“Where’s Michelson in all of this?”
Maverick tilted her pack of gum in Caitlin’s direction. Caitlin reached for a piece, then declined with a wave when she read the label: Nicorette. From cigarette to coffee to nicotine gum, Maverick stayed alert.
Greenwood continued. “According to Genevieve, trying to help Chapman back to her feet after she fell down the front stairs.”
Maverick pocketed the pack and tagged back in. “Finally, Chapman makes her way to Amireau, stops any further fight, and she, Amireau, and Michelson stumble back to the boys’ apartment. First thing in the door, Amireau yells at Michelson for not having his back. Next-door neighbor confirms yelling between two and two thirty. No distinct words, just obnoxious, like most other nights that year.”
Caitlin could imagine the fun of having coked-up frat boys as neighbors. “What about Chapman?”
Maverick shoved off the edge of the table and stretched her neck. “They claim vomiting. Michelson says the whole time he hovered over her in the bathroom, she was talking about going home between hurls. That’s when he hears a crash from the main room. Have you seen Tommy Boy?”
Caitlin smiled and opened her palms to the sky. “You mean the Chris Farley-David Spade movie I know better than the Constitution of the United States?”
Maverick nodded. “You really are growing on me, Bergman. You know that scene in the frat house when Chris is talking about the future—”
Caitlin didn’t need a reminder. “And he passes out mid-sentence and shatters a glass coffee table?”
Maverick snapped her fingers. “Right. That’s what they say happened to David Amireau. He takes a header into their coffee table. It’s pressboard, not glass, but he flattens it. So Michelson leaves Chapman in the bathroom—which is right inside the front door—and goes to deal with Dave. After ten minutes, he goes back to the bathroom. Chapman’s gone, and the front door is wide open. He assumes she walked home on her own, goes back to tuck Amireau in on the couch. Neither wake until eleven the next morning.”
“Nothing more about Chapman?”
Greenwood shook his head. “Last person who claims to have seen her was Michelson, followed by Amireau. She didn’t make it home, and no one thought it was weird until the next day.”
“Michelson?”
“Guess again.”
“Lakshmi?”
“Bingo.” Greenwood went back to the keyboard. “She started texting around ten AM. They came every half hour.”
He showed the first: All right?
The second: Still alive?
The third, around eleven forty-five: Starting to freak out. Not sure if you’re mad at me or still passed out. Text to let me know you’re alive, and I’ll leave you alone.
Maverick walked in front of the video screen and faced Caitlin. “Then the phone calls start. Lakshmi tries Chapman’s cell, her roommate, Amireau, Michelson, gets no answers, so she drives over to Chapman’s at two. Angela’s car is in the lot, but no answer at the door. She goes to the boys’ place, knocks, Amireau answers. Lakshmi said he had a black eye and a swollen nose and wouldn’t let her in. He told her Chapman walked home last night, slammed the door in Lakshmi’s face. You’ve met the girl. Think she took no for an answer?”
“Not at all.”
“Right, she walks around the place, peeps in the windows.”
“Did Lakshmi see anything?”
Maverick placed both palms on the edge of the table and leaned in. “Only Michelson cleaning up the main room with several big trash bags and a shop vac. So she knocks on the window. Michelson looks up—she says shocked—then opens the back door. He gives her the same answer, Chapman left last night. Lakshmi dials the Bloomington PD and shits this sordid mess into our laps.”
Maverick leaned back, resting her case.
Greenwood unhooked the laptop and turned on the lights. “Any questions, Caitlin?”
They’d given a polished presentation of a solid narrative. Had they tailored it for the big-city reporter? Probably. Was she going to take their word for it? Definitely not.
She stopped her voice recorder and gathered her things. “How late does happy hour go at Bear’s Place?”
CHAPTER
14
LAKSHMI SETTLED INTO a corner booth beneath tin ads for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Style. “We used to sit here every Friday, our French Fry Club. Did you come to Bear’s Place with your friends as well?”
“Oh yes.” Caitlin saw a waitress en route. “Here’s an opportunity to repeat those mistakes.”
She ordered a bacon cheeseburger, steak fries, and a Hairy Bear—the local bastardization of a Long Island Iced Tea. Lakshmi substituted hot wings for the burger, but matched starch selections.
Once the server left, Lakshmi called Caitlin’s bluff. “I want to hear everything about your meeting with Greenwood, but first, why suggest the place Angela and I ate together the night she disappeared?”
The waitress returned with two pint-sized plastic pitchers filled with light peach liquid.
Caitlin took a sip. Gin, rum, tequila, vodka, whiskey, and fruit juice all wanted her black-out drunk as soon as possible.
“If you’d said, ‘anywhere but there,’ I would have learned something.”
“Which would be?”
“That you’re so traumatized by Angela’s disappearance, you can’t retrace the steps.”
Lakshmi sipped through her straw. “But I’m not. You’re feeling me out, right? Trying to gauge whether you can trust my statement versus what you learned from the police?”
Caitlin nodded. Despite her age, Lakshmi didn’t miss much.
Lakshmi shook her head. “It’s hard to break down how you’re manipulating me without being offended.”
“I’ve lost several boyfriends this way.”
“Okay, if a person is comfortable in a place that caused them trauma, they either have nothing to hide or wish to appear as though they have nothing to hide.”
Caitlin smiled. “Right. Putting someone back in a location can take them back in time emotionally. Like Homecoming Week.”
“Have you been back to the place you were attacked?”
Caitlin crunched an ice cube. “It hasn’t exactly been on the way anywhere.”
“Will you?”
She raised her cup. “Let’s see if I survive the night.”
Lakshmi tapped plastic to plastic. “Thank you for manipulating me into coming back to Bear’s Place.”
“Here’s to drinking on a school night.”
“Not for me. No classes on Tuesday or Friday. Best senior schedule ever. Do your worst.”
“Fine. Say fuck buddy.”
Lakshmi laughed. “Fuck buddy.”
Her accent got thick on the back of her tongue each time she hit the k sound.
“Leeds?”
Lakshmi leaned forward, her out-of-practice smile bigger than ever. “Birmingham. You spent time in England?”
“That’s a story for another night. First, tell me how a British-Indian girl from Birmingham ended up at Indiana University. Give me the billboard for the Lakshmi bio piece you have to write for the Daily Student.”
Lakshmi scrunched her face, blushed. “Right. Lakshmi Anjale, graduate of the prestigious Hackley School, Westchester, New York, chooses Indiana University Kelley School of Business over Princeton to fulfill father’s dream of degree in statistical analysis, only to find direction, passion, and mentorship as an Ernie Pyle Scholar in the School of Journalism.”
Caitlin made eye contact with the waitress, pointed to their near-empty cups. “You only mentioned your father. Your mother doesn’t dream of stats?”
Lakshmi shrugged. “She died in a car accident in Birmingham when I was ten. My father moved us to Westchester.”
The waitress brought their second round and enough meat and potatoes for four. Once the ketchup was poured and the consumption began, Lakshmi returned the favor.
“Are your parents alive, Caitlin?”
Caitlin noticed a slight smile. How much research had the girl done?
“My father passed ten years ago. My mother wasn’t in the picture. You and I have a lot in common.”
“What a horrible thing to have in common.”
“Better than crabs.” Caitlin dipped a fry into the ketchup mound. “Tell me how you and Angela got together.”
“We met second semester freshman year. I transferred dorms and Angela invited me to a party.”
“Why change dorms?”
“My roommate was mental. Anyway, Angela and Devon, her roommate, lived down the hall. We all played softball together. Angela and I also joined intramural soccer. By the end of the semester, she was my best friend.”
“Why didn’t you live together after the dorm?”
Lakshmi looked down at her hands. “My father doesn’t like the idea of me living with other girls. I live in a one-bedroom apartment two blocks from here.”
“Which is where you and Angela went after Bear’s Place that night?”
“The other girls had plans, so Angela and I went to my place to watch a film.”
“On a Friday night?”
“Once a month we had girl’s night at mine. Plus, that close to finals I had a pile of homework and didn’t want to be a zombie the next day. My classes were harder than Angela’s.”
“What was her major?”
“Hospitality. She loves helping people.”
Caitlin noticed the use of present tense. How long would the cord between Lakshmi’s optimism and sanity stretch before it snapped?
“It sounds like she helped you find a place in the world.”
Lakshmi gave a slight nod, solemn. “And now she’s gone.”
Caitlin raised her mug. “Here’s to Angela Chapman.”
Lakshmi raised her own. “To finding Angela Chapman.”
“To finding Angela Chapman,” Caitlin corrected. “And helping her the way she helped everyone else.”
Caitlin moved the conversation toward lighter fare, eventually confessing her guilty pleasures—dark rums, mint ice cream, and tall men with scruff. Lakshmi admitted spending more time than she should with reruns of Friends, intramural soccer, and red wine. Caitlin didn’t pry into what she’d left out—sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Still, Lakshmi’s version of Angela’s last night matched up with the BPD’s account enough to earn Caitlin’s trust.
Her alcoholic buzz now a throb, Caitlin called the night. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine thirty, and we’ll get started.”
* * *
Caitlin walked along Third Street. Arc lamps lit the sidewalk every two hundred feet, but otherwise the path fell under the shadows of tall oaks. Two blocks from her turn south, she noticed a figure hunched over a low rock wall. Her gut told her the person was male and bigger than her. She could cross to the other sidewalk or barrel through.
She kept going. Fifty feet away, she saw that it was actually two people, waiting. Tension squeezed her shoulders, adrenaline kicked in. At twenty-five feet, she heard a female voice.
“Help, I’m freaking dying.”
Caitlin left her tension behind and ran toward the sound.
A campus police officer in a blue top and bike shorts turned a flashlight her way.
“Whoa there, ma’am. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Caitlin said. “Is she?”
The girl in question lay on a berm behind the rock wall, one arm over her face.
The cop’s light hovered over a pool of vomit. “Someone had a few too many shots. What’d you call it, miss?”
The drunk girl dropped her arm with the exaggerated motion of a six-year-old’s tantrum.
“Five for five. I’m gonna die.”
The officer turned back with a smirk. “Five shots in five minutes—that’ll do it.”
Caitlin noticed a bicycle against the wall.
“Where are her friends?”
“My guess is they saw me coming and hid.”
Caitlin looked at the bike, then the officer, then the girl. Nothing about the mountain bike screamed police department. His uniform looked like something anyone could buy at a costume store. The girl looked incapacitated.
“Where are your friends, Officer?”
“Ma’am?”
“Don’t you have a partner?”
He nodded. “Checking the block for her friends, ma’am.”
A third ma’am. Caitlin forced a smile. “It doesn’t look like she’ll fit on your bike.”
“No ma’am, but help is on the way. Please continue on to your destination.”
Caitlin crossed her arms. “I’ll wait right here until this help arrives.”
She had the officer’s attention. His smirk, long gone.
“Did I do something to you, ma’am?”
“You could lay off that ma’am shit, for starters.”
“Well, I don’t know your name.”
“All you need to know is that I’m going to sit here until I see either your partner return or someone in an official police vehicle escort this woman somewhere safe.”
“Why would you do that?”
Caitlin clenched her fingers into fists. “Angela Chapman.”
The officer looked like he might say something, but stopped.
A breathy voice spoke from behind Caitlin. “What about her?”
She turned, saw a female officer on a bike come to a stop. Fifty feet further down the street, a white Dodge Charger with low profile lights and iridescent decals approached, its flashing lights highlighting the word “POLICE.”
Caitlin turned back to the original officer. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Have a good night.”
The male officer’s smile returned. “You too, madam.”
Madam? Caitlin would have laughed, but she remembered the drunk girl. “What’s your name?”
The girl opened her eyes. “Laura Baker.”
“You shouldn’t be out here alone, Laura Baker. Feel better.”
“I’m gonna die,” she replied in a wail.
Caitlin shook her head. “Not tonight.”
She walked past the officer’s parked bike, noticed saddlebags stenciled with iridescent police decals, and wondered how she’d missed them the first time. Her heart pounded. No matter how hard she tried to control her breathing, her punk-rock heartbeat didn’t turn to easy listening until she hit the sheets of Mary’s bed.
CHAPTER
15
Los Angeles
MIKE ROMAN CIRCLED the heavy bag, repeating a three-punch combination: two jabs with the left, one cross with the right, then a side step. His punches landed in time with the third song of his workout mix—“You Know You’re Right” by Nirvana. The less-than-current song played through the tiny speakers of his phone. At six AM, no need to piss off the neighbors.
He stepped up his game, changed to a five-punch combo. “Bone Machine” by the Pixies came on. Mike added a little bounce to his hips.
The music cut out and his phone rang.
He grabbed a towel, wiped his forehead, and used his teeth to pull the Velcro of his wrist strap.
He swiped the phone screen. “You’ve got five seconds to explain how you got Caitlin Bergman’s phone, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll spend that time running from me.”
The voice on the other end either cleared its throat or laughed. In either case, he recognized its hungover timbre. “Down, boy. It is I, mostly.”
Two years ago a call from Caitlin Bergman would have sent Mike on the first train out of town. Now he answered on the first ring, every time.
“Just getting in? You do know it’s six in the morning?”
“Not here,” Caitlin said. “I’m three hours ahead.”
“Still surprised.” Mike pulled his other glove off and leaned against the counter.
Another hungover laugh came from Caitlin’s end of the line. “You free to make a little money, same rates as last time?”
Mike smiled and looked around for a pen. �
�Who do you need killed?”
CHAPTER
16
THE HYBRID’S CLOCK read 9:26 AM when Caitlin parked outside Lakshmi’s apartment building, a single-story, six-unit, red-brick building. She ended her call with Mike Roman, then texted him the business address she’d found for Kieran Michelson, not five miles from her own place in Los Angeles. Like herself, Kieran had moved to Hollywood the week after he left IU. Unlike Caitlin, the now twenty-four-year-old had his own business. His relocation must have involved a lot less crying.
Lakshmi came outside, locked the door to her apartment, and waved.
Caitlin lowered the window. “Was I the only one drinking last night?”
The young woman bounced into the passenger seat. “I pounded a coconut water. Want one? I have more inside.”
Caitlin pulled into traffic. “No, I earned this feeling. Remind me how to get to Cedar Creek.”
“Angela’s apartment? Why?”
“You and I are going to recreate the day she disappeared.”
Lakshmi smiled. “Turn north on Jordan.”
Caitlin drove slowly through the campus, stopping more than once for students crossing the street without bothering to look, as if being on campus made them untouchable.
“Do you know the time line, Lakshmi?”
“Of course. Angela woke up that morning and talked to her roommate, but Devon doesn’t live there anymore.”
Caitlin turned north past the library. “I know. I just want to get a feel for the place. We won’t bother the residents.”
“There aren’t any. After the investigation, Doris took over the lease.”
Doris Chapman rented her missing daughter’s apartment to keep it intact, even two years later? Brilliant.
Lakshmi pulled a set of keys out of her backpack. “We can go in anytime.”
* * *
The Cedar Creek apartment complex consisted of six gray two-story buildings divided into clumps of four units, two down, two up—sixteen per building.
Lakshmi stepped onto a wooden-planked walkway. Caitlin followed, noticing several black-domed security cameras.
“Those work?”
“They added them after.”
Come and Get Me Page 6
