Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) (9 page)

The phones didn’t show any sign of letting up. Sammy was growing restless. The whole morning was gone and there was still much too much to do. She motioned to the nurse and quietly rose from her chair.

“Just a minute.” Matthews put her caller on hold and looked up at Sammy.

“I’m going to have to go,” Sammy apologized.

The nurse shrugged. “I really thought we’d have more time to talk.” She scribbled a name and number on a loose Post-it note and handed it to Sammy as she punched her caller back on the line. “Give him a call. He can help you with your show.”

It was only after Sammy had left the building that she examined the Post-it. The telephone number was all too familiar. Frustrated, she tossed it into a nearby trash can and trudged off.

As the note settled among discarded greasy fast-food wrappers, only the name remained visible in Nurse Matthews’s delicate script: Reed Wyndham.

Marcus Palmer peered down the barrels of his binocular microscope and rechecked the tissue specimen from Sergio Pinez’s brain. He had to be sure. “Damn,” he muttered, refocusing to a higher power. Just as he had in the last case, Palmer observed nodular collections of so-called “microglial cells” scattered throughout the boy’s gray matter; and small, poorly defined areas of demyelination surrounding the veins of his white matter. With these destructive changes in his brain tissue, Sergio had probably experienced memory loss, confusion, and dementia for weeks. Poor kid. If he hadn’t been driven to suicide, his lethal sub-acute encephalitis would have inexorably progressed to coma and death. There was no treatment for this complication.

Damn. Palmer carefully recorded his findings in the experimental log. The viral studies were still pending, but the results wouldn’t change what he now acknowledged. Despite the apparent immunity of the majority of subjects thus far, at least twice, his vaccine had failed. Patient #12 and patient #14 were dead.

Damn, damn, damn.

Palmer knew he had only two choices. He could go to the Human Subjects Committee, stop the project, and review the original animal work. Perhaps after months of study, he’d get permission to repeat the experiment. But the ensuing investigation might uncover the fact that he’d deviated from the original approved protocol.
He would lose his tenure and be banished from the university in professional disgrace.

His second option was to continue his work, and say nothing. It was possible that both suicides were coincidental, that the two students were simply depressed. Coming forward with these data now would end his work, his life, for no reason at all.

Palmer rose and walked to his window. Gazing out at the view overlooking the gentle slope of North Campus, he was stirred, as always, by its serenity.
Ironic
, he thought. Only in such a cloistered setting could this experiment take place — blessed by grant money, lax official university oversight, and the unquestioning trust of the subjects themselves. He watched now as young men and women, cheeks flushed by the cold, hurried along the crisscrossing walk-ways — laughing, talking, utterly oblivious to their potential danger should any of them be selected for his study.

For a long time, he remained there, weighing his choices. Then, with more than a slight twinge of guilt, he returned to his desk, closing the ledger just as the telephone began to ring.

A smorgasbord of Mozart piano concertos, Paganini violin caprices, and Wagnerian opera arias wafted from various practice rooms, mingling into a discordant soup that was not at all to Sammy’s more modern taste. She hurried down the hallway of the music school, stifling the impulse to cover her ears.

“This day’s already a complete bust,” she muttered to herself. None of the students she’d interviewed so far had much to say about Sergio. They were all saddened by his death, but no one admitted to knowing him all that well. Quiet, loner type. Quite the cliché.

She knocked at yet another door without much enthusiasm. “Excuse me.” Sammy smiled at the slim black man with shoulder-length dreadlocks and a tuba wrapped around his neck who opened the door. “I’m Sammy Greene. I work for W-E-L-L.”

“Yeah, I know, mon.
The Hot Line
. I listen to your program.”

His lilting accent was Jamaican, she noted, as she entered the
closet-sized cubbyhole. There was barely room for his enormous instrument.

The musician extended a hand. “C. C. Marone.”

Sammy reached over the music stand to shake it. “I’m interviewing students who knew Sergio Pinez.”

Marone looked slightly disappointed, shrugged, and turned back toward his music. “Sergio was not into the social scene.”

“So I gather.”

Nodding, C.C. blew a series of darkly resonant notes, ranging from velvety softness to a low growl.

“Quite a range.”

“Surprising, eh?” The young musician tapped his tuba and winked. “For a baby this big.” He hiked the instrument up until it almost completely covered his slight body. “Takes good teeth and plenty of wind.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“To play it well. You need to have good teeth and plenty of wind.”

Sammy chuckled as she grabbed a pen and notepad from her purse. “Did you know Sergio well?”

“No. Only from orchestra. He was a flautist.”

Sammy appeared puzzled.

“Flutes sit with the piccolos near the front. Tubas and trombones, we’re herded to the back.”

“Oh. Was he good?”

“An artist, mon. A Jean-Pierre Rampal.”

Sammy wrote the name on her pad for future reference. Larry would know who that was. He listened to Bach a lot. “Any idea why Sergio might have killed himself?”

C.C. shook his locks. “He was very quiet. We only had the music together.”

Sammy felt growing frustration. “Did he have
any
friends?”

“We only had the music,” C.C. repeated. Another low growl emanated from his tuba. His eyes avoided hers. “Perhaps you might ask his roommate.”

Finally a connection. Sammy’s pen was poised. “What’s the name?”

C.C. hesitated for a moment, as if trying to remember. “Lloyd Fletcher.”

“You know where I can find him?”

“Yeah.” He opened the door and pointed down the hall. “Orchestra practice will be over soon.”

Sammy slipped her notepad into her purse and stepped outside the room. “Thanks. You’ve been a help.”

“Not to Sergio,” C.C. said softly. “I should not have talked to you.”

Before Sammy could question why, the door closed in her face.

“It’s done.”

“You removed the bugs?”

“Every last one.”

“And the envelope?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Not a chance. We took extra precautions.”

“That’s what I’m paying for.”

“And the other situation?”

“Keeping an eye on it.”

“That’s good. Very good.”

The man on the other end knew better than to respond. He merely smiled and gently replaced the receiver.

Lloyd Fletcher played piccolo like an angel. Sammy entered the wings of the rehearsal hall just as the musician began his solo. His eyes were closed, his body swaying in rhythm to his haunting tune. For the few moments he played, Sammy had the sensation of being transported to another world — a world where all those lost were waiting once again with open arms. The rap of the conductor’s baton on the music stand signaling the end of rehearsal jarred Sammy from her trance. She opened her eyes to see the musicians packing up
their instruments and sheet music to make room for the next class. Fletcher alone lingered, staring at the empty chair beside his.

Sammy had reached his seat before he noticed her. “Lloyd Fletcher?”

He turned slowly and nodded.

“Sammy Greene. I work for W-E-L-L.”

Fletcher’s dark, sad eyes were magnified by the thick lenses of his clear plastic frames. His face was a mask of pain and confusion. “Sorry?”

“W-E-L-L. It’s the campus radio station,” she explained. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

Lloyd frowned and started to place his piccolo in his case. “About what?”

“Your roommate. Sergio Pinez.”

Lloyd snapped his case shut. He hesitated a moment before finally motioning her to follow.

As she walked beside him, Sammy observed how tall and stocky he was, built more like a linebacker than a musician. A handsome man, he had dark curly hair, dark eyes, rugged features. Yet his fingers were thin and delicate, like his instrument.

They moved silently down the labyrinthine halls of the music building. Few students acknowledged Lloyd’s presence, though Sammy got one or two nods or greetings. At a small practice room on the opposite end from C. C. Marone’s, Lloyd waved her inside, shutting the door behind her. He still had not spoken and Sammy felt uncomfortable opening the conversation. Prying into people’s private tragedies was the downside of her job. It was so much easier to chase down corrupt public figures like the Very Reverend “Shaft.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, I’m really sorry about Sergio.”

Fletcher nodded, his eyes welling up with tears. “Thanks.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Lloyd swallowed, then nodded again.

“Would you like some water?”

A shake of the head.

“I know it must be hard to talk about him, but you seem to be the only one on campus that knew him very well. I’d like to try to understand why he did what he did.”

“Why?” The question was barely audible.

“We’d like to . . . to . . .” Sammy stumbled over the words, “a memorial on Monday. We’d like to do a memorial for Sergio. A way for everyone at Ellsford to remember. A way to let everyone show that his life mattered.”

Lloyd’s expression was a mixture of anger and anguish. “It mattered.”

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean —”
Put your foot in it again, Greene
. “I know. He was very special.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I’m sure —”
Shut up, Greene, you’re digging it deeper
. “Okay, you’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. Maybe if I can start over. How about if I listen, and you talk?”

Lloyd gazed down at his hands. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, how did you come to be roommates? I mean, you’re an upperclassman, aren’t you?”

“Fifth year senior. I asked him. Met him last summer in P-town, and thought we’d get along.” He looked off at the corner. “We did —”

P-town. Provincetown. The penny dropped. The Cape Cod resort was well known as a favorite beach destination for gays and lesbians. Lloyd and Sergio may have been more than roommates. Sammy blushed, embarrassed by her insensitivity.

Lloyd seemed oblivious as he continued his reverie. “Kind of a shy boy. I remember the first time we met. It isn’t often that I find someone who enjoys tackling Paganini concertos as much as I do. We rehearsed the third and fourth sonatas for two weeks. I’ve never had a partner quite as talented. Did you know that Sergio was a composer?”

Sammy shook her head.

“He would ad lib these passages, ‘Variations on a Theme by —’,
you know, that would wrap themselves around your soul. Brilliant. We’d spend every evening working on his new concerto. He’d just finished two new movements last week.”

“Sounds like things were going great. What happened?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Was he upset about anything?”

Lloyd looked directly at her when he answered. “You mean about being queer?”

Sammy still wasn’t comfortable with that activist word. “Uh, yeah.”

“On the record?”

Sammy raised an eyebrow. “No? Okay.” She put down her pencil.

“It was harder for him,” Lloyd said. “Macho culture. Not as accepting. He only came out to a few of us. Maybe I pushed him too hard to do more.”

“His family didn’t know?”

“No way. They’re Catholic. It’s a mortal sin.” Lloyd’s eyes filled with tears once again. “And now —”

Sammy pulled a Kleenex from her purse and handed it to the musician. He took it and crumpled it angrily in his hands.

“That’s what our society demands.” His tone was bitter. “Better dead than gay. That’s why we have to come out. We have to fight, we have to let them know we’re here. Next to them, their neighbors, their friends. We have a right to be accepted as ourselves.”

Sammy nodded. “It seems horribly unfair. Do you think that’s why —?”

Lloyd shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I thought talking to Bill was helping him.”

“Bill?”

“Bill Osborne in the psych department. He helped me out last year, so I sent Sergio to see him. Thought maybe it might help him too.”

Sammy picked up her pencil again and jotted down “Bill Osborne.”

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

That’s why the name sounded familiar, she thought, remembering Osborne’s voice on Conrad’s answer machine. She definitely needed to talk with the psychologist for background.

“He seemed to be getting better,” Lloyd was saying. “Then just this past week, it’s like, it’s like he lost himself.” He dabbed at his eyes with the Kleenex. “And we lost him.”

Sammy patted Lloyd’s arm gently. After a moment, he met her eyes with renewed enthusiasm. “You know, you can do something for him that I don’t think he would have minded.”

“Sure.”

Lloyd rifled through his piccolo case and pulled out a cassette tape from one drawer. “You can play his concerto. As a memorial. On the record.”

Sammy smiled. “I think that would be very nice.”

“That’s right, Senator. Off the record?” Reverend Taft shifted the phone to his other ear and rubbed his neck as he leaned back in his fine-tooled, high-back leather chair. Cradling the receiver against his shoulder, he made a church house with his fingertips. “Yes, sir. The publicity we got on the animal rights protest should help fill the coffers at tomorrow’s sermon.”

He placed a hand over the receiver as an assistant entered the room carrying a fresh pot of coffee. “What’s up?”

The short, stocky man pointed to the empty mug on the cedar desk.

Taft shook his head. He made a point of limiting his caffeine intake to one cup every morning. Anything more he considered a sin. “No doubt about it, Senator,” he said, returning his attention to the call. “We should be well set for next November.”