by John Lutz
“Macy was a Waycliffe student,” Jody pointed out.
Professor Pratt laid a hand on her wrist and gave a little squeeze. “If I were you, I wouldn’t talk to the chancellor, or to the police, about Macy Collins. Remember what I said about compartmentalizing. Well, this isn’t the time for you to be distracted. Concentrate on your studies and let the detectives go ahead and detect. You shouldn’t get enmeshed in a murder case, Jody. For a number of reasons, not the least of which is that nothing about this case involves you. As far as you’re concerned, what happened to Macy Collins exists in another dimension, and one you shouldn’t visit.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Jody conceded, smiling as if the professor had persuaded her.
How wrong you are.
“So what kind of place is Waycliffe College?” Fedderman asked Quinn and Pearl, after they’d returned to the office.
Pearl had made a fresh pot of coffee and was pouring some into her initialed mug. “Kinda place where half the girls are nicknamed Muffy, and the boys Bunny.”
“Like state prison,” Fedderman said.
“I won’t even ask what that means,” Mishkin said. He and Sal Vitali had divided the notes from the interviews with Macy Collins’s neighbors and were poring over them to find items of interest or contradictions.
“It looks like minor league Ivy League,” Quinn said, leaning back in his desk chair. “Small and secluded.”
“Very picturesque,” Pearl said.
Sal growled something unintelligible.
“And it looks like money,” Pearl said.
“That, too,” Quinn said.
“But I think secret suits it better than secluded.” Pearl sipped her coffee and made a face. “Maybe that’s an odd word to describe it, but that’s the impression it gives. Like there’s some dark and musty secret hanging over the place.”
Quinn swiveled slightly in his chair and said nothing. He’d had the same feeling as Pearl’s, that something just beyond sight or sound was lurking in the ivy. Or maybe that was because it had been a long time since either of them had been on a college campus. The quiet, shaded grounds and buildings of Waycliffe were a detached world of their own. One conducive to pondering and discussing rather than conducting police interviews.
After all, the Collins murder had occurred in the real world, beyond the rows of oak and maple trees that marked the boundaries of the academic enclave. In the world of Waycliffe, everything had to make sense. In Quinn’s world there was chaos.
“Are we going back there?” Harold asked.
“Right now we don’t have a reason,” Quinn said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything connected to the college that figures into Collins’s death. And there wasn’t anything useful in her dorm room.”
“No computer there, either,” Pearl said. “And the crime scene unit didn’t remove one from her apartment.”
“No computer, few friends,” Sal growled. “Makes things difficult.”
“On the other hand,” Harold said, “Macy hardly knew anyone in New York, so if a serial killer didn’t do her, there aren’t too many suspects.” Harold, looking on the bright side.
“You don’t have to know someone in New York to get murdered,” Sal said.
Helen Iman, the NYPD profiler, came in, making the office suddenly smaller with her six-foot-plus height. She was wearing khakis and a white pullover shirt with a collar and looked like a women’s basketball coach. Quinn wasn’t sure if she’d ever actually played basketball.
She was sweating, as if she’d been running up and down the court.
“Hot out there,” she said, pulling a plastic water bottle from a khaki pocket and taking a hearty swig. “I was by earlier and you weren’t here,” she said to Quinn, backhanding away water that was dribbling down her long chin.
“He and Pearl have been to college,” Fedderman said.
Quinn described the visit at Waycliffe to Helen.
She seemed to become more interested as the account unfolded.
“You think the college president—”
“Calls himself the chancellor,” Quinn interrupted.
“Okay. Whatever. You feel he was being evasive?”
“Yes,” Pearl answered.
Quinn nodded, not as sure. He didn’t want to go off in a wrong direction here. “It was only a feeling,” he said. “We have no reason to believe he was lying about anything.”
“The college itself looks too good to believe,” Pearl said. “So picturesque, and isolated from the town. Snooty as hell, too. They play lacrosse and only lacrosse.”
“I lettered in lacrosse,” Helen said.
“I bet you played field hockey, too.”
Quinn shot Pearl a warning look. If a spark was struck, the two women sometimes deliberately tried to get on each others’ nerves. Go easy, Pearl.
“Good game, lacrosse, if you’re up to it,” Helen said, apparently primed for an argument this morning.
“We’re not concerned about their athletic program,” Quinn said, heading off trouble. “Anyway, it isn’t the kind of place you’d think would have a bowl contender.”
“Football,” Pearl said. “Beats the hell out of lacrosse.”
“Maybe we oughta go back up there,” Fedderman said, coming to Quinn’s rescue before Helen could reply.
“I don’t think so,” Quinn said. “Schueller might just have been nervous, like a lot of people when they come face-to-face with the law. Especially if it concerns a murder investigation. That sort of thing would be foreign to the Waycliffe campus.”
“We would hope,” Helen said. “What about Macy Collins’s friends there?”
“She didn’t seem to have any close friends. She was in something called the Vanguard program, for gifted students. Sounded to me like everybody in the program had to work too hard to have time for friends.”
“Not like the jocks,” Pearl said. Jab, jab ...
“They must have a basketball team,” Helen said, as if every institution with more than five people did.
“No,” Quinn said. “Only lacrosse. I didn’t see any obvious jocks. The women we saw looked like college types. Trendy, studious. The men were Ivy League types, or nerds. Everybody looked like they spent too much time on Facebook and Twitter.”
“Of course,” Pearl said, “we didn’t see many students. Summer classes were in session. But Quinn’s right; the few students we did see looked like nerds or future bond salesmen. The geeky kids who did all their homework in high school.”
“Sounds like you need a perfect SAT score to get near the place,” Fedderman said.
“Or perfect bank account,” Pearl said.
“They should have a basketball team,” Helen said.
“Only lacrosse,” Quinn said, before Pearl could.
“Macy Collins have a roommate in her dorm?”
“No,” Quinn said. “Vanguard students room alone.”
“And die alone,” Harold said. He’d been silent on the other side of the office, listening.
Quinn sat wondering if this conversation was getting them anywhere. It seemed to emphasize the paucity of hard facts in the investigation. A serial killer (if he was one) like Daniel Danielle who butchered his victims (if there was more than one) didn’t seem to have much to do with an exclusive and secluded college, even though the dead woman had been a student there. Quinn was beginning to think they’d taken a wrong turn.
“I were you,” Helen said, “I’d drive back up there.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“No basketball team.”
17
Something was wrong with Ann Spellman’s laptop computer. Her wallpaper that formed the background of her desktop on her screen when she turned on the computer had somehow changed from blue sky to a news photo of victims lying under blankets on the side of a highway after a horrible head-on collision between a car and truck.
Her computer had been hacked. Great! Another disruption in her life.
Everyt
hing else seemed the same when she went online, so not exactly wrong ... but different.
This was the third day of her unemployment. Her personal possessions had been delivered from her desk at work at Clinton Industrial Designs, and she was sure she’d be persona non grata if she ever so much as entered the building.
One good thing was that the worries of her job had melted away. Being among the unemployed was unsettling, even scary. Yet it was undeniably liberating.
She had to smile. Being thrown out of a high window probably creates the same sensation, and where does that get you?
One thing, though. Life was simpler now. All she had to do was find another job. And stop thinking about Lou Gainer.
She clicked on her computer’s history and saw the familiar sites she’d recently visited. Various business networks. Matchmaking services. But were they in the same order as when she’d last left the computer?
They seemed the same. She didn’t know a lot about computers, but thought you had to go online in order to change your wallpaper. Then it struck her that someone might not have hacked into her computer remotely, but could have gone online here, in her apartment, and simply noted her browser’s history and visited the sites in the order in which she’d left them.
If they knew her passwords.
She reached over and tilted her heavy desk lamp sideways so that the weighted base lifted. There was her folded slip of paper with her handwritten passwords and screen names.
But was it folded in the same way? Hadn’t the quarter-folded sheet of printer paper been pressed perpendicular to the desk edge, rather than at an angle?
She couldn’t be sure.
She replaced the list beneath the lamp base, thinking how dumb it was to keep it hidden there. Probably half the people who used computers kept their passwords and screen names list hidden beneath the base of their desk lamp. It had to be the first place any self-respecting thief or hacker would look. Of course, as far as she knew, somebody who really understood computers could get to her sites without knowing the passwords. That was one of the reasons she’d decided on the desk lamp, with its heavy base. That, and the list was handy.
Who the hell would want to look at my computer?
Clinton Industrial Designs, maybe. Because they might want to know who she was contacting in her attempts to find another job. Lou Gainer had told her they didn’t want her taking trade secrets with her to use as leverage when interviewing for employment. The industrial design world was a shark tank.
She took several deep, calming breaths. This was silly, she told herself. Losing her lover and her job simultaneously was making her suspicious of everything. Wouldn’t anyone get a bit paranoid after such an experience?
She leaned back and considered the items on the desk. Her laptop computer, a green, leather-bordered desk pad; a pen holder with compartments for paper clips, stamps, and whatever; a phone and answering machine; an Edward Hopper print mug that held pens and pencils; a cork coaster borrowed from Ellie’s Lounge; and a small Rolodex. The symmetry of the objects’ placement seemed the same as always.
A quick check of her desk drawers revealed nothing even slightly different.
Ann sat very still, aware of her heartbeat, and after a few minutes she felt satisfied that nothing had been moved in her absence.
A sudden thought sent a chill through her. She got up from her chair and hurried to the door to the hall. After opening the door, she stepped into the hall and glanced both ways, making sure she was alone. Had a shadow moved near the banister’s turn in the stairwell leading to the foyer? Someone hurrying down the steps? In a far part of her mind she wondered if she’d been lured out of her apartment. Was it possible that someone very smart, and very malevolent, was manipulating her? Toying with her?
No, no, don’t be an idiot!
For a few seconds she forgot why she’d come out into the hall. Then she stretched up on her toes and felt along the top of the door frame. That was where she kept an extra key, in case she lost or misplaced hers and couldn’t get inside. Lou Gainer had returned his key to her apartment. Did he know about the spare key? She wasn’t sure.
Ann rubbed her fingertips over the lintel’s rough wooden surface, ignored by generations of painters—and there was the key.
She took it down and stuck it in a pocket, then went back into her apartment. Closing the door firmly, she worked the dead bolt and fastened the brass chain lock.
The rest of the world was outside now, and she was inside, with a better handle on reality. She was safe, and had been since arriving home and walking through the door. Imagination could be such a bitch.
I’m so paranoid!
She felt slightly ashamed and embarrassed. She’d really gotten herself going, and over nothing but suspicion. Why should that be a surprise? After what had happened to her, could she trust anyone ever again?
Don’t be a fool. You’ll get over it.
She did feel better now, after this evidence of her security. She was imagining the worst and working herself into a fearful state over nothing.
Ann returned to her desk and sat back down at her laptop. She clicked on Facebook and there was her home page, her familiar profile photo.
And a posting that was from her.
From Ann.
Right beneath her photograph. The one with her cocking her head to the side and smiling:
I have this feeling something bad is about to happen.
Facebook said the message had been posted slightly more than a minute ago. Ann hadn’t posted a Facebook message in over a week.
When I was out in the hall!
Suddenly the image on her computer screen faded and vanished. Her software programs began to appear, one after another, then roll and disappear, more and more rapidly, while she sat there stunned.
Some kind of virus!
... Something bad is about to happen.
“The best thing to do in a situation like this is unplug the computer,” said a voice behind her.
A hand rested on her right shoulder and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
18
Jody Jason absently flipped her thick red hair and jogged up the wide concrete steps toward the impressive entrance to Jung Hall, known among students simply as the psych building.
It was warm in the building, but still a few degrees cooler than outside. Professor Elaine Pratt was waiting for her in her office. Jody doubted if the appointment had anything to do with her business psychology class, which the professor taught. Though Jody was majoring in law, the Vanguard program had assigned Professor Pratt to be Jody’s counselor. Besides, the B-Psych class was a snap for Jody, like most of her other classes.
The office was small and cluttered, and lined with enough books to make it smell musty. Books were shelved wherever possible, including above the windows and doors. Most of the books pertained to law, psychology, and psychiatry. But there were also biographies, medical tomes, sets of general reference books, textbooks ... even popular fiction. Jody had long ago made note of the fact that the professor was an eclectic reader. Elaine Pratt wasn’t one of those indrawn academics constricted by narrow if long tunnels of knowledge.
She’d stood up behind her desk when Jody knocked and entered. Now she motioned for Jody to take a chair near the desk and sat back down. Jody cleared some books from the chair and moved it over so it was more directly facing the desk.
Professor Pratt was wearing a starched yellow blouse today with light gray slacks. Jody figured that the professor, if she wanted to dress for it, could achieve a stunning willowy attractiveness. Like a fashion model. Jody could imagine her strutting down a runway, drawing every eye like a magnet.
In the wall of bookshelves directly behind her desk was one of those huge two-volume boxed Oxford dictionaries, the kind that came with a tiny cardboard drawer that held a magnifying glass for reading the fine print. Staring at it, Jody decided you must really want to look up a word to wrestle with one of those mammoth, weighty volumes.<
br />
The professor smiled at Jody. “I can’t reveal anything about it at this time,” she said, “but I thought you should know that something good is coming your way.”
Jody was surprised. “Good how?”
“I can’t say, or I would. What I need to know is if you feel ready for a change in your life.”
“Ready?”
“I need to know that you don’t have plans for the rest of the summer that you’ve kept to yourself. That you’re not pregnant. That sort of thing.”
Jody laughed. “No other plans. And I guarantee you that I’m not pregnant.”
“And I need to know if you’re ready in other ways. If you’ve absorbed certain knowledge between the lines of text.” Professor Pratt looked directly at Jody and didn’t blink.
“I’m confident that I’ve absorbed those lessons,” Jody said, knowing what the professor wanted to hear.
Telling people what they wanted to hear was a skill she’d mastered early and well.
“The chancellor and I have discussed you often,” Professor Pratt said. “We think you have special abilities.”
“I think I’m ready for whatever we’re talking about here.”
Professor Pratt stood up. “That’s fine, Jody. I don’t like keeping you hanging, but I needed to make sure you had that block of time free.”
“I’m available,” Jody said, smiling. “And thank you.”
She maintained an erect posture as she went to the door and opened it.
She didn’t glance back as she passed through into the anteroom and then into the hall. Nothing about her revealed her thoughts.
What the hell was that all about?
19
Choking to death!
That was Ann Spellman’s first realization.
Then she began breathing deeply, noisily through her nose. Something—it felt to her tongue like tape—was clamped tightly over her mouth. She gagged, coughed, and worked the tip of her distorted tongue violently but couldn’t budge the taut and tacky surface.