Prof. Dr. Caroline Wood

Let’s get something straight before we begin. There is no other academia than “dark”. There is no such thing as light academia, or cozy academia, or even an academic aesthetic – academia is exclusively a place of darkness, of obtuse speech and veiled motivations. There is no hope in academia; there is no love in academia. There is only the cold, hard call of grants and cutthroat office politics pulling you over the edge into the void of retirement. It’s not Harry Potter - more like The Secret History, but worse: it’s not fiction.

That’s why no one was surprised when an academic’s bloody femur was found outside the Research and Development building early one Tuesday morning. What was surprising was that it was Dr. Dekker’s femur.

See, she had been the department’s shining star for the past five years – students called her “Divine Dr. Dekker.” No skin off my nose; tenure has long since kept me from caring about what the students think. Still, she got grants – that was the real trouble. Government loved the little whore as much as the pupils did, and that tended to rub her colleagues the wrong way. No one likes a show-off, and the way our department rolls you can’t escape the bureaucrats’ desperation for attention and pride, even if you do nothing yourself. That was Dr. Dekker – praised, lauded, humble and hated.

And dead. Can’t forget dead.

I did my best to stay out of things, at least at first. Bitch didn’t even have the decency to get herself offed after the major conference application deadline, so hell if I was going to go out of my way to help her corpse; I had an abstract to write. Still, my period of willful ignorance was soon to come to an end in the form of an absolute brute of a man knocking on my office door roughly three days after the femur’s discovery.

To be frank, he looked a bit like an emeritus that once propositioned me after a particularly well-funded conference reception. The lank hair in a weak combover paired with a moustache in the Selleckian tradition gave his face a thoroughly disproportionate look – add in eyebags that would make a TSA agent weep and you have the general idea.

“Professor Wood?”

I didn’t want to deign him with a response, but sighing, I did in the end: “Yes. Is this about Dr. Dekker?”

He nodded, jowls waggling over a too-tight collar. “They said you weren’t a fan.”

Weren’t a fan. What an understatement. She made me sick – a false god among an army of plebeians sucking dry the opiate of the masses: easy grades. It was the only reason they followed her like so many puppies. Broad the road to passing, narrow the road to deserving it and all that. I walked the narrow road.

“Dr. Dekker and I had … “ I paused, considering the least incriminating way to phrase it, “limited interactions over the course of our careers. Her research was focused on social psychology while I am a veteran of the psychoanalytical circles. Conferences at Berkeley versus conferences at Sorbonne, the colonies versus Paris, we hardly crossed paths.”

“But you’re her department head.”

“Clearly you haven’t spent much time at a university. I’m in meetings, darling – meetings like you wouldn’t believe. Absolutely nothing can be an email at this damned, God-forsaken institu … well, the point is, I really only signed her travel papers for reimbursements.”

Sergeant Clod nodded, taking down some notes in a pitifully small notebook the colour of the student center’s restrooms. I had kept my laptop open until now, hoping he would plod off to wherever he came from, but sensing yet another unwanted continuation of this conversation, I closed it gingerly, glaring pointedly at my unwanted interruption. He ignored me like a student during an 8am philosophy lecture.

“The students say you were jealous of her.”

Now THAT was a bridge too far. Jealous? Of that little trollop? The absolute nerve almost staggered me into raising an eyebrow, but I had not hit every single KPI they piled on me for the past three decades for nothing. The eyebrow remained in place, though I may have allowed an additional glower to darken my existing expression.

“The only ones jealous of Dr. Dekker were those who desired the attention of the students,” I replied drily, “something in which, those same students will be the first to admit, I had less than zero interest. If you’re looking for suspects who longed for affection, I would have a long chat with Professor Wanless in biochemical engineering. Word at the water cooler is several of his female colleagues wished he would take a long walk off a short plank after the most recent symposium on amygdala hacking.”

Lacking my own composure, the man’s eyebrows raised, pencil still dragging along the page at the speed of an undergrad to class after lunch. After a minor age, he looked back up at me, my glare still neatly in place.

“You have better things to do than help solve a murder?”

“An infinite number.”

“You know, most people try to act at least a little disturbed when asked about a murder. To avoid becoming a suspect.”

“Those people aren’t me, nor were they raised by my mother. Anything else, or may I get on with my never-ending to-dos?”

“Your mother?”

“Psychoanalysis, dear, I told you – do keep up.”

The raised eyebrow furrowed briefly, but in the end, as I always do, I got what I wanted. The filthy little notebook closed, the pencil was tucked behind an equally grubby ear, and, to my dismay, he was handing me what appeared to be a business card.

“If you come up with anything else, let me know. I’ll go speak to this Professor … Walgreen?”

“Wanless,” I corrected, taking the card with my nails to avoid dirtying myself and placing it daintily on a napkin on my desk. “You’ll find him at Frances Arnold Hall – to the east of here and then down the hill.”

He nodded, tipped his hat like he was doing a poor Dick van Dyke impression, and headed in the wrong direction, failing to close the door behind him. Like this university needs any more failures than it already has. Sighing, with no research assistants on hand to perform the menial task, I stooped to closing my own down before sitting down again to yet another round of article revisions. I was hopeful that I could be Reviewer 2 on another of Dr. Doux’s papers to ensure more of her quantitative nonsense wouldn’t invade the public sphere. Reducing the human experience to numbers … Freud would never.

~*~

It was three days later after my weekly Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious course when Inspector Clouseau darkened my door yet again. Well, not my door per se – it was technically the door of the twice-damned classroom I was forced to teach in. Regardless, it was darkened. I could tell it was being darkened because the students suddenly hushed, something that only typically happened while I was talking; given the fact that I was not, at the time, talking, I could only assume the ongoing drama was rearing its head.

“Remembered anything new, Prof. Wood?”

“To be frank,” I replied, continuing to pack my notes and chalk, “I haven’t given it any thought. As we discussed, I am busy beyond mortal comprehension, and the university refuses to lower my teaching load.”

“A colleague was murdered a building away from your office, and you haven’t even thought about it once?”

“No. When I say no, I mean no the first time I say it. This is worth remembering for future conversations, though I hope this will be our last.”

“Why not?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why haven’t you thought about it?”

“A question for a question,” I replied, too irate after three hours of teaching to just let this ignoramus go, “why should I have thought about it?”

“You could be next.”

“I don’t fit the profile.”

“Profile?” he replied, a hint of bemused surprise gracing his otherwise dour face, “I didn’t take you for a true crime fan, Professor.”

“Nothing so vulgar,” I rebuked, “I am a professor of psychoanalytics, and therefore, although I prefer Freudian lines, I am familiar with the work of Jung. Killers, like we all do, work with archetypes hidden in the collective unconscious. Dr. Dekker was the Innocent, while I am the Sage. If he is killing innocents, I should be perfectly safe.”

“I’ll pass that on to Quantico,” he droned, approaching the small podium at which I taught and placing a series of photos down one by one on it. Had I been a weaker woman, I may have swooned. Dr. Dekker was no longer a mere femur, but a rather grisly mess, were these images to be believed. “You found the rest of her, I take it,” I intoned, voice carefully measured to disguise any disgust that was not directed at the man holding the pictures.

“Still no thoughts?”

“On Dr. Dekker? No. On the killer, though, I would be looking for a Jester. There is nothing orderly about this, so not a Ruler, and Dr. Dekker was not in a position of authority, so I don’t see this being an Outlaw either.”

“Is Prof. Wanless a Jester?”

I was tired from my lecture, and unable to restrain a barking laugh, much to my shame. “Only within his field,” I replied, “and in the conscious world, he imagines himself the Lover, as I’m sure even you’ve ascertained if you followed my advice.” He nodded. “In the unconscious,” I continued, “he’s an Everyman at best.”

When he began gathering up the photos again, I took this as my signal that I was free of the man for another day. My own belongings collected, I was nearly out the door when I heard him from behind me.

“She hated you, you know. Dr. Dekker.”

Now this caused me to pause. I had never before heard of Dr. Dekker hating anyone, anything, ever. She was light – as I said, a true Innocent of the Jungian tradition. That she hated, and that anyone knew that she hated, was far more shocking than the fact that she hated me specifically.

“She hated how little you cared,” he continued, “how you treated your colleagues as less than yourself when you acknowledged them at all. She hated your self-promotion and how you considered the staff to be, and I quote, ‘no more than indentured servants who should be so grateful as to bask in your presence’, end quote.”

I turned to see that he was reading from a new notebook. This one, like his own, was well-used, but much better kept. It was a midnight black, some kind of suede, and thick – unusually so for what I had guessed at this point was a diary. It looked unnervingly like my own.

“But she tried hard not to hate you. Let me quote her again here: ‘The worst part is, I can’t even blame her for it. She’s from a generation that was taught to compete, and only to compete. I’d probably be the same if I went to school when she did. I just wish she understood how much misery she causes everyone around her. I wish she really got it, and how such small changes could make it all so much better for us all. But … I need to give her more grace. I really do. I wouldn’t be this hard on my parents, who are from the same time, so I shouldn’t be so hard on her. I just need to figure out how to treat her with respect without losing my mind or my integrity,’ end quote.”

The emotions I felt were, at that moment, complex. I had achieved so much more over so much longer, and none of that was mentioned. She never once considered my publications, my sacrifices, my awards or my network. She didn’t see me as an assistant or associate professor. She never talked about the committees I chaired and how I clawed my way through each grant season, strategically choosing topics that were in vogue with funders in my circle and all the nights calculating flights and trains and hotels to ensure that everyone in the world knew what I did. She didn’t say a damn thing about how many times I lied about appreciating the swine that were my colleagues to increase my university’s international reputation. No. No that wretched corpse only talked about me as a person. As a human. And I think this was the first time I considered her one too.

“Her death is more of a tragedy than I thought,” I said primly, “apparently there was some potential there.”

~*~

It took three months, but they did eventually find her killer. You’ll be disappointed to know that it wasn’t the heinous Professor Wanless, although the sad sack did take an early retirement, much to the collective relief of women campus-wide. In the end, it was a student, a student who got a 95 instead of 100 on an assignment because Dr. Dekker insisted on late marks. She died for standing by academic integrity.

I had been at a conference in Vienna for her funeral, although I heard that it was poorly attended. Conference season will do that to a funeral, though that shouldn’t have affected many of the undergrads she loved. When I got back, I found myself at her grave. It was quiet, peaceful, nothing like her classes had been. The noise complaints I fielded as her boss were legends among the HR department. Still, it felt more like that little black diary than what I had known. The grave was plain, not even marble, and simply said “Lina Dekker” in a simple blocky font – no flowers, no gifts. I checked my watch – 3:30pm, and I had another abstract deadline at 6pm. With no further time for reflection in my schedule, I pulled out my Cartier and a stack of simple post-its from my purse and jotted down “Dr.”, sticking it lightly in front of her first name. Satisfied, I turned back toward campus, the gathering storm clouds of July, and the darkness of academia.