The Campus Murders (5 page)

A desk against one wall at about the center line seemed to be in neutral territory and therefore probably shared; but then McCall changed his mind. In a corner near a closet door, on Laura's side, stood a small flat desk painted black.

He checked the nightstand, the bed, the closet, with no particular hope—Chief Pearson's men had been over the room, and he had to assume that if there had been anything of significance they would have appropriated it—but out of routine thoroughness; one never knew. There was no clutter. He went through the little black desk. Nothing; a few books. The top of the desk was bare except for a portable typewriter and a thick stack of white typing paper.

He was about to turn away when he noticed something about the stack of paper. It seemed to hump slightly. He separated the pile and found a packet of paper matches lying in the middle of the stack. The cover was white, with green and black lettering; the packet had never been used. It was a souvenir of a motel called the Greenview. McCall remembered passing a Greenview Motel on his way to the inn. It was on the outskirts of Tisquanto.

Never used. Stuck away in a pile of clean typing paper. Almost as if hidden there. If so, it had been successful, because the Tisquanto police had obviously not uncovered it in their search of Laura Thornton's things. It had been saved for some reason.

A sentimental keepsake?

It might be a lead.

He pocketed the match packet just as the door opened and a young girl almost fell into the room.

“They told me downstairs you were poking around in here,” she panted, leaning against the door. “What's the name again?”

“McCall. You're Miss Hobart?”

She examined him owlishly. “Nina Hobart. You're a big wheel, aren't you? From upstate?”

“The governor sent me.” He showed her his shield. She stared at it.

She was as slim as a mannikin, with greened eyelids and silver lips; the toenails peeping out of her sandals were painted green, too. Her impish face was almost corpse-like in its heavy pale makeup. Surprisingly heavy thighs showed almost to her crotch under the red miniskirt; then he decided that they were a surprise only because the rest of her was so thin. She wore a white ruffled blouse and a gray corduroy vest with leather thongs. And on her ash-blonde hair was perched, of all things, a man's top-hat. She carried a tan leather dog leash at the other end of which was nothing. McCall could hardly believe the evidence of his eyes. She looked like a freak. Or she was putting the world on.

“So you want to know about Laura,” she said. She had a little-girl voice and a trick of narrowing her eyes; the expanse of green eyelid thus exhibited made her look like a frog. “I can't tell you anything I haven't already told Chief Pearson's pigs.”

“Pigs?”

“I beg his pardon. Fuzz.”

“Whatever you can tell me, Miss Hobart.”

She ripped the tophat from her head and sailed it onto her unmade bed.

“Hat on a bed,” McCall said, smiling. “Bad luck.”

“You believe that traditional crud?”

“No. I just wanted to give you a chance to collect your thoughts.”

“They don't need collecting! I have nothing to hide. But I'll bet Damon Wilde does. Damon the Damned, he's known as. Her boyfriend. You know? Heard of Damon yet?”

“All over the place.”

“Then don't bother with me. Go talk to him.”

“At the moment I'd rather talk to you, Miss Hobart. Is Laura in love with Wilde?”

“Love, shove. Who knows? He thinks she is, is more to the point. Hell, it might be Perry Eastman. Or Christ knows who else. You'll hear Laura's the quiet type.” The girl giggled. “Well, you know what they say about the quiet types.”

“Has she acted differently from usual lately, Miss Hobart?”

Nina picked up the tophat, set it on her head, plumped down on the bed, and crossed her legs.

“Yes,” she said, “Laura's been worried about something. She's the secretive type, but I read her. Lately she's been extra-hush-hush. Especially last Thursday. She acted real funny Thursday. Kind of absent-minded, dig? Preoccupied.”

“When did you last see Laura?”

“Friday just before noon. She was taking a painting back to the fine arts department. They loan out paintings like library books to fine arts students. She was worried about something, and I asked her what's bugging you? But she was like mute. That's the last I saw her.”

“What do you think happened to her, Miss Hobart?”

“How should I know? Anything. That chick is the kind who could get into real trouble. You look at me and you think, there's a real swinger, because of the way I dress and talk. Okay, so I swing some, but Laura's type—” She shook her head. “You'd have to know her. Deep, she's real deep. Deep trouble.”

“Do you have any concrete reason for saying that?”

“Well … no. But look. She's arty. She digs poetry. She's gullible. She's …
mysterious
. Like London Bridge close to the water, where it's dark green and all shadow. I was in England last summer.”

“Exactly what time was it when you last saw Laura Friday?”

She thought about it. “Maybe eleven-fifteen
A.M
.”

“I take it those paintings on the wall were done by Laura?”

“Oh, sure. Everybody says they're groovy, but me, I dig these.” She jumped off the bed and dashed to Laura's closet. She dived in among the hanging dresses and came out with a large portfolio. “There's some real energetic stuff of hers in this.” She untied the portfolio on Laura's bed.

McCall had already seen its contents before the girl's arrival. Nevertheless he examined the drawings—chiefly crayon and charcoal sketches—as if for the first time. They impressed him as much now as before. These were all representational and apparently had been done for a drawing class; they were really good, free, spirited, economical in line.

“I see what you mean,” McCall said. “By the way, you say Laura was worried recently, especially Thursday and Friday when you saw her last—”

“Panicky would be more like it Friday.”

“You're sure she gave no reason why? No hint?”

“If she had a secret,” Nina said, “she hugged it to her like one of those Playboy Bunny costumes. Real uptight.”

“I see. Well, thank you, Miss Hobart. Would you please put the portfolio back where you found it?”

It was almost one o'clock, and McCall was hungry. There would be at least a cafeteria in the Student Union. Well, it was one hunger he could satisfy. The other, the one that was gnawing away inside his head, was apparently going to have to wait for a long time the way things were going. Or not going would be more like it.

He crossed the campus under swelling trees. He found himself searching out the conventional students. The ones he saw were quiet, in a hurry, and seemed edgy.

A well-larded man in a tan uniform and chinstrap helmet, wearing a badge, came toward him. A campus policeman. Middle-aged and no doubt wishing he were holding down a safe desk job somewhere.

“Pardon me, officer. Where's the Student Union?”

The man eyed him and gave him gruff instructions. As McCall walked away he heard a male voice say something about “three little pigs.” He turned. A lanky student in a red sweatshirt was jogging past, laughing. The campus cop flushed and turned heavily away. McCall noticed his hands; they made fists.

In the Student Union cafeteria McCall took his tray with its freight of beef stew, French bread, apple pie, and coffee over to a table. Through the hum and clatter he began tucking it away. He ate as if the stew were tasty, keeping his eyes open, and his ears. He had expected to find the cafeteria bulging at this hour, but it was not. Students huddled, heads together, about tables, islands of conspiracy in empty space. There was an occasional outburst of angry talk. And no laughter at all.

Two students were arguing nearby. One had red hair to his shoulders, wore a
kafiyeh
and a Victorian cameo on a long chain, and no shoes or socks. The other was sedately dressed—by contrast overdressed—in a conventional sports jacket, white shirt, quiet tie, and English brogans with clocked socks. While the neat one argued, the hippie shoveled spaghetti down his gullet. When the neat one stopped to eat his steak-and-kidney pie, the hippie yelped, “Square. You're square enough to go into the base of a monument to Civic Virtue. Why don't you dig it, man?”

“Why don't you take a bath?” the square jeered.

“Cleanliness!” The hippie spat into his spaghetti. “It's a put-on, man, don't you know that? They've been feeding you that crap since they trusted you out of didies. What's wrong with a good healthy mess?”

And he picked up his platter and hurled it at the nearby wall of the cafeteria. The plate smashed mightily, sending spaghetti and tomato sauce showering over diners and painting a mobile abstract on the wall. The hippie student laughed, saluted, and ran from the cafeteria, pursued by a bellowing campus policeman. A sober-faced, thirtyish man, evidently a member of the faculty, hurried after the offender and his pursuer.

Students were staring at the design on the wall. Others were wiping their clothes with paper napkins. Nobody seemed surprised or offended. A sort of good humor settled over the cafeteria. At one table a student held up a placard on a long pole:
BUG THE BOARD
. A fat young man hurried over to the wall carrying a poster. He hung it beside the spaghetti stains:
HEADS
—
STAY OUT OF SIGHT
; grinning.

Abruptly at another table five students jumped up.

“Ready—” one shouted.

“Aim—” another shouted.

“
FIRE
!”

Five plates smashed against the wall decorated by the spaghetti. Cheers rose from other tables. The five sprinted for the door, sending chairs flying.

A student in a stained apron walked from behind the food counter carrying a mop and pail. He looked pale and tired. He began cleaning up the mess.

McCall finished his lunch, wiped his mouth, and headed for the door. He almost bowled over Kathryn Cohan.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, yourself.” After the incident of the wall, she looked good enough to eat.

“I thought I'd find you here,” she said, “knowing men's stomachs. I ducked just in time. How do you like the younger generation?”

“Have you had your lunch?”

“Ages ago. In the far corner, where it's relatively safe. Any progress?”

They left the Student Union and headed for the administration building. There was no sign of any of the food-throwing students. Their hands brushed accidentally, and McCall looked down in surprise. She jerked her hand away as if she had felt something, too.

“You didn't answer my question, Mr. McCall.”

“I've barely started to dig in. Is that scene in the cafeteria just now typical, Miss Cohan?”

“Listen,” she said with some heat. “Don't get the idea that the student body as a whole goes in for stupid things like that. Even among the so-called agitators it's frowned on as frivolous and childish, which it is. I don't agree with most of the minorities on campus, but they're sincere. It's a fringe group that does things like this.”

“Is it just the fringe group that riots?” McCall asked dryly.

“No … but, well, they think they're right. And they do have legitimate grievances. Not that I approve of rioting or any of these militant measures. But please don't lump all the students with convictions as freaks and anarchists, the way some of the faculty and administration do.”

“Are you sure you're not a spy for the other side?” McCall asked with a smile.

“It's not funny, McCall!” Kathryn stamped her foot. “Most of the students aren't here for trouble. But there's trouble in the air. But that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about. Something very odd's happened to Dean Gunther.”

McCall stopped short. “Oh? I just saw him and he didn't mention anything.”

“He didn't know about it then. Mrs. Gunther phoned him, I guess after you left him. Somebody's burgled their house.”

“What was taken?”

“That's the odd part of it. A suit of clothes.”

“That's all?”

“A shirt and a pair of shoes, too.”

McCall stared at her. “The Dean's suit?”

“Yes. An expensive one, he says.”

“And the shirt and shoes?”

“His, too. Mrs. Gunther went to lay out his good suit for tonight. It seems a gentleman named McCall is invited to dinner.”

McCall was frowning. “And nothing else was taken?”

“Apparently not. Mrs. Gunther says drawers were yanked out of the dean's bureau and shirts scattered all over the floor, but that seemed plain spitefulness, she says—several pairs of his shoes were tossed around their bedroom, too.”

“And she didn't hear anything?”

“She was out shopping. Does it make any sense to you?”

“If I were Sherlock Holmes I could probably make some profound deduction but, frankly, I'm stuck. I can't imagine who the devil would want to steal a man's clothes and leave other things of more negotiable value untouched.”

“You're some detective, you are.”

“I never claimed to be.”

“I expected a brilliant solution right away.”

“So you're disappointed in me.”

“In one way.” Her remarkable eyes washed over him. “In another, I'm relieved.”

“Why?”

“You're human.”

“Oh, yes,” McCall said.

For some reason both fell silent.

A bell had been pealing. It stopped now, the overtones lingering on the campus. McCall turned and saw a picturesque stone building much weathered and covered with old vines. Immense trees flanked the building. A round bell tower dominated the roof. A small old man dressed in gray came around the building with a broom and began sweeping the walk.