he didn't look back.
'You in for life,' Hawk said after Alves was gone, 'hope will kill you. You going to survive, you got to keep your mind steady.'
'I know.'
'Ain't much else in there but hate and power.'
'Better than nothing,' I said.
Chapter 6
THE CAMPUS OF Pemberton College was like Collegeland at a theme park: stone buildings on hills, winding footpaths, greensward, brick, and a bunch of trees arranged so artfully that they seemed almost accidental. There even was an occasional portico and at least one arched passageway that I drove through. I saw a number of young women, many in fine physical condition. Most of them appeared dressed to work out, or go camping. I was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans. I had my jacket off. As I drove I tried putting one arm out the window and flexing. Nobody made any attempt to flag me down and seduce me, and it was kind of cold, and it made my shoulder stiff, so I pulled my arm in and rolled up the window.
A discreet road sign said 'Campus Police.' I turned off between some bushes and went in to a small parking lot behind the maintenance building. The cops were in a wing of the building, with no sign outside, hidden away like an embarrassing relative.
'My name is Spenser,' I told the young cop on the desk. 'I'm looking into a murder you had here about a year and a half back.'
'May I see some ID?' he said. His name tag said Brendan Cooney.
I showed him some. He studied it closely and slowly before he gave it back.
'Whaddya need?' he said.
'I'd like to talk to the officers involved in the case,' I said.
The young cop nodded. 'Have a seat,' he said.
I sat in a straight chair near the door and read the campus parking regulations while he went into an office for a while and then came back.
'Chief will see you,' he said and opened the lift top gate in the counter, and I walked through and into the chief's office.
'Sit down,' the chief said. 'I'm Fred Livingston.'
He was a blond guy with longish hair combed back and parted on the left. His upper teeth were sort of prominent and he looked to be maybe forty-five.
'I'm working for Cone, Oakes and Baldwin,' I said. 'Law firm. They want to re-examine the murder thing you had out here about a year and a half ago.'
Livingston nodded. 'Melissa Henderson,' he said.
'Who handled the thing?'
'For us? I did. But there wasn't much to handle. This isn't a big city police force. Soon as we found her we called the town cops, and they brought the State cops with them.'
'You see the crime scene?' I said.
'Sure. One of our guys found her, Danny Ferris. Poor bastard. He called me, and I told him not to touch anything and I went right over.'
'Can you show it to me?'
'Certainly,' Livingston said. He stood, picked up a walkie-talkie from the recharge rack, put on his hat, and walked out with me.
'She was behind some bushes down from one of the dorms,' he said in the car. 'Probably the first corpse Danny ever saw.'
'How's your experience?' I said.
Livingston shrugged.
'I've seen a few. I was Police Chief in Agawam before I got this job. Motor vehicle mostly. Some of them are pretty ugly. Couple of gun-shot homicides. Domestic one, and one involving some gang kids from Springfield. Drugs probably, we never got the perpetrators.'
We went back under the archway between two buildings and bore to the left.
'Park over here,' Livingston said, and I did.
We were at the foot of a hill with a long gradual grade, and a footpath that ascended the hill and curved among some bushes on the way. There's no special reason for it to curve, but landscape architects hate a straight line. Livingston led me along the path to the first clump of bushes.
'She was here,' he said.
I looked back at the roadway where we'd parked.
'How'd he see her?' I said.
Livingston made a face.
'Crows,' he said. 'Danny saw a bunch of crows flapping around and came up to see what was going on.'
