Hardscrabble Road(117)

“How do you know that they’ve done nothing wrong?” Jig said. “Cavellero, the man in the Philosophy Department, was one of the principal architects of that speech code you think should be abolished. And during the water buffalo thing, he was one of the biggest advocates of expelling the kid outright for daring to cause trouble. The woman in the Spanish Department helped design the ‘Orientation’ program all new faculty hires are required to take. That’s after your time. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” Alison said.

“Re-education camp,” Jig said. “Emotional bullying in the name of antidiscrimination. It’s insane. Do you know what we’re doing, on campuses like this across the country? We’re raising a generation of Republicans, because we’re raising a generation of kids who think it’s the Republicans who stand for freedom of speech and of the press. And do you know why that is?”

“Why?”

“Because on college campuses, it is the Republicans who stand for freedom of speech and of the press. It’s the Republicans who fight against the shouting down of speakers, and against censoring campus newspapers, and against criminalizing speech. The Campus Republicans are the single strongest force for civil liberties at Penn. What are we doing to ourselves? What are we doing to the world when we send kids out of here determined to vote for right-wing nutcases because they mistake the campus reality for reality in the real world?”

“And that justifies giving a nationally syndicated radio talk show host false information about my teaching and grading practices so that he can call me a Communist and get me investigated by my department?”

“The investigation didn’t happen because of what Drew Harrigan said. It happened because a student complained.”

“Maybe,” Alison said. “But I’m going to look into that, too. Because I’ve got my suspicions.”

Jig sat down again. Everything he did was abrupt, Alison thought. Watching him sometimes was like watching jerky animation.

“We have to do something to stop it,” he said. “Just talking about it won’t help. I do talk about it. I talk about it all the time. Nobody listens.”

“Nobody is listening to this,” Alison said.

“You would have sued,” Jig said. “They would have listened to that. Just watch them change if not changing means they lose money.”

“They’re not going to change,” Alison said. “They’re just going to retire.

I’ve got to get back to my office. I have to teach in a little while. I never have supported the speech codes, you know. Why pick me?”

Jig shrugged. “It was a paper you wrote. I forgot what it was called, now. About women and heresy.”

“ ‘Women and Theology in the Albigensian Crusade.’ ”

“That’s the one.”

“I really do have to go now,” Alison said.

She watched him sitting there behind his desk, perfectly at ease with himself and the world, perfectly at ease with his conscience. There were people who said that the great danger of a scientific education was that it lacked insight into the human condition. For that, you had to study the humanities. Here he was, though, with his Heidegger and his Jane Austen, and he was just as arrogant and brutal as any witch-hunting thug.





SEVEN



1


For a few moments, Gregor Demarkian thought he was going to have to stage an escape from Marbury and Giametti’s car. It was suddenly obvious why there was no settled chain of command in this case. Without one, Rob Benedetti could play crusading district attorney, like a character in a John Grisham novel, and run the whole show himself. He didn’t even have to leave the office to do it, since Gregor had the cell phone, and Benedetti had no compunctions about dialing its number. It had gone beyond the point where Gregor was worried about whether or not he was ever going to be named a formal consultant on this case, or whether or not he was going to get paid. He’d gone without getting paid before. All he wanted was to be able to do two things in a row without having to check in and explain himself. He especially wanted not to have to listen to Benedetti’s ideas on how a criminal should be hunted down and cornered. It was a shame young men were no longer required to spend a couple of years in the army. The army would have taught Rob Benedetti that the last thing you wanted to do with something panicked and dangerous was corner it.

“I know who the killer is,” Benedetti insisted, his voice coming over the air like a squawk.

“No, you don’t,” Gregor told him. Then he shut the phone all the way off and stuck it in his pocket. Benedetti could still get to him on Marbury and Giametti’s radio, but he’d have to work at that, and that would take time. “I want to go over to LibertyHeart Communications,” Gregor said. “I want to talk to Marla Hildebrande for a while.”