A Shred of Truth (31 page)

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but this country was built on the exchange of ideas, and many of the religious denominations that came over here formed from the soil of protest. Thus the name Protestants.”

Expecting a rebuke, I saw instead a bemused expression tug at the professor’s lips. He repositioned his spectacles, ran two fingers over a pasty eyebrow, and said, “For the first time this evening, I believe a student has tapped my own frustration with the spineless, amoral equivocations we see daily all around.”

I stood in shock.

“Proceed please, Mr. Black.”

“Uh, thank you, sir.”

N
early nine p.m. End of semester. And I had the full attention of the class. “Quoting a friend”—I nodded at Diesel—“here’s a pop quiz. True or false: the glam rock group Kiss once published a comic book printed in their own blood?”

My peers rustled in their seats, hesitant to speak.

“C’mon,” I prodded. “If this is your great show of courage in seeking out the truth, then we’re in more trouble than I thought.”

“Amen,” agreed Professor Newmann.

“True.”

“We’ve got our first vote,” I said. “Anyone else?”

The final tally ended in favor of the comic book’s authenticity.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s true. The band members agreed to the promotional gimmick and donated some of their own blood to be mixed with the comic’s red ink. A notary public confirmed the stunt with a sworn statement. That issue, which appeared in June 1977, went on to be one of Marvel’s best-selling issues of all time.”

Gasps of disgust went up.

“Real blood? Oooh.”

“Snap,” one kid exclaimed. “Everything cool happened in the seventies.”

“Yeah, you moron,” said another. “Like the Vietnam War and Watergate.”

I raised a hand until the room had quieted. “I bring all this up for a reason.
If this really is a secular, godless age, why are we so willing to idolize almost anything? When something entertains us or gains some sort of popularity, we shower it with praise—until the next big thing comes along. We sacrifice our standards. We stop thinking for ourselves. We let the media and marketers tell us what to love and to believe.”

“All noteworthy comments,” Newmann interjected. “But tell us, Mr. Black, what was your group’s urban legend? What was it that
you
would have us believe?”

“My study partners and I chose a local subject. After fine-tuning the idea, we went to multiple Web sites and Internet forums and proposed that General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate mastermind who later spearheaded the Ku Klux Klan, was born to a poor white woman and a slave boy from a local plantation. At delivery, his mother’s parents took young Nathan and drove the slave away to cover up the, uh, forceful nature of the pregnancy. Nathan grew up believing his father had abandoned him.”

A student piped up. “You tellin’ me the leader of the KKK was half-black?”

“That was our urban legend.”

“Dawg, that’s a work of genius.”

“It’s not true,” I emphasized. “But it started spreading.”

“It is true,” said another classmate. “I read about that on Wikipedia.”

“Students!” the professor barked.

“Diesel gets credit for that particular entry,” I noted. “We’ll be editing it from the site after tonight, if they haven’t flagged it already. But that’s the danger, isn’t it? Once the truth’s been tampered with, it’s hard to separate out the lies.”

My own words precipitated a dizzy rush, and I lowered my head. Both hands gripped the podium as images flitted across my closed eyelids: the riverbank … the gunshot … Mom kneeling, falling … splashing beneath the surface …

Most of my life had centered round that one moment.

Was I lying to myself about her reappearance? Even our legend involved an estranged mother and son. Was it another subconscious machination of mine?

God, only you know. Help me uncover the truth
.

“Truth.” I lifted my head, took a breath. “It’s the very foundation of friendship, marriage, government, and society. By testing it, we still have some hope of seeing through the lies. Meanwhile, my group’s urban legend is floating around out there, like most of yours. Too late to call it back.”

“Tha’s messed up.”

“And that, my dear students, is the point.” Professor Newmann joined me at the podium and clicked his stopwatch with a flourish. Panning the class while avoiding my eyes, he clapped a bony hand against my back. “Well done, Mr. Black.”

I thanked him. Awkwardly patted him back.

He gritted his teeth—or did I just imagine it?

“Prof—”

He shook his head.

My suspicion flared.

“Come see me afterward,” he mumbled.

He squared himself. “Students, your final grades will be calculated and in your boxes by the end of the week. For those wishing to receive them via mail, please inform the office. If you prepurchased a yearbook, those will also be available.”

Kids started shuffling around, scooping up books and supplies.

Newmann rapped his knuckles on the lectern. “Hello, class, you have not yet been released.” He hitched his lapels and said in his reedy voice, “For years I’ve set out to instruct others and to show them the pitfalls of deviating from
the truth. Some of you have already made corrections. Others have lessons still to be learned.”

My eyes were glazing. I needed food and something to drink.

“In these last moments, I want to express my gratitude to those of you who accepted me—no matter how begrudgingly—as your substitute. For personal reasons, I will not be returning after the summer. Godspeed.”

If he had hoped for sympathy, he didn’t get it. A few thank-yous and good-byes, one “Peace out, Prof,” and Ward Hall 150 was empty.

Save the two of us.

I gathered my notes from the floor. “You’re leaving us, huh?”

“For my own protection,” Newmann replied. “And for the sake of my ideals.”

“You lost me.”

“I’ve been persuaded to leave by ignoble means but persuaded nonetheless. After the verbal intimidation of one particular parent, I became victim yesterday to his escalated tactics of coercion.”

“Mr. Hillcrest.”

Newmann nodded.

“What’d he do to you?”

“It’s immaterial. The point is—”

“No no no. This is important.”

The professor pursed his lips, drawing deeper hollows in his gaunt cheeks. “On more than one occasion, Hillcrest warned me that his son’s scores were vital to his further education. I made it clear that my grades reflected the work of the individual students, nothing more and nothing less.”

“So what happened yesterday?”

“He found me at home. Roused from an afternoon nap, I was foolhardy enough to open the door without checking who was there.”

“And he forced his way in.”

“He did.”

“I can guarantee you that Diesel had nothing to do with it.”

“I never thought so. And thanks to the strength of your group presentation, I’ll be raising Desmond’s scores without violating my own ideals.”

“That’s a good thing. So lemme guess. Did Mr. Hillcrest cut your shoulder?”

“I tried to resist, naturally. But—”

“He’s a big dude. Show me the cuts.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“I think he might’ve done the same thing to my brother.”

He sighed. “I feared as much. It’s what I warned you of on the phone, Mr. Black. Of course when I saw in the Sunday paper that Johnny Ray was leaving on tour, I had hopes he would escape this man’s holy terror.”

“If only it were that easy.”

“There is something to be said for a person who’s willing to act on his convictions.”

“Oh, there’s something to be said all right.”

“In your offhanded manner, Mr. Black, you did address that very thing in your oral presentation—the need for personal conviction. It’s disconcerting in the extreme, the way it decays further each year in our homes, churches, and schools.”

“Yeah? Well.” I drew in air. “It doesn’t justify what he’s done.”

Blond hair … a slack mouth … pinkish blood …

“Show me the cuts,” I demanded again. “Don’t be shy.”

Wearing a sheared sheep’s expression, Professor Newmann slipped an
arm from his jacket and tugged the turtleneck down to reveal an all-too-familiar pair of initials.

Five cuts. Thin, but deep, in his pasty skin.

“AX.”

“Yes, I examined them in my mirror.” He slipped back into his jacket, trying to appear unfazed. “Of course, in light of Mr. Hillcrest’s collegiate accomplishments, they came as no surprise. Alpha Chi is a prestigious honor society.”

“Alpha Chi.”

“In Greek the initials are AX.”

“What?”

“A for Alethia, meaning ‘truth.’ X for Xapakthyp, meaning ‘character.’ The society’s limited to the top echelon of the nation’s universities. With his boasts of being a member, is it any wonder that he derives from this such narcissistic pleasure?”

C
heek Road cuts south off of Harding Pike and, less than a hundred yards later, passes the old entrance to Cheekwood Gardens. No longer used by the public, the spear-tipped iron gate is rusted, chained shut, and shaded by juniper trees. Statues of American eagles perch atop tall stone pillars where moss and grime have collected over the years.

All very imposing at first glance.

But I’d taken second and third glances.

With my car parked outside an animal hospital on Harding, I walked along Cheek—a neighbor out for a late-evening stroll—then slipped to the trees left of the gate. Here, behind the greenery, a chain-link fence stood between me and the estate. Between me and my Desert Eagle.

I scaled the fence and dropped down beside a pump house. Blue plumbing fixtures curled from the soil like periscopes searching for possible invaders.

This was one invader who would go unseen.

The Cheekwood estate spans fifty-five acres, its various gardens dotted with offices, greenhouses, a learning center, a museum, and a restaurant. Security cameras eye such structures, but they have little need to probe the outer darkness for petunia-stealing grannies. Uniformed guards patrol the property—maybe even my ol’ friends Taciturn Chuck and Jolly Jerry—but by hugging the vegetation and moving slowly, I was sure of recovering my pistol.

That is, if I could locate the exact shrub.

My advance from the pump house, past flowers and bushes and boxwoods, over trails and a paved drive, brought me to the Perennial Garden within ten minutes. I spent an equal amount of time creeping along hedges, trying to recognize terrain that had seemed so distinctive in daylight.

Where was the stinkin’ thing?

The fountain, the feel of the spray … If I just followed the sound of water.

When at last my fingers stretched beneath the correct shrub and snagged my treasure, I was dirty and sweaty. I brushed it off and reassembled the pieces.

Recovering my .40 caliber would’ve brought a smile to my face under normal circumstances, but I could think of nothing other than Thursday morning and my confrontation with Mr. Hillcrest. He had my mother.

The way he’d looked at that hotel clerk while toting his ice bucket …

The way he’d carved into my ex-girlfriend and left her to die …

What had Diesel told me about his father a few days back?
He’s got it bad for women, young or old. Maybe it’s wrong to say, but that’s a fact
.

Lost in these thoughts, I almost exposed my position to a passing guard. I reared back against a tree bole, took measured breaths.

Did he know I was here?

When he lifted a leg to pass gas, I was pretty sure I had my answer.

Fifteen minutes later I was back over the chain-link fence and headed toward Harding Pike. My skin crawled in the humidity of this Monday night. I slipped into the driver’s seat. Sat silently.

With the safety on, I wrapped my right hand around the Desert Eagle’s black plastic grip and its imprinted sword insignia. I let my finger rest on the trigger, while my other hand came up to brace the gun’s weight. Extended over the dash, the fixed dot sights guided my eyes to an inanimate target, and
I imagined drilling round after round through the abdomen of Mr. Drexel Hillcrest—one to match each location of Felicia’s stab wounds.

Live by the Sword … Die by the Sword
.

As he would soon discover, that was a credo that cut both ways.

I turned the engine over and headed home for a meal, shower, and sleep—if sleep was even possible.