A Faint Cold Fear

9

Jeffrey stood in the hallway outside the interrogation room, waiting for Frank. He had been in the observation area, watching Lena through the one-way glass, but the way she stared at the mirror made him uncomfortable, even though he knew she could not see through.

He had taken Frank to Lena’s apartment this morning, hoping to talk some sense into her. The night before, Jeffrey had rehearsed in his mind how it would go. They would all sit down and talk, maybe drink some coffee, and figure out what was going on. The plan was perfect—except for Ethan White’s getting in the way.

“Chief,” Frank said, his tone low. He had two cups of coffee in his hands, and Jeffrey took one, even though he already had enough caffeine in his system to make the hair on his arms vibrate.

“Did the file come in?” Jeffrey asked. The fingerprints from the cup Ethan had used were not much help, but his name and driver’s-license number had hit the jackpot. Not only did Ethan White have a record, he had a parole officer in town. Diane Sanders, his PO, was bringing in White’s sheet herself.

“I told Marla to send her back here,” Frank said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Sara find anything on the Rosen kid?”

“No,” Jeffrey said. Sara had performed Andy Rosen’s autopsy right after she finished with Ellen Schaffer. The body held no startling revelations, and, but for Jeffrey and Sara’s suspicions, there was nothing that pointed to murder.

He told Frank, “Schaffer’s definitely a homicide. There’s no way the two of them aren’t connected. We’re just not seeing it.”

“And Tessa?”

Jeffrey shrugged, his mind reeling as he tried to find a connection that would make sense. He had kept Sara awake most of the night trying to figure out how all three victims were connected. Ten minutes had passed before he realized she had finally fallen asleep at the kitchen table.

Frank looked through the small window in the interrogation-room door, watching Lena. “She say anything?”

“I didn’t even try,” Jeffrey said. Mostly, he did not know what to ask her. Jeffrey had been shocked to find Ethan in the room when they busted down the door, and then scared as shit when Lena did not immediately come out of the bathroom. For a split second, he had been certain she was lying dead on the floor. He would not soon forget the panic he felt before she finally came out or the horror when he realized that not only had she let that kid hit her, she was covering for him.

Frank said, “This don’t seem like Lena.”

“Something’s going on,” Jeffrey agreed.

“You think she let that punk hit her?” Frank asked.

Jeffrey took a sip of coffee, thinking about the one thing he did not want to consider. “Did you see her wrist?”

“Looks pretty bad,” Frank agreed.

“I don’t like any of this.”

Frank said, “Here’s Diane.”

Diane Sanders was of average height and build with the most beautiful gray hair Jeffrey had ever seen. On the surface she was fairly unremarkable, but there was a raw sexuality underneath that always took Jeffrey by surprise. She was very good at her job, and despite her caseload she kept on top of all of her parolees.

She got right to the point. “Do you have White here?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, wishing he did. Lena had made sure Ethan was given a head start before she would leave her apartment with Jeffrey and Frank.

Diane looked relieved. “Three of my guys got locked up this weekend, and I’ve been buried in paper. I don’t need trouble from this one. Especially this one.” She held out a thick file. “What are you looking at him for?”

“Not sure,” Jeffrey said, handing Frank his coffee so he could open the file. The first page was a color photo of Ethan White at the time of his last arrest. His head and face were shaved clean, but he still looked pretty much like the same thug Jeffrey remembered from their earlier meetings. His eyes were dead, staring into the camera as if he wanted to make sure that whoever looked at the picture knew he was a threat.

Jeffrey flipped past the photo, looking for Ethan’s arrest record. He scanned the details, feeling like someone had hit him in the gut with a brick.

“Yeah,” Diane said, reading his expression, “he’s been squeaky clean ever since. He keeps up the good behavior and he’ll be off parole in less than a year.”

“You sure about that?” Jeffrey asked, picking up something in her tone.

“As far as I can see,” she told him. “I’ve been doing drop-ins on him almost every week.”

“Sounds like you’re looking for something,” Jeffrey commented. For Diane to be making a special effort to do surprise visits on Ethan said a lot. She was trying to catch him at something.

“I’m just making sure he stays clean,” she said ruefully.

Frank asked, “He into drugs?”

“I make him pee in a cup every week, but those guys never touch drugs. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke.” She paused. “Everything’s either a weakness or a strength with them. Power, control, intimidation—the adrenaline from that gives them their high.”

Jeffrey took back his coffee and handed Frank the file, thinking that Diane could easily have been talking about Lena instead of Ethan White. He had been worried about Lena before, but now Jeffrey was scared she had gotten herself involved in something she would never be able to get out of.

Diane said, “He’s doing everything he’s supposed to. Completed anger-management classes—”

“At the college?”

“No,” she told him. “County health services. I don’t think they have much of a need for that at Grant Tech.”

Jeffrey sighed. It had been worth a shot.

“Who’ve you got in there?” Diane asked, glancing through the window. Jeffrey knew she could only see Lena’s back.

“Thanks for the file,” he said.

She got the hint and looked away from the window. “No problem. Let me know if you catch him on anything. He says he’s reformed, but those guys never are.”

Jeffrey asked, “What kind of threat do you think he is?”

“To society?” She shrugged. “To women?” Her mouth set in a straight line. She told him, “Read the file. It’s the tip of the iceberg, but I don’t have to tell you that.” She indicated the door. “If that’s his girlfriend in there, then she needs to get away from him.”

Jeffrey could only nod, and Frank, who was reading the file, mumbled a curse.

Diane looked at her watch. “I’ve got a hearing I need to go to.”

Jeffrey shook her hand, saying, “Thanks for bringing this by.”

“Let me know if you run him in. That’s one less perp to keep me up at night.” She turned to go but then stopped, telling Jeffrey, “You’d better have your ducks in a row if you try to jam him up. He’s sued two police chiefs before.”

“Did he win?”

“They settled,” she said. “And then they resigned.” She gave him a meaningful look. “You make my job a hell of a lot easier, Chief. I’d hate to lose you.”

“All right,” Jeffrey said, taking both the compliment and the warning in stride.

She left, calling over her shoulder, “Let me know.”

Jeffrey watched Frank’s lips move as he read the file.

“This is bad,” Frank said. “You want me to round him up?”

“For what?” Jeffrey asked, taking the file. He opened it, again skimming the pages. If Diane was right, they would have only one chance to bring in Ethan White. When they did—and Jeffrey had no doubt they eventually would—he would have to have something solid to take White apart with.

Frank said, “See if Lena will flip on him.”

“You really think that’s going to happen?” Jeffrey asked, feeling revulsion as he read through Ethan White’s criminal history. Diane Sanders was right about another thing: The kid was good at beating a charge. He had been arrested at least ten times in as many years, but only one charge had stuck.

Frank asked, “You want me to go in with you?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, checking the clock on the wall. “Call Brian Keller. I was supposed to be at his house ten minutes ago. Tell him I’ll check in with him later.”

“You still want me to ask around about him?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said, though this morning he’d been planning on asking Lena to do that. Despite what had happened since, he still wanted to follow up on Brian Keller. Something was not sitting right about the man. He told Frank, “Let me know if you find out anything.”

“Will do.” Frank saluted.

Jeffrey put his hand on the doorknob but did not turn it. He took a breath, trying to get his thoughts together, then walked into the room.

Lena stared straight ahead at the wall as he closed the door. She was sitting in the suspect’s chair, the one that was bolted to the floor and had a round eye hook in the back to attach cuffs. The metal seat was straight and uncomfortable. Lena was probably more pissed about the idea of the chair than the actual chair itself, which was exactly why he had put her there.

Jeffrey walked around the table and sat across from her, putting Ethan White’s file on the table. In the bright light of the interrogation room, her injuries were on display like a shiny new car on the showroom floor. She had a bruise working its way around her eye, dried blood caked around the corner. Her hand was pulled back into her sleeve, but she held it stiffly on the table, like it was giving her pain. Jeffrey wondered how Lena could let someone hurt her after what had happened to her. She was a strong woman, and good with her fists. The thought of her not protecting herself was almost laughable.

There was something else that was getting to him, and it was not until he sat down across from her that Jeffrey realized what it was. Lena was hungover, her body radiating the smell of alcohol and vomit. She had always been self-destructive to a certain degree, but Jeffrey would have never guessed that Lena would cross the line this way. It was like she didn’t care about herself anymore.

“What took you so long?” she asked. “I’ve got to go to work.”

“You want me to call Chuck?”

She narrowed her eyes. “What the fuck do you think?”

He allowed some time to pass, letting her know she should check her tone. Jeffrey knew he should go at her hard, but every time he looked at Lena, his mind flashed onto a picture of her a year ago, when he had found her nailed to the floor, her body ravaged, her spirit broken. Pulling out those nails had been the hardest thing Jeffrey had ever done in his life. Even now the memory brought out a cold sweat, but underneath that, Jeffrey was feeling something else. He was angry—not just angry, but pissed as hell. After all she had been through, after all she had survived, why was Lena mixing herself up with trash like Ethan White?

She said, “I don’t have all day.”

“Then I suggest you don’t waste my time.” When she did not respond, he said, “Guess you had a late night last night.”

“So?”

“You look like shit, Lena. Are you drinking now? Is that what’s going on?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be stupid. You smell like a bum. You’ve got puke on your shirt.”

She had the grace to look ashamed before she caught herself and screwed her face back into an angry fist.

He told her, “I saw your stock in the kitchen.” On one of the cabinet shelves, Jeffrey had found two bottles of Jim Beam lined up like soldiers, waiting for Lena to imbibe. The trash can held an empty bottle of Maker’s Mark. There was an empty glass in the bathroom that smelled of alcohol and one by the bed that had been knocked over on its side. Jeffrey had lived with a drunk growing up. He knew their rituals, and he knew the signs.

He said, “That’s how you’re dealing with it, huh? Hiding behind a bottle?”

“Dealing with what?” she challenged.

“What happened to you,” Jeffrey said, but he backed off, unable to push her in that direction. Instead he went for her ego. “You never struck me as that kind of coward, Lena, but this isn’t the first time you’ve surprised me.”

“I’m handling it.”

“Yeah you are,” he said, his anger sparking at the turn of phrase. His father had said the same thing when Jeffrey was growing up, and Jeffrey knew that the excuse was bullshit then, just as he did now. “How’s it feel puking your guts out before you go to work every morning?”

“I don’t do that.”

“No? Not yet anyway.” Jeffrey could still remember Jimmy Tolliver heaving into the bowl as soon as he woke up, then falling into the kitchen, where he searched for his first drink of the day.

“My life is none of your business.”

“I guess the headache goes away when you spike your coffee in the morning,” he said, clenching and unclenching his fists, aware that he needed to get hold of his anger before he lost control of the interview. He took out the bottle of pills he had found in her medicine cabinet and tossed it onto the table. “Or does this help get you through?”

Lena stared at the bottle, and he could see her mind working. “That’s for pain.”

“Pretty strong prescription for a headache,” he said. “Vicodin’s a controlled substance. Maybe I should talk to the doctor who’s giving you these.”

“It’s not for that pain, you prick.” She held up her hands, showing him the scars. “You think this just went away when I got out of the hospital? You think everything just magically healed back to how it was before?”

Jeffrey stared at the scars, one of which had a trickle of fresh blood sliding down her palm. He tried to keep his expression neutral as he took out his handkerchief.

“Here,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”

Lena looked at her hand, then balled it into a fist.

Jeffrey left the handkerchief on the table between them, unnerved that she did not care that she was bleeding. “What does Chuck think about you showing up drunk for work?”

“I don’t drink on the job,” she told him, and he saw a flash of regret in her eyes even before she finished speaking. He had caught her.

To his horror, Lena started picking at the scar again, drawing fresh blood.

“Stop,” he said, putting his hand over hers. He pressed the handkerchief into her palm, trying to stanch the bleeding.

He saw her throat move as she swallowed, and he thought for a minute that she might start crying.

He let her hear the concern in his voice. “Lena,” he said, “why are you hurting yourself like this?”

She waited a moment before slipping her hands out from under his, tucking them beneath the table and out of sight. She stared at the file, asking, “What do you have?”

“Lena.”

She shook her head, and he could tell from the way her shoulders moved that she was picking at her hand under the table. She said, “Let’s get this over with.”

Jeffrey left the file closed, instead taking a folded sheet of paper out of his coat pocket. He saw recognition flash in Lena’s eyes as he opened the page. She had seen enough lab reports over the years to know what he had in his hand. He slid the page across the table so that it was right in front of her.

He said, “This is a comparison of a pubic hair we found on the underwear in Andy Rosen’s room and a sample from you.”

She shook her head, not looking at the document. “You don’t have a sample from me.”

“I got it from your bathroom.”

“Not today,” she said. “You didn’t have time.”

“No,” Jeffrey agreed, watching realization dawn on her face. Frank had jimmied the lock to Lena’s apartment while she was still at the coffee shop with Ethan. Jeffrey had been ashamed enough about their methods to keep this information from Sara last night, but he had assumed that no one would ever have to know what they had done. He had assumed they were just helping Lena when she would not help herself.

Lena’s voice was small in her throat, and he could taste her sense of betrayal like a piece of sour candy. “That’s illegally obtained evidence.”

“You wouldn’t talk to me,” he said, knowing how wrong it was to turn this back around like it was her fault. He tried to explain. “I thought it would clear you, Lena. I was trying to clear you.”

She slid the lab report toward her so she could read it. He saw her start to pick at the scar on her hand again. Guilt twinged in his chest as a drop of blood pooled on the white page.

She glanced at the mirror on the side of the room, probably wondering who was behind it. Jeffrey had told Frank not to let anyone in there, including Frank.

He asked, “Well?”

She sat back in her chair, her hands beside her, gripping the seat. Jeffrey was glad to see her angry, because it made her seem more like Lena. She said, “I don’t know what you think you have in there”—she indicated the file—“but there’s no way anything from me matched anything in that kid’s room.” She sat up straighter. “And besides, hair isn’t admissible. All you can say is that it’s microscopically similar, and you know what? Big fucking deal. Probably half the girls on campus test out similar. You don’t have dick on me.”

“What about your fingerprint?”

“Where did you find it?”

“Where do you think?”

“Fuck this.” Lena stood but did not leave, probably because she knew that Jeffrey would stop her.

He let her stand there feeling foolish for a while before he said, “You want to talk about your boyfriend?”

She cut her eyes at him. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“I didn’t think you were into racists.”

Her lips parted, but he could not tell if she was surprised or just trying to think of a way to answer him without giving Ethan away. “Yeah, well, you don’t know much about me, do you?”

“Is he the one who’s been spray-painting shit all over campus?”

She snorted a laugh. “Why don’t you talk to Chuck about that?”

“I talked to him this morning. He said he asked you to track down who’s been doing it, but you seem to be dragging your ass.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said, and Jeffrey did not know whether to believe Lena or Chuck. Two days ago the choice would have been easy. Now he did not know.

“Sit down, Lena.” He waited as she took her time sitting back down. “You know Ethan’s on parole?”

She crossed her arms. “So?”

Jeffrey could only stare at her, hoping that his silence might will her into being sensible.

Lena asked, “Is that all?”

“Your boyfriend nearly beat a girl to death in Connecticut,” Jeffrey said. “How’s the shiner, by the way?”

She touched her finger to her bruised eye.

“Lena?”

If she’d been startled by his information, she recovered quickly. “I won’t be pressing charges against the department, if that’s what you mean. Accidents happen.”

“Maybe Tessa’s stabbing was an accident,” Jeffrey suggested.

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe somebody didn’t like the fact that a white girl was carrying a black man’s child.” She did not react. “Maybe somebody didn’t like two Jewish kids on campus.”

“Two?”

“Don’t lie to me, Lena. I know you know about Ellen Schaffer.” He tapped the file with his finger. “Tell me about your boyfriend.”

Lena sat up. “Ethan wasn’t involved in this, and you know it.”

“I do?” he asked. “Let me tell you what I know, Lena.” He counted the points off on his fingers. “I know that you were in Andy Rosen’s room at one time or another, and I know you lied about it. I know that Andy Rosen and Ellen Schaffer are dead, and I know that both of those deaths were staged to look like suicides.”

Jeffrey paused, hoping she would say something. When she did not, he continued, “I know that Tessa Linton was stabbed by a man with a lean build, close-cropped hair, and no alibi on Sunday afternoon—”

“I saw the attacker,” she interrupted. “It wasn’t Ethan. This guy was taller and had a thicker build.”

“Yeah? Matt’s description’s a little different from yours, funny enough.”

“This is bullshit. Ethan wasn’t involved.”

“Put it together, Lena.”

She found the same hole in the scenario Sara had kept coming back to last night. “You think somebody staged Rosen’s suicide and then just hung around, hoping Tessa Linton would come along to pee so he could stab her? That’s fucking stupid.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “And who the fuck knows who Tessa Linton is, let alone that she’s banging a black guy? I sure as hell didn’t know. You think people on campus give a flying fuck what some plumber is up to?” She scowled at him. “This is a waste of time. You don’t have anything.”

“I know you’re drinking too much.” He watched her body tense. “Are you having blackouts now? Maybe there’s something you don’t remember.”

“I told you I didn’t know Andy Rosen,” she insisted.

“Why did you sound surprised on the hill when I said his name?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I do,” he said, tucking the lab report into his pocket.

“What about Chuck?” she tossed out.

Jeffrey sat back, staring at her openly, wondering if she was drinking so much that her brain was going soft. “Chuck was with you the morning we found Andy Rosen, right?”

She gave a tight nod, her face tilted down so he could not read her expression.

He walked her through it like he was talking to a third-grader. “And then he was with Andy when Tessa was stabbed.” Jeffrey paused. “Unless you think he sprouted wings and took off after her and then flew right back when it was all over?”

Lena shot him a look, and Jeffrey thought she must be pretty desperate to be grasping at straws. Of course, desperation came from fear. She was hiding something, and Jeffrey had a pretty good idea what that was.

He turned the file around and opened it on the table in front of her, asking, “Ethan tell you about this?”

Lena hesitated, but curiosity eventually got the better of her. Jeffrey watched her read through Ethan’s arrest jacket. She seemed to be skimming, quickly turning the pages over as she read about Ethan’s sordid past.

He waited until she got to the last page before saying, “His father’s some kind of white supremacist.”

She nodded toward the pages. “It says here he’s a preacher.”

“So was Charles Manson,” Jeffrey pointed out. “So was David Koresh. So was Jim Jones.”

“I don’t know—”

“Ethan grew up in the middle of that, Lena. He was raised on hate.”

Lena sat back, her arms crossed over her chest again. Jeffrey studied her closely, wondering if any of this was news to her or if White had already explained, putting his own spin on the story.

Jeffrey said, “He was charged with assault when he was seventeen.”

“They dismissed the case.”

“Because the girl was too scared to testify.”

She waved her hand at the file. “He’s on parole for kiting some checks in Connecticut. Big deal.”

Jeffrey stared at her, because that was all he could do. He tried to walk her through the evidence. “Four years ago tire marks from his truck placed him at the scene where a girl was raped and killed.”

“Placed at the scene like I was?” Lena asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“The girl was raped before she was killed,” Jeffrey repeated. “Sperm taken from her rectum and vagina proved that at least six guys raped her before she was beaten to death.” He paused. “Six guys, Lena. That’s plenty to hold her down while each guy takes his turn.”

She gave him a blank stare.

“Ethan’s truck was there.”

Lena shrugged, but he thought he saw her composure begin to slip.

“That’s how they got him to flip, Lena. The tire marks matched his truck. They already knew where to find him, because he was on their sheet for this kind of thing.” He tapped the file. “You know what he did? You know what your boyfriend did? He ratted out his friends so he could save his own ass, and, like every good rat, he admitted he was there, but he swore on a stack of Bibles he didn’t touch her.”

She said nothing.

“You think he just sat in that truck, Lena? You think he just sat there while everybody else was taking their turn? Or do you think he was out there getting his piece? You think he helped hold her hands down so she couldn’t scratch them? Maybe he helped keep her feet apart so they could get a better angle, or maybe he had his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream.”

Still she was silent.

“Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, though. You wanna do that?” Jeffrey asked. “Let’s say he sat in his truck. Let’s say he just sat there watching them rape her. Maybe that was enough to get him off, watching them hurt her, knowing she was helpless and he could save her but he didn’t.”

She started to pick at the scar again, and Jeffrey kept his eyes on hers, trying not to watch her hands.

He said, “Six guys, Lena. How long did that take, for six guys to rape her while your boyfriend sat in the truck watching—if that’s what he was really doing, just watching?” Lena was silent. “And then they beat her to death. Hell, I don’t know why they bothered. By the time they were finished with her, she was bleeding from every place they could fuck her.”

She chewed her lip, looking down at her hands. Blood was flowing pretty steadily from her palm, but she did not seem to notice.

He let his guard down for just a moment, unable to stop himself. “How can you protect him?” he asked. “How can you be a cop for ten years and protect scum like that?”

His words seemed to be striking home, so he continued, “Lena, this kid is bad. I don’t know what it is you’ve got going with him, but . . . Jesus Christ! You’re a cop. You know how this kind of asshole can slip around the law. For every piece-of-shit little thing he’s been picked up on, there are twelve big things he gets away with.”

Jeffrey tried again. “His father’s spent hard time—federal time—for selling guns. We’re not talking handguns. He was trafficking sniper rifles and machine guns.” He paused, waiting for her to say something. When she did not, he asked, “Ethan tell you about his brother?”

“Yes,” she said, so quickly that he was sure she was lying.

“So you know he’s in prison?”

“Yes.”

“You know he’s on death row for killing a black man?” He paused again. “Not just a black man, Lena. A black cop.”

Lena stared at the table, and he could tell she was shaking her foot, though who knew if it was from nerves or anger.

“He’s a bad kid, Lena.”

She shook her head, though she had enough proof in front of her. “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever he is, he’s a skinhead. It doesn’t matter if he let his hair grow out and changed his name. He’s still a racist bastard, just like his father, just like his cop-killing brother.”

“And I’m half spick,” she shot back. “You ever wonder about that? What’s he doing with somebody like me if he’s a racist?”

“That’s a good question,” he told her. “You might want to ask yourself that the next time you look in the mirror.”

She finally stopped picking at her palm and pressed her hands together on the table in front of her.

“Listen,” he began, “I’m only going to say this once. Whatever you’re messed up in, whatever it is with this kid, you need to tell me. I can’t help you if you get yourself dug into this any deeper.”

She stared at her hands, not speaking, and he wanted to grab her and shake her, to make her say something that made sense. He wanted her to explain to him how she could be mixed up with a nasty piece of shit like Ethan White, and then he really wanted her to tell him that it was all some kind of big misunderstanding and that she was sorry. And that she was not going to drink anymore.

What she said was, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He had to try again. “If there’s something you’re not telling me about all this . . . ,” he said, hoping she would fill in the rest. Of course she did not.

He tried a different tactic. “There’s no chance you’ll get back on the job with this guy around your neck.”

She looked up, and for the first time in a while he could read her expression loud and clear: surprise.

She cleared her throat, like she was having trouble finding her voice. “I didn’t know that was an option.”

Jeffrey thought about her working for Chuck now, and the situation rankled as much as it had the first day he had heard about it. “You shouldn’t be working for that jerk.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, her voice still low. “The jerk I was working for before kind of made it obvious I wasn’t wanted.” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of which, I’m late for work.”

“Don’t leave it like this,” he said, aware that he was begging. “Please, Lena. I just . . . Please.”

She huffed a laugh, making him feel like an idiot. “I told you I’d talk to you,” she said. “Unless you’ve got something to charge me on, I’m out of here.”

He sat back in the chair, willing her to explain this all away.

“Chief?” she said, putting as little respect into the word as was humanly possible.

He skimmed the file, reading aloud from the list of charges that never saw the light of a courtroom. “Arson,” he said. “Felony assault. Grand theft auto. Rape. Murder.”

“Sounds like the latest best-seller,” she said, standing. “Thanks for the chat.”

“The girl,” he said. “The one who was raped and beaten to death while he sat in his truck and watched?” She did not leave, so he continued. “Do you know who she was?”

She came back fast. “Snow White?”

“No,” he told her, closing the file. “She was his girlfriend.”

Jeffrey sat in his car in front of the student-union building, staring at a group of women taping posters to the light poles around the courtyard. They were all young and healthy-looking, dressed in jogging outfits or sweats. Any one of them could have been Ellen Schaffer. Any one of them could be the next victim.

He was here to tell Brian Keller that his son was probably murdered. Jeffrey wanted to see what the man’s reaction to the news would be. He also wanted to find out what Keller had not wanted to say in front of his wife. Jeffrey hoped that what Keller said would give him a solid lead to go on. As it was, all he had was Lena, and Jeffrey could not accept that she was involved in this.

Last night Sara had kept hitting on the differences between the Rosen and Schaffer crime scenes. If someone had staged Andy Rosen’s suicide, they’d done a damn good job. Ellen Schaffer was a different matter. Even if the killer had not known about the aspirated tooth, the arrow in the yard was a pretty obvious taunt. Sara had suggested at one point that the differences between the two crimes could indicate there could be two killers instead of one. Jeffrey had dismissed her idea last night, but after seeing Lena and Ethan together this morning, he was not sure of anything.

Lena had been a different person in the interrogation room, someone he had never met before. The way she had not just defended Ethan White’s past but denied that he had harmed her made Jeffrey want to question everything she had said so far in the case. He’d been a cop for a long time and seen how abusers sucker in even strong women. It was amazing how similar their methods were and how easily some women were swayed. There were thousands of women sitting in jail right now because they’d been caught holding dope for their boyfriends. Thousands more had probably committed some kind of crime because they knew that jail was the only way they could protect themselves from the abuse.

In Birmingham, back when Jeffrey was working patrol, he had been called to one woman’s house at least ten times. She was the communications manager of an international company and had two degrees from Auburn. At least a thousand people all over the world answered to her, and every time Jeffrey came to her house because her neighbors had called, she stood there in the doorway, her face bleeding, her clothes torn, saying she had fallen down the stairs. Her husband was a scrawny little fuck who called himself a stay-at-home dad. In reality he was a drunk who could not keep a job and lived off his wife’s money. Like most abusers, he was charming and gracious and blind to what his wife looked like when he was finished with her. These days a cop didn’t need the wife’s testimony to arrest her husband for abuse, but back then the laws had protected the husband.

Jeffrey remembered one time in particular. He was standing on her doorstep in the freezing cold, watching blood drip down her leg and pool at her feet from God knows what, while she insisted that her husband was a gentle man who never laid a hand on her. In fact, the only time Jeffrey ever saw the husband touch her was at her funeral. He reached into her coffin and patted her hand, then gave Jeffrey the biggest shit-eating grin he had ever seen and said, “That last step was a killer.”

Jeffrey had worked two years with the medical examiner trying to get something on the asshole, but while you could show with a fair amount of certainty that someone had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, proving she was shoved was a little more difficult.

All this brought him back to Lena and how she behaved this morning. She was right that the hair match only circumstantially linked her to Andy Rosen. The fingerprint on the book could be explained away by a good lawyer. Jeffrey had trained Lena himself, and he knew that she was more than familiar with the ins and outs of forensic investigation. She would have known to be careful. She would have known exactly how to cover her tracks. The question was, did she have it in her? Was she so wrapped up in Ethan White that she would do anything to cover for him?

Jeffrey had to look at the facts, and the facts made Lena look suspicious as hell, especially considering her hostile attitude in the interrogation room this morning. She had all but challenged him to put the pieces together.

As much as he did not want to, Jeffrey made himself consider the two-killer scenario Sara had brought up last night, one who’d killed Andy and stabbed Tessa and one who’d killed Ellen Schaffer. The weak point they kept coming back to was Tessa’s attacker in the woods. After looking at Ethan White’s sheet, then talking to Lena, Jeffrey had to consider a variation on the theory.

Ethan could have killed Andy Rosen. Lena had come late to the scene. She could have called Ethan on her cell phone and told him Tessa was in the woods. There was no telling where either of them was when Ellen Schaffer killed herself, but Jeffrey knew that Lena would have noticed the discrepancy in the ammo. She knew more about guns than any man he had ever met. He took little consolation in the fact that Lena’s involvement in this could be as a mere accomplice. Under Georgia law she was just as guilty as Ethan.

He rubbed his eyes with his hands, thinking he was being ludicrous. Lena was a cop, despite the fact that she wasn’t carrying a badge. Crossing the line into murder, even as an accomplice, was not something she would do, no matter what kind of charm Ethan White poured on. This was crazy, and there was no reason to suspect her other than that she was being difficult. As Sara had pointed out, Lena thrived on being difficult.

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Kevin Blake’s office. The dean of Grant Tech liked to give people the impression that he was a very busy man, but Jeffrey knew for a fact that Blake spent most of his free time on the golf course. Jeffrey wanted to make an appointment with the man to update him on the case before Blake sneaked out early. Blake’s secretary put Jeffrey right through.

“Jeffrey,” Blake said. He was using the speakerphone, and if the tension in Blake’s voice was not enough to tell Jeffrey that someone else was in his office, the speakerphone was.

Blake asked, “Where are you?”

“On campus,” he answered. Keller had told Frank he would be in his lab all day if Jeffrey wanted to talk to him alone. Before Lena this morning, Keller had been the best avenue Jeffrey had to explore. Jeffrey knew that it would be easy to get sidetracked, but there was nothing he could do with Lena right now, and he knew better than to go at Ethan White with nothing to use as leverage.

Blake said, “I’ve got Albert Gaines here with Chuck. We were about to call you at the station and see if you could come by.”

Jeffrey suppressed the curse that wanted to come.

“Hey, Chief,” Chuck said, and Jeffrey could imagine the smug look on the other man’s face. “We got some doughnuts and coffee here for you.”

There was a grumbling sound that was probably Albert Gaines.

Blake said, “Jeffrey, could you drop by the office? We’d like to talk to you.”

“I can be there in an hour,” Jeffrey told him, thinking he would be damned if he came running when they snapped their fingers. “I’ve got a lead to track down.”

“Oh,” Blake said, probably thinking he would have to postpone his tee time. “Sure you can’t just run by here a second?”

Albert Gaines grumbled something again. He was a gruff man, and he demanded answers from his subordinates, but he had always been supportive of Jeffrey.

Blake had obviously been reprimanded. His tone was brisk when he said, “We’ll see you in about an hour, then, Chief.”

Jeffrey closed his phone, holding it to his chin as he watched the group of girls move on to the next section of the courtyard. He got out of the car and walked toward the student union, stopping to look at one of the posters. At the top was a blurry black-and-white photo of Ellen Schaffer and a separate, even blurrier one of Andy Rosen. Beneath these were the words “Candlelight Vigil.” A time and a location were given, along with a new suicide hot-line number that had been set up through the mental-health center.

“Do you think it will do any good?”

Jeffrey jumped, startled by Jill Rosen.

“Dr. Rosen—”

“Jill,” she corrected. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, thinking that the mother looked worse than she had the day before. Her eyes were so puffy from crying that they were barely slits, and her cheeks looked gaunt. She was wearing a white long-sleeved sweater with a collar that zipped into a turtleneck. As she talked to Jeffrey, she clutched the collar together in her hand, as though she were fighting the cold.

“I look a sight,” she apologized.

“I was just going to talk to your husband,” Jeffrey said, thinking he had blown the opportunity to speak to Keller alone.

“He should be here soon,” she told him, holding up a set of keys. “His spare set,” she explained. “I told him I’d meet him here. I just needed to get out of the house.”

“I was surprised to hear he was at work.”

“Work restores him.” She gave a wan smile. “It’s a good place to hide when the world is falling down around you.”

Jeffrey knew exactly what she meant. He had thrown himself into work after Sara divorced him, and if he hadn’t had a job to go to every day, he would have gone crazy.

“Here,” he told her, indicating a bench. “How are you holding up?”

She exhaled slowly as she sat down. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“I guess it was a pretty stupid question.”

“No,” she assured him. “It’s something I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. ‘How am I holding up?’ I’ll let you know when I get an answer.”

Jeffrey sat beside her, looking out at the campus quad. Some kids had wandered out onto the lawn for lunch, spreading blankets and taking sandwiches from brown paper bags.

Rosen was staring at the students, too. She had the edge of her shirt collar in her mouth. He could tell from the frayed material that this was a nervous habit.

She said, “I think I’m going to leave my husband.”

Jeffrey turned to her but said nothing. He could tell that her words took effort.

She said, “He wants to move. Move away from Grant. Start over. I can’t start over again. I can’t.” She looked down.

“It’s understandable to want to get away,” Jeffrey said, trying to keep her talking.

Rosen indicated the campus with a tilt of her head. “I’ve been here nearly twenty years. We made our lives here, such as they are. I’ve built something at the clinic.”

Jeffrey let some time pass. When she did not add anything more, he asked, “Did he say why he wanted to move?”

She shook her head, but not because she did not know why. There was an almost unbearable sadness in her voice, as though she’d decided to admit defeat. “That’s his response to everything. He’s all macho bluster, but at the first sign of trouble, he runs away from it as fast as he can.”

“Sounds like he’s done this before.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

Jeffrey tried to press her. “What’s he running away from?”

“Everything,” she said, but she did not explain. “My working life has been built around helping people confront their past, yet I can’t help my own husband stay and face his demons.” She said more quietly, “I can’t even help myself.”

“What demons does he have here?”

“The same as mine, I suppose. Every corner I turn, I expect to see Andy. I’m at home and I hear something outside and look out the window, expecting to see him climbing the stairs to his room. It has to be harder for Brian, working in the lab. I know it’s harder for him. He has to meet this deadline. A tremendous amount of money is at stake. I know that. I know all of that.”

Her voice had gone up, and he sensed anger that had been brewing for a while.

He asked, “Is this about the affair?”

“What affair?” she said, and her surprise seemed genuine.

“I’d heard a rumor,” Jeffrey explained, wanting to kick Richard Carter’s teeth in. “Someone told me that Brian was involved with a student.”

“Oh, God,” she breathed, covering her lips with the collar. “I almost wish that were true. Isn’t that horrible?” she asked. “It would mean he was capable of caring about something other than his precious research.”

“He cared for his son,” Jeffrey said, remembering the argument he had overheard the day before. Rosen had accused Keller of not caring about Andy until after he was dead.

“He cares in spurts,” she said. “That car. The clothes. The television. He bought things. That was how he cared.”

There was something else she was trying to tell him, but Jeffrey did not know what. He asked, “Where does he want to move?”

“Who knows?” she said. “He’s like a turtle. Whenever anything bad happens, his response is to tuck his head in and wait for it to pass.” She smiled, realizing that she had been tucking her head into her collar. “Visual aid.”

He returned her smile.

“I just can’t do it. I can’t live this way anymore.” She slid her gaze toward Jeffrey. “Will you bill me for this session, or should I pay you now?”

He smiled again, willing her to continue.

“I suppose your job is very similar to mine in a lot of ways. You listen to people talk and you try to figure out what they’re really trying to say.”

“What are you really trying to say?”

She considered the question. “That I’m tired,” she said. “That I want a life—any life. I stayed with Brian because I thought it would be better for Andy, but now that Andy is gone . . .”

She started to cry, and Jeffrey reached for his handkerchief. He did not notice the blood from Lena’s hand until after he had handed her the cloth.

He apologized, “I’m sorry.”

“Did you cut yourself?”

“Lena did,” he told her, watching her reaction closely. “I talked to her this morning. She was cut under her eye. Someone hit her.”

Concern flashed in the woman’s eyes, but she said nothing.

“She’s seeing someone,” he said, and Rosen seemed to be forcing herself to keep her mouth closed. “This morning I went to her apartment, and he was there with her.”

Rosen did not tell him to go on, but her eyes were pleading with him. Her fear for Lena’s safety was obvious.

“Her eye was cut and her wrist was bruised, like someone had grabbed her.” He waited a beat. “This guy has a past, Dr. Rosen. He’s a very dangerous and violent man.”

She was on the edge of the bench, practically begging for him to continue.

“Ethan White,” he said. “Does that name sound familiar to you?”

“No,” she told him. “Should it?”

“I hoped it might,” he said, because it would mean a clear connection between Andy Rosen and Ethan White.

“Was she hurt badly?” Rosen asked.

“From what I could see, no,” Jeffrey said. “But she kept picking at her hand. She was bleeding, and she kept picking at the scar.”

Rosen pressed her lips together again.

“I don’t know how to get her away from him,” Jeffrey said. “I don’t know how to help her.”

She looked off into the distance, staring at the students again. “She can only help herself,” Rosen said, her tone giving a deeper meaning to her words.

“Was she a patient of yours?” Jeffrey asked, hoping to God this was the case.

“You know I can’t give you that kind of information.”

“I know,” Jeffrey said, “but hypothetically, if you could, it would answer a question for me.”

She looked at him. “What question is that?”

“When we were by the river, Chuck said your son’s name, and Lena seemed surprised, like she knew him,” Jeffrey said, working it out as he talked. “Now, could it be that when Lena said ‘Rosen,’ like she knew the name, she was saying it because she knew you, not because she knew Andy?”

The woman seemed to consider how she could answer Jeffrey without compromising what she believed in.

“Dr. Rosen . . .”

She sat back on the bench, drawing her collar closer. “My husband is coming.”

Jeffrey tried to hide his exasperation. Keller was about fifty feet away, and Rosen could have answered Jeffrey’s question if she had really wanted to.

Jeffrey greeted the man. “Dr. Keller.”

He seemed confused to see his wife and Jeffrey together. He asked, “Is something wrong?”

Jeffrey stood, indicating that Keller should sit, but the man ignored him, asking his wife, “Do you have my keys?”

She handed him the ring, barely looking at him.

“I need to get back to work,” Keller said. “Jill, you should go home.”

Rosen started to stand.

“I have to tell you both something,” Jeffrey said, gesturing for her to stay seated. “It’s about Andy.”

Keller gave a look that said his son was the last thing on his mind.

“I wanted to tell you both this before it was released on campus,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not certain your son’s death was a suicide.”

Rosen asked, “What?”

“I can’t rule out the possibility that he might have been killed,” Jeffrey told them.

Keller dropped his keys but did not pick them up.

Jeffrey continued, “We didn’t find anything conclusive in Andy’s autopsy, but Ellen Schaffer—”

“The girl from yesterday?” Rosen interrupted.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jeffrey said. “There’s no question she was murdered. Considering the fact that it was staged to look like a suicide, we have to question the circumstances surrounding your son’s death. I can’t say with all honesty that we have anything to prove he didn’t take his life, but we have strong suspicions, and I’m going to investigate this until I find out the truth.”

She sat back on the bench, her lips parted.

Jeffrey continued, “I have to tell the dean about this, but I wanted y’all to hear it first.”

Rosen asked, “What about the note?”

“That’s one of the things I don’t have an explanation for,” Jeffrey said. “And I’m sorry to say that all I can give you right now is what I suspect. We’re exploring every possible avenue we can to try to find out exactly what happened, but I have to be honest: Nothing obvious is coming to mind. The two cases could be completely unrelated. It could be that at the end of all this we find out that Andy really did kill himself.”

Keller exploded, and his rage was so unexpected that Jeffrey stepped back.

“How the hell can this happen?” Keller demanded. “How the hell can you let me and my wife think our son killed himself when—”

“Brian,” Rosen tried.

“Shut up, Jill,” he snapped, his hand flicking like he might strike her. “This is preposterous. This is . . .” He was too angry to speak, but his mouth moved as he considered words to describe how he felt. “I cannot believe . . .” He leaned down and snatched up his keys. “This college, this whole town . . .” He put his finger in his wife’s face, and she backed away as if to defend herself.

Keller rose to his full height, screaming, “I told you, Jill. I told you what a hellhole this place is!”

Jeffrey stepped in, saying, “Dr. Keller, I think you need to calm down.”

“I think you need to mind your own business and figure out who murdered my son!” he roared, his face contorted with rage. “You Keystone Kops think you run this town, but this is like living in a Third World country. You’re all corrupt. You’re all answering to Albert Gaines.”

Jeffrey had had enough. “We’ll talk about this some other time, Dr. Keller, when you’ve had a chance to absorb all this.”

This time, Keller put his finger in Jeffrey’s face. “You’re damn right we’ll talk about this,” he said, then turned his back on them both and stomped away.

Jill Rosen immediately apologized for her husband. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize for him,” Jeffrey said, trying to keep his own anger at bay. He wanted to follow Keller back to his lab, but both of them probably needed a few minutes to calm down.

Jeffrey told Rosen, feeling her desperation, “I’m sorry I can’t give you more information that that.”

She clutched her collar to her neck, asking, “Your hypothetical question from before?”

“Yes?”

“It’s related to Andy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he told her, trying to shift gears.

Rosen stared out at the quad, at the students sitting on the lawn and enjoying the day. “Hypothetically,” she said, “she might have a reason to recognize my name.”

“Thank you,” Jeffrey said, feeling an inordinate amount of relief to have at least one thing explained.

“About the other,” she said, still watching the students. “The man she’s seeing?”

“Do you know him?” Jeffrey asked, then amended, “Hypothetically?”

“Oh, I know him,” she said. “Or at least I know his type. I know his type better than I know myself.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

She pulled back her collar, taking down the zipper to show a large bruise on her clavicle. Black finger marks were pressed into the side of her neck. Someone had tried to choke her.

Jeffrey could only stare. “Who . . . ,” he said, but the answer was obvious.

Rosen zipped her shirt back up. “I should go.”

“I can take you somewhere,” Jeffrey offered. “To a shelter—”

“I’ll go to my mother’s,” she told him, smiling sadly. “I always go to my mother’s.”

“Dr. Rosen,” he said. “Jill—”

“I appreciate your concern,” she interrupted. “But I really have to go.”

He stood there, watching her make her way past a group of students. She stopped briefly to talk to one of them, acting as if nothing had happened. He was torn between following her and tracking down Brian Keller to let him know exactly how it felt to be pushed around.

On impulse, Jeffrey chose the latter, walking toward the science building at a fast pace. As a kid, he had interrupted enough fights between his parents to know that anger only fueled more anger, so he took a deep, calming breath before opening the door to Keller’s lab.

The room was empty but for Richard Carter, who stood behind the desk, tapping a pen against his chin. His expectant look quickly turned to one of disappointment when he recognized Jeffrey. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Where’s Keller?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Richard snapped, clearly annoyed. He bent back over the desk, scribbling a note. “He was supposed to meet me thirty minutes ago.”

“I just talked to his wife about that so-called affair he was having.”

He perked up at this, a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah? What’d she say?”

“That it wasn’t true.” Jeffrey warned, “You need to be more careful about what you say.”

Richard looked hurt. “I told you it was a rumor. I made it very clear that—”

“You’re messing around with people’s lives. Not to mention wasting my time.”

Richard sighed as he returned to his note. He mumbled, “Sorry,” the way a child might.

Jeffrey did not let him off that easy. “Because of you, I’ve been chasing my tail tracking down this rumor when I could’ve been working on something that might actually help.” When there was no response, Jeffrey felt the need to add, “People are dead, Richard.”

“I’m well aware of that, Chief Tolliver, but what on earth does that have to do with me?” Richard did not give him a chance to respond. “Can I be honest with you? I know what happened was horrible, but we’ve got work to do. Important work. There’s a group in California working on this same thing. They’re not just going to say, ‘Oh, Brian Keller’s had a hard time lately, let’s stop until he feels better.’ No, sir. They’re going at it night and day—night and day—to beat us to the punch. Science is not a gentleman’s game. Millions, maybe billions, are on the line.”

He sounded like an infomercial trying to pressure some poor sucker into buying a set of steak knives in the next two minutes. Jeffrey said, “I didn’t know you and Brian worked together.”

“When he bothers to show up.” He threw down his pen on the desk, picked up his briefcase, and walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Class,” Richard said, as if Jeffrey were stupid. “Some of us actually show up when we’re supposed to.”

He left in a dramatic huff. Rather than follow him, Jeffrey went to Keller’s desk and read the note: “Dear Brian, I suppose you’re still busy with Andy, but we really should get the documentation together. If you need me to do it on my own, just say the word.” Richard had put a smiley face next to his name.

Jeffrey read the note through twice, trying to reconcile the helpful tone with Richard’s obvious irritation. It didn’t jibe, though Richard was hardly the rational type.

He glanced toward the door before deciding to make himself at home and go through Keller’s desk. He was kneeling down, rifling the bottom file drawer, when his cell phone rang.

“Tolliver.”

“Chief,” Frank said. By his tone, Jeffrey could have guessed what was coming next. “We found another body.”

Jeffrey parked his car in front of the men’s dorm, thinking if he never saw the Grant Tech campus again, he would be a happy man. He could not forget the blank expression on Jill Rosen’s face and wondered how surprised he must have looked when she showed him her bruises. He would not have guessed in a million years that Keller was the type of man to beat his wife, but Jeffrey had been caught off guard by too many revelations today to feel stupid for missing what might have been obvious signs.

Jeffrey took out his phone, debating whether to call Sara. He did not want her at the crime scene, but he knew she needed to see the body in situ. Jeffrey tried to think of a good excuse to keep her away but finally relented, dialing her number.

The phone rang five times before Sara picked up, mumbling a groggy hello.

“Hey,” Jeffrey said.

“What time is it?”

He told her, thinking she sounded better than she had last night. He said, “I’m sorry I’m waking you up.”

“Hm . . . what?” she asked, and he could hear her moving around in bed. He had a flash of being there beside her and felt a stirring he had not felt in a while. There was nothing he wanted more than to slip into bed beside Sara and start this day over again.

Sara said, “Mama called about twenty minutes ago. Tessa’s doing a little better.” She yawned loudly. “I’ve got some paperwork at the morgue, and then I’m going to drive back this afternoon.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

There was dread in her voice. “What?”

“A hanging,” he said. “At the college.”

“Christ,” Sara breathed. Jeffrey felt the same way. In a town where the murder rate was ten times lower than the national average, bodies were suddenly stacking up to the walls.

She asked, “What time?”

“I’m not sure yet. I just got the call.” He knew what her response to his words would be, but he had to say, “You could send Carlos.”

“I have to see the body.”

“I don’t like the thought of you on campus,” he told her. “If something happened—”

“I’m not going to not do my job,” she said, her tone making it clear there was no point arguing.

Jeffrey knew she was right. Sara did not just have a job to do; she had to live her life. He thought about what Lena had looked like this morning and the bruises on Jill Rosen’s neck. Should he let them just live their lives, too?

“Jeff?”

He relented. “It’s the men’s dorm, Building B.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Jeffrey ended the call and got out of the car. He steered his way past the group of boys outside the door and walked into the dorm, the strong smell of liquor enveloping him like a cloud. Back at Auburn, where Jeffrey had studied history in between warming the bench for the rest of the football team, they had partied pretty hard, but he could not remember his dorm ever smelling like a liquor store.

“Hey, Chief,” Chuck said. He was standing at the top of the stairs, hands tucked into the front pockets of his tight pants. The effect was obscene, and Jeffrey wished the other man would back up from the stairs Jeffrey was about to climb.

“Chuck,” Jeffrey said, watching the steps as he walked up them.

“Glad you finally showed up. Kev and I were waiting around for you.”

Jeffrey frowned at the way he threw around the dean’s name like they were best friends. Except for the fact that Albert Gaines was Chuck’s father, Kevin Blake wouldn’t have given Chuck the time of day, let alone play golf with the man. Not that Kevin would be seeing the greens anytime soon. He’d probably be spending the rest of the month fielding phone calls from anxious parents who were nervous about their kids being at a school where three of their classmates had died.

“I’ll talk to him when I can make the time,” Jeffrey told him, wondering how long he could postpone the meeting.

“This’n’s pretty straightforward,” Chuck said, meaning the suicide. “Got caught with his pants down.”

Jeffrey ignored the remark and asked, “Who found him?”

“One of the other kids in the building.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“He’s downstairs right now,” Chuck said. “Adams tried to get the story out of him, but I had to take over.” He gave a knowing wink. “She can be a little heavy-handed. You gotta employ some finesse in these types of situations.”

“Is that right?” Jeffrey asked, looking down the hallway. Frank and Lena were standing outside a room. Guessing from their posture, the two were not sharing a happy moment.

Chuck said, “She’s the one that found the needle.”

“Found it?” Jeffrey asked. He had called the scene-of-crime unit less than ten minutes ago. There was no way the techs had had time to process the room.

“Lena spotted it when she walked in to check on the perp,” Chuck said, using the wrong word for the victim. “Guess it rolled under the bed.”

Jeffrey suppressed a curse, knowing that whatever evidence they found in the room would be tainted, especially if it was evidence that suggested Lena had been in the room before.

Chuck laughed. “Didn’t mean to show you up, Chief,” he said, patting Jeffrey on the back like Jeffrey’s team had lost a game of pickup basketball.

Jeffrey ignored him, walking toward Frank and Lena. When Chuck started to follow, Jeffrey said, “You do me a favor?”

“Sure, hoss.”

“Stand at the top of the stairs. Make sure nobody comes up but Sara.”

Chuck gave him a salute and turned on his heel.

“Idiot,” Jeffrey mumbled, walking down the hall.

Frank was saying something to Lena, but he stopped talking when Jeffrey got there.

Jeffrey asked Lena, “Can you excuse us for a minute?”

“Sure,” she said, taking a few steps down the hall. Jeffrey knew she could still hear them, but he did not care.

He told Frank, “Crime techs are on the way.”

“I went ahead and took pictures,” Frank said, holding up the Polaroid camera.

“Get Brad over here,” he ordered, knowing that Sara did not want a baby-sitter. “Tell him to bring the camera. I want some clean shots.”

Frank made the phone call as Jeffrey peered into the room. A chubby kid with long black hair was slumped against the bed. On the floor beside him was a yellow band of rubber like the kind addicts use to help find a vein. The body was bloated and gray. The kid had been there for a while.

“Jesus Christ,” Jeffrey muttered, thinking that this room smelled even worse than Ellen Schaffer’s had. “What the hell is that?”

Frank volunteered, “Not much of a housekeeper.”

Jeffrey studied the scene. None of the lights were on, but the late-morning sunlight was bright enough to see by. There was a combination TV/VCR across from the body, propped up on the mattress of the bed. A bright blue screen glowed, indicating that the tape had stopped. The light gave the body an odd cast, making the skin look moldy, or maybe that particular description came to mind because the room smelled so bad. The place was a mess, and Jeffrey guessed most of the odor came from the food containers left to rot on the floor. Papers and books were everywhere, and he wondered how anyone managed to walk around without tripping.

The kid’s head tilted down into his chest, his greasy hair covering his face and neck. He was not wearing anything other than a pair of dirty-looking white boxer shorts. His hand was shoved into the opening and Jeffrey could make an educated guess as to what it had been doing in there.

There was a pattern bruise on the victim’s left arm, but Sara could better assess the mark. Jeffrey assumed from the stiff way the body sat that rigor mortis had taken over, which put the time of death within the last two to twelve hours, depending on how consistent the temperature in the room had been. Time of death was never easy to establish, and Jeffrey guessed that Sara would not be able to ballpark it any better than he could.

“Is the air on in there?” Jeffrey asked, loosening his tie. The window unit had plastic streamers on the vents, but they were still.

“No,” Frank said. “The door was open when I got here, and I figured I might as well leave it that way to air the funk out.”

Jeffrey nodded, thinking the room must have been pretty hot most of the night if the air had stayed off and the door had been closed. His neighbors must have been so accustomed to the bad smell by now that they had not noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Jeffrey asked, “We got a name on him?”

“William Dickson,” Frank said. “Far as I can tell nobody called him that.”

“What’d he go by?”

Frank smirked. “Scooter.”

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows, but he was in no position to talk. He was not about to share with anyone what they had called him back in Sylacauga. Sara had used it yesterday just to rankle him.

Frank said, “His roommate’s back home this week for Easter.”

“I want to talk to him,” Jeffrey said.

“I’ll get a number from the dean when this is clear.”

Jeffrey walked into the room, noticing a broken plastic syringe on the floor. Whatever was in it had dried, but he could make out a clear waffle shoe tread imprinted in what had once been fluid.

He stared at the tread, telling Frank, “Make sure Brad gets a good shot of this.” Frank nodded, and Jeffrey knelt beside the body. He was about to ask Frank for some gloves when the older man tossed him a pair.

“Thanks,” Jeffrey said, tugging them on. The fact that his hands were sweating made the latex stick. The light in the room was negligible, and Jeffrey looked around for a lamp Dickson might have used. There was one on the refrigerator by the bed, but the cord had been cut off, the ends of the wires sheared back to the copper. “Don’t let anybody turn on the light switch until we get a look at this,” Jeffrey warned Frank.

He tilted Scooter’s head to the side, lifting his chin off his chest. There was a leather belt wrapped around the boy’s neck that Jeffrey had not seen from the hall. Scooter’s hair was so long and greasy, Jeffrey was surprised he could see it now.

Jeffrey pushed back the boy’s hair, which moved in a thick clump. The belt was looped around the neck, the buckle so tight it dug into the skin. Jeffrey did not want to loosen the leather, but he could see a thin piece of foam squeezing out at the top. He followed the end of the belt, finding it looped through another belt, this one made of canvas. The buckle on the second belt was looped through a large eye hook screwed into the wall. The entire length of the belts was taut, the weight of the body pulling on the bolt in the wall. From the looks of it, the eye hook had been there a while.

Jeffrey turned slightly, looking at the television opposite the body. The unit was cheap, the kind you could get at a discount store for less than a hundred bucks. Beside it was a jar of Tiger Balm edged with crusty white chunks of God only knew what. Jeffrey took out his pen and used it to press the eject button on the VCR. The label had a sexually suggestive scene drawn on it under the title The Bare Wench Project.

Jeffrey stood up, taking off his gloves. Frank followed him down the hall to Lena.

“You call anybody?” Jeffrey asked.

“What?” she said, wrinkling her brow. She had obviously been ready for another interrogation, but he knew his question had surprised her.

“When you got here,” he said, “did you call anybody on your cell phone?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jeffrey asked. He thought Sara was the only person in Grant who did not carry one.

“Do you know what they pay me?” Lena laughed, incredulous. “I can barely afford food.”

Jeffrey changed the subject. “I heard you found the needle.”

“We got the call about half an hour ago,” she said, and he knew that this was the answer she had been rehearsing. “I went into the room to see if the subject was alive. He had no pulse and was not breathing. His body was stiff and cool to the touch. That was when I found the needle.”

“She was real helpful,” Frank said, his tone indicating the opposite. “Saw it under the bed and just thought she’d save us the trouble and fetch it for us herself.”

Jeffrey stared at Lena, stating rather than asking, “Guess your prints are all over it.”

“Guess so.”

“Guess you don’t remember what else you touched while you were in there?”

“Guess not.”

Jeffrey looked into the room, then back at Lena. “You wanna tell me how your boyfriend’s tread print got on the floor?”

She did not seemed fazed at all. As a matter of fact, she smiled. “Didn’t you hear?” she asked. “He’s the one who found the body.”

Jeffrey glanced at Frank, who nodded. “I heard you already tried to interview him.”

She shrugged.

“Frank,” he said, “go fetch him up here.”

Frank left, and Lena walked over to the window, looking out at the front lawn of the dorm. There was trash everywhere, and beer cans were piled into a monument by the bike rack.

Jeffrey said, “Looks like they had some party here.”

“I guess,” she said.

“Maybe this guy”— he indicated Scooter—“got carried away.”

“Maybe.”

“Seems to me like you’ve got a drug problem on this campus.”

Lena turned to look at him. “Maybe you oughta talk to Chuck about that.”

“Yeah, he’s real on top of things,” Jeffrey said sarcastically.

“Might want to see where he was this weekend.”

“At the golf tournament?” Jeffrey asked, remembering the front page of the Grant Observer. He guessed Lena was alluding to Chuck’s father, trying to remind Jeffrey that Albert Gaines could catch him by his short hairs.

Jeffrey said, “Why are you working against me, Lena? What are you hiding?”

“Your witness is here,” she said. “I’d better go check in with my boss.”

“Why so fast?” Jeffrey asked. “Are you scared he’s going to hit you again?”

She pressed her lips together, not giving him a response.

“Stay here,” he told her, making it clear she did not have a choice.

Ethan White sauntered down the hall with Frank beside him. He was still dressed in his usual long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans. His hair was wet, and a towel was wrapped around his neck.

“Take a shower?” Jeffrey asked.

“Yeah,” Ethan said, using the edge of the towel to wipe his ear. “I was washing off all the evidence from choking Scooter to death.”

“That sounds like a confession,” Jeffrey said.

Ethan gave him a scathing look. “I already talked to your junior pig here,” he said, staring at Lena. Lena stared back, ratcheting up the tension.

“Tell it to me,” Jeffrey said. “You live on the first floor?” Ethan nodded. “Why did you come up here?”

“I needed to borrow some class notes from Scooter.”

“Which class?”

“Molecular biology.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Count backward about two minutes from whatever time I called her.”

Lena saw the opening. She said, “I was at the security office. He didn’t call me, I just happened to answer the phone.”

Ethan grabbed the ends of the towel in his hands as if he were strangling it. “I left when they got here. That’s all I know.”

“What did you touch in the room?”

“I don’t recall,” he said. “I was pretty unnerved, what with walking in on my fellow classmate dead on the floor.”

“You’ve seen a dead body before,” Jeffrey reminded him.

Ethan raised his eyebrows, as if to say So what?

Jeffrey said, “I want you to make a formal statement at the police station.”

Ethan shook his head. “No way.”

“Are you impeding an investigation?” Jeffrey threatened.

“No, sir,” Ethan answered smartly. He took a piece of notebook paper from his back pocket and held it out to Jeffrey. “This is my statement. I’ve signed it. I’ll sign it again now if you want to witness it. I believe legally I’m under no obligation to do this at the police station.”

“You think you’re good at this,” Jeffrey said, not taking the statement. “You think you know how to weasel your way out of anything.” He indicated Lena. “Or beat your way out of it.”

Ethan winked at Lena, like they shared a special secret. Lena tensed but said nothing,

“I’m going to get you,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe not now, but you’re up to something, and I’m going to nail you on it. Do you hear me?”

Ethan released the paper and it floated to the floor. “If that’s it,” he said, “I really need to get to class.”