The Victims’ Club

“Sorry about that,” the sheriff said from the doorway.

Jon Avery lifted his shoulders in a partial shrug. “How bad could it be?”

“Um,” the sheriff grunted. The stocky, balding man’s light-brown uniform was always perfectly pressed. Avery never understood how the garment stayed this way. He was envious, to the extent that one could be on the topic of spray starch and an iron. Avery was slim — he had no rolls to wrinkle his shirts — but he always ended the day looking like a sack, no matter how much time he’d spent ironing his outfit that morning. Avery’s wife was happy to do it for him, but he was good with an iron: Avery’d been army. Like most soldiers, he’d wielded a Black and Decker steam iron far more frequently than an M16. The good news was that, though a deputy by payroll, he was a detective by assignment, entitling him to wear a suit, which helped to camouflage the flaws.

The reason for his boss’s apology: extra work. The sheriff’s office was small, as was the county it kept order in, and taking over fellow detective Sarah Bennet’s caseload would increase Avery’s chores by... How much exactly? He tried to figure it. Five detectives, take away one, how much more work do the others have to do? Twenty percent? He’d been helping Jon Jr. on his homework yesterday, with mixed results. Avery had been a history major and was much better with ancient Greece and Amerigo Vespucci than with sneaky math problems, which, in his opinion, a grade-schooler should not be bothered with. Much less his father.

Avery asked, “How long’ll Sarah be away?”

“Not long. Her dad’s getting discharged from the hospital, and she needs to get him into the new retirement home. Early next week, I’m guessing.” It was now Thursday morning. “She doesn’t have a lot on her plate that’s critical. I’m divvying it up. But this one thing she says needs moving on. Developed last night. And she wanted you to handle it.”

“Me.”

“What she said.”

At forty-two, Jon Avery was not the senior deputy in the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, but he was the senior detective and accordingly had more investigative experience than anyone else. Other officers tended to lean on him.

“What’s this development?” Avery asked.

“State police’re calling with some info Sarah requested. Should be any time now. The file’s on her desk. Top one, she said.”

“K, Freddy. I’m on it.”

“You’re a star. Junior’s team do good?”

“Good enough.”

Avery sipped his black Starbucks and looked over his neatly ordered desk.

He turned to the weekly disposition report on all Major Case arrests — felonies and class 1 misdemeanors — and brushed a hand through his trim hair. It was a mystery to him why his mustache remained completely black while he was graying aloft. Jon Jr. said — as if the logic were irrefutable — that this condition was because the dark shade drained from his hair and settled under his nose. It was as good a theory as any.

He needed to send the sheriff’s office’s recommendation on charges to the district attorney. The office’s statistical week ran from Friday to Friday, and, though it was Thursday and thirty-six hours remained for mayhem, this seven-day period looked to be setting a record for serious offenses.

Some offenses, though still felonies, were relatively minor, typical of the kind of crimes Avery saw in Monroe: Robin Scopes, for instance, unemployed former car mechanic, arrested for opioid sale. Others, like the Dee Gibson case, were pretty bad; her infant son had been badly burned when a batch of meth she was cooking exploded. Others fell halfway in between: Charles Fillmore, a high school senior, was charged with burglary after breaking into a home and stealing liquor and a TV.

A domestic. Other drug cases. Oxy and its sinister relatives were a problem here, like everywhere else in the world. With controlled-substance cases, Avery tried to minimize jail time and maximize programs if the offenders were willing to put in the effort and there’d been no injuries or resistance.

One crime on the list stood out not for its severity but for its far-reaching shock waves, out of proportion to the incident that led to the arrest: Donnie Simpson, the famed receiver for the local college’s winning team, the Eagles, had been arrested for felony battery after a foolish dustup over rights to a taxi. Fans were already in mourning over his absence at this coming Saturday’s game.

Avery’s landline jangled. He answered. It was Emma, the upbeat and indispensable office assistant. “I’ve got a call for Sarah Bennet. Can I transfer it to you?”

“Go ahead, Emma.”

A click.

“Hello?”

“Detective Avery?”

“That’s right.”

“That young lady just said you’re taking over for Detective Bennet?”

“Temporary, that’s right.”

“I’m Hank Severn with the State Police Computer Crimes Unit. Detective Bennet requested some information. We had some luck. I wanted to get with you folks right away.”

“Appreciate it. What d’you have?”

“She wanted to know if we could find who owned a phone that was used to upload some pictures to a website in Europe. There was a pretty sophisticated proxy used and it was a burner, but we managed to make some headway.”

“Hold on a second, please,” Avery said. “Let me get the case file in her office. I’ll be right back.”

Avery walked to Bennet’s office, two down from his. He looked at the top file on her desk.

In Bennet’s scripty handwriting was the name Rose Taylor.

Oh. That case.

In a sheriff’s office’s unmarked cruiser, Jon Avery drove along quiet midmorning streets canopied by maple and framed by pine trees. The houses neatly aligned in this trim neighborhood were sturdy, mostly wood, and painted in the colonial browns, grays and dark red typical of dwellings you’d find throughout this portion of New England.

Rawlings, the seat of Monroe County, was an old town. Soldiers on their way to, or from, a battle in the Revolutionary War — no one was quite sure which — had bivouacked in the fields that were now a cattle ranch on the outskirts. A millionaire banker based in Rawlings had been poised to become the next J. P. Morgan, if only the luxury steamship he was traveling on from Southampton, England, in April of 1912 had made it to New York Harbor. Thomas Wolfe got into a fistfight with someone in a bar here, and John Philip Sousa penned a march in a boardinghouse near the train station. Or part of a march. Or something.

But mostly the modest town was known for Preston College, into whose campus Avery now turned the Ford Interceptor.

The 12,000-student, 150-year-old institution was modeled, architecturally and landscape-wise, after Oxford and Cambridge in England. Avery took this on faith, because he’d never been to the UK (it was on the list, but he and Becky were waiting till Jon Jr. was older and could appreciate the place for more than Harry Potter). Preston was the beating heart of Monroe County, both culturally and economically, as those students spawned a good number of jobs — professors, researchers, admin and support. Then there were the coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, clubs and music venues, galleries, clothing stores, musical instrument shops, souvenir stores... all the places where the kids could spend their money. And money they had, most of them. Preston was wincingly expensive, and the people who sent their youngsters there were not, by any stretch, of modest means.

Preston was an academic mecca as well. The school had produced renowned doctors, medical researchers, politicians, think-tank geniuses, cabinet members, appellate court justices (one Supreme as well), lofty CEOs and cable-news-worthy lawyers.

The school was also known — and beloved — for its sports.

Oh, did Preston College have sports. National winning basketball and football teams. It was a Division I school, a magnet for famed coaches and young athletes from around the country. Their performances on the turf and court drew legions of fans, both in person and cemented before TV screens. (Hence why this week’s fistfight over a cab in downtown Rawlings was a “tragedy”; if Donnie Simpson was convicted for assault, as Avery believed was a certainty, his magically adhesive fingers would catch no more lobs this season — or perhaps ever again.)

Avery now made his way along the twenty-mile-per-hour streets, some of them the original cobblestone, that meandered through campus. Gothic classrooms and dorms rose on either side. He thought they looked like miniature cathedrals. The crowns of the buildings were so impressive and so lofty that he wondered how much the school might save if it poured the spire money into education instead. How expensive were spires anyway? Maybe not very if you ordered them in bulk.

Rose Taylor — whose case he was taking over — was part of the Preston College academic world. She was a PI, a principal investigator. Avery had looked up the job description online and learned that PIs were basically professors who’d been given grant money by the government or a corporation for research. In her case, this was something to do with molecular biology, chemistry and other topics he couldn’t begin to fathom; Avery supposed medical science was involved.

The case was a troubling one. Though Avery himself hadn’t worked it, he, like everyone in the sheriff’s office, was aware of the basic facts. One evening recently after work, Taylor had been at a party off campus with students and other young professionals. She’d gone with a friend, an assistant professor in the Preston fine arts school. The friend, though, had left early, with a man she’d met there. Taylor decided to stay for one more glass of wine. She’d chatted with some people around the bar but, not knowing any of them previously, gravitated to the backyard and sat by herself on a bench overlooking the swimming pool and landscaped gardens. She finished the wine and began to feel tired.

The next thing she knew she was lying on her back on the bench. It was hours later, nearly eleven o’clock. Her blouse was disheveled, partly untucked. She knew the fuzziness she felt, the dry mouth, the headache couldn’t be from the two glasses of wine she’d had; she’d been drugged. Horrified, she’d fled for home and called the police. Sarah Bennet had responded and talked her into a medical exam, which confirmed that there was no evidence of genital molestation, but a blood test revealed the presence of flunitrazepam — a.k.a. roofie, the date-rape drug. She said in her statement that, while she’d obviously been drugged, she might not have been assaulted; her blouse could’ve become untucked inadvertently.

That hope crashed the next day when Taylor began to get texts. And emails. And calls. Lots of them.

The first photo of her appeared on Snap-Shot, a photo and video upload site. It depicted her lying on the bench, head back, mouth slightly open. Her blouse had been unbuttoned and bra tugged up. It was taken down as soon as she emailed the site, but once released into the digital landscape, the pixels of her body joined the millions of sensational and exploitative JPEGs zipping like wasps — immortal ones, of course — through the internet. While the algorithms and human monitors at the more legitimate servers and search engines occasionally scrubbed the picture away on their own, it continued to pop up in emails and chat rooms.

Until recently, what had happened to Rose Taylor was not a clear-cut crime. Taking a nude picture of a child under eighteen was clearly against the law. But prosecutors had been forced to shoehorn nonconsensual uploading of nude or sexually explicit images of adults into the traditional crimes of peeping or invasion of privacy, whose statutes were not meant to address such crimes. Several years ago, though, a state criminal law had been passed that directly addressed these activities — informally called “revenge porn.” The statute primarily focused on situations where consenting partners filmed each other nude or having sex; then, after a bad breakup, one of them would upload embarrassing videos or images to get even. Whatever the motive might be — revenge or otherwise — didn’t matter; anyone who posted explicit images of someone without his or her permission was guilty of a class 4 felony.

In Rose Taylor’s case, revenge didn’t seem to be in play. She was casually dating another professor, at a university in Washington, D.C., and they had a fine relationship. She’d had no breakups in years. She could think of no students she’d given particularly bad marks to, no rival academics who wanted to trash her reputation. No stalkers. Her life was quiet, she’d reported in her statement. She had a small group of close friends, most of them connected to the college, and preferred bicycling or hiking over tailgate parties, quiet dinners to clubs and bars. The party where the incident occurred was one of the few she’d gone to this year.

Her conclusion — and Detective Sarah Bennet’s — was that what happened to her was motiveless, an opportunistic prank. Which, Taylor had said to Bennet, was almost worse than revenge.

Avery now arrived at Rose Taylor’s off-campus townhouse complex, a newish Cape Cod — style development, the sort young professionals would live in, contentedly, until the second child was on the way.

He rang the bell. He heard rustling around — the sound of a chair sliding against wood, someone walking toward the door. It opened then, though only a foot. A woman of about thirty answered. She was wearing jeans and a burgundy sweatshirt. Running shoes. Her dark hair, cut to just above her shoulders, was wiry and askew. She brushed at it absently as if realizing she should have combed the strands into place before answering the door.

She reminded him of his own wife, Becky, back when they’d gotten married.

“Yes?” Taylor asked, her brow creased. She was wary.

“Ms. Taylor, I’m Detective Avery. I work with Sarah Bennet. She’s been called out of town on a family matter and asked me to make that appointment you two had today.” He showed his shield.

“Oh, she didn’t say anything.” Taylor didn’t move from where she stood in the doorway.

“It was something that came up just this morning. Is it OK if I come in?”

“Will she be away long?”

“At least until next week.”

“I see.”

She remained silent, considering his words.

Avery suddenly understood. He was a man. She wanted the woman cop.

He continued, “Detective Bennet wanted to follow up on this lead as soon as possible.”

Taylor’s brown eyes dipped to the porch at his feet. She was debating. Finally, her lips tightened. She said, “All right, I suppose. Come in.”

He followed her into the immaculate, well-ordered townhouse. The furniture was an odd but comfortable mix of old and new. Heavy mahogany pieces beside glass and chrome. On some of the walls were tapestries, dark green and red and beige, depicting medieval characters and landscapes. One wall, above her desk, held dozens of certificates and diplomas. Another was entirely books, floor to ceiling.

She directed Avery to a couch overlooking the landscaped pathway behind the complex. A glint of light through the trees outside suggested a stream. Pleasant enough. But not enough yard for Jon Avery. He and Becky had twenty-two acres a long way out of town. He loved it all, even the portions he saw only once a month, when whim or curiosity directed him off the usual routes on a jog or a dog walk.

Taylor sat in a chair opposite him. A steaming cup of coffee was on the table where she’d been working. She offered him no beverage. Few did, and curiously the only recent offerings were from two suspects: one accused of murder, one of kidnapping. They’d each wondered, politely, if he’d like coffee or tea.

“How are you doing, Ms. Taylor?”

She debated again, her eyes turning this time to the window. A hand straightened a tuft of hair that did not need straightening. “It’s hard, Detective. I’ll walk up to the lectern, and the students look at me in a different way than they used to. Or don’t look at me. Somehow that makes me feel worse, like they’re feeling sorry for me.” She grimaced. “Students ten years younger than me, and I get pity. I had to tell my boyfriend. And my mother. Before she heard from somebody else. And then the guys on the street, checking out the goods.” A vague wave toward her torso. “So, your answer? I’m not great.”

“I’m truly sorry for your trouble. We’ll do everything we can to find whoever did it.”

She shrugged and pursed her lips in a way that said, Good luck with that. She glanced at a pile of paper sitting on the table next to her. The page on top looked to be covered in notes and calculations that Avery couldn’t have understood in a thousand years. Her handwriting was the smallest he’d ever seen.

“The state police’s Computer Crimes Unit was able to trace the upload back to the phone. It wasn’t easy. The Snap-Shot server was in Europe.”

She scoffed. “You used to have to abuse people in person. Now you can do it through Bulgaria.”

It was Serbia, but no need to bring that up.

The tracing process had cost the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office quite a chunk of change. The Computer Crimes Unit billed counties and cities for their time. And often, as in this case, when the uploader used a proxy to hide his or her IP address, an outside consultant had been brought in. An expensive consultant.

“Now, the phone was a burner. That’s—”

“I watched Breaking Bad. I know what a burner is. Paid for with cash.”

“But Computer Crimes traced the sale to a store about ten miles from here. There was a credit card purchase just before the burner was bought. The officers got the security tape and saw it was the same man buying the phone as the other merchandise.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That was smart.”

“Was, yes. And they got an image.” He took a glossy photo from his pocket. The shot was of a black-haired young man, a long face, a dark complexion, thick black hair.

“Who is he?”

“Amir Karesh. Student at Preston. Senior. No criminal record. Was he at the party? Or did you see him any other time?”

She stared some more, then leaned forward with a squint, as if trying desperately to summon up memories lost that night. She sat back, clearly unhappy. “No.”

“We’ll talk to him. See what he has to say.”

She offered another sardonic “Good luck” shrug.

“I understand Detective Bennet has had trouble getting people to give her information about that night.”

She had managed to compile a list of only fifteen people who’d been at the party that night, which was at the house of a wealthy investment banker, the father of a student at Preston. Taylor had reported there were about fifty people there. Others said roughly the same, but none of them could remember more than a few names, or so they claimed. Bennet had eventually come up with the fifteen by bluster, coercion and deduction. But not a single one of the fifteen remembered Taylor, let alone anyone who’d been taking phone pictures or slipping a roofie into a wine glass.

On the margin of the scant list, Bennet had written in angry pencil: WALL OF SILENCE.

“Have you tried contacting mutual friends, people who might’ve been there?” Avery asked Taylor.

She hesitated again. “Some, sure. Hard to do, but I gave it a shot. And I talked to Jamie — the friend I went with? She knew a few people there and gave Detective Bennet a name or two. But she can’t remember anything else. Or says she can’t.”

From the file, Jon Avery had learned that Jamie Katz had a touch of amnesia about that night. She’d even told Sarah Bennet that she “really didn’t know Rose so well.”

Avery didn’t share this betrayal, if that’s what it was, with Taylor.

“I don’t have any more questions just now. I’ll talk to this Karesh. See what he has to say.”

As they rose, Avery reflected that in all criminal cases the truth is elusive. Sometimes it hides in disguise, sometimes it’s as wispy and fleeting as steam. He knew instinctively that this would be a tough one; it wouldn’t be at all easy to learn exactly what had happened to Professor Taylor. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

He saw that she’d moved on from the topic, though, and he wasn’t surprised at her answer.

“I can’t think of anything.”

He didn’t expect what she then said. “There’s the embarrassment, the sense of violation. You get mad. But what you don’t think about? It’s been exhausting. A weight you can’t throw off.” Taylor’s eyes turned briefly in his direction but did not meet his.

They walked to the front door. As she opened it and they stepped onto the porch, Avery noted a man in his early twenties walking up the path. He was thin and gangly, wearing two sweatshirts, gray over red, and jeans with a waistline five inches too big for him. He glanced toward Avery, pausing and then continuing up the steps.

“Rosie.” He hugged Taylor, then turned to the detective.

“This’s Devon. My brother. Detective Avery.”

They shook hands. She explained that he was a senior at Preston College, studying prelaw.

Avery recalled his name from detective Sarah Bennet’s file: Devon was president of his fraternity, active on campus, the kind of student who might catch wind of rumors about the incident. He’d tried but hadn’t learned anything either.

To her brother, Taylor said, “Detective Avery came by about the incident.”

Brows tightening slightly, Devon asked, “You found them?”

The rule is you’re generally tight-lipped about progress in a case; family members, close ones, at least, are on the OK-to-tell list.

“No, but we have some leads.” Avery pulled the picture of Karesh out of his pocket again. “Amir Karesh. Do you know him? He’s a student too, at Preston. He bought the phone that was used to upload the picture.”

Devon leaned forward and looked closely at the picture. “No.” His mouth grew taut. “Son of a bitch.”

“Devon,” his sister chided gently.

“We don’t know if he took the pictures,” Avery said. “Just that it was his phone.”

Devon’s lips tightened and his eyes narrowed, signaling exasperation. It was a look that Avery observed when a victim or loved one believed justice was being derailed by those little inconveniences called due process and the rule of law. When a suspect appears guilty, he must be guilty. Of course he did it. Lock him up.

Avery slipped the photo away.

Taylor asked her brother, “So? What’s up? Everything OK?”

“Yeah. Sorta. I just screwed up my chem exam, and I decided you can take me out to lunch to drown my sorrows.” He looked at Avery. “She’s the employed one.”

“Go inside. I’ll be right there.”

The men shook hands, and Devon vanished into the town house.

Taylor had seemed surprised at the young man’s presence. Avery’s impression was that a drop-by was unusual. Her brother had come over simply to see how she was doing, he decided.

He shook her hand as well. Her dark eyes held his for a portion of a second and then returned to the doorstep at her feet, and she started inside.

Avery got to the bottom of the stairs and turned back. “Ms. Taylor?”

“‘Rose’ is fine.”

“Rose. I just wanted to say one thing.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen the photo.”

Avery had guessed she’d be wondering about that, and he wanted to put her at ease.

“Appreciate that, Detective. But, fact is, it really doesn’t matter now, does it? Because everyone else has.” She offered a resigned smile and stepped inside.

There were two of them now, working the case.

After leaving Rose Taylor’s, Avery had returned to the office and promptly recruited Jesse Hobbs, twenty-six years old, sporting a close shave of a crew cut, muscular, the cookie-cutter ideal of an enthusiastic sheriff’s deputy. He was what would amount to a patrol officer in a city police department — assigned to take on much of the meat-and-potatoes work of any law enforcement organization.

Hobbs was dependable and a workhorse, but the detective wanted him on board largely because of his job before he’d joined the sheriff’s office: he’d been a Preston College campus police officer. Since their one lead, Amir Karesh, was a student, Avery thought it might be helpful to bring someone with that kind of experience onto the case.

And he was pleased with his decision. It had taken Hobbs only two phone calls to learn that Karesh was between classes and in the food court of the building Avery was now parking in front of: the Preston student union.

They climbed from the car. Hobbs was a uniformed deputy, but for this investigation he’d dressed civilian, in a windbreaker, polo shirt and jeans. He’d explained to the detective, “Students’re a funny bunch. They see a gun or gear belt and either shut up entirely or get obnoxious.”

The two of them entered the building — gothic and, of course, crowned with fearsome limestone spires — and found the massive food court, filled with hundreds of energetic students. The high ceilings and hard tile floors accentuated the noise. It seemed impossible to have a conversation over the din, but students were certainly trying. The smell of limp burgers and onions warming on the steam table was pervasive.

Hobbs had a discreet talk with a campus cop, who pointed them to Karesh, who was sitting in the far back of the hall buried in a book. Avery and the deputy weaved through the jammed tables.

Karesh glanced up as they reached him. Avery had half expected him to grab his book — calculus, he could see — and flee. But he gave no reaction.

“Mr. Karesh?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.”

They quickly showed their badges. “I’m Detective Avery. This is Deputy Hobbs.” Heads nodded but no hands were shaken.

“OK.” The young man was now smiling. And not showing a lick of concern.

“Mind if we sit?” Hobbs asked.

“Please.”

The book before him was an advanced calculus text. Avery glanced at the squiggles and didn’t have a clue.

Avery told him, “We’re investigating an incident at a party last Saturday. On Cedar Hills Street.”

“Cedar Hills?”

Avery would be wealthy if he had a dollar for every time a witness or suspect answered his question with a question.

And a dollar for every time he bluffed. “Could you tell us when you arrived?”

Karesh squinted, probably not trying to recollect the time at all, but debating if they really knew he’d been there. He opted to be smart. “Eight-something-ish. What’s this about?”

“Your phone was involved in this incident.”

“My phone?”

Avery smiled to himself. “Do you mind if we take a look at it?”

“Any chance you have a warrant?”

“No. But we’d just like to see it. A courtesy.”

“Courtesy.” He took an iPhone from his pocket. Pushed it toward Avery.

The metadata had revealed the picture was taken by and uploaded from an inexpensive ZTE cell.

“Your other phone. The burner.”

The student hesitated. “Oh, the one I lost.”

Avery noted that he didn’t try to deny he had one. Nor did he ask the more interesting question: How had they traced a cash burner to him?

“That’s what happened? You lost it?”

“I mean, it might’ve been stolen. I didn’t really care much. It was cheap. And almost out of minutes.”

“When did you miss it?”

“I guess a couple days ago.”

“Could you tell us who else was at the Cedar Hills party?”

Karesh’s face grew thoughtful. “Gosh, no. I just don’t recall. Funny, I hit the place fast, and nothing was happening, so I left.”

Gosh?

“Do you know when you left?”

“Little after nine, I’d guess. I went to a party on Bradford. There were dozens of people there who saw me. They can verify that’s where I was.” A minor frown that, to Avery, looked fake. “If I need an alibi, that is.”

So he’d left before Rose Taylor was photographed, which according to the metadata on the JPEG was 10:32 p.m. But if Karesh lent the phone to someone who then took the picture, he might have gotten together later with that person and posted it with him, uploading it around midnight.

“And when did you leave the Bradford Avenue party?”

“A couple hours later, maybe.”

Avery asked, “Could you give us some of those names of people who saw you there?”

“Wow. Very American Detective.” He paused. Then he jotted down a few names on a yellow pad and handed the sheet to Hobbs.

“Phone numbers?”

“Hmm, couldn’t tell you. They’re not in my contacts.”

“They’re all students?” Hobbs asked patiently.

“Hmm. Maybe. Probably. So, gotta ask. What’s this ‘incident’ you’re talking about?”

“That burner was used in a crime that evening.”

“No! That’s terrible!”

A hint of overacting? Avery couldn’t tell.

“Look, I definitely didn’t have it at the party. It was gone by then.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have it when you arrived on Cedar Hills?”

He was thinking fast now, staring at his math textbook. “I can’t say, sorry. All I know is that I noticed it missing a couple of days later. Again, cheap. I didn’t care. I’m not going to fill out a police report for a prepaid.”

A generic, noncommittal answer that most likely wouldn’t come back to bite him. And Avery noted he didn’t use the somewhat shady word burner.

It was then that Jesse Hobbs said, “Uber.”

Karesh was silent for a moment. Then: “What about it?”

The young officer said, “Cedar Hills to Bradford Avenue is three miles. You didn’t walk and you don’t own a car. I checked. There aren’t that many metered cabs left in Rawlings. You Ubered.”

Avery was impressed; he himself wouldn’t have thought about the ride service, which he’d never used.

“I guess I did. I mean, yes.”

Hobbs said, “Can we see your app? The log of where you were?”

His smile didn’t falter, his eyes didn’t narrow, but there was a millisecond pause before Karesh offered the phone.

Hobbs scrolled through the app; Avery could see him click on something that displayed the heading “Your Trips.” The young deputy looked up. “You mind if we take down the addresses, just to confirm? You can say no, but it’ll save the hassle of a warrant.”

He paused again. Then: “Yeah, sure. Go right ahead.”

As Hobbs read aloud the addresses and the times, Avery wrote them down. The detective reflected that Karesh could have used the Uber app to prove when he’d left the party where Rose Taylor was assaulted.

Karesh asked, “Hey, what kind of crime was it?”

“Sexual assault.” Avery had kept the description ambiguous, to see if he could get a reaction.

Karesh’s face tightened into a deep frown. “Oh, man. That’s harsh.”

Acting or not?

“Well, I hope you catch whoever did it.”

“Could you give Deputy Hobbs your number?”

Karesh dictated it to Hobbs, who took it down in his phone. Avery and Hobbs both rose together.

Avery leaned down toward Karesh, who’d begun to gather his class notes. “Just curious. Why was it you bought the ZTE with cash, when you used your credit card for that other purchase at the same time?”

Karesh’s eyes flickered. Avery could sense the split-second recognition: That’s how they found him.

He looked as if Avery had asked an immensely stupid question. “You use your credit card with a phone, the provider sells all your information. Data mining. Could lead to identity theft. That’s a real problem nowadays.”

“But you have your iPhone,” Hobbs said. “You had to use a credit card for that one.”

“Oh, my father got it for me. Family plan, you know. Saved a ton of money.”

“So you use burners much?” Avery asked.

“All the time. Everybody should have a second phone. Emergencies, you know.”

Avery shot him a look. “As long as you don’t lose them.”

Karesh offered a cool smile. “There’s that, true.” He glanced at a large wall clock. “I have to get to class. Good luck with your case.”

“That was about as slick as I’ve seen,” Jesse Hobbs said as the two walked back to the cruiser. “But looked like he hiccuped when you asked for the iPhone.”

“You saw that too, hmm? Hey, good call on the Uber thing.”

“Nearly every student on campus has an account. Maybe not the smaller schools around here, but Preston? Mommy or daddy signs ’em up for Uber the day they register. You want, I’ll check out the addresses he went to after leaving Cedar Hills. See if he said anything about the party or Ms. Taylor.”

“Good. Something’s off about that kid. I want to know more.”

“Sure, Detective.”

They returned to headquarters. Hobbs headed for his cubicle, and Avery continued down the main corridor to the sheriff’s office. The place was decorated in what his wife, Becky, called 1970s Uninspired. The style included brushed aluminum, yellowing acoustic tile and beige walls last painted two budgets ago.

He stepped into the sheriff’s office.

The big man looked up from a cluttered desk, his half-lens glasses perched low on his ample nose, which was a bit crooked from the time, off duty, when he’d collared a meth-wired carjacker who didn’t want to be collared (and in the First Methodist parking lot, no less).

Elected six times to the job, landslides every one, Freddy Bascom aspired to nothing more or less than this: keeping peace in a county that he believed in his heart deserved it.

The big man looked up. “You want something, I can tell.”

“I need to spend some more of your money.”

“The Rose Taylor thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Makes my blood boil, what happened to her. Whatta you need?”

“More computer time. Find out what cell towers the upload pinged.”

“Wasn’t from the party on Cedar Hills?”

“Might’ve been. But doubt it. Wasn’t uploaded till almost three hours after it was shot. You can take it out of my budget.”

“You don’t have a budget. I have a budget.”

“How ’bout it, Freddy?”

“Sure. Whatever you need.”

Back at his desk, Avery filled out the warrant request and emailed it the magistrate, who approved it quickly. Avery sent all the paperwork — well, digitalwork — to the officer at Computer Crimes, who’d start following the digital bread crumbs. Avery reflected that Rose Taylor had been violated by bytes of data; the perp was being pursued by the same invisible electrons.

As he waited for the upload information, he turned to tackling some of his own tasks. The Major Case disposition report for the Monroe County district attorney was the priority, due on Monday. A single incident could lead to a number of charges (a killer might be charged with murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide), and, as senior detective, Jon Avery had to review every serious offense and recommend to the DA which charges the sheriff’s office thought were most likely to win convictions.

One crime in the report in particular had him stuck. He wasn’t sure what charges to recommend. Phil Peabody, a student at Preston College, had been arrested for weapons possession and battery. A witness claimed Peabody had stolen a leather jacket from a chair at an outdoor restaurant downtown. Peabody, who’d been drinking, claimed the garment was his, and when the witness told him to wait for the police, he’d pushed the young man, who’d fallen and broken a finger. When the deputies arrived, they discovered a pistol in the pocket of the jacket. It was an old-time gun, and unloaded, but this was still a violation of the concealed weapon laws. Peabody changed his tune and admitted he’d stolen the jacket but insisted his goal was to return it to its owner. The county prosecutor, known to take weapons offenses very seriously, wanted to charge Peabody with aggravated assault.

Avery read the file several times and debated which counts to go with. He finally decided less severe charges were called for. Peabody would still be convicted of a felony but would do only six months in jail, not two to three years. It was his first offense, and Avery had seen letters of support from his family, two of the student’s coaches and his minister.

He was jotting down his recommendation when the phone rang. The Computer Crimes detective on the other end of the line told him that they’d tracked down the mobile provider’s details about Karesh’s burner. It hadn’t been powered up since the night of the party, but they were, however, able to find out where the phone was when the photo had been uploaded.

Good news, Avery thought.

Avery called up his trusted research assistant, a.k.a. Google Earth. He examined the area Computer Crimes had delineated from the service provider. It was a huge swath of Preston campus, embracing dozens of acres — including four classroom buildings, dorms, the stadium and the chapel, along with gardens and a few shops. The experts couldn’t narrow it down any more than that.

Brother...

Well, at least there was one important determination he could make.

Avery called Jesse Hobbs.

“Hey, Detective,” the young deputy answered. “Glad you called. I’ve got six wits confirming Karesh was at the Bradford party from nine twenty to ten forty-five. He was telling the truth. He wasn’t at the Cedar Hills party when the picture was taken.”

Avery hadn’t expected anything different. He told the deputy, “Just heard from Computer Crimes. Couldn’t narrow down the upload location very much. It’s an area about the size of Pennsylvania.”

Hobbs gave a laugh.

“But tell me where Karesh was at midnight. If he was within the zone, maybe he was with the uploader or with the perp who shot the pic when he uploaded it.”

There was a pause, and Avery heard the rustle of paper. Hobbs said, “He was in Clinton at midnight, then Ubered to a club downtown at twelve forty-five. That anywhere near the upload site?”

“Nope. Nowhere near.”

Jon Avery firmly believed in innocence until proven guilty. But he just plain didn’t care for Amir Karesh and had hoped to tag him to the crime.

But not yet.

Just as Avery hung up with Hobbs, he received a text. It was from Rose Taylor, saying she had some important information. Could he meet her at an address on Sullivan Street in fifteen minutes?

He replied that he would be there. As he rose and pulled on his sport coat, he glanced at the map on his computer monitor. Somewhere in the area of campus he was looking at, the perp had stood or sat or lain in bed and uploaded the picture of Rose Taylor, changing her life for the worse.

Somewhere...

The address Rose Taylor had given Avery was a YMCA on a commercial strip just outside of Rawlings.

Avery had been to the one-story cinder-block building a number of times, though never on the job. It had been for Al-Anon meetings years ago, before — and a short time after — his mother passed. Sometimes, when memories of the tough days with her hit him, he thought about going back but always ended up telling himself he didn’t have the time — though in truth, it was the heart that was lacking.

He found Taylor standing in the main hallway, next to a closed door. She was in another bulky sweatshirt and jeans, her frizzy hair held in place by a gray headband. Today she wore dark-rimmed glasses. He wondered if they were a kind of disguise.

Avery could see through a window in the door that it was a conference room full of about twenty people — mostly women — sitting in a circle.

“Detective, thanks for meeting me,” Taylor said. “I’ve got something you should see right away. But I didn’t want to miss my meeting.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a victims’ support group for people who’ve been attacked,” she said, nodding toward the door. “A social worker runs it. Any kind of assault or battery — we’ve learned the different kinds. Sexual, domestic abuse, road rage.” She paused, her mouth tightening. “Photography.”

“It’s helpful?”

“Oh, it is. It’s...” She sought a word. “Realistic, I guess you could say. The problem for us, it’s not like drugs or drinking — you know, an ongoing problem you’re trying to stop. You don’t drink for a day, or a week or a year, and that’s a win. But with us, victims, it’s analog — there’re only degrees of success. Sometimes you’re paralyzed thinking about what happened, sometimes you function, but a loud noise or a certain face sends you into an anxiety attack. Sometimes, you cope pretty well. The group helps me turn down the volume.”

“Today?”

“The meeting days are good.”

Avery smiled at this. He said, “I was going to call you anyway. Amir Karesh? It was his phone, but he claimed he lost it. He didn’t take or upload the picture.”

She sighed at the news.

“It’s disappointing. He knows something, I’m sure. I’ll keep trying to figure out what.”

Taylor pulled an office-size envelope from her purse. “Let me show you what I got,” she said. “It came in the mail.”

Avery reached for his latex gloves — he always kept a wad in his pocket — and pulled them on. Though he and Taylor were in the hallway outside the conference room, he happened to glance inside and noticed that one of the two men in the group was looking at him, noting the gloves. He was around forty, balding, with probing eyes behind round-framed glasses. When he saw Avery studying him, he turned to the woman next to him and began a conversation.

Avery stepped back, out of his sight of those inside the room. He opened the envelope — business size — and extracted a single piece of folded 8½ by 11 inch paper, on which the following was written in neat handwriting:

Avery turned it over. Nothing on the back. Sent via the post because an email would have been traceable. A glance at the envelope. No return address, of course. Postmarked at the main building downtown, which was near campus. He’d order prints, just for completeness’s sake, but doubted there’d be any hits in the database.

“‘Fucked by six?’” she asked.

The detective shook his head. “No idea.”

Taylor added, “You know, whoever wrote that knows exactly who those three men are. And I’ll bet a dozen other people know it too.” Her eyes flared with anger for a moment, and then it faded.

“This’ll be helpful, though. Easier to find three perps than one. More conversations to be overheard.”

“More bragging,” she said.

“More bragging means more leads.”

Avery glanced toward the conference room door. “A question?”

“Sure.”

“We run a fair number of domestic abuse and sexual assault cases. What do you think if I suggest to the victims they might want to stop by here?”

Taylor brightened. “Oh, absolutely. I always thought that thinking of yourself as a victim meant you were weak, like it was your fault. But nobody ever chooses to be a victim, right? Coming here’s taught me to feel better about myself. I’d recommend it to anybody.” She dug into her purse for a pen and Post-it, and jotted a name and number. Avery slipped the square of paper away.

They shook hands in farewell, and Taylor walked inside. She sat next to the balding man, who’d been studying Avery as he’d pulled on the latex gloves. He leaned close to her, and they began a conversation.

Avery returned to his cruiser. He opened the note and read it once more.

A thought occurred.

He pulled out his phone and called up the internet, scrolling through recent local news. He stopped abruptly and read a story — well, not even a full story. Just the headline.

Damn, he thought, as he fired up the engine and sped out into the road.

Jon Avery parked before one of the most gothic of the gothic buildings on the Preston College campus. It really was gorgeous, two stories high and built of intricately carved white stone. And it was crowned, you bet, with spires like those on a Game of Thrones palace. The structure was set in a grove of maple and oak trees, a perfect architectural complement to the school’s football stadium, which loomed behind it.

Most of Avery’s work as a detective involved cobbling together enough evidence to arrest perps whose identity he already knew or could at least guess at. Rarely was the perp a complete mystery man or woman, snared by a moment of Sherlock Holmes deduction.

But this was exactly what was happening now with the Rose Taylor case, thanks to two pieces of evidence: the note from the anonymous tipster and the report from the Computer Crimes Unit at the state police about the location of the picture’s upload.

Avery climbed from the car and walked through the arched wooden doorway of the Preston College Athletics Department. His shoes — black oxfords with leather heels and soles — shot staccato echoes from the marble floors. He glanced at the thousands of framed photos on polished wood-paneled walls and at the scores of glass cases filled with trophies, cups, ribbons and plaques.

At the end he came to another large doorway and stepped into the receptionist’s office.

“I’d like to see Mr. Erickson, please,” he announced.

The slim woman blinked. “Is he expecting you, Mr...?”

“Detective. Avery.” He flashed his badge. “I’d appreciate if he could spare a minute.”

Her hand hovered over the phone. Finally, under his steady gaze, she picked it up and announced him.

“You can go in, sir.”

Avery stepped into a massive office, more dark wood and marble, along with stained glass.

Edward Erickson nodded Avery into a chair, across from his desk, which was twice the size of the detective’s back at the sheriff’s office. The Preston athletic director was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man with gray, perfectly trimmed hair. In his late fifties, Avery estimated. He was, according to the many pictures on the wall, a former linebacker for the Eagles.

“Is this about Donnie Simpson, Detective?”

Donnie Simpson, the MVP in hot water for slugging a fellow student over rights to a cab. Maybe the athletic director was hoping that the sheriff’s office had come to its senses and dropped the charges. After all, the Eagles were playing the Wildcats Saturday, and Simpson would be sorely missed. On the other hand, Avery believed Erickson knew very well why he was here.

“No, it’s not. Mr. Erickson, last week, a professor at Preston was drugged and photographed in a stage of undress at a party near the school. We’re investigating.”

“Yes, I heard about that. It’s terrible. Inexcusable. But, how can I help you?”

“At least one of the suspects is an athlete here, a football player.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“I am.”

The Sherlock Holmesian deduction that Jon Avery had made was actually quite simple. The image of Rose Taylor had been uploaded from the portion of the campus that included the stadium and dorms for the athletes. Avery combined that fact with the line from the anonymous letter: YOU DID EVERYTHING THAT GOOD WE WOULDN’T’VE BEEN FUCKED BY SIX.

Last week’s game had ended with a six-point loss for the Eagles. Avery was sure that a football player was one of the perps, one whose mistake on the field had cost the team the game.

The director leaned back, offering up a scoffing laugh and shaking his head, which Avery took to mean: Aren’t you embarrassed making such an absurd allegation?

After all the years of doing this work, Avery had developed a sixth sense — nothing psychic, of course. It was simply an ability to note when, for instance, a person cleared his throat but didn’t need to.

When he stared into your eyes but in a relaxed state would be looking down.

When his lips smiled but his face did not.

Avery rocked forward slowly. “It was one of your players. And you know who. I think half the student body knows. But you and the coaches and probably somebody from the alumni association are making sure not a soul says a word about it.”

Erickson’s jowly cheeks darkened. Avery guessed he’d been a bully as a linebacker and a bully as coach. And he was a bully still. He growled, “Why on earth would we do that?”

“You’re a Division One school. Football alone brings in seventy-two million dollars a year. You’ve got national titles. And a shot at one this year. A scandal like this? It could get your entire program suspended. Work with me. Give me that name.”

“I’m sorry for that girl—”

“The woman is a professor.”

“That professor. But, no, I don’t know who did it. And I guarantee no athletes were involved. None of our boys would ever do anything like that. Do you know, Detective, that I make sure they pray before every game?”

Well, now, there’s proof of innocence, Avery thought. “I should tell you, sir, obstruction of justice is a serious crime,” he said.

The big man brayed a laugh. “Are you threatening me?”

It wasn’t obvious?

Erickson leaned forward, whispering, “You listen to me, Detective. These lies you’re spouting could be very harmful to our school, and what’s harmful to the school could be harmful to the county our school is located in. And that could have” — a melodramatic pause — “far-reaching consequences.”

In his career, Jon Avery had been threatened with a Remington shotgun, Glock pistols, a muzzleloader and even an old-fashioned pitchfork. He’d never been threatened with unemployment before.

He set his business card on the desk. “Call me if you’d like to reconsider.”

Erickson pitched the card into his trash can.

Avery left the office and strode down the dim hall. The faces of the athletes in framed pictures on the walls seemed to be mocking him. This was the moment, he reflected, when he’d usually turn to plan B.

If only he had one.

Jon Avery spent the next day, Friday, interviewing the fifteen or so people Detective Sarah Bennet had discovered who’d attended the infamous party.

He had no more success than she had. Jesse Hobbs wasn’t making any particular headway, either, in his task: tracking down people Amir Karesh had spoken to at the various parties and nightspots he’d attended after leaving the Cedar Hills gathering where Rose Taylor had been photographed.

Avery returned to the office to find in his email inbox a report from the state police crime lab, which handled the county’s forensic work. The anonymous letter that had been sent to Rose Taylor contained eighteen fingerprints, none of which was on file in any database, state or fed.

Natch.

The detective decided to catch up on other work — the disposition reports he owed the prosecutor on the week’s felony and serious misdemeanor offenses. He sipped coffee, pleased the department had sprung for a Keurig, even if the deputies had to buy the pods themselves.

He looked over the disposition sheet with a wry grimace. What a week... The average number of serious offenses in Monroe County during a seven-day period was three or four. This last week had seen nine.

Emma, the office assistant, a round woman of about sixty, who wore ponytails every day, knocked lightly on his door and came in, setting another file on his desk. “Don’tcha love it when the smart ones go all stupid?”

Everyone in the department loved Emma.

He skimmed the arrest report. The defendant, a twenty-three-year-old Preston student with straight A’s, was employed part time as a programmer at I-Tech Solutions, one of the premier computer companies in the state. That was the “smart” part. The “stupid” part was committing a DUI that resulted in an injury. There was an even stupider part too. His defense was that the man he’d hit had been buying him drinks in the bar; he wouldn’t otherwise have had that much liquor. It was the victim’s fault. Because of that, and because Avery had a particular distaste for drinking and driving, he recommended a felony DUI charge.

Jesse Hobbs walked into the office. “Detective?”

Avery glanced up.

“I finally got somebody willing to talk about Karesh. A bartender at one of the clubs he was at that night.”

“Did he hear Karesh say anything about lending a burner to anybody, or somebody taking pix of a half-naked woman?”

“No, not directly. But in a way.”

“Meaning?”

“Seems Karesh is a retailer.”

Avery got it. And was a bit miffed with himself for not figuring this out sooner. “Selling roofies,” Avery said.

“Yep. Roofies, along with other assorted controlled substances.”

“That’s why he wasn’t happy about letting us see his Uber stops. It was his delivery route.” Avery paused. “The bartender?”

“He saw somebody selling pills and recognized what they were. He grabbed the stash and threw the guy out. He was surprised when I flashed Karesh’s picture. He assumed I was there about drugs; didn’t know anything about burners or photos.”

“Please, tell me he still has the roofies.”

“Nope, he flushed them. But all is not lost. He’s sure the baggie is somewhere in the back room. When he finds it, he’ll call. And he’ll swear out a statement that Karesh was selling.”

“Our lucky day,” Avery said. “The bag’ll have his prints and probably some residue inside. We’ll leverage him. Trade a reduced drug charge for the names of his buyers at the Cedar Hills party.”

One of whom, Avery was sure, had taken the picture of Rose Taylor.

“Let’s get the paperwork done,” Avery said. “Call the magistrate. And then your contact on campus. Find out where Karesh is. We’ll flip a coin, you and me, to see who gets to nail him.”

“Naw,” the young deputy said, “This one’s all yours.”

A half hour later, Avery and Hobbs were en route to the club to meet the crime scene techs and take the bartender’s statement.

Hobbs’s phone hummed. He answered: “Deputy Hobbs... Yeah? Oh, hi.”

Then silence, and the deputy’s face dimmed into a frown.

Avery asked, “What?”

Hobbs shook his head. And hit “Speaker.”

A nervous voice came from the phone: “Sorry. But I can’t really, in good faith—”

Hobbs said, “Bartender.”

“This is Detective Avery. Who’s this, please?”

“Jamie Southern. I work at Irish Eyes? The pub on Ellicott Street? Look, I know I told Deputy Hobbs that guy was selling roofies, but the more I thought about it, I was wrong. You know how that happens sometimes, you think you see something, and then you realize you got confused?”

“No,” Avery said. “I don’t.”

“Oh. Well, it happens to me. That guy, Karesh or whoever, was there, but he was just hanging.”

Avery sighed. “But somebody was selling roofies. You saw him.”

“It was somebody else. Some black guy.”

Seriously?

“Can you describe him?” Hobbs asked.

“Not really. It was dark.”

Hobbs asked, “The baggie?”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I couldn’t find it. I guess it got thrown out with the trash.”

Avery eased off the gas. In his anger he’d sped up fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. “We’ll want to interview you anyway, Mr. Southern.”

“I think I’m going out of town. Vacation, you know. But when I get back, sure.”

A thought occurred. Avery asked, “Is bartending your only job?”

Silence.

“I write songs.”

“I mean for money.”

“Sometimes I do some catering. A little bit, not much.”

“Mr. Southern, are you employed by Preston College?”

Silence for a moment. “No.”

“Does Preston hire you as an independent contractor for catering functions?”

Silence on the other end.

“You know, son, I can just look this up.”

“Yes.”

“Has anybody from the school contacted you—”

The phone suddenly bleated with the triple tone of a disconnected call.

Silence filled the car.

The young deputy asked, “Back to the office?”

“No.” Avery skidded the car into a U-turn and punched the gas.

Avery saw Amir Karesh slow to a stop the moment he caught sight of the two officers striding his way.

The three paused together outside the physics building. Jesse Hobbs had learned from his former boss, the head of campus security, that Karesh had a class there in ten minutes.

“Detectives,” he said. Then looked at Hobbs. “Or junior deputy, or whatever.”

Avery said, “We know what you were doing at the party. At the parties, I should say. After you left Cedar Hills.”

“Having a good time, drinking — but only in moderation.”

Hobbs said, “This isn’t a joke.”

“No, I guess not. But whatever it is, I’ve got a class to get to, and the professor takes tardiness into account when it’s time to grade.”

“You were selling roofies. You’re the go-to man for them. And anything else in your pharmacology inventory.”

“Go-to. That’s a quaint expression. Well, since I’m vertical and not on my tummy with my hands cuffed, à la COPS, what do you want?”

“We’re going to build a case.”

“Future is the operative tense there. So. I’ll repeat the comment about tummy and cuffs.”

“I want to know who you sold to at the party where Rose Taylor was assaulted.”

“You keep saying that. She was just photographed. Christ. In Europe, land of topless beaches, who’d even care?”

Avery swatted aside his anger. “Here’s an offer. Give us the names — all three of them.”

Karesh blinked at this.

Avery continued, “Give us the names. You stop selling, and we won’t pursue charges against you. You’ll walk.”

The student lifted his arm, palm up. “But check it out. I’m walking now.”

Avery hadn’t struck anybody since his college boxing days, but he felt the hungry urge to deck the kid now.

“I didn’t sell anything to anybody. I never have.”

“Work with us, Amir. You’re in a world of trouble. We can make it go away. I don’t want to. I don’t like you. But I will. Give me those names.”

“The bell’s about to ring, Detective. Have a good day.” And, turning quickly, he was gone.

The following Monday, Jon Avery stood outside the Preston science and technology building finishing a Starbucks coffee that had cooled significantly over the past fifteen minutes. He was tired. Exhausted. He’d put in nearly twenty hours over the weekend interviewing the few witnesses who had seen Amir Karesh the night of the Cedar Hills party.

“Witnesses” was not an accurate term, however. Not a single helpful fact emerged.

He’d also turned to some unlikely possibilities: that a medical company that competed with the one funding Taylor’s research had wanted to take her out of the principal investigator business. No headway there.

And without Taylor’s knowing it, he’d checked out the man in her support group who’d been acting suspicious. He was a married minister with seven children, and had been the victim of a mugging that left him badly traumatized. Off-campus parties were hardly on his agenda.

The detective took the last sip of his coffee just as he saw Rose Taylor exiting the building with a tall student, their heads down, engaged in a serious discussion.

Taylor cut her eyes to the left, noticed Avery and slowed to a stop. She and the young man finished up their conversation quickly, and the student wandered off in a lope.

Taylor joined Avery. “Detective.”

“Rose.”

“Your look tells me you don’t have any news,” she said.

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and handed her a printout. “Well, none good.”

Taylor looked down at the sheet, her deep-brown eyes widening slightly.

There were statements in the release from the chancellor, the athletic director, and the head of the “independent” panel, a lawyer in town. Probably with no direct connection to Preston, but who undoubtedly saw every football game his schedule allowed — which would be, Avery guessed, all of them.

She sighed. “‘Alleged.’ Well. Let’s see. Don’t we have about five hundred thousand copies of the proof floating around in the internet?” She looked back down at the release. “Don’t you think they could’ve come up with something a little stronger than ‘inappropriate’? They were boobs, after all.”

Avery had no idea how to respond, and so he didn’t. He said, “And I spent the weekend interviewing those people who were at the party again — and players. Nobody’s talking.”

“All weekend?”

“Aside from a school soccer game.”

“You win?”

“We did.”

Taylor looked toward a shaggy maple. Its leaves were just starting to blush. “Anything left to do?” she asked in a tone that told Avery she already knew the answer.

“Oh, Detective Bennet’ll keep at it. She’s back tomorrow.”

“But you don’t have much hope.”

Avery paused. He should be honest with Taylor; she deserved that much. “No.”

She extended her hand and shook his.

“Thanks, Detective. I know you tried. I could tell it meant something to you.”

She headed for another class, and Avery returned to his office, where he gathered up the Rose Taylor case file — to which he’d added another fifty or so pages — and brought it to Sarah Bennet’s office, placing it on her desk. He added a Post-it note: “Did my best.”

When he got back to his office, the sheriff was standing outside his door.

“Freddy.”

“Just want to let you know I’m supposed to fire you.”

“Oh.”

“Athletic director, chancellor, coupla regents all weighed in. Somebody on the county board of supervisors too. I forget who.”

“That right?”

“I said no.” The man wandered off, snagging one of the homemade cookies that Emma brought on Mondays.

It was time to return to his own workload. The Major Case disposition report for the prior week was due at the DA’s office. Nine serious offenses in one week, it turned out, was a new record. He skimmed to make sure he was happy with the charges he’d recommended.

— Samuel Arrazzo, 51, truck driver, soliciting prostitution, unlawful possession of a firearm. Complaining witness: Detective Susan Cotter.

— Aaron Phillips, 43, scrapyard owner, possession of Schedule 1 controlled substance (methamphetamine) (felony quantity). Complaining witness: Deputy Steven Webber.

— Frederick Williams, 37, McKennah Auto Repair, battery domestic abuse. Complaining witness: Joanne Harper Williams.

— Phillip Peabody, 20, student at Preston College, unlawful possession of firearm, theft, simple assault. Complaining witness: David Shepherd.

— Robin Scopes, 35, unemployed, possession of Schedule 1 controlled substance (opioids) (felony quantity). Complaining witness: Deputy Stanley Eiger.

— Charles Fillmore, 18, student at Emerson High, burglary, larceny, criminal trespass. Complaining witnesses: Henry and Joan Walker.

— Donald Simpson, 20, student at Preston College, felony battery. Complaining witness: Peter Freidman.

— Dee Gibson, 37, unemployed, possession of Schedule 1 controlled substance (methamphetamine) (felony quantity), manufacturing of Schedule 1 controlled substance (methamphetamine), felony endangerment of child. Complaining witnesses: Deputies Sandra Boston and Frank Stone.

— Josh Underwood, 23, student at Preston College, p/t computer programmer at I-Tech Solutions, DUI (felony). Complaining witness: Albert Taggert.

Avery paused, and looked out the window, galled that he couldn’t have put a tenth case on the report.

Complaining witness: Rose Taylor.

He turned back and pressed the end of his pen. With a click the tip extended, and the detective began to sign off. But then he paused and read the report again. Several times.

After leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling for a solid three minutes — a long time to ceiling gaze — he sat up and made a series of phone calls.

An hour later, he was in his car, heading to the other side of town.

Monroe Community Hospital.

Avery knew the place pretty well. His son had been born here. His mother had died here. And he’d accompanied a dozen ambulances to the ER entrance, following car crashes, overdoses and the occasional gunshot wound. Avery himself had had his left leg splinted here after a bad tumble ice skating, and a surgeon here had done a spiffy job repairing the knife wound, not deep, in his arm, from the time he’d snatched a four-year-old boy away from his psychotic mother.

He’d learned recently that the facility had once been called something different, after a Civil War general. But a member of the board had ginned up a petition to have the name changed. This wasn’t, as you might think, because of Johnny Reb versus Yankee vitriol. No, the problem was simply that the petitioner thought the word memorial was too funereal for a hospital. The truth was that business, and revenues, were down — thanks to competition from docs-in-a-box storefronts. Apparently, even in medicine, public relations and image count.

He walked to the circular drive at the front of the building. The asphalt embraced a very pleasant garden, which, at this time of year, was lush with plants and flowers he appreciated but knew little about.

Avery watched as a few people shuffled through the main doors, and then, the person he was waiting for stepped out: a skinny young man, in his twenties. He was Rose Taylor’s younger brother, Devon.

When he saw Avery, he stopped fast.

“How’s he doing?” Jon Avery asked, walking up to the student.

He could see that Devon was debating.

“I’m not trying to trap you, son. I’m only asking if your frat brother Al Taggert’s OK.”

Devon’s eyes closed briefly. And the body language — the raised shoulders, the hands folding into fists and then opening — told him: the jig was up. “He’s OK. Needed the bone reset. Was kind of a bad break.”

“Getting clobbered on purpose by a Lexus, that’ll do it to you.”

Devon blew air through puffy cheeks. “How’d you—”

“Know you were here? One of your frat brothers. I went to talk to you at the house.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

The detective pulled a copy of the Major Case disposition report from his pocket and handed it to Devon. On it three entries were circled.

— Phillip Peabody, 20, student at Preston College, unlawful possession of firearm, theft, simple assault. Complaining witness: David Shepherd.

— Donald Simpson, 20, student at Preston College, felony battery. Complaining witness: Peter Freidman.

— Josh Underwood, 23, student at Preston College, p/t computer programmer at I-Tech Solutions, DUI (felony). Complaining witness: Albert Taggert.

“It’s a report of criminal cases we’ve handled in the past week.” Avery pointed to it as he added, “The names at the beginning of each paragraph are the suspects we arrested. At the end are the victims.”

Devon stared down at the report. He handed it back and tugged up his jeans. Kid had to weigh 140 pounds, tops.

Avery could see in his face a look he occasionally spotted in suspects: I am so totally, completely busted...

Jon Avery tucked the disposition sheet away in his jacket pocket and crossed his arms. “Let me just understand this, son. You knew that nobody on campus was going to cooperate and name the men who drugged your sister and took her picture so—”

“It was my fault. I—”

“I’ll finish.”

“Yessir. Sorry.”

“So you took matters into your own hands. Your frat house is popular; I checked it out. And you’re popular too. The president. You know everybody on campus; people talk to you. You found out who drugged Rose and took the picture — Peabody, Underwood and Simpson. You figured that because athletes were involved, the college would circle the wagons, and it’d be impossible to make a case against them. So three of your frat brothers decided to get revenge yourselves.

“The plan was that your brothers would goad or trick the perps into committing felonies. And those crimes just happened to carry about the same sentences they’d get under the revenge porn law. I assume you researched that yourself: the criminal statutes, the sentences. I remembered you’re prelaw.”

Devon nodded. He’d stopped fidgeting.

“Peter tried to grab the taxi that Donnie Simpson had flagged down and got punched out. David planted that gun in the jacket and left it on a chair where Peabody’d see it and — he hoped — steal it. He got beat up too.

“Al Taggert met Underwood in a bar and encouraged him to drink, then took a dive on the trunk of the Lexus when Underwood backed up.”

Avery gave a soft chuckle. “I’ve got to say, young man, this’s something. You a chess player?”

“Just poker. But I’m pretty good.”

Avery laughed again. He couldn’t help himself.

“OK, Detective: How’d you figure it out?”

“Well, I guess you could say it was your sister. That case report I showed you? When I was reading it a few hours ago, something funny struck me. Three people arrested for felonies in one week? That was unusual. And the three victims were students too, all seniors. And they’d all provoked their attackers in one way or another.”

“What does that have to do with Rosie?” Devon asked.

“She said something to me the other day that stuck in my mind: It was ‘Nobody ever chooses to be a victim.’ The more I looked at this report, the more I wondered: What if somebody did choose to be a victim?

“I knew, from an anonymous letter that somebody sent to your sister, that at least one of the perps was an athlete. I saw that Peabody had two of his coaches write letters of character; that told me he was on a team. Everybody knows Donnie Simpson’s a star athlete. And Underwood worked as a programmer for I-Tech; he’d know about proxies.

“Then I checked to see if there was something the three victims had in common. Yep, they were all in the same fraternity. The one that you’re president of — you, the brother of the woman assaulted at the Cedar Hills party.”

Avery put on his stern father face. “You know, your friends could have been killed. Donnie Simpson’s a big guy, and he’s got a temper. And the gun that David planted?”

“He found it in his grandfather’s attic. It was an antique and probably wouldn’t even fire.”

Avery countered with: “Passerby might’ve been armed, seen it and started shooting. There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong.”

Devon’s voice now took on an edge, as he said, “Sometimes, you’re going to do the right thing, you take a chance. We weren’t going to let those assholes get away with it.”

Jon Avery wasn’t inclined to dress the boy down. He himself had come close to bestowing his famed right hook on Amir Karesh’s jaw.

“So, guess I better ask: You going to arrest us?”

Avery gave a soft laugh. “Goading somebody into punching you or tricking them into driving you over, those don’t exactly fall into the state penal code. No, I’m not going to arrest you. But I can’t stop the other detective in our office from following up on the case.”

“Sarah Bennet?”

“That’s right.”

“She won’t get anywhere. Not up against the school.”

Avery thought that was probably likely. “Some advice.”

“Advice?” Devon sounded genuinely curious.

“Well, more of an order. You remember when I was at your sister’s, when I met you, I asked if you knew Amir Karesh.”

He nodded slowly.

“I imagine you’ve found out, or you will, that he’s the one who gave the suspects the burner phone and sold them the roofies.”

Devon said softly, “I know that, yeah.”

Avery uncrossed his arms and leaned forward ever so slightly. “Amir Karesh is mine. I will build a case and put him away. If not for this, then for drugs or something else. But he’ll be prosecuted under the law. I don’t want the Victims’ Club to hurt a single hair on his head.”

“The what?”

“My nickname for you. The Victims’ Club.”

Devon grinned. “I like that.”

“Don’t get too attached. You’re disbanded as of right now. We clear on that?”

“Perfectly clear, Detective.”

Avery then asked, “Rose? Does she know?”

“Not a clue,” Devon said. “Better if it stays that way.”

Avery nodded. “Night.”

“Night.”

Devon Taylor turned one way, Jon Avery another, and the detective walked back to his car, pulling out his phone to check the time. Five o’clock. He wouldn’t go back to the office. He’d head home. Already he was looking forward to supper, with a glass of cold milk and pie for dessert. Then he’d help Jon Jr. with his homework. Please, Avery thought, dropping into the driver’s seat, let it be history or science or English. Or even art appreciation. Anything but math.