The Campus Murders (3 page)

In the silence McCall looked about. It was an MGM version of an office, all done in high-polished ebony, straight lines, and lemon-yellow leather. The books looked out of place.

“I share your dislike,” President Wade said suddenly. “The architects hired by the state didn't bother to consult me when they planned this building and its decor. I prefer the old-time religion, as it were. The good old days, if you'll forgive the cliché.”

“Is it possible, Mr. Wade, that that's what's the matter?”

The bloodshot eyes looked wary. “I don't follow.”

“The good old days. These aren't the good old days. Good or bad, they're the new days. They're today. Maybe that's what's got the students up in arms.”

With all its splendor, the room exuded the faintest odor of mothballs. It puzzled McCall.

“No doubt.” President Wade had begun drumming with his manicured fingernails on the glossy desktop. “At least that's what people keep telling me. Yet I'm convinced that the fundamentals of a college education remain constant, regardless of changing tastes and attitudes. What was your alma mater, Mr. McCall?”

“Northwestern.”

“Then you must realize what we're trying to cope with.” Wade had a naturally heavy voice that made everything he said sound slightly threatening. “What did you study, may I ask?”

“Law.”

“And you're from the Chicago area, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“I'm rarely wrong—detected it in your speech.” Wade's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. He's stalling, McCall thought. Avoiding the issue he knows is coming. “From your build I assume you were an athlete?”

“Played a little football.”

“At what position?”

“Halfback.” McCall stared at him. “If there are no other questions about me, Mr. Wade, one of my reasons for visiting Tisquanto is Laura Thornton.”

Wolfe Wade's face turned a shade beefier. “Laura Thornton. Yes. The girl student who's taken off for somewhere.”

“Is that statement based on information, Mr. Wade, or is it an assumption?”

“Well, hardly information. I mean, what else could it be?”

“A great many things.”

“Yes. I suppose so. Well, I don't know anything about it, Mr. McCall. See Miss Vance. She's the dean of women. Aren't the police taking care of this?”

“Are you really as indifferent as you sound, Mr. Wade? Somehow, I don't make you out the unconcerned type.”

“I strike you as unconcerned?” Wade stared.

“You seem to me to be avoiding things.”

The heavy gray brows rose. “Really? I had no idea. I'm very much concerned, Mr. McCall. It's just that—” he looked down at his desk—“well, I don't like thinking the girl's in serious trouble. There are so many changes … all this drug abuse—this preoccupation with sex … it's got to stop. I won't stand for rioting, I tell you! This is an institution of higher learning, not an urban ghetto!” He was almost shouting. He began to pound the desk with his puffy fist, little rigidly controlled poundings. “I know what's best for them. Their demands are outrageous—insolent—insulting—I won't stand for this sort of thing. They won't trample all over me and my college! Students—junior faculty—demanding a voice in administrative affairs!” His voice, choked with impotence and rage, sputtered out.

McCall studied him. He had heard that Wolfe Wade was a hard-line educator of the old school, but watching him, listening to him across a desk, he wondered that the students didn't tear the campus up out of sheer frustration.

“I'm sorry,” Wade said with difficulty. “My nerves these days … yes, yes, Laura Thornton. You'd be well advised to see Dean Vance, Mr. McCall. Frankly, even aside from this business of the missing student, your visit isn't entirely unexpected. I knew the governor would be concerned. I've been sitting here this morning mulling things over and not liking my thoughts.” He shook his big head. “I don't like it, Mr. McCall. I don't like any of it.”

“I'll run along. Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Wade.”

“Any time.”

McCall left Wade slumped behind his magnate's desk. In the outer office the president's secretary, a sharp-eyed woman of forty, was standing by her desk holding an open box of mothballs.

“Is President Wade all right?” she asked anxiously. “He sounds so upset. He takes these things so much to heart.” He was watching the mothballs. She was rattling them around in the box. Were they turning on with mothballs now?

McCall left and went on a hunt for the office of the dean of women. He never did find out what the mothballs were for. Probably Wade's ideas.

“Dean Vance is busy now,” the secretary in the outer office of the dean of women said. “Oh, here's Miss Cohan, Dean Vance's assistant. This gentleman says he's Mr. McCall, Miss Cohan. From the governor's office.”

The first thing McCall noticed was that she had auburn hair—the real McCoy this time, not out of a bottle or a vegetable bin. The rich locks were shoulder length, and his first absurd impulse was to go over and bury his nose in them. It was thick, glowing, honest-to-goodness auburn hair.

The next thing was her eyes. They were a sort of Alice blue, almost violet, big and direct and—well—you had to say it. A total gas.

He completed the inventory rapidly. Pretty as sin. On the Irish side. Turned-up little nose. Lips asking for it. A good stubborn chin. Slim but shapely, good breasts, dress short but not extreme, marvelous legs. Watch your step with this babe, brother …

“I do believe I've heard of you, Mr. McCall,” she said, and her voice made everything perfect. Low and sexy but honestly so, a woman's voice as it should be. “I'm Kathryn Cohan. What brings you to our little corner of hell? Don't bother to tell me—I was almost afraid to ask. The dean's tied up right now. We can talk over here.” She went over to a modest desk stacked with folders and papers, sat down behind it, and nodded to a plain chair nearby. “Won't you sit?”

“You're beautiful,” McCall said, and sat.

“Now I
am
frightened,” Kathryn Cohan said coolly. “When a man starts with that gambit, he wants something.”

“He'd be a fool if he didn't,” McCall said.

“Oh?” The milky Irish skin reddened the least bit.

“I don't mean to scare you, Miss Cohan. I don't go around scaring women or children. It's just that you kind of took me by surprise. May I smoke?”

“Certainly.”

“I forgot. I've stopped smoking.” He looked sheepish, and she smiled. “Well, I might as well talk it over with you. The governor has asked me—”

“The riots?”

“Well, primarily Laura Thornton. Do you have any information?”

“On her disappearance?”

“Yes, and also what she's like. Boyfriends. Enemies. Anything … excuse me. Your hair stops me cold. It's gorgeous.”

She stared at him. Her lashes were so long that he wondered if they were removable, and then felt disloyal for wondering. What was it with this babe? She opened a drawer of her desk, took out a pair of heavy dark-rimmed eyeglasses, and slipped them over her nose.

“Now I can see you,” she said. “I like your hair, too. Thick and black, with a touch of salt. There. Can we get down to cases now, Mr. McCall?”

He felt ashamed.

“Laura. What do you know about her?”

“Not a great deal. I know her only slightly. She's no kook. On the serious side, in fact. Taking liberal arts. Good student. Strong desire to paint—I've seen some of her work. She has originality. A terrific way with color. Especially light—she can paint light on canvas so that, well, it's real.”

“Boyfriends?”

“Pretty much this Wilde boy, about whom I'm sure you've heard.” She frowned. “He's kind of an oddball. She's too heavy for Damon, I'd say.”

“You think Wilde knows anything?”

She shrugged. The glasses slipped down her nose. She left them there. He liked that.

“Do you have any opinion as to what happened to the girl, Miss Cohan?” When she hesitated, he added, “Based on anything at all. Even feminine intuition.”

“I don't think that's a fair question to ask me, Mr. McCall.”

“Then you do have a hunch?”

“Let's say I'd rather not guess.” She turned, he thought, with relief. “I think Dean Vance is free now.”

A well-built, rather good-looking man in his forties, with thinning hair, hurried out of the inner office. The glance he gave Kathryn Cohan was preoccupied, and he seemed not to notice McCall at all. Nevertheless he waved, said, “Hello, Katie,” and left briskly.

“Would you come in, Mr. McCall?” the assistant said.

A catastrophe had apparently struck the office of the dean of women. File drawers hung open like stuck-out tongues. Three chairs stood about in an arrangement that no amount of art could have calculated; it was the beauty of sheer chance. There were too many pictures and diplomas and certificates on the walls, most of them crooked, and the floor was almost a design of crushed cigarette butts; blue smoke hung like fog over the desk. The desk cringed under the weight of high piles of manila folders and papers.

“And who is this, Katie?” Dean Vance said.

She was a tenor. McCall's first impression was that she had been fashioned by some drunken sculptor out of putty and flung against a wall, picked up, and carelessly reshaped. She had a doughy face out of which shone two great black and quite beautiful eyes. Her body descended from the head in waves of fat, overcontained by the hideous red dress she was wearing. She smoked in spurts of energy; she was a mess; and her eyes made up for everything.

“Did I hear you say McCall?”

“Yes, dean,” Kathryn Cohan said.

“Then he's the Angel of the Lord the grapevine has already informed me about,” Dean Vance said, seizing his hand and shaking the life out of it. “Sit down, Mr. McCall, and don't bother to tell me what the governor is worried about. I can guess.” She flung herself into her swivel chair and motioned him impatiently into one of the visitor's chairs. “It's our student troubles, isn't it?”

“Partly.”

“He's here about Laura Thornton, too,” Miss Cohan said.

“Really? That's interesting.”

“Why, dean?” asked McCall.

“It's interesting that the governor should concern himself about one student, when the place is crawling with defectors. Somebody just threw a trash can through one of the windows at McNiel Hall. Why? Nobody knows. Just for the hell of it, I guess. There's something in the air this morning. It's like coffee, you can smell it brewing. Probably another riot in the breeze.” She ground the cigarette in an immense flat lavender ceramic ash tray, and immediately lit another from a square, mannish case. “You may be able to give Governor Holland an eyewitness report, Mr. McCall. Now what can I tell you about Laura Thornton?”

“What you know about her, Dean Vance.”

“She's a sexy one. They can't fool me, these shy types. It's in Laura's eyes. She's making it with somebody. That smug look women get—an I-made-it sort of look—self-satisfied, you know? But so what? She's a nice girl. I wouldn't want anything to happen to her. Personally, I don't think anything has. Katie disagrees.”

McCall looked at Miss Cohan. Miss Cohan flushed her Irish flush.

“Katie thinks something pretty bad has happened to the girl.”

“You didn't tell me that,” McCall said.

“I'm sorry,” Kathryn said. “I thought you should work it out for yourself.”

“What makes you think it's bad, Miss Cohan?”

“A feeling. Nothing more than that.”

Dean Vance shot smoke like a disgusted dragon. “Feminine intuition! It could be, Katie, but I like something more substantial. Laura is pretty much sex-obsessed, Mr. McCall, and if I were you I'd concentrate on Damon Wilde. Her shacking up with him is a fact. If anything's happened to her, it could be because she ditched Damon and shacked up with somebody else.”

“Any evidence of that?”

“No. But I'm glad you're here, Mr. McCall. It's been days, and she's still missing. I can't see that the police are doing a thing. Katie will fill you in on whatever you want to know about Laura's record and activities here, and perhaps you'd better check with Floyd Gunther, our dean of men. That was Dean Gunther who just left my office. He's pretty upset by all this.”

“Thank you, Dean.” McCall rose. “I won't keep you.”

“Rubbish. Sit down. It isn't often I get to talk to a man of your age who's as attractive as you are.” Ina Vance lit a fresh cigarette from the ember of her last, scratched her wild black head, leaned back, and smiled like a cherub. “Stick around, Mr. McCall, and you'll get to know the lot of them as Katie and I do.”

“The student body?”

“Our student body, yes. Oh, Christ, I shouldn't carry on like this! We have plenty of good students, kids as conventional as bathwater, who are here for instruction as well as fun and games. But we have the new breed, too—the troublemakers. The ones with murder in their hot little hearts.”

“I'll see Dean Gunther.” McCall rose again.

“Some escapade is my guess,” Dean Vance said. “She'll turn up. Does that satisfy you, Mr. McCall?”

“No.”

She smiled at him. He smiled back.

“I like you,” she said. “Come see me again.”

“Thank you, Dean Vance.”

In the outer office Katie Cohan took off her heavy glasses. From being merely adorable she immediately became bewitching again. “Would you like me to show you where Dean Gunther's office is, Mr. McCall?”

“Does little Timmy Duck run after Mama Duck?”

“Mr. McCall! That doesn't sound much like a gubernatorial troubleshooter.” Her cheeks were flaming. “It's just down the hall, really. But I can use the exercise.”