Leopold's Way (16 page)

“We haven't had a case here since that bombing four or five years back,” Fletcher said. “This one looks to be a lot easier, though. They've got the guy already. Stabbed his roommate and then stayed right there with the body.”

Leopold was silent. They'd pulled up before one of the big new dormitories that towered toward the sky like some middle-income housing project, all brick and concrete and right now surrounded by milling students. Leopold pinned on his badge and led the way.

The room was on the fourth floor, facing the river. It seemed to be identical to all the others, a depressing oblong with bunk beds, twin study desks, wardrobes, and a large picture window opposite the door. The Medical Examiner was already there, and he looked up as Leopold and Fletcher entered. “We're ready to move him. All right with you, Captain?”

“The boys get their pictures? Then it's fine with me. Fletcher, find out what you can.” Then, to the Medical Examiner, “What killed him?”

“A couple of stab wounds. I'll do an autopsy, but there's not much doubt.”

“How long dead?”

“A day or so.”

“A day!”

Fletcher had been making notes as he questioned the others. “The precinct men have it pretty well wrapped up for us, Captain. The dead boy is Ralph Rollings, a sophomore. His roommate admits to being here with the body for maybe twenty hours before they were discovered. Roommate's name is Tom McBern. They've got him in the next room.”

Leopold nodded and went through the connecting door. Tom McBern was tall and slender, and handsome in a dark, collegiate sort of way. “Have you warned him of his rights?” Leopold asked a patrolman.

“Yes sir.”

“All right.” Leopold sat down on the bed opposite McBern. “What have you got to say, son?”

The deep brown eyes came up to meet Leopold's. “Nothing, sir. I think I want a lawyer.”

“That's your privilege, of course. You don't wish to make any statement about how your roommate met his death, or why you remained in the room with him for several hours without reporting it?”

“No, sir.” He turned away and stared out the window.

“You understand we'll have to book you on suspicion of homicide.”

The boy said nothing more, and after a few moments Leopold left him alone with the officer. He went back to Fletcher and watched while the body was covered and carried away. “He's not talking. Wants a lawyer. Where are we?”

Sergeant Fletcher shrugged. “All we need is motive. They probably had the same girl or something.”

“Find out.”

They went to talk with the boy who occupied the adjoining room, the one who'd found the body. He was sandy-haired and handsome, with the look of an athlete, and his name was Bill Smith.

“Tell us how it was, Bill,” Leopold said.

“There's not much to tell. I knew Ralph and Tom slightly during my freshman year, but never really well. They stuck pretty much together. This year I got the room next to them, but the connecting door was always locked. Anyway, yesterday neither one of them showed up at class. When I came back yesterday afternoon I knocked at the door and asked if anything was wrong. Tom called out that they were sick. He wouldn't open the door. I went into my own room and didn't think much about it. Then, this morning, I knocked to see how they were. Tom's voice sounded so…strange.”

“Where was your own roommate all this time?”

“He's away. His father died and he went home for the funeral.” Smith's hands were nervous, busy with a shredded piece of paper. Leopold offered him a cigarette and he took it. “Anyway, when he wouldn't open the door I became quite concerned and told him I was going for help. He opened it then—and I saw Ralph stretched out on the bed, all bloody and…dead.”

Leopold nodded and went to stand by the window. From here he could see the trees down along the river, blazing gold and amber and scarlet as the October sun passed across them. “Had you heard any sounds the previous day? Any argument?”

“No. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Had they disagreed in the past about anything?”

“Not that I knew of. If they didn't get along, they hardly would have asked to room together again this year.”

“How about girls?” Leopold asked.

“They both dated occasionally, I think.”

“No special one? One they both liked?”

Bill Smith was silent for a fraction too long. “No.”

“You're sure?”

“I told you I didn't know them very well.”

“This is murder, Bill. It's not a sophomore dance or class day games.”

“Tom killed him. What more do you need?”

“What's her name, Bill?”

He stubbed out the cigarette and looked away. Then finally he answered. “Stella Banting. She's a junior.”

“Which one did she go with?”

“I don't know. She was friendly with both of them. I think she went out with Ralph a few times around last Christmas, but I'd seen her with Tom lately.”

“She's older than them?”

“No. They're all twenty. She's just a year ahead.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “Sergeant Fletcher will want to question you further.”

He left Smith's room and went out in the hall with Fletcher. “It's your case, Sergeant. About time I gave it to you.”

“Thanks for the help, Captain.”

“Let him talk to a lawyer and then see if he has a story. If he still won't make a statement, book him on suspicion. I don't think there's any doubt we can get an indictment.”

“You going to talk to that girl?”

Leopold smiled. “I just might. Smith seemed a bit shy about her. Might be a motive there. Let me know as soon as the medical examiner has something more definite about the time of death.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold went downstairs, pushing his way through the students and faculty members still crowding the halls and stairways. Outside he unpinned the badge and put it away. The air was fresh and crisp as he strolled across the campus to the administration building.

Stella Banting lived in the largest sorority house on campus, a great columned building of ivy and red brick. But when Captain Leopold found her she was on her way back from the drug store, carrying a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of shampoo. Stella was a tall girl with firm angular lines and a face that might have been beautiful if she ever smiled.

“Stella Banting?”

“Yes?”

“I'm Captain Leopold. I wanted to talk to you about the tragedy over at the men's dorm. I trust you've heard about it?”

She blinked her eyes and said, “Yes. I've heard.”

“Could we go somewhere and talk?”

“I'll drop these at the house and we can walk if you'd like. I don't want to talk there.”

She was wearing faded bermuda shorts and a bulky sweatshirt, and walking with her made Leopold feel young again. If only she smiled occasionally—but perhaps this was not a day for smiling. They headed away from the main campus, out toward the silent oval of the athletic field and sports stadium. “You didn't come over to the dorm,” he said to her finally, breaking the silence of their walk.

“Should I have?”

“I understood you were friendly with them—that you dated the dead boy last Christmas and Tom McBern more recently.”

“A few times. Ralph wasn't the sort anyone ever got to know very well.”

“And what about Tom?”

“He was a nice fellow.”

“Was?”

“It's hard to explain. Ralph did things to people, to everyone around him. When I felt it happening to me, I broke away.”

“What sort of things?”

“He had a power—a power you wouldn't believe any twenty-year-old capable of.”

“You sound as if you've known a lot of them.”

“I have. This is my third year at the University. I've grown up a lot in that time. I think I have anyway.”

“And what about Tom McBern?”

“I dated him a few times recently just to confirm for myself how bad things were. He was completely under Ralph's thumb. He lived for no one but Ralph.”

“Homosexual?” Leopold asked.

“No, I don't think it was anything as blatant as that. It was more the relationship of teacher and pupil, leader and follower.”

“Master and slave?”

She turned to smile at him. “You do seem intent on midnight orgies, don't you?”

“The boy is dead, after all.”

“Yes. Yes, he is.” She stared down at the ground, kicking randomly at the little clusters of fallen leaves. “But you see what I mean? Ralph was always the leader, the teacher—for Tom, almost the messiah.”

“Then why would he have killed him?” Leopold asked.

“That's just it—he wouldn't! Whatever happened in that room, I can't imagine Tom McBern ever bringing himself to kill Ralph.”

“There is one possibility, Miss Banting. Could Ralph Rollings have made a disparaging remark about you? Something about when he was dating you?”

“I never slept with Ralph, if that's what you're trying to ask me. With either of them, for that matter.”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

“It happened just the way I've told you. If anything, I was afraid of Ralph. I didn't want him getting that sort of hold over me.”

Somehow he knew they'd reached the end of their stroll, even though they were still in the middle of the campus quadrangle, some distance from the sports arena. “Thank you for your help, Miss Banting. I may want to call on you again.”

He left her there and headed back toward the men's dorm, knowing that she would watch him until he was out of sight.

Sergeant Fletcher found Leopold in his office early the following morning, reading the daily reports of the night's activities. “Don't you ever sleep, Captain?” he asked, pulling up the faded leather chair that served for infrequent visitors.

“I'll have enough time for sleeping when I'm dead. What have you got on McBern?”

“His lawyer says he refuses to make a statement, but I gather they'd like to plead him not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“What's the medical examiner say?”

Fletcher read from a typed sheet. “Two stab wounds, both in the area of the heart. He apparently was stretched out on the bed when he got it.”

“How long before they found him?”

“He'd eaten breakfast maybe an hour or so before he died, and from our questioning that places the time of death at about ten o'clock. Bill Smith went to the door and got McBern to open it at about eight the following morning. Since we know McBern was in the room the previous evening when Smith spoke to him through the door, we can assume he was alone with the body for approximately twenty-two hours.”

Leopold was staring out the window, mentally comparing the city's autumn gloom with the colors of the countryside that he'd witnessed the previous day. Everything dies, only it dies a little sooner, a bit more drably in the city. “What else?” he asked Fletcher, because there obviously was something else.

“In one of the desk drawers,” Fletcher said, producing a little evidence envelope. “Six sugar cubes, saturated with LSD.”

“All right.” Leopold stared down at them. “I guess that's not too unusual on campuses these days. Has there ever been a murder committed by anyone under the influence of LSD?”

“A case out west somewhere. And I think another one over in England.”

“Can we get a conviction, or is this the basis of the insanity plea?”

“I'll check on it, Captain.”

“And one more thing—get that fellow Smith in here. I want to talk with him again.”

Later, alone, Leopold felt profoundly depressed. The case bothered him. McBern had stayed with Rollings' body for twenty-two hours. Anybody that could last that long would have to be crazy. He was crazy and he was a killer and that was all there was to it.

When Fletcher ushered Bill Smith into the office an hour later, Leopold was staring out the window. He turned and motioned the young man to a chair. “I have some further questions, Bill.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me about the LSD.”

“What?”

Leopold walked over and sat on the edge of the desk. “Don't pretend you never heard of it. Rollings and McBern had some in their room.”

Bill Smith looked away. “I didn't know. There were rumors.”

“Nothing else? No noise through that connecting door?”

“Noise, yes. Sometimes it was….”

Leopold waited for him to continue, and when he did not, said, “This is a murder investigation, Bill.”

“Rollings…he deserved to die, that's all. He was the most completely evil person I ever knew. The things he did to poor Tom…”

“Stella Banting says Tom almost worshipped him.”

“He did, and that's what made it all the more terrible.”

Leopold leaned back and lit a cigarette. “If they were both high on LSD, almost anyone could have entered that room and stabbed Ralph.”

But Bill Smith shook his head. “I doubt it. They wouldn't have dared unlock the door while they were turned on. Besides, Tom would have protected him with his own life.”

“And yet we're to believe that Tom killed him? That he stabbed him to death and then spent a day and a night alone with the body? Doing what, Bill? Doing what?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you think Tom McBern is insane?”

“No, not really. Not legally.” He glanced away. “But on the subject of Rollings, he was pretty far gone. Once, when we were still friendly, he told me he'd do anything for Rollings—even trust him with his life. And he did, one time. It was during the spring weekend and everybody had been drinking a lot. Tom hung upside down out of the dorm window with Rollings holding his ankles. That's how much he trusted him.”

“I think I'll have to talk with Tom McBern again,” Leopold said. “At the scene of the crime.”