Dark Mural Page 5

  “I can trust you.”

  That was true, but he had no way of knowing that. He just wanted it to be true.

  He went on. “I had a problem when I was in high school.”

  I glanced at the clock. I would give him five minutes, then call a counselor for him.

  “I had a girlfriend, senior year. We drove out to a park. We were in my car, in the back seat, making out, and she said she wanted to stop. So, I did. We did. I said I would take her home.

  “She got out on the passenger side, and I got out on the driver’s side. She tripped and fell and hit her head—the side of her face, really—on the side of the car. I ran right over and helped her up. She was crying, I think because when she fell she got her dress dirty. So, since she was crying, I went to put my arms around her, but she put her hand on my chest, so I stopped.

  “Just then this guy comes jogging toward us and yells, ‘Is there a problem?’ He was an older guy, maybe in his thirties, and bigger than me. So, I held up my hands, and said, ‘No, no problem.’

  “Then the guy walked right up to us, real close. So, I stepped over, half in front of Teresa, because I didn’t know what he was going to do. He said, ‘Step aside, mister!’ like we’re in the army or something. I said, ‘Hey, it’s okay. She’s my girlfriend. She’s just upset. She tripped and fell. I’m going to drive her home now.’

  “Then the guy saw the scratches on her face, and he shoved me aside, and yelled, ‘Back off, mister! Back away!’ So, I took a couple of steps back and held up my hands. I said, ‘It’s okay. I just need to take her home.’ He asked Teresa, ‘Are you okay? Did he hit you? Did he push you?’ She was crying the whole time.

  “Then the guy whipped out his cell phone and called the police. When they got there, one officer listened to him and me. The female officer took Teresa over to the police car and talked to her. They wouldn’t let us talk to each other. I’m pretty sure Teresa told them the truth, because at one point I heard her say, ‘No, nothing happened!’—loud, like she was sick of the whole business and just wanted to go home.

  “Then the female officer drove away with her. I don’t know if they took her to the police station or just took her home. Another police car followed me home, and they came in and talked to my parents. When they left, my dad yelled at me. He kept saying, ‘So that’s your story? You’re sticking with that?’ I don’t think he believed me.

  “After that, my parents, her parents—everybody—said I couldn’t ever talk to her again. Her dad is Tom Zannetti. He’s a big shot in Mansfield. Since then, we never have talked. She went to Ohio Northern and I came to school here.”

  He stared at the floor, but he seemed to be gazing into the depths of hell. There are certain sculptures by Rodin that capture the kind of despair I saw on his face.

  “Devon, I am sorry this happened to you when you were in high school. It sounds like you were treated unfairly. How can I help you?”

  There were tears in his eyes. “If they find out I was accused of hurting Teresa, they’ll think I killed Kate. What should I do? No one would believe me last time, not even my own parents.”

  “Is there a police record of the incident?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Were you handcuffed? Taken to a police station? Fingerprinted? Photographed? Put in a cell?”

  “No. None of that.”

  “Well, then you probably don’t have an arrest record. That’s good. I don’t know if police departments keep other kinds of records, but if they do there must be laws about sealing records of things that happened when you were a juvenile.”

  “That makes me feel better. Still, if they find out. . . .”

  “I don’t know what else to tell you, except you should have a lawyer with you if the police want to talk to you again. Talk to your parents so they can help you.”

  He reacted as if he felt an electric shock. “Are you kidding? If my dad hears this, he’ll think I did it both times.”

  That was the saddest thing I had heard all morning. I decided to try another angle. “Were you with Kate on Friday night?”

  “I drove some of our friends into Blanton and we went to Marten’s. Kate showed up later, but she wasn’t really with me. We were all just hanging out together. She took off while we were still there.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing. We left around eleven or so. I drove the others back to campus, dropped them off, parked my car in the student lot, and walked back to my dorm.”

  “So you don’t know where Kate went when she left Marten’s?”

  “No. She would hardly talk to me. She was just blowing me off. I don’t know why.”

  “Well, since your friends came back to campus with you, they can tell the police you were with them and not with Kate.”

  He nodded and stared out the window for a moment. “I guess so. Thanks, Dr. Noonan. I just needed to talk to somebody—somebody who would believe me.”

  “I’m happy to talk with you, Devon, but you still need someone on your side who can help you in case the police want to question you again. Maybe one of your friends could help you find a lawyer.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Thanks. I’ll see you in class.”

  He left, and I sat there wondering what to think and feeling alarmed. I hoped he wouldn’t be overconfident about his situation.

  My cell phone rang. It was Abbie. “Hi, Nicole. I’m just going through my campus email. I was in Pittsburgh over the weekend. Have you seen this message from the dean, about a student being killed?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I guess it was bound to happen with students walking along the road to Blanton at night, but still it’s a shock.”

  “Yes. I’m really going to miss her.”

  I thought I heard a gasp before Abbie asked, “You knew her?”

  “She was in my art history class.”

  “Oh, my god! I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?”

  “Honestly, it seems to get a little worse each day.”

  “Do you want to have lunch?”

  “I’ve got a one o’clock, and I need some time to get my head together for it.”

  “After? Make a run into Blanton?”

  “Maybe just meet back at the Hutches.”

  “My place, three o’clock,” she said, and we rang off.

  Chapter 10

  Abbie’s approach to furnishing her Rabbit Hutch was the opposite of mine. She had a pair of easy chairs upholstered in brocade and some oak tables. Perhaps they were from her family’s home, or she may have picked up some refurbished antiques. She made tea and we sat on a couple of cane-seat chairs at a pedestal table by her back window. The afternoon light was lovely on the trees beyond the lawn.

  “A student walking back to campus at night is an accident waiting to happen,” said Abbie. “Maybe the college will do something now.”

  “I don’t think the sheriff is treating it as an accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Right before you called, a student was in my office, a guy named Devon Manus. Last Saturday, I mentioned him to Sheriff Adams because he and Kate had a disagreement Friday morning. Now the sheriff has questioned him about where he was Friday night, and Devon’s afraid he’ll be accused of killing Kate.”

  “Do you mean killing her in an accident or deliberately, as in murdering her?”

  “He’s afraid he’ll be accused of murder because he was falsely accused of assaulting his girlfriend in high school.”

  Abbie sat back and thought about that for a moment. “What does the sheriff say about that?”

  “He hasn’t told the sheriff.”

  “So why did he tell you about it?”

  “He wanted advice.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to talk to a counselor, talk to his parents, and talk to a lawyer.”

  “Is he going to?”


  “Probably not.”

  Abbie scowled. “So he just laid his guilty secret on you?”

  “Who says he’s guilty?”

  Abbie looked at me as if trying to read every shade of expression on my face. “Was there ever an abuser who didn’t say, ‘It was all a misunderstanding.’”

  “You think he was lying to me?”

  “I have no idea, but, if he does have a record of abuse, it would be to his advantage to spread the idea that he was falsely accused. That way, when the sheriff comes around asking questions, he’ll find lots of people like you saying, ‘Oh, that was all a mistake.’”

  As usual, Abbie had a surprising interpretation of the facts. That was one of the things I enjoyed about talking with her, but in this instance I thought she had gone too far. “What you’re describing is very calculating,” I said. “It didn’t seem that way, talking with hm. When I was a teaching assistant in grad school, I dealt with abusive students a few times. Devon didn’t strike me as one of them. He seemed more scared than anything.”

  She shrugged. “Trust your gut.”

  “I think I’d rather use my head, and find out whether he’s telling the truth.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because I know how it feels when someone attacks you without knowing anything about you.”

  Abbie thought about that for a moment. “Like when your car got sprayed?”

  I nodded.

  Abbie thought about that for a moment. “The sheriff is investigating. Won’t he find out if this story about the high-school girlfriend is true?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m tired of waiting around for other people to look into who’s doing what around here.”

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

  “I guess the easiest thing would be to ask the girlfriend if he hurt her.”

  “Do you think she would tell you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you even know who she is?”

  “Devon said her name is Teresa Zannetti, and her dad is a big shot in Mansfield. Is that near here?”

  Abbie shook her head. “It’s somewhere north of Columbus.”

  “Still it shouldn’t be too hard to find her.”

  “I guess not, but I can’t imagine her opening up to a stranger about this.”

  “That will be the tricky part,” I said.

  We talked about the pros and cons of approaching the girlfriend but without more information couldn’t come to a conclusion. Abbie gave me a hug and I left.

  When I got back to my Hutch, I fired up my browser and searched for “Teresa Zannetti” on a few social media sites. I found her on BudStem, “The Buddy System.” There were three women with that name, and one was connected with Mansfield, Ohio. She was fairly generous with her personal information, allowing anyone to see her class schedule, photos, and list of buddies, but she did not give an email address or phone number. To communicate directly with her, I would have to become her buddy on BudStem. I thought about sending her a request but doubted she would accept a complete stranger with no interests in common.

  Since I couldn’t think of a way to get in touch with her and convince her to talk to me, I decided to sleep on it.

  I was glad for the President’s Convocation scheduled for mid-day on Tuesday. Anything to break the routine was welcome. Apparently, the college had one every year, early in the fall semester. It gave the president a chance to speak to the assembled faculty about the school’s situation and his plans for the year. It was his version of a State of the Union speech.

  My chairman, Frank Rossi, had told me the art faculty usually met at the department’s office and walked together over to the auditorium in the Old Classroom Building. He thought this made the department more visible to our colleagues. There were only two other professors in the department: Irving Zorn, whose abstract expressionist canvases sold for obscene amounts of money and decorated many corporate lobbies; and Wilma Halberstadt, who taught art education, which is a fine and necessary thing, though she seemed to put more emphasis on the education than on the art.

  The four of us were sitting together when our president, Roland Taylor, took the stage. I had met him when I interviewed last spring. He could easily be cast in a movie as a college president or a CEO, and in fact he had been both, having previously headed a small manufacturing company in Indiana.

  He began by mentioning the death of Kate Conrad, assuring us that the chief of campus security was cooperating with the county sheriff, and promising a review of safety and security policies by the end of the semester. He said all this in a conversational way before opening the folder he had with him and beginning his prepared remarks.

  Since this was my first convocation, I didn’t know if he always took a historical perspective, but he did that day. First he paid tribute to the independence of Felix Fuchs and the original members of the Eden Commune. Next he praised the vision of Hilda Kiefaber, who became the first headmistress of the Eden Independent School, which was established by the shareholders of the commune after the residential community was dissolved in the 1880s. Then he told how the school’s governing board raised funds for buildings so that the school could become Fuchs College in 1920.

  I was familiar with most of this from reading Jacob’s book, but I enjoyed hearing it as part of the convocation; a community that recalls its past when assessing its present situation is a healthy community.

  His voice rose as he said, “Today I have the privilege of announcing that this institution is on the threshold of a third major transformation.” He went on to say the college had begun negotiations with a donor interested in establishing a school of business and would soon launch a major fundraising campaign. Along with paying for a new building, the funds would be used to upgrade the library, improve the campus’ computer network, hire additional faculty and so on. At the same time, he said, the college would begin to orient itself toward preparing students for careers while not in any way diminishing its traditional strength in liberal arts and sciences.

  I was stunned. I had barely begun to understand who was who and what was what at Fuchs College, and it was changing.

  Chapter 11

  More than a hundred professors sat in silence as the president took a sip of water and shuffled his papers. When he spoke again, he did so in an intimate tone, as if he were speaking privately to each of us. “With the addition of a second school—a school of business alongside the school of liberal arts and sciences—we become a university. Members of our Board of Trustees have already spoken with officials in state government to clear the way for legally changing our designation from college to university when the new school of business opens its doors.

  “Here we face an additional challenge, one less demanding than building a new school, yet no less vital to the identity of this institution. When we become a university, and are called a university, we know that the word ‘university’ will often be shortened to a single letter, U, in conversation, on t-shirts, and on other memorabilia. When we consider the tendency of English speakers to favor the shortened vowel sound over the long vowel sound—with which ‘Fuchs’ is properly pronounced—the problem becomes apparent. The name of our revered founder will not pair well with the abbreviation for university.”

  I had to hand it to President Taylor. Without saying it, he had made clear that no one would take seriously a school whose name sounded like an insult.

  He continued. “Therefore, I call upon this faculty, which is the heart and mind of this great institution, to begin deliberations on a new name, a worthy successor to ‘The Eden Independent School’ and ‘Fuchs College.’ I ask you, what shall we call this new university?”

  With that he thanked us for our attention and departed the stage. Applause was lackluster. As my colleagues stood and walked up the aisles of the auditorium in pairs and threes, conversation was muted.

  I followed Frank and the members of my department out onto the pavemen
t in front of the building. There we hesitated, glanced at one another, and turned to our chairman, hoping for an explanation. “News to me,” said Frank with a shrug. “Good news though. More people on campus. Critical mass. Vitality. Department meeting next Tuesday. I’ll email you.”

  The members of my department went their separate ways, and I looked around at the dispersing faculty to see if Abbie or Lionel was available to talk. Instead I saw Jacob standing with four colleagues, all men about his age. I was not close enough to hear everything they were saying, but, from what I heard, they were arguing about the president’s call to change the name of the school. When Jacob started to walk away, one of the others put a hand on his shoulder, and Jacob pivoted and backhanded the man. I couldn’t tell if Jacob struck him in the face or merely batted his arm away, but the man seemed stunned, as were the others. “Never,” roared Jacob. He charged across the pavement, and everyone made way for him.

  I had spent ten years on university campuses, more than a third of my life, and I had never seen a physical altercation involving professors or graduate students. I had seen undergraduates fight, but only after a lot of drinking, and even then it was mostly shouting. That’s why Jacob’s single, angry gesture left most of us frozen in place.

  As the others began murmuring to those near them, I felt conspicuous standing by myself. I hurried off to the Student Center, where I grabbed a sandwich and sat looking over the campus green while I ate.

  The convocation and its aftermath left me feeling nervous. If other faculty felt the way Jacob did, changing the school’s name would be an explosive topic. Also, despite Taylor’s assurances that liberal arts would remain strong, a new emphasis on preparing students for careers did not sound good for me. If the school became financially strapped, as schools always did, majors that did not lead to jobs would be in jeopardy. If they started cutting programs to save money, they wouldn’t even have an art history department to shut down. They could just turn me down for tenure in four years. All the more reason to keep looking for that next job.