by Vera Kurian
“We don’t know that!” I interrupted. “We haven’t accounted for her whereabouts.”
“I can work on her, but it’s not her,” Charles said. “Then we have Trevor, Chloe’s little friend.”
Andre looked at me, surprised. Miserable, I recounted how I had been fooled by Trevor the “RA,” and Charles gave an abbreviated history of the cyberattack, and I got angry all over again. I hated being made a fool of. Andre looked more alarmed as Charles filled him in about the attack at Kristen’s house. “Trevor is a person who is sadistic and misogynistic, and has really dangerous capabilities. He’s been in the program for two years—maybe Wyman said something that set him off. Psychopaths can get like that—hold grudges forever over some minor infraction,” Charles finished, then he fell silent. Then I realized Andre was staring at me. Uh-oh, he was upset about something.
“Chloe tried to stab him and you tried to shoot him,” Andre observed. “Still, he got away. Who’s the third suspect?” he asked.
Charles resisted looking at me. “There’s another student at Adams, a junior named Will Bachman. He’s not in the program that we know of, and I don’t know what his motive could be, but that doesn’t mean there might not be one.” Andre looked at me for confirmation, but I stared down at my hands as I picked viciously at a hangnail. “I can’t really get into it,” Charles said, hesitating like he was reluctant to speak, “because of how I got the information, but basically he’s a bad character. He—”
“Bad in what sense?”
“He’s in my frat. I know that he committed at least one violent crime when he was young. He lives near where Chloe got attacked. He’s talked about Kristen, about how hot she is and he’d move on her if she weren’t my girlfriend. He’s an athlete, so we know he can move fast.”
Andre was still staring at me and I knew why. We had been working more closely together, just the two of us, with me telling him not to trust Charles, and here I was leaving him out of the loop on a bunch of stuff I had figured out with Charles. I needed to get back on his good side.
“Anyhow,” Charles said, “I think we should focus our attention on Trevor. I’m thinking of going to the police with the whole story, the hacking from last year, too.”
“The police aren’t going to help us,” I said, looking at Andre, psychically telling him to agree with me. “What are you going to say, that we’re all a bunch of psychopaths but we think this other psychopath did it?”
“Yes,” Charles said.
“We need to get proof,” I said.
“How would you plan on getting proof?”
“The old-fashioned way,” I said. “We spy on them, we milk them for information any way we can. I’ll take Trevor—he already wants to be friends. You said Emma likes you, so set up a date.”
“I can get Will, too,” Charles said, gathering up the empty beer bottles. I glanced up at him, telling him with my eyes, No, you will not. I will handle Will.
“In the meantime, let’s talk about security. Namely, yours sucks if someone was able to crawl through your window,” I said.
“You let someone take a picture of you while you were boning Chad!” Charles retorted. “Kristen and I are staying at Fort Hunt. You can’t just wander onto the estate, and my dad’s guys are there all the time.” What a bunch of rich assholes. Here Andre and I were suffering while the two of them were probably drinking mai tais delivered by a butler. “I can give you a gun,” he offered Andre suddenly.
“You never offered me a gun!” I yelled.
“I have a couple pistols. If you know how to use one, I can lend one to you,” Charles continued, ignoring me.
Andre looked torn. “No... I don’t know anything about guns and don’t want to be caught with one. I could just stay with my parents.”
“And put your family at risk?” he suggested. “You could stay here. I have a second bedroom and the doorman here seriously doesn’t let anyone in.”
Why was Charles suddenly being so generous to Andre? I narrowed my eyes at him and he smiled at me.
Andre, too, was suspicious, or at least not gullible. “I guess if it comes up...and I need to,” he said in the way people do to be polite. He accepted a key chain from Charles that had a fob for the front door and a key on it.
I got up. “Well, fun times, but I have stuff to do.” I actually just wanted to get away from them both before they started asking invasive questions about Will.
“Remember what I said about Trevor,” Charles said when I was almost to the door.
“You’re cute when you’re anxious.”
“Be careful.”
Screw being careful.
45
Day 5
There was an alcove in the Humanities Building where I liked to sit with my computer to do work in between classes—the clock was still ticking for Will. Namely, narrowing down locations for Phase Four, the final phase. One option was somewhere really crowded and chaotic—like the frat house—but this would necessitate some method of murder that might not be reliable, like poisoning, or a single stab-and-run. I needed it to take a while for the body to be found. I wanted a place where I could both kill and hide him, because transporting a body wasn’t practical—no car and no amount of yogalates was going to make lugging around one hundred and seventy pounds of dead weight easy.
Rock Creek Park was of course one of the first places I thought of. The park was DC’s version of New York’s Central Park—1,700-something acres of green stubbornly sitting on prime real estate. While there were various places to do activities there—bike paths, trails, and an equestrian center—there were also expanses of forest. I knew for a fact that Rock Creek might be a good choice because a two-second Google search revealed that many murders had already occurred there. People—mostly women, of course—who went jogging and never came home. It was tempting, but the main problem was that it was fall. I wanted to set Will on fire, but if there were dry leaves everywhere, there could be a massive conflagration, and that would only bring more attention, not less.
No, I had to find somewhere equally secluded, but fire-friendly.
I winnowed it down to a construction site and the National Arboretum, which I had just checked out yesterday in person. The arboretum had massive expanses of unoccupied land filled with trails, plant exhibits, and fields of grass dotted with trees. Most interestingly it had a bizarre installation: a careful arrangement of the original twenty-two columns from the Capitol Building, built in the 1800s but eventually moved to the arboretum when they were replaced with more architecturally sound columns. The site looked like the ruins of a Grecian temple, possibly the perfect place for a burnt human sacrifice. I was concerned, though, with how far away it was from campus, and I wasn’t sure if it had security guards at night. It probably did because the arboretum also had a collection of bonsai trees that must have been worth a lot of money.
I got an alert for a mood log: it asked me what I was doing, and because there was no option for “scheming” I picked Studying. I still had fifteen minutes before class started. I scrolled mindlessly through Instagram before I saw something that made me choke.
It was a post from Chad featuring him holding a banana to his head like it was a phone.
Hey, peeps! Still collecting phones for the Women’s Shelter! Any cell phone, any condition. No chargers necessary.
Is that phone low carb? someone commented.
I shoved my stuff in my bag and tore down the hall, drawing stares and not caring, then waited impatiently in the elevator with my phone out, ready to dial Chad. Yes—call, not text! I needed his undivided attention. And I needed to see him before Will saw that post, assuming he was smart enough to figure out what it could possibly mean.
* * *
I sprinted down the street toward the SAE house. It was 4:35. Will got out of a poli-sci lecture at 4:45, if he had even gone to class today. At this
point, I had just been biding my time—I didn’t think I was going to get the video, and was making the final preparations for Will, waiting for the crazy day of protests. Just yesterday the Post was saying that Airbnbs all over the city were sold out, rented by protestors for the event.
The front door was open. I burst into the house and two boys playing a video game barely even looked at me. “Chad!”
“In the kitchen!” he called. I ran in there and he was making what looked like a thirty-seven-egg omelet. “So you think you left your phone here?” He was wearing a muscle shirt and a puzzled smile.
“Yes, at the last party.” He led me to a room behind the kitchen that held an assortment of broken appliances. There was a huge box in there, halfway filled with cell phones. I began to paw through it.
“What’s it look like?” Chad asked, stooping to help me.
“It’s an iPhone 4 with a white circular sticker on the back. The bottom right corner is dented in.” I would know that phone anywhere—I had memorized every detail of it.
I pawed some more and then—there it was! Still with the white STX lacrosse sticker on it. Will must have left the phone with a bunch of junk when he lived at the house during his first two years. I grabbed it and made sure Chad wouldn’t see the sticker. I then leaped at him, throwing my arms around his neck, nearly knocking him over. “You’re the best!”
“Am I?” he said, smiling winningly. “Stay for supper. I’m making a frittata.”
“Rain check!” I replied, pecking him on the mouth before I ran out the door.
* * *
Back in the privacy of my room, my door shut, I shoved the iPhone 4 charger that I had bought online into the phone and waited eagerly for the phone to charge. Luckily that particular model didn’t have the fingerprint ID function—otherwise, I would have had to perform minor surgery on Will. Not that I wouldn’t be good at it. Impatiently, I stared at the phone until it was charged enough to turn on. I pressed the home button and the familiar icons appeared in front of me. First, I made sure it was on airplane mode. Even though Will had probably deactivated it years ago, you can never play it too safe.
It was not hard to find the video because I knew the date when it was recorded. Did I watch it? As if I needed anything else to fully confirm what lay ahead for Will?
I had the video—it was clearly him and it was clearly me.
There is no statute of limitations for rape in New Jersey. But no, I was never going to endure the slow grind of a court case where people would troll through my Instagram for “scandalous” pictures of me having the nerve to look attractive or have fun with my friends on a night out; where people would question if I was actually traumatized because clearly I’m a slut with straight A’s; where the question wouldn’t be “What happened to Michelle?” but “Why didn’t you...?” Instead, the narrative would be about how I had the nerve to ruin Will’s life, his good grades and his lacrosse, and about how every woman is asking for it. Fuck. That. Shit.
The day it happened, I didn’t go to the police, or my clueless mom. I stayed at home and decided that, one day, I would kill Will Bachman. It was just a feather of an idea back then, floating, not as solid as it would eventually become. No—that would come after hours of research, experimenting, self-defense classes. Will left for high school and I was left in junior high. Afterward, we went to separate high schools. Will moved through the world for the next five years never thinking about me or what he did. I was going to make sure that those were the last two things he thought of just as he died. Now, with the video, I was ready.
46
Charles stood in the crowded entryway of Ted’s Bulletin and looked for Emma, who had texted him that she was already here. The stools at the bar were all taken and a crowd of people clustered to the left of him, waiting in the separate line to make purchases from the bakery at the front. He noticed that Emma was standing outside the restaurant on the other side of the glass. He waved, then observed her glazed stare. She was watching through the glass as a pair of white-capped bakers quickly piped filling onto pastry dough to eventually form homemade Pop-Tarts.
God, what a weirdo, he thought. He stepped toward the window, pasting a smile onto his face and waving. Emma noticed him. She didn’t smile back, but walked toward the revolving door and came inside. “There you are!” Charles said cheerfully.
“I was waiting,” she said.
He went to the hostess, who asked them what type of table they wanted. “Booth,” Charles said immediately. A booth provided some degree of privacy.
They sat across from each other and were handed oversize menus. He peeked above the top of his menu to study her. She looked tired with big circles under her eyes. “Have you been all right?” he asked, putting his menu down.
“What do you mean?”
“You look tired.” He leaned forward, smiling ruefully. “Sorry—I know girls hate it when you say that. But...with everything going on.”
Emma looked at her menu without saying anything. Charles tried to imagine her wielding a knife. Was it as simple as her hating Kellen or Michael for some minor offense? Or maybe she had had a crush on them? What if she gets a crush on you? he could hear the teasing voice of Chloe saying in his head. Charles was fairly certain he was on Emma’s good side. While she apparently did not function like most other people and answer texts within a day or two, she did finally respond to him and say she would meet up. Emma was exactly the sort of person who completely ignored social invitations when she felt like it. “They have alcoholic milkshakes here,” she said.
“Yes, let’s get one,” Charles said.
“I’m not twenty-one.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“That’s all I want,” she added quietly, putting her menu down.
Charles ordered meat loaf and a Thin Mint milkshake. “It’s just... I haven’t seen you in a while, and everything’s been so crazy.”
Emma seemed to be staring behind him where a screen was showing a classic movie in black-and-white. “With those boys dying,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, trying to prompt her. “I mean, isn’t it scary?”
“People die,” she said. “And sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”
“I guess... It can make you feel like everything’s out of control, you know?”
“Or it’s under the wrong control,” she said.
The milkshake came in a tall glass with the remainder in a giant steel tumbler frosty with condensation. Charles dumped a third of his into the tumbler and pushed it across the table for Emma. Rather than bringing the tumbler up to her mouth she bowed her head, not breaking eye contact with him, and suckled from the straw. Charles thought of a life-size bee feeding upon nectar, its black eyes blank with insect thoughts.
She paused to poke her straw deeper into the tumbler.
“Aren’t you scared?” he asked.
“I’m not like you, Charles,” she said. He wondered what she meant exactly. That she didn’t feel fear, or something else?
“Kellen wasn’t a bad guy.”
“Is that one of the dead guys? I never met him. Was he a friend?” she asked.
His meat loaf arrived. Charles smoothed down his hair. “Not exactly. He was kind of loud. I prefer people who are a little more introverted.”
Emma’s eyes dropped to the milkshake.
Charles leaned forward. “You like me, Emma, don’t you?” he asked. Her eyes were moving across a constellation of points on the table. She seemed to be struggling to answer. “You didn’t answer my text!” he teased.
“I did!”
“Not for five days.”
“Was I supposed to respond sooner?”
“I wanted to hang out with you,” he said playfully. “You’re my only friend like me.” Her ears turned pink. He dug into his meat loaf. “Don’t you feel like we’re ki
ndred souls?” She seemed more pained than pleased by this. “Or is that slot already taken by your sister?”
“I wouldn’t say she’s a kindred soul.”
“I always thought it would be cool to have a twin.”
“We shared a womb.”
For the love of God, please say something useful! “You must be really close.”
“Kind of,” she said, stabbing at her shake with her straw. “Not really. She should be nicer. She didn’t want to come to DC, but she didn’t get into Berkeley and because of me we could both afford college.”
“What do you mean?” Charles asked, pretending to be distracted by his mashed potatoes.
“Because she’s a control in the study, they cover her college at American, too. She said she’s going to take her half of the signing bonus and open a business after we graduate.”
“Wyman pays for Megan’s college, too?”
“I never told you her name,” Emma said, looking at him.
“Yes, you did,” Charles said confidently. “Isn’t American pretty expensive?”
She shrugged. “It’s not free money. She still has to come in to get MRIs to compare her brain to mine or whatever, and for group therapy.”
“The two of you? Together?”
“Yes, it’s very fun.” He couldn’t tell if she was joking.
“Well, I haven’t decided what to do with my signing bonus,” Charles said, having no idea if he even received one, or for what amount it had been. His parents handled all the financial stuff.
“I was thinking of doing a gap year to travel and take photos. Twenty thousand can go pretty far in Asia.”
Emma stepped out of the booth to go to the bathroom, leaving her purse behind. Charles casually rooted through it, imagining that if anyone saw him they would think him a boyfriend looking for a spare tissue. There was nothing in there but a pamphlet for an exhibition at the Museum of Women in the Arts and a plastic key chain shaped like a ghost. When she returned he carefully tried to ask her where she had been the nights of the murders. The best he could uncover about her whereabouts the night of Michael’s murder was figuring out that she had been in a photography lab. He didn’t think he could directly ask about where she was during Kellen’s death, too, without arousing her suspicion.
