Murder Is Academic Read online

  “What? Qualms already?”

  “No, a couple of questions. First, is the house okay? Heat, running water, and so forth?”

  “No problems. Upstairs shower goes cold if some dummy turns on the kitchen sink faucet, that’s all.”

  “I see. And is there anything I ought to know about you?”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m just about perfect,” admitted Sue modestly. “The Speeding Swede here smells too good since she came back from the Tropics, but she’s still basically a good sort. And Jackie ... ”

  “Jackie has a reputation for being quiet, but that’s only in comparison to Sue,” said Jackie. She and her friend Peter had appeared at the kitchen door, his wiry arm around her shoulders.

  “Oh, hi, Jackie. Hi, Peter. This is Maggie Ryan. May rent the room. Plays flute.”

  “Really? I’m the oboe!” said Peter. “Now all we need is a clarinet!”

  “She’s also a statistician,” warned Sue, as though announcing that she carried typhoid.

  “But I overheard some authentic French too.” Jackie had shiny dark hair and a warm smile. She held out her hand to Maggie. “Enchantée.”

  “So here we all are!” said Sue expansively. “Any other questions, Maggie?”

  “One teeny thing. May I see the room?”

  Sue guffawed. “Suspicious bitch, ain’t she? Take her up, Swede.”

  Mary Beth led the way through the dining room and living room. An old sofa was covered with a Guatemalan blanket, the oak mantel displayed some French pottery and a Russian doll, the hearth held a basket of split firewood. They climbed the stairs to the big northeast room that overlooked the street. Maggie checked the closet and the desk, then sat on the stripped bed and looked thoughtfully out the window. It did seem monastic, thought Mary Beth, seeing the bare white room through a stranger’s eyes. Outside, through a tangle of winter-naked branches like a grill across the windows, the university and town stood gray against the blue sky. Mary Beth waited a moment, then sat on the bed next to her.

  “What do you think?” she asked anxiously.

  For an instant, as she watched Maggie call back her thoughts from some melancholy place, she felt the same closeness she had sensed in the bleachers. Two parched souls.

  “Your nunnery is exactly what I need,” said Maggie softly, still looking out the window. “A place to start over. To rebuild.” Then the blue eyes, direct and disturbing, switched to Mary Beth. “I think for both of us.”

  III

  4 Kamel (March 13, 1968)

  This one was old; wrinkled skin, frail bones. Older even than Mum’s mother. The murderer could see Mum, almost, could smell the stench of alcohol with the sharp senses of the eight-year-old. She was begging Pa to stop. Pa had the puppy. Pa was in control. No. No, that was over. Now he was in control himself. He stifled the scream, a feeble scream anyway. She didn’t close her eyes, just glared at him. But she wasn’t strong either. Old bitch. Trying to control him. The only problem was afterward; he had a little trouble making the triangle neat, because of the softness of the wrinkled skin.

  Then he drove away. He dumped the sleepy kitten near the animal shelter.

  It wasn’t until much later that he noticed a button missing from his shirt.

  Terry said, “The victims have all been driving alone on highways around Syracuse. Even Christie James was away from the university, on the way back from visiting her parents.”

  “How close to Syracuse?” asked Jane. They were sitting in an unused seminar room, desks pushed into a rough circle.

  “Closer than this. Fifteen miles away was the farthest, I think.”

  “That’s still too close for comfort,” said dark-eyed Monica.

  “Yes,” Terry agreed. “Let’s see. The reports also mention that the victims seem to be suffocated or partly suffocated by a hand across the mouth and nose, and then their throats cut with something that could be just a pocketknife.”

  “Okay. We knew that.”

  “But that’s all I could find. The only other thing is the triangle.”

  “Why do they stop for him? You said their cars were okay.”

  Terry shrugged. “Nobody knows. Nobody alive.”

  “Maybe he’s got a police uniform or something,” suggested Maggie. “I’d stop for a uniform.”

  “If so, nobody’s noticed it yet.”

  “Nobody alive,” said Jane. “Well, keep us posted on developments. I’ll see if we can find a policeman on that case to talk to us. And everyone be careful driving around Syracuse. Okay, Jackie, you were going to look up some general precautions.”

  “Yes,” said Jackie. “But you know, if you take all this advice, you can hardly live at all. They say don’t go out at night, don’t go anywhere alone, keep all your doors and windows locked with deadbolts, don’t go into lonely areas. I mean, who wants a life when you can’t even go do the laundry?”

  “A woman’s place is in the home,” suggested Sue mockingly.

  “Well, the advice is probably good up to a point,” said Jane. “But you’re right, Jackie. We’re all building careers. We have to compete with men. And men go to the library or to the lab at night, whether or not anyone else will go with them. Science would slow to half speed if we all followed those rules.”

  Monica said, “And a lot of us will end up fending for ourselves and maybe for dependents too, all alone. We really have to take that for a starting point. If life forces us to take risks, how do we minimize them?”

  “Okay,” said Jane. “Let’s look at self-defense, then. Someone recommended a Syracuse man named Ed Hamlin. Maybe we can hire him for a couple of demonstrations.”

  “Good,” said Maggie. “And after that maybe we can talk to a policeman, and a lawyer, to find out what kind of help we can get from them.”

  “And maybe a bartender or bouncer,” suggested Sue. “Someone used to dealing with guys who are out of control.”

  Jane was writing it all down. “Fine. I’ll make some calls. Terry, check back with me at midweek. Right now, I’m afraid I have to go meet a baby.”

  Gently, Jane rubbed salve into the infant’s skin and attached the third electrode carefully, just under the tiny nipple, then pulled down the soft shirt so the baby wouldn’t pull away the wires. She gave it a biscuit. It stared, large eyes crossing stupidly at the biscuit clutched at the end of its own short arm, and drooled a little as it pulled it jerkily to its mouth. Jane pressed the switch and the noises began. “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.” In the next room, faithful needles bobbled on the moving roll of graph paper, recording the sturdy little heartbeat with red lines. The infant listened to the ba-ba-ba for a while and then began to chew on the biscuit. Jane depressed a button, and one of the needles recorded the fact that the subject was eating. The ba-ba-ba series changed to pa-pa-pa. In a moment the subject dropped the biscuit onto the table and began to kick. Jane hit the off button, handed the child its gluey biscuit again, and tenderly removed the electrodes. She swabbed the rosy skin clean.

  “Wonderful!” she said to the proud mother. She always told mothers that their infants were wonderful, even perfect. Even when they cried a lot. This one had been okay.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” asked the mother anxiously.

  “Yes. He was just perfect,” Jane said.

  “Did Greg understand that tape, do you think?”

  “Well, we aren’t checking for meaningful words, of course.” This mother was a faculty wife, Jane noted; she’d have to explain. “It’ll be another six months to a year before Greg starts using words. But he has to know an awful lot before he reaches that stage. And one of the important things is to know at least some of the differences in sounds that are important in English.”

  “Ba and pa?” asked Greg’s mother dubiously. “Those aren’t words.”

  “Right. But if he can’t hear the difference between ‘bat’ and ‘pat,’ ‘bird’ and ‘purred,’ ‘bony’ and ‘pony,’ then he can’t hear that you’re using those different wo
rds for different ideas and objects.”

  “But how can you tell what he can hear, if he can’t talk?”

  “You’re right. That’s the hardest thing about working with babies. They can’t answer questions about whether two things sound the same or different. But the heart rate changes slightly when a child’s attention is caught, so we’re measuring that. We play the ba-ba-ba’s until he habituates. That means he gets bored. Then we shift to the pa-pa-pa’s. If he can’t tell the difference yet, there shouldn’t be any change in heart rate. He’ll still be bored. But if the shift catches his attention, then the heart rate should change a little.”

  “I see. That’s clever. And what’s that salve you put on?”

  “Same thing a doctor uses for electrocardiograms. It reduces the skin resistance to an electrical current so we can record the tiny little electrical impulses from his heart.”

  “It must be very difficult work.”

  “Yes. With children this young, we have to work in roundabout ways. But it’s interesting. I’m convinced that they know quite a lot they can’t tell us about yet.”

  “Oh, yes!” agreed Greg’s mother eagerly. “Greg is a really smart baby. My friend came to visit and he looked at her and said ‘Bet’ just as clear as day. And her name is Betty! He must have heard us talking to her.”

  “Would you like to see a heart rate record?” asked Jane, stemming what threatened to become a flood of scientifically useless anecdotes about Greg’s mental prowess. Mother love, though wonderful for both parties involved, was not very objective. She pulled her sample spool of paper from the counter and showed the mother the red lines. Eventually Greg dropped the damp biscuit again and began to complain, so Jane sent mother and child off, paid with a couple of dollars, the biscuit, and warm thanks for their contribution to the great march of science.

  Unbuttoning her lab coat, Jane went thankfully into the big equipment room next door. She was always glad to leave the tiny experimental room, its walls so close around her. For soundproofing reasons she couldn’t leave the door open the way she did her office door. It got on her nerves.

  “How’s it going?” she asked Josh.

  “Fine.” He had labeled the new record with Greg’s age, sex, and the date, and, beads jangling, was putting it away in the cabinet over his desk. Josh preferred to keep his desk right in the equipment room. It was a large room by basement standards and was crowded with scientific equipment—amplifiers, tape recorders, tachistoscopes, polygraphs such as the one Jane was using, and more. A large metal scaffold had been set up across most of the room, with high shelves fixed to it for some of the overflow equipment. The department chairman was trying to locate space for equipment storage, but it was difficult to find in this overcrowded university.

  Josh added, “The only problem is that he didn’t habituate much.”

  “Hell!” The trouble with babies was that they came in all speeds. Some of them became bored too quickly and began to fuss. Others, like little Greg, remained interested for too long. In both cases, there was no way to tell from the heart rate records if the babies had noticed the changes in the taped sounds or not. Jane added, “Wish we could screen them first for habituation time.”

  “Hey, wow!” Josh wore his fuzzy black hair in a ponytail, stored a few dubious substances among the pliers and transistors in his desk, and was often high; but still he managed to keep what he called a good head for machines. He was enthusiastic now about screening the babies. “We could bring them in one day for a pretest, and test them the next with a tape with a tailor-made habituation time. Long, short, or medium.”

  “Mm.” But it took as long to find willing mothers and schedule the babies as it did to think up the logic of the research and make the tapes. Longer. Occasionally Jane wondered why she hadn’t gone into some exciting field. Grocery checkouts. Government file clerk. “It would be hard to get them to come twice,” she said. “Let’s finish this batch. Then if we fail miserably we’ll try the other route.”

  “Okay. But I think it would work better.”

  “Yes, it probably would. Thanks, Josh.”

  “Sure.”

  “Cheers!” Jane hung the lab coat on a peg and started back upstairs to her office. It was past time for cocktails; Greg’s mother had wanted to come late. One’s life was at the mercy of one’s subjects. And of one’s journal editors. And especially of one’s tenured colleagues. How many hours had she spent on this little study now? Too depressing to count.

  “Hi, Jane.”

  She turned by her own door. “Oh, hi, Linc. How’s it going?”

  “Fair. I got my nesting paper back from the journal. No go.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Well, it isn’t all bad. One of the readers said it would be publishable if I added an additional study to clarify one of the subsidiary points. The editor agrees.”

  “Will it be hard to do?”

  “No. Except that the damn birds won’t be ready to nest again for two months.” His usual enthusiasm was dimmed today.

  Jane said sympathetically, “I was just thinking how much our lives are controlled by our subjects.”

  “How true.” Linc smiled sadly. “Anyway, enough of my troubles. I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “A girl in my class has come in to see me a couple of times. Very bright, but she says she’s in conflict about going into the field professionally. Doesn’t know if she wants to be a career woman.”

  “Tell her it’s a lot like being a career man.”

  “Yes, well, it would be easier if you told her. I mean, I haven’t hit the problems head on.”

  “Sure. I’ll try. Tell her to come in during office hours.”

  “Thanks, Jane.”

  She went into her office, wondering how many extra hours she had to put in counseling because she was one of only three women in the department. Many bright women were in graduate school now, the Betty Friedan generation. But those in her own generation had started grad work in the late fifties, and were now struggling to give the younger ones a hand up just when important things like tenure were emerging in their own careers. Maybe Linc’s student was right: maybe it was harder to be a woman in this damn business.

  She picked up her briefcase, packed with papers from bright-eyed students in her undergraduate course, and headed home. There was another worry, she thought as she switched off the ignition outside the apartment building. The Volks needed attention; nasty rattle it was developing. The dealer, unfortunately, was inconveniently located in a small town halfway to Syracuse. Well, maybe it would consent to run a little longer.

  Roger, his sock feet propped on the hassock, was reading the paper when she came in. “Hi, hon,” he said, barely glancing up. He was so damn domestic, she might as well be married to him. “How was your day?”

  “The usual,” she said, hanging up her coat. “Do we have a drink in this dump?”

  “Gin, vodka,” he said. “Fix one for me too, okay?”

  “Sure, hon,” she said. He glanced up at the bite in her voice but wisely decided not to comment on it. She went to the kitchen and found vodka and orange juice. She fixed two drinks and brought them back to the living room.

  “Want some paper?” He handed her the front pages as he took his drink. He waved the glass at her in a sort of vestigial toast and drank.

  She kicked off her own shoes and curled into a chair to inspect the front page. “Hey, incredible! McCarthy got forty-two percent!”

  “Yeah, isn’t that amazing?”

  “This war may finish Johnson yet.” She flipped down to the bottom half of the page. “Oh God, that rapist is out murdering people again.”

  “Yeah. Watch it if you drive to Syracuse.”

  “God, what an awful way to die! Beaten and terrified, and then knifed. I’d prefer something quick.”

  “Such as?” he inquired.

  Jane had thought about the question, on bad days. But now she answered
casually, “Struck by lightning. Or at least a necrophiliac. Knifed before, not after.”

  “No. I’d prefer modern technology. The electric chair.”

  “Yeah, except you’d be locked up first. That’s not for me.”

  “Well, most deaths are unpleasant,” he said cheerfully, turning to the funnies.

  “Wonder how he gets them off the road?” Jane said. “We were trying to figure it out today. They all seem to stop on highway ramps. Why?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” He was not much interested; he was reading the comics.

  “Speaking of roads,” said Jane, “the Volks has to go to Schellsburg soon.”

  “Hell!”

  “Yeah, this is the last time I buy an out-of-town car.”

  “An out-of-town lemon.”

  “The last one was pretty good, actually. But this one’s been a mess.”

  “Well, how about Thursday? We can take it out early. I’ll be in the office all day. You can keep mine.”

  “Fine. I’ll need it. I have to talk to a martial arts expert at lunchtime. WAR wants some instruction.”

  “That’s taking a lot of your time.”

  “I know. But these kids are mad, Roger. So am I.”

  “Yeah. It’s not fair.”

  “About the Volks. Linc lives out in that direction. He’ll probably give me a ride out to pick it up, so you won’t have to.”

  “Okay. We’ll do that.”

  Neither one of them felt like preparing dinner, so they picked up some Kentucky Fried Chicken and a bottle of Chablis. “If you can’t have elegance, fake it,” declared Roger, lighting the candles. He cleared up afterward and loaded the dishwasher. Jane, putting away the unfinished wine bottle, studied him surreptitiously. An agreeable man, dark-haired, a sexy smile. Conservatively dressed, of course. Lawyers always were. Horn-rimmed glasses. Mild-mannered Clark Kent. A junior member of a Laconia law firm, he was very fond of the town. One of the many advantages of tenure would be not having to move away from Roger.

  “Well, what’s the verdict?” he asked, catching her eyes on him.