 
### The Undergrad

Mark Fitzgerald

Copyright 2010 by Mark Fitzgerald

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Chapter One: Rausch

Back in those days, you could smoke in a college classroom. Sharing a paired desk with a non-smoking classmate, even. No one complained. You ground it out on the vinyl floor tile, vinyl asbestos tile actually, when you were done. Same thing in theaters, in airplanes, at the grocery store. The entire world probably stank, the smokers couldn't tell... and the non-smokers abided. At scarcely a dollar a pack, smoking was a lot of pacification for the price.

A university philosophy class, with all those young, bohemian minds, would be ablaze with the cigs and pipes of the enlightened. Ethics 201 was no exception. Everyone smoked at least one during a typical class; in that tiny windowless basement room where the smaller, esoteric classes convened. Cigs only for the undergrad; pipes were to be earned; reserved for graduate students and professors.

Parker didn't smoke. But it didn't matter; he had an immunity to it. So many years in a household of smokers. He could recall family outings to the drive-in theater and the heavy fog of smoke within the car. Didn't bother him at all. He once took his war-surplus gas mask to the event on the pretext of putting it to purposeful use, but a clear image of the screen prevailed over the questionable effect of a filter-less war relic. With no filter cartridge, it would not have been effective. He was a kid, he knew nothing of filter cartridges. It was odd he didn't smoke. His parents were very liberal about substance abuse. Probably, had he been close enough to at least one smoking peer he might have tried it and persisted in his efforts until he had mastered it and of course, he was mastered as well.

Rausch, with his trademark pipe, which was never ablaze, was casting his spell of profundity. Asking questions of his intellectually unhoned proteges that they had little chance of addressing with much intellect at this stage of their education. Setting them up for his performance... for the "coup de grace".

Professor Ryan Rausch was phenomena of a sort. He had perfected the persona of a brilliant mind, temporarily corporeal on this mortal coil, so that he could reveal the universe to those worthy enough to entreat him. He was 99 percent "bullshit" and simultaneously 100 percent the "real thing".

Never had he been less than the smartest man in the room. Physically he was just as striking. Just short of six foot, he had a girth that was ... just short of excessive. Massive torso. Hirsute well beyond average. Full beard and mustache; always closely cropped. Thick head of dark wavy brown hair. Maybe it was black. Pale skin. Manicured hands, with dark hairs between each pair of knuckles and all the way up his arms . He dressed the part. Quality clothing, just a little bit frumpy, by choice. Generally good facial features. Perhaps his eyes were slighting bulging.

Rausch was not impressed by himself in these circumstances. It was easy to impress this crowd. But impressing this crowd had rewards other than affirming his own wit. He was after all only thirty five years old. Not tenured, but a full professor. He was godlike to students. That had advantages.

The girl in the "corridor side" row, a couple of seats back from the front, always distracted Parker. His height; shortish... a quality that he liked in women. Pretty and blonde. But pretty and blonde in a special way. Her blonde was not "sheeny clean" beach bunny blonde. Her's was the kind he thought they might mean by "dirty blonde". But he wasn't sure if that still applied if the hair was a genuine and consistent flax color. It was straight as any line defined by two points and reached virtually to the waist. No makeup, at least discernable makeup... perhaps a dollop of Clearasil here and there. Fine perfect features, so perfect that she almost lacked any semblance of "character".

Parker had noticed her immediately the first day of classes. Most notably the blackness... the black denim, the black leather boots to the knee. Always a blousy chemise that defied any speculation as to the nature of her bosom.

She was the quintessence of the brainy college girl to him. Not the "post beatnik" radicals of his high school years. She had an air of confidence that he could not imagine in a woman; let alone a young woman. He thought maybe it was conferred upon her by the black boots. He wanted to inhale her if he could get close enough... to know the real scent of a woman. He suspected it might be other than fruity fresh; something leathery perhaps.

Taking philosophy seemed to him the ultimate collegiate pursuit. A "bona fide" of his eventual ascension to the upper tier of the learned. His was the realm of the mind; not be hindered by corporeal pursuits. Being a geek was not anathema to a being a philosophy student. He wasn't a geek, though. But nor was he the antithesis, a jock. He was certainly smart enough to realize there was no real continuum between geekiness and jockishness, but he was still too insecure to not fear that that his prowess and disinterest in sport and athletics, did make him a geek by default.

Philosophy was far more interesting than that he had anticipated. No, that is not correct. He assumed it was interesting, he just had absolutely no prior knowledge of it. It sounded like a really cool thing to study. Just like "Modern Revolutionary Ideologies" and "Mathematics and the Real World"; both of which bore fruit. A week into "Introduction to Archeaology" he had some misgivings about that discipline.

Philosophy was cool. In the short span of a few classes in ethics, he had come to realize just how nebulous were all his beliefs; beliefs he had passively absorbed from his lineage of earnest and ignorant kin back in Wyoming.

Greeley, Wyoming. A point along the north/south highway that highway traffic passing through would always find humor in. You smelled Greeley ten miles in advance. Cow manure; one of those curiously stout odors that are somehow not really offensive. Almost having an atavistic appeal. Like all farm smells. Wet hay.

Inured to the smell of Greeley and to that of tobacco smoke, Parker might have considered that at least one of his senses was impaired.

He grew up on a ranch. Well, that sounded too archaic and heroic. He actually grew up like virtually any American kid in the sixties. It was just that his house sat on the corner of an thousand acre parcel of land on the edge of town, instead of a quarter acre in a suburb. Other than that, he took the bus to school every day, like most kids, ate lunch in the cafeteria, rode the bus home and killed time until supper watching tv. And then watched every show interesting to his age until the "crap" came on.

His father never really called upon him to "intern" as a cowboy. It was sufficient that he knew the basics and he did. His dad was intent that his son become educated and considered a full day at school to be enough of a contribution to the collective goals of the family to release him from arduous rural chores.

So he watched tv. Living on the edge of town, he didn't have friends to consort with after school or in the later evening. When tv sucked he read. Reading, by itself had, assured him a 1554 SAT score. And a 1554 had gotten him a nearly full ride to the University of Oklahoma.

His courage had grown over the last month. He realized that he really understood the issues, at least, though he had not as yet mastered any single one of them. He wanted to be a part of it all. His listened intently to Rausch each class and completed the reading assignment the evening of the day they were assigned. He was having an epiphany of sorts. He was realizing that he could "think". In high school he didn't "think". There he learned and when required, gave evidence of his earning.

Something Rausch has said in Monday's class had jostled something in him. The entire course was about ethics. He was also taking the freshman "Introduction to Philosophy" taught by a doctoral candidate, a skinny Jewish guy, with an air of disdain for level of erudition he was being constrained to. The ethics class was open to all students, regardless of major, but it was not intended as a primer to philosophy. It was not patronized by the disinterested and only interesting to those who paid attention.

A dozen times before he had felt he had a point to make, and had come perilously close to raising his hand. Sometimes he regretted his timidity, when another student or Rausch himself made the same point. But just as many times, a few moments more reflection and discovering he was mistaken or the evisceration of another hasty student by Rausch had made him thankful for his less assertive nature.

Parker raised his hand and Rausch, with a regal gesture of the hand, the consented.

Trying very hard not to stutter, Parker spoke aloud. "I can't see how a little crime can be deemed equivalent to a gross misdeed. Surely, consequences are important. Is this not just utilitarianism in reverse?"

"A deed is only as evil as its outcome? Surely, some sins are greater than others." Parker held his breath.

Rausch enjoyed this part. He loved the rhetorical question the most. It was easy, like the way cynicism is a lazy mind's sense of humor. He was lazy a lot of the time so he put it back on Parker. "By what measure?.....any sin can produce havoc.... A lie can change the course of a civilization... a murder, by comparision may only affect few. So which is the greater sin. Can a sin be separated from its effect."

And oh how Rausch loved to answer his own question. "Take our ten commandments. The breach of any one of them is a sin, isn't it? Assuming, of course, that we dignify each commandment. I wonder if they were in the right order on those tablets."

"If I bear false witness and in doing so accomplish much good, am I equally corrupt as he whose tainted witness only abets himself or causes hurt to others?"

Parker felt a tinge of confidence and forged ahead... "vamping".

"Maybe morality isn't absolute... maybe, being immoral is really a breach of contract .. of the "social contract", as they say. If we were all liars, and uniformly endorsed lying, then no lie, regardless of its efficacy would be immoral. Maybe a lie is only wrong when it offends the promise of truth. Immorality is only a "breach of promise", I think. I pledge to be faithful and, thereafter infidelity is a sin because it is fundamentally a breach of that promise." This was fun, thought Parker.

Rausch was unaccustomed to being "challenged". He was a contrarian by choice, preferring to counter far more than concur. "What if the promise... the contract as you say, is unfair. What if the outcome is imbalanced. Say the lessor gains more than the lessee in the transaction. What if it is equal? What if it is a fair trade? Tit for tat?"

"Better yet... what if the wager shifts.... the balance shifts to one side and the "deal" becomes one that would not have been struck under the new terms. Does the contract stand?"

"For better or worse". There's a famous pledge. Give that one some thought... there are millions of miserable spouses struggling with than one."

Parker was sweating. As usual, he was gushing, the pits of his shirt blossoming and that incriminating flourish of dampness forming in the center of his chest; telegraphing to his shirt. How is it that the jocks actually sweat less than he does, he wondered. He had exhausted his line of thought and was recoiling in anticipation of Rausch's next volley when ... "RRRIIINNNGGG" went the bell.

Commotion ensued as students scrambled to salvage a few minutes of personal time between classes.

She watched Rausch as, yet again, he quipped "Pavlovian!". An observation that, overheard by a freshman, always sounded clever the first time heard.

Rausch was out of the room before even half of the students.

Satisfaction was suddenly all that Parker knew. He felt vigorous. Just crossing the threshold of the classroom door, he heard her say.

"He's quite an ass you know."

Chapter Two: Her

Parker turned liked he was taking a bullet from the grassy knoll. "Back and to the left". She was speaking to him, all the while stretching backwards in her seat, arms outstretched like a martyred carpenter; revealing no more bosom than her regular posture conveyed.

"Intelligent as he may be, he's a whore for attention. You sparred pretty well ... just hope he doesn't think you scored points with the rabble."

"So, there goes my grade point?" Parker hoped his reply was reasonably relevant and charming.

Rising with her yellow scratch pad in hand she said "No... you're probably okay. He plays fair... and it helps that only he realized he was being challenged. His vanity is secure. You'll live to fight another day."

"You were saved by the bell... time permitting he would have slaughtered you! You know, it wouldn't have mattered which side of the issue you were on... he would take the other and make you think you had been slaughtered, either way. Before you realized you'd been had, you've have already been discredited and disgraced. He's the best."

"Well... uh... thank's for the juice... uh you know the info..." That had sounded so contrived!!!. Parker was not one to be abreast of the "hipper" ways of saying things and not at all convincing when he tried. Although, he thought in consolation, "juice" is not a bad metaphor for information.

When in doubt... when you have nothing, ask a question. He was a question asker. He knew it bored and exasperated others but he just didn't know to start and sustain an interesting conversation. So, in his usual style, "You come to every class. Are you auditing or something?"

She loved it... he had set her up perfectly. She was vain. "No... I'm his TA. Hah! I shouldn't tell you but it will be me grading your essays and tests!" It was a honor she could not begin to accustom to. She was the teaching assistant of a full professor in philosophy at one the finest universities in the middle United States.

''So... I'm the one you shouldn't piss off. Ha ha". She was smiling, not just to herself but rather, on this occasion, smiling broadly enough that the world might well have witnessed her rare breach of sullenness.

What she had said was both funny and true.

"Actually, it might improve your grade if you..... take me for coffee or something." That part she hadn't expected to say. Hadn't rehearsed it like she would have, had she been conscious of her sudden interest in him. It just rolled out, it seemed; as the logical conclusion of a valid premise... she told herself.

Nothing, to Parker, could have seemed less likely than an older, smarter and wiser and quietly erotic woman asking him to accompany her anywhere. Discounting her sincerity and wanting to make a charming exit he said,"Well I would, but I swear ... I don't have a dime. Like a dime will buy a cup of coffee. "

"Well don't swear... we sure wouldn't want that. So, I'll buy... so to speak ... except I don't have a dime either, so you'll just have to drink the coffee I make at my place. It's close enough. One bus. It's even walkable."

For Tanya, the "come-on" or even just initiating further contact with men was not difficult. Her efforts were always rewarded, bolstering her confidence, until she had become outright assertive and oblivious or contemptuous of any resistance.

" Follow me... I'm Tanya."

Chapter Three: Rounding Third

Just like she promised it was a very short ride. One bus. Maybe a mile. Not two. Just a bit past the zone of once grand older homes; now each accommodating an improbable number of students, and into the adjacent zone of less palatial older homes; now rental properties to singles or couples; up or down. She talked the entire time. Walking to the bus, waiting for the bus, riding the bus. He listened. He had nothing to share, he was sure. She shared. And she was interesting and, with each city blocked removed from the campus, she was increasingly ebullient; totally nullifying her effete/ pessimistic/nihilistic persona; which she could restore as needed.

She was a Yankee. Suburban by birth. But not driven to become intensely urban like so many other young women from Connecticut. She didn't want to study in New York. Oklahoma was her adventure; though her academic achievement and her father's wealth and connections could have insured entrance to a notable east coast university. Popular in high school. Brainy. Ambitious to be notable forever. Not ambitious in terms of wealth. She had grown up very comfortably, and assumed that was everyone's future. Even a philosopher's.

Her apartment didn't smell like his at all. Not that it was tidy. But it smelled of care and pride. There were smells that were altogether new to him. Scented candles. Maybe pot. But tidy.... no. In the "bay window" part of her bed/living room was a desk overlain with several strata of essays and papers of bygone years. So, he imagined. But of course, it was just the turmoil of essays and tests yet to grade and thesis drafts and bills unpaid and all the other stuff.

There were articles of clothing on the floor and on the bed. Nothing looked soiled. Soiled, not being the right word perhaps. Perhaps worn already. It was erotic.

It reminded him of something from before. Something really erotic. Something extraordinary in its simplicity.

One of his roommates, in the house they shared, "they" being six guys, showed him his treasure one day. It was the black one-piece swimsuit of his long time girlfriend, who has remained "wherever" while he went to university. Turned in-side out, it was a "Shroud of Turin", but not the image of the savior's ascendency, but of a beautiful teenage girl's body eroding the fabric of a tight fitting garment. He envied his friend's prize. He hoped, for his friend, that it hadn't been laundered before his girl had sent him away with it.

"So... I suppose you live with a dozen roommates or something hideous like that." She asked as he followed her through the door.

He had never lived with other men. He was the only boy in a family of two parents and a child of each sex. Living communally with other men was disquieting for him. On many levels.

"Actually, I am not sure what the actual count is.... not a dozen but a lot. It changes constantly. I think it is six, right now. I hate it really. I hate being around men. Not that I have been around women either. Maybe I hate human beings. I hate being around men in their underwear. I hate the residue of men in the bathrooms. I can't imagine feeling the same way about living with women."

He was stranded in the no-mans land of another person's dwelling. He stood there, just inside the door, not knowing which direction he should go. Student apartments were stage sets. It was the designer's secret as to which part of the one or two rooms, total, was that assigned to a role usually played out in an entire room in a real home. He wondered, " was the bed the sofa? That big chair by the bed...is that the guest chair?"

Without direction from her, he just held his post there, just inside the door, as she flitted in an out of both rooms and each zone of both. There was a bathroom he assumed; somewhere. It was down the hall, outside of her suite. Shared with someone else.

He just kept talking, as she went about her business.

"I don't know that being so disgusted by men isn't sort of weird. I guess if I was a homosexual, I would be totally good with this stuff, but it seems weird to me that I am so repulsed by men. Not just physically... I just hate all the testosterone bullshit of being a man. If I get drafted I think I'll kill myself."

She was, finally, not in constant motion. She was trying to assemble all the components of a cup of coffee. Not a real cup of coffee. She could manage instant coffee, if she could find the jar of granules and boil water.

He had started to feel comfortable with her and realized that he had already began to run at the mouth like he would do back home to his kid sister. An apology... more like a warning, was required.

"I think way too much about stuff... and then I let stuff out... unedited ... coz it always seems reasonable to let stuff out it if is well intentioned... or at least not malevolent." He went on.

"It is interesting, though, how programmed we are.... to favor one gender over the other. Manliness just makes me shiver." That statement seemed to him a bit too strident. He tried to recant.

"I have no idea what my point was just then."

She turned from the sink and with a wink, "I think they call you guys "beta" males. The jocks are the "alphas". The propagators of our species." She laughed out loud. They both laughed. His laugh was just cordial.

"So, are you a man of much experience... in terms of romance ... as it were? " she queried. Not that she was so much interested in his history as she was enjoying his embarrassment.

He, feeling oddly comfortable admitting so, "As it is... none.. I have no experience whatsoever. Even my lips are pure. Everything is still in the original wrapper. I could be worth a fortune in the antiques market in a few years."

" Well, I can't say the same thing... maybe I wish I could. Don't care to share the actual count either... not a dozen but a lot. We struggle with that... at least some of us girls. Sooner or later we give it up... or someone takes it". She had been looking askance but on that last utterance her eyes met his. She looked quickly away again, emboldened.

"Yeah... someone took it! It's hard to say no... when it's something you want to know about... and, harder still, when you think your "no" will come across as an admission of cowardice. Then saying no just seems irrelevant the next time... and the next time... and the next time ... and suddenly... I guess not suddenly, but eventually... eventually you are a girl who has had a lot of lovers. A lot of sex... not a lot of love."

" But sex... it's good ... right? I keep hearing about it. From the big boys." Parker hoped his quip would relieve any discomfort she had in speaking of her history.

It did.

" I like it... but honestly I don't know if it's the intimacy... as superficial as it's been so far or the physical pleasure that matters to me. I guess it is kind of pathetic if I am somehow nurtured by pseudo intimacy.

Tanya liked to make her points emphatically. Theatrically.

"I'd fuck you. For the same reasons. To feel good... and too be close to you... and I don't even know you. See... I can just put it out there too. I like you ...and I don't mean I like the way you are or look... I just like you," she declared pulling her blouse over her head and dropping it on the bed.

Parker saw breasts. Probably not what ones you would call spectacular but breasts totally consistent with his minds eye before.. Even more overwhelming to him was the fragility of her upper torso, the grace of her neck and the frailness of her shoulders and arms. Her femininity. He wanted to embrace her. To rest his cheek against hers.

She patted the bed beside her, summoning him closer. He obeyed. She sat cross-legged, back to the headboard and he side-saddle on the edge of the bed. She grabbed his shirt and wrenched it our of his waist band. He was suddenly conscious of the degree of his arousal and, foremost, terrified of her being witness to "it". Starting from the top she unbuttoned the five pawns of his defense. Glancing downward as she did, she pushed his shirt backwards and halfway down his arms. He felt a twinge of panic at his arms being restrained from the pressing duty of concealing himself. She proclaimed, "Is that for me? A clever little female quip, if you hadn't heard it before. It both embarrassed and calmed him. He hastily proceeded to unlock himself by unbuttoning the cuff of his sleeves but not in time enough to have thwarted her assault upon the zipper of his jeans. He immediately poked through. With uncanny speed she writhed out of her black denims, completing in that single stroke, the entire process of disrobing. She pulled him forward grasping both his shoulders and "scootching" herself under him, rapidly moving her hands to the top of his jeans and, thumbs engaged in his shorts, both jeans and underwear were suddenly at his knees. Now abandoned entirely to surrendering to her he thrashed his legs wildly to be free of his pants, while the epicenter of his entire existence, his penis, rubbed deliciously against her belly. All his senses were ignited but, most acutely, he could divine her scent. Drawing in the deepest of breaths, he was nearly dizzy. He reached down to the place where surely the scent was radiating and feeling the unexpected warmth and wetness of her he swooned for moment, like in a dream, followed by the sudden awareness that he was ejaculating. He tried to extricate himself from her embrace but before he had put any distance between then he had anointed her from belly to the nape of her neck with semen.

Her reaction was nearly as immediate as his; but she was not bewildered.

"Oopps........", she said as she lay back, smiling, swirling her finger in some of it. She saw the look of abject shame in his eyes. "Oh come on..." suddenly she laughed, "sorry, bad pun. Don't be all upset. Your first time... it happens."

He wasn't hearing any of it. He was suddenly hearing the kettle she had up put on ten minutes ago, shreaking maniacally, but with ever decreasing conviction, as the water boiled away. Struggling with his balance as he did, he pulled his underwear up from their last position at his knees and standing on his tip toes to free up his cuffs he pulled up his jeans.

Hastily buttoning his shirt he exclaimed "I just don't feel... I'm just not comfortable with all this. I mean you are really cool and all that but my head is just spinning and... I'll get back to you... okay?"

"Stay Parker... please. Nothing has gone wrong... we just got going to fast. Just stay here and we can just talk and stuff, just like we were doing before."

"Tanya, I really like you... in the way you just said... but I really do just want to be alone for a while. I'll get with you again I promise."

She hadn't even risen from her bed before he has crossed the threshold of her door. The last word she got out, which he probably didn't even hear, was "come back in an hour or so."

Parker's mind was a torrent of affects. Guilt, awe, lust, joy... all melding to a stupor which blinded him to the fact that he walked right past Rausch as he headed down the sidewalk for a sullen stroll home.

Chapter Four: Daddy's home!

Rausch was quick to rage. Perhaps, because he was quick to coalesce elements into patterns... into conclusions. The instant he say Parker, the pageant was complete, like a nativity scene; the role of every figure clearly discernible . He could feel in his flesh all the fire of damnation... all the regret a prophecy fulfilled. They're all cheating cunts.

Tanya "toweled-off" with the tail of the upper bed sheet. Reaching over the edge of the bed, and slightly under, she found her size "extra large" SOONERS jersey and slipped it on. Still sitting on the bed she turned abruptly toward the door as it started to open. She almost said " Parker, you're bad"... or something clever like that, but she was struck dumb as Rausch swung open her door and immediately settled into her one comfortable chair next to her dresser.

He could assume a "regal" demeaner, that impressed him and the uninitiated, but had come to disgust her over the last two years. He slumped into her chair kicking off his leviathan shoes in the same effort. She hated the way he would so totally possess that chair. She could scarcely bear to sit in it, because of him, though it was the only comfortable reading chair in the place and she did an enormous amount of reading.

His tone was all she needed to know that a "shit storm" was brewing.

"You went straight home after class.... Still watching your shows?" Meaning, of course, the afternoon soap operas that were the closet passion of many college students, who could and would arrange their curriculum to satisfy their addiction to them.

"I like my show. My ONE show. Lord I remember some of the characters from "sick-days" when I was in junior high."

He stared at her, with as much "theatrical" condescension as he could affect.

"No," she said hoping to preempt his next questions by volunteering information, "I just wanted to get a start on some of my work." She rose from the bed without the benefit of having planned her next destination. She stalled and, in doing so, felt incredibly naked.

"Oh.. what work?"

"Oh, nothing specific .. just get organized or oriented. I don't know."

Rising from his throne, Rausch said, "I guess if you don't know, then it must be something that can wait." He as much blocked her escape from her bedside, as he offered his embrace.

" No library time tonight?" He reached around her and forced the wedge of his stiff extended fingers between her buttocks .

Tanya knew she was in for a total "mind-body" fuck, tonight.

"No... I just thought I would stay in... and I thought you might come over so I just got comfortable." The precedent of the "football jersey over nothing else" had been set before, so she was not too alarmed by his probing hand nor his discovery that she was without underwear.

Without releasing his grip on her buttock he held her there as he unzipped his fly and fished out his penis. He was enormous. It was a matter of great, unexpressed pride to him. A vindication. He was highly intelligent and he had a huge dick.

He was a "selfish little piggy" in the body of a behemoth, when it came to sex. Early on, he had affected affection, but "all the cards on the table" now, he just took what he wanted.... when he wanted it.

This time there was an "edge" to it.

She not so much as uttered a sound.

Suddenly, he tugged at her buttock spinning her around and fell heavily upon her.

She realized that his ardor was catalyzed by hostility and that he intended to indulge himself.

"I'm not into that tonight," she asserted. Having maintained his grip on one buttock he parted her and began to wedge himself between them. She exclaimed, "Really it always hurts and it's demeaning anyway."

He started to enter her. She could accommodate him with fair warning and a few deep breaths, as she had done before, but this time the pain was acute and she cried out, "really ... you're hurting!"

Pushing himself deeper he taunted, "You've taken a liking to sophomore sex? Is your little friend gentle? Like gentle has ever worked for you. But I am sure gentle is how you like to sell it to the kids."

"What the fuck are you referring to?"

"What kind of fuck did you just hand your little buckaroo before he scurried home like a naughty puppy?"

Conceding the point, that he had been there, she said, "We didn't fuck."

"When he pays the bills he can fuck you..... anywhere he wants.". He bottomed out. She gasped.

"Stop it..you fucking asshole.. go find some little boy to do that to."

Rausch grabbed her pony tail and jerked her head back toward him, "you fucking cunt!"

There was not even a click. Her vertebrae crumbled, her spinal cord severed noiselessly and, when he relaxed his grip, she simply fell face first into her pillow. Rausch was so close to ejaculating that it was a full blown moral dilemma, considered and resolved in an instant, that forbade his coming inside her deceased rectum.

He could smell the kettle being consumed, with out actually igniting, on the stove in the other room.

Chapter Five: On second thought...

### .

He couldn't stop smelling his hand. It made him dizzy. Maybe he was hyperventilating. Maybe it was because there was some compound in that aromatic brine that he was fundamentally susceptible too. It was the richest aroma he had ever experienced. Some essences he recognized. Urine. Sweat. It was peculiar to admit that it had much in common with the scent that would grace his hands if he drew them between his legs and his balls. That scent too, made him light-headed.

He had seen a woman naked. He had felt the heat of a woman on the entire length of his penis. He had ejaculated without actually touching himself. That was the bewildering part. Someone, a woman, had made him come. He could only imagine how it would feel to be fellated or masturbated by someone. To be that "victim".

She was fun. He didn't mind being teased. It was attention. She was tragic too. Victim of the "alpha male".

He had always thought of her as beautiful, he realized. A month of classes had gone by and most of the time in class, his ear tuned to Rausch, his eyes had surveyed every nuance of her.

He was nearly home, when the bus heading back to her apartment came into view. He wasn't ready to call it a day. He sprinted to the stop and boarded the bus. Damn the fare! He would be back to her in minutes. And she had invited him. He heard it distinctly as he held the door briefly before closing it to take his walk of shame.

Chapter Six: Knock-knock...

Parker wished he had already achieved the familiarity to warrant coming in unannounced, with a clever quip. But, he was only at the "respectful" knock stage; in spite of having her scent wafting relentlessly up at him from his knocking hand.

It couldn't have been a half an hour since he left her apartment. Amazing how his body was already fully recovered from his first real sexual encounter and equally amazing how intense was his resolve to consummate their acquaintanceship. But she didn't come to the door. He stepped back into the street. Everything looked the same. Lights were on. He climbed the short flight of steps from the street again and knocked. This time with a measure of conviction. It is hard to gauge the proper length of time between a knock and the resignation that it is not being acknowledged. He gave it a while longer. For some reason, as he turned to descend the stairs for the last time that night, her gave the door knob a twist.

The knob put up no resistance and the door slowing swung open, an inch at a time until it surrendered an eight inch wide portal into the life of Tanya Arquette.

She lay on the bed. Face down. A football jersey hiked up to the middle of her back. Her buttocks exposed.

Parker called out her name, barely audibly. A concession to her vulnerable state. Nothing. Gripped by an undefined fear he crept, literally in a hunched posture, to her bedside. He placed his hand upon her neck. She was warm. He felt an enormous relief. She was okay. God, he thought, for a second that, he had lost her. Speaking her name softly, and gently jostling her, he tried to rouse her. Nothing. Suddenly, he had the most horrid of "ahah" experiences.

She was not well, at all.

He tore into a frenzied search for her telephone. Did she even own one? He hurled himself at her desk, in the street-side window bay. Tossing everything to one side or the other, he finally exhumed it.... a silly "princess" style phone. In a princess color, pink.. and, like all princess phones hard to manipulate. He hated rotary phones. It was so easy to fuck up the dialing part and so time consuming. It was the stuff of nightmares for him... repeated attempts to execute the sequence of rotations to complete some vital call. But he only had three numbers to register .. 9.... 1...

"Put it down!!!!!!!!!!!!. Now!!!!!!!!"

Chapter Seven:The promise

The rage in the voice was palpable. It stopped Parker cold; halfway in the rotation on the final "one". He didn't recognize the voice but the face, camouflaged in the light and dark of a street side walk up apartmen, was still unmistakable.

"She's hurts.... I think she dying!!!!!!!!!!!"

"She's dead." The world had not really stopped with that utterance but for Parker at least, it was devoid of sound and sense. "She's dead," Parker heard him say. For the second time.

His mind cleared.... "We have to do something... call the police."

Rausch stepped out of the darkness and plopped into his chair. _"_ Normally...yes... just not this time."

Parker stared at him in disbelief.

"Doesn't my presence at the scene of the crime ..." Roach shook his head to and fro... as if in disbelief.

"You showed promise this afternoon."

"I killed her...Chester !" Rausch was proud of his spontaneous and clever television homage!

"For God's sake why?"

"I guess that would be between me and her." Rausch went on, "It was an accident ... in as much as I didn't intend to hurt her."

"Well we have to do something," Parker insisted.

Not moving from his seat, Roach, pulled open the top drawer of the dresser and withdrew a handgun.

"Chester, try thinking for a change... what do you suppose really ought to happen now... excluding that scenario where I get convicted of murder. I didn't want to kill her. There was no intention. So, I don't feel that I must abide society's efforts to exact revenge or restitution for killing her. Nor the scandal my suddenly manifest association with her might reveal."

Parker was speechless.

"Certainly you realize that my association with this woman has been discrete to this point".

A long and theatrical pause, then Rausch mused, "An unlikely pair ... she and I. We had an arrangement of sorts. I dare say I am relieved to be released from my part of the bargain."

"I am relieved to be released from my obligation to abet her career. That was the bargain... articulated or not. Can you imagine an arrogant, hirsute bear of a man with a girl like her. I always envisioned a grizzly bear plundering a hare when we made love. Lapin, I called her..... French.... she was so easily charmed. My little rabbit."

Scarcely moving from his throne, he reached and grabbed hold of the umbrella she parked next to her dresser. With gesture worthy of P.T. Barnum he poked the end of the umbrella into the crack of her buttocks causing them to part.

" How lovely that was.. is .. was.. the more glorious fruit of bartered lust. Not usually granted... more surrendered, in trade. Miss Arquette knew where her bread was buttered... or shall we say where to butter, if you follow my allusion to that "tango" film. Curious how compelling that spot becomes over time."

"The Greeks had it right...... not just in matters philosophical." Rausch wanted to laugh at his joke but he dreaded appearing narcissistic.

"It took me years to become lecherous. And only after many, many years of the most crippling lust and moral debate. And then, as if ordained, I crossed that line and, guilt or moral fiber withstanding, I was a lecher. And life didn't end.... it went on... and in that new life I was to have glorious sex."

"I never thought I would murder... certainly never pined to it. And yet... I am a murderer now. And life goes on... if I let it. And letting you tell the tale will not forward my cause ... will it?"

Another deliberate and dramatic pause, then Rausch resumed. "So, ploughboy, I'm thinking this is not going to be one of your better days."

The only thing that I am struggling with... and mind you, I am new to this stuff... is whether to simply erase the witness or risk the complications of leaving the witness, unfortunately deceased, as the perpetrator of record, as part of some whole sad college parti. I admit I am intrigued by the challenge."

"I'd have to kill you... to appear as if she had killed you. Oh... what serendipitous luck... this is her gun. The one a lovely grad student in a big bad city would only be too prudent to own."

"How to stage this one? How did she get off the shot that killed you even though you had already delivered the mortal blow? And the trouble is of course, you either die of a broken neck or you don't, I assume. You don't recover enough to get off the vengeful shot."

"So it's the old standby.. murder/suicide."

"Hard to explain the workings of the youthful mind.. dealing with so many stressors... college.. romance... money... drugs. God only knows why you did it?"

Rausch, with startling grace, was suddenly up and had the gun at the temple of Parker's head. For the suicide scenario. He cocked the trigger which made a most authoritative sound in such close proximity to his head. He literally felt the mechanical action of the gun.

"Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Parker shreaked. "I could shut up. I mean I could keep this all a secret."

Maybe posterity would reveal whether Parker had suddenly divined the path to salvation or if Rausch had simply guided him to it, masterfully.

"There are no secrets. There are pledges of secrecy... no secrets though. I've never kept one or had one kept, for that matter. How do they say it..."promises are made to be broken?"

"You don't strike me as a man that can abet a crime with his silence, let alone outright collusion." Pointing to the comfortable chair, Rausch insisted Parker have a seat. He was having fun, walking about but never removing the gun from Parker. Had Parker the presence of mind, he might have realized that Rausch could not shoot him if he made a sudden run for the door. The suicide scenario was all he had.

"Oh ... this is rich... oh my dear god this is priceless. To think just this very afternoon we had almost this same discussion. Is there yet another commandment...the eleventh?"

" Thou shalt not..... mm .. let's get the phrasing right... help me...uh..... uh... un... unbear witness. Thou shall not unbear witness? Fuck, I don't know..."

"That's perfect. Death row wisdom but .. let's use it."

Parker was fully bewildered; confused by the apparently random logic of Rausch's argument.

Rausch was "immanent".

"Come one ... Chester.. we're on to something... stay with me! It's your concept. You brought it up... in class this very afternoon. The whole social contract schtick you tried to impress us with." Now, the trademark rhetorical question.

"You keep a promise when?????????"

Parker could have answered but he was still addled by fear.

" When enough is at stake..... when it is worth enough.. . say, all that there is... say your whole fucking life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Rausch paused, and then went on, in a more reflective manner.

"No. No. I've gotten ahead of my self...... you MAKE a promise when enough is at stake. Getting someone to keep the promise is the stickler."

"Like it is really in MY best interest that you are dead in a few moments and the only way it isn't is if you trade you life, which is totally fuckin'mine right now, for eternal silence."

"But you know what Chester.... the second I let you go I don't have your fuckin' life as collateral for mine....so I don't see we have a deal here."

Having closed in on Parker again, and resting the gun barrel on his temple again, Rausch stated, coolly, "So.. I think we have to go back to the old scenario where you, the dead man, can tell no tale."

"I can promise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can promise ... absolutely... unconditionally... divorced from circumstance .. from reward...

from all contingency... simply as a pledge!" Never had Parker spoken with such eloquent spontaneity.

Rausch loved to torment. He loved to tease.

"BULLSHIT!" Rausch bellowed. "You know you might consider a different major... your grasp of ideas is superficial. You're a fairly good showman... like today in class. I enjoy waxing for the benefit of the simple, too."

"You MAKE a promise as a contract! Your keeping your promise is my concern. Convince me that you will keep it .."

"Or you can die right now."

"I promise, " said Parker with all the conviction he could manifest.

"No you ass, I not looking for earnestness.. tell me why your promise will bind you forever. Convince me and you live."

For moments, hours in his mind, Parker could think of nothing, though he could sense the presence of the "truth".

Parker found the words, suddenly. It was an epiphany. "You keep your promise because that is the "prima facie commandment".. the only ethical absolute... the one with a priori validity."

" Chester....... Chester... you are the young ingénue. I didn't see quite see it.... we were both there... and you saw it.....

it went right by me..... there it is... your dissertation...... your word too, "the prima facie commandment". I am positively jealous."

"Fuck off then". Rausch paused then continued, authoritatively. "Go away. I think I would be happiest never seeing you again. You've got you're A. Let's say this was a seminar of sorts in which you distinguished yourself and were bestowed credit in advance. You got your elective ... go back to your geology or psychology or whatever you chose to major in. GO!"

Chapter Eight: Twelve Years After

Texas Wesleyan University was unlike any other university in the suddenly sprawling Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, of 1983.

There was really only one significant public university, the University of Texas at Arlington. Right in the middle of the whole urban sprawl of North Texas, serving both Dallas and Fort Worth; without bias. Of the private universities, Texas Wesleyan was the humblest. Methodist affiliated. But not all that much like the revered Southern Methodist University of the City of Highland Park (an oasis of fabulous wealth within the Dallas municipal limits). Wesleyan was a little academic oasis mired in one of the most economically depressed areas of Fort Worth, Texas. The campus buildings encircled the one large main lot, commons, upon which the original neo classical "all in one" building was placed. A few of the new campus buildings encroached upon the main lot. At the corner, demarcating the end of the campus on the east side was the large, grand and, for the area, markedly gracious Methodist cathedral. To the south was a strip of one story "turn of the century" mercantile buildings, handsome in their prime, but now abandoned and eroding in the heat and blistering sun of West Texas.

"West Texas", because the City of Fort Worth so declared that Fort Worth was "where the west begins". Which of course was just a matter of declaration and not fact, but the city of Fort Worth, down to the last man, did feel and assert that Fort Worth was NOT Dallas. Dallas, was an outpost of the "Eastern Establishment" here on the perimeter of the western frontier. Historically, there was some truth to that assertion. Fort Worth, called "Cowtown" was where the livestock was handled and traded. Dallas was more where the currency was handled.

And of course, they killed the president in Dallas just twenty years prior. The fact that the accused killer attended high school in Fort Worth and lived there first, after returning from his period of expatriation in Russia, was not widely known or heralded.

Parker, now known as Dr. Parker Lee Fitzgerald, had envisioned, much earlier in his career, joining the faculty of one of the more prestigious universities.

But the early years of the eighties had made everyone, blue collar, white collar, rainbow collar receptive to accepting any and all offers. Every one was moving to Texas. Many were the bumpers stickers declaring "Native Texan". Or, "Welcome to Texas, now go home". There were even exculpatory stickers. "I wasn't born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could." Or, "Texan by choice if not by birth".

The heat of Texas was simply extraordinary. You could spot the Yankee easily; car windows were rolled down most of the year. A car without AC was of better use as a storage shed than a mode of transportation. Yankee cars were obsolete within the first year of immigration to Texas.

At least North Texas was not humid. Houston, they said, was humid as hell or rather hot as hell and humid. The meteorologists had their special measure. The heat/humidity index. . Rather, the "heat index". It was great for histrionic weather reporting, because no matter what the temperature, you could always report the more alarming sounding heat index. Unless, the area was totally desiccated, there was always some measure of humidity and a corresponding heat index. In fairness though, when it was over 100 degrees AND humid, it was vastly more uncomfortable than the air temperature alone suggested. Same thing for the northern regions, they had their "wind/chill factor"; making it possible for northern states to declare, bravely, they had experienced 60 degrees below zero.

Parker took a liking to jogging in the mid-seventies. He even had athletic shoes designed specifically for running; with "waffle" soles to absorb the shock and spare the knees. He lacked speed, as he found out the first time he entered a local 5k race but, motived to not come so close to death at his next race, he upped his daily mileage until he realized that he had astonishing endurance. He later heard and subscribed to the notion that "speed was a gift/endurance was an accomplishment".

Running was the quintessential (by which is meant the foremost, not second most) "work ethic" sport. He, and so many of his generation had uncompromising work ethics. His got him a PhD and scads of silly trophies commemorating his prowess, regionally, as a runner of all distances greater than a mile and up to the marathon.

The coldest he was to ever to be was the day, he had run eight miles due south, the first week in March, in Fort Worth, Texas with the north wind to his back, and turned to go north again. Twenty eight degrees F with a thirty mile per/hour wind. Fortunately, he flagged down a guy in a pick up who toted him six miles north, leaving him still with a mile west to go before he would be home. Bastard.

Chapter Nine: School Daze

He arrived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in early August, just three weeks before the start of the 1983/1984 academic year. He now was part of the "Big D"; metaphorically. The whole region was now called the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Dallas, by virtue of the wildly popular TV show of the same name, was the regional "star". Fort Worth was the part of the ensemble comprised by a dozen little cities making up the entire area.

His first day on campus, just a week before the profound reversal of roles, from student to teacher, was to attend the philosophy department kick off mixer.

He entered the main conference room of the department knowing he was the guest of honor. He didn't care for being the center of attention but it did mitigate his general apprehensions about joining a faculty.

The department head was, oddly, not an octogenarian. Still in his fifties at most, and enjoying life; though his philosopher taint might have informed him that it was pointless and futile. He was a ready convener of merriment.

"Gentlemen, let me introduce to you our newest associate Dr. Parker Fitzgerald......henceforth, our resident metaphysicist. What is a liberal arts college without one?"

Parker loved that title .. metaphysicist. Master of conundrums, paradoxes and riddles.

From the shadows, a disquietingly familiar voice, "So, it's metaphysics now. The outgrowth, no doubt, of your grad school "dungeons and dragons" days? Still slaying dragons, Mr. Fitzgerald?"

It was like ancient curse fulfilled. Parker didn't even question the inevitability of it now that it was manifest. He turned toward Rausch.

"No... I've put away childish things..... the dragon capitulated. We have an arrangement."

Rausch was delighted that the metaphor had been divined so quickly by Parker. "The dragon must have found an honorable man in you... uncommon of dragon's to place much faith in humanity. He'd best keep you in sight."

For the rest of the mixer Parker ricocheted from one professor to another, working down the hierarchy of the faculty until he had engaged even the freshmen graduate students. Rausch gave him not so much as another glance, as far as Parker could tell. It had been difficult for Parker to ignore the "elephant in the room". Not so, he guessed for Rausch.

Rausch was essentially unchanged, except for his girth. It had increased considerably. He was just short of massive. His raspy voice had become much deeper. He was almost a baritone now.

Parker managed not to engage Rausch in the least over the next two weeks, as classes began and the routine of pedagogy became established. His apprehension about being around Rausch lessened each day and it began to seem that their history would simply recede; half-way at time, he mused metaphysically, until if was infinitely removed; but never totally gone.

Chapter Ten: Slaughter

It was Friday afternoon, at the close of the school day when the dean summoned them, once again, into the anteroom to his office; a room with all the atmosphere of a London Gentlemen's Club. Reasonably fine brandy and glasses for all were immediately seen by all the guests; the entire teaching staff of the faculty.

"Those of you wishing to start "happy hour" at the appointed time may serve yourself from the bar. I am hoping you will all abide my request that you stay for what may be an hour or more." He paused, "We have had a tragedy in our department. One of our students, an undergraduate majoring with us has been murdered. Last night. Her name was... is... Nancy Nichols. Some of you might have known her well enough to place a face to her. It is too early in the semester for me to recognize the freshmen by name. Because she took the preponderance of her course work with us, this semester, the police would like to interview the faculty to see if we have any information that might be of investigatory worth. Detective Slaughter," he gestured toward her, "would like just a minute or two with each of you. As you wait your turn, enjoy some better than average brandy and smoke 'em if you got 'em."

He had never seen a more attractive woman.

It has always been a phenomenon of interest to him. Every person, every woman has a nose, two eyes, a mouth, cheeks and a chin. Same kit of parts. No single part being sufficient to confer beauty. Every part having an infinite diversity. Every combination succeeding or failing aesthetically, according to some pattern language in the mind of the beholder. When he was younger he could only recognize beauty in those women with a "full house" of good features. Even one quirky feature was a compromise. He couldn't perceive any of the girls in high school or college, save for the princesses of the campus, as sufficiently attractive to compel him to chance their rejection of him. In time, though, he began to notice that it was the quirky packages that caught his lingering glance. He liked a strong nose in a pretty face. A touch of an overbite was delightfully girlish, and oddest of all, just a hint of a lazy eye (even more than a hint) gave a woman a quality of vulnerability and defenselessness that he'd swoon to.

So, here in Detective Slaughter was that complete kit. He was agog. Her blonde hair, which he thought she might deliberately straighten, came down to her shoulders, parted just a whisker off center, like the focus her left eye. She wasn't skinny but she certainly wasn't fat. Zoftig might have been the right word but he really felt there surely was a better descriptor. He suspected she was concealing an ample bosom.

You really didn't hear the Texas accent in the metroplex. It had become so cosmopolitan in the seventies. It was a region of immigrants. Everybody was from somewhere else.

She wasn't. She was from Crandall, Texas and she sounded like it. The combination of the sweetness of her voice, the accent and the curiously rising and falling intonation as she spoke was enough for Parker to teeter on the threshold of infatuation.

Being the newest faculty member, his turn to be interview came last. Or as he self-consciously acknowledged to himself, his turn came three drinks later.

"I couldn't wait to talk to you... you're youngish," she opened with. True enough, he was the junior faculty member, only thirty years old and still "boyish" in both manner and body. " So, tell me, are you folks arrogant by nature or is it nurtured in y'all somehow. That last guy's got twenty years on you, and he's unbelievable. Who's the self loving Greek guy ..Narcissus? In the flesh... no... Apollo?..... Zeus?" She was referring to Rausch. It made him snicker to himself. Rausch's schtick only played well in his own venue.

"I wouldn't know... he looks the part. The whole rarefied mind thing. He's had the jacket twenty years." Parker caught himself... slightly too late.

"Huh....?"

"I mean it's got that look... you know, the leather elbows.... the moth holes....the uniform!" He paused ... his banter was not bearing fruit.

Parker had an agenda. He began again, more "sober" this time.

"I don't think I can be of much help to you.... I've only lived in Fort Worth... going on two weeks now. I've not so much as taken a meal any place but on campus ... and where I lay my head each night is subject to frequent change. I'm superstitious about settling in anywhere until I pass probation. It's not official but you're always on probation at first... double secret probation," he said stressing the "double secret" part of the phrase. He looked directly into her eyes to see if she had caught the reference to "Animal House", the new John Belushi film that was a campus-wide craze. Her eyes said nothing but her lips did twist slightly in the positive direction. He was pleased with himself.

He had developed an affinity for alcohol. His parents were alcoholics by even the most liberal of definitions. He had been offered wine at meals since he was in junior high. Beer was freely available to him at home throughout high school. He bolstered himself through ten years of college with a six pack/ day beer habit. Running kept him thin. One mile/per beer. His three drinks so far today emboldened him. Emboldened or not, he was going to stay in the company of Detective Slaughter by any means he could devise.

" I guess, if I am a "person of interest", and you are here to serve and protect. .. why don't you escort me to a nice place to eat and third degree me or second degree or whatever degree I deserve, while we are there."

Never had he made such a deliberate proposition of a woman but, before he could disavow it as sincere, she spoke.

"Okay... let me call in first ... I want my guys to check on something for me."

Chapter Eleven: "There's got to be a morning after..."

She hated the sound of a ringing telephone. It was visceral for her. It made her catch her breath. The telephone was the channel of sadness, of disappointment, of unwelcome news. Worst of all, when it ripped you from your slumbers. It was a short call. All business. She lay still for a minute. A minute at most, before Parker rolled over, toward her, burying his face in the side of her pillow.

"I'm sorry if the earth didn't move for you last night. I've never been good at this. Generally I avoid it." Parker went on, "I've seen pornography.... how do those guys do it?" Parker spoke the truth. He just could not sustain intercourse for anything approaching the needs of a woman; as he understood them.

"I must be missing something... you're as good as I've ever had. If you'd asked, I was going to say you were the best. Maybe I should check out that stuff out... refine my point of reference _."_ Valerie Slaughter spoke the absolute truth, as she knew it. In her twenty nine years she had had only one lover; for the entire five year span of her love life; which was now three years in the past.

"Why didn't you tell me you went to OU?" She looked straight up at the ceiling, as she forced out the last of it. Turning to him now, "You knew Rausch from before. We had an entire conversation at dinner about how Rausch was a professor at a school where a similar murder occurred and you said nothing about having gone to the same school."

She sat up, swung her knees over the edge of the bed, and, pulling on her robe, she continued, "I've been interviewing witnesses, person's of interest, perpetrators... whatever... for years... well six years, actually. I swear I can tell when someone is withholding. Maybe it's like philosophy. Maybe I just sense that there is a truth beyond or in spite of the words. Does this make sense. It must be somewhat the same. And I sensed that you were holding out on me."

"Did you know the girl that was murdered there?" Parker did not negotiate confrontation well. He met it with silence and surrender.

"Fuck... you did!!!!!!!!!!!!! Goddammit!!!!!"

"Don't end up being some serial killer. As few men as I've had in my life ...and mediocre sex apparently, I don't deserve a sociopath as a lover. Certainly not as my first "one night stand!" She mused, "One "first night stand?"

"I don't do this, you know... go to bed with someone right "off- the- bat". We connect. I like you... you're funny.... and cerebral..... and good, I think."

Parker was not sure even of the thesis of his next comments. There were three in front of him. Two really, having already made verbal atonement for his sexual prowess. He too wanted to exculpate himself as being promiscuous (she had taken his virginity in fact) and then there was the major issue of having concealed his past. One at a time.

"I've never done this before either." Not entirely true. A peculiar turn that his one first night hook-up was the one that he would have to now deflect her attention from. "Kept me pretty well celibate my whole life so far... maybe my skill will improve with practice."

" Shut up about that..... don't measure all woman's needs by the metric of your hotel room movies." You know, there are better hotels in town."

"Yeah, but do their beds vibrate". It was funny though she appeared not to share his assessment of the joke. Suddenly, he was very uncomfortable about being with her. Mostly because he had never had a post-coital experience with a woman.

"Valerie, would you mind if I excused myself for now. I had a wonderful time last night... best night of my life so far, maybe. You are everything I would wish in a woman. I suddenly have high, high hopes for us. But suddenly I'm at a total loss. I've woken up in a woman's bed, first time ever and what I want to do most of all is just slip away and savor the last twelve hours or so. Then I want to ask you for still more of your wonderful companionship." She was slow to respond so he just motored on.

"About the other stuff. About OU. I was there one semester of my freshman year. It was a bad fit. It really didn't seem relevant enough to mention when you where talking about Rausch. As for the girl that got killed, she was in one of my classes. I recognized her face when it made the papers."

"So you don't think that it is relevant that Rausch turns out to be a professor at both schools where a girl is sodomized and murdered." He knew he had telegraphed his surprise at hearing the word sodomy. Their eyes met.

"Of, course it's relevant." He conceded, embarrassed. Looking away he asked timidly, "Can I call you?"

"You woke up here for a reason... of course you can call me."

She let the drama build, "and make it soon." She kissed him quickly on the lips. He closed the door behind him. She strode back into her bedroom, or rather, the part of the one big room that had the bed, and with a sigh sat on the edge of his side of the bed. She stared blankly at the carpet, not seeing anything. She hated when she had too much to process. She broke her trance with a deliberate shake of her head; her eyes catching a glimpse of the waste basket by the nightstand.

Gingerly, she retrieved the condom within, rolled it onto itself and wrapped it in a tissue.

Chapter Twelve: Lou......

She wasn't adored by just the occasional academic. She had played out her life, unknown to herself, as the object of secret adoration of a lot of men and boys. She played with the boys as a girl, they loved her secretly. When she became old enough to care, she couldn't quite imagine herself as beautiful. She hated her nose the most. Somehow she managed to negotiate junior high, and nearly all of high school, without being the overt target of men. She was just plain enough to be off the radar of the majority of boys, who much like Parker had been, couldn't yet recognize beauty. She went to prom with the first boy who asked; a sad sack of a guy she knew would make a graceful exit the day after. She was wrong, he lingered but she gave him no encouragement and he surrender within a week.

In junior college, she relented and dated a fellow student. He adored her and for the most part was secure in his perception that they were a couple. When she entered the academy his comfort plummeted as she was one of so few women in the force and now, by a considerable margin, the prettiest. Most of the other girls were of Hispanic origin and tended toward the masculine in their characters and forms. She was always "all girl", though never "girlish". But she was noticed.

Had she loved him, he would have sensed it and been secure. She was scrupulously faithful to him but five years of fear overcame him and, with the security of a new girlfriend in the queue, he asked that they stop seeing each other. She made no contest of the split.

Lou was an "old-hand". In his late fifties. He had been with the force in every possible capacity for all of his life. He knew everything. Every procedure. Formal and otherwise. Just the sight of Valerie made him smile; a secret pleasure of the last six years or so.

Valerie strode right up to his desk and seated herself in his guest chair. Leaning over his desk, oblivious as always that her breasts swelled up significantly enough to have never gone unnoticed when she did that, she came right out with it. "I need a favor Lou." Lou stared straight ahead. "I need a genetic scan run and a comp to the dna in the Nichols case." She paused trying to gauge his receptiveness... " but it needs to stay below the radar for now".

Leaning back, having scored a good view of her bosom, Lou stated the obvious. "Valerie, honey, you know as well as anyone that a match is useless as evidence if we don't follow all the correct protocols."

"I don't expect a match, Lou... but I need to exclude it and that will at least tell me I'm on the right track. And if I'm on the right track I won't have any problem getting the dna warrant I need."

Lou, was acting the part out. In a lifetime he had seen so many theatrical presentations of law enforcement types on tv and the movies, that he always knew how his character, the "old hand", would play the scene. He paused, theatrically, and scowled theatrically, letting his co-star pick up the dialogue.

"Waddaya say Lou?"... she said stretching her arms outward and back in total mimicry of a real stretch and with a teeny smirk and an ever so faint wink. That wasn't in the script, Lou told himself.

As she walked away, he beheld both her precious butt and the precious bodily fluid in the small plastic bag square in the center of his desk.

Chapter Thirteen: It's just lunch......

It was all of a week before she heard from Parker again. It took all of a week for him to find the courage and to have rehearsed enough conversation scenarios to feel confident. Dialing a phone can be the most excruciating act; especially rotary phones. So easily misdialed. In his life he often had dreams of repeated failures to dial a crucial number on a rotary phone and now, with the advent of push button phones the dreams had evolved to include them as well. At least, in the waking life the push button was nearly fool-proof; as it was that Sunday morning.

He "over thought" it, of course. He thought setting up for an evening date would be transparent as a pretext for another sleep-over. So, he made lunch reservations at the best restaurant in town: in the opinion of the opinionated. He made the offer so soon into the conversation, that he was stuck with it; even though the conversation between them was every bit as buoyant and effortless as it had been that first day. He was happy to the core of his being and counting the minutes until 12:00 PM, Tuesday, October 10, 1983.

He met her at the street, at the ground floor entrance to the thirty story high rise office building with the ritzy top floor restaurant. Which made their reunion awkward. Can't really start the re-familiarization until you've entered the building, transited the lobby, waited for and ridden the inevitably crowded elevator, been led to your table, been seated and offered the beverage of your choosing. Now... go!!

"Do you come here often?" A genuine laugh burst out of her. This was now the best moment of his life so far.

She could eat! The Rialto truly had the best "cosmopolitan" fare in Fort Worth. But it was Fort Worth and you could still get anything you wanted "chicken- fried", and they always served "ranch dressing" and, wine list or not, you could get beer on tap.

She'd have the "chick'- frawed stake, with p'tadas and cream gravy, sad salid with wrench dressing and a Cuurs lat". That's what he thought he heard her order. It was exactly what she received. He couldn't fathom how that would have been spelt. He got "fancy" with his order and ultimately left "uncomforted". But at least he left a little on the drunken side. She too. Tuesday afternoon was his free afternoon each week and for her, with some favors called in, this Tuesday was the first free one of her career.

Almost home free. About an hour into the two hour meal, her pager chirped. She had agreed to take calls, and since she was not yet loopy from the sixteen ounce frosted drafts, she excused herself to use the payphone on the wall between "his" and "hers".

"Thiz' Lou," the voice said.

"It's Valerie, Lou." She hadn't forgotten about her arrangement with Lou, but it had gradually lost all import over the following week. She waited for his next words.

"Negative on your little experiment, Valerie. Apart from gender, there's virtually nothing. That's all I got. Don't know if it's good new or bad. That's it though. Well, not really. That girl was a party: semen from at least three different guys on her bed sheets, hair samples from even more guys. No semen associated with the rape though. Someone didn't want that AIDS probably." Valerie, was suddenly overwhelmed by her sense of relief. Far, far more relief than she might have expected even a couple of days ago. For the first time she sensed that she was really fond of a man, not just abiding of the attentions of one. And he hadn't killed anyone.

"Lou, do me one more and trash my sample. I've got a bit of a conscience problem with this whole experiment."

"Well that I can't do. I had to log it in as somebody to get it run in the first place. No way to bury it. According to the books we have that Yankee asshole Donald Trump's DNA."

"Well he better stay out of trouble from here on. At least in Texas. Thanks Lou." She hung up the phone and her foremost thought was if she looked cute enough. She returned to their table by way of a stop in "hers" to fuss a bit.

"Just lunch" became another "sleep-over".

Chapter Fourteen: Lovey-dovey...

They became a real couple. They were quick and totally earnest in declaring their love for one another. She barely beat him to it, the morning of their second night together. He spent most of his nights at her apartment, even though it was not meant for two. She had stuff. Furniture. Closet space. His "home" was entirely rented; the floor, the roof, the furniture, the linens. It was inexpensive. So he just rode out the lease knowing that he would soon make her an "offer she couldn't refuse". He loved her more than oxygen. More than truth. He couldn't be bothered anymore with metaphysics, with Xenon's friggin' paradoxes. It was the mystery of loving that consumed him. How could a person be so important to another? How could souls touch? He could make love to her in ways that could only be disgusting to others but were as natural to them as every other act of being a living being. A prophecy of Rausch's had been fulfilled.

For the first time in five years, he envisioned the coming holiday season, as a time of joy. When his mother succumbed to lung cancer, joining his father in the soil of Wyoming five years ago, he became an orphan and essentially without kin. His kid sister had discovered, within herself, a preference sexually and socially for her own gender and had removed herself gradually over ten years from her parents and, by sad fact of association, from his as well. Something between them got derailed and neither had initiated any real effort to correct things. There's always time.

Valerie came from "homes". That is, she was the youngest sibling of six, spread across the two marriages of her mother. She had one natural sister, two step sisters and two step brothers. The step siblings were all at least twenty years her senior. Her mother and her father had been county deputies. They'd had overlapping vigils at the county courthouse when they met. He was older than her mother; often mistaken as her grandfather as she grew up. She enjoyed the devotion of a grandchild instead of the lesser first generation devotion of fatherhood.

It was sure to be an interesting Thanksgiving. And yet it wasn't. All her people were straight-forward good folks. She was her momma's daughter, in the "chip of the block" sense. It was not hard to understand how her mother had had two takes at the all American family. Odd, though, that she was now twice divorced.

Had Parker been a Yankee, his reception might have been different. But he wasn't a Yankee and besides he was "country" by birth. He too had branded and neutered calves, could ride a horse, had killed animals. He had killed animals for sure. Once, when he was eleven, his dad made him wrestled down a goat and cut its throat. He cried, wailing and tearful as he did it. But he knew, even as he did it, that it was a threshold he had to cross.

Parker knew too many big words but he wasn't a sissy. Her folks liked that in him and were proud of all his words.

Christmas. She already had nice guns. She was indifferent about the police issue Glock. She had a Colt 45 Service Automatic and Smith Wesson snub-nose 38 (that could take .357 rounds). She was fixed there. So, for this, their first Christmas, he gave her a simple white gold band with twenty four single diamonds around the entire circumference. She received it, just like the handful of other gifts, by opening the package in front of one and all and Parker at the foot of the family tree on Christmas morning.

She knew what it was and what it was not, in an instant. Her eyes welled up and tears flowed to and off of her chin. It was a Valentine. It was "I love you". It was the token she was ready for.

They spent New Year's Eve, pretty damn drunk, in front of her tv and all over her bed.

Chapter Fifteen: The rhythm of life.

For Parker, the second semester of the academic year would be more demanding. He had done his stint with the intro courses; two last semester. This semester, he would be teaching his specialty. There were graduate students who would really be looking for his insight and tenured professors who were curious to see his "chops".

You didn't need to be a genius for metaphysics. You just had to know the content of the field and that was enough to make you an expert. Metaphysics was "puzzles"; puzzles that seemed to be inherently unsolvable. For his ten years of study he had accomplished nothing beyond becoming a catalogue of thousands of years of attempts to solve them. He was a repository of "chess moves", that is all. He had not solved one of the puzzles. Intuitively, he felt there were just artifacts of our language and our mental process of thinking "verbally".

Other areas of philosophy took other types of minds. He stuck to his area; it didn't make his mind hurt. He did like to relate the antic of his former colleague who once got a great parking spot at a hospital by declaring he was an epistemologist.

For Valerie, the new year was what ever crimes the rabble committed. Actually the homicide detectives were deeply indebted to the drug enforcement division for their usual failure to curtail drug use. Drug dealers and users were always killing each other. Easy cases... but steady work.

The Nichols murder had dead-ended. Too many lovers. Too much DNA. No motive.

Parker had given plenty of thought to the similarity of the Nichols murder to the death of Tanya, ten years before. He knew that Tanya's death had been a crime of passion. One that he had precipitated that night by straying onto the turf of a jealous and volatile man. He couldn't imagine that Rausch had managed the same kind of entanglement with a young student, at his age. Even the sodomy did not seem significant. His immense ardor for Valerie had been enough for him to have welcomed that act into the repertoire of their lovemaking. She had offered it, unsolicited. But he also knew that it was often, sexually, an expression of great aggression. Someday he would discuss this hypothesis with Valerie.

Chapter Sixteen: Blue Bonnet Blues

Spring in Texas is subtle compared to other parts of the country. It actually gets cold in the winter, in Texas. It had been the coldest winter of his life because he had not brought his winter clothing with him to Texas nor had he prescience to know that he would need warm clothing. Spring, nevertheless was a welcome change. Texas makes much of its spring, with due cause perhaps, as vast portions of the natural grasslands become a pageant of color, mainly blue, for a few weeks in the spring. No child born in Texas is not photographed totally awash in Bluebonnets, at some point.

His first year as a professor had gone well. No gut wrenching dilemnas. The whole university only had a thousand undergrad students. Of those, few took philosophy. They were all good kids, deserving of their acceptance to Wesleyan. He only had to give one D. And that student, a "trust fund baby" totally deserving of a D, did not make a fuss.

For Valerie, the cop, spring was "pre-season". Like the NFL. As the heat climbed, so climbed the discomfort and the discontent of the underclass. "TND". That's what they called so many of the situations they confronted. Typical nigger deal. She wasn't sure that was a fair assessment. A lot of crime was by the Hispanic population too. And certainly the white trash committed their share. But whites did not make up such a large portion of the underclass. It had struck her, one day watching the nightly news, how it looked like she lived in a society where those of black skin were routinely arrested like stray dogs. Always blacks, and to a lesser degree the brown skinned folks. Like some apartheid round-up.

The second week of May, crossing the public lobby of the headquarters building, toward the elevators, she was intercepted by Lou. Lou, who never seemed anything but laid-back was anything but laid-back. He stood directly in front of Carrie and with an extended arm pushed her to the side of the throng entering elevator.

"It looks like Mr. Trump hasn't been a good boy. At least not always. Not in the "sooner" state. Cold case made a match to a rape/murder ten years ago in Oklahoma. We gonna have to put a real name to that sample. And take a little grief... but a maybe a lot more "attaboys" for solving a hopeless case.

Chapter Seventeen: Wrong side of the law

Had he just woken from a coma he would have known where he was immediately. The interrogation room was faithful to the stereotype. One table, three chairs, an ash tray. Too much light. Opaque window along one wall. He didn't know whether he was with the good cop or the bad cop. The guy could have covered both attitudes. He was forceful but not abrasive. Parker reasoned that Valerie was watching it all too.

"Look, Professor, you're clearly an intelligent man. Surely you can see that you're tagged here. It's been ten years but witnesses recall seeing you with her that day and see died shortly after having been sodomized and your semen was all over the place. And you come back to this area and another student dies the same way. You know we don't have the match in that case... there was a lot of semen in the recent past of miss Nichols. The court could simply argue that you were mindful of genetic matching like you weren't ten years ago when it didn't matter."

"You gotta know you're fucked. You need a lawyer too. Philosophy is not going to save you... you need someone to twist the truth into such a fuckin' knot that the law won't know how unravel it."

Parker was calm. "I don't need a lawyer. I'm not guilty of anything. I am curious though... how did my DNA end up being studied? Aren't warrants and probable cause necessary to collect samples?"

"You submitted a sample alright. You just don't remember when, I guess. Anyway, it matches and we have plenty of evidence to warrant retesting.

"I didn't dispute that it matches."

They questioned him much longer but he held his ground; admitting to much of the circumstantial evidence and simply asserting his innocence. He couldn't bond out. He was only a "person of interest" in the Nichols case but, in the Arquette case, he was being held through an interstate arrangement with Oklahoma.

Chapter Eighteen: Never having to say you're sorry...

The visitation room was "textbook" as well. It was a couple of hallways and an elevator ride from Valerie's cubicle. The security level maintained was minimal. None of the detainees were actually convicted at this point so they still could expect a modicum of normalcy. They sat across a table from one another.

Apart from weak smiles and eye to eye contact that assured them each that they were in love and in great pain, nothing transpired until Valerie spoke of it. The only issue on the table.

"I'm not on the case. Even if I hadn't recused myself, I would have been taken off soon enough. I didn't think you had murdered anyone, I just wanted to quiet my mind, once and for all, that the man I was caring so much for was not someone I should be constantly scrutinizing for signs of guilt. But you did broadcast guilt... as much as I had ever seen, when we talked about your time at OU."

"I'm on administrative leave indefinitely anyway... no double secret probation for me. I don't think my career will survive this thing, anyway. And what I did can't be undone... for either of us ... the bell has been rung."

"Valerie, you did what you had to do. I would have wanted you to do it, if it was going to ease your path into a relationship with me. I might be able to make some legal challenge as to how you got the sample or your having let it be analyzed with a warrant. But I am not going to. To implicate me in the OU thing was not your intent. And I promise you there is no connection between me and the Nichols case." Parker didn't subscribe to a connection between Rausch and Nichols either, but a part of him knew that the possibility was not excluded. And, if Rausch were implicated in the Nichols case, he too would be suddenly a "person of interest" in the OU case. Maybe this sweet little country girl across the table could piece it all together. She would have to do it without his help.

"You're innocent though... aren't you?" Valerie both asserted and pleaded. "See, it shows in your eyes... that you're telling me the truth. But you're withholding a whole lot. I'm not sure that isn't just as bad as lying."

"You know, if all you do is "plead the fifth" you'll end up hanged. If you didn't do it, there has to be things you can say in your defense. Shit Parker, make up an alibi... if it keeps you from dying for a crime you didn't commit... there can't be moral issue with that."

She could taste the futility of it all. "You just can't lie can you? By your very nature, you're an open book .... and I can tell, that you are withholding ... and it is an ordeal for you, whether you admit it to me or not."

"Sociopathy is just not your style Parker Fitzgerald."

Chapter Nineteen: Renewing our vows...

Parker couldn't come to a conclusion, though he had pondered it, until it happened. Then it seemed inevitable, of course, that Rausch would visit him in jail.

Rausch was hard to predict. Not because he was chaotic but because he really was brilliant. Like a chess player, he was always five moves ahead. One might still debate whether that was strategy or acumen. Anticipating outcomes is prudent, a good habit to hold. Nevertheless, Rausch could not be easily predicted nor was any thing he did or said without deliberation.

"How heroic this must look," he said wafting his hand across the room, "the student and mentor. Wisdom being shared. The hearty encouragement from the mentor." Parker thought for a minute that Rausch must see himself in "third person" most of the time... probably with a stirring soundtrack playing in the background.

"More of a tutorial. A refresher course before the big exam. Does the student recall his lessons? Ten year's already... the logic fades from memory. The conclusion is recalled but the premise and the logical connection maybe becomes forgotten. Maybe the conviction to abide by the logically imperative wanes. In the weak or the effete." Parker just listened. He knew in advance he would have no retort to anything Rausch said.

"You do you remember the deal. Life, its very self no less, the currency. You would have been dead these last ten years and my life would have been unchanged either way... had you not made me an offer that I accepted and ONLY accepted because you convinced me that you understood and accepted the terms of the offer."

"It is "unfortunate" that you find yourself in such a precarious position now. But that has no bearing. You made a promise and I made an offering that gave you no less than your very life. Life would have ended for one of us that day. We made a pact. I did not renege on my part and you cannot renege on your part."

"I know you understand this and I know you have the intellectual and moral integrity to honor your promise. Somehow, I was just hoping to hear you renew your vows." He segued, " That's a queer idea isn't it ...couples renewing their vows?"

"It might go your way you know.... a conviction isn't certain... nor a dire punishment. I'll cross my fingers for you." He rose from his seat, to make his exit precisely as he buttoned down the conversation with his cynical little pledge.

"The new girl.......??? Nichols. Coincidence?" was always Parker said the whole meeting and just now as he was leaving.

Rausch, as he walked out, "We just don't know."

Chapter Twenty: Going "Columbo"...

It was getting hot already. Mid June and in the 90's. Of course, in a month a day in the 90's would be welcomed as a cold front. Were she not a police officer, she might dress a little lighter and a little less. But she was always covered up and buttoned up, so the walk across the large grassed lawn of the Administration Building was excruciating. She might have stayed on the sidewalks had they provided a reasonably direct route the entrance. Across the grass was the direct route and the grass was no more worthy of consideration than the roadside boulevards of Fort Worth. More dirt than vegetation and a virtual salad bar of plant species.

While Rausch had perfected the professorial demeanor, his office was a total contradiction. None of the regalia of old volumes, dark walls, somber paintings etc. He had been at Wesleyan at least five years yet his office looked like one of a graduate students; a temporary venue. He could have been an accountant for all his desk revealed.

He spoke first, preemptively. "Ms. Slaughter, I am delighted to see you again... although I would suppose that second visits with you aren't always welcome. I will assume your visit, if not entirely social, is benign nevertheless."

"Well, I guess it is social. I'm not on active duty right now. And I don't foresee a future with the force anymore so I guess, as a civilian, I can speak to you about the case against Mr. Fitzgerald."

"That's if I choose to abide you, I guess. And I do. Ms. Slaughter, my chance association with Mr. Fitzgerald, a decade ago is given a lot more import that it deserves. It certainly does not make me "important" in these matters or imply any complicity in his abhorrent behavior."

"I concede my statement sounds paranoid, but surely you can appreciate that I can divine the cause of your interest in me. I just choose to jump to the chase."

"Mr. Fitzgerald was a spectacularly average student in my junior level ethics course. I believe it was ethics. I hadn't made ethics my specialty at that time yet. He took my course, apparently met one the graduate students in the department and killed her. I never saw him again after the end of the course. I believe he pursued his studies elsewhere. The fact that he ended up credentialed in the study of philosophy and at this school is immaterial. Unfortunate for yet another philosophy student and apparently of great inconvenience to me."

"Ms Slaughter... you are observant I would think... like our Detective Columbo.... picking up on subtleties. You are a very handsome woman. Certainly, you have had a lifetime of detecting the effect you have on men. Mr. Fitzgerald was agog when you first visited our campus. How did you find my reaction to compare?"

Valerie was stumped. Where the fuck was he going here.

"I don't play for his team, Ms Slaughter. Unlike Mr. Fitzgerald, my appetites are not for the fairer of the sexes."

Valerie had sensed, as he set up for his "revelation", that it was one she should receive without the least sense of surprise. She could have her "Columbo" moments too.

"I appreciate your candor. It is still a rather bold stance to take... openness about one's sexuality. I assume you weren't so forthright in 1973."

"Certainly not... it was a "don't ask - don't tell" kind of era in the universities back then. "Closet" liberalism.

"Professor Rausch... why is it, that the "spectacularly" average student, Mr. Fitzgerald, got an A in your class, in a year where his overall GPA was barely over a two. Seems odd, you would have a recollection of him as other than bright, if he aced your class. And, Dean Sanders said you advocated for his residency here, even though he had not cited you as a reference. In fact, Parker told me that he was shocked to realize you were on the faculty here when he arrived."

" Post graduate, Mr. Fitzgerald has shown great promise ... in his dissertation and journal writings. I advocated for him based upon those accomplishments not his baccalaureate efforts."

" I really don't recall him as student of mine at all. In fact... a little secret of academia... full professors lecture and their teaching assistants test and grade. It is a perfectly fair way to accomplish this... it doesn't take a PhD to discern the difference between a D student and an A student. Mr. Fitzgerald's A was awarded by my TA.... possibly one he killed, I might add."

"Ms. Slaughter, I am spent. I've told you everything I know and I have revisited this sorry situation as much as I feel I am obliged. I would ask you to excuse me now so that I can educate the next generation of serial killers. Lord knows I have yet to spawn a Neitzche."

"Better luck, going forward then", was Valerie's blessing.

Just before her final "Columbo".

"You know, that's the first I heard that Tanya Arquette was your TA back then. Odd that she had already conferred an A on him..... half- way through the course when she was murdered."

Valerie rose from her seat. She had planted seeds, in fertile soil.

"Goodbye Ms. Slaughter. Did you know that if you drop the first letter of you last name you get "laughter'. You're hardly amusing my dear...I think the added S is quite becoming of you, as it is."

Chapter Twenty One: Doth he protest too much...

Parker was right, she thought, walking back across the campus. He was, after all, schooled in logic. And he had at least a tv-buff's knowledge of forensics. There was no trace of forensic evidence linking the OU and Fort Worth cases; only the "circumstance" of both Rausch and Parker having been at both schools at the time of the murders. But matched semen at one scene is virtually conclusive in that case and, that creates the "circumstance" that a known murderer was proximate to both crimes scenes. It was only Parker the finger of guilt could point at; logically.

A lot of things about Rausch bugged Valerie. Apart from the wretchedness of his personality. One, was the transient feel of his office. She could imagine a physicist or an engineer having a painfully austere environment but not a great "ruminative mind" like a philosopher. Certainly not in the 20th century after, so many years of the stereotype of the greater thinker surrounded by antiquities and leather and smoke had been cultured in the minds of the public. And Rausch certainly, in his person, cultured the role. But he was "rootless".

She didn't know much about homosexuality. But she didn't think it was caused by a contempt for women. Rausch was very contemptuous of her, and he had been from the first meeting almost a year ago. She didn't get this response from men: ever. She knew that she was always perceived as benign by everyone she met. She was not assertive in the slightest. Rausch just didn't like her from the outset and it was more than just because she was a woman. She sensed that.

He wasn't homosexual, either.

He wanted to fuck her. She could tell. He just wanted it to hurt when he did. He certainly had a love/hate thing with women. Like her co-workers would say to tease her, in particular, "Women, can't live with 'em, can't live with out it". Or sometime, " Women can't live with'em can't kill 'em".

It was almost a given that she would not be able to confirm any liaisons with other men. She would keep her eyes open but not try to chase it down. It would lead nowhere. And confirming prior liaisons with women would not corroborate anything other than that he might have come to his orientation later in life.

It was just too friggin' hot to not take a short cut back to her car; which she had illegally parked in the student parking area beyond the reserved faculty spots. Cutting across the lot she came upon Rausch's spot.

Chapter Twenty Two: Something about an "Aqua Volvo" man...

He had a great car. Growing up in Crandall, Texas there weren't a lot of foreign cars. Crandall was one of many fronts where the decades old "Ford/Chevy" war was being waged. Few cars in Crandall had a second seat. Many times, as a girl she had ridden, to and fro, in the bed of her daddy's pickup; snuggled just behind the driver's seat, arm dangled over the fender or riding the wind like an airplane wing. Her general disposition was toward a man in a truck and less so the man in the sports car. Of course the Corvette, might be the exception being embraced strongly buy the pickup drivers; well, the Chevy ones.

Rausch had a 1973 Volvo 1800 ES. It was in perfect condition save for a little spot of rust blossoming through the metallic blue paint at the rear fender. The ES was the quirky "second generation" of the Volvo 1800 two-seater sports car built from the early 60's. Lore is that the CEO of Volvo told his designers to revise the coupe into a version that could accommodate golf clubs. The original had the character of a small "batmobile" mainly because of its Cadillac tail fins. The hybrid, the ES, extend the cab to become a four-seater fastback; terminating in a revolutionary all glass hatch. It was probably the first of many cars to come that the back seats would fold forward enough to create a rear deck long enough to sleep on. Only eight thousand were made and now, in 1983, he was owner of what was surely one of only a couple of thousand in the world. Mechanically they were robust, having driving characteristic akin to a farm implement. But they easily dissolved in water. Overtime, rust would manifest in every conceivable place; unless the car had matured in a dry climate.

And there WAS rust. Up close she was amazed how tiny it was and also, consequently, how improbable a man of Rausch's size would care to struggle with climbing in and out of that car; even if only once a day. HAMPTON VOLVO, Cleveland, Ohio declared the telltale dealer tag medallion. Wherever the car had been in its half a million miles, it had started life near the rust belt.

She stole a look into the car. It wasn't really pristine. At least one side, the passenger side, was immaculate. The driver's side was crushed. Almost literally. The cushions were tattered and flat and the seat frame itself was virtually on the floorboards; totally unlike the passenger side that still appeared to be adjustable. Driver side seatbelt was nowhere to be seen. Everything looked stock except the steering wheel which was clearly some "after-market' racy looking thing of an improbably smaller diameter than the wheels of cars she had seen of this era before. Back then they always had big wheels because power steering was an extra or probably, in the case of the Volvo 1800, there was just no room to fit the booster mechanism under the hood. At least with the smaller wheel, Rausch could continue to fit behind it.

Her guess was that he had bought the car new and had physically, but not emotionally outgrown it. She could understand that; it was really cool... really "professorial". That car put him in Ohio, two years after the OU murder. She had read his "curriculum vitae" the one time and didn't recall a career placement in Ohio. She hadn't read it with the objective of looking for gaps in his career. She would pull that file again when she could.

She was, she suddenly realized, on the campus of a respected school of law. She wondered if a college law library might have almanacs of committed crimes for the various parts of the country. When she made her way up to the main desk she was disappointed to hear that, if such documents did exist, they did not have a copy or access to it. But, they did have microfiche of the last fifty years of newspapers from around the nation; issued annually by the publishers.

Luckily, philosophers are not researchers. None of the faculty came to the library that afternoon and Slaughter almost luxuriated as she browsed the papers over a span of a decade.

In a city the size of Cleveland, one could expect hundreds of murders in a year. But, most murders did not warrant much print; they were related to criminal activity. The treacherous.... self-cleansing of that species. The papers vastly preferred the crimes against the innocent; especially against women because the crime was nearly always an "aggravated" killing i.e.: sexual violation being part of the story and better fodder for tantalizing prose. From 1972 through at least 1978, Cleveland had been a safe haven for coeds. Nothing remotely like the OU and Fort Worth cases.

When she got back to headquarters, her call to Hampton Volvo paid dividends. A Mr. Ryan Rausch had purchased an 1800 ES at the model year end of 1983. Having performed the title paperwork on his behalf they had noted a home address in Dearborn, Michigan. They were also able to report that the vehicle had not received any scheduled maintenance for warranty validation at the certified Hampton Volvo service center during the entire period of the warranty. Slaughter, maintaining her cover as a car broker, a "road hog" she thought they were called, doing a title search she commented that her client, a prospective buyer, would likely appreciate knowing that the car might not have been faithfully serviced.

There certainly was not a Volvo dealership in the "town that Henry Ford built", in 1973. Rausch went out of his way to own that car.

That evening she ran another, tedious manual search of microfiche. This time at the Fort Worth central library just blocks from the police admin building. This time, of the considerably more modest and parochial Dearborn, Michigan paper. The same time frame had also boded well for being a coed. For being a woman in general. There had been no crimes against women that were perpetrated by anonymous and unapprehended assailants.

But, hometown boy Dr. Professor Rausch did draw some press in October of 1974 for having completed an impressive ten month tour as a visiting speaker at a good number of the colleges and universities in the region; which the paper went on to list, much to the convenience of detective Valerie Slaughter.

The weary librarians ran her off at 11:00 pm that evening. She still had to search papers from four of the ten cities whose places of higher learning had been graced by Rausch nine years ago.

A coed had been sodomized and bludgeoned in the spring of 1974, in the last stop of the Ryan Rausch regional tour, St.Louis, MO.

The tour, however, had ended in the fall of 1973.

Chapter Twenty Three: Scared straight...

The next time he saw Valerie, she was all business. No sooner were they seated she said, "I've figured it out, you know. The silence."

Parker listened.

"You know what happened... knowing what happened is why you won't talk. If you didn't know all of it, you would at least tell what you did know. I know this too...and if I embarrass you I apologize... but we both know you couldn't sustain vigorous sex, let alone aggressive, rough sex long enough to inflict damage on a woman's body. Both girls were sodomized and injured in the process. In the OU case, the semen was found on her body not vaginally. So,whoever raped her managed to sodomize her first with out ejaculating until later. Even with this second girl, no semen anally. You couldn't pull that off. Sorry.... but your little problem, embarrassing as it is to you, is really your salvation."

"But I don't know how to make that case. The expert witness has a conflict of interest."

Parker wasn't embarrassed. He had no shame with Valerie.

"If I were working the case... cases rather, knowing what I know, I would go with the notion that the cases are related... serial stuff. It's the same crime just ten years removed and with two of the original players at the second crime scene. If you exclude the undergrad, it leaves the arrogant professor... doesn't it?"

Looking him straight in the eye she got what she was fishing for.

"There it is.... the tell," she blurted out, " it's always there, Parker and it always looks like guilt...not insight. At least a jury won't get to look directly into your eyes during testimony."

"You are willing to let that arrogant prick walk? A serial killer."

Parker finally spoke, "I don't know that the "serial killer" case has been made... or will be, frankly." He knew he was right but being right would not advance his case nor his relationship with her. What was left of it.

"I could make that case," boasted Valerie. "I just wouldn't have the evidence to make it stick. I wouldn't have the corroboration... corroboration that is available. What I have is your goddam' semen on the body of a woman you didn't rape and kill. And your gonna fuckin' hang because of it." There was a slight hitch in her voice, in making that last statement.

"Well, I can sure come up with or make up a reasonably plausible scenario as to how your semen ended up on her belly and not in her ass."

As for girl number two, the "perp" must have had remarkable stamina or wore a condom. But both "perps" had girth and stamina... and both were misogynists... and I'm putting my money on the arrogant bully professor and not the short-fused undergrad."

"I hope I can save your ass."

As she turned and left, Parker said quietly to himself. "I hope you can, Valerie."

The next day, Parker was returned to Oklahoma to face his accusers and a jury of his peers.

Chapter Twenty Four: "I'm just a patsy".

Sitting in his cell, a few hours after his arrest and after having to address a throng of media reporters, he realized that he had probably looked and sounded just like another celebrated local felon of twenty year past.

In November, just two months after arriving in Texas, the twentieth anniversary of the 1963 assassination of JFK had been marked; in part with a non-stop/real-time replaying of video recorded over the course of that day. Parker had been transfixed. Nothing had been more striking than witnessing actual video of Lee Harvey Oswald declaring his innocence and his obvious bewilderment at his predicament. Parker had never heard the word "patsy" used in a sentence before, let alone with a tone mixed of resignation and despair, as it had been when Oswald declared that he was "just a patsy". Parker was a literate man. Oswald was not supposed to be literate... nor bright, but he chose a relatively obscure word that conveyed a very precise meaning, to the literate, when he succinctly characterized his situation.

Of course, Parker could not declare "I'm just a patsy", in his situation. That would have been closer to a breach of his promise than he was willing to go. Oswald, almost cocky when arrested, within hours was reduced to a stuttering mess, when the charges being made against him were articulated by the press, in his late afternoon hearing. When he realized he had been "worked".

Parker had full knowledge of the facts of his case but was innocent of the crime itself. Now, having just "channeled" him, he was equally convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald's circumstance was very similar. Lee Harvey Oswald was also dead with 48 hours of his declaration.

Almost a year later, standing before the judge, in the last moment of his trial, he had conquered his fears. It was like the theory of depression popular when he was an undergraduate, "Learned helplessness". Depression being the mind/body/souls reaction to a "unwinnable" situation. Depression does not ensue so long as you are resolved to the inevitability of the loss. He could envision no evasion of his fate; so he was not depressed. He would deal with the prospect of harsh retribution by the people of the State of Oklahoma in the next, inevitable phase of his descent.

And so he did, with the same composure, he had addressed the entire nightmare.

The verdict having been read, the judge, a handsome woman in her mid-fifties had the obligation of commentary, if only for the benefit of the media.

"Mr. Fitzgerald, In all my years on the bench I have never seen a man as intelligent as you clearly must be, so willingly and knowingly and effectively throwing oneself on the sword of guilt. I can't begin to speculate as to what defense you might have put forward, had you forsaken silence. I can't understand why you offer only your denial of guilt and nothing else. In our system of justice the burden is on the state to provide evidence of guilt but that power is balance by the accused's right to prove his evidence and for a jury of his peers to adjudicate."

"I can't speak eloquently in the language of your discipline, philosophy. But I think that logic has not been the link between premise and conclusion in this trial. But the conclusion has been arrived at as prescribed by law; by the weight of the evidence against you."

"In accordance with the judgment of the jury and as provided for by the laws of the State of Oklahoma, you are hereby sentenced to be executed for the murder of Tanya Arquette."

Chapter Twenty Five: The red-headed stranger

Although a death sentences is automatically appealable, an appeal presupposes a willingness to appeal, some basis upon which to mount the appeal and someone with the professional acumen to prosecute it.

Even without the appeal process, a sentence of death takes a long time to be carried out. Timeliness, in most matters being commendable, is simply irrelevant in the matter of executions. Especially in a country holding fast to its right to execute and with the stigma of "lynching" only decades in its past.

It was business as usual, after his sentencing. He got a new cell, but it was identical to his other, just located with all the other death row inmates. Socially, they were much the same lot as those he had been sequestered with before his trial. They all were "innocent" of course. Only he was "innocent" in terms of not actually having committed the crime he was charged with.

Having moved through the hierarchy of increasing security and increasing sociopathy of his cell block mates, he had become expert in that class of individual that runs afoul, periodically or habitually, of the laws of society.

The strangest thing, socially, was his abject fear of one of his cell mates in the thirty man cage he was first assigned to before his conviction. Parker had no frame of reference. Not one his cellmates, at this stage, were convicted felons, nor were their crimes always violent. But they evoked fear nevertheless and at each new level he rose to with the hierarchy of felons, he became unhabituated and fearful again.

He eyed Parker unrelentingly, following his route all the way round the outside perimeter of their cage to the locked entrance. And as Parker navigated the rows of cots, his few goods in hand, to his appointed cot, he could feel the heat of his eyes ever more intensely.. He was certainly the center of attention for all his cellmates and the limited universe of his jail cell had stopped spinning entirely for the few minutes of his entrance.

The guy was "freakishly" everything. He was tall. Red haired and ruddy. None of his features were that peculiar but, unlike Parker's beloved Valerie, his came together to no pleasing effect at all. And he wouldn't stop staring. Even, when it was clear to him that Parker was conscious of his intrusion, every chance to surreptitiously survey Parker was taken.

Just before 9:00 that evening, Parker turned toward the sudden voice to his left and jerked away from its source like it had been a snake.

"I get that a lot". "Don't apologize".

He went on, in a suddenly strange tone, "I've just got a face that people don't like." Now without the tone, "John Lennon said that I think." Which explained the accent he had just affected. "I'm red face and red-haired and large. I look like some drunken Irish fisherman. Are you the raping professor?"

Sensing the intent of a joke, Parker replied nonchalantly. "And what are you in for".

"Fishin' drunk", he replied. Parker could not even remember the last time he had laughed. Laughing after so long of an abstinence was like indulging in your first good cry of adulthood. When he had composed himself he asked again, "Really, what is your crime?"

"Drunk fishin. I ran my bass boat into some guy's sailboat. They say there was alcohol involved. I just don't know, I was drunk at the time."

Still playing along Parker asked, "What's the verdict? Going up the river?" He laughed at his own joke and while it did not get a hearty laugh from the other guy, he smiled and reply, "Three months in jail I think."

Parker suddenly questioned the good taste of his quip but before he could say a word, the other guy said, "You see, I've had similar problems with cars. I ran my car into a richer guy's car. They say there was alcohol involved."

Changing the topic, Aaron Perry, as he would later identify himself, asked, "What are the wages of rape and murder these days?"

"That's what I'm here to find out," responded Parker. "I suspect rapist-murderers are underpayed".

"You ain't one," Aaron asserted, not to assuage Parker but more to establish his own credibility. "I've known those guys. But, I read the papers, it might go down like you are one."

"I'm just a patsy," Parker quipped.

The reference was not missed by Aaron. Aaron grew up in Oak Cliff; once a small municipality just across the Trinity river from what is now downtown Dallas. Oak Cliff was the oft-time residence of Lee Harvey Oswald. It was at a theatre in Oak Cliff that Oswald had been apprehended after his murder of policeman J.D. Tippet and by, immediate inference, his murder of the President of the United States.

Officer Tippet's "beat" was his own neighborhood of residence; Oak Cliff. Aaron had been a school mate and occasional pal of Tippet's thirteen year old son. The morning of Tippet's murder and the murder of the President, J.D. Tippet made a point of telling his son that he loved him dearly. An emotional confession he had never made to his son until that morning. Tippet's son related this story to the Warren Commission and others as well. Aaron had heard it first person as well.

Aaron explained to Parker that Dallas and, to a lesser degree Fort Worth, was rife with first hand tales related to the Kennedy assassination. Most were antithetical to the "lone gunman" theory. Almost all unverifiable, twenty years after the fact. Aaron, after twenty years floating around "the Cliff" had heard a lot of anecdotes about the assassination and had become thoroughly skeptical of the official story. Conspiracy or not, like most Americans, he didn't care either way.

Parker, like many, many individuals, most with not nearly so much time on their hands, became a JFK assassination scholar over the course of him imprisonment. He availed himself of the "duty of the corrections system" to facilitate his literacy; compelling the provision by the state of every virtually written document pertaining to the assassination that was not, by Congressional mandate, sealed to public view until the middle of the coming century.

Admittedly, it was almost ridiculous that he extended so much effort exonerating a dead "patsy" when his effort might have been directed towards his own condition.

But it was implicit in his promise, made with a clear head and rational mind ten years ago, that he could not make any effort to exonerate himself that would have the concomitant effect of implicating Rausch. He did not need Rausch to underscore that point; though Rausch, curiously, had during their meeting months before.

Aaron did his "time" somewhere else. For ten days, though, he was one of the best friends Parker had ever had. A redhead/redneck/red face/ red-blooded Texan oil field "rig-pig" with a sharp mind, a great sense of humor and straight to the point integrity.

Later, in other place of confinement, he was conjoined with less sinister looking cellmates; but folks, still, that the devil himself might have been wary of

Chapter Twenty Six: Hard time...

With his certain conviction and certain sentence ahead of him nevertheless, he settled into the rest of his life. It was a predictable life; except for the actual duration. He didn't mind it at all. The only part that was difficult for him was being without Valerie. She seemed like a dream now. His adult life had effectively been one of social/sexual celibacy. He could abide that state once again. But he missed her... like you would miss your best friend, or your best dog, or your mother. He had learned to function alone; it was now just so difficult when you really had someone you wished to be with.

With so few options, he gradually embraced aspects of prison life that made it tolerable day to day, that he would have eschewed before. He lifted weights. He smoked. Jesus Christ, he loved smoking. It might have killed both his parents but "fuck it". It might have interfered with his running, but he lost all interest in running if it was to be performed on a 100 meter loop around the "yard". In prison, you could smoke as you lifted weights.

He didn't get involved with the drug stuff. It had had no appeal to him on the outside and, on the inside, it drew its participants into a very complex and dangerous net of liaisons. He missed his beer but the price of a buzz in prison was just not reasonable.

He became very strong. Physically and mentally. Before, to race well, he had deliberately avoided weight-training; at one point weighing one twenty four. Eating well and weight-training his runner's physique morphed into that of a decathlete. Nobody fucked with him. He was like a ninja..... and that scared the brutes in his midst.

Most of all, being an intelligent, decent non-felon, nobody feared him. He was well liked, and, with such affirmation he divested all his youthful inhibitions and became a positive, almost "evangelical" presence on his block; with a date on the cross as yet to be determined.

The standing joke in prison is that "everyone is innocent". But at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary it was the generally held conviction of all the inmates that Parker Fitzgerald was not a sodomizing murderer. Some holdouts thought that he was certainly clever enough for white collar crimes; but he had no heart for the hardcore stuff.

Chapter Twenty Seven: Perry's Como

Three months in the county jail was no more painful for Aaron Perry than working back-to-back holes in the West Texas oil patch. Sometimes just to stay in the game you left one rig and went straight to another; without a day of rest between them. In jail you got the same amount of "personal space"; it didn't matter whether you had six bunkmates like on a rig camp or thirty in the cage. Food was about a "wash". But, praise God, you didn't have to put in eight hours a day (or longer on long changes) on a filthy, superheated mechanical bull in the hot Texas sun. He read "Lolita", "The Mayor of Casterbridge", and five other books on the list of one hundred greatest novels of the English language. Once, years before, he was half-way through "Ulysses", the "greatest book", when a literate friend advised that you didn't have to actually finish it. It is still on his list. He dreaded revisiting it.

He owned his own home, in the Como district of Fort Worth; a district of thousands of "trickled down" two bedroom homes providing for the life of the real people. His first night home... he had a visitor.

The house, unlike that of its neighbors, was well maintained. She was glad of that because it portended a more reliable witness. The front door had a screen door. No doorbell. Somehow she hated this situation. Knocking on a rickety screen door usually accomplished nothing. So one had to take the more intrusive step of opening the screen to get to the actual door. It just seemed impolite. An odd reticence on the part of a cop, she admitted. She pulled the screen door open and knocked, politely and, almost immediately, the door was opening.

He had never been impressed by that type of beauty the rich folks seemed to have as a birthright. Before him, in the light spilling out from the living room and not from the long since broken porch light, was a real princess. In sensible shoes and a pant suit. He composed himself immediately. He could break the ice with any man alive, but with women, his defensives were immediately deployed and unbreachable.

She explained, there on the door step, June bugs swirling about and entering the house as Aaron fought them off, that she was a detective with an interest in the Parker Fitzgerald case and that she was privy to the fact that he Aaron and Parker conversed frequently and that she was curious if he would divulge any of their conversations. In virtually one breath.

"He didn't kill anybody, if you care to know", Aaron asserted; right to the point. He was suddenly self conscious about the cigarette he was managing to talk around. He really didn't want to project some James Dean shtick to this woman. He pulled it out of his mouth and flicked it onto the lawn, cursing himself as he did for making such a white trash gesture. Normally, he put out his cigarettes orderly in an ashtray which he emptied at more than adequate intervals. "Well, what's the point of being a redneck if you can't act like one," he joked to himself.

"I don't think he did either," Detective Slaughter offered. She paused. "So, why don't you think he didn't kill anybody?"

"He's not a killer." She didn't follow up. That, really was the extent of her case too.

"Did he ever say anything to you that made you certain that he wasn't guilty?"

"Sure he did," Aaron said casually, "I'm just a patsy." She looked quizzical.

"Honey, just how old are you?" She didn't respond, and suddenly he just wanted to be left alone. He hated that his shyness around women so often manifest as a sort of contempt. He softened his tone, saying "Sweetheart, you ask the old guys at the station about that statement and take it from there. This has been a long, long day for me... and I'd like to call it right now."

"'You take care." With that benediction he closed the door; wishing just once, a contact with a beautiful girl would not have been "official" or "contractual".

Valerie had been startled by Aaron. Not by his aloofness and hostility. He was all Texas. He was tall, forthright, and in a way, quite handsome. She wondered if he was clever too. She would have liked knowing him, she thought.

Later that evening she called Lou. It was dicey to call Lou at night. Lou was long since widowed, so there was no one to chaperone him at nights. He loved his beer. He answered, " h' low......h'.lo.. ooooow? "

"Lou, it's Valerie.... How's it going?"

.

"I don't know Valerie... let me ask it......" That really was quite clever so she rewarded it with one of her best "giggles". Valerie was convinced that ribald humor from a man was always an overture. She was wrong of course and she would have been totally "off-base" to think that, when it came to Lou. Lou just wanted to be liked and being clever was one of the few tactics was available to him at his age. She loved Lou. Everyone did. "Lou, this is probably a stupid question... and don't embarrass me by telling everyone I asked it. But where did the line, "I'm just a patsy" come from?"

The silence that followed was so long that she wondered if he had dropped the phone... or maybe even died.

"Valerie, you do owe me now... but I won't tell, I promised. You do remember the Alamo I hope?"

"Valerie, "I'm just a patsy" is almost the only words we got from Lee Oswald before Ruby killed him. Did I ever tell you I saw Kennedy that morning here in Fort Worth, not an hour before he was killed?"

'Hey cowgirl, you better "urban-up" if you want to come to the city." Lou immediately regretted his cynical and avuncular tone, but "good- god-all- mighty" how could a Texas police officer not know this shit!!!

"Hey Lou, thanks a lot. I guess I just forgot that somehow. Take care."

That had been embarrassing.

She spent a good part of her night, in her apartment with its dubious and intermittent A/C, climbing in and out of her bed sheets and pondering all the meanings of "I'm just a patsy".

There were only two senses of the phrase, she thought. "I'm complicit, along with others, but taking the blame" or "I'm innocent but saddled with the blame".

By the morning she had divined the third sense. _"I'm complicit, but not of the crime at hand and I am taking the blame_

Chapter Twenty Eight: Drop dead date...

The date of Parker's execution had been set. A Tuesday, in November. Why Tuesday or why November was anyone's guess. But it was less than three months way, unless he appealed his conviction. It, the definitive date, had no discernible impact upon Parker. He would give it some consideration when it was actually nigh.

She hadn't seen Parker since the day he was transferred from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City. She knew the time of the transfer and made a point of being there as he was escorted to the OKC police vehicle. They shared a glance. It was enough. Until later.

He was no longer the retiring egghead. At least superficially. He had put on thirty pounds, minimum, of "whoop-ass muscle". She might not have approved of the smoking but, the means of their communication did not facilitate the exchanging odors, so she was oblivious to his new vice. His voice was huskier, for some reason, she thought.

He was a lot less reticent than before. She delighted in his comments even as she was shocked by his forthrightness.

"It is incredibly good to see you, Valerie. You are a vision. You are the most beautiful woman alive. I never came close to falling in love with someone until I met you. I have no real experience in these matters outside of what you and I have had. I want to tell you I love you but I have no idea what it is to love someone other than, I know I have missed you like no one else and you are the only person in the world I care to see".

All of this gushed out of him, as he had actually intended. He didn't see the point of retracing a path already trod, by gradually revealing again his regard for her. And he knew, pending something unforeseen, he only had a hundred or so days left on earth. You "cut to the chase" sometimes.

Valerie was not good with being the object of praise or adoration. Twice, in college and later in the academy, she had formally complained about the attentions of male peers, whose affections, though tenderly conveyed, had disquieted her. Both times, well meaning but woefully smitten men had been banished from her sphere; consequent to the machinations of male dominated organizations fearful of the wrath of a female scorned. She pretended that Parker's avowal was a nice passing compliment and proceeded with the agenda she had already devised.

"So, how are you holding up?" The standard movie first line in this type of scene, she conceded to herself.

"Well... I am amazed. I would have thought death would be preferable to prison. The thing I dreaded the most, being immersed in men, like being in the army or something, is not nearly as bad as I envisioned."

He chuckled. "I can tell you this little anecdote...now. I had this very same conversation with Tanya.... about how uncomfortable I was rooming with men. She said I was a "beta" male. Now I room with the true "alpha" males."

"I'm not an "alpha"... probably a beta-minus... but I'm not so fucking contemptuous of being a man anymore. I hated my cynicism about manliness. This won't make any sense to you. But it does to me. I am stronger now in ways that matter to me. I will tell you, though, I've had to dumb myself down a bunch in order to fit in. Probably good advice, inside or outside of the cage. I used to kick the mental shit out of others, all the while fearing someone might kick the physical shit out of me."

"This isn't the smartest lot I've been among... but being among the smartest lot has not been all that interesting either."

"So, what's next, Parker? Are you still not going to appeal. This isn't a movie you know. In real life, you damn sure do die if you don't at least go for an appeal, It's your right, you know."

"Valerie, I don't have a defense. Whether a public defender presents it, a high brow lawyer does, or I do, or it doesn't get presented. There is nothing to present. But, I can tell you this too... I didn't kill her. She was killed because of me, I can tell you that. Not that I bear any blame either. Just that it would be a lie to say that I played no part in it. But that girl in Fort Worth. I have no connection whatsoever. It's just a coincidence... and not a coincidence at the same time."

"One of your metaphysical puzzles?" Valerie queried.

"Not this time, Valerie." He would have liked to call her "dear" but they did not have enough time together as civilians to have passed the "pet name" threshold.

"Parker, I think you're probably the most intelligent man I will have ever met. Putting aside that you might be a serial killer, you might well be the most moral man I have ever met. I probably couldn't run with you intellectually on any topic. I know I'm smart but probably just work-a-day smart. Smart enough to do what I do and enough to not be the brunt of jokes."

"I know you won't tell me anything about OU, but could you try to let me understand "why" if not "what". I don't care about the "what". I know in my soul that you did not kill Tanya... but you are going to die for some conviction or principal that you seem to think prevails over all else."

"I want to know what it is... that is worth dying for."

"It is one to die for, Valerie," Parker assured her. "You might even understand, if I explained it"

Which he didn't, of course. Of necessity.

Chapter Twenty Nine: Road Trip

Vacations meant little to Slaughter. She couldn't think of places she wanted to go to all that bad, especially if she had to go by herself. Now, having accumulated more days, in five years on the force, than she could carry over, there was no reason not to go north and poke around into the life of Ryan Rausch.

Until she had visited Parker in Oklahoma, she had never been north of the Red River; never out of Texas until she crossed that bridge, just a few days ago.

It would be at least a two day drive to Michigan. She toyed with the concept of a marathon effort, with no stops. Only because, she had never been to a hotel or motel before. She wasn't sure what all was involved, although the "big girl" part of her reasoned there wasn't much to be mastered.

Her one regret about being female was that she, like most, had been raised to me "helpless". Especially being the daughter of a man well beyond middle age, the step sister of much older brothers and sisters, and younger than her full sister. Everything that may have challenged her was performed on her behalf by her loving benefactors. It left her scared.

When she graduated high school she asserted her emancipation by entering the architecture program at the University of Texas at Arlington. There were a few other girls in the program at the time but they, unlike her were in it because of a passion for buildings and creativity. She had none of that passion, and being creative, she discovered, entailed far more drudgery than she had the enthusiasm for. Inspiration-perspiration, kind of thing.

She dropped all her architecture courses mid-way through the fall term, only managing to complete two elective courses. That winter she took courses at the Tarrant County Junior College in South Fort Worth and it was there she met several students who were vying to enter the police academy.

She was smart. That she had never doubted. And, she was physically robust enough to accomplish the minimum level of strength and endurance required of the academy.

She did very little time on the street. She had yet to confront a situation where she had to assert herself physically nor had she seen an occasion to fire her handgun; which she was not wont to do anyway.

What made her an asset to the force, as a detective, was her abundant charm and her sweet, local gal persona. She was a great interrogator. Never the "bad" cop.

But, she was still scared shitless of all those things in life and labor she had been denied training in. She was confident she could change a tire; just not certain yet.

She drove until late, "ten-ish" on her first night. She realized that she had declined too many opportunities already and was at risk of not finding anywhere to stay. She was far more tired than she had predicted she would have been after twelve hours of driving, let alone the twenty hours she once thought she could endure.

She pulled up in front of the Golden Grotto motel, on the eastern outskirts of Saint Louis. The sign still told of vacancies but the office looked closed. It wasn't, though the one burning table lamp in the lobby, did not shout of hospitality.

The clerk was profoundly drunk. So drunk that he gave Valerie a key, asking her to check in tomorrow morning. She could pay when she checked out.

It was one of those old style motor courts. The office/lobby complete with an attached residence was the center of a corral of duplex units. A parking space, at each side each duplex. At one side of the office was a shed of a sort with an ice dispenser, coke machine, pay phone and washer and dryer. The entire outboard side of the shed was window, fogged up slightly from the humidity of the washer and dryers. The door was propped open, so she could see three or four black guys hanging out and talking in excited tones. She couldn't make out many words... other than "I'm gonna fuck that motha fucka up ".

Glad to be back in her car, rather than one foot, she drove the hundred yards to her little half of heaven.

What ever was transpiring in the other half of heaven was going full tilt as she stepped into her room. Surely criminal. The bed was only a couple of feet from the front window which had a single two-piece curtain which would not overlap enough in the middle to insure absolute privacy.

The bath room had no bath. She wondered if that was even legal. What was technically legal was the small window in the commode room that predated the exhaust fans required in window-less bathrooms of today. It was disquieting to her that the window, held closed with a screen door type "eye and hook" device was only about four foot to the sill from the ground outside and certainly big enough for a person to access and crawl through.

Worst of all was the carpet. Everywhere. It was shag in the sleeping room and indoor/outdoor nylon in the commode room. It was a given that the commode room carpet had a corona of stain centered on its namesake. Even so, it was likely that the shag was even filthier, being inherently uncleanable.

She was exhausted, though. She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the ruckus next door, postulating what crimes were being committed as she bore blind witness. Finally, she lay back on the bed, but only one the bedspread. She didn't even uncover the pillow. Had she been thinking, she would have certainly realized that the bedspread was probably the filthiest thing in the room. An awful lot of DNA. A lot of awful DNA.

She worried about her car. It was new. It had a tape-deck. All the other cars at the "grotto" were much older. She realized that most were probably not running. The "grotto" was available daily, weekly... probably hourly. It was home to some.

She had no idea when the party next door wound down. After about an hour of enduring that din, all the while listening for the tell tale sounds of an intruder breaching her bathroom window, she fell asleep.

It was five in the morning when she woke to the sound of her next door neighbor's door slamming shut. Maybe it didn't slam but even a solid closing was enough to shake the whole cottage.

Valerie bounded out of bed and straight out the front door. She hadn't so much as used the commode. She hadn't pulled back the covers on the bed. She left the key where ever she had put it last and with a mental "fuck you golden grotto", backed her car out into the circular drive. As she came abreast of the cottage doors her neighbors were stepping out, luggage in hands. Two downright fat and downright ugly white girls in their early thirties. Who liked to party.

Chapter Thirty: Pit Stop

Thirty miles further north, just shy of the county line, she stopped into a FINA gas station that promised great coffee and pie. And a restroom.

The restroom was totally acceptable. It was actually clean. Of course, it was only 6:00 am. The poor bastard on the night shift was probably obliged to clean it each night. She didn't quite see herself as a woman needing to purchase condoms from the wall mounted dispenser, either.

Nearly dozing, sipping on her coffee, with swirling cream, because it was available and stabbing inquisitively at her pie, she was startled when the state trooper addressed her. He was big man. A big, handsome man. A big, handsome, black man. With a really big gun and draped in all the other paraphernalia of law enforcement.

"Ma'am, is that your little red Corolla?" he inquired politely.

"Yes sir", she replied. It was "sir" not because she had learned to appreciate how much cops like to be addressed respectfully, but because she was still of that generation of Texas kids that used the term without self-consciousness or facetiousness.

"Ma'am, a woman fitting your description and driving a new red Corolla with Texas plates skipped out on a motel tab about thirty miles south of here."

He had maintained his even tone and civility.

Valerie dropped her chin to her chest as it her torso had

suddenly deflated and could no longer support her head.

"Officer, I got in really late last night. I think I fell asleep but it was impossible to sleep because of all the noise in the next room, the restroom was so gross I didn't even use it, and I didn't undo the bed. The folks next door woke me up at five and I didn't want to wait to pay up and, well "hell's bells", no matter what the rent would have been I didn't get a dollars worth of value out of it."

"Ma'am, why in the world would you even check into a place like that? It's nothing but a whorehouse/crackhouse dump. You must have been tired" and with the intent to tease, "... and I don't bet, you get out too much do you."

"I'm gonna tell myself that you got all the way over the county line, and up the road about five miles, before I could catch you. Didn't even get the tag numbers."

"Thanks officer," she said, rising from the table, causing her jacket to part enough to show the strap of her shoulder holster. The trooper stopped her ascension mid-way with a straight arm to her shoulder. This caught her off balance and she immediately came down hard into her chair. Reaching for his weapon, to be ready, he opened her jacket slightly with his left hand. She dropped both her hands, palms down to the table top.

"I'm a cop." She admitted timidly. "I don't get out much".

Explaining, as she knew was expected, "I'm going to Dearborn, Michigan on an investigation."

"So, they let you take the little red cruiser, did they?"

She actually blushed. "I'm on my own time."

"I'm not sure that entitles you to wear a concealed weapon in this state, officer....?"

"Slaughter." It doesn't. "I don't get out much". He stared almost grimly.

"What, it's only funny when you say it?" Valerie protested.

"No, it's just that's the second time you've said it, miss. It's losing it charm."

"Officer Slaughter, stay out of trouble and hide that fucking thing, okay."

Over his shoulder, "Go get 'em, cowgirl."

Being a cop has its perks.

Being a girl isn't all bad either.

Chapter Thirty One: Motoring on to Motor City

The rest of the day, was almost as harrowing. The highways were increasingly snowy as she made northerly progress. She hadn't driven in snow much in Texas. What she had driven in was what they called black ice. Black, because you just couldn't see it; especially under a light dusting of snow. Streets could become literally impassable; especially bridges and overpasses. After several hours of driving in the snow, gripping the wheel like a life preserver, she began to realize that snowy roads up north did not become so precarious. Soon enough, she was again on pace with the other drivers and only an hour outside of Dearborn.

It was only about 5:00 in the afternoon when she made it to the city limits, but it was already getting dark. Not to repeat the horrors of last night she pulled into the next "quality", available accommodation, a QUALITY INN.

She had a bath, drank a six-pack of Coors Light, browsed through the phonebook and, all spread out on the king size bed, "rubbed one out"; as she had often heard the male cops say. It was particularly stimulating. There was a bed level mirror at the end of the bed and she could see herself the whole while and, while relaxing after, she realized why the bedspreads in motels might not be too sanitary.

There was a foot of snow everywhere the next morning. It didn't materially affect her mobility, it just added to the noise in her head as she plotted out her day. But it was cold. Really cold. And she had only brought a light winter coat; a fall coat in Michigan. Gloves would have been nice. She hadn't owned a pair in her life. She pulled her arm up into the sleeve of her coat and ploughed the foot of show off of her car. She was amusing and cute to the northern salesmen setting on their rounds; have brushed their cars with devices for that very purpose. No one offered to help. She wondered if that was a "northern" thing.

It wasn't really the best detective work on her part, leaving all the necessary research until she got to Dearborn. She presumed, hoped rather, that there would be Rauschs in the phone book and they would be of the Ryan Rauschs and not the "whoever" Rauschs.

They were all of the Ryan Rauschs. Her first call got Ryan's uncle, or rather his uncle's widow, who was able to tell her the numbers to dial next, to speak directly to his parents.

It was only nine in the morning, and since she was not on the clock and obliged to efficiency, she indulged her natural reluctance to not get after it and decided to postpone her interview until the afternoon. She drove around for a couple of hours, eventually losing all interest in Dearborn, Michigan and wishing she had got after it this morning, because now she felt a "noonish" visit might be inappropriate. Not for a cop on business but for an old student just looking up an old professor she admired.

She had lunch at a "Denny's". She knew the menu well, it turned out. In Fort Worth they had "JoJo's". Just like "Denny's," it had the corner of a shared parking with a hotel; usually a La Quinta. She reasoned they were the same restaurant; just branded differently for the region.

They did make a good burger. Half a pound before cooking. And great big fries, that could accommodate a tablespoon of ketchup each. Ketchup served in the bottle and, mercifully, not in the little pouches. She could sometimes get carried away and "frag" herself opening them hastily. Her officer buddies concluded "you can't take her anywhere", which she knew was a good spirited jest; but also fairly accurate.

When she'd finished eating she "parked" at the lobby payphone; in the low flying cloud of the cigarette smoke of the dozen, all smoking, patrons being seated.

She was already "horse" when she spoke in reply to the feeble "hay-low" on the other end of the line.

She presented her case, which had to conclude in her dropping by because she was so close and all. She had not really developed her ruse for getting invited over but one was not required, as she had the invite no sooner had she said she was in the area.

Chapter Thirty Two: Homecoming...

It was a little-bitty twenties era house. Side driveway of two parallel strips of concrete leading to the one car garage in the rear. A large Ford sat in the driveway still under a blanket of snow. She didn't know her car models well. It was probably an 80 model. It had one of those upholstered tops, like you might have seen on a carriage; something that she supposed was supposed to impart class to the vehicle but, even she, girl from Crandall, was certain that such fakery was not of good taste.

He pulled up in front of the house. Not well though. She had to back up and make a second attempt at parking next to and not on the curb. She stepped out of the Corolla into eight inches of slush concealed under four inches of fluff. He sensible shoes were immersed, totally soaking her socks and about six inches up the hem of her pant suit. She knew they were watching her and she hoped they couldn't see her well enough to see the ugly face she made as she uttered a really ugly word.

She realized that she did not look collegiate at all in a pantsuit. Maybe not collegiate by virtue of the passage of time, either. She still did get "carded" occasionally; which was good. She would have to be careful with her story, so that it was plausible that she had been a student of Rausch's.

His parents were sweet. Simple as that. She had been a housewife and he a line worker at the Ford plant. Retired. He was the "freeze-dried" version of his son, almost identical just thirty percent scale and "freezer burned". She was fat and happy.

All she had to build her story on was her "undergraduate" years at the University of Oklahoma; where she had taken several classes with Rausch and had admired him greatly. Last she had heard was he took a sabbatical, returning to his hometown of Dearborn, prior to a couple of years lecturing overseas.

"Well, I don't think he went overseas," said Mrs. Rausch. "You mean like to Europe? No he visited some colleges around the country but not overseas. Well, let me just check something." Within an arms length was an album with the same newspaper clippings she had already seen but now pretended to be enthralled by.

"Let's see... " she counted off the venues. "Ten". Over about two years. He was always coming and going. Of course we just loved having him back with us. He's an only child. Ten colleges. One he went back to, to receive some honor of some kind I think."

"Oh, how nice." Without revealing her suddenly increased interest Valerie asked, "Which college was that?"

"Oh, I can't remember that dear. He wasn't gone long so it was probably one in this area. He'd drive that silly car of his to save money, instead of flying."

His dad piped in, "It wasn't some honor, I think it was some teaching thing."

"Don't get me going about that car. Volvo. Son of a lifelong Ford employee comes home in a damn Volvo. Crazy looking thing too. I guess he's still got the damn thing. Must have a million miles on it. I was so damn mad at first, but about the same time "Detroit", well you know, the US makers drove the quality of our cars into the dirt trying to get rich quick. Suddenly none of our cars was worth a "sh... damn". That Volvo treated him good though. Well, pretty good, except that one trip, we were just talking about, when he had to have us wire him some money to get a fuel pump or something."

Valerie really had no prepared agenda for this interview. She didn't need one, Rausch's folks would talk and talk. Every time they concluded one anecdote, it seemed the last word of the tale was the launching pad for the next tale.

It went on until almost five o'clock when she made her final of several otherwise fruitless goodbyes. By that time the streets were just wet; but she didn't actual make it to her car without the last vestige of dense snow in the street side tree falling onto her head as she tiptoed around the from bumper of the Corolla.

For all the time invested she really didn't learn anything she didn't know or believe to be the case before.

She drank an awful lot of hot tea that afternoon. Her stomach ached from the unaccustomed overdose of tannic acid. Somehow, all the ice tea in the Texas didn't cause that.

It was interesting to hear of Rausch's childhood. Typical "only child" stuff. He was always a good boy they had said, while, in the same breath, intimating that there had been an exception.

Eventually the string of anecdotes included, "Well, you see, in his junior year I took a job at the drugstore afternoons. I really enjoyed it too. But Ryan took to running with this other boy we didn't know much about. There might have been drugs involved but one time this boy was very improper with a girl they both knew and ended up in a lot of trouble with the law. I think he ended up in juvenile detention somewhere. Of course, Ryan had to answer a lot of questions that the police asked but he wasn't involved and that was the last of the whole thing. Except, I quit that job to be more available to Ryan until he went off to college."

That night she enjoyed the fine accommodations of the "La Quinta" and a comforting meal of fish and chips at the "Denny's".

The La Quinta had HBO so she watched "Cat People". The mild eroticism and another six of Coors Light stirred her ardor, which she addressed again but with a variation from the previous evening; on the fresh sheets, bedspread over the edge and onto the floor.

Chapter Thirty Three: Just wanted to follow up...

She awoke with the revelation that she ought to check on Ryan's youthful breach. She would do it officially, as a Fort Worth detective, at the Dearborn police headquarters.

They were accommodating. She was able to get the particulars of the deed from the files and, luckiest of all, to talk to the original office on the case, now a staff sergeant. Sergeant Kemper.

The most significant revelation was that Ryan's involvement had not been incidental. Not just a simple matter of association. The girl had been seriously molested by his school chum, a short little cretin named Dwayne Loveless. Loveless did get convicted of sexual assault and did get "sent away". Though the official record did not implicate Ryan in the assault, the officer knew first hand from testimony of Loveless that Ryan had been in on the "foreplay", leaving Loveless the honor of the real assault; as Rausch watched. The girl was almost comatose from alcohol at the time of the assault; recalling only the coup de grace of the assault; when Loveless was virtually "fisting" all of her openings.

Sergeant Kemper had another snippet share. "You know, Miss Slaughter, this is the second time in the last year or so, that an out of state cop has asked about Rausch. Of course, all we've ever had on him is this one deal. I didn't talk to anyone. They just read the file I guess. I just heard that they'd been in. From somewhere in Ohio, I think. Columbus maybe. Wouldn't be too surprised if that shit Loveless hadn't been in trouble again. I guess it might have been Loveless they were checking on and not Rausch. That's probably more likely."

"You never did say what your interest in him was." Valerie was ready with her reply. It was improvised; but was even more credible than the one she had already concocted.

"Professor Rausch has received extortion threats from someone threatening to reveal something that would ruin him. Rausch says that he has nothing in his past worthy of concealing. Maybe that is not the absolute truth but we are obliged to try to catch whoever is making the threats and all we can do it fish around and see if someone comes up. This deal with Loveless is kind of promising."

Thinking she had plugged that hole, Valerie made her thank-yous and goodbyes. What she had just said, conjoined with the facts of the Loveless situation almost started to sound like the start of a legitimate case. She wondered if she should try somehow to dissuade Sergeant Kemper lest he decide to assist her in the investigation. He seemed wont to do so.

So conclude her voyage to the north. She would stop by and see Parker in OKC. She would not fill him in on her investigations. It frustrated her to talk of his case. He categorically would not reveal any particulars and nor would he indulge in any sort of speculation as to who did the killing of Tanya.

Which all meant that there really was little point in visiting him at all? She still loved him but somehow it didn't seem that their brief relationship had consummated to the point where she would maintain a vigil during his incarceration; like some significant others would. The jailhouse brides.

Besides she was running out of vacation, and, a few hundred miles south of Dearborn, a detour to Columbus seemed a better use of her days and gas.

Chapter Thirty Four: They always come in threes...

As always, the interlocal cooperation of the police department was remarkable when the request was tendered by Valerie Slaughter. Columbus being no exception.

In 1977, a sophomore student at Ohio State went missing and was found a week later in a forested area on the outskirts of town. She had been thoroughly violated, sexually. Cause of death was strangulation. The condition of her body suggested she had not died where she was found but had been conveyed there. There had been no soiling of her body or contusions suggesting she had struggled there in the forest. She was found completely naked. All her clothes were present, dumped in a heap near the body.

The case was cold. But it had warmed slightly a year or so ago, when the police department went on a campaign to solve the handful of cold cases on the books, in an election year PR effort. As part of that effort they re-interviewed her fellow students and teachers, fellow church goers, everyone. Including a visiting professor who had taught a week long course that she took that same semester; several weeks before she died. Rather, they intended to interview the professor but his whereabouts at the time were unknown. The Dearborn police department had nothing on him save for his having been questioned in regard to the assault of some girl by a classmate he had only a passing association with. He was a name in a file. A name only. The classmate, Dwayne or Darrell or some D name like that was questioned but was a dead end.

Rausch had been co-opted to teach a " block" course in ethics Ohio State University Block courses were week-long courses, earning full credit, that more academically inclined students might take during the fall or spring breaks in order to graduate sooner or to make up for courses already failed. Usually they involved a small handful of students majoring in the field sharing about six hours a day of lecture and dialogue for the entire week. No exam usually, because the professor could reasonably gauge whether the student had paid attention and made a contribution to the class. Audrey Reynolds had not been a philosophy major. She was a gregarious education student without the financial means for a fantastic "spring break". She was sensible. Blonde.

Two months later she was a deceased forest nymph.

Chapter Thirty Five: Small talk

Rausch rarely got phone calls. He didn't have friends. He had parents.

"Ryan, it's mommy," said the voice on the line.

"Hello mother. How are you?"

"Well, I'm just fine dear and so is Dad. We're just "truckin' along"." Ryan despised the way his mother continued to use that antiquated phrase that she had taken a shine to when she was in her fifties and wanted to sound" hip".

'We had such a special day today though." Ryan had no interest but gave her the "do tell".

"One of your former students came by to catch up with you and we had a really nice visit." Rausch felt an immediate and intense flush throughout his body and tried to speak calmly and clearly. Rausch had an odd manner of speaking or, better said, his voice had a gargle sound typically that became much more pronounced if he was agitated. He sounded like he was choking on his own tongue. He managed to get out, "tell me more about her."

"Well her name was Nancy and she was just an adorable little thing. She must have been from Texas or some place like that... I've never heard a stronger accent. She thought the world of you though and was really sorry to have missed you."

Ryan was raging inside. All he could manage was curt little responses to the rest of his mother's thirty minute long monologue. Even after thirty minutes when she finally hung up he was still erupting. His chest even ached.

There no question in his mind who that little cunt was.

Chapter Thirty Six: Tough talk

A year and a half before today's call, he'd gotten another call. From an old friend. He detested the tone of Dwayne's voice. He had been spared from it for twenty five years; since that last time he spoke with him before his trial and "rehabilitation".

He didn't even introduce himself, "What the fuck is going on Rausch? Why are cops sniffing around me again, because they have some interest in you. I thought you just liked to watch."

"I have no idea as to what you are referring to Dwayne. Perhaps you haven't lived a more wholesome life since school. Perhaps you are the person they were interested in, as I've not been contacted about anything related to that old mess or anything else. I'm a university professor now and you...?"

"I'm a fucking petty criminal. Damn proud of it too asshole. Well, they have come poking around asking about that old shit. Just thank your lucky stars and my sorry ass that I stuck by my old story. Which makes me think, that I did you a favor and that maybe you might want to do something nice for me, for a change?"

"Come to you point Dwayne. You have one I presume. What would make you both happy and make you disappear."

"Well, how's this kind of long term deal. Just like the first time. A thousand dollars each time I leave you out of the story, every time I have to retell it. That's two times now. That's me a grand behind in the payments, already."

Rausch agreed to the renewed terms; this time payment coming out of pocket and not from his mother out of her secret pharmacy earnings.

It seems, as Loveless had gone on to explain, that the police of Columbus, Ohio were following the slimmest of leads in the case of some dead coed from seven years before. A cold case.

Fort Worth, Texas was suddenly not the remote and safe haven he had hoped it would be. Rausch could hear the hounds.

Chapter Thirty Seven: Going for number four

And then, five months of anxiety later, Parker Fitzgerald re-entered his life. And all was well again.

And now, that little cunt girlfriend of Parker's was on the war path to destroy him and, smart enough, he knew to piece it all together.

Rausch thought he might need to commission his faithful servant, Dwayne, to perform much the same service as he had, at Rausch's behest, two weeks after Parker Fitzgerald became a "Texan".

Loveless had enjoyed killing Nancy Nichols. She was a stuck up slut. He especially enjoyed carrying out Rausch's specific instructions regarding her violation. He had been scrupulously careful about leaving DNA. Not that it would have mattered much, he thought. He had never been convicted of any significant crime, especially not of any offenses against women, except his "juvy" thing. There was no DNA of his on files anywhere. Roach told him how to break her neck and he was almost shocked at how efficient the technique was.

Killing Slaughter would be a different matter. Of an altogether different style. Her demise couldn't be yet another rape murder, not with the rape/murderer already in prison and just two weeks from execution. It had to be an "in the line of duty" thing or some sort of accident.

This would disappoint Loveless. Rausch, too. Rausch, in particular, because he had an ache to take her that way.

They agreed to a car accident. Unfortunate "pedestrian/vehicle" situation. Hit and run. One car, used and just purchased for cash. To be saturated with whisky and beer. Another car, rented in Michigan and parked a few blocks away from the dump site of car one. Car two driven back to Michigan the same day; odometer disconnected both ways. All arrangements made by Dwayne, payment for services and expenses no sooner than one year later. Roach paid his bills, Dwayne knew. Besides, they were partners.

It was to be done ASAP. At any point she might see the whole "schemata"; figure and ground would differentiate. She'd hear the chord and not just the notes.

Loveless was on the road the next morning. Two days out from arriving in Fort Worth and then no more than another couple of days, spent shadowing her to pick the "kill" spot and time. And it would be done. Then back to the petty crimes that were his bread and butter.

Chapter Thirty Eight: Service after the sale

Carrie was not just physically beautiful. Her authentic Texas accent was mesmerizing, particularly to men of the other states of the Union.

The morning of the 5th of August, she took a call from the manager of Hobart Volvo of Cleveland, Ohio.

"Miss Slaughter, I don't know if you recall but we had a conversation a while back regarding the title of a 73' Volvo 1800 ES."

"Yes I do, Mr?"

"Fremont Earl, we spoke in April".

"Yes I do recall Mr. Earl. How nice to hear from you" She sensed that something of value was forthcoming so she "charmed up".

He went on, "I was mistaken about the servicing of that vehicle. It had received some incidental service and at least the scheduled 50,000 mile service in Columbus, Ohio in May of '77. So, it is probably was maintained reasonably if that is of any interest to you now."

"Thank you so much Fremont for conveying this information to me. I will certainly pass it on. Goodnight and, again thanks so much."

Men, so driven by their libido, are even more driven by their desire to be of service to the women they admire.

Rausch's car, at least, had been in

Columbus the within days of the murder of Audrey Reynolds.

Rausch was a sodomizing woman hater. That was a superficial diagnosis, failing to explain anything; certainly now the "why" of it all. It didn't matter: it was enough to say that Rausch like to have anal sex with women and had enough anger towards them that sodomizing was not enough dominance for him. He killed them too. Valerie was convinced that Rausch was the criminal party of each case. Maybe, just maybe the Fort Worth Nichols case too. None of these cases could be made in court without some evidence other than the fact that three such crimes had occurred in cities were Rausch had been. And, dammit, you virtually couldn't use the OU case against Rausch, with Parker so definitively implicated by his DNA. Just as aggravating... no, nothing could be more aggravating than Parker's situation.... but aggravating nevertheless, was that the apparent connection between all the cases was fundamental to making any case. Without one of the cases as part of the set you had nothing. It takes three points to make the simplest geometric object. Two points and the simple line they implied was just not enough. Valerie just couldn't recognize the "constellation''; she couldn't see the geometry. And Parker wouldn't help her.

Parker was down to three weeks of life. A case against Roach could not be made in three weeks. Besides, interstate cooperation was not such that the State of Oklahoma cared that much about helping Michigan or Texas in clearing cases. In three weeks, with the execution of Parker, a cold case in OU would be resolved forever; to the credit of that Attorney General and all those he served.

It took two weeks and six days for the "bell to go off" in Valerie's mind. She could finally discern the "big dipper"; in the light of day even.

Chapter Thirty Nine: Rush to the Sooner State

From Fort Worth to Oklahoma City is about a four hour drive. You can't fly there any faster; by the time you add in transit to and from airports, to car rental etc. Driving gives you the best chance of making up time. Especially, if you are an attractive police detective, with the most unimaginable earnestness in your mission. One Texas and two Oklahoma state troopers gave her a pass when they stopped her; she was just that cute and just that intense.

She made it in three hours. That meant it was now two o'clock in the afternoon as she crossed the city line into OKC. Six hours before Parker was to die.

That she made it at all was almost a miracle given the precarious start of her day. She had checked into her office that morning. While crossing the street to the parking lot to begin her northward journey she was nearly run over by some asshole who had run the light or something. She was distracted, planning her trip and didn't notice the car hurtling toward her. A handsome and athletic young lawyer shoved her to safety, being hit himself by the side mirror of the car. He took a bruise but walked away a hero; which is always enjoyed by a young buck Texas trial lawyer.

Dwayne cursed his luck and dreaded the wrath of Rausch. There was no possibility of a "do-over". He switched the cars, as planned, and headed back to Michigan.

Chapter Forty: All that being said...

Lou invoked both lifetimes, the real and the theatrical, of law enforcement experience, to concoct, advocate and, most important, expedite a last minute interview of the Oklahoma death row inmate with the Texas law enforcement officer.

It was three o'clock when Carrie was admitted into Parker's cell. It was an unusual occurrence. The prison staff was flummoxed. The precise routine of execution day make their duties manageable; psychologically. Any disturbance was disturbing.

To rule out the possibility that Parker might make some last ditch effort to save himself by exploiting the presence of the unarmed woman, he was handcuffed to his bunk and she was instructed to remain out of his reach.

Seated in her folding metal chair, she glanced down at the food tray on his bed in front of him. The second half of a sandwich and a scatter of potato chips remained on the plate.

"That's it?"she asked.

Parker got it. "No... we're having brisket later... can you stay?"

They laughed hysterically; just not out-loud and with no hitch in their stern composure.

She wasn't going to waste another second. "He set you up," Valerie declared as assertively as a voice of such girlishly variable intonation would allow.

"You got on at Wesleyan because he made sure of it. When you got here, he killed Nichols, to turn attention towards you both, knowing that you could be linked to the OU case. He could be linked too, but he was willing to gamble that the young, testosterone addled loner was of more interest. He killed another girl seven years ago, in Columbus, Ohio. I'm all but sure of it. Same type of deal. Sodomy and physical trauma. He got away with it but I think he has been dogged by fear that the case would be reopened and then linked back to OU.

You applied to Wesleyan and he saw a chance to divert the manhunt forever. He got lucky on the DNA at OU. He probably didn't even know there was DNA evidence at all. He certainly could risk the gamble that they hadn't collected DNA evidence of him. It just wasn't the era yet.

Parker said nothing. Consent by silence. She was there. He could see that she knew she was. He could see that she say that he knew she knew. He almost laughed at that ridiculous train of thought. It worked with the facts and, with a quick revision of his assessment of the integrity of Rausch, it was deductively imperative that Rausch would devise and execute such a plan. Parker admitted to himself, he had not once entertained the idea that Rausch would set him up.

Parker's mind raced. Was it here, in this revelation? Was this the logical and, foremost important, ethical ground upon which to be released from his promise? This "betrayal".

He almost laughed out loud realizing he was working against the clock, like a quiz show contestant, to divine an ethical concept worthy of a PhD.

Valerie was ahead of him, at least in terms of having started the intellectual machinations at least six hours before. To know avail. She was missing premises. Maybe she really wasn't smart enough to do it.

He couldn't make the argument yet, but intuitively, he thought it was almost there to be made. The argument that would release him. He certainly felt less bound to Rausch by his vow of silence in light of his attempt to frame him.

Parker was "softening" up. Something within him, released him to kibbutz with her. He needed a muse, whether he would have realized it or not.

"Valerie, for a girl that has, as I once heard said, "never been past the mailbox", you are much brighter than you give yourself credit. You've made it all the way to the "reveal". I think that something magicians say."

I'll explain it... at least the concept of it all but not the particulars. And if you add up all the pieces to solve the whole puzzle, you are forbidden to act upon it. You will understand why, I think, but you must promise me... and I mean really promise me that you will not act upon this."

"I promise." She could sound earnest.

Valerie... keeping a promise is the hard part. They're easy enough to make because at the time you always strike the most favorable bargain. Keeping a promise, is sometimes nearly impossible; not because the initial terms weren't fair but because things can change."

"Kind of like when people say,

"I'll tell you blah blah if you promise you won't get mad.""

"Do you have to keep that promise? If the thing that is finally said is way out of scale ... if it is just something far more than you expected......do you have to keep that promise."

"Yes?" Valerie said timidly. "Well help me out, you're the professor."

Parker looked confused suddenly. Like he was stumped by his own question. "Maybe that is a bad example. You might get mad at what you hear, but in promising to , not get mad, you really meant you would not act upon the knowledge revealed. Shit, Valerie, I thought I understood this better myself."

He was quiet for a minute or two. This distressed her immensely. He was down to his last three hundred or so minutes.

"Valerie, I can't make a case in my mind that it is ever ethical to break a promise. Prudent sometimes, sure. Maybe even for the greatest good. But not ethical. A promise is binding. It's not like one of the ten commandments or something. We don't pledge to keep the commandments. We may sin when we commit those deeds but we don't break the commandments. There was no promise to keep them."

"Fuck, for a second I thought I had it with the "don't get mad promise". I thought for a minute the promise might not be binding because you didn't know what the revelation was going to be. But, that is to say the same thing as "a promise can be broken if the circumstances, downstream of the promise change. But, fuck it Valerie, its still he same deal, a promise is a promise."

Valerie was catching on... catching up. At first she thought Parker was just waxing on about the promise he made her make, just moments before, about her silence regarding things he was about to say. She got it now.

"We're talking about you! Shit Parker. So you are abiding a promise. A promise... and not some "carved on a stone tablet" kind of rule or your fuckin' fifth amendment rights. And by your terms a promise is a commitment. A commitment to whom... to God?"

"No Valerie, it isnot a commitment to God. God might have commanded we abide our commitments but when make a promise to someone it is not God we are bound by but rather the bearer of that promise."

Valerie was riled. "So, in this case it's a commitment to SOMEOME, not to some principle? So, who would let you die, by holding you to a promise that will cost you your life? Certainly not some dead person. You couldn't owe Tanya anything, she's dead. She's dead, and your death won't avenge her... it won't take away the sting of her death or change her eternity."

Valerie was rolling now. A juggernaut. "You made a promise in exchange for something. It wasn't for a fuckin' A in a junior philosophy class. It was for something every bit as valuable as you own life, or else you struck a really shitty bargain at the time or you're so fuckin' blinded by your fuckin' philosophical integrity bullshit that you can't see that it's all relevant." She meant to say "relative"; she made this mistake often. He thought it was cute.

"Valerie, it's not relative. All promises are binding until you are released from them. That's not to say breaking a promise isn't a mortal sin that will bring upon you total damnation. Most promises are petty and the damage done by breaking them is inconsequential and forgivable. God doesn't even command that we never break promises."

"And Valerie, I have struggled desperately with the notion that maybe keeping a promise should be weighed against its outcome; but that presupposes you place value upon the outcomes and we can't consider outcomes..", she cut him off mid-sentence. She was shreaking now.

"You dumb shit Parker, of course it should be. If you promise to buy me something for my birthday and then don't I wouldn't expect you to die because of it. So, how could you be bound to die for breaking any other promise? They're both sins regardless of the stakes... but you wouldn't let yourself die in order to not commit the first would you. Nor should you feel that you are bond to the death in the other case. Neither brings the punishment of death. Whatever fuckin' hole you dug yourself into ten years ago, it does not oblige you to die."

"Sometimes it does Valerie. Remember the promise you just made me. This is my tragedy, not yours. You cannot act on what I tell you. Promise me again." She gave her promise again.

"Here's the tragic part. I am not to die for breaking a promise. I will die for keeping the promise. I could break it and it would have only the most positive outcome for me. But it has no bearing on matters. I made a promise."

"I came upon Rausch, just after he'd murdered Tanya. It was unintentional, the murder. A rage thing, because I had just "been", so to speak, with Tanya. But it would have ruined his life had it been connected to him. His only way out would have been to kill me...he had no choice, but we struck a deal. My life in return for my silence. I accepted that deal and he made good on it. That things changed since then, doesn't obviate the deal. I can't save myself by breaking that pledge. I would not be alive but for having made that promise and the fact that Rausch knew I understood the moral imperative to keep that promise."

"He had a choice. He had choices! Staying out of jail wasn't his only choice. He had all sorts of choices. Self-preservation isn't the only choice for humans. It's what he chose for himself. You're the one who was deprived of choices, at the time so you made the only choice available for you at the time."

Their voices were now so agitated and loud, the guards where in motion to intervene.

"I had choices Carrie. I chose to make the offer, I made the pledge. It was my idea in the first place. It isn't mine to break to withdraw now or to break ever."

Valerie retorted, "What if he lied. What if he wasn't willing to kill you to conceal his guilt? What if you just took the bait? What if the promise, how ever earnestly made, was based on a lie?"

"What about the fact that he deliberately set you up so that you might die for his crimes." Didn't he promise you life when you made your pledge? Isn't he reneging on that promise by letting you die today?"

"No Valerie, there's other aspects to it. There's the issue of rational self –interest. Rausch was a free agent... with every right morally to preserve himself.... "

As loud as her lungs would permit, "Fuck all this talk if you can't seem to see it."

"Fuck it all!" Carrie screamed.

Almost with a snicker and suddenly substantially calmer, "Parker, you broke that promise. You just told a cop the whole story... a cop with a hell of a lot less sense of duty to principle."

"I don't keep promises, not even little ones."

She had less than three hours to derail the judicial system of the State of Oklahoma.

Chapter Forty One: Lights out...

Wesleyan had only 1000 students. Just the right amount of students to be able to totally coalesce around an issue or an event. Perhaps putting aside the greater responsibility of really adjudicating the issue of Parker's guilt or of his innocence, it was easy for all to at least protest his execution. At the least, a vigil for a confederate seemed appropriate. A chance to mingle as well. The thirty broad steps leading up to the doors of the Administration building were a photographic bonanza. Students, grim faced and placard bearing were arrayed across and up the entire staircase. You couldn't get a bad shot. There was a pretty coed in every frame. The local reporter could plant himself at the foot of the stairs and be blessed with an incomparable backdrop to his riveting narrative.

It aggravated Rausch, being reduced to bystander. Other faculty were being interviewed. His good sense, told him to sit this one out.

Holding court to the philosophy students in the crowd was to his liking. He could scarcely let a half a minute pass without glancing at his watch. He hitched up his sleeve slightly to make his constant surveillance of it more discrete.

Rausch, finally, found an audience in a small clump of students, he saddled up to. "A gubernatorial stay is his only hope at this time. They do happen... in the nick of time, usually, for some odd theatrical reason. We can only pray." Having nicely punched this statement with the prayer comment, he followed with "I need to step away.....Do you know if there is a working phone in the building?"

"Second floor by the financial aid office," declared a coed. Rausch, large as we is, was quick in climbing the thirty steps and disappearing within the building.

Per the official time keeper, the curiously outspoken nerd among them, it was 7:50 PM.

"I thought these things always happened at midnight. Eight o'clock is a strange time to die,." queried one student. "It's broad daylight."

"Probably so they don't have to serve a last snack before they put out the big light."

"God you're an ass. Last one of these things I bring you to."

A few more minutes passed and then, apparently without instigation, small circles of student holding hands started to form all over the lawn. Every sentence of the twenty third psalm was being recited like a song sung as a round.

"Eight o'clock," announced the nerd.

Chapter Forty Two: How the story ends....

Rausch was just inside the building courting a small gaggle of undergraduates.

"I suppose philosophy is the perfect intellectual pursuit. It has given me years of satisfaction refining my own understanding and conveying such timeless wisdom to young acolytes like you." For the first time in two years Rausch felt like his old self. Secure. He'd spent the last ten minutes in the lavatory not fully comfortable with what his manner may have been during the last minutes of the countdown.

A student, vying for an A, asked, "Is there some particular theory or something you're working on right now professor?"

"Publish or perish... right now I working on a monograph about how one must be able to distinguish between the general notions of ethics and the specific acts in ethics... called rule versus act utilitarianism . In fact, I may include a true anecdote about a former student of mine who failed to recognize this distinction; very much to his misfortune." He hated that the depth of this quip would be unnoticed by his gallery.

.

They however were quite noteful of the pretty young woman, in the pant suit, and the two uniformed police officers coming fast upon Rausch as he began the next round of stunning oratory.

The end.

About me. I am, yet again and perhaps hereafter, an unemployed architect. This story came to me during my first period of unemployment, ten years ago. I was lying on the coach. I can't recall the conception other than suddenly in my mind was this idea of a junior and senior philosopher, brought together just like in my story, stuck upon the "horns" of a philosophical dilemna. BTW, most of this story is autobiographical and the characters are folks I have known; either in terms of personality or physical description. Rausch is an homage to an actor friend of mine who, though totally unlike the fiend in the story in terms of personality and values, would be the perfect actor to embody him physically. Valerie is an homage to a woman I once worked with, whose beauty and "Texas" style was a daily pleasure and whom I sort of gave the "creeps" with my avuncular attentions. Tanya was the TA in my "philosophy of mind" class in 1971. Just as I described. No, I did not have sex with her. Just admired her style. Aaron is a guy I met, as a teenager, working on an oil rig in northern Alberta as a camp attendant. He scared the shit out of me but was a really cool guy. Took me out in the forest and taught me about nature. I thought he was intending to kill me at first; maybe he did. Dwayne isan homage to an asshole former employer with nothing near the sophistication of the Dwayne in my story.

I love old Volvos, researching the Kennedy assassination, my son Parker, my daughter Taylor and my wife Karen. Sodomy is not a passion of mine.

I hope you enjoyed this story. My next one, "Tug", is really strange but I think it will be really fun; just some kinks to work out. Virtually sodomy free. It's about a dog.

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