McCall rose. “I’ll talk to Long and Oliver.”
Pearson cleared his throat. “You seen President Wade?”
“Not yet.”
The chief reached for one of his phones. He began to dial. He did not look up or wave goodbye or even grunt.
Dismissed, McCall thought. He did not let the grin show until he reached the hall.
Tisquanto’s police headquarters smelled like police buildings the country over. Dried sweat, stale cigarette smoke, germicide, and a certain metallic odor that defied identification. The walls were the universal pale dirty green.
Two officers stood in an open doorway across the hall. McCall asked one of them, a beanpole in plain clothes, where he might find Lieutenant Long.
“I’m Long.”
“I’m Micah McCall, Governor Holland’s special assistant.”
Long’s marbly eyes immediately went into hiding. A pretty girl typing at a desk inside the room looked up with interest, caught McCall’s glance, flushed, and bent back to her machine. The man with Long came alive.
“Sergeant Oliver,” Lieutenant Long said. McCall shook Oliver’s hand. Long kept his to himself.
“Now,” the Lieutenant said. “What can I do for the governor’s special assistant?” He made it sound like an off-color joke.
“I’m here on this Laura Thornton disappearance,” McCall said. “Chief Pearson said you would tell me whatever you know.”
“He did?” said Long. Long was a sneerer; his cheeks hollowed and his thin mustache bunched a little. Everything about him was drawn out. I can’t picture having a beer with this guy, McCall thought, or exchanging a confidence; I can imagine how he strikes these college kids. Long began rocking on his heels like a house dick on a dull night. “Do tell.”
“Look,” McCall said. “Let’s not make it a war, lieutenant. I’ve been all through that scene with your chief. I’m no J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t know a damned thing about the scientific stuff; I’m sure any first-grade detective on your payroll could do a better job of tailing or following up a hard lead. I’m really not a detective at all. I’m more of a hound dog. I smell ’em out. Navigate by the seat of my pants and an occasional squint at the stars. I’m not going to look over your shoulder, lieutenant, or get under your feet. Just tell me what you’ve got so far and I’ll jump out of your hair.”
“We don’t have much,” Sergeant Oliver put in hurriedly.
McCall turned his attention on the sergeant. Oliver looked human. Medium height, face round, bunches of crow’s feet around the eyes. He wore tired-looking clothes, too. Whatever else he is, he’s not on the take. An honest cop?
Sergeant Oliver avoided glancing at his superior.
“In fact, what we have we can give you pretty quick,” Lieutenant Long said with a smile.
McCall immediately wished he wouldn’t. His smile was worse than his sneer. “I’d appreciate it if—”
“I’ll bet you would,” Long sneered. Maybe he was taking a night seminar in Immediate Assumptions. “I would myself. But the fact is we haven’t got a goddam thing. Nothing. She’s just gone up in smoke. Or made a clean getaway, if she’s done anything. We don’t even have a line on that theory. She could be anywhere, as a result of anything.”
“You think she’s dead, lieutenant?”
“Who cares what I think? You ask me straight out, I’ll say yes, I think so. But what good is an opinion, even a lieutenant’s? Where she is, in what condition, is anybody’s guess.”
“Who saw her last?”
“Her roommate, a girl named Nina Hobart. On Friday. And that’s it.”
“What about Laura’s boyfriend? The Wilde boy.”
“He says he last saw her some time Thursday. He doesn’t seem concerned any. He’s probably lying, but we haven’t been able to crack his cool. We’re working on it is all I can say.” He rocked on his heels. Still sneering. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it, McCall thought.
Sergeant Oliver said nothing.
“And that’s all you’ve got, lieutenant?”
“You want a written report? Look, that’s all we’ve got, and if you’ll let us go back to work we’ll try to get more. Okay?”
“Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. Why don’t you stroll around and take in our lovely campus? ‘Oh, dear gray elms of yesteryear’ and all that jazz. You might even catch a protest meeting or two.”
McCall stared at him. Long’s squint held steady, baleful.
McCall turned on his heel. The hell with Long. And Pearson, too. Sam Holland had warned him: “Don’t expect a lot from the Tisquanto police, Mike. Pearson’s a hard case.” It checked out, all right.
There was plenty to do before he could dig his teeth into the situation — singular or plural. A place to stay. Then the administration building; he would have to talk with President Wade. Most of all he wanted to look up the dean of men.
“Mr. McCall?”
He turned in the slanting morning sunlight at the entrance. Sergeant Oliver was coming after him at a fast shuffle.
“Yes, sergeant?”
Oliver maneuvered him away from the doorway to a spot where they were not visible from the hall.
“I don’t like to step on the lieutenant’s toes, Mr. McCall,” the sergeant said. “He’s a little touchy. The truth is, I’m on this thing maybe more than he is. I think this Damon Wilde boy knows a lot more than he’s telling, but I don’t believe anything’s happened to the girl — certainly not anything drastic.” The sergeant’s surprising baritone lowered even more. “There’s just nothing to tell you right now. That’s on the level.”
“Thanks,” McCall said.
Oliver nodded and stepped back.
McCall hit the sunshine. He had rented a black Ford sedan at the airport. As he slipped behind the wheel he glanced back at the entrance to the police building. Sergeant Oliver was still standing there, watching him.
On the way to police headquarters McCall had spotted what looked like a pleasant place to stay. Called the Red Harbor Inn, it stood at a bend in the river, just outside the business district. He avoided motels when he could, and he associated most hotels with the smell of dust. The modern ones reminded him of hospitals. Inns were most to his taste.
A fender-bent silver sedan raced past him. It was plastered with flower cutouts. The he-driver wore shoulder-length hair and a goatee. A girl who looked like a statue sat beside him as they careened down the street. The sidewalks were crowded with students of both sexes — long hair and beards were frequent, a lot of the girls wore wide-bottomed pants, and some of the boys necklaces. Didn’t anyone go to class?
McCall turned off the main drag and took a side street which soon brought him to the Red Harbor Inn. He carried his bag across the parking strip to the rustic-nautical entrance and went in. The Inn was a two-storied building of gray shakes with red trim, surrounded by old elms and oaks and chestnuts. It was a fine spring morning.
At the desk in the shadowy lobby, which smelled pleasantly of malt and cheese, he signed the register. He paid no attention to the dark bar in the adjoining room, not even filing it for future reference. Alcohol was not his bag.
“Fabulous morning,” the clerk said, a small man with big round eyeglasses.
“Beg pardon?” McCall said, cupping his ear. It discouraged further conversation. The clerk rang for a bellhop.
Then he was in a comforter sort of room, all maple and pine and chintz curtains, the kind McCall liked best. It could be a happy omen, but he doubted it.
He tipped the bellhop, latched the door, took off his jacket and tie, and lay down catercornered on the bed. His mind was keyed to questions. His reception at Tisquanto police headquarters bothered him not at all. He had paid his courtesy call, made his presence known, and that was that.