Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  "No problem. It gave me time to see your light."

  "In the northwest tower?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm glad someone else can see it."

  The doctor sounded relieved that the light was more than his own overactive imagination. The Prof plagued by the fear -- of what seemed obvious to Z -- that an advanced education did not necessarily cut you loose from childhood superstitions. "It's just that ... now that you've also seen the light ... I don't know what to do next."

  "Go inside. Out of the cold."

  "That's probably impossible. The building's locked at night."

  "It's unlocked now." No need to tell Calder that Bob Zapolska had done the unlocking. Along with keeping clients out of danger, Z tried never to involve them in illegalities, no matter how slight.

  "Unlocked? That's ... odd ... don't you think?" Z shrugged. "Could mean somebody's inside?"

  "If so, they're warm."

  "A good point. I guess if a janitor is in there we can make up an excuse about why we're there, too. Say we saw a light and are investigating. Which isn't far from the truth, after all."

  That settled, they crossed the tarry darkness of the porch, Z finding the door handle, opening it, letting Calder in ahead of him, going in himself, then pulling shut the heavy door.

  Inside, the noise of silence stunning them momentarily, they passed quickly through the inner "air lock" to be swallowed by the total blackout of the entrance hall.

  The smell was of ... floor wax ... and desiccated wood. The echo -- nothing but their footsteps fading.

  Taking off his gloves, stuffing them in his coat pockets, Z hooked out the penlight he'd brought with him. Flicked it on to wonder, as always, how a single, triple-A battery could make such a bright, if only foot-wide, circle in that windowless kind of dark.

  "Shall we go up? I've never been there, but I know where the turret room's got to be." Now that they'd actually gotten into the building, Calder's tone belied his cheery talk. He wasn't all that eager to rush up to the "ghost light" room.

  Nor had it escaped Z's notice that Calder, for all his supposed interest in the "ghost," had not been curious enough to check out the turret room when Bateman was open -- in the daytime.

  Z flicked off the light, saving the battery.

  "A question or two?"

  "OK. Sure," Calder whispered.

  Instinctively, they were keeping their voices down in the midnight of the reverberating chamber.

  Z flipped on the penlight again to light their way to the pew-like bench along the left wall.

  After sitting side-by-side, he snapped off the light, plunging them into darkness once again.

  "Let's assume," Z said, even his rough purr a degree lower in the inky cave of Bateman-after-dark, "that something funny is going on. That the ghost light figures in."

  "Mostly, I've wanted to find out about the light. But you're the detective."

  "Probably nothing." Soothing the client's fears was part of a P.I.'s job. "But no sense rushing it." Z could feel the old bench vibrate from the professor's nod.

  "Any reason someone would be sneaking around at night?" There was a long pause.

  "Not really. The first thing that comes to mind these days is ... drugs." Calder's voice had become even more hushed, the prof finally getting the picture that snooping around this way could be dangerous. "But I don't see why people would do drugs here anymore than any place else. Even if you're postulating some smart student setting up his own designer lab, you're talking about pretty fancy chemicals and apparatus, the kind of thing they have in the chemistry department. And chemistry's in another building.

  "Something valuable here? Something worth stealing?"

  "Colleges like this don't own anything like that. Oh, I suppose we've got a few, hundred-dollar prints of famous artworks on the walls. Original paintings would be the work of students: the starving artist kind. Something you'd pay thirty-nine ninety-nine for -- if it matched the color of your divan. Anyway, the art department's down the line, too."

  "Payroll in a safe? Here or in an adjoining building? Something you'd tunnel for?"

  "Not a chance." Though still speaking softly, Calder's voice had tone again. "Everyone from the president to the custodian is paid by check. Oh, there could be some cash kept overnight as a result of student fees at the start of a semester. But that kind of money would be kept in a safe in Administration." Again, Calder paused to think. "The only college in the entire Kansas City area that might own something valuable enough to steal would be Baker College in Baldwin, Kansas. They have an important Bible collection. Nothing even remotely like that at Bateman."

  "Legend of gold? Bateman's 'ghost' guarding treasure?"

  "No. Quite the contrary. Old Man Bateman's supposed to have put every cent he had into the construction of this building. Died poor but proud."

  Another of the false trails any detective had to travel.

  Too bad.

  Finding a simple motive always made things easier. Of course, adopting the view of the K.C. detective, discarding phantom puzzle pieces was a kind of help.

  One down, one to go. "Tell me about Terbrugghen."

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Still think he was Beth Ogden's lover?"

  "Yes."

  "And that she wasn't playing the field?"

  "I'd be very surprised if she were." Z would have been, too.

  "Terbrugghen taught here long?"

  "Longer than I have." If thinking could have produced a noise, Calder's mind would be grinding his thoughts fine. "I remember someone saying -- I can't remember who -- that Lucas has been here five or six years."

  "Where's he from?"

  "Back East. New York. I've heard that from a lot of people. He has a New York accent, too. New York or New Jersey."

  "He teach there?"

  "Ah ... no. I don't think so. I think he was in the theater."

  "Actor?"

  "I really don't know. Maybe. Could be he was a set designer." Calder's voice brightened. "I think that's right. Assistant set designer -- something like that. Built sets for New York plays -- musicals."

  "Then came ... here?"

  "I know. Here isn't much if you come from the New York stage." Calder paused. In the silence of the dark, Z could hear him catch his breath. "My guess would be his drinking. You can't do professional work if you drink like that."

  "Anything else?"

  "Nothing you don't know already. A lot of marriages. He's supposed to be from old money, a good part of it disappearing in the crash. Alimony eating up the rest. He's kind of a romantic character in some ways. Like he's his own Greek tragedy. Hubris. A great man brought low by his weaknesses."

  "Talented?"

  "Drunk or sober, no doubt of that. In spite of the fact that Bateman's student actors are sometimes less than professional, I always go to the school plays. Mostly because the sets are gorgeous." Calder hesitated, then rushed on. "And that would fit, wouldn't it? The rumor that Lucas used to be a set designer." Raise your voice at all and the echo of the hall came creeping back.

  "Figures. ... Anything else?"

  "That's about it." Calder had heard the reverberation, too. Was speaking softly once again.

  Nothing new of value.

  "Before we go up," Calder said quickly, "there's the money I owe you." Was the professor still hesitant about confronting the "ghost"? Z smiled in the dark.

  "After the job -- Z's standard procedure. "Though I'll accept a hundred for expenses."

  Hearing Calder fumble with his coat, Z flashed on the little light to help Calder count out a hundred in twenties and hand it over.

  First, still wanting to conserve the battery, Z switched off the light before unbuttoning his coat to transfer the money to his billfold.

  "I guess I'm ready then, if you are," Calder said, still seeming less than enthusiastic.

  "Ready."

  Ready, depending on what they found in the third-floor "ghost light" room,
of course -- something Z didn't say.

  About to walk into the "unknown," Bob Zapolska felt good that, along with his picks and light, he'd brought his sap. Another fact he'd keep from the nervous prof.

  Switching on the little light, handing it to Calder, Calder taking it, the two of them stood up and set off slowly down the hall, the professor in the lead, the light's narrow beam providing a bouncing circle as a guide.

  Going too far and nearly running into the velvet-draped auditorium entrance, Calder backtracked to turn right toward one of the staircases that swirled up grandly to its side of the auditorium front.

  First mounting the riser, they began to climb, Calder leading, the professor trying to be quiet but squeaking noisily up the middle of the wide, deep, darkly varnished steps.

  Though it probably didn't make a difference with all that racket, Z glided up quietly to the side where the stairs were joined solidly to the outside wall.

  A lack of evidence that someone was at the top didn't mean they had the building to themselves.

  As a precaution, Z moved the sap from his hip pocket to his right coat pocket. "Armed," he could concentrating on getting his bum knee up the building's three -- long -- stories.

  Fortunately, he'd already belted down a handful of aspirin after he'd struggled to the top of Bateman Hill.

  Off the last step and moving down the third-floor corridor (both men winded and trying not to show it) Calder turned down a branching hallway, the bobbing light before him pointing the way over a worn wooden floor, the tiny beam taking them past shadowed doorways, none harboring a murderer. Z hoped.

  In the narrow side corridor, the empty hall echoed their careful footsteps in short sharp barks.

  Calder stopped before the hall's last door.

  Shining the light on the door as if wanting to be sure, Calder nodded.

  The prof's job as "ghost guide" over, he stepped back to let Z approach the door, at the same time surrendering the penlight, Z switching it off.

  In total darkness, the men ... listened ....... Heard nothing. ........ Continued to hear nothing.

  Additional waiting not likely to gain him anything, Z flicked on the light to find the room's old-fashioned metal doorknob. Grasping it, he snapped off the light to listen for what seemed like fifteen minutes and was probably thirty seconds ... again hearing nothing but the sound of his own blood pulsing behind his eyes.

  Carefully rotating the doorknob, the tongue still making shrill, metallic scrapes in the deep quiet of the hall, Z pushed the door in -- an inch.

  Still straining to hear, he put his eye to the crack.

  No sound, no movement inside ... but several somethings in the room's faint light.

  The chamber's smell was of dust and age ... and little else.

  He pushed the door in further to see that, what he'd glimpsed through the crack were hulks of wood filing cabinets and other shadow shapes of similarly aged furniture. The room was used for storage. As Calder had thought.

  Still undiscovered was the source of the room's illumination.

  Snapping on the flashlight and whipping it back and forth, up and down, he saw that the turret room was too barren and too small to make much of a hiding place.

  Satisfied, he stepped inside.

  Turning, motioning Calder in, Z shut the door behind the professor, any danger now coming from the hall -- if there was a threat.

  Now all business, Z's flashlight supplementing the room's weak radiance, he threaded his way past stacked metal chairs and around up-ended desks to stand before the convex windows on the tower side.

  Looking down though the wavy panes, he could see the front walk -- a thin moonlit ribbon -- beyond that, the hill as it fell away to the street.

  Dotted at regular intervals on the college's side of the road below, were the school's old-fashioned street lamps on their ten-foot fluted poles.

  Past the hill, the town of Liberty showed itself as double rows of houselights twinkling through swaying branches of large trees.

  One thing was certain. The room's light had to come from some source other than lamps and distant homes.

  "There," Calder said, any sound a shock in all that stillness.

  "What?" Z spun around.

  "There."

  Calder, who'd stayed by the door, was pointing to a rectangle of light just under the ceiling to the right of the door, the illumination coming from what looked like -- what was -- a louvered metal ventilator cover of some kind. Probably a cold air return.

  There could be no doubt about it. The grate was the source of the room's "ghost light."

  Discovering the source of the light they'd come to investigate, Z swerved his way through the room's "furnishings" to join the professor at the vent.

  Standing directly beneath the grill -- in addition to confirming this duct as the origin of the room's "glow" -- he thought he could hear noises from the slotted cover. A humming sound ... far away. A thrumming small-engine noise? "Do you hear something?" It was Z's turn to point up at the vent.

  "Sure. That's the fans of the new forced-air system. They make that kind of noise in all the buildings -- day and night. It's more noticeable in my classroom. But not too bad there, either."

  "That's your ghost light. Coming up from below."

  "Good enough for me," Calder said, smiling, visibly relieved, and obviously embarrassed because he was relieved. "There had to be some explanation for the light. I just wanted to find out what."

  Good enough for the prof, maybe, but not for Big Bob Zapolska, Z after something bigger than finding the tower ghost. "Any chance of tracking down the light?"

  "I ... don't think so. At least I wouldn't know how to go about it. Though Bateman's mostly auditorium, there are a lot of rooms around the auditorium's perimeter. It's probably somebody leaving his classroom lights on after night school on Wednesdays, the light bouncing around in the ventilator system until it comes out here. Considering that you've got three floors of rooms to search, and the basement area, too ....." Calder shook his head.

  With no help to be expected from the professor, Z's mind turned to other ways of identifying that "classroom" light.

  If he could get the air grate off, for instance, he might be able to stick an eye in the vent hole to see what was making the glow.

  Looking around for something he could use to climb up to the vent, flashing his penlight here and there, he spotted an old secretarial chair that seemed to be intact.

  "I'm going to try to look down the vent by standing on that chair." He pointed at it.

  "The chair's got casters," Calder warned, the chair in question closer to the professor than to Z.

  "I'll be careful."

  "I can steady it some."

  That decided, Calder grabbed the swivel chair and wheeled it over, the casters squeaking in protest.

  Calder getting out of Z's way, Z stepped up on the cushioned seat, Calder clamping down on the chair's handles to keep it from rolling.

  Z's head now at vent level, he flashed the penlight all around the duct's metal frame. .....

  No luck. If, as he suspected, screws were holding the vent cover in place, they'd been painted over so many times their heads had disappeared. Not that he had a screwdriver, anyway.

  "How are you coming?" Calder asked, too busy steadying the chair to look up and see.

  "Can't get the cover off."

  "Want down?"

  "Yes."

  "Be careful. I'm backing away to give you room."

  Calder out of the way, Z pointed the penlight at the floor. Bending on his good leg to step down stiffly in his bad one, checking out his weak knee before lowering his good leg to the floor.

  "Too bad," Calder said, his inflection saying, but not that bad.

  A long ways from giving up, Z had already had another idea; was flashing the light about the room to look for what he needed: a looking glass that could be broken into slivers. .........

  No mirror.

  Failing to f
ind a mirror, he began pacing about to search for any kind of glass, Calder standing still, watching -- puzzled.

  "I'm searching for a piece of glass," Z explained.

  "Glass? There are the windows ...."

  A good suggestion as a last resort ......

  Continuing to look, Z spied an old desk -- a thin sheet of clear, protective glass on the desktop.

  Lifting a broken chair leg off a small table, Z slid an edge of the quarter-inch glass away from the desktop, Z tapping the unsupported glass with the chair leg, the blow knocking off several shards, the fractured pieces tinkling to the floor like out-of-tune chimes.

  "Quite a noise," Calder muttered.

  "If anybody's around, they've already heard us.

  "True."

  Kneeling, careful to keep from cutting himself on the sharp fragments, Z picked up a slender wedge of glass between his thumb and forefinger.

  But what to do for backing?

  He'd have to improvise.

  "Could you hold the chair for me again? This could be tricky."

  "Sure. What are you ...?"

  "I'm going to make a mirror. A poor one maybe, but it ought to work. Going to lay a finger of my glove along the apex of this fragment. Turn the downside into a mirror. Stick the glove-backed glass though a louver. See down the shaft that way."

  "Brilliant!"

  "Maybe," Z said, doubtfully, climbing up again.

  Dragging a glove from his coat pocket, topping the glass point with a black leather finger.

  Wrapping the palm of the glove around the glass where he was holding it, Z climbed up again to stick the shard through the vent, trying angles, saw what he thought was a light source deep within Bateman Hall. At least that's the way it seemed.

  One more thing to try, Z thought as he struggled down from the chair. "Does the campus run on city power?"

  "Yes ... and no. Though the college buys its electricity from the city, the power is fed into our own substation at the back of the campus."