Stone Cold

5

His plastic tray slid along the tubed aluminum railing, and Joe followed Sheridan through the buffet line of the Mongolian Wok food station in Washakie Dining Center at the University of Wyoming. The cafeteria was bustling at lunchtime, and Joe knew how much he stood out by his uniform — and his age — by the number of interested and appalled stares he received from students. Sheridan noticed it as well and smiled in sympathy over her shoulder while taking a plate of thin noodles with strips of beef and Mongolian hot sauce.

They’d passed up the burger bar, the sandwich bar, the salad station, and four other offerings that Joe preferred as he followed the lead of his daughter.

Joe leaned toward her and said, “Things have changed in this place. When I went to school here, we had a choice of Spam with green beans or macaroni and cheese.”

“Yuck,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Sheridan was dressed like most of the other students: UW hoodie, skinny jeans, boots, backpack. She was blond and clear-eyed and striking, Joe thought, more mature for her age than most of the students that gawked at him. He admired her self-assurance, and she seemed no longer embarrassed by the presence of one of her parents, which had been the case in her first two years. He understood.

He stared at his plate and said, “I don’t know what I’m eating.”

“Stir-fried noodles with beef, shrimp, and veggies,” she said, since she’d ordered for him. “Give it a try.”

He grunted and stabbed at the strips of beef with a fork. Sheridan used chopsticks. The food was better than he’d imagined it would be.

“Thanks for bringing my coat,” she said.

“You’ll need it.”

“No kidding.” She gestured with her chopsticks through the windows toward Grand Street. It was spitting snow.

“So April has a boyfriend?” she asked, looking at him slyly.

“How did you know?”

“Facebook. She decided to friend me again, and I read about it last night. Is it really Dallas Cates?”

“Yup.”

“He’s trouble with a capital T,” she said. “I’d try and tell her that, but she’d just think I was being bitchy and trying to tear her down. Or accuse me of trying to steal Dallas or something like that.”

Joe nodded. Although the relationship between Sheridan and April had thawed a bit, it was still contentious. April was a hard customer.

“She’s not real happy with you and Mom right now,” Sheridan said.

“Tell me about it. That was on the Internet, too?”

She nodded.

“I hate Facebook,” Joe said.

Sheridan chuckled.

Before he could ask why she’d called, Sheridan said, “So what brings you down here?”

He hesitated. The words that came to mind—mission, special assignment—sounded too fraught with intrigue. He said, “The governor asked me to help with an investigation up in the Black Hills. He could have asked over the phone, but he brought me down here instead.”

She paused and studied his face, looking for clues beyond what he’d just said.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Your mother does that.”

“It’s so we can figure out what you’re really saying,” she said breezily. “So you can’t really talk about it, huh?”

“That’s right.”

She smiled to herself for getting to the heart of it.

He asked, “Have you happened to have heard anything from Nate the last couple of months?”

“Nate?” she said, looking up, surprised. “No. Why?”

Sheridan was Nate’s apprentice falconer, and the previous year she’d started flying her first bird. The kestrel had performed as it should and reconfirmed her fascination with the sport. She’d mentioned from time to time that Nate had sent her emails and offered tips on flying the bird. They’d released the bird prior to school starting, with the hope that Sheridan could get another in the future.

“Just wondering,” Joe said.

“Does this thing you’re doing involve Nate?”

Joe shrugged. “I hope not.” But the black worm of dread that had formed in his stomach when he saw the trail-cam photo had grown over the past hour.

“If you see him, well, tell him hello from me,” she said. “Tell him he’s been a bad master falconer lately.”

Joe smiled. “I’ll tell him.”

They ate until the silence became an issue. Then Joe said, “You called me yesterday. Was it a real call or a pocket call?”

“A real call, I guess,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

“It’s okay to leave a message,” he said. “In fact, if you left a message I’d have some idea what was going on and not worry about it.”

“I know,” she said.

“So leave a message next time. What were you calling about?”

She took a deep breath and seemed to weigh her response. “It seems kind of stupid now.”

“Try me.”

“There’s this guy on my floor,” she said, and Joe immediately felt himself tense up.

“He’s a transfer student from California,” she said. “Los Angeles, according to the directory. I don’t know much about him, but he gives me a really bad vibe.”

Joe lowered his voice and said, “What kind of bad vibe? Like stalker vibe, or predator vibe, or what? Is he harassing you?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” she said, moving her hands as if erasing his implication from the air. “He hasn’t said two words to me since the semester started. He hardly talks to anyone.”

Joe pushed his plate aside and urged her on. He knew she had second thoughts about involving him by the way she hesitated with the details. He didn’t want to come on too strong so she’d back off.

“Okay,” she said. “His name is Erik Young. He’s a junior, which is weird right there. All the other kids on my floor are freshmen. Everybody else lives off-campus. When he didn’t come to the mandatory orientation at the dorm, I thought, ‘Okay, he’s been through all this stuff before, so no big deal. Maybe he’s shy.’ When I saw him in the hall, I introduced myself as the RA and he just stared at me. His eyes reminded me of falcon eyes — black and kind of dead. Do you know what I mean? Then he walked right past me as if I wasn’t there.”

“Does he speak English? Is it possible he’s an exchange student who doesn’t know the language?” Joe asked.

“That’s what I wondered at first, too. That he was just shy or not comfortable with the language. But that’s not the case. His roommate told me Erik had talked to him a little, but what he’d said weirded him out. In fact, his roommate said he was crazy and transferred out of the dorm the first week. Now Erik lives as a single in his room. All he does is play first-person shooter games on his computer. I had to knock on his door a couple of times to ask him to turn the volume down. Erik turns the sound down, but he won’t open the door or apologize or anything.”

Joe said, “First-person shooter games?”

“Yeah. If you stand outside his room, all you can hear is BLAM-BLAM-BLAM and explosions going off.”

She sighed. “You know, I’ve really tried with him. I’m not trying to be his best friend, but it just gets to me when I say hello or ask him a question and he just puts those eyes on me and moves on. He has no friends, dresses in all black, and totally keeps to himself. In fact,” she said, as her voice dropped to a whisper and she looked over Joe’s shoulder, “there he is.”

Joe instinctively started to turn in his seat, when he felt Sheridan’s hand on his.

“Don’t stare,” she said. “He’ll know we’re talking about him.”

“Gotcha.”

Instead, Joe gathered his plate and stood with his tray, looking around the room as if to locate where to deposit it.

Erik Young stood a few feet inside the entrance to the cafeteria, as if looking for a place to sit. Students flowed around him, but he was still, an island in a sea of motion. He was thin and had a pinched face with no expression. He wore a long dark coat that reminded Joe of a duster, but he was hatless. After a moment, Young backed out of the room without looking over his shoulder and nearly ran into a couple of female students who were entering. They glared at him, but he ignored them, and he continued backing away until he was gone.

Joe felt a chill run down his spine. He sat back down.

“See what I mean?” Sheridan said. “I can’t believe he just showed up like that when I was telling you about him.”

Joe said, “Have you talked to anyone?”

Sheridan nodded. “It’s kind of embarrassing, you know. But yeah, I talked to the dorm administrator and even a guy from campus police. But all I could honestly say was that the guy just made me uncomfortable. They asked what you asked — has he said or done anything to me or threatened anyone — and I had to say no. See, he hasn’t done anything. There are rules and procedures for this kind of thing, I guess. They can’t really do anything or infringe on his civil rights unless he acts out in some way. That’s what they told me.”

“Does he have a gun?” Joe asked.

She shrugged. “It’s against the rules, of course, but how would I know? The residents aren’t supposed to have guns in their rooms, but a lot of these guys are hunters. Some RAs just kind of look the other way if they know the student is, you know, normal.”

Joe sat back and looked at his daughter.

She said it first: “Let’s just say if there was a mass shooting on this campus, he would be the first guy who would come to my mind. I know that’s judgmental and not fair because I really don’t even know him. But you saw him…”

“I did,” Joe said. “Judging is fine with me. I trust your judgment and you should, too. Sheridan,” he said with emphasis, “you’ve always been judgmental. You’ve seen a lot, and it’s okay. Don’t let college make you doubt your instincts.”

“So what should I do?” she asked.

“It’s a tough one. Keep your eye on him, that’s for sure. Make sure your concerns are in writing and the administration has a record of them. That way, they can open a file of some kind. And if there is anything—anything at all—that he does or says or you suspect, you call the campus police and you call me one second later. Do you promise me you’ll do that?”

She hesitated for a moment. Then: “Yes.”

“Do you still have that pepper spray I gave you?”

She nodded.

“Keep it with you every second of the day.”

“I will.”

“Where is it now?”

Sheridan cocked her head in a way that indicated Somewhere in my room.

“Find it and keep it with you. And if you need to call me and I don’t answer that second, leave a message.”

She said, “What can you do if you’re hundreds of miles away?”

Joe said, “You’d be surprised how fast I can get here.”

After a beat, Sheridan said, “Now I feel kind of stupid. I didn’t mean to get you worked up based on, you know, my feelings.”

Joe reached out and grasped his oldest daughter’s hand. “I’ll do some background checking on this guy. I may involve the university folks if I learn anything. I’ll try not to bring your name into it unless I have to. But in the meanwhile, don’t feel guilty for telling me. You’ve done the right thing.”

“Dad…” she said, and for a moment he could see in her face the little girl he remembered. “Thank you. I feel a little better.”

“That’s my job,” he said.

“Please don’t tell Mom. You know how she worries.”

“I can’t promise that. We don’t keep secrets,” Joe said. “But I’d suggest you let her know about our talk before I get home.”

“She’ll want to move in with me,” Sheridan laughed, breaking the tension. “Then who would keep an eye on April and Dallas Cates?”

Joe groaned.

Sheridan said she had to go to class, and Joe accompanied her as far as the outside doors. She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, and as she left and joined the river of students headed toward the classroom buildings, he thought, I won’t let anything happen to you.

Instead of walking to the U.S. government Crown Vic he’d borrowed, Joe joined the flow of students on an inner walkway toward the dormitories and, beyond that, the classroom buildings. He ignored a couple of young yahoos who said, “Hey, Game Warden, want to see my fishing license?” He kept his anger at bay as he walked, and he spotted Erik Young a hundred yards ahead on the walkway. The boy stood out in his all-black clothing and by the way other students gave him space as he walked. Joe noted that: students who likely didn’t know Young or had likely never seen him before instinctively stepped aside to let him pass. The boy had an aura about him.

And, Joe thought, there was nothing anyone could — or should — do about it. Yet.

Rather than continue on across the street toward the classroom buildings, Young branched off the sidewalk across the dying lawn toward White Hall. Keeping his distance, Joe followed.

Two girls were inside the vestibule of the building, passing their student IDs through a card reader to unlock the front doors. He pressed close enough to them so he could enter the building due to their access. When one of them glanced over her shoulder at him, the look of worry on her face vanished as soon as she made him: a lost parent. He knew he looked the part.

Young wasn’t inside the lobby or near the dorm administration desk. Joe turned toward the double elevators to see one of them was occupied, and the lights indicated whoever was on it had taken it to the fourth floor. Sheridan’s floor.

When the next elevator doors opened and three freshman boys stepped out, Joe went in. He instinctively rested his right hand on the butt of his .40 Glock as the doors closed and the car rose.

The fourth floor was quiet and empty. As the doors whooshed closed behind him, Joe cautiously walked down the hallway. Sheridan’s room was at the end of the hall, emblazoned with a red RESIDENT ASSISTANT sign as well as a collage of photos and notices. He paused at her door. There was a photo of the Pickett family from the summer before in front of their house. He looked taciturn, Marybeth looked lovely, and the personalities of all three girls showed clearly in the shot: Sheridan attractive and self-assured; April smirking with the devil in her eyes; Lucy beaming as if she were in a pool of her own personal sunshine.

He turned and slowly walked down the hallway. The personalities and quirks of the freshmen were also displayed outside of their doors: photos, clippings, sports logos, quotes running from childish to profound. Except for one door halfway down. On that door there was a single white sticker with a name in a tiny font. He bent to read it. Erik “fuck” Young. The fuck had been scrawled by the same pen that crossed out the letters n and g. Joe wondered who had written it — another student or Young himself?

As he bent toward the door, he heard the sounds from inside that Sheridan had described: single gunshots, automatic fire, cries of pain, the roar of engines and helicopters.

He knocked on the door. No response. Then he rapped sharply, so there was no way the boy inside couldn’t hear.

Joe wasn’t sure what he was prepared to do or say. He settled on his standard opening when he visited a potential suspect, one that had elicited both immediate confessions and surprising information. He’d say, “I guess you know why I’m here.”

But instead of answering, the game was reduced in volume. Erik Young refused to respond or open the door.

Joe left after five minutes.

Both the head of campus security and the vice president of student affairs confirmed Joe’s worst fears: nothing could be done until Young actually did something. So far, he’d broken no rules or procedures. The fact that he dressed oddly and kept to himself violated no policies. While they could keep an eye on Young and he was now officially on their radar, they had to stay on the proper side of the line and not cross over into anything that would be perceived as harassment or discrimination. Joe left Laramie sympathetic but frustrated, and with a shadow of foreboding hanging over his head.

On the drive back to Cheyenne, again sandwiched between eighteen-wheelers, Joe called Coon’s private cell number, and the call went immediately to voicemail.

“This is Joe Pickett,” he said. “I’ll leave your car at the airport with the keys at the counter. Thanks for lending it to me. So far, I haven’t caused any damage, but I still have an hour.

“And I need you to run a name for me. Erik Young. Los Angeles, California. I’ll spell that…”