A Faint Cold Fear

TUESDAY

8

Lena stifled a yawn as she left the movie theater with Ethan. A few hours ago she had taken a Vicodin, and while it was doing very little to help the pain in her wrist, it was making her sleepy as hell.

“What are you thinking?” Ethan asked, a line most guys used when they wanted a woman to do all the talking.

“That this party had better pan out,” she told him, injecting a sense of threat into her voice.

“I hear you,” he said. “Did that cop do anything else?”

“No,” Lena replied, though her Caller ID had registered five calls from the station by the time she had gotten back from the coffeehouse. It was only a matter of time before Jeffrey came knocking on her door, and when he did, Lena would have to have some answers for him or suffer the consequences. She had decided during the movie that Chuck would not fire her on Jeffrey’s say-so, but there were worse things the fat fuck could do to her. Chuck loved holding things over Lena’s head, and—as bad as her job was now—he could make it even more miserable.

Ethan asked, “Did you like the movie?”

“Not really,” she told him, trying to think about what she would do if Andy’s friend did not come through. She would have to find some time during the day tomorrow to talk to Jill Rosen. Lena had called the woman’s service and left three messages, but the doctor had not phoned back. Lena had to know what Rosen had told Jeffrey. She had even scrounged around in the bottom of her closet and found that damn answering machine in case the doctor called her back tonight while she was gone.

Lena looked up at the sky, taking a deep breath to try to clear her mind. She needed somebody to talk this out with, but there was no one she could trust.

“Nice night,” Ethan said, probably thinking she was enjoying the stars. “Full moon.”

“It’s going to rain tomorrow,” she told him, clenching and unclenching her hand. A nasty bluish black bruise circled her wrist where Ethan had grabbed her, and Lena was pretty sure something was damaged. The bone ached when she held her hand to the side, and the swelling had made it difficult for her to button the cuff of her shirt. She had kept her wrist wrapped until Ethan had knocked on the door, but Lena would be damned if she’d let him know she was hurting.

The problem was, Lena did not get paid until next Monday. If she went to the emergency room for an X ray, the fifty-dollar co-pay her insurance required would wipe out her checking account. She figured that no bones were broken, because she could still move her hand. If it was still hurting Monday, Lena would do something about it then. She was right-handed anyway, and besides, she had lived with worse pain than this for longer than a couple of days. It was almost reassuring; a reminder that she was alive.

As if he could sense what she was thinking, Ethan asked, “How’s your wrist?”

“Fine.”

“I’m sorry I did that. I just”—he seemed to look for the right words—“I didn’t want you to leave.”

“Nice way to show it.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Whatever,” she mumbled. Somehow talking about it made her wrist throb more. Before she left her room, Lena had put another Vicodin and an eight-hundred-milligram Motrin in her pocket in case the pain got worse. While Ethan was looking at a group of kids in the student-union parking lot, she dry-swallowed the Motrin, coughing when it went down the wrong way.

Ethan asked, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she managed, patting her hand to her chest.

“Are you getting a cold?”

“No,” she answered, coughing again. “When does this party start?”

“It should be revving up about now.” He headed toward a path between two bushes. Lena knew that it was a shortcut through the forest to the dorms on the west side of the campus, but she didn’t want to walk it at night, even in full moonlight.

Ethan turned when she didn’t follow, saying, “This way is faster.”

For obvious reasons Lena was reluctant to follow anyone into a dark, secluded area. On the surface Ethan seemed to regret hurting her, but she had already discovered how mercurial his temper could be.

“Come on,” Ethan said, trying to joke. “You’re not still scared of me, are you?”

“Fuck you,” she said, forcing her feet to move. She tucked her hand into her back pocket, hoping it looked like a casual move. Her fingertips brushed against a four-inch pocketknife, and she felt safer knowing it was there.

He slowed down so he could walk beside her, asking, “Have you worked here long?”

“No.”

“How long?”

“A few months.”

“Do you like your job?”

“It’s a job.”

He seemed to get the message, walking on. He dropped back again a few minutes later, though. She could see the shadow of his face but not read his expression. He sounded sincere when he said, “I’m sorry you didn’t like the movie.”

“It’s not your fault,” Lena said, though he had chosen the subtitled French film.

“I thought you’d be into that kind of thing.”

She wondered if anyone in the history of the world had ever been more wrong. “If I want to read, I’ll get a book.”

“Do you read much?”

“Not much,” she said, though lately she had been sucked in by some of the sappy romances in the school library. Lena had taken to hiding the books behind the newspaper rack so no one would check them out before she finished them. She would slit her own throat before she let Nan Thomas find out what kind of trash she was reading.

“What about movies?” Ethan asked, undeterred. “What sorts of movies do you like?”

She tried not to sound too annoyed. “I don’t know, Ethan. The kinds that make sense.”

He finally got the message and shut up. Lena watched the ground, trying not to trip. She had opted for her cowboy boots tonight, and she wasn’t used to walking in a shoe that had a heel—even a low one. She was wearing jeans with a dark green button-down shirt and had put on a little eyeliner as a concession to going out in the real world. She had left her hair down just to tell Ethan what she thought of his opinion.

Ethan was in baggy jeans, but he was still wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt that covered his arms. Lena knew that it wasn’t the same shirt from before, because she could smell the laundry detergent on it with just a hint of what smelled like musk cologne. Industrial-looking steel-toed work boots completed the ensemble, and Lena thought if she lost him in the woods, she would be able to track him by the deep impression the soles left in the soil.

A few minutes later, they were in the clearing behind the men’s dorms. Grant Tech was pretty old-fashioned, and only one of the dorms was co-ed, but, this being a college, students had found a way around the rules, and everyone knew that Mike Burke, the professor in charge of the men’s dorms, was deaf as a post and not likely to hear girls sneaking in and out at all hours. Lena thought they must have stolen his hearing aids and thrown him into a closet tonight. The music coming from the building was so loud that the ground pulsed beneath her feet.

“Dr. Burke’s at his mother’s for the week,” Ethan explained, flashing a smile. “He left a number in case we need him.”

“This is your dorm?”

He nodded, walking toward the building.

She stopped him, raising her voice over the music to tell him, “Just treat me like your date in there, okay?”

“That’s what you are, right?”

She gave him a look that she hoped answered his question.

“Right.” He started walking again, and Lena followed.

She cringed at the noise as they got closer to the dorm, which had every light burning, including the ones in the dormer rooms upstairs that were restricted to the housemaster. The music was somewhere between a European dance-party mix and acid jazz with a little rap thrown in, and Lena felt like her ears would start bleeding at any moment from the high decibel level.

Lena asked, “Aren’t they worried about security coming?”

Ethan smiled at this, and Lena conceded the point with a frown. Most mornings when she showed up for work, whoever had been on the evening before was still in the cot in the back room, a blanket tucked under his chin and drool on the pillow from a long night’s sleep. She knew from the schedule that Fletcher was on duty tonight. Of all the night men, he was the worst. In the short time Lena had been at the college, Fletcher hadn’t noted one incident on his log. Of course, a lot of nighttime crimes either were unreported or went unnoticed under cover of darkness. Lena had read in an informational pamphlet that fewer than 5 percent of all women who were raped on college campuses reported their attacks to the police. She looked up at the dorm building, wondering if someone was being assaulted right now.

“Hey, Green!” A young man who was slightly taller and stockier than Ethan came up and pounded his fist into Ethan’s shoulder. Ethan returned the pounding and they exchanged a complicated handshake that called for everything but a do-si-do around the dance floor.

“Lena,” Ethan said, his voice straining to be heard over the music. “This is Paul.”

Lena tried her best smile, wondering if this was Andy Rosen’s friend.

Paul looked her up and down, as if to assess her fuckability. She did the same back, letting him know he did not meet her standards. He was pretty bland-looking in that way teenage boys can be when they’re trapped between adulthood and adolescence. He wore a yellow sun visor with the bill backward, a shock of close-cropped bleached-blond hair sticking up at the crown. He had a child’s pacifier and a bunch of charms that looked like they were from the Hello, Kitty collection hanging from a green metal chain around his neck. He saw her notice and put the pacifier in his mouth, smacking loudly.

“Yo,” Ethan said, punching Paul’s shoulder, acting a bit territorial. “Where’s Scooter?”

“Inside,” Paul said. “Probably trying to get them to stop playin’ this nigga shit.” He postured, throwing his hands around with the song.

Lena bristled at his use of the word but tried not to show it. She must not have done a good job, though, because Paul asked, “You down with the brothers?” in a heavy dialect that only a racist pig would use.

“Shut up, man,” Ethan said, punching him a lot harder than he had before. Paul laughed, but he fell back into a crowd of people walking toward the woods, catcalling racial slurs until he was far enough away for the music to drown out what he was saying.

Ethan’s fists were clenched, the muscles along his shoulders rippling under his shirt. “Fucking asshole,” he spit.

“Why don’t you just calm down?” Lena said, but her heart was thumping in her chest when Ethan turned to her. His anger pierced her like a laser, and she put her hand into her back pocket, touching the knife like a talisman.

Ethan said, “Don’t listen to him, okay? He’s an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Lena agreed, trying to diffuse the situation, “he is.”

Ethan gave her a rueful look, like it was very important for her to believe him, before heading toward the dorm.

The front door was open, a couple of students standing just inside. Lena could not tell what sex they were, but she imagined that if she hung around a couple of seconds more, she would see for herself. She walked past them, averting her eyes, trying to pin down a peculiar odor in the air. She knew the smell of pot well enough after working in a school for seven months, but this was nothing like that.

At the entrance a long central hallway with a stairway connected the three floors, with two perpendicular hallways branching off each side giving access to the rooms and the bathrooms. The dorm had the same layout as every other student dorm on campus. The unit Lena lived in was very similar, but for the fact that every room in the faculty dorm had a small suite with its own bathroom and a sitting area that doubled as a kitchenette. Here students were packed two to a room with communal bathrooms at the end of each hall.

The closer Ethan and Lena got to the end of one hallway, the better able she was to guess what at least two of the odors in the air were: piss and vomit.

“I just need to stop in here,” Ethan said, pausing outside a doorway that had a HAZARDOUS WASTE sticker on the outside. “Do you mind?”

“I’ll wait out here,” Lena told him, leaning against the wall.

He shrugged, sticking his key into the lock and jiggling the door so it would open. Lena did not know why he bothered to lock it. Most of the kids on campus knew that if you shook the knobs hard enough the doors popped open on their own. Half the thefts Lena was called out on showed no sign of forced entry.

“Right back,” he said before going in and closing the door.

She looked at the message board on the outside of his door as she waited. There was a corkboard on one half and a dry-erase board on the other. The cork had several notes thumbtacked to it that Lena was not curious enough to unfold and read. On the white board, someone had written, “Ethan gives good head” alongside a drawing that looked like a deformed monkey holding either a baseball bat or an erect penis in his three-fingered hand.

Lena sighed, wondering what the fuck she was doing here. Maybe she should just go to the station tomorrow and talk to Jeffrey. There had to be a way to convince him that she was not involved in this case. She should just go home right now, pour herself a drink, and try to get some sleep, so that when the morning came, her head would be clear and she could plan a course of action. Or maybe she should stay and talk to Andy’s friend, so that at least she had something to offer Jeffrey to show she was acting in good faith.

“Sorry,” Ethan said as he returned, looking much the same as he had when he went into the room. She wondered what he had been doing in there, but not enough to ask. He had probably assumed she would go into the room with him, where he could seduce her with his boyish charms. Lena hoped she did not look as dumb as he thought she was.

“Aw, crap,” he said, wiping the message board with the sleeve of his shirt. “That’s just the guys playing around.”

“Right,” she said, bored.

“Honest,” he persisted. “I stopped doing that in high school.”

Lena believed him for just a beat, then allowed a smile when she realized he was joking.

He walked down the hall, asking in a loud voice, “Do you like this song?”

“Of course not,” she told him, debating again whether to call this whole thing off. She could just get the kid’s name and let Jeffrey handle it tomorrow.

Ethan said, “What kind of music do you like?”

“The kind that doesn’t give you a headache,” she said. “Are we going to talk to this friend or not?”

“This way.” Ethan gestured toward the front stairs.

A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling above her as they walked into the main hall, and though Lena could hear only the music, she knew that the floor was creaking overhead.

Upstairs there would be a large central gathering room at the head of the stairs with a TV and tables for studying, not that it sounded like anyone was studying now. There would also be a community kitchen, but, judging from the other student dorms Lena had seen, probably all it contained was a hairy refrigerator, a microwave with the door stuck shut, and some vending machines. There were fewer rooms on the second floor, and even though these rooms were smaller, the second floor was more coveted. Having smelled the odor from the more often used bathrooms on the lower floor, Lena could hazard a guess as to why.

“This way,” Ethan yelled.

Lena followed him as they wound their way through the people sitting on the stairway. Not one of them looked older than fifteen, but they were all drinking a pink concoction that had enough alcohol in it for Lena to smell it as she walked by. She recognized the third odor in the house: hard liquor.

The upstairs hallway was more packed than the stairs, and Ethan gently took her hand so she would not get lost. Lena felt herself swallow at the sudden contact, and she glanced down at his hand in hers. He had long, delicate fingers, almost like a girl’s. His wrists were bony, too, and she could see the knobs sticking out just below the sleeve of his shirt. The room was so cramped and hot she couldn’t imagine how he stood the heat. No matter what Ethan hid under his sleeves, it couldn’t be worth sweating to death in a room filled with at least a hundred people, all of who were jumping up and down to the beat of what could only loosely be called music.

Suddenly the music stopped. The room groaned in unison, then laughed when the lights were turned off.

Lena’s heart jumped into her throat as strangers bumped into her. A man next to her whispered something, and a girl laughed loudly. Behind her another man pressed his body into Lena’s, and this time there was something more purposeful to the contact.

Somebody said, “Hey, let’s get the music back on!”

Another person answered, “Gimme a minute,” and a flashlight was turned on over by the corner as the DJ tried to get his shit together.

Lena’s eyes finally adjusted, and she could make out shapes of people all around her. She inched forward, and the man behind her followed like a shadow. He slid his hands up her waist and breathed “Hey” into her ear.

Lena froze.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said, rubbing against her.

Lena tried to say “Stop,” but the word caught in her throat. She lunged toward Ethan, wrapping her hands around his arm before she could restrain herself.

“What?” Ethan asked. Even in the dark, she could see him look behind her and get his answer. His muscles tensed, and he slammed his fist into the guy’s chest, hissing, “Asshole.”

The guy backed off, holding up his hands like it was a simple misunderstanding.

“It’s okay,” Ethan told Lena. He draped his arms around her, protecting her from the crowd. She should have pushed him away, but she needed a couple of seconds to calm her heart before it broke out through her ribs.

Without warning, the music started back up and black lights flicked on. The crowd cheered and started dancing again, their white T-shirts and teeth glowing purple under the light. Some started waving green and yellow glow sticks in front of one another. A few had small flashlights they used to shine in other people’s eyes.

“It’s a rave,” Lena said. At least, she thought she did. The music was so loud she could not hear her own voice. The crowd was rolling on Ecstasy, and the lights enhanced the experience. Paul’s pacifier made sense. He would use it to keep his teeth from chattering while he was rolling.

Over the music, Ethan yelled, “Come over here,” making her walk backward. She reached behind her, stopping when she felt a wall.

“You okay?” he asked, his face close to hers so she could hear him.

“Of course,” she said, pushing her hand to his chest to put some space between them. His body was as solid as the wall, and he did not move.

He brushed her hair back with his fingers. “I wish you had worn your hair back.”

“I didn’t have anything,” she lied.

He smiled, watching his fingers glide through her hair. “I could get you a rubber band or something.”

“No.”

Ethan dropped his hand, obviously disappointed. He changed the subject, offering, “You want me to go talk to that asshole again?”

“No,” she said, but part of her wanted him to—more than part of her, actually. She liked the idea of Ethan’s beating the shit out of the jerk who had rubbed up against her.

“All right,” Ethan said.

“I mean it,” Lena told him, knowing that it would be wrong to send Ethan after the guy. She said, “This is a rave. He probably assumed—”

“All right,” Ethan cut her off. “Stay here. I’ll go get us something to drink.”

He was gone before Lena could say anything else. She watched his back until he disappeared into the crowd, and she felt like some sort of pathetic schoolgirl. She was thirty-four, not fourteen, and she did not need some punk kid to fight her battles for her.

“Hey,” somebody said, bumping into her. A perky-looking brunette offered Lena a couple of green capsules, but Lena waved her off, bumping into someone else who was standing behind her.

“Sorry,” she said, stepping away and bumping into yet another person. The room started closing in on her, and Lena knew she would start screaming if she didn’t get the hell out soon.

She pushed her way through the throng of people and tried to get to the stairway, but the crowd moved against her like an undertow. The room was still dark, and she felt in front of her, using her hands to push people out of her way, until she could feel another wall underneath her palms. She turned around, guessing from the light on the other side of the room that she’d gone the wrong way. The stairs were on the opposite end.

“Dammit,” she cursed, feeling along the wall. Her hand found a doorknob, and she pushed the door open, blinking in the bright light. Her eyes adjusted to see a boy lying on his back in bed. He stared at Lena with a sly smile on his face while a blond girl went down on him. He motioned for her to join in, and she slammed the door, turning around and running into Ethan.

“Whoa,” he said, holding a cup of orange juice to the side so it would not spill.

The pitch of the music started to wind down, Lena guessed to help the ravers trip. No matter the cause, she almost said a prayer of thanks as her eardrums stopped hurting from the noise.

“I didn’t know what you wanted,” Ethan said, indicating the cup. “This has vodka in it. I made it myself to be sure.” He pulled a bottle of water out of the pocket of his baggy jeans. “Or you can have this.”

Lena looked at the cup, wanting a drink so bad her tongue curled in her mouth. “Water,” she said.

He nodded, as if she had passed a test. “I’ll be right back,” he said, setting the cup on a nearby table.

“You’re not going to drink it?” she asked.

“I’m going to get some juice. Wait right here so I can find you.”

Lena twisted off the top of the bottle of water, watching him go again. She took a long drink, keeping her eyes open so no one could surprise her. Half the kids on the dance floor were so wasted that the other half had to hold them up.

She found herself glancing over at the table where Ethan had left the vodka. Before she could change her mind, she went over and drank the entire cup in two quick swallows. The drink was nearly neat, with just a splash of orange juice for color. Her chest contracted as the vodka went down, a slow flame filling her esophagus, like swallowing a burning match.

Lena wiped her mouth with her hand, feeling pins and needles stab into her sore wrist. She tried to remember what time she’d taken the Vicodin. The movie had lasted at least two hours. Walking to the dorm had taken half an hour. How much time were you supposed to allow between dosages?

“Fuck it,” Lena said, taking the pill out of her pocket and popping it into her mouth. She looked around for something to wash it down with and saw a cup of the pink punch sitting on the table. She stared at the cup, wondering for a split second what was in it before she took a healthy gulp. The concoction tasted like vodka with just enough cherry Kool-Aid to give it its pink color. There was not much left in the cup, and Lena finished it off, banging the cup down on the table when she was done.

Lena waited three long breaths before the alcohol hit her. A few more seconds passed, and she looked around the room, feeling mellow but far from drunk. This was just a regular party with a bunch of harmless kids. She could do this. The alcohol had taken the edge off, just like she needed. The Vicodin would start working soon, and she would be feeling normal again.

The music changed to something slow and sensual, the beat lessening in her ears. Someone had apparently turned down the volume again, this time to an almost tolerable level.

Lena took another sip of water to wash the clingy feeling out of her mouth. She smacked her lips, looking around at the kids in the room. She laughed, thinking she was probably the oldest person here.

“What’s funny?” Ethan was standing beside her again. He had a bottle of unopened orange juice in his hand.

Lena shook her head, feeling a sudden dizziness. She needed to move, to walk off some of the effects of the alcohol. “Let’s find the friend.”

He gave her a funny look, and she flushed, wondering if he noticed the empty cups on the table.

“This way,” he said, trying to lead her.

“I can see,” she said, slapping away his hand.

He asked, “You like this music better?”

She nodded, nearly losing her balance. If Ethan noticed, he did not say anything. Instead he ushered her to one of the side hallways leading toward the dorm rooms. She could hear different music playing in each room, and some of the doors were open, revealing kids snorting coke or fucking like rabbits, depending on how many people were around.

She asked, “Is it always like this?”

“It’s because Dr. Burke’s gone,” he said, “but they do this sort of thing a lot.”

“I bet,” she said, glancing into another room, then wishing she had not.

“I’m usually at the library,” he said, though she thought he might be lying. Lena had never seen him there. Of course, the library was pretty big, and Ethan looked like the kind of guy who could easily blend in. Maybe he was there, though. Maybe he had been watching her all along.

He paused outside a door that was remarkable only for its lack of stickers and lewd notes.

“Yo, Scooter!” he shouted, rapping his knuckles on the wood.

Lena looked down at the hardwood floor, closing her eyes, trying to make her thoughts come together.

“Scoot?” Ethan repeated, banging the door with his fist. He knocked so hard that the door bent back at the top, showing a flash of light between itself and the jamb.

Ethan said, “Come on, Scooter. Open up, you stupid fucker. I know you’re in there.”

Lena could not hear much going on behind the door, but she gathered that someone was moving around. Several more minutes passed before the door opened, and a wave of the worst body odor she had smelled in her life hit them like a warm bucket of shit.

“Jesus,” she said, putting her hand to her nose.

“That’s Scooter,” Ethan said, as if it explained the smell.

Lena breathed through her mouth, trying to adjust. “Stinky” would have been a more appropriate nickname.

She said, “Hey,” trying not to gag.

Scooter was remarkable in his differentness. Where most of the boys Lena had seen so far had tightly cropped hair and wore baggy jeans and T-shirts, Scooter had long black hair and wore a pastel blue tank top and bright orange Hawaiian shorts. His left bicep had a yellow rubber tourniquet around it, the upper half of his arm bulging from the compression.

“Aw, man,” Ethan said, picking at the tourniquet. “Come on.” The rubber snapped off Scooter’s arm and flew back into the room.

“Shit, man,” Scooter groaned. He stood blocking the doorway, but completely without menace. “She’s a goddamn cop. What’s a cop doing here, man? Why’d you bring a cop to my pad?”

“Move,” Ethan said, gently pushing him back into the room.

“Am I gonna be arrested?” he asked. “Hold on, man.” He went to the floor, looking for the tourniquet. “Hold on and lemme do this hit first.”

“Stand up,” Ethan said, pulling Scooter up by the band of his shorts. “Come on, she’s not going to arrest you.”

“I can’t go to jail, man.”

“She’s not taking you to jail,” Ethan said, his voice loud in the small room.

“Yeah, all right,” Scooter said, letting Ethan help him up. Scooter put his hand to his neck, and Lena noticed that he was wearing a yellow chain much like the one Paul, Ethan’s friend from before, had been wearing. Scooter’s was missing the pacifier and had what looked like a key collection, tiny little skeleton keys of the sort that came with a teenage girl’s diary.

“Sit down, man,” Ethan said, pushing him onto the bed.

“Yeah, all right,” Scooter said, as if he did not realize he was already sitting.

Lena stood just inside the doorway, still breathing through her mouth. An air-conditioning unit was stuck in the window, but Scooter had not turned it on. Addicts usually liked to stay cool so the drug did not sweat out too fast, but from the smell of him, Lena imagined there was enough grease on Scooter’s body to clog every last one of his pores.

The room was pretty much like all the others: longer than it was wide, with a bed, a desk, and a closet on each side. There were two large windows opposite the door, their panes fogged with grime. Stacks of books and papers lined the floor, take-out cartons and empty beer cans resting on top of them. There was a strip of blue tape down the center of the room, probably to divide the space. She wondered how Scooter’s roommate felt about the smell.

A small refrigerator served as a bedside table near the bed Scooter now occupied. His roommate had gone with a more traditional small slab of plywood on two stacks of concrete blocks. He had probably stolen the blocks from the construction site over near the cafeteria. Kevin Blake had just sent out a memo two weeks ago asking Chuck to track down the missing blocks because the construction company was going to charge to replace them.

“It’s okay,” Ethan said, waving her into the room. “He’s totally gorked.”

“I can see that,” Lena said, but she didn’t move from the open doorway. Scooter was bigger than Ethan in every way: taller, stronger. She hooked her thumb in her back pocket, feeling the knife.

Ethan sat by Scooter on the bed, saying, “He won’t talk to you if you leave the door open.”

Lena debated the risks and decided she would be okay. She walked in and shut the door without turning away from them. “He doesn’t look like he can talk— period,” she said. She started to sit on the bed opposite Scooter but stopped herself as she remembered the kinds of things that were going on in the other rooms.

“I don’t blame you, man,” Scooter said, laughing in short barks, like a seal.

She looked around the room, thinking there was enough drug paraphernalia in here to stock a pharmacy. Two syringes lay on a small stool by the bed. A spoon with residue sat beside them, and a small bag of what looked like large pieces of salt. They had interrupted Scooter in the process of preparing Ice, the most potent form of methamphetamine. The junk was so pure that he did not even need to filter it.

“What a fucking idiot,” Lena said. Even her uncle Hank, a speed freak of the highest order, had never screwed around with Ice. It was too dangerous.

She told Ethan, “I don’t see the point to this.”

“He was Andy’s best friend,” Ethan said.

On hearing Andy’s name, Scooter burst into tears. He cried like a girl, open and unashamed. Lena was torn between being disgusted and being fascinated by his reaction. Oddly enough, Ethan seemed to share her feelings.

“Come on, Scoot, straighten up,” he said, pushing the other boy off him. “Jesus Christ, what are you, a faggot?”

He glanced at Lena, probably remembering at the last minute that Lena’s sister had been gay. Lena looked at her watch. She had wasted her entire night trying to talk to this stupid kid, and she was not going to give up now. She kicked the bed so hard that both boys jumped.

“Scooter,” Lena said. “Listen up.”

He nodded.

“You were friends with Andy?”

He nodded again.

“Was Andy depressed?”

He nodded again. Lena sighed, knowing she shouldn’t have kicked the bed. He felt threatened now and would not talk.

She nodded toward the refrigerator. “Do you keep anything in there to drink?”

“Oh, yeah, man.” Scooter jumped up, as if to say, Where are my manners. He swayed before he got his balance and opened the small refrigerator. Lena saw several bottles of beer and what looked like a plastic liter bottle of off-brand vodka. Between that and the drugs, she wondered how Scooter kept from getting kicked out of college.

Scooter began, “I got some beer and some—”

“Here,” Lena said, pushing him out of the way. Maybe if she had one more drink, she’d feel more in control of herself.

“Glasses?” she asked.

Scooter reached under the bed and pulled out two plastic cups that had seen better days. Lena uprighted them on top of the fridge and took the orange juice Ethan offered. The bottle was small. There would not be much to drink for all three of them.

“None for me,” Ethan said, studying her like she was one of his textbooks.

Lena did not look at him as she mixed the drink, pouring half the orange juice into one of the cups, then spilling in a little vodka. She kept the bottle of juice for herself, filling it to the top with the clear alcohol. She put her thumb over the opening and shook the bottle to mix everything, still feeling Ethan’s eyes on her.

She sat on the opposite bed before she remembered she did not want to and stared at Scooter as he sipped his drink.

“This is good, man,” he said. “Thanks.”

Lena held the juice bottle in her lap, not taking a drink. She wanted to see how long she could last. Maybe she would not drink it after all. Maybe she would just hold it in her hand so that Scooter felt comfortable talking to her. She knew that the first thing you should do in an interview is establish a rapport. With addicts like Scooter, the easiest way to that end was to make him think she had a problem herself.

“Andy,” Lena finally said, conscious of how dry her mouth felt.

“Yeah.” Scooter nodded slowly. “He was a good kid.”

Lena remembered what Richard Carter had said. “I heard he could be a jerk.”

“Yeah, well, whoever told you that is an asshole,” Scooter shot back.

He was right, but Lena kept this information to herself. “Tell me about him. Tell me about Andy.”

Scooter leaned against the wall and flipped his long hair back out of his eyes. He had a startling array of pimples across his cheeks. Lena could have told him that cutting his hair, or at the very least keeping it clean, would have gone a long way toward clearing that up, but she had other things to talk about right now.

She asked, “Was he seeing anybody?”

“Who, Andy?” Scooter shook his head. “Not for a long time.” He held out his cup, expecting a top-off. Lena stared at him, not wanting to share.

She said, “Talk to me first, and then we’ll get you some more.”

“I need a hit, man,” he said, reaching toward the needles on the fridge.

“Back off a second,” Ethan told him, pushing him away. “You said you’d talk to her and you’re gonna, remember? You said you’d tell her what she wanted to know.”

“I did?” Scooter asked, looking confused. He glanced at Lena, and she nodded her confirmation.

“Yeah, buddy,” Ethan said. “You did. You promised because you want to help Andy.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scooter agreed, nodding his head. His hair was so filthy it didn’t move.

Ethan gave Lena a sharp look. “See what this shit does to your brain?”

Lena ignored him, asking Scooter, “Was Andy seeing anyone?”

Scooter giggled. “Yeah, but she wasn’t seeing him.”

“Who?” Lena asked.

“Ellen, man. Ellen from his art class.”

“Schaffer?” Ethan clarified, and the name didn’t seem to sit well with him.

“Yeah, man, she’s so fucking hot. You know what I mean?” Scooter elbowed Ethan suggestively. “So damn fine.”

Lena tried to get him back on track. “She was seeing him?”

“She wouldn’t see anybody like him,” Scooter said. “She’s a goddess. Mere mortals like Andy could only deign to sniff her panties.”

“She’s a walking box of come,” Ethan said with obvious disgust. “She probably didn’t even know he was alive.”

Scooter giggled again, giving Ethan his elbow. “Maybe he’s up there doing panty raids in heaven!”

Ethan scowled, pushing Scooter away.

“What?” Lena demanded, confused.

“Damn, I heard her face looked like she swallowed a fucking cherry bomb,” Scooter said.

“Whose face?” Lena asked.

“Ellen!” Scooter answered, as if it were obvious. “She blew off her head, man. Where the fuck you been?”

Shock hit Lena like a brick. She had been in her dorm all day, watching the Caller ID. Nan had called a few times, but Lena had not picked up. Ellen Schaffer’s death added a whole new level to the investigation. If it was staged like Andy’s, then Jeffrey would be looking doubly hard at Lena.

Without thinking, Lena took a small drink from the bottle. She held the liquid in her mouth, savoring the taste before swallowing. The vodka burned as it went down, and she could feel it all the way to her stomach. She exhaled slowly, feeling calmer, sharper.

She asked, “What about the drug program his parents sent him to?”

Scooter glanced at the syringes again, licking his lips. “He did what he had to do to get out, you know? Andy liked the pipe. No getting around that. You fall in love once, you keep coming back, like a lover.” Apparently Scooter enjoyed saying the word “lover,” because he repeated it several times, his tongue rolling around his mouth with every repetition.

Lena tried to put him on the subject again. “So he came back and he was clean?”

Scooter nodded. “Yeah.”

“How long did that last?”

“Up until Sunday, I guess,” Scooter said, and laughed as if he’d made a good joke.

“When Sunday?”

“Before he died,” Scooter told her. “Everybody knows the cops found a needle up there.”

“Right,” Lena said, thinking that Frank would have mentioned this if it were true. Rumors spread around campus as quickly as sexually transmitted diseases these days.

She said, “I thought you said he liked to smoke?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “That’s what they found.”

Lena shot Ethan a look. She asked Scooter, “Did you see Andy using prior to yesterday?”

Scooter shook his head. “No, but I know he was.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he wanted to buy from me, man.”

Beside him, Ethan noticeably stiffened.

Scooter said, “He bought a shitload Saturday night and said he was gonna take it all on Sunday. Gonna go on a magic carpet ride. Hey, you think that’s what that song means?”

Lena tried again to get him back on topic. “You think he wanted to kill himself?”

Ethan stood and walked over to the window.

“Yeah, whatever,” Scooter said. Again he glanced at the needles. “He, like, came to my room and he said, ‘Hey, man, are you holding?’ and I said, ‘Fuck yeah, getting ready for Burke being gone next week,’ and he was all like, ‘Gimme what you got. I got money,’ and I was like, ‘Fuck you, no way, man, this is my shit, and you still owe me from before you went in, you fucking faggot,’ and he was like—”

Lena stopped him. “He was having money trouble?”

“Yeah, like, always. His mom made him pay rent and shit. How bogus is that, man? Her own son, and she made him pay for his clothes and shit like he was on some kind of fucking welfare.” He adjusted himself in his shorts. “That car was boss, though.” He turned to Ethan. “Did you see that car his dad bought him?”

Lena tried to get Scooter to focus. “But he had money Saturday night? Andy had some money?”

“Hell, I dunno. I guess so. He scored.”

“I thought you sold it to him.”

“Hell no, man. I told you, I knew what he wanted to do. I’m not getting caught up in that shit. You sell some dope and some kid ODs, and next thing you know your ass is in jail for freaking manslaughter, and I ain’t going to no jail, man. I’ve already got a job lined up for when I get out of here.”

“Where?” Lena asked, wondering who on earth would hire such a pathetic waste.

Ethan didn’t let him answer. “You knew he was gonna try to kill himself?”

“I guess.” Scooter shrugged. “That’s what he did last time. Bought a bag of shit and slit himself wide open with a razor blade.” He drew a line up his forearm to illustrate. “Man, that was bogus. Blood everywhere, like you wouldn’t believe. Do you think I shoulda said something, man? I didn’t want to get him in trouble or nothing.”

“Yeah, fuckwad,” Ethan said, walking over to the bed. He slapped Scooter on the back of the head. “Yeah, you should’ve said something to him. You fucking killed him, is what you did.”

Lena said, “Ethan—”

“Let’s get out of here,” Ethan said, walking toward the door. She could tell he was angry but could not understand why. He told her, “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

Scooter said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Come on,” Ethan said, throwing open the door so hard the knob knocked a dent in the wall behind it.

Lena followed him, but she closed the door, staying in the room.

“Lena!” The door rattled as Ethan knocked, but she locked it, hoping that would keep him out for a few minutes.

“Scooter,” she said, making sure she had his attention, “who sold him the drugs?”

Scooter stared at her. “What?”

“Who sold Andy the drugs?” she repeated. “Saturday night, where did he finally get the drugs?”

“Shit,” Scooter said, “I don’t know.” He scratched his arms, obviously uncomfortable with Ethan gone. “Leave me alone, okay?”

“No,” Lena said. “Not until you tell me.”

“I got rights.”

“Yeah? You wanna call the cops?” She kept the bottle in one hand and scooped the loaded syringes in the other. “Let’s call the cops, Scooter.”

“Aw, hell, man, come on.” He made a feeble attempt to reach for the needles, but Lena was faster.

“Who sold Andy the drugs?” she asked.

“Come on,” Scooter whined. When he saw that this would not work, he capitulated. “You oughta know, man. You work with ‘im.”

Lena dropped the syringes and nearly let go of the bottle before she caught herself. “Chuck?”

Scooter fell to the ground, picking up the needles like they were found money.

“Chuck?” Lena repeated. She was too stunned to do much of anything else. She took a sip of vodka, then knocked back the whole thing. She felt so disoriented she had to sit on the bed again.

“Lena?” Ethan yelled, banging on the door.

Scooter started shooting up. Lena watched, mesmerized as he pulled back the needle to draw out some of his blood, then shot the drug into his vein. The end of the tourniquet was between his teeth, and he let it go with a snap as he pressed the plunger home.

He gasped like he’d been hit, his whole body lurching. He kept his mouth open, his body twitching as the drug took over. His eyes darted around wildly, his teeth chattering in his head. His hand shook so much that the empty syringe fell to the floor and rolled under the bed. Lena watched, unable to look away, as his body jerked from the Ice in his veins.

“Oh, man,” Scooter whispered. “Oh, fuck, man. Oh, yeah.”

She stared at the other syringe on the floor, thinking about it, wondering how it would feel to let go, to let a drug control your body for a while. Or to take your life.

Scooter jumped up so suddenly that Lena banged her head on the wall backing away from him.

“Oh wow it’s hot in here,” Scooter said, his words coming out like bullets from a machine gun as he paced the room. “You know it’s so hot it’s like too hot to even breathe I don’t know if I can breathe can you breathe man but it feels good don’t you think?” he kept chattering, tugging at his clothes like he had to get out of them.

“Lena!” Ethan yelled.

The knob shook violently, and the door popped open, slamming into the wall again.

“Asshole!” Ethan shouted, pushing Scooter so hard the other boy fell against the refrigerator. Energized by the speed in his veins, Scooter popped up again, still jabbering on and on about the temperature in the room.

Ethan saw the other syringe on the floor and stamped on it with his foot until the plastic broke into pieces, clear liquid pooling around them. Then, as if anticipating the depths to which Scooter would go for another high, Ethan slid his shoe around in the puddle until there was nothing left to draw back on.

Ethan grabbed Lena’s hand, saying, “Come on.”

“Shit!” she screamed. He had grabbed her hurt wrist. The pain nearly made her pass out, but Ethan did not let go until they were out in the hallway.

“Jerk!” Lena said, slamming her hand into his shoulder. “I was getting somewhere.”

“Lena—”

She turned to walk away. Ethan tried to grab her arm, but she was too quick for him. He said, “Where are you going?”

“Home.” She continued up the hall, her mind going over what Scooter had said. She needed to write everything down while it was still fresh. If Chuck was involved in some sort of drug ring, he could have knocked off Andy Rosen and Ellen Schaffer to shut them up. All the pieces were starting to fall together. She just had to keep them in her brain long enough to write them down.

Ethan was suddenly beside her. “Let me walk you home.”

“I don’t need an escort,” she said, touching her wrist, wondering if he had finally broken it.

“You’ve had a lot to drink.”

“And I’m about to have a lot more,” she told him, pushing past a group of people who were blocking the doorway. After she wrote down everything, a celebratory drink would be in order. A few hours ago she was worried about losing her job. Now she might be in a position to take Chuck’s place.

“Lena—”

“Go home, Ethan,” she ordered, tripping over a rock in the front lawn. Lena stumbled but kept walking.

He was at her heels, jogging to keep up. “Just calm down.”

“I don’t need to calm down,” Lena said, and it was true. The adrenaline pumping through her body was keeping her mind sharp.

“Lena, come on,” Ethan said, stopping short of begging.

She turned sideways on a narrow path between two prickly shrubs, knowing she could get to the faculty dorm quicker if she cut through the quad.

Ethan followed her, but he had stopped talking.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He did not answer.

“You’re not coming into my room,” she said, pushing back a low-hanging tree limb as she walked to the front entrance of her dorm. “I mean it, Ethan.”

He ignored her, standing to the side as she tried to unlock the front door. Her coordination was shot, and she could not find the keyhole. The Vicodin was probably kicking in, swimming around in the sea of alcohol sloshing inside her stomach. What had she been thinking, mixing drugs and alcohol like that? Lena knew better.

Ethan jerked her keys out of her hand and opened the door. She tried to take them back, but he was already inside.

He said, “Which room’s yours?”

“Give me my keys.” Again she tried to grab them, but Ethan was too fast.

“You’re shitfaced,” he said. “You know that?”

“Give me my keys,” she repeated, not wanting to cause a scene. The dorms were so shitty that not many professors lived here, but Lena didn’t want her few neighbors poking their heads out.

Ethan was reading her name off the mailbox in the lobby. Without another word, he walked down the hall toward her room.

“Stop it,” she ordered. “Just give me—”

“What’d you take?” he demanded, sorting through her keys, looking for the right one. “What were those pills you swallowed?”

“Get off my case!” she said, grabbing her keys. She leaned her head against the door, concentrating on opening the lock. When she heard the click, she allowed herself a smile, which quickly left her face when Ethan pushed her into the room.

He demanded, “What pills did you take?”

“Are you watching me?” she asked, but that was obvious.

“What did you take?”

Lena stood in the middle of the room, trying to orient herself. There was not much to see. Her living space was a two-room hovel with a private bath and a galley kitchen that smelled of bacon grease no matter how many times she cleaned it. She remembered her answering machine, but the readout showed a big fat zero. That bitch Jill Rosen still had not called her back.

Ethan repeated, “What did you take?”

Lena walked to the to the kitchen cabinet, saying, “Motrin. I’ve got cramps, okay?” thinking that would shut him up.

“That’s all you took?” he asked, walking toward her.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Lena told him, taking a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet.

Ethan threw his hands into the air. “And now you’re going to drink some more.”

“Thanks for the narration, junior,” she quipped, pouring herself a healthy drink and polishing it off in one gulp.

“Great,” he said as she poured another.

Lena turned around, saying, “Why don’t you—” She stopped. Ethan was close enough to touch, disapproval blistering off him like heat from a forest fire.

He stood stock-still, hands at his sides. “Don’t do this.”

“Why don’t you join me?” she asked.

“I don’t drink,” he said. “And neither should you.”

“Are you in AA?”

“No.”

“You sure?” she asked, taking a sip of the whiskey and giving a big “ahhh,” like it was the best thing she had ever tasted. “You sure act like a drunk on the wagon.”

His eyes had followed the glass to her mouth. “I don’t like to be out of control.”

She held the whiskey under her nose, inhaling. “Smell that,” she said, then held it close to his face.

“Get that away from me,” he said, but he didn’t move.

She licked her lips, making a smacking noise. He was a drunk; Lena was sure of it. There was no other explanation for his reaction. She said, “Can’t you just taste it, Ethan? Come on, AA’s for pussies. You don’t have to go to some stupid meeting to know when to stop.”

“Lena—”

“You’re a man, right? Men know how to control themselves. Come on, Mr. Control.”

She pressed the glass to his lips, and he clamped his mouth shut. Even when she tilted the glass, spilling the amber liquid down his chin and onto his shirt, his lips did not part.

“Well,” she said, watching alcohol drip from his chin. “That was a waste of good whiskey.”

He yanked the kitchen towel off its hook and slammed it into her hand. Through clenched teeth he ordered, “Clean it off. Now.”

Lena was taken aback by his vehemence. It cost her nothing to clean up the mess, so she did as she was told, rubbing his shirt, then dabbing at the front of his jeans. His pants were tight at the front, and despite herself, Lena laughed.

She said, “Is that what you get off on, making people do things?”

“Shut up,” he ordered, trying to snatch the towel from her.

She let him have the towel and used her hand instead, increasing the pressure on the front of his pants. He grew harder under her touch.

She asked, “Was it the whiskey? You like the way it smells? Does it turn you on?”

“Stop that,” he said, but she could feel him getting more excited.

She said, “You sick little shit,” and was surprised to hear the teasing note in her voice.

“Don’t,” he said, but he did not try to stop her when she unzipped his jeans.

“Don’t what?” she asked, wrapping her hand around him. He was bigger than Lena had imagined, and there was something exciting about knowing she could either give him pleasure or cause him a great amount of pain.

She stroked him, asking, “Don’t do this?”

“Oh, fuck,” Ethan whispered, licking his lips. “Fuck.”

She worked her hand up and down, watching his reaction. Lena hadn’t exactly been a virgin before the attack, and she knew instinctively how to make him gasp.

“Oh—” Ethan opened his mouth, sucking air. He reached for her.

“Don’t touch me,” Lena ordered, squeezing him hard enough to let him know she meant it.

He braced his hand on the top of the refrigerator instead. She felt his knees weaken, but he managed to keep standing.

Lena smiled to herself. Men were so stupid. As strong as they were, you could have them begging on the floor if they thought you could make them come.

She asked, “Is this why you followed me home like a puppy?”

Ethan leaned in to kiss her, but Lena turned her head away. He gasped again when she rubbed the tip of his cock with her thumb.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asked, keeping her hand still, wanting him to beg for it. “Tell me,” she said.

“No,” he whispered. He tried to put his hand around her waist, but she touched him in the place she knew would put him on the ceiling.

“God . . .” He hissed out air between his teeth, knocking the glass off the kitchen counter as he reached for something to hold on to.

“You want to bang the rape victim?” she asked, keeping her tone conversational. “Go off and tell your little friends all about it?”

He shook his head, his eyes closed as he concentrated on her hand.

“You have a bet with somebody?” she asked. “Is that what this is about?”

He pressed his head against her shoulder, trying to remain standing.

She put her lips to his ear. “You want me to stop?” she asked, slowing down.

“No,” he whispered, his hips moving as he tried to speed her up.

“What did you say?” she asked. “Did you say you wanted me to stop?”

He shook his head again, panting.

“Did you say ‘please’?” she asked, bringing him to the edge. When his body started to shake, she stopped. “Was that a ‘please’?”

“Yes,” he exhaled, putting his hand over hers, trying to make her continue.

“Are you supposed to be touching me?”

He moved his hand away, but his hips swayed, and he was breathing hard enough to hyperventilate.

“I didn’t hear you say it,” Lena goaded. “Say ‘please.’ ”

He started to say the word but stopped himself, groaning.

“Say it,” she said, exerting the right amount of pressure to remind him what her hand could do.

Ethan’s mouth moved as he tried to say the word, but he was either breathing too hard or too proud to make it come out.

“What’s that?” she whispered, her lips just shy of kissing his ear. “What did you say?”

He made a guttural sound, like something inside of him had broken. Lena smiled when he finally relented.

“Please . . . ,” he begged, and as if that were not enough, he repeated. “Please . . .”

Lena was in that dark room again, lying on her stomach. Slow, sensual kisses were making their way along her back down toward the space where her tailbone started. She stretched, feeling her pants slide down, loving the sensation of having her favorite spot kissed without realizing that she should not be able to feel these things. Her hands and feet should be nailed down to the floor. She should be on her back.

She came fully awake with a sharp intake of breath, jumping off the bed so quickly that she fell on the floor, her head banging against the wall so hard she was stunned for a few seconds.

“What’s wrong?” Ethan said.

Lena slid up the wall, her heart pounding in her head. She reached down to her jeans. Only the top button was undone. What had happened last night? Why was Ethan here?

She said, “Get out,” her voice dead calm, despite the fear pumping through every part of her body.

Ethan smiled at her, stretching up his arms. The bed was a twin, almost too small for Lena alone, and he was pressed up against the wall on his side. He was fully dressed, but his jeans were unbuttoned, the zipper halfway down.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” she asked, horrified at the thought that he’d touched her, might even have been inside of her.

“Hey,” he said, his voice light, as if they were discussing the weather. “Chill out, okay?” He sat up in bed and reached toward her.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she warned, slapping his hands away.

He stood. “Lena—”

“Get away from me!” she yelled, her voice raw in her throat.

He looked down, buttoning and zipping his pants as he said, “Come on, it’s not like we’re gonna have to get married or any—”

She pushed him hard in the chest. He stumbled back a step but did not fall. Instead of getting the message, he took a step toward her, his face expressionless, no words coming from his mouth as he slammed his hands into her shoulders.

She hit the wall but stayed upright, shocked by his brute strength. Lena had assumed all along that she could take him, but Ethan’s body was like steel.

Ethan opened his mouth, probably to apologize. Her palm landed flat against his face. The sound echoed in the room, and before she knew what was happening, he had slapped her back, and hard.

“Bastard!” She went for him again, this time with her fists, but he caught her hands, easily overpowering her, pushing her against the wall.

“Lena—” he said, pinning her wrists. She expected pain from the earlier injury, but she was too terrified about what might have happened between them to feel anything except rage.

She tried to free herself, but he held on easily. Her knife was still in her pocket, though she knew she could not get to it with him holding her hands. She kicked him in the knee, and he bent down reflexively, giving her the opportunity to sucker-punch him full in the face. Ethan finally backed up, his hands over his nose, blood seeping out between his fingers. Lena ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God.” Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned her jeans. Her nails scraped the skin on her legs as she pulled down the pants to see what damage had been done. She checked herself for bruises and cuts, then her underwear for telltale stains, even smelled them to see if there was a trace of Ethan anywhere on or near her.

“Lena?” Ethan said, knocking on the door. His voice was muffled, and she hoped she had broken his nose.

“Go away!” she ordered, kicking her foot against the door, wishing she were kicking him with the same intensity, wishing she could see him bleeding and in pain.

He banged back once so hard that the door shook. “Lena, goddammit!”

“Get out of here!” she screamed, her throat ragged and raw. Had he been inside her mouth? Was she still tasting him?

“Lena, come on,” he said, moderating his tone. “Please, baby.”

Lena felt her stomach clench, and she ran to the toilet as she retched, bile sputtering out of her mouth and onto the floor. She sat on her knees, heaving so hard into the bowl that she felt her guts cramp inside her like somebody had put a fist in there.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see what was in the toilet, breathing through her mouth, trying not to be sick again.

The sound of a door bursting open made her look up, but the bathroom door was intact.

“Up against the wall,” a man’s voice said. She recognized Frank instantly.

“Fuck you,” Ethan barked back, but she heard a familiar sound as Ethan must have been slammed into the wall. She hoped Frank was hurting him. She hoped he beat the shit out of Ethan.

Lena wiped her mouth and spit into the toilet. She sat back on her heels, putting her hand to her stomach, listening to what was going on outside the door. Her head was killing her, her heart pounding.

“Where’s Lena?” Jeffrey said, an edge to his voice.

“She’s not here, you bastard,” Ethan told them in such a convincing tone that even she believed him. “Where’s your fucking warrant for breaking down that door?”

Lena put her hand on the sink and slowly pulled herself up.

Jeffrey asked, “Where did she go?” still using the same worried tone.

“Out for coffee.”

Lena looked at herself in the mirror over the vanity. A trickle of blood dribbled from her nose, but it did not feel broken. There was a bruise right under her eye, and she reached up to touch it. Her fingers were a few inches from her face when she stopped. A vivid memory from last night shot through her brain like a current of electricity. She had touched Ethan with this hand. She had reached down into his pants and stroked him while staring into his eyes, watching the effect she had on him, relishing what had seemed like power last night but felt only like something cheap and vile this morning.

Lena turned on the hot-water faucet, grabbing the soap from the dish. She lathered her hands, then put the foam in her mouth, trying to remember if she had kissed him. She scraped her tongue with her fingernails, gagging as soap went down her throat. She had done this because she was drunk. Fucking drunk. What the hell else would make her do something so fucking stupid?

Jeffrey knocked softly the door. “Lena?”

She did not answer, scrubbing her hands until they were dark red from the heat and friction. Her injured wrist was twice the size of the other one, but the pain felt good because it was something she could control. An irregular ridge on one of her scars caught under her fingernail, and the blood was welcome. She picked at the opening, trying to rip the skin, wishing she could peel it off.

“Lena?” Jeffrey knocked louder, sounding concerned. “Lena? Are you okay?”

Ethan said, “Just leave her alone.”

“Lena,” Jeffrey repeated, knocking hard on the door. She could not tell if he was worried or angry or both. “Answer me.”

She looked up. The mirror told the story of what he would see: her vomit in the toilet, her bloody hands dripping in the sink, Lena standing there, shaking with disgust and self-loathing.

Frank said, “Break down the door.”

Jeffrey warned her, “Lena, either you come out or I’m coming in.”

“Just a moment, please,” she called, like he was her date, waiting patiently to go to dinner.

She slid the pocketknife out of her jeans before buttoning them up again. There was a loose board in the floor of the medicine cabinet, and she slipped the knife underneath it before turning off the water in the sink.

Lena flushed the toilet as she gargled a mouthful of Scope, spitting out some and swallowing the rest, hoping her stomach could take it. She wiped under her nose with the back of her hand, then wiped the blood off on her jeans. There was no way she could button the cuffs of her shirt, but she knew that the long sleeves would cover any damage.

When she finally left the bathroom, Jeffrey was standing there, ready to break down the door. Frank stood behind Ethan, pressing Ethan’s face so hard into the wall that blood from his nose was dripping down the Sheetrock. Lena stood in the doorway. She could see past Jeffrey’s shoulder to the sitting area and the small kitchen. She wished there was some way to make them all go into the other room. Lena had a difficult enough time falling asleep at night without having to deal with the memory of their all being in her bedroom.

Jeffrey and Frank both looked completely shocked to see her, as if she were an apparition instead of the woman they had worked with almost every day for the last decade.

Without thinking, Frank loosened his grip on Ethan, muttering, “What happened?”

She covered the bleeding scar on her hand, telling Jeffrey, “You’d better have a warrant.”

Jeffrey asked, “Are you okay?”

“Where’s your warrant?”

His voice was soft. “Did he hurt you?”

Lena did not answer. She was looking at the clean comforter, the fact that it was barely wrinkled. The material was dark burgundy, and any stains would have been obvious. She let herself breathe, knowing that nothing else had happened with Ethan last night. As if what she knew had happened were not bad enough.

She crossed her arms, saying, “Get the hell out of my place. You’re trespassing.”

“We got a call,” Jeffrey said, and it seemed like his resolve was kicking in. He walked over and looked at the pictures she kept tucked into the mirror over the dresser. “Domestic disturbance.”

She knew that was bullshit. Lena’s room was at the corner of the building, her nearest neighbor a professor who was away at a conference for the week. Even if someone had called, there was no way Jeffrey could have gotten here that fast. He and Frank had probably been outside the dorm and used the scuffle as a reason to break down her door.

“So,” Jeffrey said, “what’s the trouble?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lena said, keeping a steady gaze on him.

Jeffrey said, “Your eye, for starters. Did he hit you?”

“I fell against the sink when you broke down the door.” She gave him a quick smile. “The noise frightened me.”

“Right,” Jeffrey said. He indicated Ethan with his thumb. “What about him?”

Lena looked at Ethan, and he managed to return her gaze out of the corner of his eye. Whatever had happened between them last night was just that—between them.

Jeffrey prompted, “Lena?”

“I guess Frank did that when he came in,” she told him, not meeting the sharp look Frank gave her. They had been partners before Lena was fired, and she knew Frank well enough to know she had effectively ruined that connection. Lena had broken the code. The way she felt now, so much the better.

Jeffrey opened one of the top drawers of her dresser, glanced in it, and gave Lena a steady look. She knew he was looking at her ankle sheath, but there was no law against having a sheathed knife in your sock drawer.

“What are you doing?” Lena demanded as he slammed the drawer closed.

He opened the next drawer, where she kept her underwear, and put his hand in, pushing stuff around. He pulled out a black cotton thong she had not worn in years and gave her the same steady look before dropping it back into the drawer. She knew he was looking for similar items to the pair found in Andy Rosen’s room, just as surely as she knew she would never wear a single item in that drawer again.

Lena tried to keep her tone even when she asked, “Why are you here?”

He slammed the drawer closed. “I told you yesterday. We found some evidence linking you to a crime.”

She held out her hands, shocked at how calm she felt. “Arrest me.”

Jeffrey backed down, as she guessed he would. “We just want to ask you a couple of questions, Lena.”

She shook her head. He didn’t have enough evidence to arrest her, or she would be sitting in his squad car right now.

“We can run him in instead,” Jeffrey said, indicating Ethan.

“Do it,” Ethan challenged.

Lena hissed, “Ethan, shut up.”

“Take me in,” Ethan told them. Frank pressed him closer into the wall. Ethan sucked in air but said nothing.

Jeffrey seemed to be enjoying this. He walked over to Ethan and put his lips close to Ethan’s ear. He said, “Hey, Mr. Eyewitness.”

Ethan struggled, but Jeffrey easily lifted out his wallet. He thumbed through some photographs in the front and smiled. “Ethan Nathaniel White,” he read.

Lena tried not to register her surprise, but she couldn’t keep her lips from parting.

“So, Ethan,” Jeffrey said, putting his hand to the back of Ethan’s head and pressing. “How would you like to spend the night in jail?” He whispered something else in Ethan’s ear that Lena could not hear. Ethan tensed, like an animal wanting to attack.

“Don’t,” Lena said. “Leave him alone.”

Jeffrey grabbed Ethan by his shirt collar and threw him onto the bed. “Get your shoes on, boy,” he ordered, kicking the black work boots out from under the bed.

Lena said, “You don’t have anything to charge him with. I told you I fell against the sink.”

“We’ll run him down to the station, see what turns up.” He turned to Frank. “The boy just looks guilty, don’t you think?”

Frank chuckled.

Lena stupidly said, “You can’t arrest people for looking guilty.”

“We’ll find something to hold him on.” Jeffrey gave her a quick wink. For as long as she had known him, Jeffrey had never bent the law to this degree. She could see now that he was on a mission to bring her in, no matter who suffered in the process.

“Just let him go,” she said. “I have to be at work in half an hour. We can talk here.”

“No, Lena,” Ethan said, standing. Frank pushed him down on the bed so hard the mattress bowed, but Ethan sprang back up, one of his boots in his hands. He was about to slam Frank in the face with it when Jeffrey caught him hard with a kidney punch. Ethan groaned, doubling over, and Lena put herself between the two men, trying to stop a bloodletting.

The cuff of her shirt had slid up, and Jeffrey was staring at her wrist.

She dropped her hand, telling them both, “Stop.”

Jeffrey leaned down and picked up Ethan’s boot, turning it over in his hand. He seemed interested in the tread. “Resisting arrest. That a good enough one for you?”

“Okay,” Lena said. “I’ll give you an hour.”

Jeffrey threw the boot hard at Ethan’s chest. He told Lena, “You’ll give me as long as I damn well say.”