There didn't seem to be anything to say about that.
'She was on her back,' Livingston said. 'No clothes except for her bra pulled up above her tits. Her pantyhose were tied tight around her neck. You ever seen anybody been strangled.'
'Yeah.'
'Looked like she had cuts and bruises, too. 'Course, some of that might have been the crows.'
'ME could probably figure that out,' I said.
'Oh, yeah. He did. But I'm just telling you what we found.'
'Sure,' I said. 'Go ahead.'
'That's about it,' Livingston said. 'I called the town cops, and they came over, and some State cops, and we got out of the way.'
I stood and looked at the crime scene. It told me what most crime scenes told me. Nothing. Students walked past us with books, and book bags, and knapsacks, and Diet Cokes in paper cups with plastic tops and straws sticking out. There was nothing interesting about two middle-aged guys standing around beside a clump of bushes. Nothing reminded them that a woman's murdered body had lain here a year and a half ago. Most of them probably knew it had happened, some of them had probably known the woman. But there was nothing they could do for her now, and there were midterms to think about, and college guys, and maybe the Dartmouth winter carnival. They had places to go, so they went there. And there was no reason they shouldn't have.
'Any clothes?' I said.
'Just the bra.'
'Anybody ever find her clothes?'
'Not so far as I know,' Livingston said. 'The nigger dragged her into his car. I guess he did her there and got rid of her clothes later.'
'And brought her here and dumped her.'
'That's what they tell me.'
I looked up at the dorm on the hill. 'Odd place to dump somebody.'
'Can't see it from the road,' Livingston said.
'If it's on this side of these bushes,' I said. 'But then you can see it from the dorm.'
'He probably didn't realize that,' Livingston said.
'Not hard to notice,' I said.
'Probably dark. I don't think they ever established just when he dumped her.'
'That's probably it,' I said. 'Odd place for a black man from the city to dump a dead body, on a mostly white, all prestigious, suburban, women's college campus.'
Livingston shrugged.
'Had to dump it somewhere,' he said. 'Wouldn't want to get caught driving it around.'
'You'd think he'd have driven into the center of the campus?'
'Might have driven until he found a spot where he was alone. Might have been traffic near the gate, people walking by on the street, how the hell do I know. They ain't always the smartest people in the world.'
'Most folks aren't,' I said. 'Anybody talk with the dorm residents up there?'
'Couple of State detectives were around. They probably did. College worked pretty hard to protect the students.'
'From what?'
Livingston looked surprised.
'From being hassled,' he said. 'People pay about thirty grand a year for their kids to go here. They don't like it much having the kids grilled by some cop, you know?'
'Where would I get the names of the students who lived in that dorm a year and a half ago?'
'Dean of Student Affairs, I suppose. But she won't want to give them to you.'
'Of course she won't,' I said.
Chapter 7
HAWK AND I were at the bar in The Four Seasons Hotel having a beer. It was a spacious, comfortable bar, though one of the advantages of drinking with Hawk was that even in crowded bars, you always had elbow room. Nobody ever talked loud around Hawk. Nobody ever crowded him.
'Been talking to Tony Marcus about my man Ellis.'
'Marcus is out?'
Hawk nodded. He was making eye contact with an elegant platinum-haired woman in a long dress, who was having cocktails with a couple of suits.
'Tony got a lot of money,' Hawk said.
'The Russians get a wedge into his business?' I said.
