I spun on my heel and charged down the stairs to find Clarity's father. If something had happened, I wanted to hear it from a reliable source. I walked to Dean Dunkirk's office so fast that I was out of breath by the time I made it to his door.
A sign was taped over his name plate stating that the Dean of Students was temporarily unavailable and that all inquiries needed to be made through the office of the president.
I checked my watch and jogged off campus to the house he shared with Clarity. Luckily she was still in her second class of the day and there was no other evidence of visitors. I peeked in the garage window and noted the dean's car inside. He normally walked everywhere, but I doubted he was still on campus.
"Dean Dunkirk, Patrick, open up!" I rapped hard on the front door.
A curtain shifted in the living room but there was silence.
"Patrick, it's Ford; we need to talk," I called and knocked again.
It was no surprise that he did not want to see anyone. I could imagine him pacing up and down the length of the living room, trying to prepare a way to tell his daughter what happened.
"Ford?" a cautious voice at the door called.
"I just heard,” I said. "I wanted to make sure you're okay. Clarity is still in class. She didn't know anything about it when I talked to her earlier today."
The door opened a small fraction and the dean waved me inside. I stepped into the foyer and was surprised by the transformation. The Thanksgiving decorations had been meticulously packed away in a plastic bin that now stood next to the front staircase. The curtains had been drawn over the door's stained glass, but also along the entire front of the house.
We stood in shadows and the dean said nothing. He plodded over to the decorations and shut the lid.
"They must have blindsided you in your office. Thank god you live nearby. I can't imagine weathering something like this while being stuck on campus," I said.
"It doesn't matter where I am," Clarity's father said, "I'm disgraced. No one is going to hire a Dean of Students that was caught falsifying evidence and brushing plagiarism under the rug."
"Is that really what happened? Did you really make a ruling based on what was best for the football team?" I asked.
Patrick backed away and shook a hand at me. "No, no. I can't talk to you about this. You're the editor of the school newspaper and, clearly, I don't know who I should trust, otherwise this wouldn't have happened."
I shook my head. "This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't made an enemy. Now, let me see if I can guess what happened. You thought you recently made a friend. Then that friend asked you for a favor."
"Ford, stop," Patrick said. "As much as I want to believe you are trying to help me, you are probably the last person I should be talking to about this."
"You refused to do the favor because it was against your moral judgment," I said.
Patrick shook his head, walked to his leather sofa, and collapsed. "How am I supposed to tell Clarity any of this?" he asked.
"You didn't do anything," I said.
Patrick ran both hands through his red hair and looked up at me. "Please don't sound so sure. I've made a mistake."
"It's not a mistake when you were set up. Am I right? Someone is using leverage to force a favor from you." I sat down on the chair across from him.
Patrick leaned back and slumped into the sofa. He heaved an unsteady sigh, then said, "I thought I had made a good impression on one of our largest donors. Everything was fine and I didn't think anything of it, not even when he gave me some ridiculously expensive gifts. It's the holiday season, I was hopeful. Turns out that was very naive."
"That happens to good people," I said.
"Well, I'm not sure a good person would do what I did next," Patrick said. "He asked me to look over an application, give his son some pointers. I didn't think anything of it, until he became very specific about the feedback he wanted. In the end, I was basically rewriting the applicant's essay. Then he asked me to overlook his test scores."
"But you refused." I knew it had to be true. "That's what you should be focused on now. You did the right thing, didn't you?"
"I refused to finish a second draft of the essay. I advised him there was nothing to be done with the test scores, they had to be included. Next thing I know, the president of the college is in my desk chair when I arrive this morning. I am suspended without pay as they review the evidence against me."
I leaned forward and balanced my forearms on my knees. "That's what I don't understand. How did this donor know about this plagiarism case? It's like he had it lined up to be used as leverage whenever he needed."
Patrick covered his face with his hands and groaned. "I should have seen it coming. God, why did I think everything was fine? Now I've screwed everything up."
"Whatever it is, you didn't do it. Did you?" I asked.