The Bloodwind - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels) Read online

  They had followed Danvers timorously, half afraid he would turn on them with some sort of weapon, yet too curious to remain behind in the safety of the building. They'd taken the stairs to the lobby—moon bright and glittering and snaked across with shadows—and out the side door to the parking lot. There wasn't enough room for all of them on the narrow stoop, so several had stepped down to the pavement, several more to the wide concrete apron that surrounded the blacktop.

  And no one spoke.

  The frantic whispering was choked off, Constable's irritated grunts smothered, and Danvers had suddenly reined in his imprecations and accusations, his arm-flailing melodramatics that called down retribution from the gods of his nightmares. They stood in small groups and kept their own counsel, pale images of themselves under the gooseneck lampposts that rose from each corner of the lot. The snow a foot deep on the ground seemed imbedded with mica, the stars distant and harsh. There was muffled sound from the Union, but no one listened. They watched, instead, as two patrol cars flared their roof lights and turned faces purple, the snow bloodstained, the air far colder than it ought to have been.

  The parking lot was small, holding at most two dozen cars nose-in around its perimeter. Now it was virtually empty, and on the far side, alone and in half-shadow, was Danvers' vehicle. An old one, simply black, far beyond its prime though all of them knew it had been lovingly treated. Now it had changed, and as soon as Pat saw what had been done she pressed a fist to her mouth and turned her face to Greg's arm as though denying the sight, denying the presence she felt lurking in the trees.

  There was very little left that had not been destroyed. Windshield and windows had been smashed inward, shards and powdered glass glittering on the seat covers; the hood and trunk had been battered and crumpled, the doors dented so deeply the paint had cracked and flaked off to the ground; the grille was twisted from the center outward, headlamps and taillights shattered to dust, and the hubcaps had been wrenched off and folded in half, tossed into the snow bank brown with slush. All the tires were flat, though there was no sign of slashing. The only sound a faint dripping from the radiator's ruins.

  DiSelleone spoke first: "Jesus . . . Christ." It was less than a prayer, more a horrified whisper.

  Danvers had moved to the center of the lot, arms limp at his sides, his oversized head lowered in defeat. A broad-shouldered patrolman—Pat recognized him as Fred Borg—had left the warmth of his vehicle and was talking with the professor quietly. A small crowd of students, drawn by the spinning lights, had started to gather on the pavement, in the snow, but they too were silent, were staring, their faces only segments of shadows as they watched and they waited.

  Pat had lost all track of the time. She only knew she was outside without a coat, without her gloves, and her hands were beginning to tremble violently at her waist. Yet she made no move to return inside. Like the others, she waited, listening to speculations and avoiding the few glances that stole her way and retreated. Then Danvers turned slowly, heavily, Borg at his side, and they walked to the patrol car, where they were joined by Dean Constable.

  And again a long wait, punctuated by coughing, a sneeze, a nervous giggle. Then Borg reached into his front seat and pulled something out. Pat stifled a gasp and grabbed for Greg's arm. It was a large wooden mallet. Her mallet. And embedded in its face were sparkling eyes of glass.

  Danvers looked straight at her, and Borg walked over to talk.

  They waited in the second-floor corridor while Borg sat with Danvers and the dean in the conference room. One by one they were summoned in for their statements, entering quickly and leaving the same way because no one could say anything except that Pat had not eaten with them during the recess.

  She took the chair at the foot of the table. Borg, his cap pushed back on his head, his pencil almost invisible in the grip of his right hand, sat beside her, nodding, half-apologizing in the tone of his questions.

  "I was in my office," she said, staring at her hands clasped on the table. "I'd dozed off. I wasn't hungry. Good god, Fred, you don't think—"

  "Don't be silly, no," he said quietly, glancing over to Danvers, who was sitting in the far corner and ignoring the ministrations of three of his cronies. "It'd take you all day to do something like that, and the way I see it, there was only about thirty, forty minutes for it to get done. Nope. I don't see it."

  Her spine grew less rigid. "What do you see, Fred?"

  "I see a gang of them, that's what I see. Five or six, maybe, I don't know. There is the mallet, though. It is yours, right?"

  Her initials had been carved into the underside of the head. She had no choice; she nodded. "But the studio wasn't locked. Anyone could have gone in and picked it up."

  "Yep." He scribbled something in his notepad, looked again at Danvers. "He don't like you very much, Dr. Shavers."

  "I know. He hasn't liked me since the first day I walked in here."

  "Easy to see why he blamed you, though." He flipped a page over. "Cutting his department in three. I can see it.''

  She said nothing.

  "Sleeping, huh?"

  "Damnit, Fred . . ."

  "Yeah, I know. And I suppose you didn't hear anything?"

  "No. I was . . . I was having nightmares." The smile was weak. "Nerves. I didn't hear about the new department until after the break was over."

  "Congratulations."

  "Thank you."

  "You can go now. Stockton wants any more from you, he'll call."

  She was the last, she was numb, but she wanted to talk to Danvers, to say something to him if she could. He looked so deflated, so beaten in the corner, that she couldn't hold his accusation against him. Greg, however, deterred her with a touch to her arm, handed her coat and hat and white cashmere muffler. He was right, and she knew it as she followed him downstairs. Danvers would hear nothing now but the sound of his own grief, the beat of his own bewilderment. Nevertheless, she hated leaving him there with sycophants and phonies.

  And she hated it twenty minutes later when she and Greg, Stephen and Janice, took their places in a Mariner Cove booth.

  The Cove—the left half a restaurant catering mostly to families, the right half a lounge catering to quiet drinkers—sat back from Chancellor Avenue to face the length of Centre Street, the community's business avenue. The streetlamps were harsh without foliage to mute them, shop lights either dark or etched into cold plate glass as the hour crawled toward nine. There was little traffic now, and what pedestrians strayed outside moved swiftly, hunched as if goaded by a stiff storm wind. The police station was on the corner diagonal, the Town Hall two lots to the Cove's left.

  And for the Cove, red brick and white trim in imitation of Monticello, it was a slow night, a January night, when the bartender in red velvet and the waitresses in nautical black wanted nothing more than to go home and warm their feet by a fire.

  Pat sympathized, thinking as she stared at her gin-and-tonic that the way she felt now she'd never be warm again.

  They were in a booth as far from the entrance as they could find. The bar was in the center, encircled by round tables and captain's chairs padded with black leather; the walls were a deep wine textured to the touch, the booths themselves partially obscured by draperies of fish netting. Mahogany, ebony, squared posts and carriage lamps, on each of the tables fat candles in red chimneys. The restaurant had closed down an hour ago, and there was nothing left now but the clinking of glass and ice, the soft footfalls of a waitress, a whisper or two, no music at all.

  Greg sat beside her on the outside, Stephen and Janice opposite. They had downed their first drinks without bothering for taste, had ordered a second round and were sipping them slowly.

  "I don't believe it," Pat said finally, shaking her head.

  "You saw what you saw," Stephen said. His black hair was cropped close to his skull, his eyes deep-set, his cheeks hollow. Most of his female students were in love with him, most of them jealous of the way he looked at Janice and smiled.
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br />   "No, I don't mean that," she said. "I mean, why me? My god, he must have known already what had been decided, for crying out loud. I can tell that now from the way he acted at the beginning. But why . . . why blame me?"

  Stephen considered, then sketched a circle in the air around his temple. Janice poked him hard. "Don't be silly, Steve. It isn't fair to him."

  He frowned. "Isn't fair to him? To Danvers? Jesus." And he looked to Greg for support against illogic and women. "Look, Pat, the man doesn't like you, pure and simple. You beat him out of his precious little fiefdom, with"—he grinned immodestly—"another chunk gone he probably didn't expect. Plus, you're a woman. You're taller than he is by a head—and stop smiling, it's true. You know he's a refugee from the nineteenth century. God, his forebears practically settled this place in the year zero."

  "All right," she said reluctantly. "I can see all that, but I don't have to like it, okay?" Stephen nodded, Janice shrugged. "But what I still want to know is —who? Who would do a thing like that?"

  "Oh, come on," Greg said, just short of impatiently, as if the culprit was too obvious to mention. "Who else could it be, huh? Ford may be one of the best in his field—and let's give him that, the poor dope—but he's certainly not going to win the Mr. Chips Award. He's been tough on us, but he's wicked with his so-called actors and actresses, and I'm really surprised they haven't had a crack at him before."

  "Tell me about it," Stephen said, pushing back into the corner of the booth. "In spite of my extreme beauty, believe it or not there are kids who don't much like me, either."

  "I believe it," Janice muttered, and took an elbow lightly in her ribs.

  "And Pat, too," the musician continued.

  "Who? Me?" She smiled, but didn't feel it.

  "Sure," said Greg, staring at a point over Janice's head. "You should hear . . ." He stopped and shrugged.

  "Hear what?" she said, curiosity overcoming a growing distaste for the subject. "Come on, you started to say something. What is it?"

  "Well . . . your Three Musketeers aren't exactly camping on your doorstep these past couple of months, are they?"

  She blinked her astonishment. He couldn't be talking about Oliver and the others, but the expression on his face told her he was. "No," she said in swift denial. "No."

  "The show," Greg reminded her gently.

  "But I've told them a hundred times how long it takes to arrange something like that!"

  "Pat, you and I understand these things. But think back for a minute. Try to remember what it was like when you first started, when you were so sure you'd take the world by storm every gallery owner in New York would be falling all over themselves trying to sign you on. And let's face it, m'dear, Fallchurch and Harriet especially aren't the most stable people in the world. And they're kids! My god, we all keep forgetting that. I do it, too. We see these eager young students with all that talent, we talk to them, we learn about them, and we forget they haven't a clue about what the world's like. Kids, no matter how old they are, no matter how much they've traveled on Mommy and Daddy's money."

  She wanted to refuse the truth in what he said, and told herself she should have known it all along. He was right. It happened at least once a year, but this time she'd been so anxious to get the three started she'd been blinded by her own enthusiasm. Her shoulders sagged slightly, and Greg laid a hand on her arm for a moment, just long enough before she stirred and saw the embarrassment in Stephen's eyes.

  "All right," she said. "Boy, am I stupid."

  "No more than the rest of us, Pat," Stephen said with an encouraging smile. "We just don't like to be reminded that we really do have feet of clay. And I think sometimes we forget how much we can hurt these kids without meaning to. We're human, and they don't like it. Especially when they hang their dreams on our shoulders without our permission."

  "Okay, okay," she said, palms up. "But really—if we can get off my troubles and back to Danvers—really, smashing up a car like that? That's incredible. I can see vicious pranks, but what they did there was downright destruction! There would have had to have been an army of them. And why was my mallet left behind? It's like they were deliberately trying to implicate me."

  "No," Greg said instantly. "Most likely, they had someone watching. He saw Danvers coming and they split. One of them dropped it, that's all. You start thinking like that, Pat, you're going to end up in a Hitchcock movie or something."

  She half-smiled an admission the thought had crossed her mind, then lifted her glass to finish her drink while Greg beckoned to the waitress to bring another round. When she'd finished, however, she frowned. Janice was staring at her intently, and one hand automatically went to her hair, her throat, for something out of place.

  Then: "Yes? What? Have I got a piece of lemon on my tooth or something?"

  Janice blinked rapidly, startled, and a quick flush spread over her cheeks. "God, Pat, I'm sorry. I was just thinking."

  "Uh-oh," Stephen muttered.

  Pat glared at him, turned back to Janice. "About what? Did I do something wrong?"

  "No, no," Janice said, lowering her gaze to the rim of her glass. "Nothing like that, Pat. I was just thinking about tonight, that's all."

  A pause, and Pat encouraged her with a smile.

  "Well . . . your office overlooks the parking lot, doesn't it?"

  "No," she said, "not really. I don't have a window on that side. Just one that . . . why?"

  "But the conference room does," Janice said. "I know that. That's right."

  "So?" Greg said. "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "So why didn't any of us hear what was going on? Or anyone in the Union, for that matter. I mean, you don't smash a car like that without making a hell of a racket, right? Right."

  "My window was open," Pat whispered, thinking.

  "And you didn't hear a thing the whole time?"

  "I was sleeping. I fell asleep."

  "And you didn't hear anything."

  Pat realized suddenly that the woman was frightened, her eyes shifting from side to side in search of an answer, narrowing angrily when Stephen laughed shortly.

  "Well, damnit, don't you think it's spooky?"

  Greg lifted his hands in confusion. "Spooky? Jan, what the hell are you talking about?"

  Janice sighed loudly, her exasperation bringing a sheen of moisture to her eyes. "I mean, Greg, that it seems awfully damned funny that with all those people around, with Pat right there in her office with the window open, nobody heard anything. A whole car was slammed into the ground and nobody heard a goddamned thing!"

  Chapter 7

  It was the most obvious question, and not one of them had thought to ask it, and then had no time to respond when Greg suddenly exploded into a paroxysm of laughter that had him coughing and sputtering until Pat, unsure whether to be furious or amused, slapped his back several times. By the time he'd subsided, yanking a handkerchief from his hip pocket to wipe the tears from his eyes, she noticed the waitress standing by the table, her expression puzzled though her lips worked at a nervous grin. Clever you, she thought when he winked at her. Word of Danvers' misfortune would be all over town by morning, and all they needed now was a waitress carrying tales to as many customers and friends as she could get hold of.

  "Nice," Stephen said dryly, seconding her unspoken compliment.

  Greg made a show of exaggerated modesty, then reached across the table and put a finger to Janice's wrist. "The wind," he said.

  Janice leaned away from him, as if distance would bring the words into sharper focus.

  "The wind," he repeated. "If you recall, it came up right after we left for dinner. It's apparent even to us non-scientist types that it carried most of the sound away, and we just plain did not hear the rest."

  "Yes, I suppose . . ."

  "See?" he said. "No problem, once you put a superior mind to the task. Besides, it's not our job to worry about it. That little puzzle belongs to Abe Stockton and his band of merry men. They'll
find out soon enough who the culprits are, and I'm taking odds right now it was someone like . . ." He hesitated, and Pat tensed. "Like Ollie or Ben."

  "Hey," Pat protested, twisting around to face him more squarely. "Now that's a little much, don't you think, Greg?"

  Greg was startled by her reaction, but he set his jaw to jutting in defense. "Well, maybe not, but you have to admit, Pat, they're hardly the darlings of dear old Hawksted. And lest you forget, I know them fairly well myself. And I just happen to know they're madly in lust with Sue Haslet, who just happened to have been Danvers' premier actress." He stopped, then, and grabbed for his water glass. He didn't lift it, however; he turned it slowly between his palms. "She was already in one Long Wharf production, and Ford was pushing her hard, very hard, to try her luck in New York over spring vacation. He didn't seem to care if she graduated or not. She was a nervous wreck. I wouldn't blame Ollie if he and his friends . . ."

  As his voice trailed into silence, Pat looked to Stephen for an explanation, saw instead Janice wringing her hands just below the level of the table. It took her several moments to realize that Susan Haslet must have been the woman killed in the crash the night before. And she could see then how Fallchurch might blame Danvers for it. So torn between the lure of Broadway and the tangible result of four years of studying, she might well have lost her concentration for a moment, might have been drinking too much, might have done any number of things that finally, fatally, led her onto Mainland Road.

  "Greg . . . ?"

  He shrugged. "Well, she needed someone neutral to talk to, you see."

  Another silence somewhat awkward and extended until Stephen, lighting a cigarette whose paper was as brown as its tobacco, drolly slipped into a story concerning one of his own students, a recognized miscreant whose millions were, it was alleged, the only reason he was still permitted on campus. By the time he had finished, Greg was ready with a story of his own, and Janice was clenching and splaying her fingers eagerly, waiting for a chance to cut into the round.