My students had been assigned to edit a five-minute film. I had some time, so I booted the office computer and opened one, but I found myself too distracted by Fergie’s tale of woe to really concentrate on it. What was happening to the rest of my laid-off crew? I hadn’t talked to my longtime film partner, Guido Patrini, my technical guru, for over a week, so I gave him a call.
For many years, Guido had moonlighted by teaching a graduate course in film production at UCLA. So I opened the conversation by asking him, “Tell me how you assign grades to student films.”
“In the old days we used to throw them at the wall and see what stuck. But that’s tough on the hardware. So I set up criteria when I give the assignment and then I assess how well they use those parameters to build something that is both technically and aesthetically interesting. A low grade suggests maybe they should major in psych, a high grade means they may one day earn the chops to bang their heads against Hollywood’s door.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Since I plagiarized the assignment from your course syllabus, Guido, you should grade them for me.”
“Nice try,” he said, chuckling. “I’d be happy to sit down with you and go over a couple with you, but I’m in Colorado finishing up a freelance gig.”
I told Guido that Fergie was still looking for work, and asked him to be on the lookout for something for her, that even a short-term gig would be helpful. He promised he would.
We talked for a while about nothing in particular until it was time for me to gather my things and go over to the administration building to shoot my few seconds of footage.
Chapter 5
“This is 911. What is your emergency?”
“There’s a man, hanging,” I managed to say, looking up into the open stairwell at the soles of a man’s shoes. By late that Friday afternoon the college campus was, truly, like a ghost town, and I was alone in the vast marbled emptiness of the administration lobby with a corpse dangling from the ceiling two stories above my head.
I gave the dispatcher my location and my name.
“You say a man hanged himself, Ms MacGowen?” she asked.
“I don’t know if he did it to himself or if he had help.”
“Is anyone there with you?”
“No, it’s just the two of us, as far as I know.”
“The two?” There was a pause before she said, “Oh. Is he breathing?”
“Not likely.” He hadn’t moved a micrometer since I arrived.
“Can you check?”
“His breathing?” I said, thinking, Oh damn. How had a quick stop by the lobby to shoot some footage of the empty stairwell become a scene worthy of Grand Guignol? I’ve spent most of my adult life working in one aspect or another of the news business and I’ve seen my quota of ugly things. I like to think I’m pretty tough, but sometimes enough is enough.
“Yes, ma’am. Is he breathing?”
“I’ll go see what I can see,” I said, figuring from the way his head lolled forward that there wasn’t much hope he had any breath left. Simply for the comfort of having something familiar in my hand, and to put a layer of distance between the reality of the scene above me and what I was prepared to handle, I took a camera out of my bag, flipped on the zoom and looked at the man via the camera’s little monitor screen; I could see him up close that way without actually being very close to him.
When I first walked into the building, I thought the figure hanging in the stairwell was an effigy representing all stuffed-shirt college administrators that any number of students, staff and faculty were frustrated with, a little memento left over from the earlier demonstration on the campus quad against tuition increases, class cancellations, and pay cuts. Realizing this was, in fact, a man had been bad enough; effigies don’t bleed. But recognizing who the man was made my knees buckle.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I said reaching for the stair rail. I managed to ask, “Is someone coming?”
“Paramedics and police are on the way, ma’am. Is he breathing?”
“Definitely not.”
“Have you checked his airways?” she asked.
“No.” I shuddered at the idea of touching him; his white hair was matted with something wet and dark, and his face was a horror mask. He was also well beyond my reach.
The lobby of the newly constructed building was ostentatious for a community college, especially considering the ragged state of the economy, with a stairway that was worthy of Tara: tall, curving, broad. Even from the top landing, I would barely be able to touch his shoe, the ceiling was so high.
“Can you administer CPR?”
“Are you reading from a script of some sort?” I was losing patience. “Where are the paramedics?”
“Their ETA is two to three minutes,” she said. “Stay on the line with me, Maggie, until they get there.”
“Sure.”
The automatic time locks on the exterior doors engaged; it was five o’clock, quitting time, but the staff had already fled, getting a head start on what promised to be a beautiful, sunny March weekend in Southern California after a solid week of rain. And there I was, alone, locked inside with a corpse.
I am not by nature very patient. When three minutes stretched to four, and then five, and I didn’t hear approaching sirens, I walked behind the unmanned reception counter, picked up a land line and took matters into my own hands; I dialed my college roommate’s husband.
“Tejeda.”
“Roger, it’s Maggie. Please come, lights and sirens, college admin building lobby. The college president is hanging by the neck, and he’s very, very dead.”
Chapter 6
Three of us stood shoulder to shoulder looking up, Kate’s husband Roger, me, and Sid Bishop, the captain from the nearest LA County fire station, as two paramedics and five backup firemen pounded up the stairs to reach Holloway.
Roger dropped his chin down enough to look at Bishop, who was a good half foot shorter.
“Would it spoil their fun if we told them there’s no need to hurry?”
“They need the practice,” Bishop said, watching his men intently. “When was the last time something like this happened out this way?”
“It’s the first to go down on my watch,” Roger said, emphasis on my. “And I’ve been Anacapa’s police chief for ten years.”
That got my attention. “There hasn’t been a murder in Anacapa for ten years?”
“More like sixteen years,” Roger said, still watching the paramedics. “Woman, wife of a doctor, caught the doc cheating with his office nurse, so she shot three of their four kids and herself to get back at him. She survived, the three kids didn’t.” He folded his arms across his chest. “But I wasn’t here then.”
“Dear God,” I said.
“Maggie, why do you think I took this job?” he asked, bringing his gaze down to me. “I had my fill of wet calls working Homicide down south. I like it just fine out here in the sticks.”
He bumped his shoulder against mine. “Until you rode into town and shot my stats all to hell.”
The paramedics had reached the top landing. Bishop gave them a few moments to look at the victim before he called up. “Gus?”
The paramedic who responded to the name leaned over the railing. “Goner. Not that there was any question about it. You need to call the bus, Sid.”
“Roger did already,” Bishop called up. “Any reason to bring him down before the coroner and Scientific Services guys get here to take over the crime scene?”
Gus looked at his watch. “What’s their ETA?”
“It’s Friday, rush hour. Coroner is coming from downtown LA, Scientific Services is way out in Alhambra.” Bishop looked at Roger and shrugged. “Two hours?”