Part Two
December 1965
Chapter 7
The students tumbled out of Travis High in hundreds, some to walk short distances to their homes in the Hollow, some to board dozens of school buses lined up along Twentieth and around the corners into Paine. In the old days they would simply have gone to any bus serving their particular destination, but ever since the advent of the Connecticut Monster each student was given a particular bus, emblazoned by a number. The driver was provided with a list of names and was under orders not to move until every student was aboard. So careful had the administration of Travis become that an absent student’s name was erased from the day’s list before it was given to the driver. Going to school was not such a problem; what everyone feared was going home.
Travis was the biggest public high school in Holloman, its intake spreading from the Hollow to the northern outskirts of the city on this western side. The majority of the students were black, but not by many, and while there were occasional racial problems there, the bulk of the students mixed and mingled according to their personal affinities. So while the Black Brigade had its supporters at Travis High, various churches and societies did too, as well as those individuals who trod a midline of reasonable grades and no trouble. Any teacher on the staff would have said that hormones caused more problems than race.
Though it was the Catholic high schools under strictest police attention, Travis hadn’t been neglected. When Francine Murray, a sixteen-year-old sophomore who lived out in the Valley, failed to board her bus, its driver climbed out and ran to the Holloman squad car parked on the sidewalk near the front gates. Within moments a controlled chaos reigned; buses were pulled over as uniformed men asked if Francine Murray was a passenger, others asked for Francine’s friends to come forward, and Carmine Delmonico was racing to Travis High with Corey and Abe.
Not that he forgot the Hug. Before the Ford took off he gave Marciano instructions to make sure that everyone at the Hug was present and accounted for. “I know we can’t afford to send a car there, so call Miss Dupre and tell her from me that I want every last one of them tagged down to visits to the john. You can trust her, Danny, but don’t tell her more than you have to.”
Having searched the vast and rambling school from attics to gymnasiums, the teachers were huddled in the yard while Derek Daiman, the highly respected black principal, paced up and down. Squad cars were still arriving as other schools were pronounced free of missing students, their contingents of cops dispersing to question everybody they could see, search Travis all over again, round up milling students dying of curiosity.
“Her name is Francine Murray,” said Mr. Daiman to Carmine. “She ought to have been on that bus over there” – he pointed – “but she didn’t turn up. She was present for her last period, Chemistry, and as far as I can ascertain, she left the building with a group of friends. They scatter once they’re in the yard, depending which bus they’re on or if they’re walking – Lieutenant Delmonico, this is terrible, terrible!”
“Getting upset won’t help her or us, Mr. Daiman,” Carmine said. “The most important thing is, what does Francine look like?”
“Like the missing girls,” Daiman said, beginning to weep. “So pretty! So popular! A grades, never any trouble, a great example to her fellow students.”
“Is she of Caribbean origin, sir?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the principal said, wiping his eyes. “I guess that’s why we didn’t
“Mr. Daiman, are you trying to say that one of Francine’s parents is black and the other white?” Carmine asked.
“I believe so, yes, I believe so.”
Abe and Corey had gone to talk to the uniforms, tell them to search each bus and then get it on its way, but keep Francine’s friends in a group until they could be interviewed.
“You’re sure she’s not in the school somewhere?” Carmine asked Sergeant O’Brien when he led his cops and teacher guides out of the enormous building.
“Lieutenant, she is not inside, I swear. We opened every closet, looked under every desk, in every rest room, the cafeteria, the gyms, the classrooms, the assembly room, storage rooms, the furnace room, attics, the science labs, janitor’s room – every goddamn corner,” O’Brien said, sweating.
“Who saw her last?” Carmine asked the teachers, some in tears, all shaking with shock.
“She walked out of my classroom with her friends,” said Miss Corwyn of Chemistry. “I stayed behind to straighten up, I didn’t follow them. Oh, I wish I had!”
“Don’t castigate yourself, ma’am, you weren’t to know,” said Carmine, assessing the others. “Anyone else see her?”
No, no one had. And no, no one had seen any strangers.
He’s done it again, thought Carmine, walking up to the knot of frightened young people who had claimed friendship with Francine Murray. He’s snatched her away without a soul’s seeing him. It’s sixty-two days since Mercedes Alvarez disappeared, we’ve been on our toes, warned people, showed photos of the kind of girl he targets, tightened up on school security, thrown all our resources into this. We ought to have caught him! So what does he do? He lulls us into certainty that the Caribbean is a mandatory part of his obsessions, then switches to a different ethnic group. And I put Danny Marciano down for suggesting it. Oh, Travis, of all places! An ant heap! Fifteen hundred students! Half of this city thinks of Travis as a training ground for hoods, punks and low life, forgetting that it’s also a place where whole bunches of decent kids, black and white, get a pretty good education.
Francine’s best friend was a black girl named Kimmy Wilson.
“She was with us when we came out of Chemistry, sir,” Kimmy said through sniffles.
“You’re all in Chemistry?”
“Yes, sir, we’re all planning pre-med.”
“Go on, Kimmy.”
“I thought she’d gone to the rest room. Francine has a weak bladder, she’s always going to the rest room. I didn’t think about it because I know what she’s like. I didn’t think!” The tears gushed. “Oh, why didn’t I go with her?”
“Do you travel on the same bus, Kimmy?”
“Yes, sir.” Kimmy made a huge effort to master her feelings. “We both live on Whitney out in the Valley.” She pointed at two weeping white girls. “So do Charlene and Roxanne. None of us thought about her until the bus driver called the roll and she didn’t answer.”
“Do you know your bus driver?”
“Not her name, sir, not today’s. I know her face.”
By five o’clock Travis High was deserted. Having combed it and the neighborhood, the police cordon was spreading ever outward while word ran through the Hollow that the Connecticut Monster had struck again. Not a spic. A genuine black girl. While Carmine was on his way to the Murray house, Mohammed el Nesr, informed by Wesley le Clerc, was calling his troops together.
Halfway to the Valley the Ford pulled up at a phone booth and Carmine talked to Danny Marciano without the annoyances of a car radio; some of the press could tune into that, and it was noisy into the bargain.
“No absentees at the Hug, Danny?”
“Only Cecil Potter and Otis Green, who’d already finished for the day. Both of them were at home when Miss
