by Vivian Barz
Bryan’s throat made a clicking sound when he swallowed. “Sam had been stabbed. Multiple times. They said there were also signs of an attempted sexual assault—attempted, because the police think the attack had been interrupted, you know, before it started . . .” He looked sick. “They also found opiates in her system.”
Jake frowned. “Like what?”
“High levels of opioids was what the cops told my roommate. Like she’d been drugged or something, or had gone on a bender,” Bryan said. “And before you ask, Samantha wasn’t a druggie. She’d get hammered off one peach daiquiri, so the idea of her shooting up or, I don’t know, smoking opium is beyond ridiculous. She’s never even puffed on a cigarette.”
“But you’ve also been broken up with her for some time, right?” Jake asked. “Maybe she’d started using and you didn’t know it.”
“You know that popular saying ‘Peach daiquiris are the gateway to heroin’?” Bryan asked. Before Eric or Jake could speak he answered, “No, you don’t, because it’s not a saying. Samantha wouldn’t just suddenly start experimenting with hard-core drugs. I’m telling you, never, ever in a million years would she do any kind of drug. And, you know what? I’d try to convince you otherwise if I were guilty, since it’d take some of the suspicion off me—the police think I might have drugged her. But I have no reason to lie.”
Eric asked, “Why do the police think you’re responsible for her death? Because of the drugs in her system?”
“It’s mostly because I was the last one seen with her,” Bryan answered. “They believe she was murdered the night before last, shortly after I took her home from the bar.”
Thinking of Susan, Eric said, “My ex will hardly talk to me. I’m sure she’d rather walk a thousand miles than ask me for a lift. If you two were broken up, why’d you give her a ride home?”
“Word on the street is that you two had a nasty breakup. She dumped you hard,” Jake chimed in.
Bryan flapped a hand dismissively. “It’s not like that with us. We still cared about each other—just because I didn’t want to be with her anymore didn’t mean I didn’t still love her. And, for the record, I was the one who ended things with her, in case you’re thinking I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about the whole thing. She just likes everyone to think she was the one doing the leaving. I honestly could give a shit what people think, especially around here, so I let her claim what she wants. I gave her a ride home because she was acting weird, that’s all.”
“Weird?” Jake asked.
Bryan said, “Like I mentioned before, she’s not big on the booze. She hardly ever drinks. Honestly, I don’t think she’s been drunk in her entire life—not really drunk, anyway. She’ll have a cocktail occasionally, but she’ll nurse it all night, until even the ice is melted. It was weird, though, because that last night I saw her at the bar, she ordered three drinks from me in the span of about an hour.”
“You made her drinks?” Eric asked.
“He’s a bartender down at Salty’s,” Jake said. “It’s where all the kids on campus go. I don’t, though. I’m too old.”
“I’ve seen you in the bar a couple times,” Bryan said to Jake offhandedly, and Eric noticed the color rising in Jake’s cheeks. “And, sure, I made her drinks—I’m a bartender; it’s my job—but I didn’t put any opiates in them, if that’s what you’re implying. I don’t even know if it’s possible to drink heroin or opium or whatever, and I wouldn’t know where to get something like that. And, even if I did, I wouldn’t have a need to use it on my ex-girlfriend to incapacitate her.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Bryan,” Eric said, playing devil’s advocate. “Might you have been regretting the breakup, feeling lonely?”
“I’m the one who ended things with her, remember? She’d made it pretty clear that she’d like to get back together.”
“So you say,” Jake commented.
“Look, I’m not some kind of creep. I’m hit on by at least a half dozen coeds during my shifts. These rich girls love bartenders, for whatever reason—maybe it’s some working-class fantasy they harbor. So I could go home with a different girl every night, if I wanted to. But it’s not my style.” Quickly, Bryan added, “But, even if girls didn’t hit on me, I’d never do something like that, drug someone. I swear, I took Samantha home, put her in bed, placed a glass of water on her nightstand for her to drink when she got up, and then I left. The only things I took off her were her keys, to let us in, and her boots, so she wouldn’t get her bed dirty. That’s it. It was whoever that came in after me that tried to undress her.”
Eric nodded neutrally. He supposed that, even if Bryan were a predator, he’d hardly admit it, would he?
Bryan paused, perhaps sensing their doubt. “Look, my sister, back in high school . . . she was at a party, and some guys . . .” He shook his head, plainly disgusted. “You’ll just have to believe me. I would never, ever, force myself on a woman. Not in a million years. It takes an extra-evil type of a person to do something like that, and I’m not. Evil.”
“Tell me more about her acting weird,” Eric prompted. “Was she scared, maybe behaving as if she was being threatened? Did she say that she thought someone might be after her?” He had an ulterior motive behind the questions. Naturally, the guilty often tried to pin their crimes on others. That had, in fact, been the focus of one of Eric’s classes, where he’d presented various ways notorious criminals throughout history had tried to frame the innocent. He wanted to see if Bryan would do the same.
Bryan did no such thing, which, Eric realized, didn’t surprise him. Call it a gut feeling, but he wasn’t getting guilty signals from the kid. “No, it was nothing like that. Sam had arrived at Salty’s with a bunch of doters, though, and it was like she was trying to avoid them. Usually, it’s me she tries to avoid—she’ll order a drink and then walk off the second I give it to her. No Hello, how are you? But, when I served her the third drink that night, she stayed at the bar.”
“A bunch of what?” Eric asked. “Did you say doters?”
Bryan nodded. “That’s right. They’re these fanatics who run an environmentalist club here on campus. DOTE stands for Defenders of the Earth, so they call themselves doters for short.”
“I think I’ve heard of them,” Jake said, nodding. “You’ve had run-ins with the group personally?”
“No, but they know I don’t like them, and the feeling is mutual on their end. They’re actually one of the major reasons I broke things off with Sam. After she joined up, she got all preachy.”
“Preachy like how?” Jake asked.
That’s good, Jake, Eric thought. Keep the exchange conversational. Easy breezy.
Bryan considered the question. “With Sam, there was always something I was doing wrong. If I bought a mass-produced bar of chocolate, I was somehow personally exploiting migrant workers. Sam has her ‘ethical’ chocolate shipped in all the way from Africa at twenty bucks a bar. Her parents buy it for her by the case.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me! Twenty bucks?” Jake scoffed. Eric might have thought he was merely feigning outrage because he was being held at gunpoint, had he not known how frugal his friend was. Jake was likely so outraged that he’d probably forgotten all about the gun. “That had better be some amazing damn chocolate.”
“It’s not, trust me. I’ve had it. Even weirder, it’s shaped like a baby—part of the proceeds from each bar sold go to a local orphanage on the Ivory Coast. Want to know what that part is? Ten percent. So, the orphanage is getting a measly two bucks for every eighteen dollars the corporation pockets. Real ethical, right? Sam didn’t like it too much when I pointed that out.” Bryan shook his head. “But the lunacy didn’t stop there. She’d go through my closets, telling me that the clothes I’d been wearing for years were all made by five-year-old sweatshop workers, when she never had a problem with them before. It was that sort of stuff, always putting me down and making me feel like I was destroying the world just by being alive.”
“That would be hard to deal with,” Eric said, trying to gauge how deep Bryan’s resentment ran. Had he gotten so fed up with his ex-girlfriend’s haranguing that he’d committed murder?
“It was,” Bryan agreed. “One time, she berated me for a solid half hour because I’d bought a premade sandwich at a grocery store on my way home from class.”
“What was the issue with the sandwich?” both Eric and Jake asked.
“She said that I should’ve bought local. There was a little independent café next door to the grocery store, and they sold sandwiches there—for over twice the price of the one I’d gotten. Which, of course, someone like Sam can afford, having rich parents and a trust fund. But I can barely afford near-expired clearance food as it is working two jobs and paying my own way through school. I have a partial academic scholarship, but it’s just not enough.
“That was what bothered me most about her joining DOTE, the hypocrisy of it all. There she was lecturing me, a low-income individual, about how I was exploiting the poor, when the only reason she could afford to buy her ‘ethical’ ten-dollar organic-bread sandwiches was because of the real estate money she got from her money-grubbing capitalist parents, who are about as close to slumlords as you can get. She is awfully judgmental for someone who’s never had a paying job.”
Eric noted Bryan’s use of wording in present terms: Someone like Sam can afford. She is awfully judgmental. He remembered a class lecture he’d taught about a missing persons case, where a husband had spoken about his wife in the past tense during television interviews long before her body had been found, her throat slashed so deeply that she’d practically been decapitated: She was so kind. She was such a caring person, he’d said. It was what had tipped investigators off about the husband’s guilt, his slip of the tongue over acknowledging that his wife was already dead, which the guilty often do about those they’ve murdered. The innocent—those who are truly devastated about the loss of a loved one—are reluctant to accept that the victim is gone. They will continue speaking about the deceased as if they are still living long after it has been confirmed that they are not.
Was that the reason Bryan was speaking this way now, because he was being truthful in his claims of innocence? Eric had, of course, revealed these facts during the lecture, and Bryan could have easily gotten notes from other students. Had he been studying up on the right things to say, knowing that the professor might be looking for key phrases? Could he be that diabolical?
“You said the Nevilles were slumlords?” Eric asked. He was hoping Bryan would continue to remain relaxed if they showed that they were listening and interested in what he had to say.
“Pretty much,” Bryan said with a grunt. “Well, some of the time. Most of the mega, multimillion-dollar commercial deals they do are aboveboard; they go out of their way to promote those in a big public way. If there’s one thing the Nevilles love, it’s celebrating their own grandness. But they also do these shady side deals with mobile home parks that you wouldn’t believe. Those they don’t talk about. Not ever. And, if you try to bring them up, they’ll shut you down quickly.”
“Seriously, trailer parks?” Jake asked. “I thought the Nevilles were highfalutin kind of people?”
Bryan said, “Oh, they are. I don’t mean to give the impression that they’re dealing directly with residents. I’m sure they wouldn’t be caught dead doing that. They have a management staff for that sort of thing. I don’t know the nitty-gritty specifics of it, but from what Samantha told me way back when, here’s what they do: They’ll seek out a larger park that is either struggling financially or maybe has an owner who’s let the property become run down and wants out. So, they buy it at a steal, with a hundred or so mobile homes included in the package. And, here’s where the shady part comes in. Once the ink is dry on the deed, they’ll send out notices to the current residents, informing them that the park is changing policies and will now house solely felons, and that they’ve got sixty days to vacate. Some of these people have been living in these parks for years or even decades, and then suddenly they’re told they’re out on their asses.”
“Why on earth would they do that, seek out criminals as renters?” Jake asked.
“Because, a lot of apartment complexes won’t rent to felons,” Bryan answered. “And, everyone, including felons, needs somewhere to live, right? So, the Nevilles, after kicking everyone out, will build a huge fence around the park, jack the rent prices way up, and then start moving in the criminals. They know felons will be desperate for housing and will pay whatever they charge. And they do. Still, even at the inflated rate, the rent on a trailer is cheaper than an apartment, so, in a way, the new residents think they’re getting a bargain. And, once the felons move in, they’re on the hook—where else are they going to go, right?—so the Nevilles will then start raising the rents even more, but they’ll spread it out over the course of the year, so it’s less glaring.
“As strange as it sounds, there’s big bucks in owning a trailer park. The Nevilles are renting each of those ratty little trailers out for well over a grand a month—and they’re on a property that requires very little upkeep and that they’ve done zero renovations to, other than the giant fence. Multiply that by a hundred, and you’re talking over a million a year in revenue. And they own several of these parks all over California. Half a dozen, at least. Maybe a dozen. You can do the math on how much they’re raking in. And I’m sure they’re probably also getting some kind of tax break from the state for housing ex-cons.”
“They sound pretty ruthless,” Jake said. “Rich, but ruthless.”
Bryan said, “You have no idea. And what’s really shady is what they’re doing to these communities. Imagine owning a house in the same area as the original mobile home park, which has probably given you very little grief or concern throughout the years, and then suddenly learning that you’re about to have a horde of felons as your new neighbors. And I know for a fact that they’re running at least one park that caters to—and you’re not going to believe this—pedophiles. How would you like living by a hundred or so child molesters?”
“We don’t have kids, but I see your point,” Jake said, making a face. “They wouldn’t just stay in the park, so you’d see them around. They’d be shopping at your local hangouts, like your grocery store, where you’d probably take your kid.”
“How is that even legal, what they’re doing to residents living near the park?” Eric asked. “I can’t imagine what that would do to home values in the area.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard, but the Nevilles are loaded,” Bryan replied with a thin smile. “The amount of money they’ve got is scary, and they’ve got powerful connections. Any problem that can be solved with money is no problem at all when you’re rich. I know the Nevilles have been sued by a few people over all this—moving felons and pedophiles into a neighborhood—but you can imagine the sort of attorneys they can afford with their kind of wealth. But what’s a few fines or paid-out lawsuits when you’ve got cash to burn? Oh, and the police love them for what they’re doing, which is keeping the criminals all rounded up in a single place. All these criminals at the park are on some kind of registry, so the police can find them any time they please.”
“I’m surprised nobody knows about them being involved in this trailer park business,” Eric said. He was happy to note that Bryan was lowering his gun. He hadn’t put it away, but he’d stopped pointing it at them, and that was something.
“They operate under a generic business name with partners, and they—well, their lawyers—make it extremely difficult to track them down. Oh, they’re great at putting up a good front. Guess that’s how Samantha learned how to lie so smoothly about our breakup. That whole family, right down to Samantha’s psycho, cat-killing seventeen-year-old brother, are good at keeping up appearances.”
Jake asked, “Her brother killed a cat?”
Bryan nodded. “It was the neighbor’s. Nobody was ever able to prove it, but Samantha was convince
d her brother did it, especially after she found Dexter’s—that was the cat—collar in his room when she was snooping around looking for proof. The kid has major problems—he should be locked away in an institution—but of course her parents tried to gaslight Samantha and suggest she was overreacting when she told them about the collar.”
Eric said, “You think he’s capable of hurting Samantha?”
Bryan shrugged. “I don’t think anyone can really say what another person is capable of until they do it.”
You’re not really helping your cause with comments like that, Eric wanted to say.
Jake asked, “Who else would have access to her apartment? Does she have a roommate?”
Bryan shook his head. “She did have a roommate a while back, some writer flake named Tori Blakenwell, but she took off last semester after she was given a grant to go and live in some creative arts community. The Greater Collective, it was called, if you’ve ever heard of anything so pretentious.”
“Is there any chance she might have come back to hurt Samantha? Was there bad blood between the two?” Eric asked Bryan.
“Oh, there was definitely bad blood happening there. It was actually Tori who got Samantha interested in DOTE. She was doing a story on them for the school paper or her blog or something; I can’t remember. The crazy thing is that it was Tori’s criticizing of the group that drove her to join. Samantha’s always been contrary like that. I think it’s her way of rebelling against her parents.” Bryan shook his head. “But, no, Tori wouldn’t hurt Sam. She was an artsy-fartsy, pacifist type. She was far too snooty to commit murder; she’d find that beneath her intellect. She was very self-righteous, which didn’t earn her a lot of friends. ”
