Robert Lopresti: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2011

Oh, the rumors, the joy! A lover was suggested, more than one, the malicious added. Rough trade from the city was the general feeling, though Wallace maintained the high ground on that suggestion. Nonetheless, this useful theory sent the campus police searching various urban alleys and abandoned buildings, while Wallace kept a nervous eye on the thermometer and developed a passion for the Weather Channel.

Come the thaw in February, it was time to reconsider. Big streaks and patches of black water appeared in the reservoir. A sudden freeze closed them up again, catching the mortal remains of Peter Havermeyer Turkott III, partly above the bluish surface of the ice, where he was spotted by a fisherman setting up for the chilly delights of midwinter angling.

Well, he was dead; that was sure at last for everyone, dead as Jacob Marley and, like Scrooge’s partner, returned for the enlightenment of those left behind. Questions? Of course, there were questions, but thanks to a full teaching schedule — Wallace really thought he owed the dean an apology for early complaints about the new teaching directives — Professor Ivery had an alibi supported by dozens of undergrads and a clutch of first-rate graduate students.

Still, the police couldn’t help be interested; who else had they to consider? Turkott had been Wallace’s enemy, though he spent a good deal of time explaining that the bitterness of academic disputes was strictly nonviolent.

“Until now,” said the lieutenant, a skeptical soul, but there was nothing he could do about it. Wallace was an enemy with an alibi, and there seemed to be no handle on Turkott’s killer. Just as well, too, because Wallace was clearly an accomplice after the fact, implicated up to his elbows, and after nearly three months, he could hardly use panic as his excuse.

By the end of the semester, when the investigation was clearly bogged down with every avenue explored leading to the same dead ends, Wallace found himself in a curious situation. He stopped tensing up at the sight of every police vehicle. He no longer had an aversion to opening the trunk of his car, though he still insisted on parking as close to buildings as possible and always near a light.

Thanks to his self-command and intelligence, he had avoided disaster. Turkott, that thorn in his flesh, was gone, and Wallace was the last combatant standing. He was relieved, but not wholly pleased, for campus life had lost some of its savor. The common room bored him; department meetings were beyond tiresome. There were days when he could have confessed to missing Turkott, who’d added a pleasant edge to every academic discussion.

And there was something else, a thought that had only gradually insinuated itself into his consciousness as his anxiety about discovery waned: someone else knew what he’d done and might be a danger to him. On the accepted theory that Turkott, killed by a mysterious stranger, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Wallace’s new fears were nonsense.

But he didn’t believe the official line for a minute. That he had been implicated at random, by coincidence, offended his sense of importance. His car had been chosen, he knew it had, because the red BMW coupe was distinctive with the litart vanity plate. Anyone hiding a body would have picked a less conspicuous vehicle, unless — and here Wallace felt a little shiver — unless it was a deliberate attempt to implicate him. Or threaten him.

Wallace was amazed that he had not considered this earlier. At first he had been so anxious to avoid scandal, so annoyed at the inconvenience, even so triumphant about his enemy’s demise, that he had not considered himself a target except of Turkott’s posthumous malice. Sloppy thinking.

He realized with a mix of dismay and excitement that his life had changed forever. He had an enemy, a real, not an academic, enemy, someone clever and ruthless, whom he had, inadvertently, protected by confusing the time line and removing evidence.

The killer was someone on campus; Wallace was sure of that. Perhaps in the department, perhaps in one of his seminars, even in the office. Someone hated him and he would have to watch everyone, ponder every word, every gesture, and collect every bit of gossip, every hint of displeasure. Now Wallace began to see the difference between his old “enemy” Turkott, who had produced stimulation, not anxiety, and this new unknown menace.

Was it Edgar, the Americanist, whom he had opposed on certain general education requirements? Wallace sometimes felt under observation when Edgar was in the same room. Or maybe Saul, who, rumor had it, had enjoyed a fling with Turkott. There was something about the way he greeted Wallace, a false bonhomie that jangled the nerves. Wallace was short with them both and scuttled out of the office if they were ensconced there.

Come to think of it, even Marylin was not impossible, was she? The administrative assistant was a big, strapping woman, twenty years younger than he was. Capable of putting a corpse in a trunk? Oh, he thought so.

He had to consider the students and ex-students, too, for Wallace had to admit that there had been a couple of unfortunate dissertation committees. He began to write flattering recommendations for every candidate, especially for former doctoral candidates now on the job market. If they lived in the area, he made particular efforts because it might be anyone, and who knew what the killer wanted?

On bad days, when everyone looked suspicious, when the undergrads seemed like malicious mobs and his graduate students like so many Machiavellian schemers, he sometimes thought about the police. About making a discreet call some quiet afternoon to the campus police headquarters. About expressing his fears. About asking for help.

But “why” they would ask, and then he’d have to tell them about the parking lot and the blue tarp and the terrible effort to heave Turkott, his junior by several years and heavier by several dozen pounds, over the guard rail into the dark water. He wasn’t sure he could do that, and, besides, after nearly a year wouldn’t it be too late to find the dropped threads of DNA or whatever it was that cracked such cases?

By the next December, Wallace had lost so much weight that the department chair asked if he might not want a leave, perhaps move his sabbatical up a year. It could be done. Wallace waved away the idea, though it troubled him. And he was more upset when the dean took him aside one day and paid him many compliments before launching into the merits of the latest money-saving early retirement program.

“Oh, I intend to go on indefinitely,” Wallace said in as airy a tone as he could manage.

The dean fixed him with a cold look. On reflection, he wasn’t sure that he didn’t dislike Wallace even more than he had disliked Turkott. “There have been complaints,” he said. “Some of a serious nature.”

“This has been a difficult year,” Wallace admitted, “but things will look up next semester.”

“I think I can guarantee emeritus status,” said the dean. “At this point in time.” He didn’t have to add, “but not later, not if you delay.”

Out in the parking lot, Wallace found himself shivering. He had his heavy computer bag on his shoulder, and he found it hard to keep his footing on the slick pavement. He actually skidded the last few feet to his car and narrowly saved himself from sliding underneath the BMW.

Open the trunk, put away the laptop. He wouldn’t need it as much now, nor his briefcase, heavy with papers. He lifted the trunk, saw a flash of blue, blue fabric, blue tarp, and tumbled forward, half in the trunk, half on the freezing pavement. He would have come to grief if an alert student, an EMT in training, hadn’t spotted him. He wrapped Wallace in the blue blanket he found handy in the trunk and dialed 911.