Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) Read online

  Bingo. Sammy cut the connection just as she recognized the caller. Luther Abbottt of Taft’s Youth Crusade. “Thanks to the Ayatollah for taking the time to call our show,” Sammy quickly added. She glared at Larry through the window, who gave her an apologetic shrug.

  “You know,” Reed interjected, “religion and family are mechanisms for social cohesion. But neither lagging church attendance nor changes in sexual behavior have shown to have any real correlation with the rising rate of suicide among young people. Fact is, it’s just harder to be young today.”

  Sammy smiled at Reed for saving the moment. The phone lit up again. “You’re on the air.”

  Frowning, the Reverend Taft turned down the volume of his radio to speak to his assistant. “I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all.”

  The assistant nodded. “I admit it was a little overdone.”

  Taft’s voice was icy. “The kid sounded downright hysterical. Makes us look like fools.”

  “I’ll talk to him; tell him to tone it down.”

  “Why not take him off the front lines for a while?” Taft suggested. “Let him do a little bit of studying. We’ve got others who can do the job.”

  The assistant nodded again, and hurriedly left the room. Taft leaned back in his chair and turned the volume up once more.

  “Well, in the late 1950s,” Reed explained, “experts began using a technique called a psychological autopsy.”

  “What’s that?” asked Sammy.

  “Medical records and extensive interviews with survivors are used to build a portrait of the individual’s personality and reasons for committing suicide. Sometimes they can even reconstruct a person’s final days.”

  “No kidding.” What would they say about Professor Conrad, Sammy wondered. “So you can go back and piece together why someone committed suicide?”

  “And hopefully learn to prevent future attempts of people in similar circumstances. By the way, they’ve found that attempters and completers are different groups.”

  “Completers?”

  “People who succeed. The majority of people who attempt suicide are female, while most of those who complete are male. Often it’s their first attempt. Men are also less likely to see a mental health professional. Like I said before, they go to their primary-care doctors instead.”

  “What else did they find?”

  “People tend to take their lives when they feel they’ve lost all hope or have completely failed at something.”

  Sammy frowned, “You mean as long as they have some hope, they won’t?” Poor Sergio must have felt so alone.

  “That’s right. Depressed people will cling to any hope that —”

  Sammy recalled her interview with the dean. The tenure decisions weren’t due for another month. Sergio was one thing, but why did Conrad give up so early?

  “Then if things fall through, they’ll turn their rage inward against themselves.” Reed stopped and looked at Sammy.

  “Uh, if that’s true, why wouldn’t Professor Conrad wait until after the Tenure Committee made its decision before he —?” she blurted.

  “I don’t know,” Reed admitted. “It doesn’t fit the profile. But, then again, when you’re dealing with people, research doesn’t always have the answer.”

  “Then maybe we’ve got to look a little harder and find out what really happened and why,” Sammy said sharply, as a phone light came on. “Hello, you’re on the air.”

  Disgusted, Gus Pappajohn snapped the “off”’ switch on the office radio. Wonderful! Bad enough to have a couple of suicides to deal with. Now Nosy Nellie implies this could be something more. If she starts asking questions, or, worse, gets others asking questions.

  Feeling the burning in his stomach rise up his gullet, Pappajohn reached for a roll of antacids. This would go over real big with senior administration and the board of regents. So much for his quiet, cushy job.

  “And remember, always call for help.” Reed finished.

  Clicking off the caller, Sammy smiled. “Thanks, Reed, for coming and all your excellent advice. We’d like to close our show today with a memorial to a friend. The finale from Sergio Pinez’s final concerto.” A glance at the clock indicated she was almost out of time. “Join us tomorrow on The Hot Line . ’Til then.” She motioned to Brian to start the tape.

  Sammy flipped off the mike switches, as Sergio’s haunting notes came over the speaker. Reed listened intently. The music was soothing and calm. So unlike the poor young man’s last days .

  Sammy eased over to him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “Mmm.” Reed smiled. “I like how you say thank you.”

  “Well, you were terrific. Really.”

  “So, how ’bout we go over to my place and finish that thought?”

  “Wish I could, but I’ve got a million things —”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, it’s a crazy week. I promise, after Wednesday, I’ll make it up to you. Really.” Sammy gave him a warm kiss. “Promise.”

  Larry sprang through the studio door. “Great show, y’all. Just great.”

  “Thanks,” Reed said. “I enjoyed —”

  Larry nodded and quickly turned to Sammy. “Let’s plan for tomorrow in my office in five.”

  “Aye, aye,” Sammy replied, as Larry rushed off. She shrugged at Reed. “Story of my life.”

  “Wednesday, huh?”

  “I’ll try,” Sammy said. “Listen, can you do me a favor?”

  Reed’s eyes narrowed.

  “Nothing big. Can you get a copy of Conrad’s autopsy report for me?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

  Her expression was earnest. “Research.”

  Reed raised his hands in a gesture of exasperation and surrender. “Oh, all right. You know I can’t turn down those eyes.”

  “And,” Sammy fished in her purse for a moment, then brought out the pill bottle from Conrad’s home and showed Reed the two tablets, “know what these are?”

  “No, why?”

  “When you have a chance, can you find out?”

  “Where’d you get the bottle?”

  She looked around before whispering, “Conrad’s study.”

  Reed’s reply was a very loud “What?”

  “Shhh.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No, just curious.”

  “I’m not going to say it, Sammy.”

  Sammy patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m always careful. I’m just doing my job.”

  A lone fluorescent lamp fastened precariously above the engineer’s board flickered, bathing the cluttered room off the main studio in an eerie light. Balancing a warm pizza in one hand, Sammy carefully stepped between snaking wires and boxes of old records and eight-track cartridges. Egg cartons paneling the walls and industrial carpeting dulled external sound, so that when she reached Brian McKernan and wrapped her free arm around his broad shoulders, his lighted Marlboro nearly fell from his lips.

  The bearded grad student pulled off his padded headphones. “Christ, Sammy, you scared the crap out of —” His chubby face broke into a grin as he saw the pizza. “Mmm. What took you so long?”

  “Luigi’s during midterms?”

  Brian sniffed at the air. “I smell anchovies.”

  “With your smoking, I don’t see how you can smell anything.” Sammy made a face and brushed at her sweater. “I’ll have to do laundry tonight.”

  The engineer deposited the half-smoked cigarette in a can of Mountain Dew. “If I didn’t smoke, I’d be fat.”

  Sammy surveyed the countertop, littered with soda cans, fast-food cartons, and Snickers wrappers, then the white polo shirt that stretched like a drum over Brian’s ample stomach. It was stained with the remnants of some ancient meal. “You got room for this?”

  “Always.” Brian pushed a stained wiring schematic diagram to one side, clearing some counter space for the dish. He eagerly opened the box and pulled off a slice drowned in c
heese. While negotiating his first large bite, Brian failed to notice that the “everything” on the pizza was sliding down the front of his shirt.

  “Should I get you a bib?”

  “Nah,” Brian said sheepishly as he saw the tomato sauce flowing toward his lap. “Some people wear stuff tie-dyed. I go for ‘piedyed.’ ” Grinning, he scooped up the ingredients with two fingers and popped them into his mouth.

  Sammy rolled her eyes and stifled a groan. “Just make sure this stays clean. Okay?” She pulled the cassette from her purse and placed it on a shelf above the desk.

  “Your wish is my demand.” Brian was not entirely joking. “What is it?”

  “An interview I did last week. Parts of it didn’t quite — You think you could enhance the sound?”

  “If anybody can. Phone tape?”

  “No, live.” She felt a momentary pang of irony. “The recorder was in my purse, so some stuff didn’t come out too clear.”

  Brian raised an eyebrow. “Off the record, eh?”

  Sammy nodded. “Way off.”

  Brian wiped his fingers on his jeans and examined the cassette. “Conversation is a lot trickier than music.” He checked his watch and frowned. “I’ve got to jerry wire the board in Studio B tonight. Even whispers send the VU meters into the red zone.” He pulled a pen from the nerd pack in his shirt pocket and labeled the cassette “Greene.” “When I’m done, I’ll come back here and give it a try.”

  Sammy gave Brian a friendly pat on the shoulders. “You’re a real mensch.”

  Brian responded with an aw-shucks look and a shrug, “You’re not so bad yourself.” Eyes twinkling, he opened his mouth wide and folded in a second brimming piece of pizza.

  Reed grabbed the report as the machine ejected it. He didn’t want anyone to know he was using the hospital fax — especially Palmer. Sometimes he wondered how he let Sammy talk him into these things — though he had to admit, the radio show today had served a good purpose. He hoped at least one kid would consider alternatives before doing anything foolish. Yeah, the show had actually turned out to be one of Sammy’s better ideas.

  This, on the other hand, was another story. He slipped the fax into his lab coat and walked briskly toward the men’s room. Inside a locked stall, he removed it and skimmed over the computerized autopsy report:

  Date of report: 21 November

  Time of report: 3:00 p.m.

  Name of decedent: Barton Edward Conrad

  Age: 42

  Profession: Professor, Ellsford University

  Time of death: Postmortem hypostasis puts death at somewhere between midnight and two a.m.

  No outward physical evidence of struggle

  A detailed description of the route the .22-caliber bullet traversed and the trauma produced in the mouth and brain.

  Internal organ assessment otherwise normal.

  Reed skipped to the lab report near the bottom of the page:

  Paraffin test: positive on left hand

  Toxicology Screen: Blood alcohol concentration .15. Legal limit: .08.

  And the final verdict:

  Cause of death: Gunshot wound with perforation of skull and brain

  Manner of death: Suicide

  There it was in black and white. The bullet had effectively destroyed all of Conrad’s vital centers. Once he pulled the trigger, nothing could save him. Suicide. Just as the cops suspected. Sammy’s overactive imagination had struck out. Drunk and depressed, Conrad had put a gun to his head.

  Reed reached in his pocket for the pill bottle Sammy had given him earlier and held it up to the light. No doubt this would be another wild-goose chase, but he’d promised to take the vial to the pharmacy right after the show. Reed’s high-pitched beeper began an insistent echo off the lavatory tiles, confirming that the page operator’s access to medical staff included every corner of the hospital. He checked the number. It was the emergency room. Reed flushed the john for effect before rushing from the stall. Racing down the hall, he returned the pill bottle to the side pocket of his lab coat where he’d already replaced the autopsy report. Sammy’s request would have to wait.

  “Code blue, emergency room, code blue,” blared the hospital intercom as he neared the ER’s double doors.

  Anne Sumner hung up the phone, looked at her sorority sister, Jenny Claris, and threw up her hands. “That was Dr. Palmer. It’s okay. Lucy went home.”

  Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Why? What happened?”

  “Chickenpox.” Anne frowned.

  “It’s not contagious?”

  “He says not if you’ve had it.”

  Jenny looked relieved. “So why’d she go home?”

  “I guess to keep from exposing students who haven’t. You never know.”

  “I wish she’d told us.”

  Anne shrugged. “We were in class all day. She probably had to rush to catch her train.”

  “Does Chris know?” Jenny asked, referring to Lucy’s boyfriend.

  “Dr. Palmer said he’d call him. He’s also getting her excused from exams.”

  “Wow, that’s nice.”

  “Yeah, Lucy said he was great.”

  Jenny giggled, “Lucky girl.” They both knew that Lucy’s mind hadn’t been focused on schoolwork lately. “Got her number in Iowa?”

  “Somewhere. I’ll have to dig it out.”

  “Say hi from me.”

  “I’ll call later this week.” Anne said. “Two midterms to go. If I don’t hit the books, I’ll need a doctor’s excuse myself.”

  Carl Brewster was as close to a true Vermonter as anyone Sammy had met since coming to EU. “Seventh-generation St. Charlesbury on both sides of the house, if you please,” he told her. His family had run the country store and post office for most of that time.

  In the 1960s, Brewster opened a photo shop just on the edge of campus to cater to the college crowd. His advice to the students then was the same as now: get off drugs and join the Masons. When he turned seventy-five, his sons urged him to retire. He agreed to let them run the store and the post office, but insisted on managing the photo business — as an amateur photographer, he enjoyed dabbling in the darkroom.

  The first few times Sammy had come into the place, she couldn’t pull more than “Nope” and “Yup” from the eighty-year-old. He possessed the laconic canniness of those legendary Green Mountain folk who directed lost flatlanders into back-road oblivion. Lately, though, he’d loosened up and Sammy found him to be a friendly, if still not particularly loquacious sort.

  “How’s life, Mr. Brewster?”

  The old man had his back to her, but in an accent thick enough to chop wood with, replied, “Can’t complain, Miss Greene.”

  Sammy found his down-to-earth attitude refreshing. “Wish most of the people I run into felt that way.”

  Brewster turned, his ever-present corncob pipe clenched between his teeth. “That’s what’s wrong with you young’uns today. Too much complainin’.” Although the words were serious, the robin’s egg blue eyes twinkled.

  Sammy pointed to a photo of a craggy, bearded man on the far wall. “That a new one?”

  Brewster had the entire shop filled with his photographs. Most were Currier and Ives shots of covered bridges, quaint, steepled nineteenth-century towns, serpentine country roads, dazzling winter landscapes. A few were portraits of independent-minded Vermonters like this one. The man with a chest-length beard resembled an Old Testament prophet. Sammy didn’t recognize the machine he was working on.

  “Yup. Took it last month at the Ellsford Museum. That’s Godfrey Dunn demonstrating pump-log boring.”

  “Pump-log boring?”

  “Somethin’ you New York folks wouldn’t know about, that’s for sure.” Brewster explained that before plastic pipe was widely available, wood was the cheapest Vermont material for making water pipes. A pump log was a hollowed-out timber through which water flowed from outdoor springs and was pumped indoors. “After cutting the right size trees, Dunn hollows them out with a
long-handled auger, sharpens one log end like a pencil, and indents the other to fit its neighbor.”

  “Presto! A pump log.” Sammy was fascinated.

  “Not so easy,” Brewster advised. “Ordinary person could well go wrong. If the borer forgets to remove the wood shavings inside the opening, when the auger freezes in the clogged hole, the only way to fix it is to chop the log apart to free the tool.” Brewster pointed to the photo of his old friend. “Dunn was the best pump logger there was. Doing it with his dad since he was seventeen.”

  Sammy studied the man in the picture, now appreciating the history.

  “So, what can I do for you, Miss Greene? I’m a might busy this morning.”

  Sammy didn’t argue, though no one else was in the shop. She found the roll of film in her purse and placed it on the counter. “I’d like these developed as soon as possible.”

  Brewster shook his head. “You New Yorkers are always in a hurry.” Reminding her that New York and Vermont were miles and worlds apart.

  “I need them for a story I’m reporting.”

  Brewster had already turned his back on her. “All right. They’ll be ready first thing tomorrow mornin’. That soon enough?”

  Sammy smiled as she watched the old man tack up yet another photo, this one a black-and-white family portrait. “Thank you, Mr. Brewster. That’ll be just fine.”

  Outside the photo shop, Sammy blew hot breath on her ungloved hands and turned up the collar of her peacoat. Yesterday’s rain had stopped, but the air was biting. Even her nostrils tingled from the cold.

  Hands stuffed in her pockets, Sammy stepped off the curb. She was midway across the narrow street when she saw it out of the corner of her eye — a late model Ford hurtling toward her at breakneck speed.

  “What the —?”

  The mustachioed driver seemed to be staring directly at her. She momentarily froze, then, off to one side, she heard a high-pitched scream.

  In a second, the car’s chrome bumper was less than ten feet away. Afraid she wouldn’t make it across, she started to run back, but her feet gave way. Sliding the last few feet as the car sped by her, she rolled into the gutter by the roadside.