A Killing Spring (11 page)

She had been in two of my classes, but I had never seen anything in her work to indicate that someday she would be
the one to catch the brass ring. My briefcase was on the window seat. I pulled out the folder of unmarked essays and sorted through till I found Kellee’s. It was an analysis of how a councillor from the core area used the alternative press to get across his message that the city had to start listening to the concerns of the prostitutes who lived and worked in his ward. Like everything else Kellee had done for me, it was meticulously researched, adequately written, and absolutely without a spark. I curled up on the window seat and began leafing through some of the other essays. Jumbo Hryniuk had written about how J.C. Watts, the brilliant quarterback for the University of Oklahoma and the Ottawa Rough Riders, had parlayed fame on the football field into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and special status as one of Newt Gingrich’s boys. As always, Jumbo was almost, but not quite, on topic. Linda Van Sickle, the young woman Reed had ranked second, had submitted a case study of a civic government that showed how the city council’s political timidity was growing in direct proportion to the increasingly adversarial nature of local media outlets. It was a brilliant paper, good enough to be published. So, I discovered, was Val Massey’s essay, “The Right to Be Wrong: The Press’s Obligation to Protect Bigots and Bastards.” Reed’s decision simply didn’t make sense. I skimmed through the rest of the essays. Of the sixteen people in our seminar, I would have ranked seven ahead of Kellee Savage.

When Alex called, I was still mystified, but the words on the page were starting to swim in front of me, and I knew it was time for bed. Alex sounded as tired as I felt.

“Glad you went home?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m glad I was there, but I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”

“How’s your nephew?”

“Immortal,” he said. “Like all kids his age are. That’s why
they can drink and sniff and snort and speed and screw without protection.”

“You sound as if you’ve had enough.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s not more coming. Jo, sometimes I get so goddamn sick of these little pukes. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m sick of going to their funerals.”

“Is it that bad with your nephew?”

“I hope not. Jo, I’d really rather not talk about this.”

“Okay,” I said. “Come over, and we don’t have to say a word. That’s the advantage real life has over telephones.”

He laughed. “It’s a tempting offer, but I’d better not. Even without words, I’d be lousy company tonight.”

“Then come tomorrow morning,” I said. “I don’t have to teach till ten-thirty, and the kids leave for school at eight.”

“I’ll be there,” he said. “Count on it.”

When I first met Alex Kequahtooway, there was nothing to suggest that he would be a terrific lover. He was knowledgeable and passionate about serious music, but he was guarded in his response to everything else. We went out for three months before we were intimate, and during that time of coming to know one another, he was kind but almost formally correct with me. After we became lovers, the kindness continued, but it was allied with an eroticism that awed and delighted me. Alice Munro differentiates between those who can go only a little way with the act of love and those “who can make a greater surrender, like the mystics.” Alex was one of love’s mystics, and that morning as I lay in bed beside him, breathing in the scent of the narcissi blooming in front of the open window, listening to Dennis Brain play the opening notes of a horn concerto on the radio, I was at peace.

He took my hand, leaned over and kissed me. “Mozart,” he said. “The second-best way to start the day.”

It was a little after 10:00 when I nosed into my parking spot at the university. The test I was about to give was on my desk, and I checked it to make sure it was typo- and
jargon-free, then I went down to the Political Science office. I needed exam booklets, and I wanted to make copies of a hand-out for my senior class. As I counted out the exam booklets, I was still humming Mozart.

When Rosalie Norman, the departmental admin assistant, saw me at the copying machine, she hustled me out of the way. “I’ll do that. Every time you faculty use it, something goes wrong, and I’m the one who has to call the company and then try to figure out whose secretary I can sweet-talk into doing your photocopying until the repairman decides to show up.”

On the best of days, Rosalie was not a sunny person, but that morning, even the most casual observer would have seen that she had a right to be cranky. Over the weekend, she had got herself a new and very bad permanent. Her previously smooth salt-and-pepper pageboy was now tightly coiled into what my older daughter, Mieka, called a “Kurly Kate do,” after the girl on the pot-scrubber box.

I tried not to stare. “Rosalie, if you have a spare minute later on, would you mind getting me an extra key for my office?”

Her blackberry eyes shone with suspicion. “What do you need an extra key for?”

“I’m going to be sharing with Professor Mariani until the Journalism offices are straightened around.”

She sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to go over to Physical Plant in person, you know. They don’t just give out those keys to anybody. More sweet-talking. I’ll probably be there half the morning.”

I considered the situation. Rosalie Norman had a choleric disposition, and for the foreseeable future, she was stuck with the permanent from hell. Chances that her day would ever begin as mine just had, with world-class love-making, were slim to nil.

I patted her hand. “I’ll go over to Physical Plant,” I said. “No use wasting your morning sucking up to an office full of sourpusses.”

A smile flickered across her lips so quickly that I was left wondering if I’d just imagined it. “Thanks,” she said, then she leaned over the copier, scooped up my copies and slid them into a file folder. “The next time you need copying done, put it on my desk in the tray marked ‘copying.’ We have a system around here, you know.”

The phone was ringing when I got back to my office. It was Ed Mariani.

“I’ve told our admin assistant you’re moving in,” I said, “and I’m just about to phone Physical Plant for your key.”

He laughed. “And I pride myself on being a Virgo. I really do appreciate your generosity, Joanne. I know it’s not going to be easy having somebody else lumbering around your office. Now, I’m afraid I have another favour to ask.”

“Ask away. You’ve already softened me up with your Clare Boothe Luce allusion.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s about Kellee Savage. She wasn’t in my class this morning. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but I want to get these interviews started, and Kellee’s the logical person to start with. If she shows up for Politics and the Media, would you get her to give me a call at home?”

“Sure,” I said. “And, Ed, don’t worry about the lumbering. I’m looking forward to having you around.” I hung up, called Physical Plant, arranged to pick up an extra office key later in the morning, and set out for class.

After I’d got my Poli Sci 100 students started on their test, I opened my briefcase to take out the senior class’s papers. That’s when I noticed I still had the copy of
Sleeping Beauty
that Kellee Savage had thrust into my hands on St. Patrick’s Day. As it turned out, there had been more truth than poetry
in the image of Kellee Savage as Sleeping Beauty. Her story might have lacked a handsome prince, but she had certainly nabbed the prize that would awaken all her possibilities. When Ed Mariani told her that she had been chosen to live happily ever after, or at least for a semester, in the big city, Kellee was going to be one triumphant young woman.

That afternoon, when I walked into the Politics and the Media seminar and saw that Kellee’s place at the table was still empty, I felt a shiver of annoyance. Kellee had been made the recipient of a shining gift; the least she could do was stop pouting and show up to claim it.

As soon as class got under way, Kellee was banished from my thoughts. It was a spirited hour and a half, not because of the questions I’d prepared for discussion, but because of an item that had dominated the weekend news. Late Friday afternoon, an Ottawa reporter, faced with the choice of revealing the source of some politically damaging documents that had been leaked to her or of going to jail, had revealed her source. Early Sunday morning, the senior bureaucrat the reporter named had jumped off the balcony of a highrise on rue Jacques Cartier. The argument about whether a journalist ever had the right to put self-interest above principle was fervent. Even Jumbo Hryniuk, who usually cast a dim eye on the doings of the non-jock press, grappled vigorously with the ethics of the case. Only one student was not engaged. As the passions swirled about him, Val Massey remained preoccupied and remote. Remembering his father’s casual act of brutality the day before, I was worried.

When the seminar was over, I handed back the essays I’d graded, and as always when papers were returned, I was soon surrounded by a knot of students with questions or complaints. Linda Van Sickle waited till the room had cleared before she came up to me. She was a sweet-faced young
woman with honey hair and the glowing good looks that some women are blessed with in the last weeks of pregnancy. In her Birkenstocks, Levi’s, and oversized
GAP
T-shirt, she was the symbol of hip fertility, a Demeter for the nineties.

I smiled at her. “If you’re here to complain about your grade, you’re out of luck,” I said. “I think that’s the highest mark I’ve ever given.”

She blushed. “No, I’m very pleased with the mark. I just wanted to ask you about Kellee. I know I should have done something about this sooner, but I did try to call her a couple of times, and I was sure by now I would have run into her.”

“Back up,” I said. “You’ve lost me.”

Linda shook her head in annoyance. “Sorry. I’m not usually this scattered.” She smoothed her shirt over the curve of her stomach. “I’m a little distracted. This morning my doctor told me it’s possible I’m carrying twins.”

“Twins!” I repeated. “That would distract anybody.”

She shrugged. “When we get used to the idea, we’ll be cool with it, but the doctor wants me to have an ultrasound Friday, so I’m going to miss your class, which means it’ll be another week before I can get Kellee’s tape-recorder to her. She left it in the bar Friday night. I picked it up after she left. She was pretty … upset.”

“I know she was in rough shape,” I said. “She phoned me. Linda, I’m aware that Kellee was drinking pretty heavily that night.”

“Then you know why she hasn’t been coming to class or answering her phone.”

“You think she’s ashamed of her behaviour,” I said.

“Yes, and she should be,” Linda said flatly. “I like Kellee, but she wasn’t just blitzed that night at the Owl; she was mean. She was sitting next to me, and I thought if I let
her ramble on, she’d give it up after a while, but she never stopped. The worst thing was that the person she was accusing wasn’t there to defend himself.”

“Val Massey,” I said.

“She told you!” Linda’s normally melodic voice was sharp with exasperation. “That really was irresponsible. It’s totally ludicrous, of course. Val could have any woman he wanted on this campus. He’s not only terrific-looking; he’s bright, and he’s sensitive, and he’s kind. There’d be no reason in the world for him to come on to Kellee Savage.”

“That was pretty much my feeling too,” I said. “When Kellee talked to me, I tried not to leap to Val’s defence, but she knew I didn’t believe her.”

Linda looked at me levelly. “No rational person would believe her.”

“That night at the Owl – didn’t anybody realize Kellee needed help?”

“At first we all just thought it was sort of funny. That was the first time any of us ever remembered seeing her in the bar, and there she was, sucking back the Scotch.” Linda wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I don’t know anybody under the age of forty who drinks Scotch, but Kellee said she was drinking it because Professor Gallagher told her that once you acquire a taste for Scotch, you’ll never want anything else. I don’t know whether she acquired the taste that night, but she sure got hammered.”

“Why didn’t somebody take her home?”

“As a matter of fact, I’d just about talked her into letting me drive her back to her place, when Val walked in. That’s when everything went nuts. Kellee ran over to him and started pounding him on the chest and saying these crazy things; then Meaghan Andrechuk discovered Kellee’s tape-recorder whirring away on the seat in the booth where we’d
been sitting. Can you believe it? Kellee had been recording the private conversations of people she was in class with the whole evening …”

“Did Kellee ever explain what she was doing?” I asked.

“She didn’t get a chance.” Linda gnawed her lip. “Did you ever read a story called ‘The Lottery’?”

I nodded. “In school. As I remember, it’s pretty chilling.”

“Especially the ending,” Linda agreed, “when everybody in town starts throwing stones at the woman who is the scapegoat. There were no stones Friday night, but there might as well have been. Everybody had had too much to drink, and Kellee didn’t help matters. Instead of apologizing, she started shouting that she was the only one of us who was doing real journalism, and she was going to show us all. She was so loud the manager came over and threatened to throw her out.”

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the image. “It must have been awful.”

Linda’s gaze was steady. “It got worse. Kellee started arguing with the manager. He was really patient, but she kept pushing it. Finally, he gave up and asked one of the women who worked in the bar to help him get Kellee into a cab. They were trying to put Kellee’s coat on her when Meaghan came back from the bathroom and said there’d been a bulletin on
TV:
Professor Gallagher was dead. Kellee went white and ran out of the bar. She left this.” Linda opened her knapsack and took out the tape-recorder that I recognized from class as Kellee’s. “You’ll make sure she gets it, won’t you?”