The Campus Murders

15

The inside of the rented Ford was crammed with last winter’s mulch, a malodorous mess of damp and rotting leaves. The exterior had been used as a wall for the advertisement of graffiti, a display of obscenities deriding Governor Holland, McCall, President Wade, and authority generally. Perhaps significantly the graffiti had been written in soap.

McCall reamed out the interior as best he could and drove to an all-night garage. He was beginning to stiffen up from the beating, and he kept squirming behind the wheel.

“You’d better wash the car as well as clean the inside,” he told the attendant. “I’ll pick it up in an hour or so.”

“We don’t do car washes at night, mister.”

“I can’t run this thing in its present condition.”

“That’s your problem.”

“You don’t seem swamped with work. How about it?”

The man grinned. “What am I bid?”

“Does everybody in this town have the morals of a grave robber?” McCall growled. “All right, double the usual. But I want a good job.”

“You got the best, mister. What happened?”

“You tell me. Parked my car and when I got back it was like this.”

“These goddam college bums,” the garage attendant said. “You want a cab, use the office phone. I’ll put it on the bill.”

McCall gave the taxi driver Kathryn Cohan’s address. He was deposited at the foot of a meandering flight of steps that led up a hillside to the house perched at the top in a broad nest of trees and shrubbery. The front-door lights were on and he could dimly make out an unconventional redwood house all angles and ells.

Apparently she had heard the taxi. She was waiting in the doorway.

“For God’s sake, Mike, where have you been? I was beginning to get worried.”

“Here and there. Sorry I was delayed.”

“You could have phoned.”

“Not really,” McCall said.

She pulled him inside and inspected him in her foyer. “What happened, Mike? You look awful. Look at your clothes! You’ve been in a fight!”

“If I was, it was pretty one-sided. They don’t grow many sportsmen in old ’Squanto, do they? I mean, whatever happened to fair play?”

“Mike, will you tell me what happened!”

She clung to his arm. In the soft lighting her hair shimmered red gold. She was all in brown — bell bottoms in crushed velvet, velvet shirt, suede vest, and square-toed reptile shoes.

“You look delicious.”

“Mike.”

“Let’s go in there and sit down,” McCall said. “I’ve been running.”

It was a beautiful living room of naked hand-hewn beams, bright rugs, slapdash furniture, everything a bit oversized and comfortable-looking and surprisingly unfeminine. The walls were crowded with books and pictures.

McCall sank into a leather armchair.

“Bourbon?”

“I’m a weak-gin man.”

“How weak?”

“I hate the stuff, to tell you the truth. All right, this once make it bourbon. One jolt. Old grandma’s remedy.”

She brought him the shot and he gulped it down. She sipped hers, nestled at his feet. “Now tell me,” she said.

He told her.

“You poor, poor darling,” Kathryn whispered. “Those monsters! Oh, Mike, I don’t know what’s happening to people! Rebellion is one thing, but... I’m no prude, but this is — is indecency! Don’t you think you ought to see a doctor? At least let me run you over to the emergency room of the hospital.”

McCall shook his head. “I’m all right. They were careful not to hurt me badly.” At the last moment he had decided to omit the part about the lighted cigarette and his groin.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “I think I could use one more drink.”

She jumped up and refilled his shot glass. This time he nursed the stuff. It burned its way down, and he made a face. She watched him with her head cocked.

“You’re a strange guy, Mike... It’s a known group, by the way. I mean, nobody can ever prove anything, and from what you say you can’t actually accuse individuals because you wouldn’t be able to identify anybody. They’ve been in trouble before with all their running-around-naked activities. They call themselves Nature’s Children.”

“Mother Nature spawned a litter of mean little bastards.”

“The police have hauled them in a few times. But they deny everything, nobody can ever make an identification — they always use those horrible masks — and anyway I’m sure if you accused them they’d come up with interlocking alibis for this evening, the way they always do. They’re a disgrace to the college.”

“Why aren’t they kicked out?”

“Because you have to have due process on campus as elsewhere,” Kathryn said dryly. “You can’t kick a student out without cause. No one’s ever pinned anything on them. A few have been dropped from Tisquanto for poor grades — they’re not very good students — but most of them manage to get by. They stick pretty close and avoid the other students.”

“Nature’s Children,” McCall said savagely. “I’d like to kick a few of their rosy little asses.” He winced, and she jumped up.

“You’re in pain!”

“I’ve felt fitter. Katie, I wonder if I might take a shower.”

“I should have thought of that right off! And while you’re taking it I’ll clean up your clothes. You follow me.”

He tagged her to a pink-and-white bedroom furnished in maple. Where she takes her clothes off, he thought, she wants it feminine; and felt an absurd relief. “There’s the linen closet,” she said, “and that door there leads to the bath. Leave your clothes out here and I’ll get busy on them. Oh, you’ll need a robe. Oh, dear, I don’t think any of mine would fit you...”

“A big bath towel will do fine, Kathryn.”

“Plenty of those in the linen closet. Throw your clothes out here when you’re undressed.”

He stripped in the bathroom and tossed his clothes out dutifully. Then he took a look at himself in the full-length mirror set into the inside of the bathroom door.

His body was a welter of bruises well on their way to lividity. I’m going to look like a working palette, he thought. The cigarette wound was nasty. He rummaged in the medicine chest and found a jar of burn ointment. This he applied liberally to the burn. Then he got under the shower and adjusted it for its gentlest spray. Even so, it hurt abominably. He dried himself gingerly, feeling like the sensitive Prince in the fairy tale who could feel the pea through sixteen mattresses.

He wrapped himself in a huge bath towel and went into the living room. She was clucking over the condition of his shirt.

“I’ll have to wash your shirt and shorts, Mike. They’re filthy. I’ve got a drier,” she added quickly. “It won’t take long.”

“When I go to the Turkish bath,” McCall said, “I put myself entirely in the hands of the attendant.”

“Feeling a little better?” she asked when she got back.

“Not much.”

“You sit down here. I’ll bathe those bruises.”

“It’s okay, Katie.”

“Do as you’re told.”

He sat down. She immediately began on his face. The rubbing alcohol burned like acid. Her extraordinary eyes kept watching him, concerned.

He told her suddenly about the burning joint and his groin. Kathryn blanched. “That can’t be true! You’re putting me on.”

“Do you want me to show it to you?”

“No! I mean — how could she? It sounds like something out of Krafft-Ebing.”

“Or Buchenwald,” McCall said. “I can only tell you that it happened. It’s all right, Katie, I put some of your burn salve on it.”

“Do you want another drink?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re really not a drinker, are you?”

“No.”

“I notice you don’t smoke, either.”

“I’m fighting it,” McCall smiled.

“You’re remarkably free of vices, Mr. McC.”

“Except one,” he said, and pulled her to, him.

Afterward she accused him of having raped her.

“I had a remarkable lot of cooperation,” McCall said dreamily.

“What’s more, you promised, Mike. You gave me your word.”

“I’m sorry, Katie. I’d take it back if I could.”

“I’ll bet!” She tossed the flaming locks on his chest. “What I ought to do is jab you in that burn.”

“My God, no. You wouldn’t.”

She shivered and tightened her arms. “Is this all there is to it, Mike?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to take the Nature Children’s gentle hint and leave town and I’ll never see you again?”

“A, I don’t take hints. B, I have no intention of leaving town until my assignment is finished. C, even if I did, I’d see you again — if that’s what’s steaming around in that little old redhead.”

“Mike, they might hurt you again... worse the next time...”

He felt her convulse, protecting him with all her limbs, and he allowed himself to be consoled in the traditional way.

A taxi waited down in the street. They stood in the front doorway.

“I hate to leave you, Katie, but I’m dead for sleep. I want to check the hospital, too.”

“Take care of yourself, Mike.” She kissed the side of his jaw and gave him a hard push. “Get going, cowboy.”

“Cowboy?”

“You know what I mean, damn you!”

He grinned and trudged down to the cab. He had the man drive him to the garage where his Ford waited, gleaming and sweet inside. McCall gave the attendant a big tip and headed crosstown.

Tisquanto Memorial Hospital looked ominous in the spring night. The moon was down by now and the hulking place was largely a haunt of shadows. He hoped it was not prophetic.

He checked at the third floor desk, and the old blonde nurse with the withered lips said, “Still no change, Mr. McCall.”

“Could I look in on her?”

The nurse hesitated. “I suppose it’s all right. Just for a second.”

“Her father still here?”

“No, he went back to his hotel. The poor man was exhausted. We had to practically force him to leave.”

“Where you going?” McCall demanded.

“Mr. McCall,” the old nurse said, “this is the way I get my exercise.”

“You don’t trust me,” McCall said sadly.

“I just want to be able to say, if the doctor should question me, that nobody touched her.”

They were halfway up the hall when they heard a muffled shriek. It was cut off abruptly.

“What’s that?” McCall demanded.

“Blessed if I know.” The nurse began to hurry. “It sounded like it came from... from Miss Thornton’s room...”

So McCall ran, too. He burst through the door. A pale bedlight shadowed the unconscious girl. He saw a man’s leg disappearing over a windowsill, and a young nurse sprawled on the floor, looking dazed. A bed screen had been overturned. There was a pillow on the floor.

The nurse scrambled to her feet, holding her throat.

“A man,” she said, swallowing. “He choked me — tried to smother Miss Thornton...”

“See if she’s all right!”

McCall jumped for the window. “Call the police,” he said to the old nurse, and dived out.

The featureless figure of a man was speeding down the fire escape. As McCall started down after him the man reached the first floor. Running through McCall’s head was the thought that he was chasing the man who had beaten Laura up. Had he left her for dead at the river? This attempt to kill her pointed to that — to kill her before she could regain consciousness and identify him.

The man dropped from the short stretch of ladder to the pavement below. He ran like a whippet toward the parking lot at the rear of the hospital. His running made hardly a sound; he was in sneakers.

McCall finally reached the ladder and dropped. It’s a running night, he thought grimly, and sprinted with everything he had. He could no longer see his quarry.

He reached the lot. A few cars were parked there. McCall stood frozen, listening.

Nothing.

He had lost whoever it was.

McCall went over the lot and cars. A low wall surrounded the area. He found nothing.

Two special officers ran toward him wielding flashlights.

“Any sign of him?” one asked.

“He got away,” McCall said. “There’s no sense searching.”

He went back to the third floor. The old nurse was standing in the doorway of Laura Thornton’s room.

“How is she, nurse?”

“No damage. Apparently he’d just started when Miss Durham’s scream panicked him and he beat it. Some doctors are in there with Laura now, but she’s all right. At least she’s no worse than she was. He got away?”

“Yes. Where’s this Miss Durham now?”

“In the dispensary behind the desk.”

An intern was just concluding an examination of the young nurse’s neck. “You’ll live, Maggy,” he said, patted her fanny, and left.

“These damn interns,” she said angrily. “Oh, excuse me, Mr. McCall. You have to be dead before they get interested.”

“Drink some more of that coffee,” McCall said, “then tell me what happened.”

She took a sip and set the steaming cup down. “I was by the bed checking her pulse and respiration. I thought I heard the window open, decided I was hearing things, and didn’t even turn around. I regretted it right away. He grabbed me from behind, got a stranglehold on my neck with both hands, shook me like a doll, and threw me down. He yanked the pillow from under Miss Thornton’s head and started pressing it over her face. I heard myself scream, and he got scared or something and ran for the window. Then you and Mrs. Taliaferro came in, and that’s all.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Hardly, when he choked me from behind. He could have been Dracula for all I know.” She shuddered. “He was so fast. Going and coming... they ought to have posted a policeman in here.”

“I thought they had.”

“I wonder why they didn’t.”

“They will from now on,” McCall said grimly. “Her father had better be notified.”

“Let the police do that, Mr. McCall. I’m not tangling with him.”

Neither am I, thought McCall.

Sergeant Oliver stepped out of the elevator. He looked ashen. He had three officers with him.

“What in God’s name happened here, Mr. McCall?”

McCall told him. “He was a speedster, sergeant. He practically flew. I didn’t have a chance to get him.”

“This thing’s developing,” Oliver muttered. “And you seem to land in the middle of everything. What happened to your face?”

“A little accident,” McCall said. “How come you didn’t post a guard over Miss Thornton?”

“The lieutenant didn’t think it necessary.”

“As soon as Mr. Thornton gets here,” McCall said, “your lieutenant is going to have a change of heart. Good night, sergeant. I’m for some shuteye.”

Back in his room at the Red Harbor Inn, McCall undressed slowly, considering the events of the evening. None of it sounded rational. He slipped into bed and lay thinking about Katie Cohan. That banished sleep altogether. Finally, he sat on the edge of the bed and watched dawn pale the sky.

It had been a long and trying night.

Although — recalling Katie again — not without its compensations. What had she called him?

He grinned.