The Resolution

Who killed Ronnie Fells?

Melissa’s finger paused on the “Walk” button most of the University’s bovine herd ignored. Couple times a semester, some oblivious moron, some entitled pedestrian constitutionalist with an immortality complex or a misunderstanding of the superpowers conferred with a doctorate got dislocated or ruptured at this corner near the student union. They made the button extra big and enameled the huge raised arrow so even a medieval lit major could spot it, and still, the world sporadically lost another great MBA, hotel manager, halfback, or biochemist at the intersection of Davis and University.

A disproportionate share of them seemed to be Greeks. Not Parthenon/spanakopita Greeks – the dudes who generally defiled everything between the Ionic or Doric columns that held up their privileged Frat Row digs. Especially any “sisters” who crossed their arched thresholds any given Saturday night. They had greater odds surviving intact rushing the yellow here at 5 p.m. on Move-In Day, Melissa reflected with a grim smile, recalling her single sophomore brush that opened up pledge space at the Theta Omega house and ruined a potentially fruitful NCAA career.

It had been decoupaged to the streetlight by the elements, amid a collage of personal solicitations, missing pets, shitty band flyers, and pedantic and esoterically furious social missives.

In 1976, Ronnie Fells was attacked outside the Phi Rho house at 450 South Rudolph. Most students had already left campus for winter break, but Ronnie remained on campus to work a few shifts at the campus McDonald’s for Christmas gift money. After sharing a few drinks with a friend on her own way out of town, Ronnie began the five-block walk back to the Phi Ro house where she lived. The next morning, a passerby found her body in the shrubs beside the sorority, with severe head injuries. Barely alive, Ronnie was transported to Millington St. Mark’s Hospital, where she passed away on Christmas Eve.

A 47-YEAR-OLD COLD CASE. NO WITNESSES. NO SUSPECTS QUESTIONED; NO LEADS FOLLOWED UP ON. Listen to the full details of the case on the new podcast RONNIE’S FINAL CHRISTMAS—

“You can fucking go any time, you know.”

Professor Urquardt fixed the boy with an utterly blank look. “So can fucking you,” she noted, quietly. The kid in the University-blue hoodie unconsciously rocked back, his red rat-shit wisp of a beard twitching in the welcome July breeze. Melissa’s index finger left the button, but she stood planted, looking back to the flyer.

Like assholes and opinions, Melissa reflected. Everybody’s got a podcast.

**

“You listen to podcasts.”

Jae didn’t glance up from their double-wide monitor, but instead selected another Taki and transferred five tracks simultaneously. “That’s a question, right? I think I’m getting the subtle rhythms of your flatline inflections, but—“

“Shut up.”

Snacks were verboten in the Premiere bay, but summer rules now applied, Jae was the most intuitive (and distraction-free) videographer/editor ever immune to Melissa, and despite a recent Time cover and a near-Pulitzer nod, Urquardt was paying a self-imposed penance in terabytes of University staff video and alumni fundraising porn.

“So which podcast?”

“You ever listen to something called Ronnie’s Final Christmas? Local production, maybe a couple years ago.”

“Sorority chick killed back in the ‘70s? Ronnie Something? Cops kinda brushed it under the rug?”

Melissa rolled up a chair. “Ronnie Fells. They did? The cops?”

“Well, the dude did. The podcaster. I mean, he did like three parts, then it just disappeared. He spent the first two shows monologuing and speculating, and the last segment was about the cops and the girl’s sister being evasive and vague. I mean, shit, it was, what, 47 years ago? The sister’s gotta be on a ventilator by now, and weren’t the cops more interested in busting hippies’ heads back then?”

“Forty-eight years ago – I saw it on an old flyer with a dead QR link.”

“Yeah, I found it on a Podcast app – that shit lingers in the blogosphere for eternity. Jae shoved the Takis bag aside and pulled a pre-COVID iPhone from their backpack. It was, Melissa knew, the perennial post-grad’s last link with their Southern Illinois parents. Jae’s black-nailed thumbs worked at the screen, then the student abruptly shoved the phone at their “mentor.”

“Why don’t you do that in your office? At least if you want your campus sustainability shizzle ready for Cannes.”

**

“Fuck, that was like a year ago.”

Or seven Gen-Z years, Melissa mused. Though by those calculations she would be about 200, it didn’t keep the former Dante Muertos, AKA Carey Tosch, from openly appraising the former photojournalist. To Professor Urquardt, the male gaze was merely a timewaster, and if the reviews of her academic demeanor were of significance, one could catch more bees with honey than by stuffing their shattered wings up their rectum.

“I take it you bailed after you couldn’t get anybody to give a rat’s ass.” Melissa was not that breed of Hymenoptera.

“I just fucking lost interest,” Tosch muttered. “People love those old cold cases – innocent coed meets an untimely end, maybe some sex angle. But whatever it was just pure murder, no real hook. The cops had forgot it a long time ago, and they were going to make me file an FOI to dig out the original file. Plus, I couldn’t find a sponsor, not even the vape joint next to the CVS. And the sister got all up my ass about dredging up bad memories. It just wasn’t, you know…”

“Fun any more?”

Carey nodded earnestly. “Look, you want to take a run at it? I got some photos from the Fells woman, before she went all megabitch on me. I can make you a good deal?”

Melissa wanted to grab the doughy slacker by the ears and negotiate a royalty-free deal. But God seemingly had granted him neither a brain nor lobes, so she took a different tack.

**

“Well, pardon me, but that’s simply bullshit,” Rina Fells stated.

Melissa buried her spoon in the Extra Crunchy JIF that served as tonight’s supper. “How so?”

“Closure may be overrated, but I was hoping this kid might give me some resolution.” An edge of anger was building in the old woman’s voice. “ I guess this was just a hobby for him, and he lost interest pretty quick. After I dredged up all those photos and letters and memories…”

“Yeah, about that. You didn’t go to the University, right?”

“Wasn’t my thing back in those days.” A hint of amusement seemed to dilute the anger. “I won’t bother to tell you what was.”

Good, Melissa thought.

“Anyway, I got a job at the local paper, and that turned out to be my thing. Retired as city editor last year, right after my last round of chemo, knock on wood.

“But the photos, yeah —Ronnie’s sorority buddies sent me hundreds of photos they’d taken. Polaroids, 35-millimeter, to post at the visitation. Our folks weren’t memory board people, so I just kept and eventually scanned them. That’s what I sent that weasel bastard. You could probably get them from him, he hasn’t deleted them…”

“I’d actually like ‘em from you.”

“They’re big files, but I’ll send you a Google Drive link soon as we hang up. I thought I recognized the name, Professor Urquardt. I do a course at the community college, photojournalism, and if it’s not too nervy, I think meeting the woman who broke that trafficking—“

“I appreciate it,” Melissa fabricated, “but I’m ass-deep in campus deadlines. You been there.”

Rina paused. “Yeah. TIFs work for you?”

**

“And that was the problem,” Melissa conceded, bisecting a black pudding. Breakfast for lunch was a favorite, and she favored a coma-inducing Irish spread.

Professor Deshpande daubed a tine full of boxty thtough her apple sauce. “The .jpg is the graphic currency of the lay public. And this podcaster, that’s what he sent you?”

Melissa hadn’t shared the details of Tosch’s “cooperation.” “He forwarded me a set of .jpgs, instead of the .tifs Rina sent him initially. Luckily, he used minimum compression , or I’d never spotted the doctoring.”

 “The .tif format typically uses lossless compression, preserving all pixel data. When you convert to .jpg, the entire image undergoes lossy compression. The cloned area will be compressed along with the rest of the image, resulting in further deterioration.”

“Yeah, you know I work for a University art department?”

The chairman of said department sipped serenely at her Earl Grey. “I’m simply setting context. The sister is an editor, with an eye primarily to print quality. Ms. Fells essentially enshrined these images, and lovingly preserved them at the highest resolution. Your new media wunderkind operates — or operated — outside visual media. He purported to need these images to get a ‘feel’ for his subject. Why convert them, compress them, create a new batch just for you? Perhaps to alter them? But, again, why?”

“And that was what was weird. Fells’ and Carey’s photos seemed nearly identical. And the strangest thing was the man in two-third of both sets. The man with the shitty ‘70s hip professor fashion sense. The dude with the weird ears.”

“Attached lobes — a common genetic trait in some family lines, though fleshy free-hanging lobes are far more common. Do you know, Central India has a gene frequency of only 19 to 24 percent attached earlobes? In the United States, that frequency is 2 to 3 percent, so the odds of a familial trait were far higher.

“I searched through the University’s archives. Professor Thornton Tosch, PhD., philosophy and ethics, 1968 to 2013. There was something of a flap when he married one of his grad students, but as Thea argued, it was a different time. He went to the mat for his female students and colleagues on several occasions, and there was no evidence of romantic or sexual quid pro quo.”

“He still in town? He’d have to be, what, about 90?”

“Well,” Deshpande murmured. “That is the rub. Three years after his retirement, his daughter – presumably young Tosch’s mother -- went to check on him. He had been long-divorced, and in declining health when he left the university, and he lived on Reed Drive – one of those gingerbread bricks. His unfortunate daughter discovered him in his detached garage, deceased from carbon monoxide fumes. It may be significant that Professor Tosch’s obituary asked that any and all memorials be directed to the American Cancer Society.”

“Or maybe guilt,” Melissa grunted.

“But if Thornton Tosch had developed a fixation on Ronnie Fells, if he had indeed killed her, why would his grandson not have deleted him from these photos? You said they have been doctored.”

Professor Urquardt withdrew both sets of photos from the envelope. She’d picked Maggie’s both for the thresher man’s breakfast and the high-backed wood booths, and Chairman Deshpande began to examine Carey’s and Rina Fells’ sets. “I considered Tosch might have wanted to frame Grandpa. Maybe he was with his mom when they found old cyanotic Thornton. But even if the little shit was the best Photoshopper in the world, I’d have spotted it.

“So I scanned every centimeter of every photo. As it turned out, I found alterations in every image where Thornton was present. Small changes – a few cloned pixel segments here or there –sky or bark or vegetation.” Melissa tapped the photo before her boss, and shuffled through Rina Fells’ set. “You see it? If you looked at it 400 or 500 percent, you’d see the cloning in the .jpg version.”

Deshpande glanced up with a tight smile. “And who watches the watchman?”

**

“What made you nervous?”

Carey Tosch dropped the huge plastic sack he’d juggled with his keys, and pad thai cascaded over the cheap Five Below rug. Melissa stopped a runaway shumai with her boot.

“Fuck! FUCK!” he gasped, knocking over a badly assembled Target torchiere lamp. He struggled to the armchair opposite the couch where Professor Urquardt had been waiting in the twilight

“I’m calling fucking 9-1-1!” he yelled. Tosch sounded like he’d start bawling any second.

“Are you, though?”

“What are you doing here?”

Melissa rose, and Carey banged back against the apartment door. She grinned, stepped over the fallen lamp, and peered at Carey’s family gallery, watching for peripheral movement.

“These tell a lot better story than you’re capable of.” She tapped the family portrait, before a two-story that looked to be in the Chicago burbs. “Little Carey, Mom, Dad, and I assume Grandma.” She moved on to a shot of a beaming adolescent Carey with his arm around the same well-dressed woman, older now, slightly more stooped. “Where’s Grandpa Thornton? Why’d you come up with this whole podcast thing? To see if anything had ever come up in the case? What actually happened?”

Carey slumped. “They got divorced when I was three -- he never called or came around or anything. The university was his whole deal, and when he got sick, Mom tried to, you know, mend borders.”

“Fences.”

“He was an asshole about it all, didn’t need our help. I think he’d been drinking. Like for days. Mom and him got into it, and she mentioned how Grandma’d warned us not to even try. Then, Grandpa went off, said ‘her holiness’ wasn’t so holy.”

“Dr. Caroline Salten – didn’t connect it up ‘til an, uh, friend told me she and Thornton hooked up in the ‘70s. Former assistant dean of humanities. Led that women’s march after Roe v. Wade got knocked down. Impressive.”

“She always kind of scared me. But one night, I confronted her. I expected her to blow up, but instead, she started crying, which was kinda worse, you know?”

“Oh, I do. What’d she tell you? That she’d caught your grandpa cheating with some student, with Ronnie Fells? Shadowing her like a lovesick dog? I saw what you took out of those photos – Rina wouldn’t have had any idea what it meant, either your grandpa or your grandma shadowing Thornton.”

Carey pulled at his face with both hands. “That was the worst part. Grandpa was this goody-goody hippie prof – worried about his students probably too much. Grandma told me his sister had hung herself when he was a boy, and he had like this psychosis about sexual abuse.” Psychosis, Melissa reflected. “This Ronnie had a shithead boyfriend, angry drunk and drunk most of the time. Grandpa started watching out for her, and Grandma got the idea he was screwing one of his students.”

“She would,” Melissa muttered. “So Grandma gets Ronnie alone one night during winter break. But…?”

“She wasn’t too clear about that,” Carey said hollowly. “But Grandpa made a big deal with the cops about Ronnie’s murder, and she had to tell him just to shut him up. Which he did, though it fucked up the marriage. He’d made her kill somebody.”

“Made her,” Melissa echoed. “And Grandpa bought into it ‘til he eventually took the big hit off a tailpipe.” Carey broke eye contact, and Professor Urquardt plopped back onto the couch. “Fucking shit. She was worried he’d spill. Did you help her?”

“He was dying anyway. Grandma didn’t have anything to do with it – most of Grandpa’s neighbors worked at the University, and she didn’t want to take the chance…”

“Fucking fuck,” Melissa breathed. Carey started to cry, and it was a good five minutes before she could make it up and out the door and 10 more on the phone with some cop Chairman Deshpande’d futilely recommended calling before making the approach. After 15 minutes on the front stoop, she began the cross-campus trek home.

In July, free of human impediments, University was a mercifully desolate stretch, and as Melissa came up on the Student Union, she emerged from the bubble just long enough to punch the big metal button. The white guy on the light directed her to proceed.

The squeal of tires jolted Melissa to life, and she spotted a pouf of white hair as the Prius rounded the corner widely, wildly, propelling an evasive Professor Urquardt into the metal pole just below the pedestrian avatar.   

A name popped into her flickering mind as a socially responsible sedan skidded into the signal cattycorner with what even in her current state could only be described as a highly satisfying crunch. Reflective white on green. It hovered above until the fadeout.

DAVIS.

**

Who Killed Paul Ropp?

The limping blonde stopped, planting a stabilizing palm on the pole as a pair of nattering freshmen nearly skirted past her. The handsome young man in the photo was beaming, a world seemingly ahead of him. The fraternity sweatshirt was taut along his chest, bagged about the abs. Left bicep in sculpted relief about the shoulder of a pretty young woman, grinning in anticipation of the same unfolding world. Fingers tight against her tanned forearm, his eyes on second examination slightly unfocused even under the grainy, washed color. Ronnie’s “grin” transcended the grain.

January 10, 1976: Paul Ropp was headed back to the Alpha Sigma house after an evening on campus being comforted by friends over the recent murder of his girlfriend. A half hour after leaving his friends, Paul perished under the wheels of a late-night train. Police wrote Ropp’s death off as a drunken accident, but WAS IT? A witness claimed to have seen a second man talking to Paul, but unlike the energy poured into the investigation of his GIRLFRIEND’S death, the cops turned a deaf ear.

Was Paul Ropp the victim of both a psychotic killer and a feminist/misandrist ‘70s counterculture? Find out on MAN SLAUGHTER, a six-part podcast…

A cool shadow fell over the blonde as she vaguely registered the ping of knuckles on metal and jerked the freshly-applied flyer from the brushed metal.

“Hey,” the source of the shadow wheedled. “I wasn’t done. I love true crime shit...”

Melissa glanced up at the countdown commencing across University. “You can fucking go any time now.”