Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

"Come by the office later this afternoon, and I'll get some of their geniuses over here. Five o'clock?"

"Make it the Crowne Plaza garage. I'm being watched, and I want it known that I am not alone in this and we have a veritable righteous army at our disposal. They can scare me off, but twenty more just like me will pick up the baton."

Dunphy took this seriously. "The campaign can't afford twenty more like you, Don, but I take your point."

I ate half my Cobb salad, then had to get up and get going. I drove out to Schenectady on Route 5, assuming I was being followed but not caring overly much. I returned the rental car and picked up my Toyota with its shiny new tires.

The tab came to $712 for the tires, towing, and so on, an unanticipated expenditure for donors to the Shy McCloskey gubernatorial campaign. It was up to me—and maybe only me?—to see that they got their money's worth.

Heading back to Albany on the interstate, I took the Washington Avenue SUNY exit and made my way to the administration building that housed the public information office. No one seemed to be following me. I checked the skies overhead for miniature drone aircraft with cameras but didn't spot any.

I identified myself to the department receptionist and said,

"I'd like to talk to Ms. Blessing, if I may. It has to do with the death of a student five years ago."

She nodded sympathetically. "I'll check with Millie. People are coming from BBC America to interview her, but they haven't shown up yet."

"I'll try to be quick."

119

Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

I was soon ushered into an office like Paul Podolski's—

spare design, functional gizmos, bookish clutter—except three times the size of his and with a couch. A window looked out on the spot half the length of a rugby field away where Greg Stiver had fallen to his death.

Millicent Blessing, stylish and fiftyish, with a ready smile and a firm round bottom, offered her hand and said, "I'll be happy to talk to you, Mr. Strachey, but it's really the lawyers who the McTavishes should be in touch with. At this point, we're all at the mercy of Chilton, Quarrels and whatever they might work out with the McTavishes' law firm. Or is that who you're representing?"

"Who are the McTavishes? What's their involvement? I'm confused."

"Oh. Gail said death of a student. Is this about something else?"

I took a seat, as did Blessing, now looking a bit tentative about my presence.

"I'm making some inquiries for a client about graduate student Gregory Stiver's suicide five years ago. I understand you were here at the time."

The smile melted away and Blessing may actually have blanched. "Oh yes, I remember that. It was horrible. I was thinking of another death on campus. One more recent—a binge drinking tragedy. But, yes, Gregory Stiver. That one was heartbreaking, just heartbreaking."

"Greg was about to receive his master's degree. All that achievement, and then he jumped to his death. From that building just over there, I understand. The Quad Four tower."

120

Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

She blinked back tears. "That's right. The awful thing is....

It's hard to talk about this, but the terrible thing is, I was here in the office at the time sitting right at my desk where I am now. And if I had looked out the window a few seconds later than I did, I might actually have seen Gregory fall. I think—I'm saying I think—I noticed him on the roof before he jumped off of it. But I didn't make anything of it. I suppose I just assumed it was university maintenance people up there.

Then a couple of minutes later there were security staff and the police and the ambulance, and that's when I went down there. I saw that boy's broken body. It was a sight I'll never forget. It was devastating, just devastating."

"You said you might have seen what might have been maintenance people on the roof. People, plural. Not just Greg?"

"Maybe. I don't really know. There was so much confusion at the time, I wasn't really sure what I saw or when I saw it. I thought about it afterward, trying to remember. But I do have this image in my head that I can't get rid of, of two people on the Quad Four roof before the thing happened. That's all it is, just a kind of blurry image, like a picture that's out of focus."

"In your image, what were the two people doing?"

She sighed. "God, I wish I knew. Nothing. Just standing or—I don't know. Working on the roof? Of course, maybe I just imagined I saw anything at all. I told the police detective about what I thought I remembered, and he said nobody else had reported seeing anything similar. He said it seemed as though it was just Gregory on the roof, because his backpack was up there and his cell phone. And of course if anybody 121

Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

else was there at the time, presumably they would have tried to stop Gregory from jumping, and then they would have reported whatever they knew about the whole hideous situation."

"Do you remember the police detective's name?"

"I don't, really. He was a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness. Rather emotionless. I remember thinking he wasn't just stoic but rather cold."

"Could it have been Detective Ivor Nichols?"

"Oh. I think it was. Ivor is an unusual name for an Albany police officer."

"He was the investigating officer. I can't ask him about his own recollections because Detective Nichols died a couple of weeks ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Was his passing work-related?"

"Lung cancer."

"So not work-related, exactly. Though you have to wonder how much cancer is triggered by stress."

"Or the nicotine and tar a lot of people still employ to cope with stress."

"I smoked in college. Nicotine is such a powerful drug. I can't say I think about it much anymore. But if there's an afterlife and smoking is allowed, I'd be tempted to take it up again. What harm would there be in it at that point?"

"Sounds awfully good to me. How much," I asked, "did you know about Greg Stiver's personal life? Apparently it had been stressful in the months before his death."

"I knew very little. The police looked into that. Apparently friends of Gregory talked about job-hunting difficulties. I 122

Red White and Black and Blue

by Richard Stevenson

know he was gay, but there was no evidence that he was bullied or anything like that. Nothing that I heard about, or that the police mentioned. And there was a suicide note, the police said."

"Yes. Although I don't know where that note is today.

Three people saw it, and where it went after that is unclear."

"Why, may I ask, are you looking into Greg's death five years after it happened? Does this have something to do with insurance? There were no legal complications at the time involving the university. The stairwell door had been left unlocked, but no one at the time made anything of that at all.

If someone is determined to jump from a high place, they can easily find somewhere to do it."

"There are some lingering questions about a relationship Greg was in and whether or not its abusive nature contributed to his taking his own life."