Free The Book of Kills by Ralph McInerny Page A

this?”
    “Those papers are from my current seminar.”
    “But this is my paper!”
    Ranke dismissed this, saying all papers looked the same nowadays. Meaning bad. But Orion was incensed. He rattled on. He sounded like one of the cases brought before the ethics committee. But Orion was adamant. He knew his own paper, didn’t he? And of course Bacon had had opportunity to download it from Orion’s computer. Orion found his library carrel claustrophic and left the door open when he was in it, and unlocked when he was not.
    “I keep everything on the hard disk. We talked about this assignment. I called up my old paper and gave him advice about his.”
    “No wonder they’re similar.”
    “Similar? They’re identical.”
    Orion was on his feet. He would prove it. Off he went and within the hour, he was back. He dropped a laser-printed essay on Ranke’s desk.
    “I’ll compare them for you.”
    And he did, standing beside Ranke’s chair, pointing back and forth between the two papers. They were line-for-line identical. Bacon had not even reformatted it before printing it out. He had remembered to substitute his name for Orion’s and change the dates. In that, at least, his paper was original.
    “I’m going to break his neck,” Orion roared. His indignation was that of someone seldom in the right.
    “Orion, sit down and listen.”
    Ranke explained to his presumed protégé about the ethics committee. He felt like a bad angel, corrupting the young. He was conscious of betraying, by proposed inaction, the ideals of scholarship, to say nothing of simple human honesty. Orion listened in sulking disillusionment. Ranke was patient and lengthy in his explanation of the futility of bringing any charge. When eventually Orion left, Ranke felt unclean. For once Orion had been wholly right. Bacon should have been expelled forthwith on the basis of this unequivocal evidence. In a better time, he would have been. But times had changed. Not for the first time, Otto Ranke wondered if he had not lived too long, or at least put off retirement too long.
    That was not quite the end of it. Some days later, a scowling Orion returned.
    “I should have stored it on a floppy,” he said when he had sunk into a chair.
    “What happened?”
    “I told Bacon I knew what he had done.”
    “And he denied it.”
    “No. He crowed about it. Maybe if he hadn’t I would just have followed your advice. I told him you knew of the plagiarism. That was my big mistake.”
    When Orion next looked at the files on his hard drive he found that the seminar paper was no longer there. It had been erased. It seemed clear that Bacon had done it. Any charge now would be only hearsay. Ranke felt relief and hated himself for it.
    Now Ranke permitted the discussion of the ethics committee to become audible. Academic women continue to be guided by compassion, however misguided. The accused was always in good hands with them. They too had known unjust oppression. . . .Ranke took his mind out of gear again and looked out the window, not the ones giving a view of the corridor outside, but those through which the campus in the final phase of autumn was richly visible. How many more campus seasons would he see? The longer he stayed, the greater the risk that he would have someone like Bacon for a colleague. Perhaps he already did.

15
    BARTHOLOMEW LEONE, LIKE EVERY one else, bore the effects of Original Sin. He sensed a signal victory in the offing and he was fidgety with delight. He moved up and down his office, waiting for his client, anticipating the inevitable jousting with Ballast. He had pored over the bound document Orion Plant had left with him. He had pursued the spoor of possible precedents and come up empty. Of course, academic law was relatively new and precedents were as often set as followed, but the conviction had grown upon him that Ballast would make mincemeat of him in court, if the case ever went to court, which he doubted. This was a moment when a