Will Lavender - Obedience

“His book?” Dennis asked, remembering what Orman had said at the party.

“Yes. The plagiarism thing. Messy indeed. It almost ruined us all, those of us who had been behind his hiring in the first place. Those of us who granted him tenure. It should have been the end of him, but he has loyal friends in the department, people who will swear by his genius. And he is brilliant. I don’t think there’s any doubt.”

“He plays a game in class,” Dennis said. He didn’t know why he’d said it; it was just something to placate the dean, to win the dean over to his side. Implicate Williams, cast Williams as a fool, he thought. Save yourself.

“A game?” the old man asked.

“It’s very silly. It’s-a forensics game. Like a case we have to solve.”

“Ah yes,” Orman said. “I’ve heard of it. These puzzles and games-people say he’s obsessed with them. Part of his brilliance, I guess. But that’s not the question, is it? No. Of course not. We’re all brilliant, some more than others. The question is this: what kind of representative is he for this university? And it’s been proven, time and again, that he is a dubious one at best. Oh, they think I’m just paranoid. A silly old man. Crazy. They think that I’m just too old fashioned for Williams’s teaching practices. But there’s something there. Something …off about the man.”

“I’ve felt it, too,” Dennis admitted. He wanted to go on but he was careful about what he said. It was best, his father often said of academia, not to have too many enemies.

“Dennis, I urge you-no, let’s make this a demand, considering I have so much leverage over you now. I’m going to demand that you stay away from him. If he asks you to his office, don’t go. If you see him out on campus, keep walking. Your parents wouldn’t want you to get into trouble on my watch, would they?” The old man smiled sardonically, showing his short, yellow teeth. Dennis nodded and went out into that wind, closing the door gently behind him.

Place

As you know, Polly was at a going-away party on the last night she was seen. What you don’t know is where this party was or by whom it was given.

The party was on Slade Road, just outside of town. It was given by a man named Tucker “Pig” Stephens. Pig was older than most everybody else at the party. He was considered a “go-to” guy: you went to him for dope, for alcohol if you were underage, for solace when you were depressed or needing.

Pig owned a Harley-Davidson that was customized so that it would roar ferociously as he sped down the highway. He called his bike “the Demon,” and he’d painted the snout of a razorback along the sides that seemed to flare in a certain light. During the winter, he kept the bike in a storage facility off I-64 because he was inherently distrustful of all his friends, most of whom were members of a local motorcycle group called the Creeps that Pig also belonged to.

He was well respected by his circle and feared by cops: he had been arrested many times and had served hard time in Montoya State Prison when he was twenty years old for breaking and entering. His criminal record was long, but for the past five years it had been inactive; everyone who knew him claimed that he had turned over a new leaf.

Pig had taken Polly under his wing. He protected her. He considered Mike his younger brother, and often when you saw Pig in town Mike was with him. But Pig had soured on Mike recently. He had been heard saying that if Mike bothered Polly again, he was going to personally see to it that Mike was “put in his place.” On the night of Polly’s party, the two men were seen arguing by the pool out back. It was late and by that time everyone was drunk. No one could say for sure what the two were arguing about, but most were sure that it had to do with Polly. Pig, a huge man, weighing more than three hundred pounds, put his finger into Mike’s chest. Not long afterward, Polly left. Some people who had been standing out on the back deck (Pig lived in a duplex and rented out the top floor to his friends, including, at one point last summer, Mike and Polly) saw Polly leaving shortly after the argument. According to these witnesses, Pig saw her off. He may have even hugged her gently before she got in her car and went home, where her father was waiting.

Mary didn’t know what to do with this new information other than the fact that it brought another suspect into the equation: the older father figure, Pig. She imagined him. Pig, fat and volatile, was gentle when he needed to be and fierce when he had to be. What did he say to Mike out by the pool? That he would kill him if he touched Polly again? Was Pig secretly in love with Polly? Had they had an affair, even been in love with each other? When Mike found out about them had he hit Polly, leading her to call the police?

She still had the unread chapters of Auster’s City of Glass to read as well as the new chapters for tomorrow’s class, but she couldn’t make herself focus on the words. In the novel, Quinn was filling his red notebook with facts and observations, empirical designs, emotions and feelings. But Mary was not as fortunate: she had very little at this point. She had seen Polly’s picture on the transparency but had inexplicably forgotten what she looked like, and now she would be murdered by Mike or Pig or, heaven forbid, her own father. What would Leonard Williams think of this, her forgetfulness?

Suddenly, she was asleep and dreaming. In her dream, Mary saw Williams enter a dimly lit room. There was an overhead projector in the middle of this room. He turned it on. There was nothing on the first sheet, just a yellow wall. Nothing on the second. He shuffled through papers, one by one by one. They were all blank, empty, void yellow squares on a bare wall. Professor Williams was very angry now. His face was red, contorted, veins bulging in his neck. Mary was suddenly there-she saw herself sitting in a chair by the projector. She had dressed formally, for a performance, a presentation of some kind. She buried her face in her hands as Williams went through one blank sheet after another. Then she could feel him looking at her, the heat of his glare. Williams was now completely in control of her. He was her authority and her influence. Williams said something but his voice was muted, sliced off. It was painful even though it was soundless, and she felt herself shrinking from him. Suddenly he was coming toward her, stepping through the projector’s light. He was angry, so angry-

She woke in the early gray of the morning. Brown was silent and she knew by the color of the blinds that it was too early for her to get up. But she could not go back to sleep. She had slept unevenly, and her body was stiff when she stood. The floor was cold. It was finally autumn outside, and soon she would have to turn on the heat to shower.

As she did every morning, she checked her e-mail.

There was something she hadn’t seen last night. It had been sent just minutes after the Pig clue, but she had forgotten to recheck her messages after reading that one. This one was simply called “Evidence,” and Mary tentatively, remembering the hanged man, clicked on it.

There were two attached files in the message. Mary clicked on the first one, and a picture of a red car beside a road appeared. Polly’s Civic on Stribbling Road, she assumed.

She clicked on the second one and another photograph loaded on her screen. It looked as if it could have been of a party in one of the frat houses. The foreground was harshly lit by the flash. It was a wider shot of the photo Williams had shown on the transparency that day, the one of Mike sitting on a couch. There was Mike again, his eyes red and his hair mussed.

Sitting beside him, with her arm around his peeling shoulders, was Summer McCoy.