by Vera Kurian
“And what’s that?”
Megan barely turned to address her. “For me to never leave her behind.”
43
Groaning, Andre opened his eyes. Something smelled. His own T-shirt. He pulled it off—he had definitely vomited last night. He tried to sit up but his body immediately told him not to.
How could you be so stupid? he thought, and the voice he heard in his head was not his own, but Kiara’s. He had gotten drunk last night at Marcus’s house. He hadn’t meant to—he had been incredibly careful about drinking ever since he found out about the murders. What good was the baseball bat under his bed, and the careful traveling across campus, and the triple-checking of dead bolts, if you were just going to stumble down some street, drunk and stupid? But someone had brought two twenty-four-packs of alcoholic root beer from Trader Joe’s and it was so sweet you couldn’t really tell there was alcohol in it. Andre had done what countless other college freshman do every single day: he had had a good time, got drunk with his friends, and stumbled home with his roommate to have a hangover the next day.
Stupid stupid stupid. You could have been killed. He stumbled out of bed and crawled to the bathroom, vomiting up horrifyingly black liquid. The very sight of it made him more nauseated. Moaning, he flushed the toilet and curled up on the cold bathroom floor, shivering.
“I’m dying,” he said quietly. He felt a sudden, intense desire to be home. Not here in this weird, dangerous place, but back in NE at his house, in his comfortable room overlooking the backyard. Mom and Dad downstairs having coffee. He even missed Isaiah forcing Andre’s head into his armpit, laughing maniacally. He had always been so bored at home, so bored that he never thought he would miss it.
What a baby. Eighteen and you’re homesick? Andre struggled to a sitting position, leaning against the bathtub, and got out his phone. He had a missed call from his dad. His finger hovered over the Call Back button. One button and maybe all this would be over. His parents could whisk in and everything would magically be better. He wasn’t sure how, but maybe it would be. Maybe they wouldn’t be that mad. He could just leave, tell them that full-time school was too much for him, and once he was away from Adams, the danger would be over. He jumped when his phone rang—it was his father. After a brief greeting his father immediately asked if he had woken him up.
“What? No.”
“Oh, you sick? You sound sick?”
“Just, ah, out a little late last night.”
“You’re not drinking, are you?”
“Of course not. It was an ice cream social.” What did his parents think college was, anyway? Study parties and, well, ice cream socials? “I was talking to a girl.” That would throw him off.
“Ooohh,” he cooed. There was a pause—it sounded like his father had put his hand over the phone to say something to someone else, probably his mother. The pause seemed an eternity for Andre, who debated finally saying something, something that could end all of this. All it would take was one word, although he wasn’t sure which word to start with. “Listen, Pooh, we wanted to let you know that the surgery is scheduled.”
“It is?” His father’s back surgery had always felt on the horizon. But there were always more appointments to go to, and his father’s diligent way of researching the hell out of anything before committing.
“November 3—I’ll be back on my feet in time for Thanksgiving.”
Andre felt a wave of panic. “That’s so soon.” His father was the guy tending to patients in the ambulance, not the one on his back. A huge, healthy man with a booming voice, not an unconscious body attached to a bunch of wires and tubes. Even the thought of him in a hospital bed made Andre feel more nauseated.
“It’s nothing to worry about. You know what they call it when they remove a disk? A discectomy!”
“Very funny,” he said impatiently. “But anesthesia and everything?”
“It’s not what you’re picturing—they’re not going to cut me open. It’s minimally invasive. Smaller incision, smaller tools, and two guys at work had this same surgeon.”
“I can come home that weekend,” he offered quickly. And no, I will not tell you anything that will stress you out, like that I may or may not be committing fraud to pay my way through college or that there’s a serial killer on the loose. Nothing like that at all, I swear.
“Yeah, Pooh, it’ll be good to see you.”
So much for the spilling of secrets.
* * *
“Dr. Torres?” Andre asked, sticking his head into Elena’s office. A few hours and two Pedialytes later, he felt marginally better. “I was finishing a survey and the screen froze.”
She got up and followed him down the hallway to the experiment room he had been working in. She leaned over the computer and wiggled the mouse. “Sometimes they’re wonky,” she said. He sat down beside her.
“I don’t know if you heard,” Andre said, figuring he might as well try to fish. “I was able to ID the guy I saw the night of the stabbing. It was another student named Kellen Bismarque.” Elena frowned, looking at the computer screen, shock making her eyes blank, but she didn’t comment on this. Andre opened the package of M&Ms he had been given in another experiment and offered her some. “If you’re a regular person, doesn’t all this processing of emotions make you tired?”
“Sometimes.”
“Dr. Wyman’s probably seen a ton of crap in his time,” Andre said. Maybe it was the Pedialyte talking, but he was feeling bold. “I was reading somewhere that he was the psychologist on the CRD case back in the day.”
“Oh, yeah, but he never talks about it,” Elena said, her eyes not leaving the computer as she hit ESC again.
“That must have been crazy.”
“That case devastated him. Can you imagine being someone’s therapist for two years only to find out they were a serial killer?”
Andre was stunned, glad for the distraction of the computer unfreezing so that Elena couldn’t see his face. He had always thought that Wyman had been hired by the police to evaluate Gregory Ripley to see if he was “sane” enough to stand trial. But this detail, while bizarre, made more sense. He treated the guy for years—that was why he had fought for him.
He finished the survey as quickly as he could, then bounded down the stairs and outside, pulling his phone out. He and Chloe had for the past week been unsuccessfully trying to contact the former fiancée of John Fiola, but she hadn’t responded. Chloe had found her home address and advocated for simply showing up—Andre thought this ill-advised. This tiny morsel of new information was the closest thing they had had to a clue since discovering Emma. Important update, he texted. Let’s meet?
She responded a few seconds later, saying she would round up Charles and they could meet at his house. Interesting, Andre realized. Chloe didn’t want him to know where she lived but never made it seem like that’s what she was doing.
He figured he would have time to pick up a late dinner and stopped at the SAC. He had to cajole a worker to make him a burrito because they were moments from closing. Content, he ate his burrito while searching on his phone for stuff about John Fiola—ancient social media posts on sites he hadn’t even heard of before, and an article from the Daily Owl that quoted him for a grad school social event.
Andre crumpled up his foil wrapper, but when he went to throw it in the trash he realized something was off. There was no one else in the cafeteria. There always seemed to be students there at any hour, eating or studying across from the huge display of TVs glaring news. He was alone except for the silent babbling of CNN talking about the protests, the smell of floor cleaner suddenly salient. It’s fine, just hurry up, he told himself as pulled on his book bag. He would go outside and there would be the inevitable crowd of people and he could walk to Charles’s house in safety.
He just had his hand on the door when he heard from behind him: “Hey, man.”
/> Don’t turn around. But he did, anyway. A few yards away was a big dude—like football big—you could tell even though he was wearing the same oversize Adams sweatshirt that everyone owned. He was holding up a white cord. “I think you dropped your phone charger?” he said. He was smiling, but Andre could only stare back.
Had he even brought his phone charger with him today? He didn’t think he had. And millions of people had the same white iPhone charger. He committed himself to trying to memorize what the guy looked like, but he had his hood up. He was white, with brown hair and very straight teeth, and was still holding out the charger.
“Ah, no thanks, man, it’s not mine.”
The man cocked his head to one side. Was he even an Adams student? Or just someone who slipped into the cafeteria after hours? “You sure?” The bulky sweatshirt—he could be wearing it to conceal something, a weapon. Not that he needed one. The guy looked like he could pop Andre’s head off with little effort.
“I’m good,” Andre squeaked, and chanced to turn his back to flee from the building into what he hoped was a crowded campus thoroughfare.
Except this time it wasn’t. Every now and then the planets aligned and somehow all students were collectively hungover, or too tired to go out, or it was drizzling and they were lazy and just wanted to watch Netflix. Through the windows of the tall academic buildings surrounding him, he could see people inside, but there was no one on the street but a lone homeless person smoking a cigarette. Andre shoved his hands into his pockets and walked quickly, hoping the man wasn’t following him. No one was going to stab him in the middle of the street, right?
Why weren’t there even any cars on the road? In the distance he heard a persistent siren and realized the police might have blocked nearby roads for a motorcade—that always messed with traffic. It was strange that in a city there were still occasionally places that seemed devoid of people.
It occurred to Andre that the only times he had genuinely been scared for his safety had been times when there weren’t people around—not the times when there had been a crazy person on a bus or even just people sitting on the stoop when you could hear gunshots somewhere in the distance. That felt okay because there was always someone who met your eye or made a joke. He chanced what he hoped was a casual half turn around and saw that no one was behind him, at least not that he could see, but there were plenty of dark nooks to hide in between streetlights.
Then he saw a couple exit Anderson Hall ahead of him and begin to walk in the same direction. Relieved, he quickened his pace to catch up with them, but then noticed one of them half turn around and saw him. Then their pace quickened. I’m not the bad guy here, he thought with sad irony.
He didn’t bother to try to catch up with them and they quickly turned off onto another street. He was only three blocks from Charles’s when he sensed in his peripheral vision someone on the other side of the street crossing over to his side, behind him. His heart lurched. He hadn’t gotten a good look at them, given the angle, other than the vague notion that they had seemed male. Part of him wanted to turn around and look, but another part of him said that this was a bad idea—walk faster. Andre did so, straining his ears, but he could barely hear anything behind him and his pulse was beating loudly in his ears. He pulled his hand from his pocket and rested it on the hilt of his hunting knife.
This absolutely can’t be how I die, he thought. Caught in the horror movie cliché of someone slowly following you, all while on the verge of figuring something out. But there’s one thing everyone did wrong in horror movies—even the final girl. They were, for some reason, incapable of logic or running fast without falling down. Still trying to look casual, with his other hand he pulled out his cell phone, pretending to look at it while he used the dark screen as a mirror. He could see no one behind him. They must have turned off.
He heard a noise to his right as he came to a cross street. Andre stopped and turned, his eyes struggling to adjust from the garish yellow glow of the streetlight to what seemed like the impenetrable blackness surrounding a dumpster. Was there something there? Something silently watching him? It was too quiet.
Oh HELL no, he decided, and with no further deliberation he sprinted as fast as he could, faster and with more determination than any idiot in any horror movie, not looking back, not giving himself the time to doubt what his instincts told him. He didn’t falter or stop until he had reached the safe bright lights of Charles’s lobby. Luckily a woman had reached the door at the same time and he followed her in, but then she hesitated with her fob out in the vestibule before the locked inner doors. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you in. You’ll have to call your friends if you don’t live here.”
He started to laugh—it hurt but it was still funny.
44
Day 7
Here we were in a crisis and Charles was swimming laps. We were supposed to meet Andre soon, and it was critical that I talk to Charles before we met. The Aquatic Center, which housed the indoor pool, was pleasantly warm and humid compared to the cold air outside. Had Charles thought this out? Was it even safe to swim? There were a few people swimming laps, but I identified Charles by his showboat-y freestyle. He kick-turned off the wall, then rippled underwater for a third the length of the pool, headed in my direction. I crouched by the lip of the pool and stuck my hand in front of him as he approached. He stood up, blowing water off his face.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Can’t you see me, dum-dum?”
“Not without my contacts, but that sounds like the dulcet tones of Chloe.” He plucked his goggles from his eyes and settled them in his hair.
“Come on. We need to talk before we see Andre.”
He waded to the edge of the pool, then pulled himself up. He wore racing-style jammers that came to midthigh but regardless did not leave much to the imagination. He definitely had the build of a swimmer—slender, but bigger in the chest. I took advantage of his temporary blindness to do a thorough visual accounting of nearly every inch of his dripping, creamy skin.
He grabbed a towel and started to dry off. “Give me a minute to change.” Charles looked over his shoulder as he approached the men’s locker room. “Unless you want to help.”
I showed my teeth at him.
He emerged wearing khakis and an Adams sweatshirt. “You should always wear your contacts in case something happens. You’d think you’d learn that after what happened to Kristen,” I advised. He held the gym door open for me with sarcastic flamboyance. He always grew sullen when I brought up Kristen.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked. We headed toward his apartment, where Andre would meet us.
“I’ve been considering your Will theory, however ridiculous. I’m taking it seriously, but we can’t tell Andre about him.”
“Why not?”
Because then there’s one more person who knows I have a motive to kill him? “Because it’s private. We’ll make something up.” As we walked, I prepped mentally—Charles seemed set on Trevor or, more ridiculously, Will being our little hunter, which meant that I had to get Andre to think it was Emma to buy me a few more days. This shouldn’t be too difficult because Andre was now seriously considering that the twins were secretly Wyman’s love children. Trevor seemed the most likely to me, which meant I had to distract everyone from actually nailing him until after Phase Four of Will.
Andre met us just outside of Charles’s apartment, looking sweaty. “What’s your problem?” I asked.
“I thought someone was following me.”
“Welcome to my day-to-day life,” I said as I pulled the door open after Charles unlocked it.
Charles got us some beers and we positioned ourselves on his couch. Apparently, Andre wanted to chug his entire beer before getting to work, which I thought was a little dramatic. “We each have updates,” I said. “You start, Andre.”
“Let’s go bac
k to the beginning with Wyman,” Andre said finally. “Almost twenty years ago, he worked on the case doing in-depth interviews with CRD after he was arrested. I couldn’t understand what made him argue against the death penalty, which was what Virginia was trying for.” I nodded. “But come to find out—and Elena just told me this—that Wyman was actually CRD’s therapist for years before Ripley got arrested. What if he knew?” Andre said.
“Knew that the guy was killing?” Charles asked.
“What if Ripley was Patient Zero? Wyman’s first guinea pig on a method to treat psychopaths. Except things go horribly wrong, and the last thing he wants to do is admit it.”
“Psychologists are legally required to report it when a client threatens someone,” Charles said. He was already trying to catch a sympathetic eye from me but I didn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure exactly what I thought of Wyman, but it seemed Charles had a soft spot for him. He was too attached after two years of being coddled in therapy by the man to see the possibility that he wasn’t an entirely benign do-gooder.
“They’re supposed to. But what if Ripley talked about having killing urges and Wyman thought he could develop some process to stop him, that this would be groundbreaking research,” Andre said. “Or what if Ripley said stuff and Wyman didn’t take him seriously? You know how we all talk big in therapy—I did this, I did that.”
Charles frowned. “I don’t see how all of this, which happened before we were born, even matters—we’re getting hunted right now. And we’ve only got three real suspects.” He held up a finger. “Emma, who I know—”
“What do you mean you know Emma?” Andre asked.
“He knows Emma,” I said.
“I lied to you,” Charles admitted, not sounding contrite. “I didn’t trust you guys so when you asked I pretended I didn’t know her. Yes, she’s in the program—she’s a junior. We’ve...interacted. She’s kind of a weird person, but I can’t see her being a serial killer.”
