The Sixes

15

WAIT A MINUTE, Phoebe thought, Hutch hadn’t mentioned that part. Were there details about the incident that Hutch wasn’t privy to?

“Did you see the person?” Phoebe asked.

Wesley shook his head defensively, as if he’d detected a trace of doubt in her voice.

“No, I didn’t see anyone, and I don’t remember anything about going in. But I would never, ever have ended up in that river on my own. I had one beer that night. I’m not a drinker.”

Not a drinker. Those were the same words that the friends of Scott Macus, the student who had drowned over a year ago, had apparently said about him.

“Start from the beginning, will you?” Phoebe said. “You were at Cat Tails, right?”

Wesley pursed his thin lips together and then blew out a sigh.

“Yup. It was around this time a year ago—November 16. When I got back from the library that night, a couple of guys on my floor said they were going out, so I decided to tag along. We ended up walking into the place around ten.”

“Is it mostly kids from Lyle who hang out there?”

“On weekends, yes, but not so much on weeknights. The place was pretty full that night, but I’d say over half the crowd was townies.”

“Okay, so what did you do when you got there?”

“We bought a round of beers at the bar and just stood there for a little while, shooting the breeze,” he said. “There were a couple of local women at the bar—at least ten years older than we were—and they started chatting us up. I had zero interest, but my buddies seemed pretty into them. After I’d played wingman for a while, I wandered over to the other side of the bar and ended up throwing darts with a couple of guys I recognized from school but didn’t know by name.

“After a few games I looked over and saw that my buddies were still talking to those cougars. I could have just taken off, but I didn’t feel like walking back to campus—one of the guys had driven. I bought another beer but only had a couple of sips.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“It’s the God’s honest truth. I needed to get up pretty early the next day to finish a paper, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Once I’d bought the second beer, I wandered over to this old jukebox against the wall and pumped a few quarters in it. Played a few Stones songs. Then all of a sudden this guy I didn’t know came over to the jukebox and asked me if the machine gave change. I said I didn’t think so. I remember he just stood there, and then he said, ‘Well, at least someone had the good taste to play the Stones.’ And that’s the last thing I remember. Until I came to in the river.”

“That must have been terrifying.”

He stared off for a minute, massaging his forehead with one hand.

“I thought I was in a dream, some kind of nightmare,” he said, looking back at Phoebe. “I’m a good swimmer, but I felt so weighed down in my clothes, I could barely keep my head up. Thank God I had loafers on. I kicked them off and swam to the shore. I was about half a mile farther south from Cat Tails. There’s a fair amount of trees around there, so somebody could have pushed me in without anyone noticing.”

“What time was this?”

“My phone was dead, but I had a waterproof watch on. It was half past one when I made it to shore. I’d lost, like, two hours. Cat Tails was closed by then, and there was no one around. I tried to flag down a couple of cars, but the drivers wouldn’t stop. I looked like the swamp monster, so why would they? I walked back to campus and went right to the security office. There was some young kid on duty, and you could tell he thought I’d probably been pounding back Buds all night. The next day the head guy—that geezer who’d been there for years—stopped by my dorm and talked to me, but he obviously thought I’d been hammered, too.”

“What do you think really happened?”

Wesley made a sharp tiih sound as he exhaled air. “Someone must have drugged me,” he said. “Not with a drug that knocked me out, but one of those date-rape drugs where you still seem to be functioning but you don’t actually know what the hell is going on, and you don’t remember a thing afterward. Whoever it was talked me into going outside and away from the bar and then pushed me into the river.”

“Did you ever set your drink down and take your eye off it?”

“Yeah, a few times, like when I was playing darts. In hindsight it seems stupid, but what guy expects his beer to be drugged? The mug was basically right in front of me, but I kept turning around to shoot. I also put it down again when I was picking songs at the jukebox.”

“What happened to your friends?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to know,” Hines said. “The next day they told me that they looked for me just before the place closed at midnight and didn’t see me. They decided that I must have hooked up with some girl and bolted.”

Interesting, Phoebe thought. Again, that’s what Scott Macus’s friends had assumed about him.

“So it sounds like you were someplace outside of the bar from before midnight until one or so, but you have no idea where. Go back to the guy by the jukebox. Did you mention him to me because you thought he might be significant?”

Wesley touched his upper lip with the side of his forefinger and looked away momentarily.

“Yeah, I keep thinking about him,” he said. “I mean, the way he approached me seemed a little weird, even at the time. He was older—late thirties or early forties, and better dressed than a townie.”

“Is it possible you were assaulted that night?”

“You mean, like raped?” he said. There was a flash of disgust in his eyes. “No way. I would have, you know, figured that out. The person got his jollies just from pushing me into the river and hoping I never came up. You know, a kid from Lyle drowned in the river last year around this time, and nobody had any idea how or why, but I’m thinking he was drugged, too. And maybe the same thing happened to Lily Mack.”

“I just realized that I actually saw you outside her dorm the first night she was missing.”

He narrowed his eyes at Phoebe.

“Oh, yeah, you look kind of familiar. I’d been on campus that night, meeting with the head of maintenance about our lawn-care deal. And then I heard people buzzing about something happening to this girl Lily. I knew her. I mean, I didn’t know her know her, but she was in a class of mine. And right away an alarm went off in my head—because of what happened to me.”

Phoebe glanced down at her notes, scanning them. Her mind was racing. Wesley’s story added credence to the theory Tom Stockton had raised: that there was a serial killer drugging college students in river towns and tossing them to their deaths in the muddy Winamac.

“Wesley,” she said evenly. “This is important information, and you need to go to the police with it as soon as possible.”

He shifted in his seat, not happy with the thought.

“I just don’t want to end up feeling like a jerk again,” he said.

“I don’t think that will happen this time,” Phoebe said. He shrugged. “I have one more question, if you don’t mind.” She needed to get back to what her true focus was.

“Sure,” he said. “Shoot. But then I need to move. I have to call a supplier before dinner.”

“Do you recall if there were any girls from Lyle College in the bar that night?”

It seemed to be the last question Wesley was expecting, and his gray eyes widened in surprise.

“Yeah, there were a few around, I guess. Why?”

“Have you ever heard of a secret society of girls at Lyle? One called the Sixes?”

Hines looked closely at Phoebe again, thinking something but not saying it. Finally he shook his head.

“Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell. What are you getting at, anyway?”

“They’re apparently pretty wicked. Up to a lot of bad stuff.”

Wesley wrinkled his face, perplexed.

“You mean they’re like a cult?” he said. “Or like witches or something?”

“It’s more that they like to bully people—both male and female students,” Phoebe said. “And they play nasty tricks on them. I’ve wondered if they might be connected to the drownings in some way. One of the members is named Blair Usher. Another, I believe, is Gwen Gallogly.”

Wesley shrugged. “Never heard of either one.”

“Did anyone ever paint a check mark on your dorm room door?”

“No—that sounds like frat boy behavior and Lyle doesn’t have frats.”

“Well, I’d better let you make that phone call,” Phoebe said. “If anything else occurs to you, will you get in touch?” She drew a business card from her wallet and passed it to him. Wesley glanced at the card, then flicked it a couple of times with his thumb. Sensing he was growing restless, Phoebe dropped her pad into her purse and rose from the couch.

“Sure,” Wesley said. “And thanks for listening. You’re the first person who’s seemed to care.”

As Wesley walked her to the door she glanced around the apartment.

“You didn’t decorate this place all by yourself, did you?”

“You mean, did I use a professional?”

“Or I thought maybe your mom helped you. Or your girlfriend.”

He smiled ruefully. “My mom died quite a few years ago. And I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment.” His smile turned cheerier. “But hey, when I find somebody, maybe she’ll appreciate the fact that I’m not a slob.”

“Absolutely,” said Phoebe. She shook his hand and thanked him once again.

Driving out of the town-house development a few minutes later, Phoebe weighed how she felt about Wesley’s story. She could see how the campus police might have viewed him skeptically when he’d arrived sopping wet at two in the morning, but she had to admit, he sounded credible enough now. Plus there didn’t seem to be any reason to keep flogging his story after all this time if it wasn’t true.

Did she believe he’d been the intended victim of some kind of roving serial killer? Stockton would surely think so—and she would have to share this story with him tonight—but Phoebe still found it tough to embrace the whole idea. At this point, there was no evidence that Scott Macus had been murdered, and the verdict was still out on Lily.

And as harrowing as the experience had been for Wesley, it still could have been just an accident. Phoebe remembered once reading that the most common date-rape drug was alcohol. In certain instances a woman woke up with a strange man, couldn’t remember how she’d ended up there, and assumed she’d been drugged, but the amnesia was in fact the result of her suffering an alcoholic blackout. Wesley said he hadn’t drunk much that night, but he could have had more than he remembered, or maybe his tolerance was extremely low.

And what about the Sixes, she wondered. There didn’t seem to be anything linking Wesley’s experience to the group. They might be mean as hell, they might want to show loser boys who was boss, they might have even played a role in Lily’s death somehow, but there was no apparent reason to believe they were luring male students to the river late at night. And yet she couldn’t let go of the idea they might be involved.

Phoebe had planned to stop by her house before meeting with Stockton—to turn on lights and to make sure everything was okay—but her impromptu meeting with Wesley put her behind schedule. She drove directly to the campus, found a parking spot, and bounded up to the second floor of the administration building. Stockton’s office was just down the hall from Glenda’s. His assistant had apparently left for the day—it was dark in the anteroom, the assistant’s desk deserted. But the door to Stockton’s inner office was cracked enough to reveal a strip of light. Phoebe tapped on the door. From inside she heard Stockton’s muffled voice call for her to enter.

Unlike most of the others on campus, this office had a clubby, old-boy-network feel—wall-to-wall bookshelves, an Oriental rug, and black-shaded lamps casting soft puddles of light around the room. Phoebe suspected that Stockton must have coughed up a bit of his own dough to help create the ambience, since the school hardly had a decorating budget.

Stockton didn’t look up right away. Instead, with horn-rimmed reading glasses perched midway down his nose, he continued to peer at the sheaf of paper in his hands. Reminding me of who’s in the power position, aren’t you? Phoebe thought. A few seconds later Stockton lowered the sheets and glanced up.

“Thanks for dropping by,” Stockton said, as if it had been he who had summoned her. “Why don’t we sit over there? It’ll be more comfortable.”

He motioned to a seating area with a matching leather sofa and chair. As Stockton made his way around the desk, Phoebe took a seat on the sofa. There was a coffee table in front of her, displaying a carved wooden box and leather coasters. The only thing missing, Phoebe thought, was a stack of Horse and Hound magazines.

“So you’ve had a bit of a road trip today,” Stockton said, lowering his large frame into the chair. A dash of sarcasm had laced his words, and though Phoebe wasn’t sure what she’d done to tick him off, she had a feeling she would find out soon enough.

“Yes, but it was worth it in the end,” Phoebe said.

“The famous author’s powers of persuasion at work?”

“I wouldn’t attribute anything to my so-called persuading skills,” Phoebe said. “I think in light of Lily’s death, Alexis realized it was essential to speak up now.”

“I would have appreciated a heads-up about your trip.” Stockton sniffed. “As the dean of students, anything involving student life here is under my domain.”

So that’s it, Phoebe thought. I’ve stepped on his big fat toes. She felt a sudden urge to let a little air out of that ego of his, but quickly submerged the instinct. If she were going to continue with her investigation, she would need his cooperation.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Phoebe said. “I’d run it by Glenda, and I thought you were in the loop. She probably assumed I’d informed you.”

“So tell me what you learned from Alexis,” he said, moving on now that she’d been duly reprimanded.

She described what the girl had shared—including all the gory details about the circles of membership.

“Jesus,” Stockton said when she’d finished. “Not exactly the campfire girls, are they?”

“No, they’re certainly not. Does this circle stuff ring any bells with you? The deleted term papers, for instance?”

“Actually, yes,” he said, stroking his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “We’re used to those ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ kind of excuses here, but there were a couple of incidents recently that concerned me. Within one week, two different students reported having a term paper they were working on deleted from their laptops while they were in the library. They’d been sitting in the same section of the library, and had gotten up briefly. In one case to go to the ladies’ room, and in the other to locate a book. From what I could determine, they didn’t know each other.”

“What about anonymous postings about sexual encounters?”

“That I’m not aware of specifically. We know that cyber bullying goes on with kids, but it’s an elusive thing because they don’t like to come forward. I hope Alexis named names.”

“No, she refused.”

“Well, that’s the only way we can speed up shutting these girls down. I had Blair Usher in for another talk this morning, but she just plays totally dumb. Claims she’s heard of the group, but has no idea if anyone she knows is in it. Why would Alexis insist on protecting them at this point?”

“She’s fearful of further recriminations.”

“You mean, reaching-beyond-the-grave kind of thing? I’d say that’s overreacting a bit, wouldn’t you?”

“No, these girls seem pretty fierce. Has Glenda had a chance to tell you about what the Sixes did to me—the rats?”

He wrinkled his nose, as if a putrid smell had just blasted into the room.

“Yes, a grisly business. I wish I could devote more of my attention to it, but I’ve got the Lily Mack situation to deal with. And that comes first.”

Phoebe realized she needed to bring Stockton up to speed on her conversation with Wesley. But as she started to speak, someone knocked on the door. Stockton called for the person to enter, and to Phoebe’s surprise, Val Porter stepped inside.

“Oh good, Val, you’re here,” Stockton said.

What was this all about? Phoebe wondered. Val smiled at Stockton but only ran her eyes quickly over Phoebe’s face, as if she were a stranger on a train platform.

“I’ve asked Val to join our discussion,” Stockton told Phoebe. “Needless to say Val has a wonderful understanding of female adolescent behavior, and I thought it would be helpful to obtain her input on the Sixes.”

Phoebe could barely hide her annoyance. Just because the woman taught courses like Introduction to Feminist Theory and Geographies of Gender hardly made her an expert on secret girl societies.

Val took a seat at the other end of the sofa, but close enough for Phoebe to pick up the scent of patchouli. Val’s hair was pinned on her head tonight, and silvery tendrils hung loosely around her face in that boho style she favored. Phoebe wondered what Val’s reaction would be if she learned Phoebe had been to bed with Duncan.

“So how can I help?” Val said, addressing the question mainly to Stockton. She grasped a silver tendril between the index and middle fingers on her right hand and slowly slid it through her fingers.

“I’ll let Phoebe fill you in,” Stockton said. “She’s had an interesting trip to the Baltimore area.”

“Baltimore?” Val said. “What has that got to do with anything?”

Phoebe practically glared at Stockton.

“Unfortunately,” Phoebe said, “it’s not appropriate for me to share details about my visit down there with anyone else, since I promised confidentiality.” She turned to Val. “What I can share is that the Sixes is capable of being extremely cruel and nasty. A psychologist I talked to said that it’s girl power run amuck, and it isn’t uncommon at this stage of their lives. Does that jibe with what you’ve seen in your gender classes?”

“Until Tom mentioned it to me, I’d never heard of this little group, so I really don’t have much to contribute.” Val’s self-satisfied tone, however, suggested that they were about to hear an opinion regardless. “That said, I could see female students here banding together to encourage a sense of empowerment.”

“Are you saying the girls here need a boost?” Phoebe asked.

“Good God, no,” Val said. “The women at Lyle—like the women at most colleges today—are smart, proactive, and ambitious. They arrive here thinking that they’ll meet men of their equal, men superior to the slacker boys they attended high school with, but that’s not the case. They soon discover that it was much tougher for them to be admitted to the school than their male counterparts—we have fewer male applicants these days, so we lower the standards for them. The boys aren’t up to par socially or intellectually, and that can wear on the women very quickly. Banding together would at least be a way for them to experience solidarity and sense of purpose.”

“You’re not suggesting it’s a good thing, are you?”

“No, Phoebe,” Val said. “I don’t believe that’s what I said at all.”

“Are there any girls in particular who you think might—”

The door to Stockton’s office suddenly flew open, and all three of them turned in unison. Glenda stood in the doorway, her face etched with concern.

“What’s happened?” Tom asked.

“Trevor Harris—the student Lily Mack was dating?” Glenda said. “They found a body in the river late this afternoon, and the cops are pretty sure it’s him.”