Pulse

13

The morning sun grew larger and more orange, dissipating the lingering haze. Quinn threaded the Lincoln through heavy traffic and drove from the city and into upper New York State. Pearl sat quietly beside him in the passenger’s seat. The sun burning through the windshield was making her sleepy. The radio was playing softly and had lapsed into a rap tune:

You be the one

I got the gun

The favorite son

Run, bitch, run

You know I got the gun

Pearl wondered if the lyrics had really been thought out, if they had any significance. She couldn’t help doubting. She reached forward and switched the radio off, then glanced over at Quinn. “Do you mind?”

“Most of the time, if I’m told nice.”

“What the hell do you think those lyrics mean?”

“Means he’s got the gun.”

She continued to stare at him but couldn’t make out his eyes behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

Pearl settled back in the Lincoln’s plush upholstery and crossed her arms. She tried to doze off, but couldn’t.

Run, bitch, run.

The drive had taken them a little more than an hour. Waycliffe College was about a mile outside Putneyberg, a town easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention and drove past the “Business Loop.” The town proper was an assemblage of clapboard shops and shaded side streets. Quinn wouldn’t have been surprised to see Andy and Barney patrolling.

Traffic was sparse. So was paint. The structures that weren’t brick had taken on a gray, weathered look. Quinn decided what the hell, call it rustic.

As they drove along Main Street (what else?) the few people on the sidewalks didn’t pay much attention to the Lincoln. They were probably used to luxury vehicles coming and going, many of them carrying present and future trust-fund babies. The loop off the highway was now mostly for the college.

Waycliffe wasn’t large enough to transform Putneyberg into a college town. Only one of the two local bars looked like the kind of place Waycliffe students would frequent. A twenty-four-hours place called Price’s. Of course, there was always the other bar, a dump called Eddies (without an apostrophe), if some dumb college kid wanted to pick a fight. Probably at either place they could score drugs.

The newest-looking object in Putneyberg was the big shiny sign informing Quinn and Pearl that Waycliffe College was one mile ahead, and that Putneyberg wished them good-bye. Quinn looked for a HELLO sign on the other side of the street where traffic ran the opposite direction, and there it was.

“No gown versus town here,” Pearl said. “It looks like gown won a long time ago.”

“I didn’t see anyone of college age,” Quinn said.

“Because it’s summer.”

“Still, only a mile away from a cold beer…”

The trees bordering the road suddenly looked a lusher green than the others, and they were well trimmed. There was a sign announcing the college turnoff was five hundred feet ahead.

Quinn braked and made the right turn, and they were on smooth blacktop winding through more uniformly trimmed trees. Quinn and Pearl, New Yorkers, offered a few guesses about what kind of trees they were, but they probably weren’t even close.

And there ahead was the college, an assemblage of similar redbrick buildings, most of which were at least half devoured by ivy. The largest building, brick and with a column-flanked entrance, loomed before them. Where the ivy had been trimmed away, carved stone lettering identified it as the administration building. All the ivy and other foliage lent the grounds a lush look, but at the same time everything was neatly manicured. Waycliffe had about it the burnished quality of the old and invaluable.

There was a small gravel lot in front of the building. Half a dozen cars were parked in reserved spaces near the entrance. Quinn parked before one of the V ISITORS signs on the opposite side of the lot, in the shade.

When Quinn and Pearl entered the building they were surprised by how cool it was. The only person in sight was a girl in her late teens or early twenties seated cross-legged on a lone wooden bench, diligently copying something from a netbook computer in her lap into a spiral notebook.

“We’re looking for Chancellor Schueller,” Pearl said.

The girl didn’t glance up but pointed with a long, decorous fingernail to her left.

They walked down the hall about fifty feet, past a couple of blank wooden doors to a larger, six-paneled oak door with a brass plaque lettered OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR.

Quinn knocked and opened the door simultaneously.

They entered a small anteroom with book-lined walls and a narrow desk, behind which sat a gray-haired woman with a wasted look and a narrowed left eye that gave her a kind of shrewd expression. She’d apparently just closed a bottom desk drawer and sat up straight. She gave them a May I help you? smile.

“We have an appointment to see Chancellor Schueller,” Quinn said. He and Pearl simultaneously flashed their identification.

“Oh, yes, the police,” the woman said. “About poor Macy Collins, I would imagine.” Without waiting for her assumption to be confirmed, she rose from her chair and strode to one of two oak doors like the ones connecting to the hall. She knocked gently on the door on her left, pushed it open a few feet, and announced them.

Then she opened the door wider, and Quinn and Pearl walked past her into Chancellor Linden R. Schueller’s office.

Schueller was standing behind his desk, grinning widely, in meet-and-greet mode. He was a slender, handsome man, perhaps early forties, in a neat gray blazer with leather elbow patches. His dark hair was combed sideways with geometric precision from a perfect part. Gold cuff links flashed on white cuffs. His eyes, behind newly fashionable tortoise-shell glasses, were brilliant blue and aware. He looked too much like a rich playboy to be an academic

After introductions and hand shakes, he motioned with his arm toward two small but overstuffed chairs facing the desk, causing a gold watch to flash beneath a white cuff. “Detectives, please make yourselves comfortable.”

Quinn and Pearl did, while Schueller settled in behind his wide, cluttered desk. There was a green desk with narrow leather edging of the sort people stuck business cards and odds and ends under. An array of envelopes, slips of paper, and business cards were wedged beneath the rich-looking leather. It struck Quinn as odd that Schueller would have such disorderly layers of paper on his desk; didn’t college chancellors delegate most of the actual work?

“You mentioned that this was about poor Macy Collins,” Schueller said. He shook his head and appeared genuinely sad. “Such a bright young woman. Such a terrible waste.”

“Did you know her personally?” Quinn asked.

“Oh, we in administration know all our students, especially those with the potential Macy Collins possessed.”

“Then you might know which students were her particular friends,” Pearl said.

“She had many friends, but mostly on a casual basis. Students in the Vanguard program are kept quite busy. They’re primarily here to learn, and they want to learn. They form fast friendships, but it takes a while. Macy hadn’t been in Vanguard quite long enough to make those connections.”

“She was a sophomore,” Quinn pointed out.

“Yes, but a Vanguard program sophomore.”

“She was that from the beginning?”

“Oh, yes. She was chosen for her exceptional abilities. Most of her qualifying and placement test scores were well above the ninety-nine percentiles group. Our Vanguard students quite often are recruited into responsible, high-paying jobs immediately after they obtain their degrees.” He beamed, proud of his students. “Waycliffe alumni do quite well in the world. You might pause on your way out to examine our Wall of Fame.”

“Macy Collins will never be there,” Pearl remarked.

“Sadly, that’s true.” He looked at Pearl as if disappointed that she’d stated the obvious. Pearl would never make the Vanguard program.

“Macy lived in a dorm,” Quinn said. “Is it unusual that she didn’t have a roommate?”

“No. All our Vanguard students have private rooms.”

Why am I not surprised? Pearl thought. Her college years before she’d dropped out were, to her recollection, a haze of arguments with her instructors, parties, and putting up with people who mostly infuriated her. And, oh, yeah, there’d been sex. The kind that didn’t budge the earth an inch. Criminology courses had been her only refuge.

“We’d like to take a look at her room,” Quinn said.

Schueller nodded. “Of course. It’s relatively barren. She took most of her possessions with her to the apartment she subleased in the City. The apartment where she was living when she…”

“Died,” Pearl finished for him.

Schueller stood up and absently buttoned his blazer. “Your professional scrutiny might find something pertinent.”

They left the administration building and Schueller accompanied them along a curving concrete walk toward a three-story redbrick building with the requisite relentless ivy framing its entrance. The campus was almost deserted. A few people were strolling the walkways. A couple was seated side by side on a wooden bench beneath a shade tree, speaking to each other as if in rapture. A hundred feet from them a young man with a mane of curly blond hair sat cross-legged on the grass, working attentively on his upside-down bicycle. That was it for human habitation, other than Schueller and his two guests with guns. Pearl felt as if she didn’t belong here.

“We have summer classes in session now,” Schueller said, glancing at his watch, “so the place isn’t as deserted as it seems.” He drew a briar pipe from his pocket and clamped down on it in the corner of his mouth. “I don’t actually light this thing,” he said. “Bad example for the students. But I like the aroma of the unlit tobacco.”

“You must have been a heavy smoker at one time,” Pearl said.

The chancellor smiled around his pipe stem. “We won’t talk about that.”

And maybe a lot of other things, Pearl thought.

Macy Collins might have had a private dorm room, but it was small. There was room for a narrow bed, a desk, a closet with a tri-folding louvered door, a single window looking out on an area of green and meticulously tended lawn. In the distance were crowded trees and the dormered roofs of old but well-kept homes, some of them quite large and no doubt expensive. Some faced the street beyond, others the campus. Quinn supposed that was where some of the tenured faculty lived. There must be plenty of endowment money to augment the lofty tuition fees hinted at in the college brochures.

A flat-screen monitor with a blank screen was on a corner of the wooden desk, along with a full-sized keyboard. A small printer sat on the floor near a desk leg. Everything but the computer, just as there had been no computer in Macy Collins’s apartment.

“It appears that she had a laptop she hooked up here.”

“All of our students are furnished with laptops,” Schueller said, holding the briar pipe in his hand now. It was for show, anyway. “There’s no need to instruct them on their usage. Computer literacy is one of our prerequisites. Even our non-Vanguard students are superior in most respects. Mostly they come from the best families. I’m sure even a detective would recognize some of their names.”

“Maybe especially a detective,” Pearl said. This guy Schueller was about to make her puke.

“The full-sized keyboards and monitors are optional,” Schueller said. “The monitors are for watching movies, or occasionally sports.”

“Does Waycliffe have a football team?” Quinn asked.

Schueller smiled tolerantly. “We only play lacrosse.”

“Ah,” Pearl said.

Quinn was picking up her vibes and hoped she wouldn’t mouth off.

They poked around for a while, but there was nothing of use in the tiny dorm room. Macy Collins hadn’t possessed much, and most of it-including her laptop, which might have been taken by her killer-could have been transferred via backpack to her address in Manhattan. Macy had lived light, and probably mostly alone, at least somewhat isolated by her intimidating IQ and penchant for listening, watching, and learning.

“Are any of her friends on campus taking summer classes?” Quinn asked Schueller.

“No. Most of our Vanguard students take summer internships. Some travel for further enlightenment. Others visit their families. I understand that Macy Collins was working as an intern at a law firm in the city.”

“It didn’t strike me that she was from a wealthy family,” Quinn said.

“She wasn’t. But a student like Macy is eligible for a great deal of grant and student loan money. For the most part, our students work real summer jobs only because they wish to experience them. I’m sure that for them the extra money is negligible.”

Maybe, Quinn thought. It was something to check with Macy’s mother.

He and Pearl thanked Chancellor Schueller and drove into Putneyberg to try Feed’n’ Speed, the restaurant they’d noticed on Main Street. It was a low tan brick building with a NASCAR decor. Front ends of race cars lined the front edge of the flat roof. Just inside the door was a large black-and-white photo of racing and bootlegger legend Junior Johnson.

The service was slower than the sign promised or Johnson would have approved. Lunch was tasteless, but apple pie for dessert was terrific.

“Why do places like this usually serve great pie?” Quinn asked, washing down his final bite of pie with tepid coffee.

“Maybe it only seems that way because of the rest of the food.” Pearl glanced around at what passed for the lunch crowd. About a dozen people at tables, and five slumped on red vinyl stools at the counter. Most of them were over fifty. Nobody seemed to be from the college. She could understand why most Waycliffe students went elsewhere for the summer.

“Notice something about Chancellor Schueller?” Quinn asked.

“Other than he’s the kinda guy who was probably born with a pointer in his hand?”

“He seems more upset about the loss of such a promising student than about a young woman’s violent death.”

Pearl thought about that. “True. What do you think it means?”

“Right now, it means I’m gonna have another piece of pie.” Quinn waved to get the waitress’s attention.

“Only lacrosse,” Pearl said. “Jesus H. Christ!”

Chancellor Schueller had summoned two faculty members to his office. Summer classes were over for the day, and the administration building was otherwise unoccupied. They would not be overheard.

It was warm in the office. Schueller sat behind his desk. Elaine Pratt sat relaxed with her legs crossed in one of the two office chairs. She wore a fashionable lightweight beige pantsuit and darker brown Jimmy Choo high-heeled pumps. Around her neck was a dainty gold chain threaded through a delicate cameo. Professor Wayne Tangler, who taught literature, was there, standing. He had on a navy-blue Hickey Freeman blazer and a striped silk tie over a pale lavender shirt. He was lean, with a gray downturned mustache and calculating gray eyes. On his lanky wrist was a loose-fitting platinum watch on a linked band. The three academicians looked as if they belonged on a yacht rather than in a tradition-bound, ivy-smothered college.

“We have a problem,” the chancellor began. “It has a name. Macy Collins.”

“The other students are naturally upset,” Elaine said.

“That’s not exactly the kind of problem I mean.” Schueller was obviously uncomfortable with what he had to say. The others waited patiently while he struggled with himself. Out came his briar pipe; then it returned back to his pocket.

“The police are as of now uninterested in anyone at Waycliffe as a potential suspect in the Macy Collins murder, and I see no reason that might change.”

“But it might,” Elaine Pratt said.

“Exactly. If it does, we need to be ready. We have secrets other than murder that we can’t have revealed. Secrets that a murder investigation might lead to incidentally. If a Waycliffe faculty member-one of us-is even mildly suspected of this crime, it could lead to the ruination of this institution we all love. It could deprive our students, and it could end our tenure at this great place of learning.”

“Not to mention,” Elaine said.

“Not to mention.”

Tangler stood hipshot like a duded-up western gunslinger. He became very still. Elaine Pratt cocked her head to one side, like an interested sparrow.

“It might not be that bad,” Elaine said.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Tangler said.

Elaine uncrossed her legs and looked over at Schueller. “Any ideas?”

Schueller began absently toying with a sharp-pointed yellow pencil on his desk. “The solution to our problem is simple,” he said. “This suspected faculty member was here with us, in this office, on the evening of Macy Collins’s death.”

“Maybe this person already has an alibi,” Elaine said.

Schueller shook his head. “If he does, if he, say… was in another city with a married woman, the police wouldn’t suspect him of being in New York murdering Macy Collins.” Or if his flight plan suggested he was in another city… “The point is, we don’t want that sort of information to get beyond us.”

“And the married woman,” Tangler said.

“Of course.”

“You’re suggesting that we lie to the police,” Elaine said.

“Only if necessary. It would be a harmless lie that might as just as easily be true, and it might save this college from extinction.”

“As well as our jobs and considerable financial interests,” Tangler said. He squinted at the chancellor. “I understand the cops were here today. Did they ask you about this person?”

“Not yet. And maybe they never will. But I want to be ready, and I need to know we can continue to count on each other.”

“You’re not only proposing that we lie to the police, but that we do so in a murder investigation,” Elaine said, as if to make clear to each of them what was happening.

“Exactly.”

“That will make us accomplices.”

“In for a penny…” Tangler said, smiling beneath his mustache.

“We’re already accomplices,” the chancellor said. “But as far as the police are concerned, not in murder.”

Tangler rubbed his chin, tugged at his mustache. “All right, Chancellor. You can rely on me.”

“And me, I suppose,” Elaine Pratt said, after a slight hesitation.

“We can’t simply suppose,” Schueller said.

“Of course. Count on me.” No hesitation that time.

Schueller smiled, nodded, and stood up.

“Are we going to cut ourselves and join hands to mingle our blood?” Elaine asked.

“Our needs are already mingled,” Tangler said. “As is our duty to each other.”

“Noble talk,” the chancellor said.

“Noble purpose,” Tangler said.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Elaine Pratt said. “Especially about the death of Macy Collins.”

Nobody drew blood, but they did shake hands.