The Campus Murders

7

McCall knelt on the riverbank.

“Turn on the flash.”

“I’m afraid it’s not much,” Graham Starret said. “Batteries are low.” He flicked the light on. A pale yellow beam, more shadows than light, struggled on the black water.

McCall took the flash from the student and played it on the girl’s face. She was lying half out of the water. The eyes were closed. The hair looked like seaweed. Her mouth hung open. Bruises and darkened swellings distorted her face.

He put his ear to her heart, felt for the carotid artery with his right hand.

“Is she dead?” Starret whispered.

“No, she’s alive. Barely, I’d say. Give me a hand.”

Between them they dragged the girl up on the bank. Her dress, which had once been white, was soaked with mud to her hips. She wore a thin black cardigan over the dress, which was ripped across her breasts.

“She’s taken a bad beating.” McCall stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her. “Starret, go find a phone and call the police. Ask for Lieutenant Long. And have them rush an ambulance.”

The student had come in his own car; McCall had followed in his rented Ford. Graham Starret left on the run. McCall watched him peel off, headlights slicing through trees and shrubbery, and vanish down the dirt road.

He returned his attention to the girl. There was nothing he could do for her now but wait for the ambulance.

McCall touched her hand. It was icy and damp. No wonder: lying in river water all this time. Mercifully she had lost consciousness.

What had happened?

Someone had beaten her savagely. One eye was frightfully swollen. Her mouth was puffed grotesquely over her teeth. Her cheeks were lumpy and contused, her arms striped with cuts and bruises. He gently inspected her head. Blood clots had formed on the scalp. She had been repeatedly struck over the head. It was a wonder she was still breathing.

He reached for a cigarette, remembered, and flashed Graham Starret’s failing light across the river. It was narrow here; the water ran as if it were deep. The stream made small secretive sounds between its banks.

Spring.

Would Laura Thornton ever see another?

In the moon-deserted night, with black water rushing by as if to a conspiratorial rendezvous and a battered human being at his feet awaiting dissolution, McCall could not repress a shiver. Death he had seen in plenty in his youth; it was not death that bothered him. It was the dying. When it was all over, what was left? You threw it out like so much garbage. But to stand by and witness the struggle, the failing, the going out... like the batteries in young Starret’s flashlight... this he had never been able to bear. He had had one interminable night in Korea holding the hand of a Marine buddy who was dying of a stomach wound inflicted by a mortar round, and he could still feel the loosening clutch and hear the fading moans in his dreams. The company was pinned down in the barrage, the medic had been killed, and there was nothing to do for the Marine but watch him die.

McCall looked up at the star-salted sky, felt the chill spring breeze on his cheek, and shivered again.

Faced with the body of the girl, he felt an urgency. He wished he had been able to talk with Damon Wilde. Now it would have to wait. And there was Perry Eastman, in Dean Gunther’s office: cocky, contemptuous. And Dennis Sullivan, the other student mentioned in connection with Laura Thornton. McCall ached to get at them. There was something to go on now.

He would have to contact Governor Holland, too, hand the governor the dirty job of reporting this to Laura’s father...

Two police cars, preceded by Graham Starret’s yellow Mustang, shot in under the trees. A patrolman got out and stood by his car, looking back. And there were Lieutenant Long, the sneerer, and Sergeant Oliver. They hurried toward him. Another officer focused a spotlight on the girl’s body at his feet.

Long covered ground in a peculiar long-striding, knee-bending way. McCall almost laughed; the lieutenant’s stride made him think of Groucho Marx. When he came up to McCall he threw his head back and stared accusingly.

“Who found her?” he demanded.

“Starret did. Didn’t he tell you? Didn’t you bring a doctor? And where’s the ambulance?” With a character like Long you threw five questions to every one of his.

“Sure I told him,” young Starret said. “Is she still alive?”

Long stooped over the girl, sneering. Sergeant Oliver said, “She’s still breathing. This is a break, a real break.”

“Doc!” Lieutenant Long called.

An old skin-and-bones got out of one of the police cars and trudged toward them. He was carrying a medical bag. He paid no attention to McCall or the police officers.

“This is our M.E.,” Oliver said, “Doc Littleton. Mr. McCall.”

Dr. Littleton grunted. “Don’t involve me in your lousy politics. Stand back, will you?” He squatted beside the girl’s body.

“Where’s that ambulance?” McCall said.

The medical examiner flicked an eyelid, dug sharp fingers into the girl’s neck, nodded, snapped his bag open, snatched a stethoscope, placed it under her left breast. His bony fingers went here and there.

“How is she, doc?” Oliver asked.

“Call that ambulance again and tell them to make time. This girl’s barely vital.” He began to massage her wrists. Then he plunged into his bag, came up with a disposable hypodermic and a vial. He filled the syringe, squirted some liquid into the air, and stroked the needle into the girl’s arm. “No telling,” he said abruptly. “Miracles have been known to happen, though not by me.”

“Will she live?” Long asked.

“You tell me, lieutenant. You’re the wonder boy of the ’Squanto police department.”

“What’s eating you?” Long asked angrily.

“First get that goddam ambulance here,” Dr. Littleton growled. “I’ll be glad to fill you in on my personal feelings afterwards.”

Long loped away, glaring. McCall said to Littleton, “No prognosis yet, doctor?”

“Not without a thorough examination. At that she must have the constitution of a racehorse.” The M.E.’s eyes in the spotlight glittered like ice at Sergeant Oliver. “And you wonder boys still haven’t come up with any lead to this thing?”

“No,” the sergeant said stiffly. “How about you, Mr. McCall?”

McCall resisted the temptation to point out that he had been on the case less than nine hours. He said, “Nothing, sergeant,” and turned to Littleton. “Has she been lying out here since Friday, doctor? That seems a hell of a long time.”

“Too long. She couldn’t have survived. I’d give it two days at the outside. Even that would be a stretch no matter how healthy the girl is.”

“Two days,” Oliver said reflectively.

“Right now she’s critical.”

Lieutenant Long came striding up. “They’re on their way. Held up by a three-car accident on the west side.” As he spoke they heard the ambulance siren. “Start checking the ground around here, Oliver. If any clue that might have been here hasn’t been wiped out by Mr. McCall and his boy Friday.”

“I’m not anybody’s boy Friday,” Graham Starret said. “In fact, lieutenant, I’m not anybody’s boy but my mama’s and papa’s.”

Long gave him a long look, then turned away. Oliver moved off, flash probing.

“Any idea what she was beaten with, doctor?”

“Hard to say, Mr. McCall. Might have been a piece of two-by-four.”

“You want me to stick around?” McCall asked Long.

“For a while,” Long said. “You can sit in your car.”

McCall started for his Ford. The black student fell into step with him. “Do you think I ought to stick around, too, Mr. McCall?”

“Judging from Lieutenant Long’s attitude, I think it might be wise. If he gives you a hard time, get word to me. Either through Dean Gunther or at the Red Harbor Inn, where I’m staying. I know it’s hard, but don’t hand him any lip, Graham. There’s no percentage in giving him an excuse to clap you in a cell.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. McCall,” young Starret said, grinning. “We’re experts at handling the man when we set our minds to it.” Then he said soberly, “I sure hope she lives.”

They had paused in the path, and McCall said, “Graham, do you have any notion who might have done this?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t understand it at all. I mean why anybody would want to beat up a girl like that. It’s way out, man.”

“Did you know Laura Thornton well?”

Starret shrugged. “I knew her, that’s about it. I wish I hadn’t found her. I wouldn’t put it past Long to try to mix me up in this.”

“I don’t think he’d try any raw stuff with the governor’s personal representative on the scene, Graham. If you had nothing to do with it, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The student turned back, shrugging again, and McCall went on to his car. He slid under the wheel and sat there, hungering for a cigarette. Maybe if he took up pipe smoking...

The ambulance arrived and two white coats ran down the path with a stretcher. A police officer walked over to McCall and handed him his jacket. It was wet and muddy and he did not put it on.

Lieutenant Long was talking to Sergeant Oliver. Oliver seemed startled. Then he moved quickly over to where the Negro student was standing. They spoke for a moment and went toward one of the police cars.

And there was Long, at the Ford, sneering. “I’ll want a full statement from you, McCall, at headquarters. Meanwhile, we’re taking Starret in.”

“For what?”

Long winked. “For questioning. Wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out he’s our boy. So then you’ll be able to go on home, McCall, and tell the governor he can stop worrying about Tisquanto.”

“You think Starret did it?” McCall said incredulously. “You haven’t really questioned him! On what grounds, lieutenant?”

“My nose,” Long said. “I can smell ’em out a mile away.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“He knows too much. Found the girl too easy. We’ll break him down soon enough.”

“But he’s the one reported the discovery. Would he have done that if he’d had anything to do with this?”

“Who’d he report it to, tell me that? The police, like he ought to? No, he goes running to his pal Dean Gunther. If you hadn’t happened to be there we’d probably not know about it yet.”

“You’re a racist,” McCall said. “I’m not going to let you coldcock that student, Long.”

“Sure, Mr. McCall,” Long said with a smile. “I sure will remember. Racist, am I? Look, I know the facts of life, you’re one of those do-gooder liberals like our dear mushy gov who’s responsible for what’s going on these days. Give ’em a finger and they want everything.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, lieutenant. Just remember what I said.”

“He was after her,” Long snarled. “Niggers go for white meat, any hep white man knows that. She repulsed him and he lost his head — went after her with everything he had. I’m betting we find she’s been raped.”

“Maybe she was,” McCall said. “That’s a long way from proving that Graham Starret did the raping. You know what I think, lieutenant? I think that after you’ve questioned Starret and Chief Pearson gets a full report, you’re going to decide to let the kid go.” He started his engine; the ambulance was moving off. “One other thing. If I find out that so much as a finger’s been laid on Starret, you’ll wish you’d never become a cop.”

McCall shot across the clearing after the ambulance. He heard Long call out something in a vicious tone but he could not make out the words.

Tailing the ambulance into town, McCall considered the case of young Starret. The thought of the student’s possible guilt had crossed his mind at once. His argument to Lieutenant Long that Starret’s announcing his discovery of the girl’s body took him off the hook hardly held water. He could have panicked and abandoned her originally, expecting her to be found quickly, and when she was not found quickly, his fear that she might die could well have caused him to “find” her, with his date (who on investigation would no doubt back his story up) as a witness. But there was nothing — so far — to tie Starret in with Laura Thornton’s increasingly mysterious life. No, it was more complicated than Long wanted it to be. The lieutenant was looking for a quick and simple — racist — solution.

The Tisquanto Memorial Hospital was an old-fashioned-looking yellow brick structure built in the Twenties, four stories high. It sprawled over a considerable area. McCall parked his car near the emergency entrance and hurried over to the drawn-up ambulance.

They had already removed the girl. He went in. At the admitting desk he said, “Laura Thornton. The emergency case they just brought in. Where did they take her?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you that information,” the pretty girl in white said.

McCall dug out his credentials case. The girl’s eyes widened.

“The police said not to give out any information, Mr. McCall—”

“I’m working with the police.”

“Well, she’s in Emergency Room C. Dr. Edgewit is attending her.”

He found the girl under an oxygen tent, with two nurses busy over her. Dr. Edgewit, in a green surgical gown, looked absurdly young. He was examining Laura Thornton intently. Dr. Littleton stood by, watching his every move.

McCall introduced himself.

“No time,” the young doctor said without looking up.

“Will she pull through?”

“She’s in coma. Concussion, shock, you name it. She’s taken an unholy beating.”

“I’ll get out of your hair, doctor. Dr. Littleton?” He took the medical examiner aside. “Is Dr. Edgewit competent?”

“He’s the chief resident. Fine doctor.”

“Do you happen to know if the girl’s had a personal physician in town here? It would be better for all concerned if she were seen as quickly as possible by her own doctor.” He was thinking of Brett Thornton.

“I’ll find out, Mr. McCall.”

McCall hunted up a pay telephone and dialed the governor’s private number in the capital. Holland himself answered, as he often did.

“All right, Mike,” the governor said with open relief at McCall’s news. “You stick with it and report developments. I’ll notify Thornton right away. He’ll no doubt fly down there tonight — he has his own private plane. Dig into this hard, Mike. Find out who beat Laura. Whoever it was, I want him! And not just because Thornton’ll have my hide if we don’t turn him up. You understand?”

“I’m way ahead of you, Governor.”

“I wish I could get down there myself, but it’s just not possible. I’m tied up here. But I’ll be down as soon as I can, especially if an emergency develops. By the way, don’t tangle with Thornton. He’ll land down there loaded for bear.”

“I understand, Governor.”

“And Mike? I can’t trust the local police on this student rebellion. That’s why I wanted you there in the first place. The truth is, I don’t know whom to trust in good old ’Squanto. So I’m relying on you and your judgment.” The line went dead.

The governor’s tone had been light. McCall was not fooled. The old man’s really worried, he thought, Thornton must be applying a lot of pressure. He knew how much Sam Holland wanted a renomination; he felt that his work for the people of the state, faced as he was with an unpredictable legislature, needed at least another term for completion of his program of social legislation.

McCall turned away from the telephone to see Dr. Littleton hurrying up the corridor toward him.

“The girls at her sorority use a Dr. Williams,” the M.E. said, “but there seems to be doubt that she’s ever seen him for anything. Personally I wouldn’t recommend him. He’s more interested in his golf handicap than in what’s going on in medicine.”

“Then we’d better let Dr. Edgewit handle it till Mr. Thornton gets here and makes his own decision. Thanks, doctor.”