Rachel couldn’t crack the sender of the email, but after a couple of hours she did have all seven separate addresses it had been sent to, all with the McKinnon email suffix. “They’ve gotten better at hiding stuff since I did this before,” she told me over dinner.
“You were a hacker for hire?” I sipped a beer.
“Just part of my wild days.” She winked.
Before dinner I’d sent emails to the remaining members of McKinnon’s Classics department, asking if they’d gotten an email like Gunderson and Fishling. I checked after dinner, but no one had gotten back to me. So I watched TV with Rachel until we got bored and went to bed.
The next morning my phone buzzed while I was sorting through financial documents on an embezzlement case—someone was padding his expense account. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr. Jurgen? This is Tricia Howes.” Her voice was firm and clear. “I’m a professor at McKinnon College. I received one of those emails.”
I switched windows on my computer. “What did it say?”
“’The curse is coming.’” She sounded irritated. “Or something like that. All caps. I assumed it was a joke, so I deleted it.”
“It seems that at least two other members of your department have gotten the same email. Do you know if anyone else has?”
“I couldn’t guess. I’m actually on a leave of absence. COVID.” She coughed. “And it may turn permanent. Not the COVID, but the leave, if they actually close down the department.”
“Is that happening?”
“That’s the rumor. Budget cuts. Fewer instructors, larger class sizes. You can only raise tuition so much.”
Things were tough all over. “Are you aware of the two deaths on campus?”
“God yes. Some kind of coyote? I haven’t gone out of the house in eight months.”
We hung up and I checked Howes’ name off my list. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but patterns are always interesting.
I got an email from one of the other profs, Leland Maines, who forwarded the message he got—another “The curse is coming.” He added, “What the hell is this?” and his phone number.
Rachel came in carrying her Supergirl coffee mug when my phone buzzed again. I waved to her before I answered. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Leo Frazer. I got one of those emails you were asking about?”
Third of the five I’d contacted yesterday—the last living five in the department. “What did it say?”
“Uh, it’s right here. ‘Beware the curse of,’ and then it stops. It doesn’t say what the curse is. What’s going on?”
“Everyone in your department has gotten the same email. Or mostly the same.” I paused. “And, uh, two of them are dead.”
“The coyote.” He laughed. “Yeah. What should I do?”
“Forward it to me. Can you think of any reason someone would be targeting the Classics group?”
“Well, they’re trying to close it down. I mean, the budget’s been cut back three time in the last 18 months, they offered buyouts and two profs took them and they weren’t replaced, and the rumor is Marston’s trying to get rid of us. Which is stupid. Enrollment’s down a little bit, but everything’s down from the pandemic. And sending a coyote to kill us off? Seems a little extreme, right?”
“What about the email? Any idea who might have sent it?”
He thought for a minute. “Hank Hinch—that’s Henry Hinchcliff, he was head of the department before he retired two years ago. Took one of the buyouts. He had a daughter named Wendy. You know, like Wendi? She died—car accident, not COVID, this was years ago. Hank was working on a book of poetry to honor her, and had some kind of fundraising site to publish it, but it got shut down by the college for some reason. He was pretty unhappy, and then he left. That’s the only thing I can think of.”
It sounded like a farfetched connection, but nothing was off limits in my life. I thanked Frazer and turned to Rachel as she started working. “Sleep okay?”
“Once you let me get to sleep. You animal.” She grinned. “Anything new?”
I shrugged. “I should probably check to see if anyone outside the department got the same email. Maybe it’s a campuswide thing. But I’ve got another name to track down.” I stood up. “Once I get some more coffee.”
With more coffee, I checked in with my client. She gave me Hinchcliffe’s number and email address, as well as the okay to reach out to a handful of other profs she knew, checking on whether the curse emails had gone out to anyone beyond the Classics department. In the meantime I got two more replies, from Paula Wren and Jerome Spadley. Both forwarded their emails. Wren’s was “The curse is coming,” and Spadley’s was “Beware the curse” again.
I sent more emails, then called Henry Hinchcliff. “Hank Hinch,” he answered on the second buzz.
I introduced myself, and he recognized Abigail Fishling’s name right away. “Riiight,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “I was sorry to hear that. I was going to send her a card. Isaac was a great professor—and a friend.”
“Have you received an email from wendi919? Something about a curse?”
He chuckled. “I don’t get emails from the college these days. I blocked them, unless it’s someone I know. Let’s just say we didn’t part on the best terms.”
“What happened? Leo Frazer said you took a buyout.”
“I was . . . forced out, really.” Hinchcliff sighed. “Philip Marston, our beloved president, is determined to bleed the place dry so he can pay for his pet projects. New buildings, a bigger central park with statues, more acreage, a state-of-the-art science lab—none of which have happened, yet. It’s always delayed, but in the meantime he’s cutting corners and stockpiling cash. He probably expects one of those new statues to be him.”
“So he’s not very popular in your department?”
“My former department? No. I stood up to him as long as I could. Photography couldn’t take it, they all left or got fired. Art history is probably coming next, they don’t have anybody with enough seniority to fight back. McKinnon’s focus was always on the practical—business, agriculture, that sort of stuff. But it has a long tradition of supporting the liberal arts too. Their place is getting smaller every year.”
He chuckled again. “Now I sound like an angry old man. Retirement’s great. I read and write, work in my garden, see my grandchildren—at least more than last year, not as much as before. I can’t complain for myself. But I can’t help feeling bad for whoever’s left. And Isaac . . .” He sighed again.
“I’m glad you’re doing okay. You don’t still live on the campus, do you?”
“No, no, I’m in Florida, like a stereotypical AARP member. My family still lives in Illinois, though.”
“Leo Frazer mentioned something about a book?” I didn’t think it had anything to do with the case. I just liked talking to him.
A soft groan. “My daughter Wendy died in a car accident 10 years ago. I wanted to publish a book of poetry in her honor. It got—there was a conflict with the college, and I ended up paying for it myself. I’ll send you a copy.”
“Thanks.” I felt awkward. “I’m, uh, sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” He took down my address and we hung up.
I stretched. Rachel was deep in her work, and I knew better to bother her. So I sipped some coffee, thought for a minute, and then decided to take a deep dive into Philip Marston, president of McKinnon College.
He’d done pretty well for himself over the years. A vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, lots of time on the slopes of Aspen, and a bunch of fancy cars—Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches. All on the standard salary of the president of a modest-sized midwestern university—not exactly Harvard. So where was his money coming from?
I was digging into that question when my phone buzzed. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr. Jurgen? My name is Paula Wren.”
At 4:30 I was back in the McKinnon campus, or rather at the edge of it, in a gravel parking lot with Paula Wren.
In her 30s, she had short curly black hair and a long, thin nose, and she wore black shorts and a blue denim jacket. Cute, although I wouldn’t tell Rachel that—she still gets territorial.
Wren had asked me to meet her at the Emerson Silvester McKinnon Forest Preserve, a couple hundred acres west of the college. Thick trees surrounded the parking lot. Only a few cars were parked. A list of rules advised against littering, firearms, feeding the wildlife, picking any plants, and leaving the hiking trails. A map of the hiking trails was posted just below.
She shook my hands. “Thanks for coming out. I know it’s a long drive.”
“What did you want to show me?”
“I was out here looking for coyote tracks.” She led me to the head of one trail. “They were saying Joel was killed by a coyote, and I didn’t believe that. I walk here a lot—more, since they cut my class load. And my salary.”
She kept up a good pace. I tried not to huff and puff too much keeping up with her. “I know, it wouldn’t prove anything if I didn’t find anything, and even if I did, there are coyotes here, just not many. But I know where their favorite spots are. And I like to hike out here.”
I can tail a car through rush hour traffic on the highway, but staying with her was a challenge. I need to start working out more. After 15 minutes we left the trail. The ground was rougher and rocky, covered in leaves and twigs and animal droppings. Squirrels jumped through the trees.
“I’m sorry it’s so late.” The sun was dipping over the horizon. “I had a class, and then office hours. Two students. The Odyssey, it’s my most popular class. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to stick it out, though.”
“The budget cuts?” I thought I saw a snake slither under my foot, and managed to smother an unmanly yelp.
“That, and my girlfriend wants to move to St. Louis. She’s got family there. Here we are.”
She pushed between two trees. The ground in the clearing was bare except for a few scattered leaves. Wren looked around, frowning, then nodded. “Good. It’s still here.”
She squatted. I bent down.
A large track scarred the dirt. It would take a size 15 shoe or so. Five long toes jutted out, and something more extended from the tips. Claws?
I took a few pictures, then brought up the photo I’d taken in Isaac Fishling’s back yard, under the hedge, They looked similar.
I looked around. I saw a few more partial tracks, leading toward a hill.
“There were more this morning.” Wren stood up. “I took a long hike to clear my head before class. But tracks don’t last too long. Good thing it didn’t rain.
“What are they?”
She looked me over with an expression I’ve seen a lot—deciding whether or not I’d believe what she said. Finally she took a deep breath. “Wendigo.”
“Wendigo.”
She crossed her arms. “Abby—Abigail said she hired you in particular because you’re open-minded to—strange things. And she doesn’t believe it was a coyote either.”
I nodded. “Wendigos are cryptids. Mythological creatures. I’ve heard of them. Never seen one, but I saw a Bigfoot once. So yeah, I’m open-minded.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Except—not good. If there’s a wendigo prowling around . . .”
I turned around, shading my eyes as I gazed up the hill, then peering through the trees. “Yeah. Maybe we should get back.”
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