An Academic Affair: A Novel

By Winston Lavallee

At a sleepy New England college an elderly professor, Henry Triggs, becomes embroiled in turmoil beyond his comprehension. A young woman student goes missing and issues of clandestine booze, drugs and murder suddenly undermines college harmony, trapping Triggs in a spiderweb of trouble and the college in a an unexpected nightmare.

Torn by some of his own long-standing issues, he finds that confronting a vicious drug kingpin requires much more moxie than simply playing by college rules. Calling on the steadying influence of his recently departed wife and some loyal friends made over time in town-gown relationships, he stumbles through investigations that are both dangerous and bittersweet. New challenges in both academic and non-academic life change forever his outlook on the peace and quiet of college life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664164680

Book preview

AN

ACADEMIC

AFFAIR

A Novel

Winston Lavallee

Copyright © 2021 by Winston Lavallee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Front Cover photograph of Old Chapel by John Solem. Reproduced with permission of the UMass Office of News and Media Relations. Any reproduction without written permission from the UMass Office of News and Media Relations is prohibited.

Rev. date: 08/26/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

824559

Contents

Acknowledgements

Book Summary

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Acknowledgements

My wife, Peggins who always lent a helping hand and worried

with me through hours of frustration at the computer and to

recognize the many other helpers who experienced my neglect.

For Bill Schenker, Police Chief Emeritus,

a Good Cop.

Book Summary

Professor Henry Triggs becomes embroiled in a missing student issue at Hockanum College only to find that affairs at this sleepy academic institution go well beyond the academic kind. After decades of college service as a Dean, he tries to bury himself in biological research and teaching, seeking a smooth glide path to retirement. With his daughter, Judy, an Army nurse challenged with a failed marriage and PTSD and his only son listed as missing in Viet Nam, Triggs quietly struggles each day with the turmoil of loss.

Initially clueless of a pervasive drug network on campus, he is led by his curious nature, into a morass of student-faculty improprieties, drug and alcohol abuse and murder. New challenges and surprises within the remnants of his struggling family put both them and him in danger from a clever and vicious drug kingpin/serial killer with whom he and the college has unknowingly become intimately involved.

When his daughter returns home to Hockanum, and they learn of the disappearance of his grandson, Triggs is driven to extremes of bumbling behavior in attempts to protect his distraught daughter and rescue the lad.

Calling on the steadying influence of his recently departed wife, Annie, and some loyal friends made over time in town-gown relationships, he stumbles on events that are both dangerous and bitter/sweet, challenging forever his outlook on any peace and harmony suggested by college life.

Chapter 1

His legs weren’t what they used to be. He knew that, but Joe Pritchard was a stubborn cuss and pressed ever harder on the bike pedals, ignoring the sharp stabs behind his tibias. He had always been in good physical shape, but the uphill stint on the familiar trip home had become a challenge now that he was pushing 70+ years. It was nearly dark, making the cracked, pock-marked tarmac and obscure potholes a cruel obstacle course catching at his bike tires no matter how he swerved. Each balancing twist of the handlebars meant reduced speed which sapped his dwindling strength. Since surrendering his driver’s license months before, biking was his only means of travel. He had only a few non-driving elderly friends and had always lived alone. After retiring as keeper of the Hockanum College greenhouses two years ago, he’d lost his college housing which forced him to live in a rustic shack on the north side of town. This isolated location in a side hill woodlot under the shadow of Mount Basalt was the only place he could afford. Hence, his required weekly grocery run.

This was a dangerous time to be in traffic, but he’d had the sense to wear reflective white gear and had equipped his bike with blinking red lights. Commuters, gabbling into cell phones, often drove their high-powered SUVs well beyond the speed limit and rarely gave an inch of asphalt to alternative means of transport. No matter that the bike lane was clearly marked. Autos zooming by seemed not to care and gave him precious little room.

He finally crested the hill barely holding his own with the bike’s front wheel wobbling crazily. Gaining speed on the now downward pitch, he looked forward to a rest at the turn-out up ahead. And good thing it was there as a truck suddenly roared up behind him, so close as to push him out of the bike lane into the unpaved shoulder, the driver never so much as slowing down to check on the biker’s recovery.

Damn fool ! he yelled at the departing taillights as he skittered into the sand and gravel apron, the shimmying bike now out of control. Upon striking a raised catch basin hidden in the weeds, he bailed off the bike and threw out his hands in an attempt to break his fall. His glasses flew off and he skinned his cheek while rolling among the rough landfill and stems of dank goldenrod and brown-eyed susans. The bike with his load of groceries, somehow managing to remain upright, continued on and slammed through a mass of scraggly bushes into Potwine Brook.

He struggled to his feet, visibly shaken from both rage and the rough fall. His hands seemed to work okay, but were cut and bleeding from puncture wounds after the impact with the rough stones and shards of broken glass. Small grains of cinders were embedded under the skin. No pain now, but in a few hours he knew that these wounds would begin to throb. But at least he was whole. Nothing broken or out of place. Making a short search among the flowers, he found his glasses, bent, but unbroken. After some twisting, he clamped them behind his ears, then searched his pockets for a tissue or handkerchief. Finding none, he gathered some leaves to wipe the blood off his hands and face. Unsatisfied, he slid down a short slope between the bushes to where the brook gurgled on its way to the river. The cool water felt good on his traumatized hands.

Looking around, Joe noticed that the guard rail of the Potwine Brook bridge had recently been rammed and buckled by an errant motorist. Damn lucky he didn’t go swimming in the drink., he scoffed to himself. Bet he lost more than a fender. Joe never noticed the broken parking light glass shards and the strip of rocker panel in the tall grass.

On an overhanging branch was a scarf that perhaps someone had lost out a car window or maybe left by the youngsters who sometimes parked in the turn-out and enjoyed amorous activities. He’d spotted used condoms on the shoulder on previous trips. The scarf was acceptably clean and of good quality. He hesitated, then prior to retrieving it, rinsed his hands again in Potwine Brook and wiped away any remaining loose gravel and blood. Freeing his bike from the sodden blow-down snag lying into the brook, he pushed it back to the turn-out. Lucky for him, the milk and eggs carefully packed in the bike’s saddlebags were undamaged. He folded the scarf and carefully stuffed it into one of his saddlebags, always remembering to be neat and tidy. In the failing light he never noticed the college logo or a stiff, rust-colored soiling on one end of the fabric. He decided that he was too shaky to ride, so he carefully walked his bike the half-mile to the rutted dirt logging road leading to his shack in the woods where he knew that a couple of good shots of Scotch would restore him.

Chapter 2

Henry Triggs had few complaints. A full professorship with tenure after a teaching/research career at Hockanum College, he was the envy of many aspiring faculty. But often, an occasional dark cloud of past memory stole on cat’s feet into his small but snug office.

It seemed just yesterday that the sounds of enemy bugles and frightened enemy infantry were again running through his platoon skirmish line. He shivered recalling that long and horrible retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in the bleak North Korean winter. Overrun by Chinese foot soldiers and overwhelmed by the icy, arctic air blowing down from Manchuria, his platoon was nearly helpless. Insufficient cold weather garb, poor logistical support and clueless decisions from top command made holding the line a cruel joke. It was man-to-man combat with both the weather and the enemy, neither giving any quarter.

Like his buddies, he had shot anything that moved, forward or backward over his hastily dug, shallow foxhole. A bitter gall now rose in his throat as he recalled the young Chinese soldier who had leaped over his position and halted, not taking cover and sealing his fate by not knowing what to do next. Triggs barely got off a short machine gun burst, then seeing the boy’s face disintegrate. The body fell helplessly into his foxhole, still pumping hot, red life over Triggs and his weapon. In the weird silence that followed, an Army medic crawled up next to Triggs thinking him wounded. No, no!! Triggs had yelled, waving the medic to his motionless buddy in the next foxhole.

He’d been one of the lucky ones, evacuated with the remnants of his unit from Hungnam harbor. He tried to bury that experience during his recuperation on the hospital ship taking him home, but harsh memories kept welling up, often at inappropriate times, like now.

His girl Annie had waited for him and they married right after his discharge. The G.I. Bill got him advanced degrees in biology from Ivy League colleges and placid Hockanum College had hired him where he had remained, never seeking to join the rat race of leap-frogging to other more prestigious appointments elsewhere. He and Annie had enjoyed a satisfying life and raised their two children in the serenity of Burkett, a quiet New England college town. Just what he needed to let bygones be bygones.

Then, as wild fears produced by the domino theory of small countries falling under Communist control, war again cast shadows over South East Asia. An overblown and perhaps erroneous report of a confrontation between a U. S. Navy destroyer and some North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin lit the fuse.

Annie and Henry’s son David had just finished medical school under sponsorship by the U. S. Army and started serving in the ranks as the required active duty pay back. Small specialized U. S. Army forces were being sent into South Viet Nam to train and support elements of the South Vietnamese Army. Among these non-combatants were medics and doctors including Triggs’ son.

Here we go again, Professor Triggs had mused sourly, protecting the world with naïve young men on orders by old men bent on polishing their images. It always seemed the way of power.

Triggs ambled over to the window of his tiny third floor office in Henderson Hall and looked out over the college pond. Beyond the manicured lawn, accented by carefully kept flower beds, the pond waters lapped gently up to a distant side hill held firmly by mixed hardwoods and a band of white birch. Dammed early in the life of Hockanum College, the pond spewed downstream over a 15 foot waterfall to seep along sluggishly to the river some three miles away. Running alongside the departing water was the ornate greenhouse where he and students had spent many hours.

Over the hill and far away to the north, was Monadnock Mountain, its bald head barely showing, appearing like some giant with a cleric’s tonsure poking through a wreath of cloud. Even the bulldozing glacier many thousands of years ago, sliding up and over the massive pate, had failed to move it. Much closer and to his left he could see the outline