Flynn's World (16 page)

Grover’s eyes bulged. He swallowed hard. Finally, he shrugged. “Yeah. Why not?”

Flynn was parking the unmarked Boston Police car in a well-marked Cambridge bus stop.

“Inspector Flynn, have you any idea who has attacked me personally and professionally on the electronic toy in this vile and virulent manner?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me who?”

“No.”

The professor began to let himself out of the backseat. “I still teach a class. I still keep office hours. If these people had the character tradition should have given them they would have attacked me and my work in a less anonymous manner. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Flynn said.

Before getting out of the car, Grover whispered to Flynn, “What’s in the envelope?”

“Cartoons.”

“Of the professor?”

“Yes.”

Rage filled Grover’s face. “Someone drew cartoons of the professor?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll pull the head off the rat who did that!”

“Fractionalization, Inspector Flynn,” the professor said.

They were walking through Harvard Yard to the professor’s office.

In front of them walked Grover in sunglasses, watching the hands of everyone who approached them. As he walked along he looked behind every tree. Apparently, he was even scanning the roofs of the surrounding buildings for snipers.

“‘Fractionalization.’” Flynn knew he need encourage the professor no further for him to continue his thought.

“You were at the cocktail party at Dean Wincomb’s house.”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you notice the people there? Black people keeping to themselves, those of Asian derivation in a separate huddle, women making their own little exclusive group, people of one generation not talking to people of another generation?”

“It was pretty obvious.”

“Not too many years ago I could have brought those people together. Given them a sense of commonality. Of the human race, the human experience, as a whole. You know, we’re-all-in-the-same-boat-together sort of thing.”

Flynn said, “Eric Hoffer. I’m sure you’ve read him.” Professor Loveson stared at him. “In order to bring people together you must provide them with a common enemy.”

Staring sideways at Flynn, Loveson tripped on the edge of the sidewalk.

Grover whipped around.

Flynn grabbed Loveson’s elbow and steadied him. “That’s all right, Grover.”

Loveson said, “I think you are one very strange cop, Inspector Flynn. How do you explain yourself?”

Flynn chuckled. “I’m lying doggo. Lacking an invasion from Mars, you might consider doing the same.”

Loveson unlocked the door to his office and pushed it open.

Immediately, he gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Grover stepped in front of him and entered the room first.

Flynn entered second.

Loveson remained standing in the doorway. He looked around. “This,” he said.

The floor was shin-high with torn paper.

Every book and magazine from the shelves had been taken down and ripped apart. Their spines looked like the wings of so many dead birds. Drawers of the filing cabinets and desk had been turned out. Manuscript pages had been torn lengthwise and then across and apparently thrown to scatter them widely. Pictures, award citations from the walls had been smashed against a corner of the desk, and then shredded.

Two Harvard chairs were tipped over in the mess.

“This,” Loveson said.

“Who has a key to this office?” Flynn asked.

“Flynn.” Grover was looking at Loveson.

Still in the doorway, Loveson’s face had grayed. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. His right hand rubbed his chest.

“This,” Loveson said, “will kill me.”

Somehow getting his feet through the mess on the floor and despite his left wrist being in a cast, Grover caught Loveson as he collapsed. Turning him over, he eased him gently to the floor.

“You work on him,” Flynn said. “I’ll find a working phone.”

SIXTEEN

“How do you feel now?” Flynn stood by Loveson’s bed at Mt. Auburn Hospital.

The professor seemed held together by tubes. He was controlling his own oxygen mask.

“Ah, Richard,” Loveson said. “You’re still here.”

Grover stood behind Flynn.

“Professor,” Flynn asked, “how can I get in touch with your daughter?”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Flynn saw Grover take Loveson’s hand in his.

“Sir,” Flynn said. “You once mentioned having a daughter to me. When I was saying something about my daughter, Jenny—”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“All right.” Flynn took a step back. “I’ll look in on Mrs. Loveson for you.”

“Before you go, Flynn . . .” Loveson spoke through a dry mouth. “Please turn off the television.”

While Flynn fumbled around trying to find out how to turn off the television, Loveson continued: “My younger colleagues take nonlinear thought as an intellectual posture. What they don’t realize is that the biggest intellectual influence upon their lives has been the television, which is not capable of being linear for three minutes together. No wonder they eschew linear thought. They are incapable of it.”

Flynn finally found the switch. The television screen went blank.

Loveson said, “I’m afraid these generations will end up as crazy as Ezra Pound.”

With a nod of his head, Flynn indicated Grover should follow him out of the room.

In the corridor, Grover shook his head. “He keeps on saying what he wants to say, no matter what. Isn’t he wonderful?”

“Extraordinary.”

“Will it be all right with you if I stay with him for a while?”

“All right,” Flynn said. “But as people arrive to see him, do not identify yourself as a police officer. Say you’re just a friend.”

Grover said, “I am just a friend.”

Grover’s eyes were wet.

In the hospital lobby, Flynn met Dean Wincomb entering.

“How is he?” the dean asked.

“Stable. He’s had a heart attack.”

“Inspector, I’ve had a phone call.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how else to do this. Could you come to my office? Would two o’clock be convenient for you?”

“Yes.”

The dean said, “I think we’ll have something interesting to tell you.”

Flynn let himself back into Professor Loveson’s office.

After the paramedics lifted Loveson out of the office on a gurney, Flynn had found Loveson’s keys in the rubble on the floor. He had locked the door.

Nothing appeared to have been disturbed in the trashed room.

Flynn thought he had seen some papers of particular interest to him among the thousands of pieces of paper on the floor. They stood out because of the colors on them.

As he picked out these pieces of paper on the floor, he noticed they were the only papers which had not been torn.

UR GOING TO DIE
Another: WHY DON’T YOU KILL YOURSELF?
Another: JUST DIE
DIE OR WE’LL KILL U
U R A EVIL MAN

There were dozens of such notes.

The letters and some whole words had been cut out from magazines, and glued onto sheets of paper torn from cheap ruled ring notebooks.

U R GOING TO DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH
U DIE WITHIN MONTH
U DIE IN TWO WEEKS
U DIE IN ONE WEEK

Flynn collected all such notes he could find. He tried to handle them by only their upper-left edges. He hoped forensics would be able to lift fingerprints from them.

As he did so, he postulated that, seeing none of these pieces of papers was torn, whoever had trashed Professor Loveson’s office was probably the same person who had written them.

“Ah, vanity, vanity,” Flynn said. “Isn’t it wonderful, what it will do to you?”

“Come in, Inspector Flynn.” Dean Wincomb rose from behind his desk. “Please close the door.”

Assistant Professor Don Carver did not rise from his chair in front of the desk. He twisted his neck to look at Flynn as if to read his face.

“Ah, Carver!” Flynn looked down at him. “So you’re ready to confess.”

“I suspect my young colleague is afraid of being charged with manslaughter,” Wincomb muttered. “Please sit down, Inspector.”

“I’ll stand.” Flynn held the manila envelope he had bought at the Harvard Coop under his arm. In it were the threatening notes.

Sitting behind his desk, Dean Wincomb sighed. “You called this meeting, Don. The floor is yours.”

“Yes. Well.” Carver hitched himself higher in his chair. “I was in the building when they took old Loveson out this morning.”

“You’re referring to Professor Louis Loveson?” Flynn asked.

Carver amended himself. “Professor Loveson. He had a heart attack, did he?”

“Yes.”

“Will he be all right?”

“Who knows?” said Wincomb.

Flynn said, “His office has been trashed. His books, files, manuscripts. If he’s not dead, the center of his world is.”

Carver studied his hands twisting in his lap. “I want you to know I didn’t do it.”

“Do what?” asked Flynn.

“I did not trash his office.”

“Let’s start with what you did do,” said Flynn.

“I did put that stuff on the Net about him, his work, earlier this week.”

“‘Stuff’!” Flynn said. “What a literary term, Assistant Professor! Could you try for a more academic description of that manuscript?”

Carver tilted his head to the side. “Stupid stuff. A critique. I was trying to expose—well, maybe—the singlemindedness of Loveson’s work.”

“You did it anonymously,” Dean Wincomb said. “It was an anonymous, vicious attack.”

“Well, yes. The Net provides one with that kind of freedom.”

“With the possibility of complete irresponsibility,” Wincomb said.

“‘The electronic toy.’” Flynn looked at the ceiling, which was not much above his head. “The great poison pen.”

“It’s all right,” Carver insisted. “What is written on the Net is as true as anything else.”

“Is it?” With both hands, Wincomb was fiddling with a pen on his desk. “I don’t wonder you may think all academic discipline has been abandoned.”

“I have my First Amendment rights!”

“You have abrogated academic responsibilities,” said Wincomb. “Let alone human decency.”

“You have the right,” Flynn said, “to stand on a lemon crate on the commons and say anything you wish. And those who disagree with you have the right to boo you. You have the right to publish your thoughts—signed. You do not have the right to assault people anonymously.”

“I did not trash his office.”

Flynn asked, “Have you been making anonymous, threatening phone calls to Professor Loveson?”

There was a slight smile from Carver. “I’m not the only one. A group of us . . . We’d get conversing on the Net regarding the works of Louie Loveson . . . making fun of them. Of him. Like, you know, his spending his life running around in only the center of the maze. We’d think of some funny way of insulting his work, him.” He looked up at Flynn. “‘Threatening’? No. We never actually threatened him. Not with bodily harm. Nothing like that.”

“Please do not touch these.” Flynn permitted gravity to slide the threatening notes onto Wincomb’s desk. “If your fingerprints are already on them, we’ll find out soon enough.”

The men on both sides of the desk leaned forward to look at the notes.

Wincomb shook his head. “Disgusting.”

“Did you or your group of colleagues send these missives to Professor Louis Loveson?”

Carver looked frankly at Flynn. “No. Absolutely not. These aren’t funny.”

“No,” Flynn said. “They’re not.”

Carver said, “Of course, I can’t swear to what other people do, have done. I can’t believe anyone I know would do a stupid thing like that. They’re childish!”

By tapping the edges of the papers, Flynn slid them back into the envelope. “You and I may have different ideas as to what is childish,” Flynn said. “I’ve visited your home.”

Wincomb sat up. In a somber voice he advised Carver, “Your teaching contract will not be renewed.”

Carver looked shocked.

“I believe this is reason for immediate dismissal,” Flynn said.

Carver looked more shocked at Flynn.

“You’re on suspension as of now,” Wincomb said.

Mouth open, Carver’s head swiveled back and forth between Wincomb and Flynn like a tennis ball being hit by both sides.

“I believe he should be made an example of,” Flynn said.

“We do not wish to make a public issue of this, Inspector Flynn.”

Flynn remembered the President’s words: “I really don’t want a written record of this, if you understand me. Unless, of course, something happens and it is unavoidable.”