The Black Door (6 page)

“Yeah,” Kanter muttered, draining the last of his coffee and rising ponderously to his feet. “Yeah, forward for freedom. Well, see you at the news conference at Bransten, with luck.” He moved toward the door. “Be sure and buy a copy of the
Dispatch
this afternoon. Save yourselves some digging.”

Campion made a derisive noise, and I decided to order a Danish.

I made the Danish do for lunch, and by eleven-thirty I’d arrived at the Bransten campus, where I planned to stay until the dean’s news conference, at two o’clock. I would then go down to headquarters for Larsen’s news conference, and then to the paper, where I would theoretically be supplied with a biographical sketch of Grinnel for use in my story. With luck, I expected to finish the story by nine in the evening, a twelve-hour day. Really thirteen, I decided, since I’d made the Danish do for lunch.

I’d lived for most of my life in San Francisco, yet I’d hardly heard of Bransten College, and had never been there. Seen from the outside, Bransten is a complete city block, bordered on all sides by thick-growing trees, and protected by a high iron fence. Seen from the inside, Bransten is typically the staid, conservative college—solid brick buildings, gracefully curving graveled drives, well-clipped shrubs and lawns. As I drove through the tall front gate, I wondered how many of my colleagues had preceded me. I didn’t have long to wonder. Ahead, a TV truck was pulling up, followed by a car from the same station. Reasoning that they would attract a crowd, to my advantage, I pulled in behind to await developments.

I didn’t have long to wait. It was apparently the lunch hour, and curious knots of students immediately began to gather. Next a campus policeman appeared, and finally I saw what was undoubtedly a faculty member making his fretful way through the gathering crowd. He was, I discovered, assistant to the dean, Mr. Johnson.

I talked with the TV camera crew, while the reporters were negotiating with the assistant dean. The cameramen told me they intended to take a few hundred feet of film on the general college scene, and, hopefully, the girls’ dormitory and Roberta Grinnel’s room.

“Do you know where her dormitory is?” I asked.

The cameraman pointed across the quadrangle. “That building there: Mary Friedman Hall.”

I thanked him and moved away, deciding that I could accomplish more unassisted by the Bransten brass. As I walked, I looked around me. The campus was laid out in a huge square, undoubtedly to conform with the city block on which it was built. In the center of the square was a magnificent lawn, crisscrossed by flagstone walks and dotted with marble benches. The lawn was bordered by a broad promenade, forming the campus quadrangle. Around the quadrangle the buildings were arranged in a symmetrical pattern. What appeared to be administration and classroom buildings, three-storied, occupied the north and south sides of the quadrangle. Lower two-storied buildings, obviously dormitories, occupied the east and west sides. Back behind the dormitories I could see the miscellaneous structures: maintenance buildings, storage areas, garages and parking lots. All the buildings on the quadrangle were of identical Georgetown architecture—dark red brick, trimmed in sparkling white-painted wood. The effect was subdued, serene and well endowed.

As I walked toward Mary Friedman Hall, I remembered Campion’s statement that Bransten College believed in neither housemothers for its dormitories nor check-in restrictions for its students. Thinking about it, I began to wonder how I would penetrate the girls’ dormitory without a housemother to run interference. Reporters were usually unwelcome enough, without surprising scantily clad young ladies in their private quarters.

I decided to reconnoiter first, walking around the building. Apparently a single window went with a single room. Calculating, I figured the windows at a total of eighty for the entire building. Eighty girls lived in the Mary Friedman dormitory, then, give or take a few.

By the time I’d completed my circuit of the dorm, I was feeling both conspicuous and faintly foolish. Many of the students, passing by, favored me with curious stares, but none seemed inclined to stop. And, remembering Campion’s estimate that a hundred millionaire’s families were represented in the student body, I somehow was reluctant to begin plucking at sleeves.

So I was left standing on the promenade, staring at the broad steps of Mary Friedman Hall and speculating that, really, America wasn’t quite a classless society, at least not as far as I was concerned. I was about to return to my TV brethren when a familiar, incongruous figure emerged from the dormitory. It was Jim Campion, airily waving. His lanky form looked like a somewhat refined Ichabod Crane, all angles and limbs and joints, working at cross purposes as he jolted down the steps flapping his elbows.

Watching Campion’s breezy, unconcerned progress, it occurred to me that I wasn’t really aggressive enough to be a good crime reporter. I wasn’t breezy or unconcerned. Nor was I cynical or thick-skinned, another good combination for the newsman. I thought too much and hesitated too often.

It was a disturbing, unexpected moment of revelation. I wondered whether it were really true, or whether I was just tired or coming down with a cold.

“I didn’t know you were coming out here,” Campion said. “I thought you were going to dig into Grinnel.”

“I changed my mind. Can we get into her room?”

“Sure.” He pointed. “It’s at the end of the right-hand, first floor hallway; second room from the end, in the back. There’s a police seal on the door, but it’s broken. Simcich’s inside. He’s waiting for the brass, I gather.”

“Is it all right to go inside? I mean—”

He grinned. “No problem. I understand the girls have posted a notice in the lavatory, advising caution for the duration.”

I grinned in return and started up the stairs. “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder. “Where’re you going?”

“I’m going to nose around in the coffee shop for a while. It’s almost noon now, and Johnson said two o’clock. It’s hardly worth going back downtown. Besides, there’re telephones in the coffee shop.”

“Okay. I’ll see you over there, then.”

“Right.” He turned and began walking behind a covey of coeds, appreciatively.

I found the room without difficulty, knocked, and was admitted by a detective I’d met only once—a young man named Simcich, who was studying at the University of California’s Extension Division, hopeful of becoming a pharmacist. I gathered that he was still pursuing his studies, because he immediately returned to an easy chair and picked up a large book with an academic-looking title.

Slowly, I looked around the room. For a millionaire’s daughter, it was a small, almost austere room with a single bed, a desk, an easy chair, a bookcase, and a bureau. The bed, I noticed, was unmade. Had she slept in it the previous night, then? Or had it gone unmade from the night before? Did the girls have maid service? I took out my notebook and scribbled,
bed, when slept in?

Surprisingly, with the exception of three books piled neatly in one corner, the desk top was uncluttered. The bookcase, too, contained no more than a dozen books; two of the bookcase’s four shelves were completely empty. The books had the look of having been seldom used, and indifferently.

I turned to the bureau. Only a few tubes of lipstick and jars of make-up were placed on the glass top, not arranged with compulsive neatness, but somehow not scattered with a girl’s typical, hurried sweep. I stepped toward the bureau and tentatively reached toward the top drawer.

“Ah, ah,” came the voice behind me. “Mustn’t touch.”

I shrugged, returned to the center of the room, and once more looked around me, searching for some feeling of the girl. She’d been twenty; she was probably a senior. It was February; she’d lived here at least since September. Yet the room had no real feeling of occupancy. It could have been a hotel room, occupied for the weekend, and about to be vacated. There was none of the co-ed’s typical fripperies—pictures on the wall, clothes strewn about, panda bears and rag dolls on the bed.

It was an impersonal, somehow unhappy room. In an hour, all traces of its occupant could be completely erased.

The clothes closet door was half open. Although the light was dim, I could make out the contents—a closetful of rich, expensive clothes, mostly tweeds and woolens, to cope with San Francisco’s chilly, foggy weather. Glancing at the watchful Simcich, I took a single step closer. I was looking for party dresses, and toward the back of the closet I saw a few—colorful silks, and basic blacks. But, totaled, Roberta Grinnel’s wardrobe resembled her room, lacking a girl’s typical verve and frivolity. Yet, remembering the corpse in the small, disheveled bedroom, she must have been desirable, even beautiful.

I turned to Simcich.

“Anything new?”

He shrugged. “If there is, you probably know more about it than I do. I been sitting right here for the past two, three hours.”

I glanced around at the room’s polished surfaces.

“Has the place been fingerprinted yet?”

He shook his head.

I looked again at the desk, the dresser, and bookcase. Then I realized what I was hoping to find: photographs of the girl’s parents, her friends and her schoolmates.

“Nothing’s been disturbed?” I asked. “How about the pictures?”

Simcich sighed. “Nothing’s been touched. I promise you.”

“Isn’t anyone coming here to look the place over?”

“They’ve been.” Simcich’s voice became faintly plaintive. Obviously, he was anxious to return to his book. “Bancroft and I came out first thing, about nine o’clock. We looked around. I, being a Detective Third Grade, got stuck.”

“Why didn’t you just leave the door sealed? I see it’s been broken.”

Again he sighed, and now closed his book and laid it aside, pointedly. “We sealed it and started to leave. Then it occurred to Bancroft that the members of the press would be out here in bunches. We decided to leave me here. As an accommodation, you might say.” He spread his arms, to encompass the bleak, empty room. “So here I am. At your—”

A knock sounded on the door. Simcich rose, crossed the small room in four strides, and opened the door. The members of KPAX’s television team stood outside. As they came into the room, nodding to me, I thanked Simcich and left. I walked down the hallway, gazing at the double row of closed, cloistered doors. Did I dare to knock at one? I paused, stood in the middle of the hallway, and thought about it. Then, suddenly impatient with my own timidity, I turned on my heel and rapped smartly on the second door down from Roberta Grinnel’s, on the same side of the corridor.

“Who is it?” came a girl’s voice.

“It’s, ah, Stephen Drake. From the
Sentinel.
May I talk to you?”

“Just a minute, please.” I heard a drawer bang shut, and a door close. Footsteps were approaching, and the hallway door opened. A short, dumpy brunette wearing a sweat shirt, blue jeans, and horn-rimmed glasses stood coolly regarding me.

“Are you a reporter?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m looking for some, ah, background material on Roberta Grinnel. Did you know her?”

For a moment she didn’t reply, but continued to look at me with her impersonal, disconcerting stare.

“Yes. I knew her. As well as anyone, anyhow.”

I looked past her, into the room. Then I glanced up and down the hallway. I thought I heard a furtively closed door and a giggle unsuccessfully stifled.

“Look,” I said, moving a half step toward her. “I’m not used to standing in the hallway of girls’ dormitories. May I please come in?”

She smiled, but humorlessly, as if she were pleased to find me flustered. Then she stepped back.

“All right,” she said gracelessly. “But it’s already noon. I have a one o’clock, and I haven’t eaten yet.” She closed the door, motioned me to an armchair, and sat on the bed. With a no-nonsense air, she turned to face me. And waited.

I took out my notebook. “It’ll just take a minute, Miss … ?”

“The name is Stephenson,” she abruptly replied. “Betty Stephenson. But—” She pointed to the notebook. “If I were you, I wouldn’t use the name. Not without checking with my father.” She said it as if no further identification of her father was necessary. Somehow, the assumption irritated me.

“Who is your father, may I ask?” I chilled my tone to match her own.

“He’s board chairman of Waterford Steel.”

“Oh.” I closed the notebook, deciding that I’d get nowhere antagonizing her. “Yes. I see what you mean. Please don’t worry, then.” I paused and gazed around the room: typically the co-ed’s cluttered quarters, if perhaps a little less frilly than expected. But, looking at Betty Stephenson, it was obvious she didn’t have much to be frilly about. She was one of those girls who should never wear blue jeans. Yet, probably out of a bleak obstinacy, she undoubtedly wore them constantly, derisive of the very femininity she secretly longed for.

She pointedly glanced at her watch. I decided that, as a public figure’s daughter, she may have been brought up to despise reporters. Or maybe she had just been brought up a brat.

So, in a businesslike voice, I said; “How long have you known Roberta Grinnel, Miss Stephenson?”

“Almost four years. We came in as freshmen together. And we’ll”—she hesitated—“I’ll be graduated in June.” The correction didn’t seem to trouble her.

I decided my best move was to match her own direct, almost brutal candor.

“Did you like her, Miss Stephenson?”

She thought about it, but only for a moment, her eyes still steadily upon my own. Then she shook her head.

“No, I didn’t. Not very much, anyhow.”

She seemed to be looking for a shocked response. Probably, I thought, she’d been a little girl who’d learned to get attention by shocking people at cocktail parties.

Still pitching my voice in the flat, disinterested accents of the impersonal inquisitor, I said, “Did anyone like her?”

“The girls, you mean?”

I nodded. “Let’s start with the girls.”

“Then I’d say ‘no.’ At least, I can’t think of any girl that really liked her much. And after spending four years in a place this small”—she glanced out the window resentfully—“you know almost everyone, superficially if not intimately.”