The Campus Murders (21 page)

The boy's fingers unconsciously explored his jaw.

A wave washed over McCall. He was no sentimentalist, but there was something in the story, the little-boy tone, the way the fingers kept feeling the jaw, that made McCall want to grip the boy with paternal warmth and tell him everything was going to be all right. When it obviously was not going to be anything of the sort.

“So when you couldn't talk Gunther out of it you decided to frame him with Pat Reed's help?”

“It wasn't hard,” young Sullivan said with a whining laugh. “I had this chick, Pat Reed, eating out of my hand—she had a real thing for me, she dug me. And a nympho besides. I explained to her what I wanted and she went for it right off, thought it was a gas. The idea of getting old Deanie Gunther to take his pants off in her room and get all hot and bothered while I snapped pictures from a hidden vantage point really grabbed Pat. So she gave him a cock-and-bull story about how my parents wanted to meet him in private—in her place as neutral territory—to discuss my ‘case,' and don't you know the fathead fell for it? I was all set up behind my blind, and the minute he shows up she locks the door and starts stripping, and there's Gunther standing there with his mouth open and his eyes bugging out like he can't see enough—getting hotter by the second and at the same time afraid—and when she's all naked—”

“All right, I can imagine the rest,” McCall said. Sullivan brooded at his bloody handkerchief. After a while McCall said, “How did Laura Thornton get into the act?”

“That happened before I had to kill Gunther, I mean while we still had him under our thumb. Damon Wilde was Laura's steady, and she got jealous because he was playing around. Damon started out for here one day, probably to get some joints, we've got a cache of grass here at the shack for the in group. Laura followed him, thinking he was meeting some other chick. When Damon saw Pat and me here, he took off. Laura, thinking he was here, sneaked up and overheard Pat and me talking about the Gunther situation. She heard everything and beat it, scared as a rabbit. But when she had time to think it over she came and told me what she'd heard. Man, was she shaking. Kept saying, ‘It was a put-on, Dennis, wasn't it? Tell me it was a put-on.' I told her yes, it was, but I knew she didn't believe me. I knew when she'd had time to think it over she'd go running to Wade.”

“So that Friday, instead of dropping her off at the liberal arts building, as you claimed, you kidnaped her? Brought her out here?”

“There's a toolshed out back of the shack here. I tied her up in there till I could figure out how to shut her mouth. I didn't know what else to do. I was all wound up, like. Y'know? I left her there from Friday noon till Monday night. Then … I took her to the river.” His eyes flamed briefly. “I thought she was dead. Christ, she looked dead enough. She should've been. The bitch.”

“Very inconsiderate of her,” McCall said. “Oh, you left out one thing, Dennis.”

“What's that?”

“The part where you beat her up.”

“I don't remember that, Mr. McCall, honest to God I don't,” Sullivan said earnestly.

“Are you denying that you beat her?”

Sullivan was beginning to look sullen. “All right, so I beat her.”

“It didn't bother you?”

“I thought she was dead!” the boy shouted.

“I see,” McCall said. He was sure he was going to wake up any moment, or find that he had been living in an Alice-in-Wonderland episode. “And the painting?
Inferno
?”

“She had it with her when I took her out to the shack—she'd been intending to return it to the fine arts gallery, like I said. To tell you the truth, Mr. McCall, I took it to my room, where I had some other borrowed canvases, and forgot about it. I should have returned it right away, or burned it. But I wasn't thinking very straight those days.”

“Yes,” McCall said. Or subsequently, he added to himself.

“I did all right, though. Till you showed up. The local fuzz weren't getting anywhere. I was going great. You spoiled everything.”

“Let's stick to the chronology. The photos you took the night you staged that lovely scene in Pat Reed's room were what you held over Gunther's head to keep him from kicking you out of college. What made him change his mind?”

“I talked with him over the phone and the son of a bitch says he can't live with himself any more. Spouted a lot of high-and-mighty crud about conscience and moral duty and courage and how society would not blame his weakness when he explained how he had been tricked and framed and teased beyond endurance, and that type spiel. That's when we began writing those letters, to keep him in line. It worked for a while, but then I got wind he was starting expulsion proceedings. So what could I do? I had Pat write that Lady G note to him, telling him to meet her behind the Bell Tower. He didn't even fight, really, just fumbled around. And I nailed him. It was like sticking cheese.” The words tumbled out now. “I couldn't stop sticking him. It was boss. It was like wild, man! … And you kept snooping around, maybe getting close … I have friends, dig? We didn't want you on campus, Mr. McCall. So I got a crowd together—”

“Nature's Children.”

“I didn't tell 'em the real reason. Just that we ought to fix you good. It was a gas, jumping you like that. They swung, man. It's a good bunch.” His face pulled down. “Then I broke into the hospital.”

“You wanted to finish the job on Laura?”

“Yeah. It was close. You almost got me.” He laughed. “And then Pat gets on me. All of a sudden she gets religious or something. Scared? Man, she's shaking like she's gone cold turkey. She almost spilled her guts when you talked to her. It was too close. I knew that when she tells me she's going to the fuzz and try to get out from under.” He flapped his arms like a bird. “So again I got nothing else to do but … I asked her to meet me in the Bell Tower room at a time I knew old Burell was eating at the Student Union, and I … I did it. And that's it.”

“You choked her? Then hanged her to the bellrope?”

“It was hard, too,” Dennis Sullivan muttered. “I had to keep the effing bell from bonging. You try it sometime.”

McCall touched the boy's shoulder. The muscle under his finger felt like reinforced concrete.

“We'll go now, Sully.”

“Go? Where?” the boy asked dully.

He was completely tractable walking to McCall's Ford and on the drive to town.

“You know what you brought me?” Lieutenant Long said. “A lot of nothing is what!”

“Oh?” McCall said. They had Dennis Sullivan in handcuffs; he was sitting dejectedly in a chair at police headquarters studying the floor.

“Okay, so I book him on a few charges. Possession of a deadly weapon—” McCall had turned over to him the Beretta he had taken from the boy “—assault and so forth. But murder? All I have is your story of what he admitted to you, and if you think that's evidence—”

“I know the legal bind, lieutenant,” McCall said. “Your big hope is Laura. Is she still out?”

“Still out. So if you expect thanks, Mr. McCall, you're going to have a long wait.”

“My expectations in this world,” McCall said philosophically, “are few. But I can hope, can't I?”

He watched them book young Sullivan to give his detention the stamp of legality, then they disappeared with him in an interrogation room. McCall had made his statement to Chief Pearson with a stenographer present, and he had already signed the transcript. So there was nothing to hold him at headquarters.

The last thing he saw as Sullivan was hustled out was the boy's pale, scuff-eyed face, expressionless except for a slight groping look, as if the world were just a bit out of focus.

McCall slowly walked out. He had had word from the capital that Governor Holland was on his way to Tisquanto, and he was feeling a great relief. The state police had had to be called in under an emergency decree. Militant students had invaded a building on campus and occupied part of it; furniture was being thrown out of windows, they were wrecking the place; it looked like a long siege. Other students were drawn up in battle lines around the administration building, effectively keeping college personnel immobilized inside. The state police were being issued riot guns, and some tear gas was already drifting over the campus.

Was Katie safe? He had heard no reports of injuries to administrative people caught in the building, but anything might have happened … his step quickened.

There was a pitched battle going on before the administration building between hundreds of state police in gas masks, carrying grenade launchers and riot guns, and students hurling bricks and cobblestones torn from some of the ancient walks of the original quad of Tisquanto State. Bodies of injured boys and girls lay strewn about the grass like wounded on a battlefield. Students were being dragged by officers to paddy wagons and tossed in feet first. It reminded McCall of the convention in Chicago. Clouds of gas, more and more of it, hung over the campus. McCall caught a whiff and ran. No point in trying to break through to the administration building now; he would probably be taken for a student and clobbered, and be thrown into the jug suffering from exposure to tear gas besides.

He retrieved his Ford and drove back to police headquarters. He could not have said why, except that Dennis Sullivan's face kept haunting him.

“You back?” Lieutenant Long scowled.

“How's Sullivan?”

“You worried about him?”

“I don't know. I can't get him out of my mind.”

“Okay, Mr. McCall, why don't we have us a look?”

The lieutenant's face told him nothing but bad news. McCall followed the officer with a foretaste of unpleasantness. They went downstairs to the cell blocks. It was steamy here; there was a mingled odor of urine, vomit, and disinfectant.

Long stopped before a cell.

“I've sent for the shrink,” he drawled. “Kind of figured he might be needed.”

The young man was crouched at the far side of the cell, on the floor, gripping his wounded ear. He was staring at something not visible to normal eyes, and muttering obscenities in a mechanical, almost a ritual, way.

“What kind of dope is he shooting, anyway?” the lieutenant chuckled.

McCall turned away.

20

McCall spotted Sam Holland the moment he turned the corner of the third floor corridor at Tisquanto Memorial Hospital. The governor was deep in conversation with Brett Thornton.

“Mike.” The governor was looking pleased. “How did you know I was here?”

“I'd heard you were on the wing, and I figured this would be your first stop.” McCall turned to Laura's father. “How is she, Mr. Thornton?”

“In my own way,” Thornton said, “I've been thanking God. She's out of the coma, McCall. She's going to be all right.” He looked years younger.

“I've just heard about this student Sullivan,” Governor Holland said.

“Already?” McCall exclaimed. “It just happened. What did they tell you?”

“Only that you brought him in and told the police that he's been responsible for the attack on Laura and the two subsequent killings. How firm is this, Mike?”

“Firm, sir. But no case. It's going to take Miss Thornton's testimony. You haven't been to the campus yet?”

The governor's face darkened. “No, I'm going over there now.”

“All hell's broken loose, Governor—”

“Mr. Thornton?” It was a nurse, in the doorway to Laura Thornton's room. “Dr. Madigan and Dr. Stroud say it's all right to come in now.”

Brett Thornton ran. Governor Holland put his hand on McCall's arm. “Give him a couple of minutes, Mike.” Two minutes later Thornton appeared in the doorway. He was wiping his eyes. “Thank you, Governor. You can see her now, McCall.”

As they came in Dr. Edgewit held up two fingers, smiling. Two minutes.

She was well swathed and almost invisible, but the eyes were alive and her bloodless hand groped for her father's with considerable hunger.

“Laura, dear,” Governor Holland said. “I'm so glad.”

“It was Dennis Sullivan,” she whispered. “He did it to me. He tied me up—”

“You can tell us all about it when you're a little stronger, Miss Thornton,” McCall said.

He was at peace.

Chinky-chink showed.

A few minutes later, back in the corridor, Thornton's mouth was the old trap.

“I'm grateful for the way things have turned out, Governor,” he said. “For sending McCall here and clearing this up you'll get nothing but praise from me. But in all fairness I have to tell you—”

“I know, Brett,” the governor said with a smile, “in all fairness you have to tell me that politically nothing's changed. You're still going after the gubernatorial nomination, and you're going to fight me for it tooth and nail.”

“Right.”

“Well, at least it won't involve a personal attack.”

“No,” Thornton said, “that I can promise you.”

“That's all I ask. Good luck, Brett.”

“I'm not that generous in spirit, governor. But I'll shake your hand.”

When Thornton returned to his daughter's room, the governor and McCall went downstairs. An aide reported the situation on campus. The immediate riot was over; there had been numerous arrests, especially of the invaders who had occupied the campus building.

Listening to the reports of casualties and property damage—with some uncensored details of the filth deposited in wastebaskets and liberties taken with files of private correspondence—Governor Holland's considerable jaw grew larger.

“It's Columbia all over again,” he said grimly. “Well, I'm all for freedom of expression, but there's a big difference between free speech and taking over the campus!”