John Lutz - Pulse

“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 on 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.”