The Campus Murders

18

The meeting was in progress when McCall entered the auditorium. He recognized the man talking onstage as John Snyder, the English professor he had questioned about Dennis Sullivan.

He took a seat halfway down the aisle. There was no one near him. They were all seated in the first four rows, probably administrators, heads of departments, and other personnel responsible for carrying out administrative policy.

Campus police guarded every entrance.

“...nothing is settled, nothing will be settled, until we take a last-ditch stand.” Professor Snyder’s left cheek twitched. His fist made little frustrated assaults on the lectern.

“John?” A woman rose in the first row. “We’ve just learned there’s been another murder on campus.” She was a broad-shouldered woman in a pale blue dress. She waved a sheaf of papers. “It’s a student this time, Patricia Reed. I think you have her in one of your classes. She was — it happened in the Bell Tower. Mr. McCall, the man Governor Holland sent up here from the capital, found her. She was hanged!” Her voice rang with horror and defiance. “How much longer can we allow this bloodbath to go on?”

Snyder tightened his thin lips. “The fight is really becoming personal. These psychos will stop at nothing!”

“What do you mean personal?” someone called out.

“I mean, we’re dealing with people who will stop at nothing to get at us. Oh, there’s honest rebellion. I recognize that. But there’s this barbarism, too. Responsible protest can be tolerated. But they’ve turned this campus into a shambles!”

A thin, taut woman came halfway out of her seat. “You know they’ve repeatedly asked for meetings with the administration on a give-and-take basis and been treated like children caught stealing cookies—”

“They’ve had their chances—”

Other voices chimed in, and soon the auditorium was in an uproar.

McCall listened for a while, then he slipped out of his seat and made his way out of the place. Wherever the answer lay, it was not going to come from people like these. President Wolfe Wade, stung by something the thin woman said, had come out angrily for the expulsion of all dissident students, out of hand. McCall made up his mind: one of his first recommendations to Governor Holland was going to be the replacement of Wade. He was the perfect college administrator — for the 1920s. Unfortunately, time had marched on, leaving Wade far behind.

He passed through the swinging doors into the foyer, crossed the gloomy lobby, and stepped into the sunshine. A few students were hanging about outside. They had not been invited to the meeting, even these worried-looking ones. It seemed to him that what the situation cried out for was student representation as a matter of right, the beginnings of a responsible dialogue, a meeting of minds on a level of mutual respect. The way things were going, Tisquanto State College was headed for holocaust.

Meanwhile, he had murders to challenge. Dean Gunther. Pat Reed. The near-death of Laura Thornton — if she was still alive.

He had missed something somewhere. Maybe he should start over again. Laura Thornton’s room, for instance. That was where he had found the book of matches that had led to the Greenview Motel and her liaison with Damon Wilde...

He drove through the winding streets, seeing students everywhere, lines picketing the science building now, other students milling, holding signs aloft, shouting their young heads off. How much longer before this all blew up in everyone’s face?

He could see nothing different in Laura’s room at first. He stood in the yellowish glow from the windows and tried to forget everything he knew...

Then he spotted the two letters on Laura’s bed. They had not been there on his first visit. He pounced and picked them up carefully. One was in a pale blue envelope with the return address of her parents — a letter her mother had mailed several days ago. He did not read it.

The other was in a long white envelope with a liberal arts imprint, posted the day before:

The note was signed, “Lucielle Smith.”

McCall stood staring at the note. He stood for a long time savoring the taste of recognition. Every such denouement brought the same sense of mechanics: a computer with its memory banks full finally shuttling and clacking the answer in lightning maneuver. Peace, it was wonderful.

He took the letter and left.

He drove over to the liberal arts building and parked curbside. Seeking out the fine arts department, he was directed to a gallery-like room walled with paintings and other artwork. There was a desk, a young girl leaning on it reading a magazine.

“I’d like to see Miss Lucielle Smith.”

“Miss Smith?”

The girl went into a glassed enclosure and presently a middle-aged woman came out with her. She had untidy hair and she wore a green smock.

“You sent an overdue notice to a Miss Laura Thornton, a student here,” McCall said.

“Oh, Miss Thornton. The one—?”

“Yes.”

“We sent her an overdue notice? When?”

“It was apparently just received. Mailed yesterday.”

“That has to be a mistake. I’ll check.”

McCall handed her the letter. She went back into the cubicle and opened a file. She bit her lip, shut the file and, carrying the letter, came out again.

“Just a moment, please.”

She walked quickly across the room to an alcove. He could see her stooping there, riffling through some canvases in a storage closet.

When she came back she said, “As I thought, a foul-up. The painting was returned — I just checked. You know how offices are. We apparently missed checking off the painting and sent the notice routinely.”

“When did Miss Thornton return it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could I see it? The painting, I mean?”

“Are you connected with the college, sir?”

He introduced himself.

“Oh, in that case! This way.”

He followed her to the alcove. Paintings were stacked along the wall and in the closet rack. Each canvas was numbered on the back.

“It’s this one,” Miss Smith said.

McCall viewed it tenderly, almost with love. It was the one he had seen once before, all right. The all-red job, an abstraction that managed to look like flames leaping to a cave roof; violent shades of red combined to assault the senses.

He straightened up, careful to show nothing to the curator, who was looking nervous. But inside it was like a holiday. Or a reprieve. His mind had snapped like a trap. It was a good feeling.

“Thank you very much, Miss Smith.”

“Would you care to borrow it? We restrict our loans to students and faculty, but in your case, Mr. McCall—”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you. I just wanted to see it. But I’d like you to take this painting out of circulation — put it somewhere for safekeeping till it’s called for by certain authorities. Under lock and key preferably, Miss Smith.”

“Whatever you say.” She clutched the painting as if it were trying to fly away. “How... how is Miss Thornton?”

“Still the same, I’m afraid.”

“We can’t get over it here. Have you any idea who assaulted her so brutally, Mr. McCall? Is it tied in with Dean Gunther’s murder?”

Apparently she had not yet heard about Patricia Reed.

“Thanks again,” McCall said, and left.

Instead of leaving the building, McCall climbed the stairs to the English department faculty room and asked when Professor Snyder was expected back from the meeting at McNiel Hall.

“He just rang up,” the young instructor said. “On his way over now. I gather it was something of a frost.”

“Yes,” McCall said, and sat down to wait.

The frenetic figure of John Snyder scuttled in a few minutes later. “Oh, Mr. McCall. Waiting for me? I’m very busy—”

“This won’t take a minute, professor,” McCall said. “I’m looking for information. It’s a long time since I sat in on an English course. It’s about that Godiva story of the — what was it?—”

“Eleventh century,” Snyder said. “Wife of Earl Leofric of Mercia. That’s the legend, Mr. McCall. Just a legend, please. It appears as one of Walter Savage Landor’s ‘Imaginary Conversations,’ in Tennyson’s poem ‘A Tale of Coventry,’ and some other literary works. What do you want to know about it?”

“What was the name of the man who disobeyed the Earl’s order and took a good look—?”

“Peeping Tom.”

“I know that. What was his last name?”

“I don’t believe the legend has ever given him one. All we’re told is that he’s supposed to have been one of the townspeople, a tailor by trade.”

“That’s what I thought,” McCall said, and crushed the English professor’s hand. “Thank you.”

McCall drove directly to Dennis Sullivan’s rooming house.

He rapped on the black door; rapped again. He tried the door. It was locked.

A door down the hall opened and a freckled face poked out. “You want Dennis?”

“That’s the idea, son.”

“Well, he’s not in, for chrissake.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“What am I, my brother’s keeper? Lay off the knocking, will you? I’m trying to sack out.”

McCall descended, preceded by a door slam.

He had to find young Sullivan. Perhaps the best bet was to check his schedule at the administration building. He started for his car.

“Hi, there! Mr. McCall?”

It was young Starret, the black student who had found Laura, just starting up the walk.

“You live here, Graham?”

“No. Just visiting.”

“I was hoping I’d find Dennis Sullivan in.”

“Oh, Sully’s out at the shack.”

The little building in the woods, near where he had been stripped and beaten.

“What makes you think he’s all the way out there, Graham?”

“I know the cat,” the black student said. He was toting an armful of books. “When Sully’s in an evil mood, watch out. You don’t want to go out there, Mr. McCall. Not right now, anyway.”

“What do you mean, ‘evil mood’?”

“Uptight, like.”

“Could you be a little more specific?” McCall smiled.

The young man smiled back. “Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“But I’m not going to.”

“I see. Well, thanks, Graham.”

“For nothing? Advice is cheap.” Then Graham Starret shrugged. “But you better take it, Mr. McCall. It would be a bargain at double the price.” He went into the rooming house, waving.

McCall drove out of Tisquanto, taking the macadam road. The mere thought of the clearing in the woods near the shack made the place on his groin itch.

He missed the dirt-road turnoff the first time and had to backtrack. Evil mood... uptight... he wondered what young Starret had meant.

He found the turnoff this time. It entered at a grassy knoll, then the road curled away in the woods. He was near the river, he knew. Not too far from where Starret had found Laura Thornton.

The clearing was deserted. McCall killed his engine and got out. Through the trees, some hundred yards away, he saw the log building. It had a railed porch.

He started toward it and stopped, looking down. He had stepped on his necktie. He picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket.

Half-grown fir trees flanked the shack. Then he saw a car, a bright blue fender-dented Corvair. It was parked at the side of the building. So Starret had been right.

McCall sprinted for the cover of the nearest fir tree. No sign of life from the shack. It looked like an abandoned lodge in need of repair; the roof was tacky and the porch sagged. A perfect hideaway for hell-raising college kids.

He made another quick dash to a tree nearer the porch, decided to chance it, leaped lightly over the rail and across the worn boards, and crouched at a window.

He heard muttering inside and risked a look.

It was young Sullivan in there, right enough. He was crouched in a chair staring into space, talking rapidly to some invisible audience. McCall could net make out what the student was saying. Not that it mattered; it was probably transcendental nonsense. The boy was high on some drug; turned on with a vengeance.

McCall kicked the door open and leaped inside.

Young Sullivan did not even look around.

“Sullivan,” McCall said.

It was nonsense, all right, a babble of incomprehensible impressions, a reaching out to a world beyond reality. The babble held steady.

McCall went over to him and shook him. “Sullivan!”

The stream of words dried up. The boy turned bloodshot eyes McCall’s way and blinked.

“It’s the upstate fuzz,” he said in a pleased way, but very slowly, as if a sensible statement required laborious thought.

McCall dragged a chair over and sat close; their knees touched. “Are you with it, Sully? Enough to understand plain English?”

Then he saw what the young man had been playing with under cover of the tabletop.

“Oh, yes,” Dennis Sullivan said, and he brought forth the pistol, aimed it at McCall’s head, and pulled the trigger.