Never Saw Me Coming

by Vera Kurian

  Merrifield Teacher Accused of Sex with Students Placed on Administrative Leave Pending Investigation

  MERRIFIELD, NJ: Police are involved in an ongoing investigation into allegations that Alexei Kuznetsov (22), a history teacher at Merrifield High, was having a sexual relationship with at least two female students, aged 15. The abuse was revealed when Kuznetsov was discovered with one of the victims on school grounds.

  The article went on, but didn’t name Chloe as one of the female students. He scrolled down to the comments until her name caught his eye.

  The student involved is Chloe Sevre and she is a #slutcunt.

  Well, being a slutcunt wasn’t proof that someone was a murderer.

  “Sir?”

  Startled, Charles looked up and both Mercer and Mal were looking at him. The latter was packing up. “You were right. I found malware on both computers. Someone had remotely accessed this laptop and had control of the webcam.”

  “For how long?” Charles asked, his mind flipping through everything Kristen might have said or done in front of the camera. They had sex in the living room just last week.

  “It’s hard to say. Everything’s scraped clean now, and I installed new software, which should help.” Charles thanked them and saw them out, feeling panic in his stomach, telling Mercer that, yes, he would call if there were any new developments. What if someone had recorded them? Listened in on their private conversations? How could this be happening again?

  Cyberguy, he wrote. Last year, Charles had been attacked, but he had never seen or learned the identity of the culprit. He just woke up one bright sunny morning to a phone call from his bank that there were strange charges on his credit card: someone had purchased an ATV in Waco, Texas, a thousand dollars’ worth of diapers, and a three-year subscription to a hardcore gay porn site. Crazy, but not outside the realm of normal credit card theft. He had just finished denying the charges when his cell phone service cut out. It took an hour to deal with this at Kristen’s house because his account had been canceled, but they refused to accept his password and kept telling him that he, Charles Portmont, was not Charles Portmont. Then his student ID couldn’t swipe him into the library—it had been wiped clean. Charles had been dropped from all his classes. He was just dealing with the dozen anchovy pizzas that arrived to his condo when his father called, infuriated by a series of charges on his own credit card that appeared to be made by his profligate son.

  Nothing made sense until he finally got his cell service restored and he received a flurry of texts from Daisy. Daisy was a girl Charles hardly knew and here she was nonsensically begging him for help, which didn’t make sense until he realized they were both being attacked at the same time.

  She sent him screenshots of hundreds of texts pouring in from blocked numbers calling her a whore and a slut, angry texts from friends who were suddenly infuriated with her. Her social media accounts had been hijacked and were posting nudes of her—or ostensibly of her—along with offers of free rough sex followed by her phone number.

  “I don’t know who’s doing this,” she had sobbed into his voicemail. Charles deleted the voicemail immediately. As far as Kristen knew, someone was cyberattacking her boyfriend for no apparent reason—maybe political reasons attached to his dad, but she hadn’t figured out what Charles already had because she didn’t have all the information. Someone out there had a Thing for Daisy and Charles had made the drunken mistake of hooking up with her. Someone must have seen them and gotten really angry. Suddenly Daisy’s problem had become Charles’s problem. At a loss, he proposed the only solution he could think of: he opened a draft email and wrote out the words I will pay you to leave me alone. The next day the draft email was still there with a new line added under it by a stranger: 10,000$. This followed by instructions of how to convert money to a cryptocurrency and deposit it in an anonymous account. Once Charles did this the attacks stopped as quickly as they started.

  When Charles had first heard of Michael’s and Kellen’s killings, his mind hadn’t immediately jumped to the cyberattacker as a culprit, but now that he had time to think of it, he wasn’t so sure. This person had tried to mess with his grades, get this family pissed at him and had mined Charles’s texts and emails for unflattering things he had said about Kristen to send to her. This person had done everything but out him as a member of the psychopathy program. The attacker could have outed him to all of Adams, and also had no way of knowing that Charles had already told Kristen about his diagnosis. Why would that one fact be withheld when everything else had been used against him? He had assumed the attack had been about Daisy, but maybe it had actually been about him. Charles had done some poking around on Google Scholar about internet trolls and discovered one study that showed that not only did they score high on measures of psychopathy, but also sadism.

  Charles chewed on the back of his pen, then reluctantly added one other name to the list. Emma. He withdrew his phone to look at the latest text from Chloe. A picture of Emma and the words Do you know this girl? He did know this girl. And she was in the program. How had Chloe and Andre managed to track her down?

  Charles had not noticed Emma his freshman year when they were both in Intro Philosophy together. She had stringy hair and bad posture and was nothing to look at. She was in Charles’s discussion group and sometimes he caught her staring at him. This happened sometimes; Charles knew he was good-looking. He never saw her talking to other students or at parties or campus events. He had once been walking across the area outside the SAC with picnic tables—all the tables were filled with talking, laughing students except for one. Emma, sitting alone, facing the wrong direction. She was not, as it appeared, staring into space, but observing an inchworm dangling from a nearby tree from a gossamer thread. The stupid worm was sad, too—a dumb small thing that would probably be dead by tomorrow.

  On a whim, Charles sat with her and ate lunch, pretty sure now that that insignificant action back then had caused Emma to have a crush on him, which was sadder still. Then a week later, he was catching a quick practice session in one of the piano rooms in Albertson and he caught her peeping through the window at him. He opened the door, catching up with her as she attempted to flee, intending to set her straight.

  “I’m in the program, too,” she had said, startling him out of speaking. At first, he thought she was threatening him, but then he realized that she just wanted to share something in common with him. She had seen him talking to Wyman once, and seen him do a mood log on his smartwatch. Charles was too curious about meeting another psychopath to be annoyed. But Emma didn’t fit the bill of what he thought they were supposed to be. He thought psychopaths were supposed to be...well, like him. Charming and charismatic and able to get what they wanted from people. She seemed more like someone had taken a mouse and dipped it into warm water to make tea.

  But Emma didn’t grasp the concepts of the program as well as Charles did and didn’t seem to care. She wasn’t interested in being taught how to read emotions or why her actions upset people. She was only interested in her major (philosophy) and her hobby (photography), the only things that seemed to animate her. She was a girl devoid of charm, but what was it about her that evoked a deep feeling of sadness in him? Even a feeling of protectiveness?

  Emma was not his friend. She would never qualify as that. But she was a kindred soul of sorts, and he liked to think that Chloe and Andre were wrong, that Emma couldn’t be a suspect. But he had to consider some facts that made him uncomfortable.

  Emma had already proven herself capable of tracking down someone else in the program. He didn’t know really anything about her other than her major and that she had a sister who went to American who she was very close with. But he knew one other thing—that Emma had a crush on him. That she had followed him at least once. Was it possible that Emma and the cyberattacker were one and the same? He was resistant to the idea, although he couldn’t pinpoint a rational reason why.<
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  * * *

  A few hours later, Charles heard the distinct sound of Kristen dropping her keys at her front door. He ran to open it, putting a contrite look on his face. Kristen had clearly had a few glasses of wine with dinner. He followed her to the kitchen where she took off her jacket and wrenched off her heels. “You didn’t walk home alone, did you? Look, I’m sorry,” he said.

  She looked at him carefully. He hugged her, kissed the top of her head. “I’m an asshole.” He had to get the tone right—soft, just above a whisper.

  Kristen pushed back, wanting to get a look at his face. “What exactly are you sorry about?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t go to dinner with you and your sister when I said I would.”

  “Are you?” she asked. She was daring him to lie. She knew too much about the way he worked. “Did you actually have a migraine?”

  He contemplated her, calculating. “No. I just didn’t want to go.”

  “Then why did you say you would when I asked you in the first place?”

  “Because that’s what you wanted me to say.”

  “So, you’re not sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I did something that hurt you.”

  It wasn’t working. Most girls were easier than Kristen. Now with sad eyes he followed her around the kitchen. As she poured herself a glass of water, he put his arms around her from behind. “Can you forgive me?” he asked quietly, nuzzling her neck.

  She put her glass down, setting her hands flat on the counter. “You know, every time you disappoint me I love you a little less.” Kristen walked away from him, settling on the couch. The words stung in just the right way.

  “I don’t want you to be mad at me,” he said, lingering around her like a satellite in orbit.

  He sat next to her, pressing his leg to hers. She turned the TV on and loaded an old episode of Who Wants to Marry a Soybean Farmer?—a show he despised. Charles had a strange contradiction in his very core: he both did and didn’t care about people’s view of him. He wanted to do whatever he wanted, but at the same time he wanted to be adored. This sometimes led to fights with Kristen, but at the same time she loved him. How much of all this was even his fault? Had he been born this way and it was all genetics, or was it perhaps the result of growing up in his family? The incident at Old Ebbitt Grill was not surprising given that his dad had been a functioning alcoholic for years.

  When Charles had originally told her about his diagnosis, she had been alarmed. The first two months of their relationship had been a whirlwind, but then he had come clean after much consultation with Wyman. Psychopath was just the word that made you think of an insane killer running around with an ax, not a fellow freshman from a well-respected boarding school who came from a family with money and had friends and interests and decent grades. To his surprise, she didn’t respond with disgust, but read up about the diagnosis and asked him questions about it. They were just too good together to let this get between them.

  Charles rested his arm on the back of the couch behind her. Soon came the little kiss on her ear. The stroking of her hair. He looked for a sign of approval. She flipped channels, watching the news coverage of the protests that continued to swamp Lafayette Park down by the White House. Charles leaned in and kissed behind her ear. His hand landed on her knee. His lips traveled down her neck. She closed her eyes momentarily—Charles knew exactly how to touch her. Kristen reached out, cupping his head in her hand. “Sweetie, you’re def not getting any tonight. This is the doghouse and you’re sitting in it.”

  35

  Day 16

  “Do you like M&Ms?” the RA asked me.

  “Yes?” I answered.

  “Sit.” On the desk in front of me in the experiment room was a blue bowl with a red mark along the inside. The RA dumped a bag of mini M&Ms into the bowl, filling it up to the red line. “You can eat these candies if you want to, as much as you want. Hang out for an hour, play with your phone, read a magazine.” There were some outdated issues of Self and Psychology Today. “But if you don’t eat any candy, when I come back at the end of the hour, you can have everything in the bowl in addition to another whole bag. Got it?”

  I got it. She left and I looked around for the hidden camera. There wasn’t a two-way mirror and the door was safely locked, my wasp spray snugly nested in my jeans pocket. I put my feet up on the desk, liberally ate M&Ms and played Dog Dash on my phone. I opened my dating app and deleted guys—no Will yet. I read an article in Self about the ten steps to perfect makeup-free makeup.

  What are you up to tonight? came a sudden text. Chad!

  Not much lol. U?

  When it was ten till, I rooted through my purse. I had a couple pieces of notebook paper, which I crumpled up, testing the size a couple times until I was able to bury them in the bowl of candy so that the candy still went up to the red line. When the RA came back, she exclaimed, “You did it! Some people can’t!” She was awarding me with another bag of candy right when Chad texted again. Meet up for drinks?

  I walked out of the building buried in my phone, working out the logistics with Chad. We had just settled on a restaurant when a notification popped up: one more match from the dating app. A certain lacrosse player! I hurried home to get dressed, but made myself wait before messaging Will. I only had about two more weeks until it was D-Day, but I didn’t want to seem overeager because then he might be suspicious.

  I was pondering what to write when a message from Will popped up.

  Cute pic, he wrote.

  Lol. Did you catch that fish yourself? (For some inexplicable reason, he had a picture of himself holding a fish, presumably taken during a fishing trip.)

  No it jumped straight into my arms

  Is it slutty to be messaging one boy when you are on the way to meet another? Maybe not if you’re planning on killing one of them.

  * * *

  I was meeting Chad at a restaurant on 9th Street after he finished up with “a business meeting.” The place was one of those dim affairs with almost no lighting other than a single tealight at each booth. Chad was perched at the bar, talking to the bartender. He smiled widely when he saw me. He reminded me of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast except with better hair.

  “I know the bartender here,” he said, leading me to a booth, opting to sit next to me instead of across.

  I asked what sort of business meeting he had and he went on and on about hurricane relief and how the frat was going to raise all this money. Why bother? Another hurricane is going to come anyway—we should be teaching people to swim.

  We got beers and I began probing. Any time I tried to subtly suss out whether or not he was in the program, Chad would change the subject—sandwiches, astronomy. He was either an evil genius or an innocuous himbo. I stepped up the flirting when we were midway through our second round of drinks.

  “I like your watch,” I said, playfully examining it, and in the process also touching one of his big hands.

  “I saw a Groupon and figured I’d get one.”

  A lie? And why did Charles hate him? It made him more intriguing. “It’s nice,” I said. I looked up at him and our gazes locked. “So, what do you do when you’re not saving the world?”

  “Weightlifting mostly. Tough Mudders. I’m training for the Crossfit games.”

  “Crossfit has games?”

  “It’s very competitive!” he said, grinning. “But SAE takes up a lot of my time. There’s a lot of stuff to organize, like the hurricane thing.”

  “You live in the house?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

  “Come on,” he said, bumping my side jovially. “I mean, my room’s neat, and basically I get to live with all my best friends.”

  “Some of the brothers don’t live there?”

  He shook his head. “When you first get in you’re required to live there, but you can move out after that first year. I t
ry to make sure everyone still feels included. We’re at the house every day—it’s like a family. We’ve all been helping with Charles’s election. Marty did the design for his posters, I helped with the rally, Will got the lacrosse vote.”

  “Will?” I asked.

  “Blond guy? On the lacrosse team?”

  “Oh, right, that guy. Do you hang out with him a lot?”

  “More lately, I guess. He’s been hanging around the house a lot.” Too afraid to be in his own house, perhaps?

  I snapped my fingers like I just remembered something. “Oh, one of your pledges is in my Bio lab. We dissected a pig together. Reek?”

  Chad looked confused, then a slightly annoyed look came over his face. “Milo, you mean. I really don’t like the nickname thing but the brothers won’t stop.”

  “He’s a nice kid.”

  “Super nice. Really smart. I hope he sticks around.” Chad was apparently the master of giving out information that was inherently meaningless. He smiled again, this time more flirty. “Speaking of parties, I can’t believe you don’t remember meeting me at Charles’s house.”

  “Did we talk?”

  He sipped his drink. “I was hitting on you.”

  “Not hard enough apparently.”

  “Would I have had a chance?”

  “I’m sure you found someone to pair up with.”

  “I ended up sleeping on the floor with six other people.”

  I could feel the crackle of heat, a deep itch within me. All this careful living had put a serious dent in my social life, which is to say, getting my fair share of vitamin D. “I slept alone that night.” I had an image in my head suddenly. Standing in front of Charles wearing only his shirt. I thought about him reaching out and slowly unbuttoning the buttons, his hands sliding down the exposed skin.