Jeremy Hogan: A nod of the head. A genuine look of concern.
“You must take your situation immediately to the dean’s office and inform him of everything you’ve told me. You should do this without delay. You are absolutely correct. Your fellow student sounds to be in significant trouble. He may need hospitalization.”
And then the brief exchange that started everything:
“Can you help?”
“Him?”
Ed Warner: Hesitation. Honesty.
“No. Us.”
“I will call the dean right now and tell him you are on your way to his office. He will want to see chapter and verse. You are correct, Mister Warner. The symptomatology you present includes several recognizable elements of certain sorts of dangerous explosions. I would think acting quickly in this situation is crucial.”
“Should we contact campus security?”
“Not yet. The dean should do that.”
Then Jeremy Hogan reached for the phone on his desk with very much the same motion he would use thirty years later in the precious few seconds before he died.
Andy Candy waited for the psychiatrist in California to continue. She could hear him gathering his breath.
“There was a physician in our department-a research guy-studying early-childhood attachment disorders, who did much of his work with rhesus monkeys. National Institutes of Health grant, I recall, not that it’s important.”
“Monkeys?”
“Yes. They’re great subjects for psychological studies. Very close in social behaviors to you and me, even if the churchgoing public doesn’t want to believe that.”
“But what-”
He interrupted her. “Just rumor, you know. Innuendo. Whatever actually happened got covered up by the university really fast, probably because the administration didn’t want it impacting their U.S. News and World Report ranking. But the sort of story that stays with you, even if I haven’t thought about it in years and years. No one has ever asked me about this. And, you must recognize that as sensational as it seemed to be then, there was no time for any of us to digest it, assess it, what have you. We were all swept up in all that third-year tension.”
“I understand,” she replied, although she doubted that she did.
“The research psychiatrist came in to his laboratory one morning. Door had been forced open. He found five of his prize monkeys arranged in a circle on the floor. Their throats had been sliced.”
Andy Candy gasped.
“But what…”
“Dead monkeys. No, slaughtered monkeys.”
The psychiatrist hesitated. “Now, did that have some connection to the troubles in Study Group Alpha? No, one ever proved that, at least not that I know. And it wasn’t as if that research doc hadn’t made more than a few enemies. He was notoriously cruel to his assistants, and prone to yelling at them, firing them, and screwing up their futures. Not hard to imagine that one of them went looking for a little payback.”
“You don’t think that?”
“I never knew what to think, and had no time to think it anyways,” the psychiatrist continued. “That wasn’t what bothered me.”
“What was that?” Andy asked, slightly afraid to formulate this question.
“It was the number. Five-as in five dead monkeys. There were twelve others that were untouched. Sometimes, when one examines acts, particularly acts of violence-it makes sense to try to connect dots. Why weren’t all the monkeys killed? Or perhaps, just one?”
Andy Candy stammered again, making some grunting sound that came out instead of a question. The only word she could come up with was “And…”
“And that’s all. I always thought that the lab incident had something to do with that psychotic student. A matter of timing, I suppose. A hearing. Dismissal. Back of an ambulance heading to a private psychiatric hospital. Goodbye, so long, and that was it. One minute he was there, the next gone. And there was no obvious connection to that particular laboratory. Like, he wasn’t studying with that professor. But, like all of us, he knew about it, and he knew how to get in and out. So maybe the Freudian in me wants to see a link, but a detective wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Four people testified at that dean’s office hearing: the members of the study group. Curiously, though, there were five slaughtered monkeys. Four versus five… which threw it all askew.”
“What about Doctor Hogan?”
“He wasn’t at that hearing. All he did was what any faculty member would do: contact the dean’s office. The rest was up to the members of Study Group Alpha. So I can’t really see what he has to do with this.”
“I see…” Andy Candy said, although she didn’t know if she did.
“Of course, this all might be just conjecture. Sounds like far too much Hollywood, if you ask me. And perhaps it was the overinflated and overheated suppositions of a too-tense and stressed-out imagination, so I wouldn’t put that much credence in it. Even in medical school rumors were inflated, exaggerated, and bandied about like junior high school dating rumors. But the dead monkeys-those were very real.”
Andy Candy felt her mouth go dry and she choked out her question: “Do you remember the name of that student?”
The doctor hesitated.
“Interesting,” he said after a momentary hesitation. “You would think that recalling a detail like monkey murder would automatically mean that I would remember the name as well. But I do not. Totally blocked. Intriguing, huh? Perhaps if I think about it for some time, it will come to me. But right now, no.”
Andy Candy thought she should have a thousand additional questions, but she could not come up with any. She looked out the window of the car and saw people starting to emerge from Redeemer One. She realized suddenly that the hand holding her cell phone was slippery with sweat.
“Sorry. I don’t know if I’ve helped you or not,” the doctor continued. “That’s all I recall. Or, possibly, that’s all I care to recall. You let me know where I should send that contribution to the memorial fund.”
The psychiatrist hung up.
24
Gotta love Facebook.
Student #5 was getting to know Andrea Martine from a distance. He was staring at an electronic array of her wall pictures and reading captions and comments, lots of silly, inconsequential words that concealed some important elements: dead father the vet; music teacher mother; happy college times that seemed to stop abruptly; no posts for weeks. I wonder why. Bits of information flooded him as he carefully sorted through the typical teenager-to-college-student chaff in his search for hidden details that would help him plan. He had an odd thought: Did Mark Zuckerberg ever imagine that his social network could be used to make a decision whether to kill someone?
He smiled and had an added thought: It’s a little like preparing to go on a blind date, isn’t it? He imagined himself seated across a restaurant table, exchanging pleasantries with Andrea Martine. He spoke in a nice, friendly voice: “So, you like adopting animals, do you? And reading Emily Dickinson poems and Jane Austen novels both for class and in your spare time? Isn’t that interesting…