John Lutz - Pulse

“If you aren’t pragmatic, you’re going to lose the battle,” a tousle-haired boy in the last row said.

“Precisely,” Professor Pratt said, pleased.

“I agree with what you say,” Jody Jason said, “but we can’t simply put what happened to Macy out of our minds.”

“We can for the next hour,” the professor said.

And for the most part, they did.

Professor Pratt considered that a breakthrough.

After class, Jody lingered and approached the professor, who was gathering her teaching materials and poking them into a brown leather bag that was a cross between a large purse and a briefcase.

“I noticed a man and woman talking with Schueller,” Jody said.

“You mean Chancellor Schueller.”

“Of course.” Jody actually thought of the professor as “Elaine,” and the chancellor simply as “Schueller.” But she’d learned to be careful. Hierarchy and respect were important at Waycliffe. “I was wondering if they were talking about Macy Collins.”

“I can’t enlighten you on that,” Professor Pratt said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Were they police?”

“Yes. That’s my understanding.”

“Are they going to talk to any of the students?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Professor Pratt closed and latched her purse-briefcase. “Why are you so interested?”

“It’s a puzzle,” Jody said. “A murder case that cries out to be solved.”

“How do you know it isn’t solved? There might be an obvious perpetrator. Possibly a boyfriend none of us knows about.”

“I wouldn’t think so. And the way she was killed. Did you read about Macy’s injuries, the awful things done to her?”

“Actually I haven’t,” Professor Pratt said. “All I’ve seen or heard about the case is from a capsule report on a cable news channel this morning. It was too hysterical to be very informative.”

“The twenty-four-hour news cycle.”

“Yes, it’s changed the world,” Professor Pratt said. “Not necessarily for the better.”

“It’s easier to find people.”

Professor Pratt looked at Jody as if trying to decipher some code. “That’s not always a good thing.”

“I meant with the Internet. The social networks.”

“More like antisocial networks.”

“Sometimes, I guess. Do you happen to know the names of the two detectives who were here earlier today?”

“No. Sorry. Chancellor Schueller might be able to help you there, but I’m not sure you should bother him with business other than Waycliffe’s.”

“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.