Campus Bones (Dead Remaining)

by Vivian Barz

  Casually, she said, “It’s getting kind of late, though, so—”

  “Oh, do you need me to go?” Eric asked, making a move to get to his feet. The last thing he wanted to do was overstay his welcome.

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “I was going to say that you could always stay the night, if you get tired.”

  “Oh.” Well, well.

  “If you don’t mind having to share a bed with me, though,” she said. “I don’t have a couch, obviously, so the only other option is to sleep in the bathtub.”

  “That wouldn’t work. It’s a stand-up shower.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, right.”

  “So, really, the only option is to sleep in the bed.”

  “Well, I’m okay with that if you are.”

  “Sure, I’m okay with that,” he said. Although, when the time came later for them to go to bed, they didn’t do much sleeping.

  CHAPTER 28

  “What time is it?” Eric asked groggily the following morning.

  “It’s early. Too early,” Susan said and then kissed him quickly. “Shhh, go back to sleep. Stay as long as you want. I’m sure you know how to let yourself out.”

  He sat up on an elbow and watched as she got dressed. “So . . . I guess this means we’re back on?”

  She let out a long sigh, as if facing a very harsh fact. “Yah, I suppose it does.”

  “Good.” He smiled and lay back down on his pillow. “I love you, you know.”

  “I know.” She finished slipping her shoes on and then crossed the room to give him a kiss goodbye. “I love you too. Now get some sleep.”

  Excited about the new leads (and, of course, having Eric back in her bed), Susan had hardly slept a wink. The sun was only just starting to come up as she entered the FBI office; on the drive there, she had to repeatedly scold herself for speeding. She was itching to get to work. But first, coffee.

  Steaming cup of java in hand, she settled down at her desk. Her first order of business was to look into Zelman’s background. Luckily, the IT department was up and running—many of the techs regularly filed into the building so early each day that they made her arrival that morning look slothful—and readily available to fulfill her request.

  Within a half hour, a tech named Harry ran up the background report on Zelman that she’d ordered. “That was fast.”

  “It wasn’t really any trouble at all, since you only wanted financials,” he said modestly.

  “Good work, Harry,” she said anyway, which clearly pleased the agent.

  Susan cracked into the report. Zelman, she wasn’t surprised to see, was an extremely wealthy man. “Must be nice,” she muttered dryly as she took in the long series of numbers that made up his numerous cash accounts. He had enough money at his disposal that on any given day he could go to the neighborhood she was raised in and buy up a whole block of houses, if he’d fancied.

  Which, she saw, was actually the sort of thing he’d been doing.

  During the last couple of days, he’d made payments to several individuals, each in the ballpark of $400,000. After a quick call down to Harry for their addresses, she learned that they all lived in the Cambridge Downs development. She had a pretty fair idea what those payments were for.

  She was surprised to recognize two names to whom additional payments had been made. Cindy Jenkins had recently been paid $4,000. In fact, as Susan searched further through the accounts, she saw that Cindy had received several payments from Zelman, which ranged from a grand all the way up to $8,000. Dov’s widow, Anne, had also recently received a single payment for $9,999. Clever, Susan thought. By keeping the number just under $10,000, he’d avoided prompting any red flags.

  Still, wily as he’d thought he’d been, he couldn’t hide what he’d done from the FBI.

  Susan gulped the rest of her coffee and grabbed her jacket. First, she’d take a trip to Cambridge Downs, and then she was going to question Anne Amsel and Cindy Jenkins about their financial gifts from Zelman.

  As she discovered, many of the residents at Cambridge Downs were elderly. Which was good, since older generations tended to get up at the crack of dawn—at least, that’s what she’d always heard. Why this was the case, she didn’t know, but it seemed to be true now. Trudy Thompson, Ellen Marr, and Bradley Medina, the residents she first spoke to, appeared to have been awake for hours. Though all three residents were extremely cooperative, Trudy Thompson was the chattiest of them all.

  “I just couldn’t believe my luck,” she told Susan. “A representative of Zelman Industries just showed up at my door one day and offered me three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for my home. It was like winning the lottery.”

  She probably wouldn’t be saying that if she knew about the rare mineral her land was sitting on, Susan thought. Then, a number or two would have been added to that check. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, there wasn’t much to it. The man offered me the check, and I laughed and asked him what type of maniac would pay that kind of money for a trailer—you know that’s what this entire development is, don’t you? They’re called ‘modulars’ or ‘manufactured’ homes, but at the end of the day, Cambridge Downs is essentially a trailer park.”

  “So then what did he say? And did he tell you why he wanted your home so badly?”

  “He told me that the reason behind the purchase had no bearing on the transaction between us,” Trudy said with a shake of her head. “He was actually kind of a rude little twerp—you can always tell when a youngster is uncomfortable around us old folks. He told me he’d add another fifty thousand to the check if I’d change my mind. I told him if he made it seventy-five, he’d have a deal. I was joking, of course, but then he wrote out a check for four hundred twenty-five thousand dollars and handed it to me.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, first, I had to pick up my jaw off the floor. Then, he said I had thirty days to vacate my home. And that once the check cleared on my end, I was to send him all the appropriate paperwork. He also advised me not to share with other residents what I’d been paid.” She smiled. “I was convinced that the whole thing was a joke or maybe a scam until the check cleared, but even after that I had my son use the Google on his computer to look up this Zelman. He’s a legitimate businessman, all right.”

  “Then what?”

  Trudy shrugged. “I got to packing. My son lives over in Florida, so I’m buying myself a little one-bedroom condo on the coast right in their neighborhood. Once I die, he can have it. The rest of the money is going to pay for my granddaughter’s college education. I can already taste the oranges,” she said with a cute little giggle.

  Susan smiled warmly. “Good for you.” She didn’t have the heart to tell the old woman that she’d been duped. She seemed happy enough with her decision, so she just let it be. Ellen Marr and Bradley Medina had told similar stories, but it was Trudy who’d squeezed Zelman’s man for the most. Poor Mr. Medina got only $320,000 for a home that was identical to Trudy’s. So, in a way, she’d made out the best.

  Susan asked, “Do you know of anyone in the neighborhood who doesn’t want to sell?”

  “Oh, there’s a couple people.” She flapped a hand. “Crazy old fools, too set in their ways to make a change. You know what these trailers are to them? Coffins.”

  “Can you think of anyone who’s been particularly vocal about not wanting to move?”

  “Oh yes, Davis Pelt. He’s been going around putting letters in everyone’s mailboxes. He’s steaming mad about all this.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t bothered to read any of his letters—been too busy packing. But I heard he’s been saying some pretty unkind things about those of us who’ve sold.” She cupped her hand and loudly whispered, “He’s kind of a pill. His wife, Dana, God rest her soul, was much nicer. She was the only reason half of us tolerated him. He’s positively unbearable now that she’s gone.”

  “Which house is his?” she asked. She
thanked Trudy for her time and wished her luck in Florida.

  “And you, good luck with old grumpy pants,” she said with a wink, and she gently closed her door.

  “Mr. Pelt?” Susan asked when a tall man with a shock of snow-white hair pulled open the door to a squat green “modular.”

  He took one look at her and began shutting the door. “I’m too old to change religions, and I’ve already got plenty of steak knives,” he snarled.

  She quickly produced her badge and held it up for him to see. “Mr. Pelt. I’m with the FBI.”

  This got him to open the door fast. “So Johnny Law has finally started to take me seriously, have they?”

  “Who?”

  “Are you not listening? The police!” he yelled loud enough to scare some birds out of a nearby tree. “You must be deaf or something.”

  I might be after all your yelling, Susan thought. “I’m with the FBI.”

  “Eh, same thing.”

  No, it really wasn’t, but she was not going to debate the differences with the cantankerous old prune. Trudy wasn’t kidding. What she found most astounding was that he’d actually gotten this lovely Dana woman to marry him—any woman, for that matter.

  “May I come in?”

  “Let me see that badge again.”

  She held it up for him to scrutinize like he was appraising a priceless oil painting. Others had done it to her before, and each time she’d wondered what made them think they were qualified to spot a fake. He must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he finally let her in. He didn’t offer her a beverage or a seat, which was perfectly fine, since she was intending to spend as little time with the man as humanly possible.

  As soon as she brought up Zelman’s name, Davis erupted in a series of curses.

  Susan patiently waited for him to finish. She’d dealt with worse than him, but not much. “Care to share with me why you’re so angry?”

  “I thought you already knew! I told the police—”

  “I’m FBI.”

  He waved a hand at her, grunted. “That creep’s been hounding me nonstop to sell my home. He’s offered me close to a million dollars to leave, but I don’t want to. It’s harassment, is what it is! He’s been doing it to other folks in the neighborhood who’re on the same page as me.”

  “Why don’t you want to sell, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “My wife passed away in this house, and I plan on doing the same thing. Look at me! I’m an old man—I can barely make it to the bathroom on time most days. You think I’d be able to move homes in my condition? And even if I could, where am I supposed to go? Do you know how much houses are in this area? Sure, I could try to buy one with all the money Zelman’s man wants to give me, but then how am I supposed to pay property taxes on it? I don’t have any family anywhere else, and all my friends are here.”

  You actually have friends? Susan nearly blurted. “What is the split of people who want to stay in the area versus those who want to leave, do you think?”

  “Oh, I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. We’re afraid it might escalate to violence. Zelman’s men have been talking about ‘being forced to take alternative measures,’ if we don’t comply, whatever the hell that means. Wouldn’t take much to put me in the grave.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Ever since he could remember, Jake had been a light sleeper. As a boy, his young, overactive imagination had translated the creaks and groans of his parents’ old Georgian mansion to the clomping footsteps of a hockey-masked serial killer coming to murder him. The wind became the battle cries of banshees declaring war upon him; the branches of trees scratching against the side of the house, witches clawing their way in to steal his eyeballs.

  And now, as he heard the whispers inside his small studio, he was imagining that very bad individuals who intended to do him grave harm were coming to get him. Problem was, this time he was right. He didn’t dare open his eyes, for fear they were watching him for signs that he was stirring. He hadn’t heard them come in; either he’d been sleeping deeply or they’d slipped in through the bathroom window. His hand was closing in on the baseball bat he kept next to his air mattress; and, had he reached it, the morning might have turned out very differently for him.

  But they got to him first.

  Suddenly, Jake was feeling himself being yanked to his feet. Dirty fingers wiggled in through his lips, prying open his mouth. He gagged as a splash of liquid was poured down his throat. He managed to spit a little of it out, but most of it had gone down.

  And then he was falling, falling down deep into a pit of nothingness.

  CHAPTER 30

  Outside his home, Eric had just exited his vehicle when a minivan screeched up next to him. The window rolled down, and then a young twentyish girl he thought he recognized from campus asked if he knew where the nearest gas station was.

  As it so happened, he did.

  He stepped closer to the vehicle, and the van’s side door slid open. It was then that three things occurred to him simultaneously. The first was that there was a group of masked individuals jumping out from the van, one of them holding the same pillowcase he’d seen in his vision of Bryan being thrown off the roof. The second was that Jake was lying hog-tied on the floor of the van, which had no back seat. The third, and most important, thing was that he should scream for help.

  But by then it was too late.

  CHAPTER 31

  After Susan escaped Davis Pelt’s angry clutches—she thought she’d never get the man to stop raving—she hit up the Amsel residence next.

  She was met with great hostility from Dov’s wife, Anne, who wasted no time telling her, “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up at my house to interrogate me while I’m mourning my husband’s death!”

  “Anne—”

  “I told you he was no killer, didn’t I?” the widow shrieked, shaking a fist in her face. She burst into wild sobs. “I told you so!”

  Susan had had about enough of people screaming at her. She was stunned when a dainty arm sporting a David Yurman watch on its wrist curled around Anne’s shoulder, and then Cindy Jenkins came into view. “Geez, lady, why don’t you just leave her alone? Harassing a pregnant woman! What’s wrong with you?”

  Susan allowed the spectacle to continue for precisely thirty seconds longer before she decided she’d had enough. Davis Pelt had prickled her nerves, making her surly, and she used the aggressive mood to her advantage. She became further incensed when Cindy made a move to slam the door in her face.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Susan snarled. “Not unless you two want to spend the night in jail.”

  “Jail?” Anne shrieked. “We didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “I know about the payoffs, you two,” Susan said, and both women’s faces went white. “So, unless you want me to take you away in handcuffs, you’d better let me in and start talking. Now.”

  Both women sat down on the couch, holding on to one another tightly, as if they were afraid they might float away. They stared at Susan expectantly, as if they were under the impression that this was to be an interrogation-type situation. Susan only glared down at them silently.

  It was Anne who broke first. “Look, I know it was wrong to take the money. But I’m pregnant, and my husband is dead. I’m broke. What do you expect me to do?”

  “No, you first,” Susan said to Cindy. “What’s the deal with you and Zelman?”

  She shrugged. “What. He’s my boyfriend.”

  “He’s married.”

  “So? Married men can have girlfriends, you know,” she said unpleasantly.

  “Not ones that they’re paying on a regular basis,” Susan said. “That is what you call a prostitute, not a girlfriend. Is that what you are, Cindy, a prostitute?”

  “How dare you! I’m most certainly not—”

  “Then you better start talking, or else I’ll take you in right now and charge you with prostitution. How’d you like to have that on your record?” Susan had no intention wh
atsoever of doing that, but her threat put enough of a scare into Cindy that she began babbling.

  “All right, I’m not his girlfriend! Marcus pays me every so often to do little chores for him.”

  “What kind of chores?”

  Cindy sighed. “Weird stuff. Not anything that would hurt anyone, I swear!”

  “I’m waiting,” Susan said. “I’m going to need specifics. Weird stuff doesn’t cut it.”

  “Well, like one time, he wanted me to go into the control room at the dam and take a bunch of photos on a disposable camera he gave me. He never said why, but a couple weeks later he then wanted blueprints of the building. So, I borrowed the ones from the business office, made photocopies after everyone had gone home, and then put everything back. Nobody was ever the wiser. No harm, no foul, I figured.”

  “And how were you transporting everything to Zelman?” Susan asked.

  Cindy’s eyes guiltily moved to Anne.

  “What are you looking at me for? I wasn’t involved in any of this!” Anne said.

  “But Dov was, wasn’t he?” Susan deduced.

  “What? Cindy!” Anne shrieked, wriggling out of her stepsister’s arms. “You can’t be serious!”

  Cindy sighed. “I’d do the requested tasks and then give everything to Dov to put in these birdhouses Zelman set up for him at different locations. Then he’d have somebody else pick them up. He—Zelman—was paranoid about being seen with anyone he was paying.”

  “Just when I think that things can’t possibly get any worse!” Anne cried furiously. “We’ve got one of those birdhouses in our front yard! Why would Dov do something like that?”

  Susan answered for her. “Because your sister furnished him with a security gig he never would have gotten had she not covered for him.”

  “Is that why you gave Dov a job, so you could blackmail him into doing your bidding?” Anne demanded.

  “Look, it wasn’t like that. He offered, because he knew I’d put my ass on the line for him.” Cindy made a move to put a comforting hand on Anne’s shoulder.