Richard Stevenson - Red White and Black and Blue

Maybe an assemblyman or senator who knew the family. I have no memory of it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

You know, I could check. My notes on the incident are in our system."

"Would you? That'd be great."

"Then, Mr. Strachey, I'm afraid I can't spare you any additional time. BBC America is sending a crew out to interview me. I assume it's for something they're doing on budget cuts or tuition increases. Budgetarily, we're under the gun like never before. The Brits are, too, so I suppose they want to know how were handling the financial crunch."

"Probably."

She fooled around with her computer for a minute or two, scrolling up and down, this way and that.

"Here it is," she said finally. "Assemblyman Louderbush's office called asking for a copy of the campus police report.

Security knows that we liaise with the Assembly, so they passed on the request to us. I'm sure I sent the report, as per the request. It is odd, though. Isn't Mr. Louderbush's district out in the western part of the state? Gregory was from Schenectady."

"He was."

"And now Kenyon Louderbush is running for governor.

Mister Tea Party. Your investigation has nothing to do with that, does it?"

"That remains to be seen."

Now she was starting to look apprehensive. "What happened to your ear?"

I gave her a quick rundown on the ex-girlfriend. She seemed skeptical, but before I left she did give me the name of the campus police official who might know where Greg Stiver's phone and backpack could be found.

At first, the campus cop didn't want to look for the stuff. It was in a room he didn't have a key for. And the guy with the key was on his break. I asked where the break was taking place, and I tracked the officer down in a cafeteria. He couldn't give me the key, of course-even though I was Gregory Stiver's Uncle Donald-but he said he'd be returning to the office in ten minutes. I sat down and watched him read the New York Post.

"Yanks are for shit this year."

"Looks that way."

In the office, I was required to sign something certifying I was a Stiver family member. I did so and walked off with Greg Stiver's backpack. I checked to see if the cell phone was in it. It was, along with books and other items.

I had a number of chargers in the car and found one that fit Stiver's five-year-old Verizon phone. It was just a telephone, no aromatherapy apps or IMAX. I charged the phone while I drove downtown.

Back in the hotel room, I checked the phone first. There were eighteen stored numbers and I made a note of each.

The only ones that rang a bell were Jenny, Prof P, and KL. I guessed KL was not Kuala Lumpur but Kenyon Louderbush.

Moreover, the last number called from this phone five years earlier was the one listed for KL.

Otherwise the backpack yielded nothing useful. It contained a copy of Stiver's thesis, two books on economic theory, a copy of the National Review and a half-full bottle of drinking water. There was no notebook or other more personal item. The Albany cops had undoubtedly been through the bag, so it was possible some of its contents had been removed.

I phoned Timmy, who answered this time. I asked him if everyone in his office was frantic, what with the state budget many weeks overdue and the state coming close to running on empty.

"Very funny."

"Right. It is Friday afternoon."

"Myron's on his way into the city, and the rest of us are sitting around figuring out ways to add some generous new perks to our pension plans."

This was a joke, for Timmy's boss, Assemblyman Lipschutz, had led countless fights to reform both the nonsensically overstuffed state budget and the way the Legislature was a mere plaything for the corporate and union lobbyists who underwrote election campaigns. None of these reform efforts had come close to succeeding, and Shy McCloskey had pledged his support for another reform go-round. He may even have been sincere.

I brought Timmy up to date on my visit with Hugh Cutler, who had been surprised that his estranged brother had killed himself, and on my meeting with Millicent Blessing, who believed she had seen two people on the roof of Quad Four just before Greg Stiver plunged to his death.

"So is it looking as if Stiver's death wasn't actually suicide?

That's unnerving."

"I don't know. As it adds up, the evidence keeps coming back to that possibility. It's hard to imagine, though, that anybody-Louderbush or anybody else-would have pushed Stiver off a building in broad daylight. It's true that it all happened while classes were in session, and you know how deserted a college campus can become while everybody is indoors taking notes and trying hard not to look at their watches more than once every five minutes. But there are always a few people out and about, so any kind of rooftop confrontation would be tremendously risky for anybody intent on foul play."

"Of course, foul play isn't often intended. Sometimes it just happens."

"There's that, yes. Maybe especially among people with a history of violent behavior between them."

"Also, how tall is the building?"

"Eight stories."

"So anything happening on the roof wouldn't be visible from down below unless it was happening at the very edge.

Witnesses would have to be some distance from the building to have a view of any activity on the roof. And that distance would make it hard to make out what was going on."

"Hence Millicent Blessing's uncertainty over what she saw."

"But," Timmy said, "if it wasn't suicide, how at this late date-or anytime-would anybody know what the truth was without having been there at the time? Only the other person on the roof-if there was another person-would know what really happened. So, are you feeling kind of at a dead end in this?"

"My assignment is to find out if Kenyon Louderbush really did have an abusive relationship with Greg Stiver, and if so, might it have contributed to his death? Figuring that out still seems doable, even though the only two witnesses so far, Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman, are far from perfect as credible moral finger pointers, and Janie is unlikely to go public at all. I'm convinced, though, that Louderbush did do something very, very bad-so bad that the Serbians keep trying to scare me off the case. So I have to keep slogging.

This guy has to be stopped."

"Louderbush plus his Balkan gangsters."

"Well, whoever the bastards were who beat me up and wrecked my tires and ransacked my room."

Now he was paying even closer attention. "What do you mean, ransacked your room?"

"Oh, didn't I mention that? While I was in Massachusetts this morning. They got into my room at the hotel."

"God, how did they do that? Those rooms are supposed to be secure."

"They're supposed to be."

Timmy fussed for a few minutes over my physical vulnerability, and then asked, "Do you have your gun with you?"

"I do."

"I don't know why that makes me feel worse, not better.

Well, I do know why. As I have pointed out previously, it's the statistics."

"It's true that statistically handguns are far more of a risk to their owners than to the average violent criminal. But you know me. Remember, in college I got a C in statistics."

"Oh, well, then. So was anything taken from your room?"

"No, the break-in was just more mau-mau-style waving of bones and feathers in my face. They want me off the case, and this was part of their instant-message booga-booga routine."

"They must be wondering what it would take to actually get you to throw in the towel. Or, maybe they aren't wondering that at all. Maybe their aim in threatening and harassing you is entirely different."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"These guys do seem to be holding back. But they let me know constantly that they're on top of my every move. Clean-Tech is going to check the car for a tracking device, and they'll go over my laptop, too."