Tunnel Vision

6

Jenna Emmons could not believe what she had seen. It was bizarre, horrifying, and the image would smolder in her brain for years.

Her first thought was that it was all the beer from the Theta Chi party—maybe four pints. But those were spread over four hours. She was groggy, but not delusional.

She had returned to her dorm around two thirty and changed for bed. As usual, she went to the window to take in the fabulous night view of Boston. Her room was on the fourth floor in MIT’s Building W1, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive, in the tower peaked by a cupola shaped like the helmet of Kaiser Wilhelm. It was one of MIT’s trophy dorms and a choice locale she had won in the housing lottery.

From that height, she took in the full span of Harvard Bridge, which carried Mass. Avenue across the Charles River into Boston, whose glorious skyline burned like jewelry boxes stacked up from the river’s edge to the top of Beacon Hill. Tonight a full moon had risen over the eastern horizon, leaving a rippled disk riding the river’s surface.

What arrested her attention were two men walking on the western side of the bridge from Boston. They stopped a few times to look down at the water, then proceeded until they were about three-quarters across, no more than fifty yards from her window. One man wore a hooded jacket. The other was bareheaded and leaning with his back against the rail. The hooded man gesticulated with his free hand, as if trying to convince the other of something. Then the hooded man helped his companion get up on the rail, where he found his balance. Jenna’s first thought was that the hooded man was going to take pictures of his friend with the river and skyline as backdrop. But they continued talking, the hooded man appearing to hold something in his far hand while pleading with the other, who rocked back and forth on the rail like a primate in a too small cage.

Suddenly the men embraced each other for a long moment. The sitting man then braced himself on the rail with his hands. When the hooded man was certain that no cars or strollers approached, he raised a baseball bat and smashed the other on the head.

Even through the closed window, the blow made a sickening crack that sent the victim over the rail and into the black water.

Jenna cried out in horror and disbelief. But what sickened her was the hideous realization that the victim had waited for his companion to bash his head in. That it was on purpose—that they had walked together to just the right spot and waited for the traffic to clear so one could put the other out of his misery.

Before the hooded man walked away, he flung the bat into the water, then looked down to where his friend had fallen and made the sign of the cross.