The Campus Murders

11

The house was an old mansion gone to seed. It smelled of bitter coffee. Sullivan’s room was on the third floor.

McCall found it off an alcove and knocked on the door, freshly painted black.

He knocked again.

“All right,” a voice said.

The door opened, and McCall was a little startled. The young man who stood there had long brown hair sweeping to the neck and curled low across the forehead. He wore a heavy gold earring in his left ear and, like Damon Wilde, he was naked to the waist. He was also barefoot. He wore black, very tight jeans that almost embarrassed McCall. Long sideburns framed his cheeks like parentheses.

“Dennis Sullivan?”

The young man stared; he had bright, fixed blue eyes. “You’re McCall.”

“That’s right. May I come in?”

Sullivan shrugged and stepped back.

McCall entered a small arty room walled with paintings and photographs. The rest was litter and dirt.

“Excuse me,” the young man said. “I was just dressing.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sullivan went into the bathroom. He shut the door.

“I suppose you’re here to question me about Laura Thornton,” he called.

“Yes,” McCall said.

Silence.

McCall prowled the room looking at the photographs and the paintings, the beat-up furniture, the textbooks on the shelf above a desk. Most of the pictures on the wall were photographs, blowups of the campus, crowds, a number showing violent action, principally by white-helmeted police wielding their clubs on students (taken apparently during the riot). McCall noticed a good deal of photographic equipment lying about; either it was Sullivan’s hobby or photography was part of whatever curriculum he was taking. A few unframed canvases leaned against the desk. McCall went through them. They were all violent abstracts. One was a study in yellows; another was in blues, black, and purples. One that especially drew his eye was in various shades of red; it made him think of flames scorching the walls and roof of a cave. The artist’s name was scrawled in the righthand lower corner of the painting, but he could not make it out.

He leaned the canvases back against the desk and went noiselessly to the bathroom door. He heard a soft, derisive whistling. He shrugged and surveyed the walls again. Two enormous blowups had obviously not been snapped by young Mr. Sullivan: one of Humphrey Bogart, the other of W. C. Fields. Fields was in his Micawber costume, Bogart in his Harry Morgan character from To Have and Have Not.

Dennis Sullivan stepped back into the room fully dressed. He had put on a black shirt and a fawn-colored vest; the shirt was buttoned at the neck, but he was tieless. Instead, a large round silver medallion on a leather thong hung to his chest.

“I couldn’t get to first base with her,” Sullivan said.

“With Laura?”

“Who else, man? She was uptight. At least as far as I was concerned.” He fingered his medallion. There was something smoothly nervous about him, like a lid over a can of eels. McCall stared at his gold earring. It was for real; the lobe had been pierced.

“You don’t seem much broken up about what happened to her.”

“Should I be? I’m sorry somebody beat her up, of course, but teasers lead a dangerous life.”

“She’s a teaser?”

“Opinions differ. Anyway, what happened to Dean Gunther grabs me more than Laura’s beating. His death affects the situation here at school, and that’s something that concerns everybody. Conditions are rotten bad, Mr. McCall.”

“Let’s stick to Laura. How well do you know her?”

Even standing still there was a swagger to Sullivan; he had a certain flair. “Biblically I struck out. Socially, it’s relative, like everything else.”

“Answering nothing.”

“I mean she’s a good enough chick, but we don’t really get on. She likes me, all right, but that’s as far as it goes. What I’m concerned about is the way ’Squanto is run. The students are the majority, shouldn’t they have a voice in what goes on? I think so. But they say the system offers you a route and you’ve got to take it or bug out. Take pot, for instance. Why shouldn’t we be able to smoke pot if we like? Why in hell can’t it be legalized? Or LSD? Or speed? Whose rights am I trampling on when I take a trip?”

“That has nothing to do with ’Squanto,” McCall said. “That’s a matter of law.”

“But it’s an example.”

“The trouble with you campus radicals, Sullivan, is that you don’t focus. You’re like the general who got on his horse and rode off in all directions.”

“Focus? I reserve all my focusing for my photo lenses.”

“Yes, I see you’re interested in photography.”

“I’m studying photographic journalism. But like I say, you focus your attention on something instead of your camera’s, you’re blind to everything else that needs changing. A camera records what’s happening; a man has to keep on the watch for what’s coming. I’m involved with the changing world, man, dig? Take complacency. Everybody’s complacent today. Well, you’ve got to be jarred loose! We want to make new rules — turn ’Squanto into a meaningful experience.”

“I don’t have the time to listen to your philosophy just now, Sullivan,” McCall said. “Meanwhile, you may have been the last one to see Laura Thornton before she was attacked. You were seen with her Friday noon.”

“Oh, that,” Sullivan said. “Laura was walking over to the liberal arts building and I gave her a lift.”

“You didn’t see her after you dropped her off?”

“No.”

“Why was she going there, do you know?”

“Well, they have a department that operates like a library, loaning out paintings like books. Students borrow them. Laura was returning a painting.” He seemed to consider something, hesitated, then said, “That’s all I know. I dropped her off there, and that’s it. We hardly talked on the way.”

“Oh?” McCall said. “Did you have a spat?”

“It had nothing to do with me. I remember thinking she must be off her feed or something, because usually she’s talkative. When I let her out with the painting she took off fast, and I went about my business. You know, it gives you an eerie feeling at that, realizing you may have been the last to see her.”

“You’re talking as if she’s dead, Sullivan.” McCall was watching him closely.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way! I meant...” Whatever it was he meant, he did not explain. “I wonder why she was clobbered like that.”

“Whoever did it must have had a powerful reason, wouldn’t you say?”

“But to be so brutal,” Sullivan muttered. “And now the dean. Stabbed to death. Almost like the two things are tied in somehow. And then there’s that blackmail — those notes.”

It struck McCall like a blow. “How do you know about that, Sullivan?”

“Didn’t you read the morning papers? All about those letters. They say you found them.”

McCall hid his anger. It had never occurred to him that the police would publicize the letters while their discovery was still steaming. What could Chief Pearson be thinking of? Unless it hadn’t been Pearson but Lieutenant Long. Either way, it was not going to help the situation on campus. To the stew of campus unrest was now added the spice of a dean who was accused of having played around with coeds — a dean, moreover, who had got himself murdered as a result of it.

“Groovy, man,” Sullivan said with a grin. “Old Gunther making like Humbert Humbert. Wait till I get Pat’s reaction! She’ll love it.”

“Humbert Humbert?” McCall said.

The student stared. “The guy in Lolita.” Then he shrugged. “I’ve learned one thing in my young life — I don’t think anything would surprise me any more.”

“Lolita was hardly the college-student age,” McCall said shortly. “Who’s Pat?”

“Well, you could call her my steady. Patricia Reed.”

“I thought you were hot after Laura Thornton.”

“That was for kicks,” Sullivan explained patiently. “Pat and me, we’ve got a thing going. And speaking of going, that’s just what I’ve got to do. You through with me, Mr. McCall?”

“For now.”

“I’d like to talk to you in depth when we’ve got more time. You know, like about drugs, sex, Vietnam, the whole bag. You being the gov’s man Friday and all, you could maybe give his excellency the inside on what’s really cooking at ’Squanto, and why.”

“Yes, we’ll have to do that. Can I drop you somewhere?”

Sullivan politely declined the offer, and they parted on the walk before his rooming house. Sullivan had a Bolex slung over his shoulder.

McCall drove slowly back to the administration building, thinking young Sullivan over. He was another opaque one. No matter what came out of their mouths, when you analyzed it it amounted to nothing. Was it part of the scene, or were these deliberate opacities, for personal reasons? McCall shook his head. He had never felt so alienated in his life. It was like dealing with extraterrestrial beings.

Something was brewing on campus again. It was overrun with students. Placards waved wildly. There was a great deal of shouting, and little scuffling eddies where disagreements broke out into violence. Before one building McCall saw something that made him think he was back in the colleges he had known — a snake dance. But it was only in mockery; the students were actually on a picket line. They danced to the accompaniment of a derisive chant. The only word in the chant McCall could make out clearly was “pig.” Scanning the faces of the campus police, McCall had no doubt whom the students meant.

Kathryn Cohan was not in her office. A secretary told him that she might be attending a faculty meeting at McNiel Hall.

McCall checked the front office for Perry Eastman’s address and was just stepping out into the corridor when he heard a crash of glass. A coed walking by shrieked and broke into a run.

A man came running up the hall. McCall stopped him. “What’s going on?”

“They’ve started again!”

McCall stepped across broken glass. Students were boiling around the entrance to the administration building; all he could see were enraged faces and gaping mouths. They were shouting obscenities. They wheeled like a stampeding herd of range cattle and started back across the campus.

The man McCall had stopped in the hall joined him on the steps.

“I’m Dean Gunther’s assistant,” the man said nervously. “You’re Mr. McCall, down from the capital, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve just had to call for the regular police, Mr. McCall.”

“What’s this one about?”

“What’s it ever about? They want to run the college! If I were in charge, I’d kick the lot of ’em the hell out.”

At this moment President Wade came out of the building, looking hunted. He paused on the steps and stood there helplessly. He did not notice McCall.

A group of students separated themselves from the crowds and began silently to form ranks. They were all blacks. They broke into a run, shouting.

McCall turned to Gunther’s assistant.

“Where’s McNiel Hall?”

“You don’t want to go over there, Mr. McCall. That’s the center of the trouble. There must be a thousand students there trying to tear the place down.”

“Where is it?”

The man told him.

McCall left on the run. He soon had to slow to a walk, using his shoulders, slipping through the shrieking crowds. There were man-to-man fights all over the place. It had the looks of something nasty, all right.

McNiel Hall was a round arena-like building. It was under attack from students hiding behind the thick privet hedges bordering the building. They were hurling rocks at the windows. Wherever McCall looked he saw broken glass.

The campus police were taking shelter in the entrance to the Hall. They were largely middle-aged men; some were white-haired.

“Pig meat!” screamed the students.

One grizzled cop broke his cool. He lunged down the steps, waving his billy. A strapping student in a white sweater rose from nowhere and slugged him in the face. The man fell over with a bleeding mouth and began to scramble away. The student kicked him in the rump, laughing. Then he went back to throwing rocks.

McCall suddenly spied Damon Wilde leading a group toward the entrance, evidently to storm it. He kept waving them on, shouting encouragement.

Then McCall heard the sirens, and a moment later police cars roared into view.

It was miraculous how quickly the campus turned from crashing chaos to peace. The Tisquanto police piled out of their cars with their riot guns and tear gas and plunged into an immediately ambling, quiet student body. The group headed by Damon Wilde simply melted into the crowd.

Their discipline impressed McCall. The police mingled with innocent-looking students, baffled. There were no targets for their clubs and canisters. Everybody moved away from McNiel Hall as if a rally had been called, held and concluded. The most curious murmur, an almost silence, settled over the campus. It seemed to say, “We have the power to exercise — or not — as we see fit.”

Behind the almost-silence lay a threat.

It became evident to McCall that Damon Wilde was a force to be reckoned with; he must certainly be one of the inner ring of the student rebellion leadership. He was an articulate, directed young man with clear ideas and a strategic sense. By contrast Dennis Sullivan was a disjointed sophomore. McCall sensed that Sullivan was a follower, on the periphery of the unrest, being swung along with the rest.

McCall turned back toward the administration building. The way the students had turned meek and mild at the appearance of the regular police disturbed him almost more than their previous violence. This thing is organized, he thought. Today they preached a sermon; tomorrow they might call for blood.

As he slid under the wheel of his car, McCall thought of Kathryn Cohan and wondered if she had been inside McNiel Hall during the trouble, and how frightened she must have been. By God, I’m feeling protective! he thought, and hastily turned to thoughts of Perry Eastman, next on his list, and what he would be like. Would young Eastman offer a lead?

McCall drove away longing for a cigarette.