Heart of Ice

Chapter Thirty-three

It was worse than a couple of angry midgets wrestling in the closet. A pillow over the head did nothing.

Thump. Whap. Thump!

The intermittent banging of the pipes reverberated from the bathroom with its Vera wallpaper and cheerfully outdated daisy appliqués. It was 2:00 A.M. and Jenna Kenyon knew she couldn’t sleep in that room. She grabbed the pillow and a blanket, and started for the TV lounge, where she figured she could grab a spot on the couch. The TV was still on, and all of the couches were occupied with young women glued to a dating-show marathon that featured four pretty women in an RV vying for the affections of a smooth-chested hunk with a unibrow.

The BZ girls were sucking it in with a big fat straw.

“You’d think he’d wax his brow if he’s gonna wax his chest,” said one of the girls, a redhead in yellow pajamas with lips and fingers stained orange from Cheetos.

“No kidding,” a brunette agreed.

“I still think he’s so hot.”

“Oh, yeah. Superhot.”

Jenna lingered for a moment, but none of the girls saw her. And she decided that there was no way she was going to kick them out of their cozy cocoon and away from their inane conversation so she could crash there. She doubted they’d offer, and if they did, they’d do so begrudgingly. It was too late to impose anyway. It didn’t matter that the TV show they were riveted to was nothing short of complete garbage.

Tired and beginning to feel stressed, Jenna decided to go upstairs to the sleeping porch. She hated the sleeping porch at her BZ house at Cascade University, and knew this was no better. Dozens of beds. Lights always out. A snorer or two in utter denial. It was a sleepy girl’s nightmare. She tiptoed inside, and searched for a bed as far from the open window as possible. Fire codes mandated that the window next to the fire escape remain open. Jenna knew sleeping next to the open window only invited the inevitable—a drunken frat boy proving his prowess by slipping into his girlfriend’s sorority bed late at night. It happened almost every night, on every campus, across the country.

As Jenna drifted off to sleep, she couldn’t help but think that no parent would ever allow a son or daughter to join a frat or sorority if they knew everything there was about them.

If I ever have a daughter of my own, she’s going someplace without the Greek system, she thought.

At first, the cry was unintelligible. Just a guttural scream that started loud and went even louder. It was coming from the second floor, up the stairway to the sleeping porch.

The girl in the bed next to Jenna jumped to her feet. “What’s going on now?”

Jenna sat up and felt for the gooseneck lamp hooked to her bedframe and turned it on. The bulb was no more than twenty-five watts and it barely illuminated the faces of the girls who’d crawled out of bed.

“Megan must have forgotten the front-door combination,” another said.

But the scream wasn’t about being locked out.

“Oh, my God!” came the words this time. The scream. The words. Something was very, very wrong.

Jenna pushed past the girls in the hall and headed down the stairs. At the second-floor landing, she found Midori hunched over, sobbing uncontrollably. She reached down and put her hand on her shoulder.

“Midori, what is it?”

Midori was crying so hard now, she couldn’t speak. She looked up, her face frozen in utter terror.

Jenna got on her knees and held her; in doing so, she felt a wetness on Midori’s nightgown. She looked closer.

It was blood.

“Midori! What happened? How did you get hurt?”

By then, the entire hall was filled with girls—less the ones that were going to take the walk of shame home after spending the night with their boyfriends—and the air was thick with panic.

“It. It. It isn’t me.” She sputtered out her words and turned to indicate the guest bedroom. Midori started to shake. “It’s Sheraton. Something’s happened to her.”

Jenna motioned for another girl to attend to Midori. She commanded a girl who had taken pictures with her cell phone to dial 911.

“I mean, right now.”

Ma Barker scurried up the stairs, swathed in her inch-thick turquoise terry bathrobe. Her head covered with a nylon sleeping cap.

“Good, Lord! What’s going on up here?”

“I don’t know. Sheraton’s hurt.” Midori looked up. “She’s in there!”

Jenna nearly lost her footing as she entered the bedroom. Looking down, she saw the smear of blood. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The wall next to the daybed was splattered with a triple arc of blood that looked like the devil’s rainbow. Three dripping arcs of blood oozed from the wall to the floor behind the bed. Her cream-colored wool coat borrowed by Sheraton in the chill of the night was striped with red.

And there she was. The body of a young woman facedown, the light from the bathroom reflecting off the dark wetness of her head.

“Sheraton?” Jenna said, almost in a whisper. “Are you OK?”

There was no answer, just perfect stillness.

Thump. Whap. Thump!

Startled, Jenna screamed. The noise of the water heater nearly jolted her to the ceiling.

“Ya’ll pull yourself together. Campus police are coming!” Ma Barker called out.

A siren wailed louder and louder. The girls in the hallway started to cry. Ma Barker tried to gather them together to get out of the house.

“We don’t know who did this,” she said, “And I don’t want any of my girls here to meet him, if he’s still in the house.”

Ma Barker was thinking of the slaughter of five girls by a serial killer ten years before. He’d crept into the sleeping house of a Chi Epsilon chapter near St. Louis and cut the throats of five girls. All but one bled to death. The deaths were painful, slow, and beyond anything anyone could have imagined. The lone survivor recovered and eventually testified against Paul Walton, the boyfriend of one of the victims. He’d been angry that she’d broken up with him and was sure the other sisters were behind it. Today, he was in prison on death row.

As the girls followed Ma Barker down the stairs to the front door, Jenna hurried back up to the sleeping porch and turned on the overhead lights. Her heart pounded and fear gripped her so tightly she could barely breathe.

“Is everyone out of here?”

She ran over to a bed on the north side of the room. The girl curled up under the covers wasn’t moving.

“Oh God, not another!”

Jenna pulled the blanket from the bed and prepared herself for the worst. But it was only a decoy, two pillows arranged by a girl who decided her reputation was something worth saving. Or at least worth lying about.

Jenna was acquainted with police procedure as well as anyone. She knew what was to come. The sad task of notifying the dead girl’s parents. The questions. The follow-up. All of it. Not only had she been raised on Law & Order in all of its incarnations, she had a realistic view of police work through her mother’s experiences as a cop. Few meals or evenings were left without some comment about some investigation in the news, or even closer to home.

Jenna wanted to cry, but knew that tears did nothing.

A man stood in a coffee line at the Nashville airport. His right hand was sore and he’d bandaged a small cut with tape he purchased from a drugstore. Despite the pain, he was nearly euphoric. He’d had a great business trip. One of the best ever. He could hear Wolf Blitzer’s voice coming from the bank of TVs bolted overhead in at the gate. Wolf was talking about a breaking news story coming out of the college town of Dixon. Without turning his head toward the screens, he fixed his auditory senses on Wolf’s words.

“…The body of a college student was found earlier today at the Beta Zeta House on the campus of Dixon University.”

No name was given. The audio had some quotes from some young people who were devastated by the grisly discovery. It was boilerplate reporting, and the only thing that made it interesting was the fact that the victim was young, pretty, and a college student. She was, as the story implied, too young to die. Too full of promise.

“…a person of interest is being questioned.”

That line made him smile.

“Tall latté, no foam,” he told the girl behind the counter, still listening to the news report.

The real person of interest put Equal in his latté.

This is too good to be true, he thought.

He was right about that. It was.

Emily Kenyon was overcome with concern. Jenna was on the phone telling her about the horrific discovery of Sheraton Wilkes’s blood-drenched body at the BZ house at Dixon University. Jenna called earlier in the morning, but Chris was staying over and she just let the phone ring. She felt like a bad mother just then. A really bad mother. Most women who attempted to build new relationships felt the twinge of regret any time they put a new love over their children, no matter if they were toddlers or grown.

“You must be terrified,” she said. “The poor girl.”

“Jesus, Mom, I’ve seen a lot in the past few years, but nothing like this. I’m talking like something out of a slasher movie. Spatter all over the wall.”

She wanted Jenna to get on a plane right that very minute. Certainly, she knew Jenna’s strengths. She was tough, because she’d had to be. They’d made it through a nightmare five years earlier with the three horrific murders that shook Cherrystone and the ensuing events that nearly cost them their lives. But that was past them. It was water under the bridge. It had to be. To let violence consume either mother or daughter would be letting go of the love they had for each other. The bond they had was unbreakable.

“I’m OK, Mom,” Jenna said.

“Honey, I’m sure you are. But why don’t you come home?”

“A grief counselor is coming in from Nationals, and they want me to stay until he gets here. I said I could do it. I mean, Mom, this girl was slashed to death and the sisters here saw it.”

“Saw the murder?”

“No, no. The aftermath. What I mean is, most of them saw Sheraton’s body and after the police came through with the crime kits, the room has been visited by everyone who lives in the house. One girl sent photos from her cell phone to her dad’s paper in Knoxville and they put them up on their website.”

“Nice. What’s wrong with people?”

“That’s what I thought. Mrs. Barker, the housemother, says that she’ll clean up the mess. I feel a little bad that I didn’t offer to help her.”

“Are you sure you’re OK?”

“I’m a little shaken, but I’m doing all right,” Jenna said, tearing up a little.

Emily knew that Jenna was on the verge of falling apart, but to mention it would be to push her to the edge. She was a thousand miles away and there was no way to wrap her arms around her. “All right,” she said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No. I’m just going to stay until the counselor comes. Then I’m going to come home. Nationals wants me to take a couple of weeks off and skip Gainesville.”

“Good idea. So when will you be home?”

“Monday night at the earliest.”

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m fine. I’m going to help these girls the best that I can, but really, I know that’s not my expertise. So far two of the girls said they’re going home, but I’ve seen their grades and I think they would have dropped out anyway.”

“Do they have a suspect?”

“They won’t say. At least not the police. The girls think Sheraton’s boyfriend was mad at her. But mom, I had dinner with Sheraton last night and she said how much she loved the guy. There were no problems. Not on her part. She wasn’t smart, Mom, but she was a nice girl. I liked her.” Jenna almost said “really liked her” but she knew that was the kind of editing of feelings done after a tragedy. Sheraton was a nice enough girl, and she didn’t deserve what happened to her, but she was hardly anyone with whom Jenna would ever stay in touch.

Now that was impossible anyway.

“Have the police picked up the boyfriend?” Emily asked.

Jenna didn’t answer.

“Jenna?” Emily looked at her phone and the signal was strong. “Jenna?”

“Sorry, Mom. I have to go. They want me to come to the station to make a statement, so, of course, I have to do that.”

“Call me when you get back. I love you.”

“Love you more. Say hi to Chris.”

Emily was overcome with worry. She’d done her best to keep up a calm front, but the idea that her daughter had been so close to a killer was more than unnerving. Sorority houses had been drenched in blood before, certainly. Whenever pretty young girls were sequestered in places like sororities, nursing dorms, or Girl Scout camps, men with evil in their hearts had a way of tiptoeing inside. One deadly step in the darkness toward their prey.

The women of Emily’s generation knew of one case that brought an instant and deep shudder of fear.

In mid-January 1978, serial killer and jail escapee Ted Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house on the Tallahassee campus of Florida State University. He slipped inside around 3 A.M. No one heard him. No one had a clue that he was even in Florida, let alone on the hunt once more for young, female victims. In a bloody frenzy that lasted no more than a half hour, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman were bludgeoned and strangled to death; Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner were severely injured.

After that terrible incident, mothers and fathers across the country made hurried trips to see that their daughters lived in houses with security systems that could preclude a killer from gaining entry.

What the parents didn’t know—and what surely would have given them even greater pause—was that most houses had alarms. But girls frequently gave out the alarm codes so tardy sisters could get home late at night.

Later, when David Kenyon got the news of Sheraton Wilkes’s slaying and learned that Jenna had been there when it happened, he called Emily. By then, she was in her office reading Jason’s latest report on what Mitch Crawford’s neighbors thought of him.

“We need to get our daughter out of there,” David said, without bothering to say hello.

Emily sent down the report and put her ex-husband on the speakerphone. She pushed her chair back and glanced at Jenna’s high school graduation portrait.

“Nice to hear from you, David.”

“There’s a crazed killer out there and she needs to come home.”

Emily let out an exasperated sigh. “She has a job. She’s fine. She’s safe.”

“Emily, I think we have different ideas about what’s safe and what isn’t.” The subtext of his remark was meant to hurt, to conjure images of the past when Jenna was, in fact, in grave danger.

Emily could hear a baby crying in the background, which meant that David was likely calling from home. Dani had probably left to go shopping. She’d rather spend money than time with him, she thought. For once, I don’t blame her.

“Look, David. We don’t need to have conversations like this anymore. We’re done. She’s over twenty-one. And, in case you’ve forgotten, she’s working the Beta Zeta gig because you reneged on your offer to send her to law school. Stupid me. I should have had that written into the divorce decree, but I was dumb enough to still trust you. I didn’t know you and Dani were already so involved.”

“Does it always have to go there? Do you always have to bang the drum about Dani? Get over it.”

Emily felt her face grow hot. I’m not letting him do this to me. I’m not having my buttons pushed!

“I am over it. And I’m over you. Consider this conversation over, too. Our daughter’s grown. Don’t ever, I mean, ever, call me again pretending that you care about her.”

The baby’s cries grew louder.

“David, give the baby a bottle. Try being a dad to her. You might like it.”

She hit the speakerphone Off button. It felt so good being a bitch to a man who treated their daughter like an after-thought—like something on a list that had to be checked off.

Buy groceries

Fill up the car

Pick up dry-cleaning

Care about your daughter

A thousand miles away in the basement office of his Garden Grove home, Michael Barton read Jenna Kenyon’s latest entry, posted around 3 P.M. that same day.

I’m still at DU. I’m sure most of our sisters have read or heard the sad news about one of our own. Sheraton Wilkes was savagely killed. Her parents are going to hold a memorial service in her hometown and I’ll post all the details here later in the week. Nationals is putting together a tribute for Sheraton. I didn’t know her well, but she was a very nice girl. We’re heartbroken in Dixon.

In light of what happened, I’m canceling my recruitment training for the BZ house in Gainesville this week. I’m going home to Cherrystone. You can call me on my cell, leave comments here, or use my e-mail addy. Thanks for understanding,

Jenna Kenyon, Southern BZ Consultant

Everything the young woman wrote made him angry. The way he saw it, Jenna Kenyon pretended to be so concerned about her sisters, the dead girl, and the BZ organization.

What a phony piece of garbage!

He glanced at the calendar and opened his e-mail account, selecting his boss’s name from the address book. He started typing:

Clay, I got a couple of leads I need to work in goddamn Spokane. Leaving on Monday, back Wednesday night. Tell the gang to feel sorry for me. At least Nashville has Jack Daniels. Not sure what, if anything, Spokane has. LOL

—Michael

He liked the LOL—laughing out loud—to close the e-mail. It made him feel more fun. Sure, he could be fun.