The Campus Murders Read Free Page A

“The police seem to be getting nowhere, he says. He wants you to find Laura. Get to the bottom of it.”
    â€œHas he any idea—”
    â€œNo. He’s simply staggered. Brett’s like most parents these days—we think we know our children until one day we wake up and find they’re strangers. He can’t even imagine what’s happened to her, except that he’s sure it isn’t her fault, whatever it is. Me, I’m not so sure, Mike. Not with the way young people are today. God knows what you’ll turn up. Do you suppose you can do this discreetly?”
    â€œI can try. Why did he threaten you?”
    â€œI’ve never seen Brett so shaken up. I’d like you to do it, Mike, for Laura’s sake. I’ve known her since she was a little girl. She still calls me Uncle Sam.”
    â€œDo you have a photo, governor? I don’t remember her.”
    Holland produced a Polaroid color closeup of a sweet-faced girl with straight dark hair falling below her shoulders. She had direct blue eyes and a winsome smile. She looked about nineteen.
    â€œPretty,” McCall said. “Any facts at all?”
    â€œShe phoned her mother last Thursday afternoon saying she’d be home for the weekend Friday night. Thinking back on the conversation, Mrs. Thornton is inclined to believe Laura was unhappy about something—more than that, worried. She hadn’t sounded like her usual bubbling self, Mrs. Thornton says. When she didn’t come home Friday night, Thornton called the college, but no one was able to locate her. The police were notified, they instituted an immediate investigation, and by Sunday night the girl was officially declared a missing person.”
    â€œHow about boyfriends? A girl as pretty as this must be swamped.”
    â€œNot surprisingly, the Thorntons know very little about Laura’s social life. The only boy they knew about was one she had once brought home to meet them, Damon Wilde, who also attends Tisquanto State. Neither Brett nor Mrs. Thornton liked him, Brett says. Arrogant, erratic, too demonstrative with Laura—remember, this is Thornton’s characterization. He put the boy down as a troublemaker, a radical in student politics.”
    â€œI can imagine how that went down with Thornton,” McCall said. “If Laura brought him home, she must have liked him a lot.”
    â€œApparently she did. Anyway,” Governor Holland said, “Thornton talked with Laura’s roommate, a girl named Hobart, Nina Hobart, but Miss Hobart threw no light on Laura’s disappearance. Nor did Damon Wilde.”
    McCall flew to Tisquanto early the next morning.
    There was still an hour before noon.
    McCall unpacked, went downstairs, and drove across town to the campus.
    The last time he had seen Tisquanto State College had been before the modernization boom, when the buildings were still the original ivy-covered, blackened red brick with white trim, and there was a bell in a belfry that tolled the hours. Now the traditional old buildings cowered in the shadows of immense glass-and-steel office-type buildings, almost forgotten. The beautiful old landscaping had largely vanished, although there were still enough lawns and winding walks and ancient trees to bridge the past. McCall preferred his memories.
    He checked signs and made his way to the towering administration building.
    Students were all over the campus, and McCall looked them over carefully. Most of them were conventionally clad—the timeless open-throated shirt-and-pullover combination of colleges down the years, and for the girls the skirt-and-blouse look that varies from generation to generation only in the length of the skirts. This was the short-skirt generation, which McCall found very pleasant.
    But dotting this cake like bits of glacéed fruit were the exotics of the hippie generation, whites and blacks—stylists of the far-out, psychedelic color studies in