Stalking Death (5 page)

"Not this year."

"So there's no one to corroborate her story." I felt a flash of sympathy for this unknown girl. Whatever was driving her behavior, she was all alone with it.

"That's right."

"Anything else, other than calls?"

He looked back at the woman behind me and I could sense her giving him permission to answer. Surely, if she were a Trustee, he would have introduced her. So who the hell was she and why was he looking to her for authorization?

"Twice since the fall term started she has come to us with rather pornographic pictures she claims to have found in her room. She says there was another one, back in the spring, that she threw away. She says her things have been rearranged. Disturbed. That messages and bits of paper have been placed in her pockets and in her... uh... undergarments."

Bizarre. Why would someone make up such a story? What did she stand to gain?
"To whom did she go with these items?"

"In one instance, to the head resident in her dorm. The second time, to the resident on duty. Both times, we conducted a careful investigation and concluded there was no way anyone other than the student herself could have placed the items there."

I needed to know the details of his investigation. "You told her this?"

"Yes. And she went crazy on us. Hysterical. Furious that we didn't believe her. That's when she started spreading all over campus that she was being stalked and harassed, that a male student had invaded her room, and we wouldn't help her. Naturally that got other girls upset. They called their parents and you can imagine the rest."

"You didn't involve the police?"

The "of course not" from behind me almost drowned out his reply.

"We preferred to handle the matter in house, as I'm sure you can understand. And we have a most adequate security force."

Maybe they did. Some campus security forces were superb, others little better than glorified groundskeepers. "Did your security force conduct the investigation?"

"No, we did."

"You, personally?"

"Of course not. Our Dean of Students and the Head of Residential Life."

"And their names are?"

For a second, I thought he wouldn't answer. Headmasters are frequently defensive when they have to call in outsiders, but usually it doesn't take long for them to realize we're all on the same side. Sometimes lower level administrators are more difficult. They often feel their jobs are threatened. But Chambers ought to be able to see that his job was more threatened by not handling things well than by doing the right thing. I was only asking the same questions he could expect parents or reporters to ask.

"Craig Dunham is Dean of Students. Cullin Margolin is Head of Residential Life."

"Do you still have the items she claims were placed in her room?"

He looked past me at the woman. "Miriam? Could you? I think they're still in Wendy's desk."

"It doesn't matter, Todd. They're irrelevant," the woman said.

"Well, she's asked. And I suppose it makes sense for her to see them."

"It's just a waste of time," she said, but she rose from her chair and glided out the door, the only sound the subtle susurration of her dress.

"Your secretary?" I asked.

"My wife." Again that slight surprise, as though I should have known.

Todd Chambers was reasonably polite, had a reputation for competence, and had had the good sense to call us when he had a campus problem. So why did I find him so irritating? Because he expected to have his mind read, and I'm no mind reader. Because he was being ridiculously stubborn about providing essential information. I couldn't tell whether he was being deliberately disingenuous, whether Miriam was here because she was the brains in this outfit, or whether together they had a plan to get our approval without actually dealing with their problem.

I was also irritated because of what was coming—the moment when he'd drop all pretense of cooperation, try to force me to approve his letter, and I'd say no. Then either I'd have to persuade him to let me help or I'd have to leave. If it was leave, it would be only with the clear understanding he couldn't represent that I, or our company, had had any part in his decision to send the letter or anything else he chose to disseminate. That would be unpleasant.

Chambers' wife returned holding an envelope gingerly between two fingertips. She placed it on the desk in front of him with a husky, "Darling, it's getting late," and began her flowing retreat.

I held out my hand, stopping her. "Mrs. Chambers?"

Her expressionless eyes met mine as she gave my hand a cursory squeeze. It was like being handed a bag of bones that had been in the refrigerator. She dropped my hand without a word and glided back to her chair.

I watched him shake the contents of the envelope onto his desk. Two pieces of paper in protective plastic sleeves. I've spent too much time around cops, I guess. They reminded me of evidence envelopes. I reached toward the top one. "May I?"

"Of course," he said. "You asked to see them, didn't you?"

I picked it up and moved it into the light. A strong-looking naked black woman bound to two posts, a leather hood over her head, being approached by a masked white man wearing an enormous dildo. Scrawled between her legs were the words, "You know you want it, baby." The message was menacing, pornographic, and stomach-turning.

Hastily, I set it down and picked up the other. Different woman, different position, different message, but equally ugly and disturbing. I tried to imagine myself at sixteen, finding such a thing in my bed, and my stomach knotted. No young woman, unless she was deeply disturbed, would associate herself with something like this. Most would have no idea where to find such pictures. The new freedom and ease about their sexuality which many young women espoused was about exactly that—free-dom. Freedom was not what these pictures were about.

Seeing the pictures enforced my growing sense that I needed to meet Shondra Jones. If she was crazy enough to do this herself, handling her would be well beyond my abilities, probably beyond the abilities of the St. Matthews counseling staff. Whatever I learned from a meeting with Shondra Jones, now that I'd seen these pictures, I knew this situation would not be put to rest by any letter.

"These are very disturbing," I said, putting them back in the envelope. "Have other girls seen them?"

"A few," he said, "before we took them and locked them up." His head bobbed. "The pictures, I mean, not the students."

"So it's understandable why they're upset."

He nodded.

"But no other students have gotten them?""No."

"Getting back to the phone calls. How many? With what frequency? Duration?"

This time he answered. "She says all the time. Often enough so she can't study or sleep."

I made a note. "That also began this fall?"

"Not exactly. She claims they began last spring and continued all summer to her home. She says she reported it to her housemother. The woman Shondra claims she reported it to is no longer on our staff. And there is no record of the complaint."

"There would normally be such a record?"

"Of course."

"Did you contact this woman?" He didn't answer. "What about her last year's roommate? She doesn't corroborate Shondra's story?"

"She didn't return this year. She really wasn't St. Matthews material."

Meaning either no one had tracked her down as part of their 'thorough investigation' or she'd refused to talk to them after being tossed out on her ear. "What about friends who might have been in her room when the phone calls occurred?"

"She's pretty much a loner."

He seemed almost pleased that no one could corroborate the story, while I imagined a troubled girl increasingly isolated by the departure of anyone she was close to. Either isolated and crazy enough to crave attention, even negative attention, or scared to death with no one to share it. "Are the dorm residents also the student's advisors?" He nodded. "What is her relationship with her current house mother?"

Behind me, Miriam Chambers sniffed. His eyes shot to her, then back to me. "I told you. She's difficult."

"Has Shondra accused anyone of being her stalker? Identified anyone?"

Chambers stared steadily past me at his wife. "How could she? There is no stalker."

It wasn't an answer to my question. "Is this her third year here?"

"Second."

"So she's a sophomore?"

"Junior."

"Does she get along all right with her dorm mates?"

Chambers shrugged. "Like I said, she's kind of a loner."

"What about with her teammates?"

"I've heard no complaints. She's a hell of an athlete." He sounded annoyed.

Did that mean he hadn't bothered to find out during his thorough investigation? Anyone trying to get a handle on the matter would need information about the student, her personality, her social and academic situation both to investigate the complaint and decide what steps to take to help her. Even if he planned to con me, at some point someone, trustee, reporter, or even Shondra's lawyer, was going to ask these questions.

"What about her brother? Is he a four-year senior?"

Chambers nodded. "Getting Shondra here was his idea. He was worried about what might happen to her back home. They're being raised by a grandmother and I guess that Shondra was quite a handful. Jamison just kept at us until we agreed to take her." He smiled. "He's quite a diplomat, but he never gives up. He's very protective of his little sister, very much the responsible older brother, even though they're not much more than a year apart."

"You sound fond of him."

"I am."

"But not so fond of his sister. Why is that? Has she given you trouble before?"

He shrugged, sighed, and looked at his wife. "We might as well tell her, I suppose."

"I thought," her voice was steady and cold, a hard knot of sound in the dim, quiet room, "she was only brought here to advise us about the letter. So people would see we'd done everything we could."

"But Miriam... you've been listening. She'll understand when she knows what this is really about."

"It was just the wording, Todd. That's all we were concerned about. That's all
she
should be concerned about. The wording and the fact that we did the proper thing. Sent the letter so our parents would be reassured. That's all we hired her for. Shondra doesn't matter. We can't allow a thief and a trouble-maker to spoil what you've worked so hard for."

She confirmed my suspicion that EDGE had been called in as window dressing, not to give real advice. I hate it when people discuss me like I'm not in the room. It's rude and demeans both me and them. I turned to her. "You must realize that the proposed letter is neither produced nor sent in a void, Mrs. Chambers. Neither the content nor the impact can be adequately assessed without the facts."

"The facts are that the girl's crazy. She's out to get us. She'll make trouble no matter what we do."

"Shondra has a history of mental illness?"

"Not that I know of." She shook her head impatiently. "I told Todd to just expel her. That would have been the simplest thing. He said we had to go through some steps. We need to discredit her and calm everyone down, then get that girl out of here before she destroys everything."

"What is she trying to destroy?"

I was watching her face, not really expecting an answer, but though she uttered no words, her eyes moved to a picture on an easel in the corner—a large colored architect's rendering of an impressive brick building.

I got up to examine it. In the lower right corner, in that incredibly neat square printing architects have, it said: MacGregor Center for Music and the Arts. I hadn't seen the rest of the St. Matthews' campus, so I didn't know how this fit in, but it had a bigness and impressive centerpiece quality which suggested it was a major project for the school.

"It's lovely," I said.

"Thank you," Chambers said. "We've got donor commitments for over nine million and we're about to begin the public phase of the campaign. The largest ever for St. Matthews. This is a particularly sensitive time, which is why we're so concerned about Shondra coming forward with her accusations now."

His wife's sudden sharp gasp stopped him before he finished the sentence. But though people, sometimes including my own clients, have occasionally wished I were deaf, dumb and blind, I am none of those things. "What is it that you and your wife are trying so hard not to tell me?" I asked.

Todd Chambers had an ability to delay without embarrassment that bordered on the extraordinary. He'd done it to me before and now he did it again. He simply sat behind his desk in the pool of yellow light while his wife and I waited, watching in different kinds of breathless anticipation as he carefully straightened and aligned three piles of papers. Finally, when he'd gotten the arrangement just the way he wanted it, he raised his head and cleared his throat.

"Actually, I misspoke earlier. Shondra did accuse someone of being her stalker. Her accusation is, of course, completely ridiculous. His name is Alasdair MacGregor and he's the grandson of the major donor of our arts center."