Stalking Death (14 page)

Chambers stood at the side, alternately commanding them to break it up and urging the watching students to help him. Both efforts were equally ineffectual. Except for pushing him away with bloody hands when he tried to get between them, the fighters ignored him completely. A group of students in shirts and ties and fierce grins clustered together, calling encouragement to Alasdair and heckling Jamison. On the other side of the crowd, another group, marked by their height, were giving similar encouragement to Jamison. A little beyond them I saw Shondra, standing a little apart from a bunch of tall women, hands clenched, her face creased with worry.

Eventually, a carload of campus cops rolled up, sirens screaming, and skidded to a stop, barely missing the watching crowd. Four of them poured out, grabbed Jamison, and manhandled him across the field and into the back of the car. It took all four. He was a huge guy and way past mad. All the time they were dragging him away, he was shouting at Alasdair, a steady stream of threats, profanity, warnings to stay away from Shondra, and that this was far from over.

A second car arrived and two cops led Alasdair, much more gently, over to that. As he was getting into the car, Alasdair looked over at the car Jamison was in and smiled a blood-streaked smile through battered lips. He looked back at his cohort, gave them a victory sign, then ducked his head and disappeared from view.

Two cops stayed in the car with Jamison while the other two approached the crowd of excited students and one of the cops ordered them to disperse. His actual words. "You are hereby ordered to disperse."

I wondered where their chief was, what kind of relationship he had with the students, and why Chambers was standing there like a wooden soldier while all this was going on. The cop's instructions fell on deaf ears anyway. The crowd grew as students milled and stared, filling in newcomers on what had taken place and asking the cops questions about what was going to happen next.

Through it all, Chambers and his wife stood together, Chambers staring bleakly at the car holding Alasdair. I was too far away to hear what was being said, but her mouth never stopped moving and he never acknowledged that she was speaking.

Much as I hated leaving unfinished business, I'd been fired, so I didn't run over and grab Chambers' arm and yell, "Do you have any idea what's going to happen now?" Instead, I turned with a grateful sigh and walked back to my car.

There was a note under my wiper. "Why don't you ask what Alasdair and them do to girls?"

I had a pretty good idea who'd written it. If I were staying, I might have done just that, but while I was disturbed by the situation I was leaving behind, and frustrated that I hadn't been able to reason with Chambers, St. Matthews' problems were no longer my business.

Maybe, on the way home, I'd pick up a bag of apples so I could make a pie.

Chapter 10

Andre, the man who loves to eat, was delighted with his apple pie. Suzanne accepted my explanation of the events at St. Matthews with a shrug and a sigh, agreeing we couldn't win them all. I spent the rest of the week working on a report for a school that
did
want my services, and interviewing the hopeless cases who wanted to be my secretary.

My last secretary, Sarah, left behind when we moved the business from Massachusetts to Maine, had spoiled me. She'd griped about the workload, the copy machine, and her impossible husband, but she'd been a jewel. I'd gotten used to having my needs anticipated and to finding neatly typed stacks of work on my desk every morning. Sarah had also fielded my mother's cranky calls. Now I was willing to settle for someone who could type and spell, and even that seemed like too much to ask.

Friday night, Andre cooked steaks on the grill. We shared a bottle of red wine and ate deadly chocolate cake while watching Barbara Stanwyck in "The Lady Eve" and "Ball of Fire." Her costumes were so cute I asked Andre how he'd like it if I ran around in harem pants and a little bolero that stopped just below my chest.

"I wouldn't let you out of the house," he said.

"Let?" I tried to inject a dangerous note into my voice but I was too mellowed by wine to sound very menacing.

"No way," he said. "You ran around in public in something like that, you'd cause traffic jams, serious accidents, lust attacks, and be a general public nuisance. So no, I wouldn't let you out of the house. I wouldn't leave the house, either. Just stay home and run my fingers across your bare tummy until you begged for mercy."

"Go ahead," I said, tying my shirt in a stomach-baring knot. "Make me beg."

When the phone rang in the middle of the night, my heart stopped, even though Andre was snuggled so close I could feel his breath against the back of my neck. Phones ringing in the night were an occupational hazard of living with a homicide detective. They were never good news. With a grunt, he pushed himself across the bed and snatched up the receiver, already awake and alert as he said, "Hello?"

There was a silence after his hello which I assumed was a brief description of where the crime scene was and what he'd find there, until he said, "Hold on. She's right here," and handed me the phone. "Some guy named Dunham," he said, "with a private school emergency." With a satisfied sigh at getting to hand it off, he snuggled back into the covers and pulled his pillow over his head.

I paused before I said hello, racking my brain for who might be calling, but the only Dunham I could think of was Craig Dunham at St. Matthews, and they'd sent me packing. It would take more nerve than I could imagine most people having, or a huge emergency, for him to be calling me at 2:00 a.m..

I stared out the window, where a shaft of moonlight painted the lawn silver. Outside that streak of light, it was a still, black velvet night. I wanted to go back to sleep and let these people handle their own problems. I slid my leg across the bed until I was touching Andre, then lifted the phone to my ear. "Thea Kozak."

"It's Craig Dunham, at St. Matthews. I apologize for calling at this hour, but we've got a major crisis on our hands and we need your help."

"You fired me, remember?"

"We made a huge mistake," he said, "and believe me, we're regretting it. If you want, when you get here, I'll go down on my knees and apologize. Just please listen to what's happened and say you'll come." The panic in his voice crackled across the miles.

"Hold on." I slipped out of bed, crossed the cold floor to my office, and switched on the light. "Okay," I said, grabbing a pen. "What's the emergency?"

He grabbed a breath. "Around 11:30 last night, a body tentatively identified as Alasdair MacGregor was found smoldering in a pile of leaves."

"A body?" My voice dropped to a whisper. "A dead body?" As though there were any other type of body that prompted calls at this hour, except from horny jocks.

I fought my desire to put the phone down. This should have been a call for Andre, not me. I was a consultant. Give me admissions glitches, faculty members downloading pornography or seducing students, financial peccadilloes, mass food poisoning, student pregnancy, chemical spills or a bus accident, but please, no more dead bodies. I'd had enough of death and violence. I was treating my PTSD and trying to live a normal life.

I wanted to crawl back into my warm bed and forget this call. If I closed my eyes, I could picture it. Shadowy figures circling, the smoky blaze against the darkness, the pungent smell of leaf smoke with a nauseating undercurrent of burned flesh. Flashing lights and cop radios and the controlled chaos of a crime scene. Alasdair MacGregor's gorgeous face, which I'd last seen streaked with blood and smiling, now blackened and blistered. My imagination, always going for the telling touch, carefully arranged that curl on his sooty forehead.

"Did he die in the fire?" I asked.

"We don't know yet. We don't know much, really. Only that he's dead. You know how police are." He sounded infinitely sad and weary, a place I'd been too often and understood too well. "I'm sorry," he said. "But this is familiar territory to you and we're way over our heads." As though other schools had their crisis plans in place and were cool with campus death. Or as though because I'd dealt with it before, I was a pro and unfazed by it. Nobody was cool with death.

I'd dealt with campus death before, but that was with a strong headmistress with whom I'd had a good working relationship.

I had no relationship with Chambers or Dunham, never mind the other deans or campus security and little reason to believe I could work with them. But this was an emergency. Against my will, because the creeping horror of other times and other bodies was coming over me, I clicked into gear.

"Got a pen?" I waited through the sounds of rustling and fumbling while he found one, wondering who makes an emergency phone call without a writing implement?
Cut him some slack,
I reminded myself.
He's in shock.

"Ready?"

He made an affirmative sound.

"Better recruit some of the other deans in to help you, you've got a lot of work to do. As soon as we hang up, call all your resident advisors and let them know what's happened. If you can disturb me, you can certainly disturb them. Tell them that until further notice, everyone is on duty at all times. Also alert your counseling staff. You need them to make themselves available as many hours as possible. Even if they're just sitting in their offices, knowing they're there will be comforting to your students."

I gave him time to write that down. "Now, your students. I assume some of them know, that there's been gossip, but no formal announcement?"

"Right. I don't think many of them know. It was in a pretty isolated place."

"So that's the first thing you have to do. An early morning assembly to deal with it right up front, acknowledge their concerns, and to be sure they know that their counselors and advisors are available. And while you can't control phones, ask them not to discuss it until the facts are known."

I waited for the sound of pen scratches to stop. "Food. Food is critical. Not just in the dining halls, but in their dorms. Lounges. In the student center. Any place they're likely to congregate and talk. Sodas, sandwiches, chips and cookies. Bowls of fruit. It will cost you, but in the long run, it pays."

What else needed to be done immediately? "This one is critical, Craig. You have to control the flow of information. Get your PR people on this immediately. Only one person speaks to the press and you agree in advance on what is said—a written script so no one deviates. Do not allow reporters to speak with your students. That means controlling access to the campus and especially to campus buildings. You've got to get your directors of security and grounds and buildings on board right away. You can't wait. The press will have been following the police scanners. Now, parents..."

"Wow," he said. "I had no idea." He cleared his throat. "Something else you need to know..." It sounded like more bad news, as though what he'd already said wasn't bad enough. "Jamison Jones was found standing over the body. He's been arrested."

I supposed the one followed from the other and wondered if the whole business could have been prevented if Chambers had been willing to take advice. So much for Chambers's confident assertion that Jones could be controlled. Too late now. What was done was done.

"About your parents," I began again, not quite ready for the Joneses, but I had a question about whether it even made sense for me to be doing this much. "Why are
you
calling me?"

He knew what I meant. I read the knowledge in his silence. I studied the mottled purple and white patterns on my cold feet, and doodled on the pad in front of me.

"You mean why not Todd, and am I authorized to act for the school?"

"That's right."

"He's... I don't know... fallen apart? This new building meant so much to him. Too much, I suppose. When he left the scene, he went back to his house. He refuses answer the door or the phone so I authorized myself to call you. That is, after I checked with Charles Argenti. Chairman of the Trustees? He said go ahead and call you. I'm expecting him any minute. He's driving up from Boston."

"He likes his coffee black," I said, "and be sure you have a supply of legal pads and sharp pencils ready for him. And you'd better reserve us both rooms at The Swan. What's your relationship with the local police chief?"

"Pretty good," he said, sounding puzzled.

"Because we'll need his cooperation. And what about Shondra? How's she doing?"