blameless here?”

I wasn’t sure what to think. “I didn’t say I was blameless.”

“Just a hypocrite?” He sighed a little too deeply. “I don’t like doing this to you, Jacob.”

“I hear a but.”

“You know the but. Are the police investigating your claim?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer so I went with the truth. “I don’t know.”

“Then maybe it’s best that you take a leave of absence until this is resolved.”

I was about to protest, but then I pulled up. He was right. Forget all the political mumbo jumbo or legal claims here. The truth was, I was indeed putting students in harm’s way. My actions had, in fact, already gotten one student seriously injured. I could make all the excuses I wanted to, but if I had kept my promise to Natalie, Barry would not be lying in a hospital bed with facial fractures.

Could I take the risk of letting it happen again?

Lest I forgot, Bob was still out there. He might want vengeance for Otto or, at the very least, to finish the job or silence the witness. By staying, wouldn’t I be endangering the welfare of my students?

President Tripp started sorting the papers on his desk, a clear sign we were done here. “Pack your things,” he said. “I’d like you off campus within the hour.”