The Book of Kills Read Online Free PDF Page B

them?”
    “That is the assumption. Why else would he turn some humdrum historical research into a crusade?”
    “Why indeed?”
    Father Carmody sat forward, then thought better of it and eased his back against the firm support of the chair.
    “I think you’ll agree that a good offense is the best defense.”
    It sounded like one of the truisms that had been spoken in high slurred voices late into the night. “Of course.”
    Father Carmody ticked off the episodes that had enjoyed a brief run in the local media and then drifted into that great black hole that swallows up the news. Roger had not known of the episode at the log chapel. Father Carmody waved his hand.
    “That doesn’t matter. It is the vandalism in the cemetery that presents an unequivocal instance of law breaking.”
    “But more distasteful than legally serious.”
    “No doubt. Then there is the kidnapping.”
    “Father Burnside?”
    “No no. The chancellor.”
    This was indeed news. The events Father Carmody related had been successfully kept secret. The pathetic performance of the chancellor on the video that had been left at Corby Hall was described.
    “Did
they
ask for ransom?”
    “They
want a concession that the land is stolen.”
    “But
they
did not keep the chancellor prisoner until they got it.”
    “The next message told his whereabouts and rescuers went to fetch him. It has left him shaken.”
    “I’m not surprised.”
    The theory in the Main Building was that recent events had been elements in a carefully planned strategy that would stretch into an indefinite future, with more pressure put on the university with the passage of time. Kidnapping the chancellor had been a dramatic way to get his attention. And a copy of the damning video could be delivered to a television station at any moment. It was the chancellor’s particular wish that all copiesof the sad scene he had enacted for his captors be destroyed.
    “What offense did you have in mind?”
    “They, Roger. I am a mere messenger. But in this case I think they may actually be right. The assumption they want explored is that the same people are behind the legal threat and perpetrated those outrages.”
    “That seems plausible.”
    “Proof is needed. And discretion, of course; the other side must not be alerted that the inquiry is going on.”
    “And you want Philip to conduct it?”
    “You and Philip.”
    An accuser accused of sacrilege and kidnapping would be thrown from his moral high horse and lose the rhetorical advantage that agitating for Indians undoubtedly gave in the present atmosphere. Roger said he was certain Philip would agree to take the case.
    “Are you going to the game, Father?”
    “I prefer to watch it at Holy Cross House. We have a very large screen television now.”
    “Can you hear the cheers from the stadium there?”
    “Some of us can.”

8
    PROFESSOR RANKE LIVED with his wife and daughter in a modest ranch house on Angela Boulevard, on the edge of the campus and within easy walking distance of his office in Decio. The interview with Orion Plant not only spelled the end of the young man’s academic career but also wrote finis to another matter Ranke had driven into the deeper recesses of memory. But this disturbing thought emerged then. Orion and Laverne Ranke, his daughter. Once there had been what in an eighteenth-century novel would have been called an understanding between them. Nothing overt, simply the significance of the unstated, the logic of events. In his first years as a graduate student, Orion had been a frequent presence in the Ranke home. The first time he had been included in a group of students the professor had in for a Sunday afternoon sherry party. Laverne, a recent graduate of Saint Mary’s and of the same age as these graduate students, joined the party, along with Freda, Mrs. Ranke.
    Otto Ranke had carried into his private life the high standards of his profession—or was it perhaps vice versa. In any case, he would never