The Hanging Page 5

  “The committee was biased,” I said. “Between you and Lew...”

  She smiled. “And a few others. Sly made such a wonderful presentation to the committee. We fell in love with the way he incorporated history and geography into his artistry. His design belongs to this place as none of the others would. The work is not only beautiful, lyrically so, but there is whimsy.” She raised her hand toward the ceiling and inscribed the path of a flying dove. “There is definitely whimsy.”

  “Is that coffee I smell?” Lew Kaufman shambled in. There was a new smear of something across his cheek. He selected the next-least-objectionable mug from among the collection on the counter and filled it from the pot. “So Bobbie, Maggie. What’s up?”

  He carried his mug to the table, leaned down to kiss Bobbie’s proffered cheek, and left a terra-cotta streak behind; the Mark of Lew, I was beginning to think.

  Bobbie thumbed the smear off her cheek. “I was just going to tell Maggie about something I learned this morning.”

  “What’s that?” He slurped his coffee.

  “You know that Park tried to get money from me last fall to buy the bronze bowling pin from Whatshisname if Sly...”

  “Bombed?” Lew said. “Yeah. Franz von Wilde. Bullshit. When he was a student here his name was Frankie Weidermeyer. Putz.”

  “You knew him?” Bobbie asked, taken aback. “You never told the committee.”

  “Didn’t want you to think I was prejudiced.”

  “But you were,” she said, smiling broadly.

  “Sure, but not toward Weidermeyer. Back in the day, he took a few of my studio classes. I always thought he was more arts-and-crafts than fine arts; not top of the heap, talentwise, even there. But when your mommy owns a big gallery, I guess talent doesn’t matter so much.”

  She repeated, “You never said.”

  He laid a big stained hand on her shoulder. “Bobbie, I knew I didn’t need to. I trusted your good judgment.” He chuckled. “Did look like a big bronze bowling pin, didn’t it?”

  “Well, hell.” She cocked her head to study his long, expressive face. After a moment, she said, “The thing is, Lew, I just learned that Park bought the bowling pin after all. That’s why he wanted to take down Sly’s work. He’s stuck with that ugly thing now. Probably embarrassed.”

  Lew slammed a hand on the table, upsetting my mug. “Dammit,” he spat, rising to grab paper towels. “If there was ever someone who needed to be strung up by his balls, it’s that bastard. Of all the colossal gall.”

  He mopped the table with paper toweling off a big roll and slam-dunked the sodden wad into a trash can. Still upset, he refilled my cup, nearly overfilling it when he looked away to speak to Bobbie.

  “How the hell did he manage to come up with the money?”

  “He went out on his own and raised it. Kate and I turned him down when he solicited us, but others wrote checks,” Bobbie said.

  “Several others,” she added. “And he did it without going through the Foundation. David Dahliwahl had pledged money for an engineering scholarship. But when Joan Givens took tax forms to David, expecting him to give her a check, he told her that Park had already collected. In December.”

  “Aha,” Lew said, catching my eye. “That’s what Joan wanted to talk to Park about after our meeting.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  I thought of the file she brought to the meeting and the papers she was laying in front of Holloway when the rest of us left. The Foundation was the only legitimate fund-raising organization on campus, and apparently Holloway had sidestepped them. Illegally.

  Lew dropped back into his chair. “Who else did the bastard tap?”

  “I made some calls for Joan,” Bobbie said.

  Lew gestured for her to go on.

  “Ruth Carlisle, Melvin Ng, and the Montemayors all gave checks to Park. There were others.”

  Bobbie looked from me to Lew, making sure she had our attention, drawing out the drama a bit. “Park collected enough loot to buy that awful piece several times over. And none of it went through Foundation accounts.”

  “Bastard,” Lew spat, happy, I thought, to have something more to hold against Holloway.

  “I think we’ve established that,” I said. “What happens now?”

  “Joan is taking what she has to the Board of Trustees,” Bobbie said. “I hope we can avoid legal action, but that will depend on Park’s response.”

  I slid off into a sort of nether zone, thinking about a possible film project—Park Holloway—and didn’t hear what they said next. Lew called my name and brought me back into the grubby comforts of the faculty lounge.

  I said, “Sorry. What?”

  “I asked if you were finished for the day,” Lew said.

  “Pretty soon.” I glanced at my watch. “In another hour the light should be right to film the stairwell.”

  “Couldn’t it wait until Monday?”

  I shook my head. “It’s supposed to rain again on Monday. This may be my last, best shot before the piece goes up next week.”

  “You might run into Park,” Lew said.

  I shrugged. “So what if I do?”

  “Didn’t Sly say something this morning about taking a twelve-bore?”

  “And didn’t I tell him to watch what he says?”

  With the puzzle of Park Holloway on my mind, I went into my little office with about an hour to kill. Right away, I turned on my desk computer and Google-stalked him. There were over a hundred thousand Internet hits. Getting through them would take half a week, time I did not have.

  Not so long ago, I would have called on my personal assistant, Fergie, to see what she could find, and Jack Flaherty in the network’s Archives and Research department to do the same. The two of them together could, and did more than once, find the proverbial needle in a haystack for me. But I had been severed from those resources.

  When my series was canceled, my entire production unit at the network was laid off. I knew Fergie was still looking for a job, so I called her, hoping she had some time I could buy.

  “How’s the job hunt going?” I asked her after we had established that we were both just fine, thank you.

  “Oh, Maggie.” She burst into tears. “There’s nothing out there. I went to an interview this morning and there were thirty people filling out applications. For one half-time file clerk position.”

  “Damn,” was all I could think to say.

  “It’s hopeless.”

  “Fergie,” I said, “I need some help doing background research. Would you be interested?”

  After a pause, she asked, “For pay?”

  “Of course.” I told her what I wanted. “Right now it’s just exploratory. Snooping actually. If we come up with something, I’ll go look for backing to make a film.”

  “If there’s something to find, I’ll find it,” she said, sounding like my fierce assistant again instead of a defeated whelp. “And if you decide to make a film, you better hire me, boss.”

  “Couldn’t do it without you. But for now, I’m thinking there might be a week’s worth of work for you.”

  “Great. You’re a lifesaver,” she said. “What kind of money are we talking?”

  “The same rate the network paid you.”

  There was a pause.

  “Maggie, I couldn’t make my condo payment on the first.”

  “How much do you owe?”

  When she told me, including a late penalty if she didn’t get the payment in by the tenth, I did some rough calculations, gulped, and said, “Okay, kiddo, that’s about seven days of work. I’m sure we’ll find plenty for you to do.”

  “In advance?”

  Thinking, Lordy Maggie, you need a keeper, I said, “Sure.”

  She gave me her account information so I could make an immediate electronic deposit. As soon as we said good-bye, that’s what I did, feeling Mike looking over my shoulder as I did, hearing him say, “Maggie, she’s twenty-seven years old. She should be able to figure
things out by herself.” And me answering, “Times are tough.”

  I looked at the clock; it was just after four. Usually, those few people who were not furloughed on Fridays cleared out early to get a head start on the weekend. I wanted to film the empty stairwell without the shadows of people around the vast open spaces of the administration lobby interfering with the shot. The outer doors would lock automatically at exactly five, so a few minutes before that, I decided, would be the best time to go over. At that hour, the people should be gone and the sun would be low in the sky and streaming straight in through the big glass front doors.

  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?”

  “Be my guess.” Roger raised his face to Gus. “As long as the head isn’t ready to sever, better leave him as is for the coroner.”

  I admit I felt a little squeamish, fought back the image that suddenly flashed behind my eyes of the decapitated corpse of Park Holloway crashing to the floor at our feet.

  Bishop was studying the ceiling, looking at the fixture in the center from which Holloway’s noose was suspended.

  “Any idea how we’re going to get him down, Rog?”

  “That thing Holloway’s garrote is attached to up there connects to an electronically operated pulley. It was put in last week to support a big sculpture that’s going into the stairwell. If there’s any reason to bring Holloway down before Scientific Services gets here, we’ll open that panel over there, hit the switch, and lower away.”

  “Interesting,” Bishop said, going over to the panel. He nudged it with the toe of his boot and the door popped open. I could see pry marks on the wall where the panel’s lock had been forced, marks that had not been there when I saw it earlier in the day.

  “Better come away from there, Sid,” Roger said. “There might be prints.”

  The radio on Bishop’s belt began to squawk. He took it off, had a brief conversation that sounded like code. Still holding the radio, he addressed Roger.

  “There’s a collision on Kanan Road—car’s on fire. Because of budget cuts, we’re two crews short. I gotta get these guys up there. Any reason you need one of them to stick around?”

  “Go ahead,” Roger said. He gestured toward Holloway. “Nothing you guys can do for him. Go on. We’ll wait for the coroner.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “You’ll need to answer questions, Maggie. You found him.”

  Bishop summoned his crew and they thundered out as rapidly as they had entered.