The Book of Kills (6 page)

Professor Ranke was seated in his study, brooding, ignoring the sounds of pre-game celebration that turned the campus into swarming crowds of anticipation, when the call from Roger Knight came.

PROFESSOR RANKE SUG
gested they meet in his home. He did not go to campus on game days.

“Wait until the game has started, then come. The campus is deserted and the roads are passable.”

Roger agreed. His usual mode of transportation on campus was a golf cart and, as the professor had said, it would be an easy matter to drive it from the apartment he and Philip shared in graduate student housing to the Ranke home on Angela. It was two-thirty in the afternoon when he set out. The trees were golden, falling leaves drifted in a variety of graceful spirals onto the campus lawns. From the stadium came as from a great distance the strains of band music and the low guttural sound of the eighty thousand spectators which from time to time erupted into a roar that seemed to shake more leaves from the trees. Not ten minutes after setting out, Roger rolled up the Ranke driveway and began the slow process of extricating himself from the cart. The front door opened and Ranke stood there, sweatered, slippered, smoking his pipe, waiting for Roger to approach.

“Can I help you?”

“I’ll manage.”

And he did. He lumbered toward his host and allowed himself to be helped up the steps and into the house. As they went
on to the study, a wraithlike young woman looked at them from a doorway.

“My daughter, Laverne.”

Roger bowed. The wraith withdrew.

“I have come on a curious mission,” Roger said when he had been eased into a large leather chair. The walls of the room were lined with books. The surface of the desk was cluttered in an attractive way. On either side of the chair, books were scattered on the floor, some open, some shut.

“Forgive me for not meeting you on campus.”

“Nonsense. I understand perfectly.” A distant roar went up in the stadium where Philip and his guests were following the fortunes of the game between Notre Dame and Florida State.

“I see your property abuts the cemetery.” He had noticed this as he purred along the walk that passed the three entrances to Cedar Grove.

“They will not have to carry me far.”

Roger laughed, sensing this was a standard remark when the proximity of the house to Cedar Grove was mentioned.

“Little else commends this location other than the fact that I can walk to campus. But on a day like today . . .” Ranke lifted his hands and let them drop. Earlier, game traffic had whisked along Angela Boulevard to the parking lots, but now the street was quieter than at any other time. Ranke settled back in his desk chair. “Most of my colleagues fled to the northern suburbs. Their houses look out on artificial lakes and golf courses. They insist it is charming. But I would have to drive.”

“And look out on artificial lakes and a golf course.”

Ranke smiled. “What will you drink?”

“Nothing.”

“I am going to have some beer.”

“Do. I never take alcohol myself, but you must have your beer.”

“Mrs. Ranke can serve you coffee.”

“Perfect.”

Roger had the sense that Ranke was trying to postpone whatever it was that had brought Roger here. Why did he think that Ranke already knew?

“Once you mentioned a graduate student who was working on the early days of the university.”

“He has been dismissed.”

“Then he is Orion Plant.”

“I forgot that I mentioned his name.”

“You didn’t.”

Roger sipped the hot strong coffee and put cup and saucer on the hassock before him. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. He told Ranke why he had come.

“So they suspect Orion.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“What reason do they have?”

“It is largely inference. He has retained a lawyer to contest his dismissal from the graduate school.”

“Good God.”

“He has no case?”

“The department should be sued for pretending he had the capacity to be a historian. I should be. As his advisor I gave him the benefit of every doubt. Finally that became impossible.”

“You agreed to his dismissal?”

“I voted for it.”

“Do you think it possible that he was responsible for what was done in Cedar Grove?”

“Oh yes. But why such concern about actions which, however ignoble, would not be worth prosecuting?”

“There are other things.”

Ranke squirmed in his chair when Roger told him of the arrested wedding at the log chapel, but of course he had heard of that. But the kidnapping of the chancellor astonished him.

“That is being kept absolutely confidential, of course.”

“Of course. Let me see if I understand you.”

Ranke had a gift for succinctness. But when the story was made short it had its unsavory aspect. The university intended to gather evidence, if there was any, that Plant had been behind these events. The kidnapping loomed largest. Then, rather than have Plant prosecuted they intended to use this information to undermine any suit Plant proposed to bring against the university.

“That’s the idea,” Roger agreed.

“This seems very large artillery to destroy an insect.”

“Remember, I never met the man.”

“It was only an analogy. Surely there are simpler ways to handle a man who threatens to bring a suit with absolutely no merit against the university.”

“There is a larger target.”

Ranke lifted his unbarbered brows and finished his glass of beer. His pipe had gone out and he began relighting it. He was waiting.

“What had Plant discovered about the transfer of the land to Notre Dame?”

“I don’t know.”

“I had hoped he had shown you his research as it was done. Isn’t that the usual procedure with a doctoral dissertation?”

“He had long wandered away from the topic we had approved.
He was an erratic student, subject to obsessions. The plight of the Indians, the alleged plight, became everything to him.”

“Did you talk to him about it?”

“I pressed him for chapters of the dissertation he was supposedly writing.”

Roger had the feeling that Ranke could tell him more but would not. He had come in the hope that Ranke would prove a short cut to whatever might constitute the basis for an accusation that the university counsel was sure would be made, to the vast embarrassment of Notre Dame. Roger had no compunction in helping stave off that embarrassment. He had no doubt that Native Americans had been badly treated here, though he did not think this could be laid at Father Sorin’s door. In any case, attempts to reverse all the injustices of the past would make a shambles of the world as it had come to be. On the continent, in the Middle East, in Ireland, such disputes led to armed conflict that created fresh injustices for future generations to ponder.

“I love your book on famous authors who lectured at Notre Dame.”

Authorial vanity, fully justified in Otto Ranke’s case, altered the atmosphere in the study. His host called for more beer and coffee, which was brought by the broad and beaming
hausfrau
who was Mrs. Ranke. For two hours they sat happily recalling a golden past. When Roger rose—with Ranke’s help—to return to his apartment before the game ended, they passed once more through the living room to the front door. And, as before, the spectral Laverne looked accusingly at them as they passed her.

THE INCIDENT AT HALF
time was within the sight of all eighty thousand spectators in the stadium, but only a fraction took notice. While the Florida State band played there would of course be flag twirlers and other supernumeraries clothed in the somewhat romantic costumes in which the natives of the hemisphere were thought to have dressed, but no such garb was expected when the Notre Dame band, the oldest college band in the nation, as the announcer said in reverberating tones and, one hoped, with historical justification, took the field. Throughout the game the Leprechaun had pranced about dressed like a stage Irishman, wearing a cottony false beard, taking part with the cheerleaders. But the character that took the field as one band marched off and the other prepared to occupy the gridiron was a sight never before seen in that hallowed place.

He might have been mistaken for the Leprechaun had it not been for the feathered headdress he wore. Onto the field he came, his body bowed back in what might have been mimicry of the bandleader, head so far back that his feathers seemed to brush against the grass of the field. In a moment it became clear that his was an unscheduled appearance. A hand went up to halt the band about to take the field. The feathered apparition advanced to the fifty yard line before coming to a halt. There, he bowed first to one side of the field, and then the other. There
was a murmur of tentative laughter and those descending to the lower level for refreshments slowed their pace.

Suddenly, with one deft movement, the figure divested himself of his green costume and was exposed in near nakedness, wearing only a breech cloth. His upper body was luridly painted and he spread his arms wide. Then, with obvious dexterity he began to unfurl the banner that had been wrapped around his ostensible baton. The wind caught the cloth as it was freed and then the banner floated free, its legend legible to those on the Notre Dame side.
GIVE NOTRE DAME BACK TO THE INDIANS.

The reaction was equivocal until the uniformed security men who had been gathering on the sidelines converged on him. Some minutes were taken up in a comic pursuit, as again and again he eluded the hands that would take him captive. The crowd responded to an evident underdog and began to cheer his many escapes, but then he was subdued and taken in custody from the field. Boos were heard, and jeers directed at the captors rather than the captive. One florid-faced guard hastily wound up the offending banner. It was all over in a matter of minutes, but the scene had gone out over television to the ends of the nation.

In the chancellor’s box, consternation reigned. Father Bloom, reminded of his recent ordeal, had gone pale and replied incoherently to the queries of his distinguished guests. Someone opined that it was a student prank and was surprised at the wild and angry glare he got from the chancellor. One of the chancellor’s handlers was heard to give orders that the culprit be detained.

“What was that all about?” the wife of a trustee asked.

“A student prank,” the chancellor managed to say, but he said it between gritted teeth.

On the field, a planned program was executed by the band, but there was little appreciation in the box reserved for the officers of the university and their guests. It occurred to one of the proliferating platoon of assistant provosts that Noonan, chairman of the board of trustees, had been called from the box just before the first half ended. He had not yet returned. Nor had he returned when the halftime festivities were over and the opposing teams went to their respective sidelines to the cheers of their supporters.

“Who was it came for Noonan?” the chancellor asked the priest for whom the title Advisor to the Chancellor had been invented.

“An usher?” But there was doubt in the advisor’s voice.

“Go find him.”

He did not mean the usher. The advisor left, fighting against the flow of fans returning to their seats for the second half.

The third quarter ended and neither Noonan nor the advisor had returned to the box. The chancellor was clearly agitated. From the nearby presidential box, the university counsel came in response to an urgent gesture.

“Neither Noonan nor Father Anselm have come back.”

“I’ll find them.”

“Take an escort with you.”

The thought that anyone who left would fail to return had the chancellor in its grip. Ballast nodded grimly.

It was a glorious victory for the home team, but there was no rejoicing in the chancellor’s party. Mrs. Noonan was, in her
own words, frantic. Her husband had had open heart surgery within the month and, having seen him so reduced, his hitherto solid thereness brought into doubt by the surgery, the valedictory thoughts she’d had while he was being operated on returned. The chancellor was in no condition to reassure her. Ballast’s failure to come back with word filled him with foreboding.