The Hanging

Chapter 5

“This is 911. What is your emergency?”

“There’s a man, hanging,” I managed to say, looking up into the open stairwell at the soles of a man’s shoes. By late that Friday afternoon the college campus was, truly, like a ghost town, and I was alone in the vast marbled emptiness of the administration lobby with a corpse dangling from the ceiling two stories above my head.

I gave the dispatcher my location and my name.

“You say a man hanged himself, Ms MacGowen?” she asked.

“I don’t know if he did it to himself or if he had help.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

“No, it’s just the two of us, as far as I know.”

“The two?” There was a pause before she said, “Oh. Is he breathing?”

“Not likely.” He hadn’t moved a micrometer since I arrived.

“Can you check?”

“His breathing?” I said, thinking, Oh damn. How had a quick stop by the lobby to shoot some footage of the empty stairwell become a scene worthy of Grand Guignol? I’ve spent most of my adult life working in one aspect or another of the news business and I’ve seen my quota of ugly things. I like to think I’m pretty tough, but sometimes enough is enough.

“Yes, ma’am. Is he breathing?”

“I’ll go see what I can see,” I said, figuring from the way his head lolled forward that there wasn’t much hope he had any breath left. Simply for the comfort of having something familiar in my hand, and to put a layer of distance between the reality of the scene above me and what I was prepared to handle, I took a camera out of my bag, flipped on the zoom and looked at the man via the camera’s little monitor screen; I could see him up close that way without actually being very close to him.

When I first walked into the building, I thought the figure hanging in the stairwell was an effigy representing all stuffed-shirt college administrators that any number of students, staff and faculty were frustrated with, a little memento left over from the earlier demonstration on the campus quad against tuition increases, class cancellations, and pay cuts. Realizing this was, in fact, a man had been bad enough; effigies don’t bleed. But recognizing who the man was made my knees buckle.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I said reaching for the stair rail. I managed to ask, “Is someone coming?”

“Paramedics and police are on the way, ma’am. Is he breathing?”

“Definitely not.”

“Have you checked his airways?” she asked.

“No.” I shuddered at the idea of touching him; his white hair was matted with something wet and dark, and his face was a horror mask. He was also well beyond my reach.

The lobby of the newly constructed building was ostentatious for a community college, especially considering the ragged state of the economy, with a stairway that was worthy of Tara: tall, curving, broad. Even from the top landing, I would barely be able to touch his shoe, the ceiling was so high.

“Can you administer CPR?”

“Are you reading from a script of some sort?” I was losing patience. “Where are the paramedics?”

“Their ETA is two to three minutes,” she said. “Stay on the line with me, Maggie, until they get there.”

“Sure.”

The automatic time locks on the exterior doors engaged; it was five o’clock, quitting time, but the staff had already fled, getting a head start on what promised to be a beautiful, sunny March weekend in Southern California after a solid week of rain. And there I was, alone, locked inside with a corpse.

I am not by nature very patient. When three minutes stretched to four, and then five, and I didn’t hear approaching sirens, I walked behind the unmanned reception counter, picked up a land line and took matters into my own hands; I dialed my college roommate’s husband.

“Tejeda.”

“Roger, it’s Maggie. Please come, lights and sirens, college admin building lobby. The college president is hanging by the neck, and he’s very, very dead.”