Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) Read online

  As graceful as a gazelle, Bud Stanton leapt four feet and deposited the ball into the basket. In the same seemingly effortless way, he’d fed countless layups and jumpers to the net this season, leading the previously unlucky Ellsford Eagles to first place in the Northeast NCAA conference.

  “Not bad.”

  The six-foot-seven sophomore pivoted to face husky Lefty Grizzard who’d just entered the empty gym. “Didn’t expect to see you here today, Coach.”

  “Me either. Thought you’d be studying. Conrad gives killer exams.”

  Stanton shrugged and turned back toward the basket. “Yeah, well, I’m not worried.” He fired a three-point jumper from thirty feet. It sank easily.

  Grizzard eyed his star hoopster warily. Cheating was not something he encouraged, even if a coveted playoff berth was at stake. He asked firmly, “Then why don’t you tell me how come?”

  Stanton’s expression was pure innocence. Cradling the ball, he said smoothly, “It’s taken care of.”

  A flare of anger crossed Grizzard’s face. He kept his voice even. “You want to explain that?”

  “I just called in some markers.” Stanton’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t worry, Coach. I’m not about to get my hands dirty.” He threw a backboard shot which found its target, then held up his hands in a “you’ll see” gesture. “Everything’s gonna work out.”

  The player’s nonchalance irritated Grizzard even more. “I don’t want to hear that bullshit,” he shouted, “You don’t do nuthin’ here without clearing it with me. Understand?”

  Stanton backed off. “Okay, okay, everything’s cool.”

  “It better be.” Grizzard growled, poking his finger into the athlete’s chest. “Because if I find out you crossed the line, asshole, mark my words. I’ll hang you out to dry.”

  “Don’t touch that!”

  Startled, Sammy jumped up from the desk chair to face an irritated Gus Pappajohn. Standing in the middle of the living room, he seemed like some enormous, lumbering, brown bear — his five-foot-ten, two-hundred-seventy-five-pound, beer-bellied hulk barely covered by a bulky wool sweater, stretched over a pair of baggy corduroys. His unshaven face suggested he’d been dragged out of bed. His grumpy mood confirmed he wasn’t happy about it.

  “What a sight to wake up to.” His gaze traveled from Sammy to Conrad’s body. “What is it with you, Greene? For a pint-sized package, you’re sure a bundle of sore ass.”

  “The Yiddish term is tzoris ,” she returned, adding wryly. “Nice to see you again, too.”

  “I thought all you college kids slept in on Saturday.”

  She allowed herself a half-smile. “I like to be an early bird.”

  Pappajohn grunted as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “Worms are my job, Greene. What are you doing here?”

  “My job, Sergeant. I’m a reporter.”

  The ex-cop scrutinized her. “So what’s the story this time?”

  “I don’t know. I came too late.” She paused to force down an uninvited sob that surprised her, then manufactured a smile. “I guess things got a bit too much for him.”

  “Bit too much of this.” Pappajohn picked up one of two empty wine bottles from the floor by Conrad’s feet and eyed the label. “Good year.”

  “The gun and the note are over there.” Sammy pointed as Pappajohn began examining the head wound. “Thought you might want to check for fingerprints, maybe take some pictures.” She remembered Conrad’s lecture on PCR and added, “Maybe call in forensics people for a DNA match?”

  Pappajohn gave her a weary look and ambled slowly around the couch, noting the cluttered desk. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Which one?”

  Sitting back onto the edge, arms crossed, he turned to face her, his gaze less than friendly. “Goes without saying you’re a magnet for trouble.”

  Sammy felt the color rise in her cheeks. Pappajohn’s attitude was getting irritating. She knew he didn’t like her. She felt the same way about him. The man might have been a hot shot Boston detective once, but as far as she was concerned, he’d really done a lousy job tracking down last year’s campus rioters, and she hadn’t been afraid to say so — on the air. If it almost cost him his job, it wasn’t her fault. “What was the question again?”

  “What in blue blazes are you doing here?”

  “Uh, I came to interview Professor Conrad.”

  Sammy’s hesitation was not lost on the detective. “At seven o’clock Saturday morning? Must be some story.”

  “The Ellsford Teaching Award. It’s a great honor. He won.” Pappajohn pulled a couple of Rolaids from his pocket and popped them one at a time into his mouth.

  “You know, you’d be better off if you laid off the moussaka.”

  “And you’d be better off if you laid off the bullshit.” Pappajohn wasn’t smiling.

  Sammy tried to maintain a confident demeanor. Her mind raced to find a plausible explanation for her presence. Conrad’s midnight paranoia may have been the ravings of a depressed man, but if he had stumbled onto an academic conspiracy at Ellsford, it could involve even the campus police.

  She stepped back toward the large armchair, stopping herself just before her hands touched the armrest. Frozen, she looked up at the sergeant. “May I sit here?”

  Pappajohn waved a hand. “Sit.” He continued to glare at her.

  Sammy took a deep breath, hoping her story would sound convincing. “Look, I really did come to talk to him about the award. He said he had something to do this weekend and this was the only time we could meet. I’ve got a Monday deadline. We were going to do a show about the award — you know, testimonials, students of his, colleagues — that’s all there is to it.”

  “That’s all there is to it,” Pappajohn mocked. “So, how’d you manage to get into the house? Seeing that the professor over here was already dead and the house was locked.”

  “He was dead!” Sammy asserted. “The side window was open. I saw him lying on the couch and I —” She shuddered, thinking about it now. “I only came in when I called out and he didn’t answer.”

  “Listen to me, Greene.” Pappajohn leaned toward her with steely eyes. She could smell the onion on his breath. “This poker game’s out of your league. You’d be smart to keep your nose out of it.”

  A uniformed emergency medical technician knocked on the door “Sarge?”

  Pappajohn waved him in. “Over here, Dan. He’s all yours.” He looked over at Conrad’s body for a moment. “Got a camera?”

  “Yeah, in the van.”

  Pappajohn nodded. “Good. Grab a few shots, then take him out.”

  So Pappajohn wasn’t going to call forensics. Sammy knew better than to comment.

  The campus cop kept silent while the young tech left and returned with a Polaroid Spectra to snap pictures of the dead man. A skinny companion with sloped shoulders wheeled in a gurney. Together, they matter-of-factly approached the body and aligned the transport bed.

  “Third suicide this month,” Dan said.

  With a sidelong glance at Sammy, Pappajohn joked, “Popped himself with a .22 just to avoid talking to her.”

  Sammy’s outward bravado couldn’t drown out her inner voice.

  My fault. As the EMT reached under Conrad’s shoulders to lift him, the professor’s arms dangled stiffly. For a moment, Conrad’s head hung lopsided in the tech’s sling. His lifeless brown eyes stared directly at Sammy.

  Pleading eyes.

  Accusing eyes.

  Dead eyes.

  Like her mother’s.

  My fault.

  “L-look, I’d b-better go,” Sammy stuttered, grabbing her purse.

  “Well, don’t wander too far from campus,” Pappajohn said.

  Sammy barely heard the warning. Pale and shaken, she stumbled past the gurney and dashed from the house.

  A gloved hand reached into the wire-mesh cage, trying vainly to grab the baby pigtail macaque by its silver collar.

  “Hey, what are
you doing?” the tech demanded.

  “I’m afraid this little one’s gotta be quarantined.” The man in white overalls pulled a university form from his back pocket. “Incident report.”

  “Shit.” The tech touched his forehead where a short row of stitches brought the jagged edges of the wound he’d received yesterday into neat apposition. “Damn that Reverend Taft. He’s nothing but trouble.” He pointed to the monkey. “She didn’t mean to bite that kid. He provoked her.”

  The man shrugged. “All I know is I gotta get her outta here.” He reached into the cage once again, but the primate bobbed and weaved against the bars. “Can you give me a hand?”

  Reluctantly, the tech held out his arms. Without hesitation, the animal came forward, grasping the tech’s neck with human-like fingers.

  “She really likes you.”

  “Yeah.” The tech helped place the pigtail in a small portable cage. “What’s going to happen now?”

  The man threw a canvas cover over the top of the pen, ignoring the monkey’s howls of terror. “That’s up to the boss.” His reply was deliberately noncommittal. Fact was, he had orders to dispose of the macaque before the day was done.

  Outwardly, Sammy appeared calm.

  She didn’t let her guard down until she was halfway across campus. She’d run the distance in record time, her legs pounding the frozen ground with angry determination, her mind chanting the mantra, I’m in control, I’m in control to the rhythm of her feet.

  As she ran, she looked around. Everything was just the same, the sights and sounds of campus as familiar to her now as hours before. Perhaps nothing had happened. But, of course, it had. Out of breath, Sammy collapsed on the dewy grass under a grove of large oak trees.

  Why did death always seem to follow her? From the day her mother had passed away, it had haunted her with memories and guilt. Now it was Conrad.

  My fault.

  Sure, Conrad had been depressed. Drunk and depressed. A lethal combination. It had nothing to do with her. Just a horrible coincidence. Still, she couldn’t shake a feeling that the sessions with him yesterday had something to do with his passing.

  Inner protests couldn’t ease her growing anxiety. She didn’t want to lose control again. Maybe the relaxation exercises she’d learned in psychology class would help. Students held hands and closed their eyes — tried to visualize a peaceful mountain spring. The trickling water, the lullaby of the gurgle.

  She almost giggled at the memory. Struggling to picture what the group leader was suggesting, her senses kept coming back to the moist left hand of her neighbor to the right. The poor kid was so nervous, his hands drenched with perspiration. After class, she’d gone over to talk to him. A freshman, not quite used to “new age” teaching methods. She remembered his soft voice and shy smile. And his name.

  She sat bolt upright. Sergio Pinez. His name was Sergio Pinez! The boy who killed himself.

  She dropped her head to her hands. Again. Another soul she had touched was gone.

  Pappajohn remained in the empty Conrad house for a long time after Sammy ran out. He walked from room to room just as she had done, making a cursory survey of the surroundings, orienting himself to the scene. He was convinced there was no mystery to the professor’s death, but he’d be damned if some college kid was going to tell the university honchos that he hadn’t done his job.

  Satisfied, he went out to his car and returned with a forensic kit. Slipping on a new pair of latex gloves, he carefully placed the typed note and the gun in separate evidence bags. He selected several strands of brown hair he found on the sofa — no doubt belonging to the victim.

  Then he dusted a few areas for prints, including the windowsill and the front door, discovering several partials, certain the lab would identify them as belonging to either Conrad or Greene. Good thing hers were on file — ever since he’d hauled her down to the station after last year’s anti-abortion demonstrations. His stomach twisted, recalling the grief she’d caused him then.

  Still gloved, he wandered over to the cluttered desk and sat down in front of the Macintosh. Pappajohn was a PC man, but he knew enough about computers to appreciate the elegance of the Apple operating system. He flipped the “on” switch and waited for the smiling face to appear on the screen, indicating that all was well with the hard disk.

  He double clicked the icon to view the computer’s contents. Under applications he found “E-net,” an online network that allowed Ellsford University computer users to talk to each other. Pappajohn could access the system on his own PC. It enabled him to work at home and download information from anywhere on campus through his modem.

  After staring at the screen for a few minutes, Pappajohn began searching files. Within minutes he located the access log for the past month, still intact in the E-net folder. Several entries dated back to the beginning of November, but only one to last night. Exactly three minutes after eleven. That must have been just before Conrad died. Pappajohn double clicked, expecting an answer to his question, but a message appeared: “This document requires the proper access. Continue or Quit?”

  Pappajohn frowned. Without the correct access code, he couldn’t review the log. Fortunately, all campus-linked E-net codes were recorded in the registrar’s office. As campus police chief, he could insist on a copy. He’d just have to wait until Monday when the bureaucrats were back at work.

  He keyed in “Quit” and shut down the computer. Slipping off the latex gloves, he gathered up his forensic kit, walked out the front door, and locked it behind him.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Startled, Sammy looked up, the blurry white form standing over her slowly coming into focus. “Oh, God. Reed. I’m sorry.”

  Reed Wyndham was dressed in a stained hospital work uniform, a grim reminder of the brutal battles beyond this oasis of grass and trees. Like Pappajohn, a soldier of misfortune, to whom death was no stranger. And like Pappajohn, angry with her.

  Sammy stood up slowly. “You wouldn’t believe what happened.”

  He held up a hand. “Don’t. No more excuses. I don’t want to hear it. It’s always some crisis or another. You seem to think I’m never busy, that I have no responsibilities.” He brushed back an unruly blond lock from his brow. “I’m a fourth year med student. I’m at the beck and call of everybody up the ladder from interns to residents to junior faculty to people like Marcus Palmer. They all expect me to be there when they snap their fingers.”

  Sammy took a deep breath and interrupted with a firm voice. “Look, I know that, but if you’d just let me explain.” Surely he’d understand when he knew the facts. “I had to stop by Professor Conrad’s for —”

  “I can’t afford to jump up and down for you anymore, Sammy.” He fixed her with a look of exasperation. “You knew I had rounds at eight. At seven thirty, I called your room. No answer. I figured you were on your way, so I waited. By the time I finally did get to the hospital, I was twenty minutes late and caught hell from Palmer. And you know what the worst part was?”

  Sammy started to reply, but was steamrolled by Reed’s tirade.

  “The worst part was that I was worried about you. Maybe you were mugged on your way to my place or —” he shook his head, “or you were in some kind of trouble, so I asked a buddy to cover for me and started running around campus like a goddammed chicken trying to find you.” He let out a long exhale. “And you, you were on some stupid story about some stupid teacher.”

  Sammy fought to control her own temper, though her emerald green eyes radiated frustration. “If you’d only listen for a second, you’d —”

  “Forget it. It’s not important. I’m not important. You broadcast that bulletin loud and clear.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  His tone shifted to a fatalistic calm. “So I think you should find someone who is important, Sammy. For you. Maybe someone like that brilliant Professor Conrad.”

  Sammy’s hands were shaking, her face red with anger.

/>   Reed didn’t linger. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital. Patients are waiting. For me .”

  She considered going after him, then acknowledged the futility, leaned back wearily onto the bark of the giant oak tree, and watched him disappear.

  Once again, she was alone.

  “Awesome.”

  Lucy Peters turned to face her sorority sister. She’d been trying on clothes all morning, hoping to select just the right outfit for the Midterm Madness party that night. Right now she wore a turquoise tank top that accented her eyes and another pair of attributes. “Think so?”

  Anne Sumner nodded. “Chris’ll be blown away.”

  “I hope so.” Christopher Oken was a sophomore from Philadelphia, and probably the coolest guy Lucy had ever known. They’d been seeing each other every weekend since they’d met four months earlier. Compared to the revolving-door social life common among freshmen, theirs was considered a long-term relationship. Lucy hoped Anne would be lucky enough to find someone so special. “Who’re you bringing?”

  “Mike’s got a chemistry exam on Monday, so I’m taking Ron. Of course, if I had a hunk like Chris, I’d go out on both.”

  Lucy laughed as she stepped out of her jeans. “You sure like to take chances, don’t you?”

  Anne flipped open her purse to show her sorority sister a color assortment of condoms. “Thirty-one flavors. AIDS isn’t in my game plan.”

  Lucy nodded in agreement. “You’re telling me. You can’t be too careful.” She wound a gold choker around her neck and reached under her hair to latch it.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Anne pointed to an elevated, quarter-sized pink circle on Lucy’s chest.

  Lucy checked the mirror. The spot looked so big. “I don’t know.” She touched it gingerly with one finger.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Itch?”

  “No.” Lucy rubbed the area. It didn’t change. “I never noticed it before.”

  “Love bite?” Anne teased.

  A sudden fear gripped Lucy. Could she have caught some venereal disease? That would be really rank!