by E M Kaplan
“For real?”
“Yep.” She resumed shoveling in food, conflicted between savoring it and filling her hollow belly as fast as possible.
“What are you caught up in this time, Josie?”
“I don’t really know.” And isn’t that the plain and simple truth?
“Know what?” Drew had come up behind them, pitching his nearly full coffee cup into a nearby garbage can.
On hearing his voice and seeing him up close and in person, Josie ditched her breakfast, slid off the hood of the car, and wrapped her arms around him. Two nights away from each other had seemed like an eternity. In typical Josie fashion, she’d pushed the separation out of her mind, only to confront it when it was over, at least for now—though she hadn’t loosened her grip on him and wasn’t sure if she ever would.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but she was stressed out, relieved to see him, glad to breathe in his soap and clean laundry smell—and well, she was terrible at expressing herself. Her friend, Susan, sometimes made jokes about it, but maybe Josie was on the autism spectrum after all…
“Oh, do you want me to leave?”
She hugged him tighter, as if he really were trying to get away, which he wasn’t. When she spoke into the front of his shirt, he laughed. Wow, he smelled good. Nothing beat Drew-aroma. He was in a t-shirt and hoodie instead of his typical button-down.
“How’s Bert? Is Mr. Peepers taking good care of him?”
“That dog is getting more attention than he’s ever had. Frankly, the old man is smothering him. I think Bert is going to be happy to have you back after this. He just wants to take a decent nap and fart in peace.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better. And don’t you have to work?”
“You’re having an adventure—within driving distance of me. Do you think I’m going to let you do this alone? No, I am not. The last two times, you got injured. This time, you won’t.”
“I don’t plan on getting hurt again,” she said, although with more bravado than she felt. Benjy was looking back and forth between the two of them, interested and amused. He ruffled a hand through his short hair and looked away.
“I’m here to make sure it doesn’t happen. For the next few days, I’m not a doctor—I’m your bodyguard. You just do your thing. I won’t get in the way—I’m the muscle.”
Was he just posturing, puffing up, full of bluster? He wasn’t really a big-talker kind of guy, but there seemed to be some chest-puffing happening. She hated to admit it, but it kind of turned her on. In fact, she would never, ever admit it. Not even under duress or torture, like food deprivation.
Still, her perverse nature made her argue. “Seriously? What about your patients? Some of them could die, you know. How many days did you take off? I’m not exactly on a schedule.”
“People owe me favors. They’re covering for me. I’ll stay as long as it takes,” he said, and she felt a kiss land on the top of her head. Though she knew he wouldn’t be able to follow through on his promise, she appreciated it for what it was—a pledge of sorts and reassurance that they were still together. Obviously, they had a few things they needed to talk about, namely a certain woman doctor and her trespassing-fool lips. If Drew suddenly found he needed to get back to work, Josie would understand, but while he was here, she was going to make the most of it.
Behind them, the car door slammed shut with a nasty groan, making Josie cringe. She should have been more diligent with its upkeep. Somewhere, chills were running up and down her Uncle Jack’s spine at her neglect of poor Green Giant. Benjy straightened up, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a bed roll tucked under his arm.
“So, where’s your dorm?”
Chapter 25
“Is it just me or are they making these things smaller than they used to?” Benjy glanced around Josie’s single-occupancy room—the white walls, the beige rectangular area rug, the penis-enscribed desk. He’d tossed his sleeping bag onto the small rug in the center of the room and was lounging on her bed—it seemed to be the thing for visitors to do.
Honestly, there wasn’t anywhere else for them to linger, so she couldn’t blame him. At least he wasn’t sitting on her pillow. “And oh my God, it smells exactly the same as our dorm used to smell. What is that? Like stale pizza, mold, and dirty shoes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Decades of nervous sweat and social anxiety.”
Funny. Now that she’d been there a day or two, she couldn’t smell it anymore.
Drew asked, “I know we have to get your car to the garage in Framingham, but what else is on the agenda for today?” She was having difficulty taking her eyes off him. Somehow, lying awake, staring at the scarred ceiling of this cramped room had made him seem somewhat fantastic, as in…magical and imaginary. But here he was, real and…damned good-looking. Dark-skinned and swarthy, with that curly hair she liked to run her fingers through when they were falling asleep at night—
“Agenda for the day. Right,” she said, getting back on track.
She wanted to hunt down Lydia Blaine, the Women’s Studies professor on campus who was friends with both Jane the admin and Professor Sanborn’s ex-wife. Checking the time on her phone, Josie figured it was too early to catch Professor Blaine, so maybe they could do a little recon on the Executive Club kitchen and the campus police station.
“Look at those gears churning,” Drew said. “Is that smoke coming out of her ears?”
“I think we need to split up,” Josie said. She figured Benjy could scout out the kitchen while she and Drew had a chat with good ol’ Officer Krupkey.
“Well that’s harsh,” Drew said. “After I came all this way. Maybe I should have brought flowers.”
Josie rolled her eyes. His smile told her he wasn’t serious—he was horrible at keeping a straight face unless he was in the office. At work, he was all Mr. Doctor-Business-Guy. Here in her dorm room, he seemed relaxed, like he was on a weekend getaway. Freshman dorms, the new stay-cation destination.
“I mean, I make a list of things to check out. Benjy takes some and we take the others.”
“I knew that,” he said. Based on his laid-back grin, he had totally known it and was yanking her chain, which made her smile.
Josie had one of those moments just then when everything seemed right in the world. Kind of ridiculous to feel this way when someone she loved was giving her a hard time—but it was the truth. Chock it up to her perverse nature, maybe. Or maybe she was just really, really happy to have her boyfriend and her bestie nearby.
She wasn’t an expert in happiness, having denied herself the luxury most of her life… but things seemed to be looking up. She wasn’t failing as a private investigator at the moment. The tangled knot that was Professor Sanborn’s stalker could, indeed, be smoothed out and re-braided into a normal cord of interwoven events. No one else would be harmed—
“Oh my God.” Brandon burst into her room. “Professor Sanborn just got stabbed.”
#
A deep brow crease on Brandon’s face marked exactly when he noticed the additional male population occupying Josie’s room. Benjy and Drew were a good deal taller and broader than Boy Tarzan. Plus, they had a genuine adult aura to them—which was laughable to Josie because she knew them and had witnessed their dorkiness on more than one occasion—but they did seem mature in contrast to the kid.
“Who the hell are these guys? Did you bring in…our replacements?” His hang-dog look gave Josie a twinge of guilt. In a way, she had upgraded her Scooby gang. Not intentionally, but now that things were getting serious, it was time to consider taking the kids off the roster and sending them back to class. But she had more worrisome matters than the kid’s feelings to think about just now.
“How bad is Professor Sanborn hurt? Where is he?” she asked him.
“He’s downstairs in his apartment. Someone called 9-1-1, but they’re not here yet.”
They all hit the staircase, their footsteps thundering o
n the cement slabs going down.
The professor’s apartment door stood open, as it always seemed to be, and a crowd of students had gathered around. Josie recognized his game-playing neighbors from down the hall. They looked silent and solemn in the face of a real emergency. However immersive their games’ interfaces were, they still weren’t real life. Real blood could make a person get serious quicker than she could say “game over.”
Benjy stepped into bouncer mode and started crowd control. He had them all step back, and as soon as their view of the dramatics was blocked, the crowd began to lose interest and wander away, back into their own micro-dramas. Drew made his way into the apartment to give medical assistance. Josie stood back and observed—which was what she was best at doing, truth be told.
Professor Sanborn was standing in his microscopic kitchen, clutching his left shoulder. His button-down shirt was stained with fresh, wet blood—so red it looked fake to Josie. Ironic, so soon on the heels of her thoughts about video games. But then, she’d never seen a fresh knife wound, despite having had one herself. Her own from last spring had been in her back, so she’d been spared the wobbly knees and queasy stomach that suddenly surged.
She took a couple of deep breaths and shook it off—because look how efficient and calm Drew was. He’d taken a clean towel from inside a kitchen drawer and had pressed it against the professor’s shoulder. Then he had him sit on his ratty, stained school couch while they waited for help to arrive. While Drew was putting pressure on the wound, he’d engaged Professor Sanborn in light chit-chat.
“Ever been stabbed before?” Drew asked. He peeled back the towel with gentle hands and pulled away the professor’s shirt where it had ripped. He seemed to be checking the severity or maybe the depth of the wound. Josie couldn’t tell how bad it was by Drew’s facial expression, but based on his mild smile, everything seemed hunky-dory.
“No. Not really. This is a first for me.” The professor gave a nervous laugh, and then his forehead wrinkled, as if he weren’t sure if he should be laughing. “It wasn’t really on my bucket list, if you know what I mean. Bungie jump off a bridge. Zip line in Costa Rica. Get a roller derby girl tattooed on my arm.”
Have an inappropriate relationship with an underage girl, Josie thought, squinting at him.
A familiar jingle of keys and the blip of a police radio approached from down the hall. Josie looked up in time to meet eyes with Officer Krupkey, who acknowledged her with a tip of his chip—very generous of him to greet her at all, she figured, since she wasn’t really a member of law enforcement. Maybe, like a lot of people, he thought she was cute and essentially harmless.
“Who are these two?” he asked her, gesturing to Drew and Benjy.
“They’re my…associates. That one’s a doctor,” she said, nodding at Drew, as if his credentials were going to make his unexplained presence more legit. She didn’t even try to make up a reason why Benjy, the sometimes-entrepreneur, sometimes-disowned-trust-fund-kid, was hanging around.
“They can stay until the ambulance gets here.” Officer Krupkey focused on the professor. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Yes, of course. I was here making a cup of coffee while I was getting ready for work. I have my first class in about an hour, so I was all dressed and coming into the kitchen when this guy—this person—jumps out of the dark and jabs me with a knife.”
Officer Krupkey jotted a few things down in his notepad. “You’ll need to make another statement for the Northam PD, obviously, but can you show me where you were standing? That is, if you’re feeling all right.”
The officer glanced at Drew, who gave a shrug. Apparently the wound was non-fatal. Either that or Drew had a preternatural calm when he was doctoring. Josie figured the former was the case. He was an experienced medical professional, but he’d never downplay an injury if it put a patient in further harm.
Professor Sanborn got up and demonstrated where he’d been standing when he’d been attacked. “And then I turned around and the guy—” He made a poking gesture with his right hand toward his left shoulder.
“And did you get a look at the person who attacked you?” Officer Krupkey paused, pen lifted from his notepad.
“It all happened so fast. I didn’t really get a good look. I mean, the lights were off.”
“You make your coffee in the dark?” The officer frowned at him. Yeah, that seemed weird to Josie, too.
“Yes, I do. Every morning. I don’t like to turn on the lights until after I’ve had my first cup. It hurts my eyes.” The professor waved a hand in front of his face, and Josie recalled that he’d told her he took a sleeping pill every night.
After her Arizona trip, she’d had some trouble sleeping, and Drew had given her a couple of sleeping pills to try. The first night she’d taken one, she’d sleep-walked into the kitchen and cooked a full breakfast—an egg frittata, cinnamon rolls from scratch, and sweet potato hash browns. Enough for a dozen people. The smell had woken up Drew, who had been sleeping on her couch for a while before officially moving in with her.
They’d eaten well the day after her sleep-cooking incident, needless to say. The next couple of times she’d tried a sleeping pill, she’d had such a difficult time waking up the following mornings that it hadn’t seemed worth it. Walking around in a fog was not for Josie. She needed to keep her wits about her, even if she kept imagining bad guys around every corner. At least she’d be ready for them, real or not.
So maybe making coffee in the dark wasn’t so weird if he had a sleeping pill hangover every morning. And at least he wasn’t driving to work—all he had to do was walk up the hill from his dorm to his office.
“Keep some pressure on that arm there,” Drew reminded him, which also served nicely to get them back on track.
“So you were standing here…” the officer prompted Professor Sanborn again.
“Right. And I turned because I thought I saw something move. Or…you know how you just feel like someone else is next to you? You just know. So, I spun around, and he got me with a knife.”
Knife? Josie perked up.
“You say it was a man?” Officer Krupkey asked.
“I think so. I mean, not taller than me. So maybe a young man. Or a tall woman. I really couldn’t tell in the dark.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.”
What about the knife? Josie wanted to know. She pinched her lips together, trying to prevent herself from blurting it out. She was exerting such pressure on her mouth, she probably looked like a drawstring bag.
“No voice or sounds at all?”
“No, none.” The professor shook his head. “Maybe some breathing, but that may have been me. You know, gasping. Then I kind of yelped—because it hurt. And I was surprised.”
For the second time in as many days, Josie heard sirens. Which meant the local police would be taking over, most likely, as well as EMTs for his shoulder wound. Their time for questioning him was running short.
What about the frickin’ knife? Josie wanted to butt in, but it was in her best interest to remain quiet and let Officer Krupkey do his job. She wanted to speak with him after he was finished with the professor, and that would go a whole lot better if he wasn’t pissed off at her. See, she could learn a little self-control after all.
“Did you see anything about the guy’s hands?” Officer Krupkey asked.
“Uh. No?” The professor sounded uncertain. He looked at Josie, a crease down the center of his forehead, as if she might have a better answer.
“Any gloves? Bare hands? Any rings or watches? Anything of that nature?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anything. Maybe gloves?”
“And where’s the knife now?”
Aha, finally.
“Oh, it’s in the sink,” the professor said, and before anyone could say anything, he reached over and grabbed it by its handle.
“Uh, I don’t think—” Drew began to say.
“Sir, please s
et that down on the counter immediately.”
“Holy crap,” Josie said.
Unless her eyes were deceiving her, it was the very same knife that should have been upstairs in her room in the envelope with the money order receipts. The tip was broken off in exactly the same way.
Chapter 26
Josie was ready to jump out of her skin—she wanted to run upstairs to check her desk for the knife—but she didn’t want to miss anything else the professor might tell them.
But was it the same knife? Did the attacker steal it out of my desk drawer? How many people knew the knife was in my dorm room?
The professor, after much hair-pulling and tooth-gnashing over missing his morning class, was taken to the Northam police station to continue making a statement. He’d been patched up by EMTs, but his wound wasn’t deep and he’d refused medical treatment. Drew confirmed the bleeding had stopped, but that he might still need a few stitches, depending on how active he was with that left arm.
“It looks like a superficial wound, honestly,” Drew told her as an aside. “He lucked out. Looks like he turned at just the right time to avoid getting stabbed any deeper.” Josie couldn’t picture the professor doing any kind of ninja move on purpose, but maybe an accidental flail had saved his bacon.
“Officer Krupkey, do you have a few minutes to talk to me—us.” Josie corrected herself after glancing at Benjy and Drew. She had a whole new entourage to include and she wasn’t quite used to it yet. It would take some time getting into the spirit of it, this teamwork stuff. A few months. Or possibly forever.
“Yeah. All right. I’m just heading back to the station to fill out a report. You want to catch a ride with me in the cruiser or meet me over there?” The station was on campus and just down the hill from the dorms in the opposite direction of the administration buildings. It was faster to hoof it rather than follow the road around the perimeter of the campus.
