The Campus Murders

1

McCall was accustomed to police resentment, but one look at Pearson’s frozen face told him that this chief of police was going to pose special problems. His politeness was painful.

“Have a seat, Mr. McCall.”

The visitor’s chair was straight, hard, and cramped for a man of McCall’s size, which was not large. But the chair was uncomfortable not by accident. Nothing in this office happened by accident. Pearson had green eyes that looked as if they had been boiled in salt water.

“So you’re Governor Holland’s man Friday.”

“You left out the six other days, chief,” McCall said with a friendly smile.

Chief Pearson did not smile back. “You’re a pretty tough guy, I hear.”

“Not really. I don’t care for violence. Do you?”

“It’s not what I like, Mr. McCall. It’s what my duty calls for.”

“I’m glad you’re a man who takes his responsibilities seriously,” McCall said. “That’s going to make my job easier.”

The boiled eyes looked at him.

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Pearson said. “Just what does bring you to Tisquanto?”

“The trouble at the college, for one thing.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The chief permitted himself a smile of unbelief. “What’s happened to Sam Holland? He used to be a pretty tough guy himself. Now he sits in that office of his upstate and jitters like a little old lady just because a bunch of snotnose college kids make like great big conspirators. Look, Mr. McCall, in my job, in my time, I’ve handled everything on that campus from what they used to call hazing to a fraternity ruckus where the boys had to have the beer flushed out of their tummies with stomach pumps.”

“From what I hear, chief, this isn’t quite the same thing.”

“Sure it’s not. But I’m handling it. Tisquanto’s a good town. And it’s my town.”

“Nobody’s trying to take it away from you,” McCall said with another friendly smile.

“Then what are you doing here?”

McCall did not answer. He liked to feel his way in one of these things, where virtually everything was an unknown; he had found that the less he said the less he muddied events.

As he’d predicted to himself, Chief Pearson could not stand silence. “I’m not saying there’s no trouble,” he said. “Some of these kids are just out-and-out commie revolutionaries, I swear to God! I don’t know where they come up with these ideas. Most of them come from good solid homes, from good solid people, which you’d think couldn’t produce kids like these in a thousand years. But you can tell Governor Holland not to fret his head. If that’s what you’re here for, Mr. McCall, you can go right on back to whatever you were doing before the Governor sicked you onto me.”

“There’s something else,” McCall said.

This time it was Pearson who was silent. He had a ferret face to go with his teddy-bear bottom; it sharpened wonderfully, sniffing for danger.

“This Laura Thornton disappearance,” McCall said.

The pencil in Pearson’s fist struck the stainless steel water bottle on the desk and bounced to the linoleum. As it bounced Pearson bounced, too, to his feet.

“Look here,” the chief exploded. “There’s absolutely no need you being here, McCall. Absolutely none! Not about that. You hear me?”

“We’ve apparently got off on the wrong foot, chief,” McCall said. “Why don’t you sit down and cool it? I didn’t come to Tisquanto to step on anybody’s toes, or usurp your prerogatives, or do anything but observe what’s going on for the private information of the governor. You’ve got a job, chief, so have I. And mine is Assistant to the Governor for Special Affairs — or, to put it plainly, Sam Holland’s troubleshooter. Between the goings-on on campus and this disappearance of a girl student, the governor’s worried. And you know my credentials — they give me carte blanche anywhere in the state. If you don’t want to honor them, just say so and I’ll report that to the governor. He’ll take if from there.”

Pearson glared at him. He had returned to his overstuffed chair at McCall’s suggestion, and he seemed to be struggling with the impulse to jump out of it again. But he mastered the impulse.

“All right, Mr. McCall. Only she’ll turn up. They always do.”

“Let’s hope she does. Just the same, I’d like what information you have. I understand she hasn’t been seen since Friday. Today is Wednesday. That’s a long time.”

“For the kids these days? She’s probably shacked up with her boyfriend somewhere, turning on with LSD or something.”

“Oh, she has a steady boyfriend?”

“A creep named Damon Wilde.”

“What does this Wilde boy say?”

“Look, Mr. McCall. Why don’t you talk to the two officers working on the Thornton girl’s case? They’ll give you all the information available.”

“Who are they?”

“Lieutenant Long and Sergeant Oliver.”

“Where do I find them?”

“Long’s across the hall.”

McCall rose. “Thanks, chief.”

“One thing,” Pearson said. McCall looked down at him. The man looked blue with cold; it had a chilling effect on his surroundings. “Maybe you ought to wise me up, Mr. McCall. There’s something in this that don’t smell kosher to me. This Thornton girl is Brett Thornton’s daughter. Thornton’s trying to take the party renomination away from Governor Holland. Everybody in the state knows they’re enemies. What’s Holland’s angle? What’s he so anxious to find Thornton’s kid for?”

“That,” McCall said, “is a crack I don’t like!” He felt the old fury rising and fought it down. He had it pretty well under control these days except where Sam Holland’s interests were concerned. The governor called it his one weakness.

“No offense,” Chief Pearson said coldly. “But we’re not exactly a bunch of hicks in Tisquanto, Mr. McCall, no matter how they regard us in the capital. We keep score. What’s behind this?”

“Nothing! Thornton and Holland are political enemies, true, but they’ve always respected each other as men. If the governor can help find Thornton’s daughter, he very much wants to do so.”

“If you say so. But better sit down again, Mr. McCall. I’ve got a few more things on my chest about what’s going on at the college.”

McCall sat down again. Apparently Pearson was having second thoughts.

“Actually, the situation is pretty bad. Wade’s half out on his mind, and Floyd Gunther is as nervous as a mother bird.” Wolfe Wade was president of the college, and Floyd Gunther was dean of men.

“There have been threats against the administration.”

“Personal threats?”

“Especially against Dean Gunther.”

“Anonymous, I suppose.”

“Hell, no. They carry signs on their picket lines — bold as brass. We’ve had them in for questioning, but of course they’re smart enough to avoid a charge we can make stick. The truth is, we’re sitting on a powder keg here, Mr. McCall. We can handle it, all right — don’t get me wrong — but on second thought maybe it’s just as well the governor knows the real situation. We’re expecting anything.”

“How many students are involved in the nasty stuff?”

“A small group, relatively. Or rather a number of different small groups.”

“Hippies? Yippies?”

“And kooks and agitators and Lord knows what else. Some of the hippie crowd are okay, though they all turn my stomach.”

“What’s their beef?”

“Who knows? More say in administration, the right to pick the curriculum — you know, it’s countrywide. They come on hard at the sight of a blue uniform, start throwing things. The other day I thought they’d tear down the administration building stone by stone. So far we’ve handled them without too much trouble. I figure to keep it that way. You can tell the governor.”

McCall rose. “I’ll talk to Long and Oliver.”

Pearson cleared his throat. “You seen President Wade?”

“Not yet.”

The chief reached for one of his phones. He began to dial. He did not look up or wave goodbye or even grunt.

Dismissed, McCall thought. He did not let the grin show until he reached the hall.

Tisquanto’s police headquarters smelled like police buildings the country over. Dried sweat, stale cigarette smoke, germicide, and a certain metallic odor that defied identification. The walls were the universal pale dirty green.

Two officers stood in an open doorway across the hall. McCall asked one of them, a beanpole in plain clothes, where he might find Lieutenant Long.

“I’m Long.”

“I’m Micah McCall, Governor Holland’s special assistant.”

Long’s marbly eyes immediately went into hiding. A pretty girl typing at a desk inside the room looked up with interest, caught McCall’s glance, flushed, and bent back to her machine. The man with Long came alive.

“Sergeant Oliver,” Lieutenant Long said. McCall shook Oliver’s hand. Long kept his to himself.

“Now,” the Lieutenant said. “What can I do for the governor’s special assistant?” He made it sound like an off-color joke.

“I’m here on this Laura Thornton disappearance,” McCall said. “Chief Pearson said you would tell me whatever you know.”

“He did?” said Long. Long was a sneerer; his cheeks hollowed and his thin mustache bunched a little. Everything about him was drawn out. I can’t picture having a beer with this guy, McCall thought, or exchanging a confidence; I can imagine how he strikes these college kids. Long began rocking on his heels like a house dick on a dull night. “Do tell.”

“Look,” McCall said. “Let’s not make it a war, lieutenant. I’ve been all through that scene with your chief. I’m no J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t know a damned thing about the scientific stuff; I’m sure any first-grade detective on your payroll could do a better job of tailing or following up a hard lead. I’m really not a detective at all. I’m more of a hound dog. I smell ’em out. Navigate by the seat of my pants and an occasional squint at the stars. I’m not going to look over your shoulder, lieutenant, or get under your feet. Just tell me what you’ve got so far and I’ll jump out of your hair.”

“We don’t have much,” Sergeant Oliver put in hurriedly.

McCall turned his attention on the sergeant. Oliver looked human. Medium height, face round, bunches of crow’s feet around the eyes. He wore tired-looking clothes, too. Whatever else he is, he’s not on the take. An honest cop?

Sergeant Oliver avoided glancing at his superior.

“In fact, what we have we can give you pretty quick,” Lieutenant Long said with a smile.

McCall immediately wished he wouldn’t. His smile was worse than his sneer. “I’d appreciate it if—”

“I’ll bet you would,” Long sneered. Maybe he was taking a night seminar in Immediate Assumptions. “I would myself. But the fact is we haven’t got a goddam thing. Nothing. She’s just gone up in smoke. Or made a clean getaway, if she’s done anything. We don’t even have a line on that theory. She could be anywhere, as a result of anything.”

“You think she’s dead, lieutenant?”

“Who cares what I think? You ask me straight out, I’ll say yes, I think so. But what good is an opinion, even a lieutenant’s? Where she is, in what condition, is anybody’s guess.”

“Who saw her last?”

“Her roommate, a girl named Nina Hobart. On Friday. And that’s it.”

“What about Laura’s boyfriend? The Wilde boy.”

“He says he last saw her some time Thursday. He doesn’t seem concerned any. He’s probably lying, but we haven’t been able to crack his cool. We’re working on it is all I can say.” He rocked on his heels. Still sneering. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it, McCall thought.

Sergeant Oliver said nothing.

“And that’s all you’ve got, lieutenant?”

“You want a written report? Look, that’s all we’ve got, and if you’ll let us go back to work we’ll try to get more. Okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it. Why don’t you stroll around and take in our lovely campus? ‘Oh, dear gray elms of yesteryear’ and all that jazz. You might even catch a protest meeting or two.”

McCall stared at him. Long’s squint held steady, baleful.

McCall turned on his heel. The hell with Long. And Pearson, too. Sam Holland had warned him: “Don’t expect a lot from the Tisquanto police, Mike. Pearson’s a hard case.” It checked out, all right.

There was plenty to do before he could dig his teeth into the situation — singular or plural. A place to stay. Then the administration building; he would have to talk with President Wade. Most of all he wanted to look up the dean of men.

“Mr. McCall?”

He turned in the slanting morning sunlight at the entrance. Sergeant Oliver was coming after him at a fast shuffle.

“Yes, sergeant?”

Oliver maneuvered him away from the doorway to a spot where they were not visible from the hall.

“I don’t like to step on the lieutenant’s toes, Mr. McCall,” the sergeant said. “He’s a little touchy. The truth is, I’m on this thing maybe more than he is. I think this Damon Wilde boy knows a lot more than he’s telling, but I don’t believe anything’s happened to the girl — certainly not anything drastic.” The sergeant’s surprising baritone lowered even more. “There’s just nothing to tell you right now. That’s on the level.”

“Thanks,” McCall said.

Oliver nodded and stepped back.

McCall hit the sunshine. He had rented a black Ford sedan at the airport. As he slipped behind the wheel he glanced back at the entrance to the police building. Sergeant Oliver was still standing there, watching him.

On the way to police headquarters McCall had spotted what looked like a pleasant place to stay. Called the Red Harbor Inn, it stood at a bend in the river, just outside the business district. He avoided motels when he could, and he associated most hotels with the smell of dust. The modern ones reminded him of hospitals. Inns were most to his taste.

A fender-bent silver sedan raced past him. It was plastered with flower cutouts. The he-driver wore shoulder-length hair and a goatee. A girl who looked like a statue sat beside him as they careened down the street. The sidewalks were crowded with students of both sexes — long hair and beards were frequent, a lot of the girls wore wide-bottomed pants, and some of the boys necklaces. Didn’t anyone go to class?

McCall turned off the main drag and took a side street which soon brought him to the Red Harbor Inn. He carried his bag across the parking strip to the rustic-nautical entrance and went in. The Inn was a two-storied building of gray shakes with red trim, surrounded by old elms and oaks and chestnuts. It was a fine spring morning.

At the desk in the shadowy lobby, which smelled pleasantly of malt and cheese, he signed the register. He paid no attention to the dark bar in the adjoining room, not even filing it for future reference. Alcohol was not his bag.

“Fabulous morning,” the clerk said, a small man with big round eyeglasses.

“Beg pardon?” McCall said, cupping his ear. It discouraged further conversation. The clerk rang for a bellhop.

Then he was in a comforter sort of room, all maple and pine and chintz curtains, the kind McCall liked best. It could be a happy omen, but he doubted it.

He tipped the bellhop, latched the door, took off his jacket and tie, and lay down catercornered on the bed. His mind was keyed to questions. His reception at Tisquanto police headquarters bothered him not at all. He had paid his courtesy call, made his presence known, and that was that.

McCall took stock.

First, there was this trouble at Tisquanto State College. It wasn’t just innocent “unrest,” in spite of Chief Pearson’s first allegations. McCall had done some homework before coming. Along with reports of widespread dormitory sex, the spreading use of LSD, marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, and other drugs (at least one documented case involved STP; it had sent a girl student over the brink into a mental hospital, where the prognosis was poor), there was outright, outspoken defiance of the Establishment, threats against the administrative authority, a minor revolt of some of the younger faculty, and at least one medium-sized campus riot that had hospitalized ten students and one of Pearson’s officers.

“I want you to fly down there and check it out, Mike,” Governor Holland said. “See if it’s as bad as reports claim. Or if it’s worse. Finish up that Mafia report first. Next week will do.”

But the next afternoon the governor called him in again.

“A complication, Mike, one that might be nasty. You’ll have to leave for Tisquanto right away. Turn the Mafia report over to Bill.”

The governor was worried.

“What’s this about, sir?”

“Brett Thornton just left.”

“Thornton — here?”

“Surprised me, too. It was obviously not a social call. He came to me for help.”

“To you? It must be a personal matter.”

“It is. Characteristically, of course, he doesn’t ask for my help, he demands it.”

“He threatened you? With what?”

“He said if I didn’t help him he’d use my ‘negligence’ — his word — in his nomination fight against me. Of course, it’s silly — I’d help him in a matter like this under any circumstances. But he’s under great stress, Mike. I feel sorry for him.”

“What trouble is he in?”

“It’s his daughter. You met Laura once, I think. She’s in her sophomore year at Tisquanto State. The girl is missing, hasn’t been seen since last Friday, Thornton says. He’s half out of his mind.”

Brett Thornton was a highly successful corporation lawyer and Sam Holland’s chief opponent in the state party organization. Governor Holland was up for renomination for the gubernatorial plum. Ordinarily his incumbency would have made renomination automatic. But the necessity to raise taxes, statewide riots in the ghettos of the cities, and other hard issues had made him the target of the opposition, and he faced a fight for the renomination from the conservative element of his party, of which Thornton was the outstanding figure.

They had been friends for many years. But the political bug had bitten Thornton, and with his bold, adamant, opinionated nature he swept friendship off the board. It had hurt Sam Holland, a sentimental man.

“Why did he come to you?” McCall demanded.

“You, Mike.”

“Me?”

The governor grinned. “Somewhere he’s developed a high opinion of your talents. Or maybe your publicity has oversold you.” Then his mouth went grim. “The police seem to be getting nowhere, he says. He wants you to find Laura. Get to the bottom of it.”

“Has he any idea—”

“No. He’s simply staggered. Brett’s like most parents these days — we think we know our children until one day we wake up and find they’re strangers. He can’t even imagine what’s happened to her, except that he’s sure it isn’t her fault, whatever it is. Me, I’m not so sure, Mike. Not with the way young people are today. God knows what you’ll turn up. Do you suppose you can do this discreetly?”

“I can try. Why did he threaten you?”

“I’ve never seen Brett so shaken up. I’d like you to do it, Mike, for Laura’s sake. I’ve known her since she was a little girl. She still calls me Uncle Sam.”

“Do you have a photo, governor? I don’t remember her.”

Holland produced a Polaroid color closeup of a sweet-faced girl with straight dark hair falling below her shoulders. She had direct blue eyes and a winsome smile. She looked about nineteen.

“Pretty,” McCall said. “Any facts at all?”

“She phoned her mother last Thursday afternoon saying she’d be home for the weekend Friday night. Thinking back on the conversation, Mrs. Thornton is inclined to believe Laura was unhappy about something — more than that, worried. She hadn’t sounded like her usual bubbling self, Mrs. Thornton says. When she didn’t come home Friday night, Thornton called the college, but no one was able to locate her. The police were notified, they instituted an immediate investigation, and by Sunday night the girl was officially declared a missing person.”

“How about boyfriends? A girl as pretty as this must be swamped.”

“Not surprisingly, the Thorntons know very little about Laura’s social life. The only boy they knew about was one she had once brought home to meet them, Damon Wilde, who also attends Tisquanto State. Neither Brett nor Mrs. Thornton liked him, Brett says. Arrogant, erratic, too demonstrative with Laura — remember, this is Thornton’s characterization. He put the boy down as a troublemaker, a radical in student politics.”

“I can imagine how that went down with Thornton,” McCall said. “If Laura brought him home, she must have liked him a lot.”

“Apparently she did. Anyway,” Governor Holland said, “Thornton talked with Laura’s roommate, a girl named Hobart, Nina Hobart, but Miss Hobart threw no light on Laura’s disappearance. Nor did Damon Wilde.”

McCall flew to Tisquanto early the next morning.

There was still an hour before noon.

McCall unpacked, went downstairs, and drove across town to the campus.

The last time he had seen Tisquanto State College had been before the modernization boom, when the buildings were still the original ivy-covered, blackened red brick with white trim, and there was a bell in a belfry that tolled the hours. Now the traditional old buildings cowered in the shadows of immense glass-and-steel office-type buildings, almost forgotten. The beautiful old landscaping had largely vanished, although there were still enough lawns and winding walks and ancient trees to bridge the past. McCall preferred his memories.

He checked signs and made his way to the towering administration building.

Students were all over the campus, and McCall looked them over carefully. Most of them were conventionally clad — the timeless open-throated shirt-and-pullover combination of colleges down the years, and for the girls the skirt-and-blouse look that varies from generation to generation only in the length of the skirts. This was the short-skirt generation, which McCall found very pleasant.

But dotting this cake like bits of glacéed fruit were the exotics of the hippie generation, whites and blacks — stylists of the far-out, psychedelic color studies in cloth, ponchos, beads, Nehru jackets, long-chained necklaces on the men, American Indian outfits on some of the girls... a riot, McCall thought, not without humor. One long-haired young man swathed in a royal blue velvet cloak stood in the middle of a walk flaunting a sign across his chest that said I AM A STUDENT, DO NOT FOLD, BEND, OR MUTILATE.

There were signs on young people all over the place — KEEP ON THE GRASS — WHO’S AFRAID OF BIG BAD WOLFE? — TURN ON DEMOCRACY, TURN OFF AUTHORITARIANISM — and the like. One sign on the back of a boy solemnly picketing the steps of the administration building said simply: SMOKE POT.

A head of auburn hair bobbed into view on the other side of a tall privet hedge. Something inside McCall bobbed with it. There had been an auburn-haired girl on the campus of his youth... but when this girl came around the hedge, the auburn turned to carrot, and the girl was a freckle-faced plain Jane. McCall laughed and stepped around the boy with the SMOKE POT sign. A fat, broken-nosed young man in too tight jeans and an orange sweater, with streaming blond hair, chased a miniskirted girl. The girl was shrieking with real fear. The boy hurled a book at her and shouted an obscenity.

“Isn’t love beautiful?” the boy with the sign said.

McCall entered the building. Five minutes later the President of Tisquanto State College rose from behind his gleaming desk. He did not offer to shake hands. “Well, Mr. McCall,” Wolfe Wade said. “Doesn’t the governor trust us to take care of our own affairs?”