Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) (7 page)

“Wake-up, dammit! Wake up, please!”

But he didn’t rise up. Sammy was trembling all over.

My fault!

In an instant the years rolled back and she recalled the image of her mother lying on the daybed. Not quite seven, Sammy had come home from school one day to discover her, still warm, but long past life. On the end table she’d found an empty bottle of pills and a note, scribbled in her mother’s neat hand,
Sorry. I tried
.

Sammy never cried that day so long ago. Even at the funeral hall as she knelt beside her mother’s coffin. Her father had not come. He’d already moved to Los Angeles, and was living with his new fiancée. Bubbe Rose would become both grandma and mother now — seeding Sammy’s tongue with Yiddish idioms, her soul with Jewish guilt.

Over the years, Sammy strove to appear unflappable, self-assured, tough. Keeping all her emotions bottled up, the paragon of self-control.

But, yesterday, news of a student’s suicide had created a tiny chink in her reservoir of unresolved feelings. Today, finding Conrad’s lifeless body had broken the dam. The child within her wept as she could never remember weeping.

When she was done, she wiped the tears from her cheek, picked
up the cordless phone from the end table by the couch, and calmly dialed the campus police.

Luther Abbott was exhausted. The throbbing in his hand had kept him awake all night. He’d been told to elevate it, but how was he supposed to accomplish that and still sleep?

“Blasted chimp!” He unwrapped the loose gauze dressing and examined his wrist.

“Lucky that monkey didn’t injure any tendons or joints,” the doctor in Student Health had declared yesterday as he cleaned the wound. “I’d have to put you in the hospital on IV antibiotics. This way you can go home on oral medication.”

Now Luther was taking pills four times a day, though the angry red color of the skin surrounding the bite suggested they might not be doing any good. He extracted a bottle of aspirin from the drawer beside his bed. A couple of these, he thought, should do the trick. He rubbed his flattop. Might even help the headache just forcing its way into his consciousness.

He didn’t have time to be sick, darn it. Today he had to crack the books for Monday’s midterms. And tomorrow he’d attend Reverend Taft’s Sunday service. In the afternoon the Reverend’s group would be planning the next campus mission of the Youth Crusade. He had to be there. After his outstanding performance in the last demonstration, they’d made him a group leader.

He chugged down his pink antibiotic along with two aspirins and a prayer. God will look out for his soldiers. I will not be sick, he vowed. And that’s that.

But as he returned the aspirin bottle to the drawer, Luther Abbottt had no idea he was soon to be sicker than he’d ever been in his life.

After alerting Campus Police, Sammy gently set the cordless phone back in its cradle and walked over to the front door, unlocking it as the dispatcher had requested. She returned to Conrad’s desk and sat
down, turning for a moment to look at the body. From this distance, she could almost convince herself he was peacefully asleep. But the jarring image of the professor last night, anxious and upset, flashed into her mind.

The Ellsford Teaching Award is the kiss of death.

Ironic.

She turned from the body and felt a twinge in her heart as she scanned the cluttered desktop. Folders, envelopes, scientific journals, and papers were scattered in disordered piles over every available surface. A small bin on one end masqueraded as an outbox where several stamped bills waited to be mailed.

Sammy remembered the large brown envelope addressed to Dean Jeffries that had lain on top. Marked CONFIDENTIAL, it must have been important to Conrad. She searched through the pile of letters. It wasn’t there. Curious, she examined the open desk drawers, but found only more reports and journals, all dealing with molecular genetics.

She tugged at the lower left-hand drawer. It was locked. The center drawer was jammed with thumbtacks, paper clips, and rubber bands. Conrad had also accumulated a collection of pens, many sporting the advertising of hotels far away from St. Charlesbury’s row of homey bed and breakfasts. Fumbling her way through, her hand closed around a small glass object at the back of the compartment. Guiltily, she extracted what turned out to be a bottle with a #12 printed on the label. Inside were two white tablets. Quickly, she slipped the bottle into her pocket and resumed her search.

Where was that envelope? Conrad couldn’t have mailed it last night. Not in his drunken state. One last pull at the locked drawer proved futile. She briefly considered prying it open, but the police would arrive soon. She didn’t want to be caught breaking and entering.

Her roving eyes came to rest on the sleeping computer screen of Conrad’s Macintosh. Without thinking, she reached in back and turned it on, the pinging and whirring soon ending with the familiar heading of a file folder and its contents. What had Conrad been
working on before he died? She sat, stunned at the answer. On the screen, under the folder heading “Games,” a ready-to-be-played version of “Hangman” opened.

The jangle from the desk phone startled her and she jumped.

A second ring.

She stretched her hand toward the sound, then stopped.

The stillness of the house magnified the shrill third ring. What should she do? Her hand hung motionless.

Before she could respond to a fourth ring, Conrad’s answering machine intervened. A ghostly voice spoke from the box: “You’ve reached the machine. You know what to do, and I’ll get back to you.” The machine beeped.

“Osborne here. Hey, guy, I’m worried about you. Let’s talk, okay?”

Too late.

For a long time, Sammy sat quietly as the machine clicked and whirred back into ready mode. Finally, noticing an orange button lighting the outlet chain at her feet, she closed the “Games” file, and kicked the button off with her toe, darkening the computer screen.

Conrad’s silent guardian once again, Sammy thought as she leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.

As graceful as a gazelle, Bud Stanton leapt four feet and deposited the ball into the basket. In the same seemingly effortless way, he’d fed countless layups and jumpers to the net this season, leading the previously unlucky Ellsford Eagles to first place in the Northeast NCAA conference.

“Not bad.”

The six-foot-seven sophomore pivoted to face husky Lefty Grizzard who’d just entered the empty gym. “Didn’t expect to see you here today, Coach.”

“Me either. Thought you’d be studying. Conrad gives killer exams.”

Stanton shrugged and turned back toward the basket. “Yeah, well, I’m not worried.” He fired a three-point jumper from thirty feet. It sank easily.

Grizzard eyed his star hoopster warily. Cheating was not something he encouraged, even if a coveted playoff berth was at stake. He asked firmly, “Then why don’t you tell me how come?”

Stanton’s expression was pure innocence. Cradling the ball, he said smoothly, “It’s taken care of.”

A flare of anger crossed Grizzard’s face. He kept his voice even. “You want to explain that?”

“I just called in some markers.” Stanton’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t worry, Coach. I’m not about to get my hands dirty.” He threw a backboard shot which found its target, then held up his hands in a “you’ll see” gesture. “Everything’s gonna work out.”

The player’s nonchalance irritated Grizzard even more. “I don’t want to hear that bullshit,” he shouted, “You don’t do nuthin’ here without clearing it with me. Understand?”

Stanton backed off. “Okay, okay, everything’s cool.”

“It better be.” Grizzard growled, poking his finger into the athlete’s chest. “Because if I find out you crossed the line, asshole, mark my words. I’ll hang you out to dry.”

“Don’t touch that!”

Startled, Sammy jumped up from the desk chair to face an irritated Gus Pappajohn. Standing in the middle of the living room, he seemed like some enormous, lumbering, brown bear — his five-foot-ten, two-hundred-seventy-five-pound, beer-bellied hulk barely covered by a bulky wool sweater, stretched over a pair of baggy corduroys. His unshaven face suggested he’d been dragged out of bed. His grumpy mood confirmed he wasn’t happy about it.

“What a sight to wake up to.” His gaze traveled from Sammy to Conrad’s body. “What is it with you, Greene? For a pint-sized package, you’re sure a bundle of sore ass.”

“The Yiddish term is
tzoris
,” she returned, adding wryly. “Nice to see you again, too.”

“I thought all you college kids slept in on Saturday.”

She allowed herself a half-smile. “I like to be an early bird.”

Pappajohn grunted as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “Worms are my job, Greene. What are you doing here?”

“My job, Sergeant. I’m a reporter.”

The ex-cop scrutinized her. “So what’s the story this time?”

“I don’t know. I came too late.” She paused to force down an uninvited sob that surprised her, then manufactured a smile. “I guess things got a bit too much for him.”

“Bit too much of this.” Pappajohn picked up one of two empty wine bottles from the floor by Conrad’s feet and eyed the label. “Good year.”

“The gun and the note are over there.” Sammy pointed as Pappajohn began examining the head wound. “Thought you might want to check for fingerprints, maybe take some pictures.” She remembered Conrad’s lecture on PCR and added, “Maybe call in forensics people for a DNA match?”

Pappajohn gave her a weary look and ambled slowly around the couch, noting the cluttered desk. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Which one?”

Sitting back onto the edge, arms crossed, he turned to face her, his gaze less than friendly. “Goes without saying you’re a magnet for trouble.”

Sammy felt the color rise in her cheeks. Pappajohn’s attitude was getting irritating. She knew he didn’t like her. She felt the same way about him. The man might have been a hot shot Boston detective once, but as far as she was concerned, he’d really done a lousy job tracking down last year’s campus rioters, and she hadn’t been afraid to say so — on the air. If it almost cost him his job, it wasn’t her fault. “What was the question again?”

“What in blue blazes are you doing here?”

“Uh, I came to interview Professor Conrad.”

Sammy’s hesitation was not lost on the detective. “At seven o’clock Saturday morning? Must be some story.”

“The Ellsford Teaching Award. It’s a great honor. He won.”
Pappajohn pulled a couple of Rolaids from his pocket and popped them one at a time into his mouth.

“You know, you’d be better off if you laid off the moussaka.”

“And you’d be better off if you laid off the bullshit.” Pappajohn wasn’t smiling.

Sammy tried to maintain a confident demeanor. Her mind raced to find a plausible explanation for her presence. Conrad’s midnight paranoia may have been the ravings of a depressed man, but if he had stumbled onto an academic conspiracy at Ellsford, it could involve even the campus police.

She stepped back toward the large armchair, stopping herself just before her hands touched the armrest. Frozen, she looked up at the sergeant. “May I sit here?”

Pappajohn waved a hand. “Sit.” He continued to glare at her.

Sammy took a deep breath, hoping her story would sound convincing. “Look, I really did come to talk to him about the award. He said he had something to do this weekend and this was the only time we could meet. I’ve got a Monday deadline. We were going to do a show about the award — you know, testimonials, students of his, colleagues — that’s all there is to it.”

“That’s all there is to it,” Pappajohn mocked. “So, how’d you manage to get into the house? Seeing that the professor over here was already dead and the house was locked.”

“He
was
dead!” Sammy asserted. “The side window was open. I saw him lying on the couch and I —” She shuddered, thinking about it now. “I only came in when I called out and he didn’t answer.”

“Listen to me, Greene.” Pappajohn leaned toward her with steely eyes. She could smell the onion on his breath. “This poker game’s out of your league. You’d be smart to keep your nose out of it.”

A uniformed emergency medical technician knocked on the door “Sarge?”

Pappajohn waved him in. “Over here, Dan. He’s all yours.” He looked over at Conrad’s body for a moment. “Got a camera?”

“Yeah, in the van.”

Pappajohn nodded. “Good. Grab a few shots, then take him out.”

So Pappajohn wasn’t going to call forensics
. Sammy knew better than to comment.

The campus cop kept silent while the young tech left and returned with a Polaroid Spectra to snap pictures of the dead man. A skinny companion with sloped shoulders wheeled in a gurney. Together, they matter-of-factly approached the body and aligned the transport bed.

“Third suicide this month,” Dan said.

With a sidelong glance at Sammy, Pappajohn joked, “Popped himself with a .22 just to avoid talking to her.”

Sammy’s outward bravado couldn’t drown out her inner voice.

My fault.
As the EMT reached under Conrad’s shoulders to lift him, the professor’s arms dangled stiffly. For a moment, Conrad’s head hung lopsided in the tech’s sling. His lifeless brown eyes stared directly at Sammy.

Pleading eyes.

Accusing eyes.

Dead eyes.

Like her mother’s.

My fault
.

“L-look, I’d b-better go,” Sammy stuttered, grabbing her purse.

“Well, don’t wander too far from campus,” Pappajohn said.

Sammy barely heard the warning. Pale and shaken, she stumbled past the gurney and dashed from the house.

A gloved hand reached into the wire-mesh cage, trying vainly to grab the baby pigtail macaque by its silver collar.

“Hey, what are you doing?” the tech demanded.

“I’m afraid this little one’s gotta be quarantined.” The man in white overalls pulled a university form from his back pocket. “Incident report.”

“Shit.” The tech touched his forehead where a short row of
stitches brought the jagged edges of the wound he’d received yesterday into neat apposition. “Damn that Reverend Taft. He’s nothing but trouble.” He pointed to the monkey. “She didn’t mean to bite that kid. He provoked her.”