Pilate's Cross (excerpt from the novel)

Mackey and Guthrie stood up and took a step toward Kennedy’s door.

The double-doors rattled as a tall, portly man in a snow-speckled overcoat barreled into the outer office. He eyed the two men for a second and said, “I’m first. I have an appointment.”

Grace returned from Kennedy’s office. “Oh, Dr. Bernard,” she said, not looking him in the eye. “Dr. Kennedy is ready to see you and has been expecting you. Please go on in.”

Bernard nodded and walked past Grace and the salesmen. He quietly closed Dr. Kennedy’s door behind him.

Mackey whistled. “Boy, that’s a friendly fella, huh?” he said.

Grace looked at her desktop as if to make it clear she wasn’t there to make excuses or explanations for anyone. “Dr. Bernard has been…well…” She cleared her throat and leaned forward toward the men

In turn, the salesmen leaned forward in the creaky old chairs, eager to hear some rare gossip from the usually Sphinx-like Grace.

She had just opened her ruby-red lips to speak when the air in the room crackled with an explosive series of five sounds.

Mackey froze.

Grace jumped.

Guthrie launched from his chair. “Was that…gunshots?” he said.

Dr. Kennedy’s office door opened, and Bernard calmly strode into the outer office, closing the door behind him with his left hand, holding a distinctive German Luger pistol that was partially obscured under his coat with the right. A sickening sulfurous smell followed him.

Guthrie started toward the professor, but Bernard raised the gun at the veteran. In the next instant, his left hand instinctively jolted toward his eyeglasses, which had faint red specks on the lenses.

Everyone froze for a bizarre two seconds of silence before Bernard walked past them into the hallway.

Grace rushed to Kennedy’s door and saw him splayed like a marionette with clipped strings on the floor beside his desk. His head rested at an odd angle of contortion against a radiator on the wall. He had a small, almost bloodless hole above his right eye. In contrast, a jagged crevasse where his nose was supposed to be bled like an open floodgate down his face, crimson staining the white, starched collar of his shirt. His right hand was also bloody and mangled; the bullet had obviously torn through it when he tried to cover his face in self-defense. Droplets of blood covered the photo of President Kennedy on the newspaper lying across his desk.

“He’s been shot!” Grace choked out, stating the obvious.

Mackey burst into the room, saw Kennedy, and threw up on his own shoes.

“I knew they was gunshots,” Guthrie said, whistling and patting his pockets for a pack of cigarettes.

***

Dottie heard what sounded liked a series of thumping sounds from downstairs, but she thought little of it. She continued typing her memo until Dr. Bernard, who had calmly slipped into the room and up to her desk, interrupted her. She noted that he was wearing his overcoat and was wiping his eyeglass lenses with a monogrammed handkerchief. “Oh, Dr. Bernard, you startled me.”

Bernard didn’t look at her; he simply continued to clean his glasses. “He in?”

“Um, yes he is. You can go on in if you’d like,” she said, keenly aware of Keillor’s open-door policy with faculty, even faculty whose contracts had been terminated effective the end of semester.

Bernard grunted, put his glasses back on, and stepped toward Keillor’s office. Then, he suddenly stopped. Without turning around, he spoke in monotone, “They shoot presidents these days.” Then he jammed his right hand into his pocket and went in.