BLUE BLOOD RUNS COLD (A Michael Ross Novel Book 1) Page 2

  The meeting took place in the Planck Union building in a room that overlooked the new gym and the concert hall that sat beside it, and it began in shared misery. The end came at 9:02 when the club's president, Shannon Moore, vocalized her thoughts out loud. She had not intended for anyone to answer her question. She not even intended for anyone to take it seriously. What made her speak up, she could not have said. A momentary impulse drove her to speak. She knew no more than that.

  She said, “Are we going to do something about it?”

  The idea that they could do something—much less that they would do something—had never occurred to them. The more active members of the group had volunteered their time for the annual early November drag show, at the Halloween costume dance, and various other events. They organized free hug periods in which passersby could hug a member of the group, with no strings attached. None of them had ever challenged the administration. That idea was beyond comprehension. There had always been a hesitancy in their actions. They shied away from projects that appeared too controversial. They had always stayed within the realm of the safe, the secure, and the known.

  For the briefest of moments, everyone in the room who had come to talk about Jolanda, to come to terms with her sudden, unexpected death, considered that there were over seven thousand students on campus and only a handful of administrators. How many people would it take to bring the university's operations to a grinding halt? For every single student in the room had no doubt that the president not only did not listen, but made a point of ignoring students' concerns whenever possible.

  Zachary Tyler, a twenty-one-year-old senior who had already enrolled into a graduate program at Shippensburg, said, “We have to do something.”

  And thus it was decided by slow yet inexorable consent that, as one, the group would go down to the administrative building. They made no plans about what they would do, or what they would say. Some of them talked about staying until noon, then going together for lunch. Afterward, they would all go back to their respective classes. They did not imagine themselves as activists or crusaders for a specific cause. They merely wanted, for one day only, to have their voices heard, to have their concerns recognized, to have something done at last.

  It did not go unremarked that at 9:13 in the morning, twenty-one students walked together from the PUB across campus, chatting as they went. Most 8 a.m. classes lasted until 8:50. The next batch of classes started up at nine o'clock. During those times, students who had been stuck with the dreaded morning classes sleepwalked to class, often showing up late and in pajamas. What mingling did take place on cold mornings when the wind blew stronger than usual took place between 9 and 10. This was when students went to the PUB to have made-to-order breakfast food and overpriced sushi prepared the previous day. Though students and faculty alike tried to arrange their schedules so as to have nothing to do on Friday, there were thousands of students remaining on campus, all of whom rapidly learned the news about Jolanda. Many were curious to see how badly the college would screw up this time.

  For this reason, students gathered outside Ravney Hall. Yellow caution tape had been erected around the building. The chains that normally prohibited vehicles from entering the small strip of road that sat in front of the dormitory had been taken down. Three large white trucks, all parked in a row, sat in front of the dorm, a sure sign that something had gone wrong. In the distance, the distinct wailing of police and ambulance sirens could be heard. This drew even more students, especially the TWLOHA group, who stopped on their way to the administrative building to watch the emergency vehicles pull in. The police officers and EMTs discovered then what the college students had known for a long time; there was an abundance of grass and a shortage of pavement. The vehicles rolled up onto the snow-covered grass. Two police officers wearing heavy black jackets and black woolen hats strode into the old dorm, their heavy boots thudding on the stone steps up to the third floor.

  There, they entered Jolanda's room. Except for the snow that had been dug out, everything had been left as it was. The two officers took pictures of the room, including the collapsed ceiling and the body lying there, motionless. Within five minutes, they came to the conclusion that foul play had not been involved in her death. Though the final judgment would rest with the coroner, who had to take into account whether she had been drugged or unduly influenced by the atmosphere around her in a way that affected her physical health, the officers saw no way that the ceiling could have been tampered with. A quick interview with the maintenance personnel who had discovered the body revealed that her door had been locked. Further interviews would be required to determine if she had entertained any guests, or if any work had been done to the roof in the last few months.

  The officers anticipated a difficult assignment, for all the residents on the third floor were already in the process of moving out to new locations. It was not known whether other parts of the roof would collapse as well. The priority was to evacuate the students as quickly as possible. The officers would have to interface with administrative personnel to track down the students; both of them anticipated that this might mean paperwork and official requests. Added to that was the fact that they could not be certain how many students would leave campus for the weekend, or had left after Jolanda's death but prior to their arrival. Writing it off as an accident appeared the safest, most expedient course.

  When the ambulance came shortly thereafter, Shannon Moore broke down crying. She did not want to cry, for she feared that tears might freeze on her cheeks. Yet something inside her had broken. She remembered going with Jolanda to milkshake night every Wednesday at the local church just up the road from the university. Those milkshakes had always made Shannon sick, yet she had drank them because there had been laughter and good company during those nights. It never mattered to her that she had to take Pepto-Bismol medicine when she got back to her dorm room; what mattered was that she had been able to enjoy the company of people she enjoyed being with.

  Now, that company was gone, torn away from her without warning. There would be no more Wednesday night milkshakes, no more listening to Christian rock bands for which she had no interest. There would be no more Jolanda. Shannon considered then that an irreplaceable part of the world had been lost, and all too suddenly. There had been no reason behind it. Shannon had not even been able to say good-bye. That hurt more than anything else.

  She cried on Zachary's shoulder, who still felt a twinge of discomfort come over him. He felt uncomfortable when people got too close. He had never been able to express this to the group, even after three years of attendance. Hugging was expected there; Shannon was a person who hugged anyone at any time for any reason, often without even asking first. Zachary just endured it as best he could while two EMTs came through the open doorway.

  He reflected on the strangeness of it all. Every dorm on campus had to be entered by means of sliding an identification card through a scanner. Once inside the dorm, each room could be locked from the inside. Death had subverted the normal rules of privacy; a beeping sound went off from the doorway, indicating that the door had been left open too long. Jolanda's room—once her private, inviolate space—was now open to everyone who could pass by the hallway. She no longer had any secrets. In death, she could no longer hide anything, or prevent anyone from seeing her. The echoes of her existence had been placed in the hands of strangers she had never known.

  The crowd, which by then numbered over two hundred students, together walked towards the administrative building, which lay just beyond a hill a short distance from Ravney Hall. Once Shannon forced herself to stop crying, she remembered her original determination. She wanted to make her voice heard. This desire trumped her need to lay in bed and sleep, her need to be alone, her need to also be with friends who could comfort her. Somewhere inside her, unconsciously, she suspected that more deaths might follow if she did not do anything. Shippensburg University had been put in charge of Jolanda's safety, and it had failed.

 
4

  The chief of the campus police at Shippensburg, Theodore Kenny, knew that he was not respected on campus by the students or in the town by the local police. The students on campus saw the university police as a group of people whose job it was to hand out extremely expensive parking tickets and break up loud parties during the early evening hours. Shippensburg tried its best to be an alcohol-free school—a notion that it used for advertisement purposes as much as possible while ignoring the reality of students carrying around vodka in sprite bottles, or hiding six packs of beer in extra backpacks they used just for that purpose. No one questioned a student carrying around a backpack; that was only to be expected. As a result, no one inspected any student's backpack at all. Beer got around campus by the gallons, even while Chief Kenny did his best to uphold the rules that had been established on campus.

  More than that, the small, squat police station was a place where students paid their expensive fees to acquire parking passes when they could just as easily park a short distance away in town with the added inconvenience of walking into town every time they needed to drive somewhere. The police station had very limited evening and overnight shifts; students who lost their ID cards had to make do without it until the station opened up again and a replacement could be provided. This meant that the dining hall and the PUB had to keep records of students who had lost their cards and then charge those cards manually later, if that were possible.

  No one on campus had any reason to like the campus police, and every officer who worked on the force knew it.

  Despite having full investigative powers, the campus officers were not respected by the officers in town. There were no detectives on campus, no commissioners, and no internal affairs division. The campus police were seen as rent-a-cops carrying around fine books, earning a check for doing next to nothing. The fines that they did hand out, as often as not, were not paid until that student discovered a hold placed on his or her account that prevented registration for classes, dorm assignments, among other things. When there had been an incident of a gun going off on campus on the old soccer field, the university had been obliged to call in the state police. The student in question had brought his father's gun to college for a reason only he had known about. That had been three years ago. Ever since then, whenever Theodore encountered anyone from the local police, he received a cold aloofness that he knew came from a lack of respect. He could not be trusted to handle even a simple illegal possession charge. He was simply a glorified ticket-writer in the eyes of the officers who worked in the borough of Shippensburg.

  It did not surprise him, therefore, that when he got the call at 8:40 in the morning that a student had turned up dead, he had not been invited to survey the scene to determine if the incident should be put down as a possible homicide or as an accident. Despite having served for fifteen years as an officer for the Harrisburg City Police Department—a beat where homicide was not uncommon—all of that had been forgotten when it came time for the university to handle the situation. If his services would be required, he would be asked by someone directly. He decided that he would not force himself upon the scene just to get in a pissing match over jurisdiction. By rule, everything that happened on the campus fell under the jurisdiction of the campus police. In practice, the town police and the state police were called upon to deal with serious situations, rare as they were.

  When another call came in at 9:37 in the morning, he thought that he had finally been asked to weigh in upon the matter. The call came from the Office of Social Equity, which had two people and one intern, none of whom had ever made any significant difference on campus for as long as Theodore had been around. As far as he was concerned, the office had been created to placate some disadvantaged person or other and had not been abolished for reasons owing to the university's already poor public image. The people there softened the blows, instead of stopping blows from coming.

  The woman who ran the office, named Melinda Rumberger, was possessed of a smooth, calm voice that went up in pitch the more she felt provoked or panicked. That had been more often than Theodore had cared to admit, for he, unlike the other officers on campus, had often been invited to have discussions with the administrative staff about improving conditions at the university. From the first meeting, Theodore had suggested that Shippensburg break off from the PASSHE system and become, if not completely financially independent, then at least closer to being in control of their own destiny. The state government of Pennsylvania held the purse strings of the university; as such, bureaucrats and politicians alone decided how much money would be given out. That, he felt, was the root of all the problems which had plagued Shippensburg for the duration of his employment. He had received dull, blank stares from everyone gathered around the large table. When Theodore kept his head up through the long, drawn-out silence, the administrators in the room looked away, or focused on the food they had brought with them. This had especially been the case for Dr. Rumberger, who turned her entire body away from him as though she didn't want to listen to anything he had to say.

  After that sunny day in late September, he continued to attend the meetings out of courtesy. He never ventured an opinion, and always spoke as briefly as possible when called upon. Though he never allowed his irritation to creep into his manner or his tone of voice, it always came to the surface whenever he had anything to do with the administrators. He cleared his throat and picked up the phone on the third ring, looking at the unique four digits at the end of the telephone number on his caller ID that identified the office from which the call originated.

  A shrill voice came over on the line, one which was deliberately lowered in volume. Melinda said, “Hello, is this the police station?”

  “Good morning, this is Chief Kenny speaking, how can I help you?”

  A heavy, relieved sigh, then the rustling of papers. “Chief Kenny, thank god. I didn't know who else to call. Everyone is away in an emergency meeting.”

  Theodore called upon his eighteen years of experience upholding the law then. He had pulled drunks by the arm into the station who promptly puked all over the floor. He had reported to accident scenes where mangled, still living bodies had to be carried off on stretchers while passing cars slowed down to get a glimpse of the mayhem. He had raided chop shops and drug labs, each time chasing people who ran. People always ran. He had answered the call for highway chases that ended up filmed by helicopter crews, later to be released on television shows. He had also filled out a mountain of paperwork, both physical and digital, which had by turns stressed him out and exhausted him. By comparison, the concerns of college life, secluded as they were from the rest of world, always struck him as petty, even unimportant. That allowed him to be calm through everything the university threw at him, including a woman calling his office phone in the morning with urgent business.

  He said, “Calm down, Dr. Rumberger. What's the situation there?”

  She blurted out, “Students! Students! Hundreds of them! They're-they're-all at once!”

  Theodore pulled a notepad out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. He held the phone between his chin and his shoulder while he prepared to write. “What is your situation? Do you require assistance?”

  “Yes, I require assistance! I can't handle all of them at once! Oh god, now they're chanting things. They're chanting things, hundreds of them! Come at once, and send all the men you have!”

  She said the last sentence in a higher volume than any of the previous ones. For his part, Theodore could not see what might be wrong with hundreds of students gathering in a single location all at once. Such things happened all the time—at events, at concerts, at the homecoming football game. The only concern that he'd ever had at such events was that students would drink too much alcohol.

  He said, “I'll come myself, and bring one other person with me. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, that-that should do. I just, I wouldn't know what to do if they all came storming in all at once.�
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  He thought, you'd probably have to get off your butt and do something for once. He said, “Yes, all right. Thank you for calling. I'll be there in five minutes.”

  5

  The meeting in the employee dining area had been far from productive. Lorraine had suspected that the discussion would devolve into recriminations, either real or imagined. She had permitted the Women's Center Director, Zoe Lupinski, to attend without having been invited. Throughout the meeting, Zoe looked pensive, worried. The woman didn't speak up, even though she had never hesitated to be vocal before. She had always been active and vibrant whenever an event in any way related to feminism or women's rights was held. She worked sixty-two hours a week on a salaried pay scale. She stayed until ten o'clock at night some Saturdays just to be there personally for whatever enjoyment or enlightenment she hoped to impart to the student body. Today, sitting in front of so many people in suits, many of whom she knew on a first-name basis, she sat in place, biting her bottom lip. Lorraine had never seen the woman so out of sorts before.

  She wanted to ask Zoe's opinion when the meeting abruptly came to an end. The hour that she had allotted for the meeting had come and gone. The president of Shippensburg University knew at once that nothing had come of the meeting. No one had offered any real, tangible solutions. She stood up in her chair, an action that evoked quick, frightened reactions from the administrators present, who hid their emotions at once behind stony, impassive expressions.

  She said, “Gentlemen, ladies, I'm afraid we can't stay here forever talking about what we must do. The business of the day must carry on. Those of you who had planned to leave in the early afternoon today, well, I'm afraid you might be staying a bit longer than you anticipated. We have a dead student on campus, and Ravney Hall might end up being condemned. I'm afraid that all your other business must be put to one side while we handle this as best we can. Some of you may be getting calls from the press, from parents, or from the Price family. I don't think I have to advise you as to what you have to do today and in the coming weeks. You're all professionals. You all know your jobs. You've been doing the best you can with bad situation after bad situation. Well, here's another one. We'll just have to work hard and get through it.”