by Spencer Baum
The scar was a reminder to Gabe of how fraudulent snap judgments can be. He thought of a factoid he’d heard once about employers making up their minds about potential job candidates within seven seconds of meeting them.
Sunny with the scar wouldn’t be hired for the same jobs as Sunny without.
Without the scar, Sunny was just another entitled college kid. But with the scar, Sunny was different. With the scar she was a survivor of some kind of trauma. Was that scar from a knife? A car accident? Did Sunny have a difficult childhood? Was she from an abusive home?
With the scar, Sunny was legit. The scar was physical proof that, at least once, Sunny had lived through something hard.
On the TV, Leonelle was still talking.
Here was a girl who had everything going for her, but she started hanging with the wrong group of friends.
Those Blue Brigaders, said Tammy. Those kids are trouble.
Gabe turned his attention to the other picture frame on the table. This frame was a group selfie of Kyle Duvall, Sunny Paderewski, and Seth Daron.
Kyle’s youthful, punch-drunk face stood out among the three. What were you doing with these two, Kyle?
And where was Jenna? Weren’t these Jenna’s friends? Why was Kyle with them and Jenna wasn’t?
It was such an unusual shot. The three of them, Kyle, Sunny, and Seth, were on some kind of balcony. Kyle was on Sunny’s right. Seth was on her left. Sunny was holding the camera for the selfie. She held it at a high angle, placing their faces at the bottom of the frame, giving the rest of the photo to whatever was going on in the background.
And, now that he had time to look at the photo’s entire scene, it was clear to Gabe that something interesting was going on in the background.
The background was a courtyard, four red brick buildings surrounding a lush carpet of grass with a few scattered trees. Was it a college? Yes, the setting was distinctly college, one that was hosting an active, chaotic scene at the moment the photo was taken. A stampede of students poured out through the doors of the centermost building in the photo. The students looked harried, distraught. Concrete stairs in front of the building—the photo captured a crowd of kids rushing down the stairs midstride. Red-faced, upset, was that girl in the corner of the frame crying?
The building in the back of the frame had letters on its face. This was definitely some kind of school. Only a school names its buildings after people and then puts those names in huge letters over the front door.
A high school? No. Look at the age of those people running from the building. Those were college kids. And something significant was happening to them. The more he looked at the photo, the more Gabe was convinced that when Sunny held up her camera, she wasn’t taking a picture of herself and her friends so much as she was taking a picture of the scene behind them. What the hell was going on back there?
He turned his attention to the name written on the building. The first letter to appear in the photo was a lower case r. “rent Ames.” The rest of the building’s name was cut out of the shot.
He picked up his phone and did an Internet search for “rent Ames.” The search returned listings of apartments for rent in Ames, Iowa. He glanced them over while Leonelle and Tammy continued yacking away on the television.
And then we had what, for many, was the most memorable moment of the night, Tammy said. Jenna, having just snatched the yellow key off the wall, runs headlong towards the Minotaur, only to have Nathan Cavanaugh appear and trip her.
Gabe added the word “College” to his search and performed it again. He got more apartment listings, but now they were all in the vicinity of Iowa State University.
Did they take this selfie in Iowa? Why would they be there? No, that couldn’t be right.
He put the picture frame in his lap. He leaned back on the couch. He closed his eyes and listened to the TV for a moment.
I think this part of the race resonated with viewers, said Leonelle. We saw how hard Jenna worked to get that yellow key. To have Nathan Cavanaugh of all people appear from nowhere and try to kill her.
It was like a sucker punch from Nathan, wasn’t it? said Tammy.
It was cowardly. But that’s Nathan Cavanaugh. He is a man who planted a bomb in a room full of innocent children and made it explode when he was half a mile away.
Gabe’s mind was drifting. He thought about the framed photo in his lap, a missing memoir, a letter thrown at his feet, a laptop he found in a cardboard box…
He tried another web search on his phone. This time he described everything he saw in the picture. “Rent Ames brick buildings courtyard college balcony chaos Seth Daron Kyle Duvall Sunny Paderewski.”
The first result he got back was 10 Most Mysterious Acts of Antidomer Terrorism.
A countdown list, clickbait for social media.
He clicked on it.
Terrorist Act #10 on the list was an unsolved murder that happened during a riot in San Francisco.
#9 was a car bombing in Arizona.
Gabe expected to find the assassination of Barbara Lomax on the list, which would explain why a search that included Seth’s name brought him here.
But what about “Rent Ames” and the other search terms? Courtyard, college, brick buildings…he supposed it was possible that all these terms were spread throughout the text. He kept reading.
Stolen property. Arson. Unsolved murders. He was halfway through the list and had found no mention of a courtyard or brick buildings.
Number 4 wasn’t relevant to Gabe’s search, but he slowed down to read the first sentence anyway.
Terrorist Act #4: The Bombing of the Desert Ridge Hotel
Though we know who committed the tragic bombing of a retirement party at the Desert Ridge Hotel in Las Vegas, this one is still mysterious because of the inscrutable motives of Nathan Cavanaugh and the conviction among many that he couldn’t possibly have acted alone like he claims…
Gabe skimmed ahead to the next one.
Terrorist Act #3: The Orange Riots
Following a series of controversial death penalty convictions in New Jersey, members of the Blue Brigade at Seton Hall University organized a protest march that, over the course of three days, turned increasingly violent…
He went to the next one.
Terrorist Act #2: The Mary Nolan Stink Bomb
During the Finale of Tetradome Run Season 37, during a watch party at Mary Nolan College, unknown perpetrators set off a series of stink bombs inside the Trent Ames Center for the Performing Arts, where over 1,000 students, faculty, and members of the surrounding community were…
He stopped, realizing he’d nearly missed it. He glanced back at the previous sentence.
The Trent Ames Center For the Performing Arts.
He looked away from his phone, to the photo still in his lap. A red brick building at the back of a college courtyard, shiny silver letters running over the entrance doors. rent Ames.
Or rather, TRENT AMES, with the T cut off at the edge of the photo.
He looked back to his phone and continued reading.
… gathered for a Tetradome Run watch party. The stink bombs, which experts later said were created by someone with high level chemistry and device engineering experience, were so potent that they caused a mad rush for the exits. Although no one was killed in the stampede, eleven people suffered injuries that required medical attention.
Gabe turned his eyes back to the photo. The Trent Ames Center. Chaos in the background. Students pouring out.
Back to his phone to re-read some pertinent points. Antidomer slogans written on the smoke bomb casings. Perpetrators never brought to justice.
Was he looking at the perpetrators? Could this be a photo of three pranksters in their moment of triumph?
The article said this prank happened during the Finale of Season 37. Gabe counted backwards in his mind. Yes, Season 37 would have been the last Tetradome Run Seth Daron was alive to see, and here he was in the photo, alive and well.
“Holy shit,” Gabe whispered.
Forget the memoir that might or might not be locked on a computer he stole from a dead guy’s apartment. Visions of a new story were already taking shape in Gabe’s mind, a story he could sell for big bucks, a story that tied Seth Daron and Jenna’s little brother to an unsolved crime. Was this picture enough to prove the connection?
It was compelling, but he needed more if he was going to write a piece.
He looked up Mary Nolan College on his phone.
Mary Nolan College, in Lakewood, Texas, was founded in 1962 by the children of…
Now he looked up Lakewood, Texas, and found that it was 40 minutes west of Austin.
He called Myka.
“What’s up, Gabe?”
“I need to ask you a favor,” he said. “Something kind of expensive and I don’t have the money for it now, but you know I’d pay you back as soon as I can.”
“What do you need, Gabe?”
“A plane ticket to Austin.”
CHAPTER 30
A laptop, which Cameron picked up just before midnight.
Two framed photos of Kyle Duvall with friends. Gabe packed them both in his suitcase.
A set of keys and an old MP3 player—unsure of what to do with those, Gabe stored them in his sock drawer.
And a book.
A tattered paperback with a drawing of a purple flower on the front cover, and on the inside cover, handwritten in purple ink, an inscription for Kyle.
To Kyle,
May this book inspire you in the ongoing fight that good people wage for justice, as it has inspired me.
Love,
Sunny
The title of the book was Spartacus Jones and the Serpent’s Mouth.
Before he went to bed that night, Gabe began to read it. What a strange little book it was.
Chapter 1 began with the sentence: Three years after the war I finished my requirements at seminary.
He read the first page, began to skim at the second. The next day, on the plane ride to Austin, Gabe read the book cover to cover.
The story was about 17th century Spanish explorers who went looking for gold, found a tribe of “primitives” on an island chain in the Pacific, and proceeded to enslave them and exploit their labor. Among the explorers was a priest who fell in love with one of the islanders. The priest went native, joined the islanders in revolt, and a bloody climax ensued. In the novel’s final scene, the priest (who was now calling himself “Spartacus”) used a bomb to sink a Spanish ship, while his lover used another bomb to blow up the church the priest and his compatriots forced the islanders to build.
The novel was satisfying in a bad-guys-get-what’s-coming-to-them kind of way. Reading through the book, particularly the fiery speech Spartacus delivered before he killed everyone on his boat (including himself), Gabe could see how the novel would appeal to idealistic college kids, particularly those of the antidomer persuasion.
Gabe’s flight landed in Austin just before eleven central. Using the last dregs of money available on his least-extended credit card, he rented a car and drove west on Highway 290. He arrived at Mary Nolan College in the early afternoon.
The campus was gorgeous, an idyllic escape in the middle of Texas Hill Country. Robins chirping, grackles honking, squirrels playing, students texting…when Gabe reached the Trent Ames building he found it unchanged from Kyle’s photo. Red bricks and a concrete staircase behind a lush lawn and colorful flowerbeds. Gabe walked to the center of the courtyard, putting himself between the Trent Ames building and the balcony where Kyle and his friends took their selfie. He pulled out his phone and began snapping pictures. Students, crisscrossing his path on all sides, took no notice of him. He imagined they saw him as the dad of a new freshman, or a middle-aged alumnus having a nostalgic visit at the alma mater.
Still taking photos, Gabe climbed the stairs in front of Trent Ames. At the top a student held open the door for him. He stepped into the lobby, an open space that was big enough for a crowd of hundreds, maybe a thousand or more if they were packed in tight. How powerful were those stink bombs that even with this lobby serving as a giant buffer between the auditorium and the front door, students were still sprinting out of the building when it happened?
He snapped a few shots of the lobby. A student carrying a cello case. An abstract sculpture made of marble. Oil paintings on the walls. Doors to the performance hall straight ahead. Hoping to get some pictures of the performance hall he tried the doors, but found them locked. He turned a corner and found a hallway with a series of framed photographs lining the walls. The photos gave a history of the building, from planning and construction to the present day.
The first photo showed an elderly woman holding a shovel full of dirt. The caption read, “Mary Nolan herself kicked off construction at the job site for the Trent Ames Center.”
Three framed photos of the hall under various states of construction came next. A photo of Mary Nolan cutting a ribbon in front of the completed building came after that. Photos from the first musical performances on the stage, from student recitals, from noted speakers who gave lectures in the hall...
Then a photo of a packed auditorium looking at a movie screen that was stretched across the stage. “Sigma Alpha Society organized a watch party for the 31st Season of The Tetradome Run with all proceeds to be given to The Victims Fund. The event was a success and Tetradome watch parties became an annual tradition in the hall after that.”
The next framed photograph showed an action scene in the lobby of Trent Ames. An amateur shot, snapped on someone’s cell phone in the midst of the stink bomb incident. People running, people crying, people covering their faces with their shirts, holding their hands over their eyes. There were a dozen people in the focal layer of the shot, but behind them, about to charge through the doors of the auditorium, were hundreds more. This was a shot of the stampede as it was happening. The first line of the caption read: “Terrorists filled the hall with poisonous smoke during the watch party for the 37th Tetradome Run.”
Terrorists. It was interesting that the college chose that word. Gabe had imagined the Mary Nolan stink bomb incident as a clever college prank, with a couple amateur-grade smoke bombs fogging up the auditorium. But in this photo, the smoke was billowing out of the open doors. It looked like a five-alarm fire was raging inside the performance hall.
The next photo in the series showed the front page of The Mary Nolan Tribune the day after the stink bomb incident. The headline was: You Could Have Killed Us!
Students, faculty, and staff who filled The Trent Ames Center yesterday afternoon to watch the Finale Race of The Tetradome Run report that a series of smoke bombs went off inside the auditorium, filling the space with dangerous fumes.
It was typical student reporting. Safe, conservative, by the book. The eyewitness quotes were the best part of the piece.
“We were ten minutes into the show when I heard a hissing sound,” says Torrance Hatch, a senior economics major. “My first thought was that gas pipes were bursting.”
“One of them went off in my row,” says junior communications major Jayden Rommel. “The smoke had an atrocious, unnatural smell to it.”
There was a black and white photo printed alongside the text. As Gabe looked at that photo, he felt a bubbly, youthful excitement. It was the feeling that this moment was significant, that right here, right now, he could define his own identity.
Or redefine it.
For twenty years Gabe Chancellor had been someone who tried to follow his dreams and failed. He was the washout who’d shot for the moon and landed among the cubicles. Until today. Until now. Until he looked at this low-quality newsprint photo from an old edition of an obscure student paper, trapped behind glass and hung on a wall in a quiet corner of a quiet hallway.
The photo showed
the courtyard outside Trent Ames Center. It was a ground-level view of the same scene that served as background to that strange photo he’d found in Kyle’s apartment.
A ground-level view of the exact same scene.
Girl in sweatshirt, barfing in a trash can. She was in the photo he found in Kyle’s apartment, and in this photo too. In this photo, the girl wasn’t caught in the act of barfing, but was in between, wiping her mouth with her sleeve while she waited for the next wave of vomit.
Confused campus cop was here as well, his bushy eyebrows and moustache plain to see.
Bolo tie man, guy with book, popcorn holder…it was a Where’s Waldo of proof that Kyle, Sunny, and Seth had been here, on this very spring evening, taking a selfie above the courtyard. Even the dark puffy clouds in the sky were the same.
He had a story. No matter what came of Kyle’s laptop, whether or not Cameron could crack it open, whether or not there was anything worth finding inside, Gabe had a story that would get him a byline in a national news magazine and an invitation to appear on The Tammy Flanigan Show. Two of the most notorious acts of anti-Redemption protest in recent history, the assassination of Barbara Lomax and the Mary Nolan Stink Bombs, were connected via Jenna’s brother, and Gabe had the photographs to prove it.
CHAPTER 31
Handcuffs, A Riot, A River of Blood, and A Body
Excerpted from A Victim of Circumstance: The Memoir of Jenna Duvall
Last night I dreamed about the day I was arrested.
Not the whole day. Just the worst part. The part that hangs in my mind.
Officer Tafoya is leading me up the stairs from the basement of McCallister Hall. My hands are cuffed behind my back. He’s walking behind me, his hand a vice grip on my arm as he pushes me forward.
I’m crying. But not because I’ve been arrested. That’s upsetting, to be sure, but at this point I still believe it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes this is a crazy mistake and I’ll go free.
