The Campus Murders (15 page)

Had Laura found out? Maybe she had. Maybe she wasn't as free and easy in her attitude toward freedom of the sexes as her boyfriend. Maybe she called him on it and got beaten to within an inch of her life for being such a square.

Was Wilde capable of such a thing? He was quick-tempered, certainly; he had resented McCall, answered a few questions, rushed away. He had been nervous. He had also been cryptic, on the one hand admitting having been with Laura in the Greenview Motel on a number of occasions under the false names of Mr. and Mrs. Jospeh Addison, and on the other confessing with every appearance of sincerity that he didn't really care much for Laura. And, finally, voicing a threat. Watch out, fuzz …

It didn't add up. Nothing added up.

McCall sighed, got back into his shoes and jacket, and went downstairs to the bar. This was one of those times when it would have been comforting to be a lush.

Joe Mozzarella-Cacciatore-Vermicelli-Grundy was on duty in the dim barroom, which was otherwise empty. He immediately told McCall he wasn't feeling well. “It's this weather,” the barman said.

“The weather? It's been a gorgeous day.”

“For you, maybe. Me, I hate spring. It could be good old snow-and-ice winter all year long as far as I'm concerned. The minute it starts to warm up and the green stuff begins growing I get pains in the belly something awful. The doctors don't know why. I feel like hell.”

McCall commiserated with him. “Maybe you need a drink.”

He shook his head. “Not with my history, Mac. What's your pleasure? Weak gin-and-tonic again?”

After serving McCall, Joe retired to the end of his bar and sat down on a stool, hugging his belly.

Was Wilde a blackmailer? A killer? Anyone could kill given the time, place, and circumstances. That was one criminology lesson McCall had learned as far back as Chicago. And what could he have been blackmailing Gunther about?

People began drifting into the bar, Joe got busy, looking happier, and McCall waved off a refill and went into the dining room. Five minutes after he got back to his room he had to jog his memory to recollect what he had eaten.

The phone rang.

“I've been thinking about you,” McCall said gratefully. “Say something, Katie. I need the refreshment of your voice.”

“You tell the nicest lies. Mike, if you promise to behave, you may come over to my place tonight. Maybe I'm Miss Sucker, but I'll take your word—this once.”

“You have it,” McCall said. “I need you tonight. I really do. I've been beating my brains out on this thing and getting absolutely nowhere. When do I show?”

“Like, say, right away?”

“Where do you live?”

She gave him directions.

“I'm practically there.”

He showered, dressed in his charcoal suit, which he had found in the room delivered by the valet down the street, selected his quietest necktie, and hurried to his Ford. He found her directions ambiguous and he had some difficulty locating the section of Tisquanto where she lived. He finally got on the track and began cruising along the residential streets, looking for the right one.

The roar of an engine startled him. He glanced at his rear-view mirror and saw the headlights of another car bearing down on him from behind like a juggernaut. In reflex he wrenched his wheel toward the right, sluing over to the curb. Stupid kids out on a tear!

He glimpsed another car.…

But the first car did not pass and go its way. It shrieked by alongside and darted into the curb about twenty feet ahead, cutting him off. Fortunately he had already slammed on his brakes, and the Ford stopped a foot from the other car.

The second car was already parked beside him. He heard a man's voice shout something. Car doors swung open. Bodies began climbing out. He jumped from his car, ready for anything.

He could hardly believe what his eyes were telling him. They were running at him, brandishing their arms, a grotesque crew of false faces leering under the streetlights. They were wearing Halloween masks.

And they were all—girls and men—naked.

14

He felt himself seized and he fought. But four naked young men smothered him by sheer volume.

“What do you want?” McCall heard his own voice thick with rage.

“Be a good square.”

“Nice daddy. Whoa, boy.”

A girl giggled.

He heaved and got an arm free and made a swipe at one of the masks. But the man retracted his head like a snake, and one of the others punched him in the abdomen.

“A real toughie, he is.”

“Sock it to him!” a girl's voice yelled.

“Get him in the heap.”

He struggled again. But his captors had apparently been selected for their brawn. They had him effectively immobilized; he found no opening for a judo or karate maneuver.

“Walk over to that car,” somebody said. “Or we'll throw you into it head first.”

“He's cute,” a girl said. She ran close to him, breasts bobbing below the green monster mask; laughing in his face.

McCall took hold of himself. “Are you sure you people know what you're doing?”

“We're doing our thing, what else?”

“Do you know who I am?” They were hustling him over to the first car.

“The gov's errand boy, aren't you?”

“Open the door.”

“Somebody get in first.”

“I will,” the same girl said. “He's cute.”

She piled into the car. He was shoved from behind and found himself half lying on the unclothed girl. Others leaped into the rear with them while the front seats filled. In a moment the car was packed.

“Get going.”

“How about the rest of the gang?”

Someone called from outside the car, “We'll follow you. Step on it.”

The girl rubbed against him. “Sock it to me, grandpa.”

“Sack that,” a man said roughly. “Step on it, will you?”

The car lurched into motion.

“Do you know what the charge will be?” McCall said. “Kidnapping.”

A fist sank into his midriff again. McCall's mouth opened and whoofed a burst of air. The pain was like a tidal wave. Even his jaws ached. They must be high on something. Nobody in normal command of himself would abduct the governor's personal representative. He might be in considerable danger.

He inhaled and exhaled cautiously, mastering the pain, husbanding his strength. He might well need it later, all he could muster.

“It's like we're the fuzz and you're the innocent public,” his assailant jeered. “Police brutality. How do you like it?”

“Cut it,” the one who seemed to be in charge said curtly.

“What's the point of this?” McCall asked.

“You were warned to lay off. You didn't.”

The car was speeding. He tried to see where they were going, watched for landmarks. But they were traveling dark streets in a residential area that meant nothing to him. The headlights of the other car held steady in the rear window.

“It's hard for me to believe you're college students,” McCall said. “You act more like a gang of hoods.”

“This cat is asking for it,” a man said. “I move we start the class.”

“Second the motion!” This from the one who had struck him in the abdomen. As the man spoke he swung again. McCall was ready for him. He twisted sharply on the seat. The big fist went whistling by, and McCall's left came up in a short arc, with power. It smashed against the man's jaw, and there was a cracking sound.

“Son of a bitch!” he screamed, and slid to the floor. The other two men in the rear seat fell on McCall. One of them kneed him, the other swung at his face. He crumpled and collapsed in a burst of fireworks.

The girl in the corner asked with a giggle, “Can I have grandpa now?”

“He's all yours, doll.”

She twined her arms about his neck from behind like a snake, half gagging him. The man who had kneed him laughed. “Hold him that way, baby.” The other man laughed and hit him in the face again.

“That's enough for now,” the authoritative one said. “Let's save our strength.”

“Yeah, we're going to need it.”

“
He's
going to need it. But lay off his face.”

“Stop that, baby. You'll get your kicks in the woods.”

Someone pulled the girl off him; she had been smothering his face with her body. McCall noticed now that they were out in the country; the streetlights were gone. The headlights of the second car gave him an occasional glimpse of the black countryside.

The car careened, and McCall knew that they had turned off the main road. From the bumpy ride, they were traveling on a dirt road now.

“How much longer?”

“We're almost there.”

“Where we taking him?”

“Over by the shack.”

“You going to give it to him in the shack?”

“Hell, no, then we'd only have to clean it up. We need it in a couple of days for the bash.”

“What bash?”

“Tell you about it later.”

“Here we are.”

“Is this deep enough in the woods?”

“Whoever comes here except us?”

“You're going to love this, Snoopy.”

The car screeched to a halt and the door flashed open and the men piled out. One reached back and grabbed McCall's ankle, as if to drag him from the car.

He kicked. The man yelped, backing away.

“Well, looky, looky,” the girl in the rear seat said. “Look at all this room they left us. You want to make out, fuzz?” and she grabbed his hand and put it on her body. A fist struck him in the groin and strong hands clamped on his legs.

Struggling, trying to kick, he was hauled from the car. The second car had pulled up and emptied, and it seemed to McCall that the entire student body of Tisquanto State fell on him.

“Where's the rope?”

“Who's got the rope?”

“Here.”

Through the wall of flesh lying on him McCall caught glimpses of other naked bodies shifting about in the moonlight, breasts, buttocks, genitals; and where faces should have been the grotesque monster-masks. It was like some witches' sabbath.

“Okay,” the leader's voice said. “You men, hold on to him. You girls—strip him.”

McCall rocked suddenly to his knees and sprang toward one of the men. He failed to arrive. Three others tackled him and brought him down with a crash. They were young and powerful. He felt panic for the first time. Could they actually be going to kill him? Four held him down, two by his legs, two holding his arms over his head.

“Get his pants off,” the voice said. “You. You've had plenty of practice.”

One corner of McCall's brain, the residence of the neutral observer, remarked that at no time had any of them used a name in talking to others. This had been well planned.

The rest of him squirmed. But they held him fast.

Small fingers worked on his belt, unzipped his fly. He wriggled and twisted and arched his back trying to escape the soft little hands, but he was like a big insect caught in a bigger spider web, he could only struggle in vain. He stopped fighting to conserve his strength for what lay ahead.

He felt his trousers stripped off.

“Jacket, shirt.”

He put up no resistance as two girls removed his jacket, his tie, his shirt, his T-shirt.

“His shorts.”

The girl-hands ripped his shorts off.

He was naked except for socks and shoes. McCall had the silliest thought: he wished they would take those off, too. To be left in the raw, all but your ankles and feet, was somehow too grotesque to bear.

“Wow,” said one of the girls. “Oh, wow! Look at the way grandpa's hung. Bigger even than you, Bobby.”

McCall heard a smack and the girl's yelp. “No names! Don't skid again.”

They yanked him to his feet. McCall blinked. Oddly, he did not mind his nudity now. In the country of the altogether-naked, the man with shoes is king … he almost laughed at the conceit. They were in a clearing. The moon was almost directly overhead.

“I want a joint,” one of the girls said.

“There's some in the car.”

“Where?”

“Glove compartment.”

The girl hurried off, everything bouncing in the moonlight. When she returned she was lighting a cigarette. From the acrid odor, it was marijuana. The headlights of the second car filled the clearing like a stage set.

“Tie him to that tree,” the leader ordered.

He was hustled over to a young maple. They began lashing his legs to the tree. He grabbed one of the men by the ear and twisted. The man fell back with a shriek and sat down hard. He got up slowly, picking gravel out of his rear end.

“That'll cost you, Mr. McCall,” he said in a very quiet way.

“He's so damned
cute
,” a girl with blonde hair curling from under the mask said.

They finished tying him to the maple.

The girls crowded around. The one with the marijuana cigarette came closest. She rubbed against him. “You're sweet,” she said. “Too bad there has to be a time and a place for everything. Here, have a drag.”

McCall averted his face. She tried to jab the joint between his lips. Two of the other girls laughed and tackled him from the sides, working on his jaws to get his mouth open. He bit one of them.

“The hell with you, Fuzzy Wuzzy,” the girl with the joint said. “You won't smoke it, it's going to smoke you.”

She rammed the lighted end into his groin.

McCall strained against the ropes as if he were in the electric chair. The girl stepped back breathing hard and fast, eyes glowing.

“All right, all right,” one of the males said. “You've had your jollies. One side.”

Where the cigarette had touched his flesh McCall felt a flow of lava. He chewed the lining of his cheek, deliberately diverting the pain.

“Now,” the commanding voice said, “we all take our licks. One crack a piece, ladies and gentlemen. Line up.”