Phi Beta Murder (5 page)

After Campbell’s statistics class,
they drove along the Arlington Expressway to the Regency Square Mall, where they ate a quick lunch. Rex bought his son a few items of clothing, along with a set of microwave-proof dishware, a new feather pillow, and a clock radio. Campbell had complained of occasionally sleeping through his old alarm clock, which Rex didn’t find surprising in view of the general racket in the dorms. He also insisted on buying his son a bottle of multivitamins and a stock of Florida orange juice.

It was the first time he had taken Campbell on a shopping spree, unless he counted the purchase of school uniforms and stationery at the beginning of term. Campbell’s mother and, after her death, his grandmother had fulfilled that role before his son left for college.

“What made you get me all this stuff?” Campbell asked as they loaded the provisions in the back of the SUV.

“I thought it might cheer you up.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Campbell gave him a quick hug in the parking lot and drove them back to the campus, looking much perkier.

As they were putting the last of the stuff away in the room, Justin knocked on the door, which Campbell had jammed open with a stopper. “Dix’s parents are here,” he announced in a fluster. “They’d like to see you, Mr. Graves.”

“Me? Do you know why?”

“I think because you were first on the scene yesterday evening and they want to thank you.”

Rex felt his face suffuse with blood. His palms went moist. He didn’t want to meet the grieving parents, especially to be thanked for something that any reasonable person would do; worse still, when he had not been able to save the boy. All the same, he did not see how he could refuse. “Where can I find Mr. and Mrs. Clark?”

“In Dix’s room.”

The three of them traipsed down the steps to the second floor, and Rex and Campbell approached #216 in the middle of the corridor. The doorframe had been repaired. When he knocked, a good-looking man with a weathered face opened the door. Rex cleared his throat and held out his hand. “I’m Rex Graves. This is my son Campbell.”

“Keith Clark. My wife Katherine. Please come in.”

Mrs. Clark, who sat on her son’s bed clasping the Easter bunny, murmured an effortful greeting. An empty cardboard box stood on the floor by her feet.

“Please sit down,” Keith Clark invited, taking the computer chair at his son’s desk.

The remaining option was the rigid-looking futon in burgundy denim, which Rex and Campbell settled onto as comfortably as the poorly padded sofa allowed.

“We understand you tried to help our son.”

“I wish there was more I could have done. I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Clark dismissed the apology with a flutter of his hand. “We’re still trying to make sense of what happened. The medical examiner said the cause of death was asphyxia by hanging. The police ruled our son’s death a suicide. There’s no note, but they found instructions downloaded from the Internet on how to kill yourself.”

“Where were those found?”

“Here on the desk. They’re from a Goth website called Necrophacts.com, which is all about death and which lists, quite graphically, the easiest ways to commit suicide.”

“We feel we must have done something wrong along the way,” Mrs. Clark murmured, momentarily closing her eyes while she composed herself. She shook back her sun-streaked hair, which looked as though it had not seen a brush since the previous morning. Rex’s heart went out to her. “And yet he seemed quite cheerful over Spring Break, didn’t he, Keith? He was out catching up with high school friends who were also home from college.”

Rex remembered how Campbell had done the same thing over his Christmas vacation.

“I didn’t notice anything was wrong,” she continued in a monotone, twisting the knitted bunny in her hands. “We sat up late one night talking in the kitchen, just like old times when he lived at home.”

“The dean of students told us that one out of every 7,500 to ten thousand college students takes his or her life each year in the States,” Mr. Clark interjected. “As if it might be a comfort for us to know that our son is a statistic!”

“I suppose he was stressing the importance of not blaming yourselves,” Rex ventured.

“How can we not? Did you know our son well?” Mr. Clark asked Campbell.

“Not very well, sir. We played on the same soccer team. And he was in my computer science class last year. We worked on an assignment together.” Campbell seemed instinctively to understand that the Clarks would be glad of even the smallest detail regarding their son. “Everybody I knew liked him.”

Mr. Clark smiled in gratitude at Campbell. “So is your dad here in Florida on a visit?”

“He came over from Scotland for the week. We’re hoping to visit the Keys next weekend before he leaves.”

“Do you like sailing?”

“Aye,” Campbell replied. “And fishing.”

“Where are you staying?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“We have a beach cottage in Islamorada. Dix loved it.” Keith Clark smiled sadly and turned to Rex. “I read an account of the Swanmere Murders in England in some magazine. When Justin told me a Scotsman by the name of Rex Graves had broken down Dix’s door, I guessed you might be the barrister who solved that case. Is detective work something you do often?”

“I was involved in another case in the Caribbean just last summer. An acquaintance asked me to look into the disappearance of the French actress Sabine Durand.”

Mr. Clark nodded thoughtfully. He hesitated. “I wonder if we might ask a favor of you.”

“Go ahead.”

“We feel there are some loose ends in our son’s death, but we’re flying back home after the memorial service on Wednesday, and I don’t think we’d know where to start searching for answers if we stayed. You seem like the right person to look into things for us. I know it’s a big imposition on your time …” He looked ashamed to ask, and Rex knew he had to be desperate.

“You feel there are unanswered questions,” Rex restated.

“The whole thing just seems so quickly disposed of,” Mrs. Clark said through fresh tears. “I can understand that the university wants to sweep this under the rug with minimum upset to the other students, but we need to feel easy in our minds that what happened to Dix could not happen to someone else’s child.”

“Do you suspect the university is at fault somehow?” Rex asked gently.

“Show them the letter, Katherine,” her husband urged.

She reached into her bag and drew out a couple of sheets of paper. “If Hilliard is in any way responsible for my son’s suicide, I want to know!”

Her husband took the documents from her and handed them to Rex.

“Did you show these to the dean of students?” Rex asked after glancing at them.

“He said the college was looking into it.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” Mrs. Clark remarked.

Rex reread the ditty that someone had posted on StudentSpace.com under a thread entitled The Snitch.

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his stash in a bucket,

A student named Ray

Got framed one day

And the man from Nantucket said fuck-it.

Dixon was clearly the man from Nantucket, but who was Ray? He asked Campbell. His son shrugged in reply. And what did the “stash” refer to? Was Dixon involved in drugs?

“Has the ME performed a toxicology test yet?” Rex asked Keith Clark.

“The report showed traces of Xanax, which we knew about.”

Next, Rex perused the copy of a letter their son had sent to Hilliard University a month before, demanding that the StudentSpace website be shut down, or at least that all malicious references to him be deleted. “Campbell, didn’t you mention something about a website called StudentSpace.com?”

His son stiffened beside him on the futon. “It’s a site where students post gossip about their faculty and peers. It’s a place to vent and let off steam, but it’s become really ugly. There are accusations of students being gay or promiscuous and professors in AA, and stuff like that.”

“Dix was being harassed,” Keith Clark said.

“You’d think the university would want to shut it down,” Rex commented. “It’s hardly conducive to harmonious relations between students, and between students and staff.”

“The dean said it was almost impossible to track down the main culprits,” Mrs. Clark explained wearily. “He said a social website similar to StudentSpace.com started at Harvard. He went on about Hilliard being a liberal college and freedom of expression and blah-blah-blah. I told him that if the website was responsible for my son’s death I would sue Hilliard for negligent failure to intervene and prevent it. Dr. Binkley said the college never received a copy of that letter.” Katherine’s taut expression suggested she didn’t believe it for a moment.

“You think the dean might be lying,” Rex said with a sympathetic nod.

“I think it’s a big cover-up.”

“We’re not saying there might not have been contributing factors,” Mr. Clark clarified. “Just that this website may have pushed Dix over the edge, if he was already in a delicate frame of mind. I mean, that’s a pretty vicious poem someone wrote accusing our son of abusing drugs—if I’m reading it right.”

His wife let out a shuddering breath. “We knew about the Xanax. Dix said it was for anxiety. The pressure of his studies was getting to him and he was falling behind in math. He took Xanax before his SATs and then quit afterward with no ill effects, so we weren’t too concerned. When I found that poem and the copy of the letter he wrote to the college in his bedroom at home after he left, I knew there was more to it. I’ve been wondering if he meant to show them to us and then changed his mind.”

“I guess what we’re asking of you is that you find out what you can and maybe let us know our best course of action,” Clark told Rex. “If, of course, you agree to help us.”

“As you know, I am not able to act in any legal capacity since I’m not licensed to practice law in this country,” Rex cautioned.

“We realize that. But you’d know what questions to ask, and Campbell has inside knowledge of what goes on here on campus.”

Rex glanced over at Campbell, and his son nodded, indicating his willingness to help.

“I’m here until the end of the week. I’ll give it my best shot,” Rex promised.

“As to compensation …”

“Not necessary. As a parent myself, I feel I have a stake in this too.”

“Well, at least let us give you the loan of our cottage in the Keys. There’s a small fishing boat you can use, and a couple of kayaks …”

“Och, that seems like too much responsibility—”

“Dad,” Campbell objected. “I have my boater’s license.”

“It’s an eighteen-footer, center console with a ninety-horsepower motor. Campbell won’t have any problem with it. We have a beauty of a sail boat back home. This other one is just for dinking around.”

“This is very generous of you,” Rex said.

“Not at all. There’s a realty office across the road—Islamorada Vacation Homes. Ask for Donna. She keeps a spare key for when our friends stay at the cottage. We’ll call her and let her know to expect you. The office is open every day until six.” Mr. Clark reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here’s my business card. Please call if you find out anything about what we discussed.” The card was inscribed with the words,
Clark & Associates. Architects
. “The memorial service will be held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Wednesday at four. We’ll be returning home afterward.”

“With our son’s body,” Mrs. Clark added, crumpling onto Dixon’s bed and hugging his pillow to her face. “This still smells of Dix,” she sobbed into it.

Rex worried what impact this might be having on Campbell. He was distracted by a knock at the door. Mr. Clark, who had risen to go to his wife, opened it. A young girl with an arresting face and long, caramel-colored hair flew over to Mrs. Clark and knelt down by the bed to console her.

“Our daughter Melodie,” Mr. Clark said. “She’s a freshman at BU.”

“We won’t impose on your grief any longer, Mr. Clark,” Rex said, getting to his feet. He turned toward his son who was staring at Melodie with a look of awe and compassion. “Campbell.”