Death by Dissertation (12 page)

I sat on the couch again. Now was not the time to discuss my ability to view pornography without being permanently warped. “We-e-ell,” I said in slight exasperation, “what is on the tape?”

“Tacky is not the word for it, let me tell you,” he responded with a grimace. “First of all, this tape is definitely amateur work, and in this case, the amateur had to be Charlie. I told you he had an expensive video camera, didn’t I?”

At my nod, Rob continued. “I’m pretty sure he must have recorded these... these activities, but when and where I don’t know.”

“What activities are you talking about, Rob?” I asked impatiently.

I wasn’t completely surprised when he answered baldly, “Kinky sex, involving Whitelock and some woman. Or women. I’m not sure. There are lots of scenes with whips and other devices, and the woman is dressed in leather, wearing a mask. Whitelock is naked as the day he was born. He’s not wearing a mask, so you know right away who he is. I did a lot of fast-forwarding.” He paused to scrunch up his mouth in distaste. “We’re talking serious S and M here. Gracious, what a sight! Whitelock naked is enough to put you off sex for a lifetime! I couldn’t even make myself fast-forward through the second tape. I just looked at the beginning long enough to determine that it was more of the same. I had enough with the first one.”

“You don’t have any idea who the woman was?”

“No,” Rob said. “Unless she happens to wander by wearing one of the leather outfits from the tape! I told you, she wore a mask of some sort.”

“Maybe there are some distinguishing marks, or something else that could be used for identification.”

“Probably, if you want to go through the tape looking for them!” Rob made a funny face. “To think of Whitelock...” He shivered with revulsion. “And the kinds of things they’re doing. I’m not sure I can even look at him in class again.” He flourished the videotape. “This kind of thing goes on all the time in certain parts of the gay community, and I’ve got one friend who’s really into it, but I’ve never known anyone—anyone straight, that is—who went in for it.” He shook his head.

I laughed. “I didn’t know you were such a prude. Those kinds of activities”— I mocked his tone—“are probably a lot more common than you think, in both the gay and straight worlds.”

Flushing, Rob riposted, “I guess I don’t have your wide experience, then. The sight of people beating each other while they’re having sex doesn’t do much for me, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t know anything about my experience. But just because you don’t approve of their sexual practices doesn't mean you can get on some moral high horse. It’s none of your business. As long as they’re consenting adults, they can do what they want with each other.”

Rob glared at me, breathing hard. I returned his stare, refusing to back down.

Then, to my surprise, he laughed. “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, I guess. I don’t want anyone telling me what I can do in my bedroom, either. Point taken.”

I shrugged. “Good. So, what do we do now?” I asked. “I suppose we should call the police and turn it over to them. The longer we hold on to this tape, the more trouble we could be in.”

Rob stood up and began to pace to and fro. After a minute or so, he turned toward me, scratching his nose.

“That’s my first inclination, too,” he admitted. “I want to shove the responsibility onto someone else. I dragged you into this because I was scared they’d arrest me, and now that I’ve actually got evidence that could implicate someone else, I’m having second thoughts.” He laughed hollowly. “This tape is such a gross violation of privacy, and I don’t want to carry it any farther. I wish I’d never looked at it.”

I leaned back on the couch. “The best thing we could do is throw the tapes in the garbage and forget them. If I believed they had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie’s murder, I’d do that and not think twice about it. But I have a hard time believing there’s no connection between Charlie’s having this stuff on videotape and his murder.” I thought for a moment. “Besides, you could’ve been severely injured, or even killed, last night, possibly because of the tapes, if that’s what the burglar was after. That, frankly, scares the hell out of me.”

“Agreed.” Rob returned to the couch and stood solemnly looking down at me. “I think the tapes make Whitelock look like Suspect Number One. That reminds me, did you have a chance to read his article in the
Medieval Quarterly
yet?”

“Yes, and I think it was probably plagiarized from a seminar paper of Charlie’s that I read. Whitelock uses exactly the same evidence and arguments. And speaking of that paper, I know I have a copy of it in my files upstairs. I’ll go get it right now.”

Rob nodded, and I jumped up and ran up the stairs. It took only a couple of minutes of rummaging through my desk to find the paper. I skimmed it quickly as I walked downstairs.

“I was right. Some of the phrasing is even the same. I’m positive he plagiarized Charlie’s work.” I paused to measure Rob’s response; receiving none, I continued, “Does that confirm what you suspected?”

He gave me an odd look. “Actually, Andy, it was more than suspicion on my part. I didn’t tell you everything yesterday. Charlie... confided in me the afternoon of the day he... died.” Rob was having a difficult time maintaining his composure, thinking about Charlie’s last day, but he took a deep breath to steady himself before continuing.

“I’d never seen him that upset.” Rob shook his head slowly, remembering. “Charlie had just found his copy of the
Medieval Quarterly
in his mailbox, and he glanced at the contents page and found Whitelock’s name on the lead article. After he looked over the article, he came straight to me. He could hardly talk, he was so angry. He shoved the journal at me and pointed at Whitelock’s article, but I didn’t understand what was going on. I hadn’t read his paper, so I had a hard time believing that Whitelock had stolen his work.”

“Charlie actually accused Whitelock of plagiarism?”

Rob nodded. “When he could finally talk without cussing, he told me Whitelock’s article was essentially a rewrite of one of his old seminar papers. Then he went on to say that was probably why Whitelock had gotten him on the program of the S.H.F., with another paper that Charlie didn’t think was quite as good. How come you had a copy of Charlie’s paper?”

“During the first week of classes, I was talking to him about what Whitelock expected from us in his seminar, and he offered to let me read one of his papers that he said Whitelock had liked.” I paused, reflecting. “I think he couldn’t resist showing off a good paper. And, if Whitelock was going to steal, I guess he’d steal the good one.”

“Why bother, otherwise?” Rob laughed bitterly. “To be honest, though, I thought Charlie had to be exaggerating. I couldn’t imagine Whitelock doing such a thing and expecting to get away with it.”

“That’s a good point,” I responded. “All Charlie had to do was dig out a copy of his paper and cause a big enough stink to embarrass Whitelock, if not prove that he was guilty of plagiarism.”

Rob shrugged. “That’s what I would have done. And Charlie was angry enough when he first told me about it that I thought he was ready to do something rash. But then he started calming down. I asked him what he was going to do, and he smiled at me. It was a pretty repulsive smile, though.”

“What did Charlie do after he talked to you?” I asked. “Did he confront Whitelock?”

“He did, right after lunch that day. The next time we had a chance to talk about it was later that night in the grad lounge, after the lecture. He told me about his first confrontation with Whitelock, but he didn’t say anything about what went on when they talked after seminar that afternoon. You walked right into the middle of our conversation.”

I thought hard until I recalled what I’d overheard. “You were saying something about someone making a threat.” I closed my eyes “... really threatened you if you didn’t stop? ” I quoted triumphantly.

“Good memory,” Rob replied, impressed. “When you walked in, Charlie had just finished relating the big confrontation scene, and I said something like ‘You mean he really threatened you if you didn’t stop?’ After you left, Charlie and I kept talking. He had gone to Whitelock’s office early Tuesday afternoon, before the seminar. Charlie showed him the article and accused him, flat out, of plagiarism. According to Charlie, he blanched a little, but then he laughed in Charlie’s face.

“Charlie kept trying to argue the point with him, but all Whitelock would ever say was that, while Charlie’s work may have suggested certain trains of thought, he hadn’t taken anything substantive from it. He insisted that the footnote that mentioned Charlie was sufficient, and he didn’t see why Charlie was so upset.”

Whitelock certainly had the nerve to brazen it out. The man’s upbringing had given him an aristocratic bearing and supercilious mannerisms. I could see him remaining coolly superior while Charlie just got more and more steamed.

Rob kept talking. “Whitelock had the nerve to threaten not to approve Charlie’s dissertation and have him kicked out of school if Charlie persisted in such wild accusations.”

“Geez,” I said, “no wonder Charlie was upset. I’d’ve been ready to start ripping the hair off his head at that point.”

“Me, too,” Rob responded, “but Charlie had something else in mind. He realized that Whitelock was going to try to outbluff him, so he tried threatening him another way. I know he added some things to the paper he was working on recently, to contradict Whitelock and make him look like a fool. That was in between the time he talked to Whitelock and the time of our seminar.” He frowned. “After Charlie told me that much, he got real vague, but he hinted that he knew things about Whitelock that Whitelock didn’t want getting around to people in the history department or the university administration. I tried to get him to explain what he was talking about, but he wouldn’t. I finally gave up and left him there in the grad lounge a little after ten. When I looked back, before I went out the door, he was reaching for the phone. I don’t know who he was going to call.”

Wearily, Rob rubbed his eyes. “I stayed up pretty late that night reading, well past midnight, and I never heard Charlie come home. And I thought yesterday morning, when I got up and didn’t see any sign of him in the apartment, that he had hidden in the library overnight. Sometimes he did, since he thought campus security was such a joke. I never imagined... well, you know.”

I laid my hand lightly on his arm. “If Whitelock killed him over this, he’ll be found out and punished for what he did.”

Rob raised his head to look at me. “I hope so,” he replied softly. “Heaven knows Charlie could be a colossal prick, but he didn’t deserve this.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said quietly. “I wonder, though, what led Whitelock to steal the paper in the first place. He’s tenured, and it would take an earthquake or a major scandal to get rid of him. His position is about as secure as it can be. After all, he’s the big name in this country in Frankish history. Why would he want to steal Charlie’s work?”

“Charlie said Whitelock hasn’t published anything but book reviews for nearly ten years now—no books or articles. He thought Whitelock was desperate to demonstrate to the rest of the history department that he was still capable of doing publishable work. Maybe he needed to boost his ego. ” Rob rubbed his shoulder absentmindedly. “Also, it wouldn’t hurt when it came time to talk about salary increases. Charlie found out somehow that Whitelock hasn’t had anything more than the lowest possible raise for five or six years. I guess he went through Whitelock’s drawers that time he was house-sitting for him. I wouldn’t have put it past him, frankly. I told you he had an insatiable curiosity about other people. I doubt Whitelock’s privacy meant very much to Charlie, given the evidence of those videotapes.” He expelled a heavy sigh. “I’m getting a little sidetracked. I suppose the simplest answer to your question would be money and respect.”

I was quick to agree. In the rarified atmosphere of the academic world, where the monetary stakes were small, reputation counted for a lot. Someone as egocentric as Julian Whitelock might not balk at a little intellectual theft to bolster a stale or expiring reputation.

Rob shook the copy of Charlie’s paper, which he had taken from my hand. “Now, with this, I can nail Whitelock’s ass to the wall, and he can’t squirm away from it.”

“Are you ready to call the police?” I asked, moving toward the phone.

“No!” He looked earnestly at me. “I think we should give Whitelock a chance to explain first, as much as I’d like to dump all this on the police right away.” He waved his right hand in the air. “Call it some atavistic notion of ‘fair play,’ but I don’t think I can turn over the tapes without talking to him first, even if... even if he did kill Charlie.”

“We’ll probably get into a lot of trouble for interfering, but I agree with you.”

“Good.” Rob stood up, looking at his watch. “It’s about ten minutes till one. Whitelock ought to be in his office this afternoon.” He moved toward the door.

“Wait!” I said. “You’d better call Azalea first to make an appointment. You know how Whitelock is.”

Rob’s nostrils flared in annoyance. “You’re right. If I just burst in on him, he’ll get huffy and not talk to me, unless I insist and make a scene.” He picked up the phone and punched in the number of the history department office. After a few seconds, he said, “Hello, Azalea, this is Rob Hayward. I was wondering, does Dr. Whitelock have any free time this afternoon? I need to talk to him. It’s important.” He waited a moment, glanced at his watch, then responded, “Thank you. One-thirty is fine.” He hung up.

“Do you want me to go with you for moral support?” I offered. “He might find it more difficult to deny if there are two of us.”

Rob hesitated, obviously tempted. “No,” he said. “If we’re wrong, and this has nothing to do with the murder, I don’t want him to have any reason to be vindictive toward you. No reason to drop both of us into the shit, if we can avoid it.”

Reluctantly, I had to concede that this was true, and since Rob remained adamant, I decided to stay at home.