The Campus Murders (4 page)

“You,” said McCall devoutly, “can't use a thing. You're perfect.”

“Is McCall Scottish or Irish?”

“Which do you think?”

“Irish. No Scotsman would be so blatantly romantic.”

They swung down the hall side by side without further conversation. McCall was beautifully at peace. If not for the girl's disappearance, this would be a pleasure.

Katie touched his arm. “Good luck.”

He was very conscious of her as he went into Dean Gunther's outer office.

It was empty, and he crossed to the door marked
PRIVATE
and knocked.

“Come in, Mr. McCall.”

McCall went in. The well-built, good-looking man with the thinning hair was leaning back in his chair, big hands folded over his abdomen. He was looking quizzical.

“Been expecting you,” he said.

“I didn't think you noticed me back there in Dean Vance's outer office.”

“Noticing people without seeming to do so is the essence of my profession,” Dean Gunther said. “I should be surprised if it weren't yours, too. Well, sit down, Mr. McCall. It isn't every day Governor Holland sends his bloodhound to our campus.”

For all the raillery Gunther was nervous. He had a harried look, as if hunters were after him. He was the bow-tie type—in a previous generation he would have parted his hair in the mathematical middle. He rose from his chair behind the leather-topped desk and leaned across it to shake hands. He had a good handshake. He waved McCall to a chair, and they both sat down.

“Now maybe we'll get some action. I've heard you're here not only about the student trouble but also about Laura Thornton. Forgive me for sounding like an old fogy, but I don't know what our colleges are coming to. It's all anyone can do to exercise some control over these people. If you can call it control.” He scowled. “Something drastic has got to be done, Mr. McCall. Frankly, I don't know what the solution is.”

“Let's take one thing at a time, Dean Gunther,” McCall said. “About this Thornton girl. Her father is understandably in a sweat over this, and your local police don't seem to have got anywhere. Governor Holland sent me here as a personal favor to Mr. Thornton.”

“I don't pretend to understand political people,” Gunther said, shaking his head. “Forgive me if I can't equate the temporary disappearance of a single student with the gravity of a general situation that has turned this college into a battlefield. Anyway, I'm sure it ties into it somewhere.”

“You mean the girl's being missing is a result of what's going on on campus?”

“I don't see how it can fail to be. ‘Student unrest'! What an understatement. Tisquanto's a play yard for hippies and Yippies and lefties and commies, a training ground for commandos, and how is a mere cadre of administrators expected to cope? We try to keep the trouble under wraps so as not to disturb the community. Campus agitators are thick as rats in a dump. There's no peace—ever. They claim they want to improve education. What a farce!” he snorted. “What they want is turmoil—anarchy, Mr. McCall!” He slicked what was left of his hair back. “Student power. Academic freedom. Bull! The decent—the clean—students take it in the neck. You can't cross the campus without having stupid handbills forced on you advocating everything from better desserts in the Student Union to violent revolution. Academic freedom! They want everything their own way. They're a bunch of screaming children with bricks in their little fists.” He paused to wipe a fleck of spittle off his lip. “Mr. McCall, we have an average of two rapes a week here at 'Squanto, would you believe that? Just last week a pretty young librarian working late in the stacks was attacked by a masked hoodlum. She didn't report it. A friend found her at home in hysterics, got the story out of her, and reported it to Dean Vance. She fought the boy off—it was a boy, she insists, not a man. He satisfied himself with her like an animal three times in an hour. She was a virgin, and she's Roman Catholic, and she says that at first she fought. But then, she told her friend, she found herself responding, going wild. She had several orgasms. Afterwards, of course, she broke down with guilt and remorse. At this moment she's in a sanitarium, practically a mental case.”

“Has the rapist been found?”

“Are you kidding? No more than any of the others. I cite this, Mr. McCall, not as an exceptional example but as symptomatic of what's happening on this campus. We've had to put eight more men on the campus police force.

“Student demands are outrageous. This militant element is drunk with power. And even the ones who aren't militant among the hippies—the ‘do-your-thing' crowd, ‘tell-it-like-it-is' …” Dean Gunther shuddered. “I could cheerfully kill the Madison Avenue evil genius who started that ‘like' syndrome! Anyway, they come to class high on grass, they drop acid, the chronic heads are increasing in number. Property means nothing to them. They never heard of self-discipline, let alone the other kind. Forgive me for running on this way, but I'm fed up.” He ground his teeth. “And helpless.”

“You expect more rioting?” McCall asked. The poor guy was really in a sweat.

“It's bound to happen. Don't you know it's the in thing, Mr. McCall?” He ran his hand over his hair again. “We're getting right up there with Berkeley and Columbia.”

“What about President Wade? Is he as helpless as he sounds?”

“Certainly he is. We all are! Wolfe still had dreams of the Halls of Ivy and the Groves of Academe, Mr. McCall. It's where he was raised and got his background. He's caught in a trap, for all his intelligence and experience. He doesn't know how to deal with the situation we have here. He's headed for a breakdown, or a resignation like Kirk of Columbia and Kerr of Berkeley. The students ridicule him.”

“But this troublesome element, I'm told, is a small minority. Can't the other students help?”

“Some do, but there's no organization of effort such as the militants display. The conforming students are caught in the current, midstream. If their classes are disrupted, what can they do?”

McCall did not comment. “About Laura, Dean Gunther. I heard that a boy named Damon Wilde is close to her, but denies knowing anything about her disappearance.”

“Those are the allegations. Me, I'm suspicious of everything and everyone these days. Say, what's your first name?”

“Mike is what my friends call me. Stands for Micah.”

“Mine's Floyd. How about a drink, Mike? I have a bottle in my desk. For God's sake don't tell Wolfe Wade.”

“Sure thing.”

“You have sympathetic ears.”

Gunther produced a quart of bonded stuff. They had two drinks apiece. McCall consciously gave every evidence of enjoyment. He was that rare specimen of adult American, a spare drinker by choice. He simply did not like alcohol. He drank only when his job called for it, or it served some ulterior purpose.

“Mike,” Floyd Gunther said, leaning back, “you sure as hell have a job ahead of you. Damon Wilde isn't the only hot number in Laura's book. Two other boys have dated her heavily to my knowledge.”

McCall nodded. He always preferred to keep his mind open, assume nothing until he had every fact, or until some spark set him off.

“Who are they?”

“There's Perry Eastman. There's Dennis Sullivan. I know them both, to my regret. Sullivan's chasing seems rather perfunctory—a because-she's-there sort of thing. Eastman, however, has been hot after Laura for some time.”

“How do you know all this, Dean?—Floyd?”

Gunther showed his teeth in a grin. They were rather bad teeth. “It's my business to know, Mike. I wish to hell I were better informed! I can only hope you find her and that she's all right.”

“What are Eastman and Sullivan like?”

The Dean of Men shrugged. “Sullivan is mixed up in the student agitation. He's the cocky sort—you find yourself wanting to punch his face in. Perry drinks a lot and I suspect takes drugs. I've talked to him about it, but of course he denies it.”

McCall questioned him in depth and soon concluded that the man knew nothing that might help. Gunther seemed under considerable strain, but this was probably because of what was going on.

“Maybe your presence here will accomplish some good,” Gunther said. “It might make them cool it while you're on campus and give us a breather. But somehow I doubt it. If things don't improve, one of these days the governor is going to have to call up the National Guard, and then there'll be hell to pay.” The Dean glanced at his watch, a black-dialed, skin-diver's chronometer, and McCall rose.

“I'll be on my way, Floyd. I know you're busy.”

“It's not that,” Gunther said quickly. “Perry Eastman's supposed to see me right about now. Disturbance in class; ridiculing a professor; drinking.”

“It's lunch time anyway,” McCall said. “And I want to check Laura Thornton's room. Where do I find the Sigma Alpha Phi house?”

Gunther gave him directions. “How about coming to dinner tonight, Mike? My wife's a great cook, and we could explore the situation more thoroughly.”

McCall made the usual demurral, the Dean insisted and named eight o'clock. “We eat late these nights,” he said with a forced smile, and McCall turned to leave.

A tall, slat-built, round-shouldered young man was lounging beside a desk in the outer office, smoking.

“Come in, Perry,” Dean Gunther said.

Eastman wore snake-tight Levi's and an enormous white terrycloth pullover that sagged like a wet horse-blanket. His black hair hung to his round shoulders, and bangs just missed his eyebrows. A brass necklace dangled on his chest. He wore leather sandals over dirty bare feet.

“Hi, Deanie,” Eastman said. He eyed McCall from puffy slits. “What's with the system today? We getting down to the nitty-gritty?”

McCall stepped into the hall and shut the Dean's door with a conscious effort at self-control. He was suddenly aware of the generation gap and the surge of aggression in the naked ape.

He thought of President Wolfe Wade and Dean Vance and Dean Gunther and wondered how they stood it.

3

The Sigma Alpha Phi house stood on an elm-guarded street just off campus, a squatty frame building of Victorian vintage with yellow shutters and lots of wooden embroidery and a gallery of windows rubbernecking in the sunshine. The reception room inside reminded McCall of an undersea grotto, blue lights glowing on bluish walls. There were carnivorous-looking plants in fancy tubs (did they eat only males? he wondered), feminine furniture, thick silky rugs; his nose was assailed with bath oils, perfumes, garlic from something cooking, and a not quite successful deodorizer. A slithery young woman with a bad complexion, dressed in a pajama-like East Indian lounging outfit, showed him in.

He explained who he was and asked to see Laura Thornton's room.

“Naughty-naughty,” the girl said. “No dice, bud. We're off-limits, according to the Great God Square in the ad building.”

“You're all perfectly safe from me,” McCall said solemnly. “In my job sex is irrelevant.”

“I'll bet,” the girl said, looking him over. “Oh, Prissy.”

A tall mannish girl in red bell-bottoms had drifted in to stare at him.

The pimply girl said, “This is Mr. McCall, Prissy. He wants to see Laura's room.”

“You know that's impossible, Cuddles,” the tall girl said. She had no hips and almost no breasts, and McCall got a sudden overwhelming charge of sexual hostility from her. Her voice had a point to it, like an icicle. “You'll have to leave,” she said to McCall.

“Oh, don't be like that, Priss. Remember the fuzz invasion?”

“I'm a kind of fuzz myself,” McCall said.

“Oh?” the mannish girl said, raising her unplucked eyebrows. “Then I suppose you've got credentials. Or something.”

“I should have shown it to you right off.” McCall brought out his shield case, with its impressive special gold governor's seal. “Will this do?”

“Oh,
that
McCall.” The tall one shrugged. “This is making waves in strange places. I suppose we have no choice.”

“Goodness!” Cuddles said. “Of course not, Priss. I'll take him up. Follow me, Mr. McCall?” And the girl led him quickly down a blue-suffused hall and up a carpeted staircase in the grand manner. “It's this one,” she said, stopping at a closed door. “Nina's not here just now, Mr. McCall, but I guess it's okay. I mean Nina Hobart, Laura's roomie.”

“I'm not going to steal anything,” McCall smiled, “if that's what's worrying you.”

“Oh, I don't mean anything like that!” She weighed him again, shrugged slightly, opened the door, and pointed. “That's Laura's side. Mr. McCall?”

“Yes?”

“Think anything bad's happened?”

“I certainly hope not. If Miss Hobart gets back while I'm here, please tell her I'd like to see her.”

“Okey-pokey.” She lingered. He stared at her, and she shrugged again and slithered away. He shut the door and took a long look about the room. This was the real beginning of his assignment.

The room was big and airy, with big windows covered with yellow-flowered marquisette curtains which threw a saffron light over everything. The left side of the room was a mess, bed unmade, piled with clothes; a psychedelic-colored rag rug hung over a chair; from an open dresser drawer dangled a black bra. A crude red-lettered poster on the wall above the bed announced:
LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SEXINESS
. Another, in violet, read:
OPEN FOR BUSINESS. WE NEVER SLEEP
. The third half-wall displayed a chaster sign, with the cryptic inscription:
KITTEN
.

But the untidy side was not Laura Thornton's side; it was Nina Hobart's. The missing girl's bed—McCall identified that side as hers from the initials on the trunk under the bed—was made with almost professional neatness, and the spread was a neutral écru affair. The wall space of Laura's half of the room was covered almost completely with unframed canvases in brilliant colors. It was non-representational art, for which McCall had no particular liking; but he recognized a high and unusual quality. If these were examples of Laura's painting, Kathryn Cohan had not exaggerated her talent.