Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  “She had many friends, but mostly on a casual basis. Students in the Vanguard program are kept quite busy. They’re primarily here to learn, and they want to learn. They form fast friendships, but it takes a while. Macy hadn’t been in Vanguard quite long enough to make those connections.”

  “She was a sophomore,” Quinn pointed out.

  “Yes, but a Vanguard program sophomore.”

  “She was that from the beginning?”

  “Oh, yes. She was chosen for her exceptional abilities. Most of her qualifying and placement test scores were well above the ninety-nine percentiles group. Our Vanguard students quite often are recruited into responsible, high-paying jobs immediately after they obtain their degrees.” He beamed, proud of his students. “Waycliffe alumni do quite well in the world. You might pause on your way out to examine our Wall of Fame.”

  “Macy Collins will never be there,” Pearl remarked.

  “Sadly, that’s true.” He looked at Pearl as if disappointed that she’d stated the obvious. Pearl would never make the Vanguard program.

  “Macy lived in a dorm,” Quinn said. “Is it unusual that she didn’t have a roommate?”

  “No. All our Vanguard students have private rooms.”

  Why am I not surprised? Pearl thought. Her college years before she’d dropped out were, to her recollection, a haze of arguments with her instructors, parties, and putting up with people who mostly infuriated her. And, oh, yeah, there’d been sex. The kind that didn’t budge the earth an inch. Criminology courses had been her only refuge.

  “We’d like to take a look at her room,” Quinn said.

  Schueller nodded. “Of course. It’s relatively barren. She took most of her possessions with her to the apartment she subleased in the City. The apartment where she was living when she…”

  “Died,” Pearl finished for him.

  Schueller stood up and absently buttoned his blazer. “Your professional scrutiny might find something pertinent.”

  They left the administration building and Schueller accompanied them along a curving concrete walk toward a three-story redbrick building with the requisite relentless ivy framing its entrance. The campus was almost deserted. A few people were strolling the walkways. A couple was seated side by side on a wooden bench beneath a shade tree, speaking to each other as if in rapture. A hundred feet from them a young man with a mane of curly blond hair sat cross-legged on the grass, working attentively on his upside-down bicycle. That was it for human habitation, other than Schueller and his two guests with guns. Pearl felt as if she didn’t belong here.

  “We have summer classes in session now,” Schueller said, glancing at his watch, “so the place isn’t as deserted as it seems.” He drew a briar pipe from his pocket and clamped down on it in the corner of his mouth. “I don’t actually light this thing,” he said. “Bad example for the students. But I like the aroma of the unlit tobacco.”

  “You must have been a heavy smoker at one time,” Pearl said.

  The chancellor smiled around his pipe stem. “We won’t talk about that.”

  And maybe a lot of other things, Pearl thought.

  Macy Collins might have had a private dorm room, but it was small. There was room for a narrow bed, a desk, a closet with a tri-folding louvered door, a single window looking out on an area of green and meticulously tended lawn. In the distance were crowded trees and the dormered roofs of old but well-kept homes, some of them quite large and no doubt expensive. Some faced the street beyond, others the campus. Quinn supposed that was where some of the tenured faculty lived. There must be plenty of endowment money to augment the lofty tuition fees hinted at in the college brochures.

  A flat-screen monitor with a blank screen was on a corner of the wooden desk, along with a full-sized keyboard. A small printer sat on the floor near a desk leg. Everything but the computer, just as there had been no computer in Macy Collins’s apartment.

  “It appears that she had a laptop she hooked up here.”

  “All of our students are furnished with laptops,” Schueller said, holding the briar pipe in his hand now. It was for show, anyway. “There’s no need to instruct them on their usage. Computer literacy is one of our prerequisites. Even our non-Vanguard students are superior in most respects. Mostly they come from the best families. I’m sure even a detective would recognize some of their names.”

  “Maybe especially a detective,” Pearl said. This guy Schueller was about to make her puke.

  “The full-sized keyboards and monitors are optional,” Schueller said. “The monitors are for watching movies, or occasionally sports.”

  “Does Waycliffe have a football team?” Quinn asked.

  Schueller smiled tolerantly. “We only play lacrosse.”

  “Ah,” Pearl said.

  Quinn was picking up her vibes and hoped she wouldn’t mouth off.

  They poked around for a while, but there was nothing of use in the tiny dorm room. Macy Collins hadn’t possessed much, and most of it-including her laptop, which might have been taken by her killer-could have been transferred via backpack to her address in Manhattan. Macy had lived light, and probably mostly alone, at least somewhat isolated by her intimidating IQ and penchant for listening, watching, and learning.

  “Are any of her friends on campus taking summer classes?” Quinn asked Schueller.

  “No. Most of our Vanguard students take summer internships. Some travel for further enlightenment. Others visit their families. I understand that Macy Collins was working as an intern at a law firm in the city.”

  “It didn’t strike me that she was from a wealthy family,” Quinn said.

  “She wasn’t. But a student like Macy is eligible for a great deal of grant and student loan money. For the most part, our students work real summer jobs only because they wish to experience them. I’m sure that for them the extra money is negligible.”

  Maybe, Quinn thought. It was something to check with Macy’s mother.

  He and Pearl thanked Chancellor Schueller and drove into Putneyberg to try Feed’n’ Speed, the restaurant they’d noticed on Main Street. It was a low tan brick building with a NASCAR decor. Front ends of race cars lined the front edge of the flat roof. Just inside the door was a large black-and-white photo of racing and bootlegger legend Junior Johnson.

  The service was slower than the sign promised or Johnson would have approved. Lunch was tasteless, but apple pie for dessert was terrific.

  “Why do places like this usually serve great pie?” Quinn asked, washing down his final bite of pie with tepid coffee.

  “Maybe it only seems that way because of the rest of the food.” Pearl glanced around at what passed for the lunch crowd. About a dozen people at tables, and five slumped on red vinyl stools at the counter. Most of them were over fifty. Nobody seemed to be from the college. She could understand why most Waycliffe students went elsewhere for the summer.

  “Notice something about Chancellor Schueller?” Quinn asked.

  “Other than he’s the kinda guy who was probably born with a pointer in his hand?”

  “He seems more upset about the loss of such a promising student than about a young woman’s violent death.”

  Pearl thought about that. “True. What do you think it means?”

  “Right now, it means I’m gonna have another piece of pie.” Quinn waved to get the waitress’s attention.

  “Only lacrosse,” Pearl said. “Jesus H. Christ!”

  Chancellor Schueller had summoned two faculty members to his office. Summer classes were over for the day, and the administration building was otherwise unoccupied. They would not be overheard.

  It was warm in the office. Schueller sat behind his desk. Elaine Pratt sat relaxed with her legs crossed in one of the two office chairs. She wore a fashionable lightweight beige pantsuit and darker brown Jimmy Choo high-heeled pumps. Around her neck was a dainty gold chain threaded through a delicate cameo. Professor Wayne Tangler, who taught literature, was there, standing. He had o
n a navy-blue Hickey Freeman blazer and a striped silk tie over a pale lavender shirt. He was lean, with a gray downturned mustache and calculating gray eyes. On his lanky wrist was a loose-fitting platinum watch on a linked band. The three academicians looked as if they belonged on a yacht rather than in a tradition-bound, ivy-smothered college.

  “We have a problem,” the chancellor began. “It has a name. Macy Collins.”

  “The other students are naturally upset,” Elaine said.

  “That’s not exactly the kind of problem I mean.” Schueller was obviously uncomfortable with what he had to say. The others waited patiently while he struggled with himself. Out came his briar pipe; then it returned back to his pocket.

  “The police are as of now uninterested in anyone at Waycliffe as a potential suspect in the Macy Collins murder, and I see no reason that might change.”

  “But it might,” Elaine Pratt said.

  “Exactly. If it does, we need to be ready. We have secrets other than murder that we can’t have revealed. Secrets that a murder investigation might lead to incidentally. If a Waycliffe faculty member-one of us-is even mildly suspected of this crime, it could lead to the ruination of this institution we all love. It could deprive our students, and it could end our tenure at this great place of learning.”

  “Not to mention,” Elaine said.

  “Not to mention.”

  Tangler stood hipshot like a duded-up western gunslinger. He became very still. Elaine Pratt cocked her head to one side, like an interested sparrow.

  “It might not be that bad,” Elaine said.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Tangler said.

  Elaine uncrossed her legs and looked over at Schueller. “Any ideas?”

  Schueller began absently toying with a sharp-pointed yellow pencil on his desk. “The solution to our problem is simple,” he said. “This suspected faculty member was here with us, in this office, on the evening of Macy Collins’s death.”

  “Maybe this person already has an alibi,” Elaine said.

  Schueller shook his head. “If he does, if he, say… was in another city with a married woman, the police wouldn’t suspect him of being in New York murdering Macy Collins.” Or if his flight plan suggested he was in another city… “The point is, we don’t want that sort of information to get beyond us.”

  “And the married woman,” Tangler said.

  “Of course.”

  “You’re suggesting that we lie to the police,” Elaine said.

  “Only if necessary. It would be a harmless lie that might as just as easily be true, and it might save this college from extinction.”

  “As well as our jobs and considerable financial interests,” Tangler said. He squinted at the chancellor. “I understand the cops were here today. Did they ask you about this person?”

  “Not yet. And maybe they never will. But I want to be ready, and I need to know we can continue to count on each other.”

  “You’re not only proposing that we lie to the police, but that we do so in a murder investigation,” Elaine said, as if to make clear to each of them what was happening.

  “Exactly.”

  “That will make us accomplices.”

  “In for a penny…” Tangler said, smiling beneath his mustache.

  “We’re already accomplices,” the chancellor said. “But as far as the police are concerned, not in murder.”

  Tangler rubbed his chin, tugged at his mustache. “All right, Chancellor. You can rely on me.”

  “And me, I suppose,” Elaine Pratt said, after a slight hesitation.

  “We can’t simply suppose,” Schueller said.

  “Of course. Count on me.” No hesitation that time.

  Schueller smiled, nodded, and stood up.

  “Are we going to cut ourselves and join hands to mingle our blood?” Elaine asked.

  “Our needs are already mingled,” Tangler said. “As is our duty to each other.”

  “Noble talk,” the chancellor said.

  “Noble purpose,” Tangler said.

  “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Elaine Pratt said. “Especially about the death of Macy Collins.”

  Nobody drew blood, but they did shake hands.

  14

  “I love your body,” Lou Gainer said to Ann Spellman. “You made that clear just a few minutes ago,” Ann said. She was still breathing hard, and her twenty-four-year-old nude body glistened with perspiration. She watched her diet and worked out faithfully almost every day, but even though she knew Gainer was several years older than she was, it was all she could do to keep up with him physically. He appeared deceptively slender in clothes. The grace of his movements and cut of his suits made his lean, hard physique a surprise.

  She was aware of Gainer watching her closely as she rose from where she’d been seated on the edge of the mattress. After veering to the window to turn down the thermostat on the air conditioner, she padded barefoot into the bathroom.

  In the mirror she caught sight of her compact, busty body, dark eyes, and thick black hair. It had been amazing how Lou had used her body, how much pleasure he’d given her, and derived from her. She felt a brief uneasiness about how skilled a lover Gainer was, how experienced he must be. His knowledge and lovemaking skills weren’t intuitive. They had to have been learned. Nothing about that concerned Ann, other than that someone had to have taught him.

  Jealous. That’s all I am.

  She pushed her worries to the back of her mind, pinched the flesh of her waist to make sure she wasn’t putting on any excess weight, and turned on the shower. Testing the water carefully with her hand to make sure it wasn’t too hot, she thought about trying to preserve what was left of her hairdo. Then figured screw it. She’d dry her hair with a towel and then comb it damp.

  The steady spray of water was lukewarm and soothing, making her sorry she couldn’t spend more time under it. But it didn’t really matter. Warm water in this building didn’t last long before it began to run cold.

  Ann had no serious misgivings about her affair with Lou. He was her boss at Clinton Industrial Designs, where she worked as one of half a dozen graphic artists. The other employees all knew by now that Ann and Lou were a couple. One of them, an attractive and immensely talented artist named Gigi, had even asked in a roundabout way if Ann might be thinking about a wedding.

  Ann hadn’t been, until Gigi put the idea in her head. Twenty-four already. I’m not so young anymore, and the clock is ticking.

  Standing beneath warm needles of water in the tiled shower, Ann had to smile. Sleeping with the boss was one thing, but marrying him was something else altogether. There was a sense of adventure in their affair, spiced by secrecy even if it was an open secret. She wouldn’t want to undermine that with talk of marriage. She needed to be careful here.

  She was still smiling as the shower curtain was suddenly swished and jangled aside.

  Lou stepped into the shower with her. He kissed her wet forehead and fondled her soapy breasts. Began sliding his hands down her back and over her buttocks.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “You startled me. Haven’t you ever seen Psycho?”

  “I had another kind of movie in mind. Ever think what a hit we’d be in a porno film?”

  She laughed. “Is that a proposition?”

  “Just an idle thought.”

  Deciding more soap was called for, he picked up the tiny oblong sliver from the soap dish and shook his head. “Times are hard,” he said, showing the thin oval of soap to Ann.

  “So’s something else.”

  He reached around her and rotated the chromed knob to make the downpour from the showerhead warmer, simultaneously kissing the side of her neck. The thin wafer of soap slipped from his other hand and didn’t make a sound as it was taken by the gauze of water rippling on the shower stall floor. Lou used his bare foot to slide it over where it was out of the glide of water toward the drain.

  “Speaking of hard,” he whispered in her ear, �
�there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She felt the warm tip of his tongue in her ear and squirmed, grinning, to wrench her head away. “So go ahead and tell.”

  His hesitation, something in the sudden stillness of his body, warned her, but she didn’t grasp the meaning of her sudden premonition.

  “I’m going to have to fire you,” he said.

  She toweled dry in a fury and stood before him in her white terry cloth robe, her wet hair a dark tangle like her thoughts. Her brown eyes danced with anger. Lou finished putting on his pants, then his shoes.

  “What else do you have to say?” she asked.

  He looked up at her from where he sat on the bed. “That I hate like hell to have been the one to tell you. But I had to. It’s part of my job.”

  “Is it something I did-or didn’t-do?”

  “For God’s sake no, Annie! It’s the economy. I wasn’t kidding when I told you times were hard. You know we’ve lost some big accounts. The company simply can’t justify paying so many employees.”

  “I’m not the only graphic design artist there.”

  “And I’m not the one who decided to let you go. It was a board decision.”

  “Aren’t you on the board?”

  “You know I am.”

  “Boards are just a way to dilute responsibility,” Ann said.

  “C’mon, Annie…”

  “Did you fight for me?”

  “Hell yes, I fought.”

  She didn’t believe him. The lie was in his eyes like an ominous object floating just beneath the surface of dark waters. He wasn’t leveling with her. He’d decided to end her employment, probably as a way to end their affair.

  And there the bastard sits. On my bed.

  “So you thought you’d drop by one more time and have one last piece of poor, dumb Ann before telling her she’s being cut loose. Or did you expect to keep coming over here and dropping your drawers while I was drawing unemployment?”

  “That’s not in the cards, Annie. It can’t be.”

  “Better damn well believe it.”

  “The board knows you’re good, and you’ll probably soon be working for the competition. How’d it look if you and I were still having this secret affair that everyone knows about?”