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burn off tension. But I have to say, I knew a few other rugby players, and none of them ever looked like they'd been run over by a truck the way Greg did. And this seemed to happen regularly. It occurred to me he might be—let me just put it bluntly—in an abusive relationship."
"You never asked him?"
"Once I did, actually. I thought I had to. I said something about his black eye, and had somebody socked him one? This was a chance for him to open up if he wanted to. But he didn't pick up on this. He said oh, no, it was just a wicked weekend game with some of the rougher players in his league. I let it go after that, thinking that either he had to work this out on his own at his own pace, or that maybe I was just imagining the whole thing as to any abuse.
Educators used to be inattentive about this sort of thing, and now maybe we've overcompensated and we've gotten hypersensitive. It's hard these days to know when to butt in and when to butt out."
"Any signs of a rugby team at Greg's funeral?"
"Not that I noticed. It seemed to be mainly family and friends of the Stiver family, plus a few other faculty and students from the econ department. There was somebody from the Federalist Society I recognized."
"Both of Greg's parents were there?"
"I believe so. Why wouldn't they be?"
"I've been told Greg's father, Anson, is a nasty piece of work, and they didn't get along."
"I didn't know that, but then Greg never talked about his family at all with me. He preferred to talk economic theory 78
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and history, and it was the nature of our relationship that he could do that with me and just lose himself in it, the way some people lose themselves in drugs or sports memorabilia or line dancing. I'm a little bit that way myself with economic theory, although I do manage to have a life otherwise. My wife sees to it that I come out of my academic cave from time to time, and I am grateful to her for that."
"What about political figures? Were there any at the funeral?"
Podolski tugged at his beard as if to stimulate memory.
"None that I'm aware of. Why do you ask? Is your investigation politically related somehow?"
"Possibly. It's too soon to tell what my investigation is really about or where it might lead."
"Does somebody think Greg might have been pushed off Quad Four? I have to say, I've been haunted by that possibility ever since he died. I assumed at the time that the police would have considered foul play, and then they rejected it based on the evidence they had. Of course, if they had asked my opinion about Greg committing suicide, I'd have told them that to me it was unlikely. But they never asked. Apparently they based their conclusion on the physical evidence and little else."
"The Albany cops did talk to Greg's neighbors, Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman, who told them that Greg had been anxious and depressed for many weeks. Did Greg ever mention Insinger and Jackman to you?"
"Not that I recall."
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"Those two also told me that Greg was romantically involved with a political figure he met when this man visited one of Greg's classes at SUNY. Do you know who they might have been referring to?"
More beard tugging. "None comes to mind. Political figure?
On rare occasions members of the State Legislature are on campus for one reason or another. Or the governor. Who was governor five years ago? George Pataki, I guess. Or—I have to ask—do you actually know who the politician was that Greg was getting it on with and you're just being coy with me?"
"I'm trying to be discreet. Call it coy if you want to."
"Then I suppose I could figure it out. I could ask around the department. But why don't you just tell me who it was and save me a lot time?"
"Kenyon Louderbush."
"The Tea Party guy running for governor?"
"Yes."
"Yuck."
"Republicans can be sexy. I've read that one reason Laura Bush has stuck with her doofus of a husband for so many years is, she considers him a hot number."
"That's enough about Laura and W behind closed doors. As my students sometimes say, TMI."
"Couldn't Louderbush have visited a class without your knowledge?"
"Possible but not likely. I'm vice chair of the department, and faculty always give me or Doris Carpenter, who's the chair, a heads-up as to any visiting royalty. Legislators have to be wined and dined, at least figuratively speaking. And 80
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Louderbush is one of those budget-committee characters whose presence in the department—or on campus at all—
would be taken very, very seriously by the powers that be around here. No, I would have known about Louderbush showing up on campus. I really doubt that that's where the two of them met."
This was getting confusing. I said, "I keep getting different stories from different people as to who Greg Stiver was and how he led his life and what his state of mind was in the months before he died. He was depressed, he wasn't depressed. He was an isolated economics wonk in an abusive relationship, or he was an eager young man looking forward to launching a career in academia who let off steam regularly by charging around and getting banged up on a rugby field.
Greg's story gets more Rashomon like by the hour."
Podolski seemed to be gazing at my bandaged ear. "It looks like you're into rugby pretty heavily yourself, Donald. Or is your own story also more complicated than you're letting on?"
"You could say so, yeah."
"Anyway, I love your bag."
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
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Chapter Nine
Loitering in a car outside an elementary school is a good way to draw unwanted attention if you're not the parent of one or more of the pupils inside. So I parked in what appeared to be the staff lot, locked the shoulder bag in the trunk of the Corolla, and strode up to the uniformed security guard outside the main entrance. The stout, seventyish, Caucasian man was shifting this way and that, looking as if he was about ready to finish his shift and get the heck off school property and go somewhere and have a smoke—I could smell it on him—and a brew. The curb fifty feet away was lined with idling school buses, their drivers poised, awaiting the onslaught.
"Sir, I'm looking for Jennifer Stiver. Is she likely to come out this way?"
"Prob'ly."
"So, school's out in three minutes?"
"Yeah, about that. But the teachers won't be out yet. They mostly stay late."
"Will Jenny be in her classroom?"
"Prob'ly."
"I'm her cousin Donald from Minneapolis. She doesn't even know I'm in town. Aunt Elva thought I should surprise Jenny and she'd get a kick out of that."
"That's nice. She's in room twenty-six. Just tell the office first."
"Thank you, sir."
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I stood aside when a bell went off, the entire building seemed to tremble on its foundations, and the doors burst open and unleashed a hopping and skipping swarm of small people jabbering and hollering. The loading of the buses by the drivers and cadres of aides was carried out as efficiently as any UPS overnight sorting operation. None of the hundreds of first-to-sixth graders wandered off or fell under a bus or sneaked behind a bush to smoke pot. Within a fast five minutes, the buses shut their doors and roared down the street in a mighty convoy behind which lesser traffic would soon creep along, in Buddhist-monk-like synchronicity with a universe that was orderly and moral twice a day.