McCall took stock.
First, there was this trouble at Tisquanto State College. It wasn’t just innocent “unrest,” in spite of Chief Pearson’s first allegations. McCall had done some homework before coming. Along with reports of widespread dormitory sex, the spreading use of LSD, marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, and other drugs (at least one documented case involved STP; it had sent a girl student over the brink into a mental hospital, where the prognosis was poor), there was outright, outspoken defiance of the Establishment, threats against the administrative authority, a minor revolt of some of the younger faculty, and at least one medium-sized campus riot that had hospitalized ten students and one of Pearson’s officers.
“I want you to fly down there and check it out, Mike,” Governor Holland said. “See if it’s as bad as reports claim. Or if it’s worse. Finish up that Mafia report first. Next week will do.”
But the next afternoon the governor called him in again.
“A complication, Mike, one that might be nasty. You’ll have to leave for Tisquanto right away. Turn the Mafia report over to Bill.”
The governor was worried.
“What’s this about, sir?”
“Brett Thornton just left.”
“Thornton — here?”
“Surprised me, too. It was obviously not a social call. He came to me for help.”
“To you? It must be a personal matter.”
“It is. Characteristically, of course, he doesn’t ask for my help, he demands it.”
“He threatened you? With what?”
“He said if I didn’t help him he’d use my ‘negligence’ — his word — in his nomination fight against me. Of course, it’s silly — I’d help him in a matter like this under any circumstances. But he’s under great stress, Mike. I feel sorry for him.”
“What trouble is he in?”
“It’s his daughter. You met Laura once, I think. She’s in her sophomore year at Tisquanto State. The girl is missing, hasn’t been seen since last Friday, Thornton says. He’s half out of his mind.”
Brett Thornton was a highly successful corporation lawyer and Sam Holland’s chief opponent in the state party organization. Governor Holland was up for renomination for the gubernatorial plum. Ordinarily his incumbency would have made renomination automatic. But the necessity to raise taxes, statewide riots in the ghettos of the cities, and other hard issues had made him the target of the opposition, and he faced a fight for the renomination from the conservative element of his party, of which Thornton was the outstanding figure.
They had been friends for many years. But the political bug had bitten Thornton, and with his bold, adamant, opinionated nature he swept friendship off the board. It had hurt Sam Holland, a sentimental man.
“Why did he come to you?” McCall demanded.
“You, Mike.”
“Me?”
The governor grinned. “Somewhere he’s developed a high opinion of your talents. Or maybe your publicity has oversold you.” Then his mouth went grim. “The police seem to be getting nowhere, he says. He wants you to find Laura. Get to the bottom of it.”
“Has he any idea—”
“No. He’s simply staggered. Brett’s like most parents these days — we think we know our children until one day we wake up and find they’re strangers. He can’t even imagine what’s happened to her, except that he’s sure it isn’t her fault, whatever it is. Me, I’m not so sure, Mike. Not with the way young people are today. God knows what you’ll turn up. Do you suppose you can do this discreetly?”
“I can try. Why did he threaten you?”
“I’ve never seen Brett so shaken up. I’d like you to do it, Mike, for Laura’s sake. I’ve known her since she was a little girl. She still calls me Uncle Sam.”
“Do you have a photo, governor? I don’t remember her.”
Holland produced a Polaroid color closeup of a sweet-faced girl with straight dark hair falling below her shoulders. She had direct blue eyes and a winsome smile. She looked about nineteen.
“Pretty,” McCall said. “Any facts at all?”
“She phoned her mother last Thursday afternoon saying she’d be home for the weekend Friday night. Thinking back on the conversation, Mrs. Thornton is inclined to believe Laura was unhappy about something — more than that, worried. She hadn’t sounded like her usual bubbling self, Mrs. Thornton says. When she didn’t come home Friday night, Thornton called the college, but no one was able to locate her. The police were notified, they instituted an immediate investigation, and by Sunday night the girl was officially declared a missing person.”
“How about boyfriends? A girl as pretty as this must be swamped.”
“Not surprisingly, the Thorntons know very little about Laura’s social life. The only boy they knew about was one she had once brought home to meet them, Damon Wilde, who also attends Tisquanto State. Neither Brett nor Mrs. Thornton liked him, Brett says. Arrogant, erratic, too demonstrative with Laura — remember, this is Thornton’s characterization. He put the boy down as a troublemaker, a radical in student politics.”
“I can imagine how that went down with Thornton,” McCall said. “If Laura brought him home, she must have liked him a lot.”
“Apparently she did. Anyway,” Governor Holland said, “Thornton talked with Laura’s roommate, a girl named Hobart, Nina Hobart, but Miss Hobart threw no light on Laura’s disappearance. Nor did Damon Wilde.”
McCall flew to Tisquanto early the next morning.
There was still an hour before noon.
McCall unpacked, went downstairs, and drove across town to the campus.
The last time he had seen Tisquanto State College had been before the modernization boom, when the buildings were still the original ivy-covered, blackened red brick with white trim, and there was a bell in a belfry that tolled the hours. Now the traditional old buildings cowered in the shadows of immense glass-and-steel office-type buildings, almost forgotten. The beautiful old landscaping had largely vanished, although there were still enough lawns and winding walks and ancient trees to bridge the past. McCall preferred his memories.
He checked signs and made his way to the towering administration building.
Students were all over the campus, and McCall looked them over carefully. Most of them were conventionally clad — the timeless open-throated shirt-and-pullover combination of colleges down the years, and for the girls the skirt-and-blouse look that varies from generation to generation only in the length of the skirts. This was the short-skirt generation, which McCall found very pleasant.
But dotting this cake like bits of glacéed fruit were the exotics of the hippie generation, whites and blacks — stylists of the far-out, psychedelic color studies in cloth, ponchos, beads, Nehru jackets, long-chained necklaces on the men, American Indian outfits on some of the girls... a riot, McCall thought, not without humor. One long-haired young man swathed in a royal blue velvet cloak stood in the middle of a walk flaunting a sign across his chest that said I AM A STUDENT, DO NOT FOLD, BEND, OR MUTILATE.
There were signs on young people all over the place — KEEP ON THE GRASS — WHO’S AFRAID OF BIG BAD WOLFE? — TURN ON DEMOCRACY, TURN OFF AUTHORITARIANISM — and the like. One sign on the back of a boy solemnly picketing the steps of the administration building said simply: SMOKE POT.
A head of auburn hair bobbed into view on the other side of a tall privet hedge. Something inside McCall bobbed with it. There had been an auburn-haired girl on the campus of his youth... but when this girl came around the hedge, the auburn turned to carrot, and the girl was a freckle-faced plain Jane. McCall laughed and stepped around the boy with the SMOKE POT sign. A fat, broken-nosed young man in too tight jeans and an orange sweater, with streaming blond hair, chased a miniskirted girl. The girl was shrieking with real fear. The boy hurled a book at her and shouted an obscenity.