Document of Expectations

Friday afternoon

1 friDaY afternoon the oscar ranger seminar room on the second floor of the old stone building known as anthropology grew hot after a day under the late spring sun. unlike other buildings on campus, which housed multiple departments, anthropology held only one. the comparatively affluent anthropologists enjoyed the comfort of their own freestanding building, with its name newly carved in marble above the majestic front doors. a decade before, the Department of anthropology had been just another minor entity in the college of social sciences at central Highlands university, but a wealthy benefactor, a collector of antiquities, had given funds for an endowed chair and for unspecified “site improvements.” the donor’s only stipulation was that the funds be directed to anthropology. Because of the president’s desire to please the benefactor (who also gave money to reroof the school of Hotel and restaurant management), the inhabitants of the college of education were booted from the elegant stone building and transferred to a lesser structure, which had once held the now-defunct school of Drama. the anthropologists had moved in to take education’s place and were now solidly ensconced in the fine edifice. it was early may, unusually warm during finals week, and the air conditioning would not be turned on until the first summer session began in three weeks. the students felt uncomfortable in the stuffy seminar room on the second floor of anthropology, so the first professor to use the room that morning opened the old casement windows. at the end of the day, the professor giving the last exam of the semester, on “southwestern rock art and 2 sacred Vortexes,” would normally have paid no attention to the windows. But this day was different. after the last haggard student dropped her blue composition booklet on the table next to the lecture podium and left the room, the professor picked up his thermos full of Hawaiian punch, walked to the window and poured the red liquid on the carpet. that is how it had been planned since well before the sun had risen that morning. sunDaY, 11:30 p.m. thick Virginia creepers proliferated around the base of the old stone anthropology building. tiny feet of the lush, green tendrils had latched on to the century-old cement and rock outcroppings, and over a long period of time the ivy had ascended the outer walls. in the night’s darkness a figure in black pants, a black, long-sleeved knit top, black shoes, and a black mask crept along the edge of the flowerbeds, then stopped to look up. Lights in two of the offices on the third floor were still on. stepping across a flowerbed, the intruder put black-gloved hands onto the wide sill of the eastern window of the first floor and, with a small hop, pulled up onto the sill. the intruder ascended from the first-story window ledge the intruder reached toward three large rocks as handholds, intending to scale to the top of the old greenhouse at the second floor, a steamy conservatory that the university medicinal botanists had insisted stay attached to anthropology. considering the amount of grant monies the biologists brought in every year, the president of cHu didn’t argue with them. so the greenhouse had remained. from there it would be an easy step for the figure in black across the roof to the wide window ledge of the second-story ranger seminar room windows. However, the intruder found the ascent to the second floor more arduous than expected. a light rain had fallen earlier in the evening, and the trespasser struggled to hold on to the slippery, leaf-covered rocks. a gloved hand tried to grip one of the stones as a handhold, but slipped off the wet leaves. the intruder fell backwards, arms flailing, snapped through a rose bush, and landed with a splat a few feet below in the muddy flowerbed. ...