Frenzy

by V. J. Chambers

  I giggled. “Yeah, you look it.”

  “I’m actually an immortal vampire.” He took a sip of coffee. “That’s why I’m so unbelievably attractive.”

  I shoved him. “Shut up.”

  His coffee spilled. “Hey, watch it.” He brushed a little bit of spilled liquid off his coat. “Weren’t you saying I was bad at taking compliments?”

  “That wasn’t taking a compliment. That was giving yourself one.” I reached for a stack of napkins on the table and leaned over to dab at the place where the coffee had spilled.

  His hand came up to snag the napkins.

  Our fingers touched.

  We both froze, looking into each other’s eyes.

  His eyes were a startling green color. They had flecks of amber in them.

  My breath caught in my throat, just gazing at him. He really was unbelievably attractive.

  He swallowed.

  I licked my lips.

  Was he going to kiss me? Our faces were close. All he’d have to do is come a few inches closer.

  Did I want him to kiss me? He was a drug dealer, after all. Not that I particularly cared if he broke the law or whatever. But he didn’t seem like the most stable guy in the history of the universe and—

  Levi pulled the napkins away from me. He busied himself with wiping at the spill.

  I let out my breath.

  “Um, you know, I don’t remember Cori having a black eye,” said Levi. “But I didn’t know her in October. I met her later. Maybe there’s something to this weird boyfriend theory.”

  I struggled to pull my thoughts together. Don’t think about kissing Levi, I urged myself. “But her boyfriend was Parker. He wouldn’t hurt her. He’s not like that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Levi and I huddled at the call box outside Parker’s dorm. The call box was a big metal box with a speaker and a keypad. You used it to call people inside the dorm so that they’d come down and let you in. We couldn’t go in, because our ID cards weren’t programmed to let us into Parker’s building.

  The phone was ringing, and it echoed out of the call box, sounding tinny and amplified.

  Eventually, it stopped. “What?” said a sluggish voice.

  “Parker?” I said. “It’s Molly. Can I come in?”

  “Did Jill send you?” His words were slurred.

  “No, it’s not about Jill,” I said. Of course, I had told her that I’d promised her to try to talk to him. Still, I wasn’t sure that was the best strategy to get him to see me, considering he wasn’t returning her calls.

  “Go away.” The call box went dead.

  My shoulders slumped. “Dammit.”

  Levi looked up at the dorm. “What is this? Wilton Hall?” He started to dial a number on the keypad.

  The call box began to ring again.

  Someone picked up. “What up?”

  “Hey, Deke, it’s Levi. I’m outside. Can you let me in?”

  “Levi? Man, what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to get into see someone, and he won’t come let me in. Can you come down here and open the door? As a favor?”

  “I got you, man,” said Deke. “Give me like five minutes, aight?”

  “Yup.” Levi pressed the end button on the call box.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Do you know everyone on campus?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Pretty much.”

  * * *

  Parker opened the door. “What the fuck?”

  “Hi, Parker, can we come in?” I said.

  “No.” He started to close the door.

  Levi stopped him. “Let us in, man.”

  Parker sagged against the door. “You know what? Whatever.”

  Levi and I trooped inside.

  Parker shut the door after us. He didn’t look good. He was wearing ratty jeans and a stained sweatshirt. His hair was greasy, and his chin fuzz had become a full-blown beard. His eyes were hollow and shadowed.

  His room didn’t look that good either, but knowing what I knew about college guys, it probably always was a mess.

  I gingerly stepped over dirty laundry on the floor. “So, how you doing?”

  “You’re looking at it,” said Parker. “Look, just tell Jill that I don’t want to talk to her right now. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “It’s not about Jill,” I said. “But, you know, she is really worried about you. You think you could call her and tell her you’re okay?”

  He set his lips in a firm line. “That it?”

  “No, it’s not it,” said Levi.

  Parker rolled his eyes. He crossed the room and picked up a can of beer. He took a long drink.

  “You and Cori,” said Levi. “You dated.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, she slept around a lot.”

  Parker let out a disbelieving laugh. “You think?”

  “Must have pissed you off,” said Levi.

  Parker drank more beer. He belched. “That’s why I dumped the bitch.”

  “Yeah, but not for a while,” said Levi. “Weren’t you guys still together right before finals, because I remember seeing you guys at that party.”

  “That was about the end of the relationship, yeah.” Parker drained the beer and crumpled the can with one hand.

  “So, you must have known that she was cheating on you before that,” said Levi.

  Parker opened up his mini-fridge and got out another beer. “No, that’s the thing, dude. I had no fucking clue. I trusted her. I was an idiot.”

  “Everyone knew that Cori got around,” said Levi.

  “I didn’t.” Parker opened the beer. “Why are you here?”

  “You knew she was cheating on you, and it pissed you off. You ever get so mad that you just…” Levi slammed a fist into his palm.

  “What?” said Parker. “No.”

  I spoke up. “Back in October, Cori had a black eye.”

  “Did she?” said Parker. “Well, I wouldn’t know, because I didn’t start dating her until the Halloween party out at the farm.” He pointed at Levi. “That was the first night I met you, actually.”

  Levi let out a breath. “You didn’t date her in October?’

  “No,” said Parker.

  “You know who did?”

  “Uh… I think his name is Chase. He doesn’t go here. He doesn’t even live in town. He lives in Renmawr. I think he was like this wannabe gangster guy or something. Cori didn’t talk about him much, not that I wanted her to go on and on about her exes.”

  Levi nodded. “All right. Let’s go.” He turned to Parker. “Thanks.”

  “Why are you asking me this shit?” he said.

  “We’re trying to figure out who killed her,” I said.

  Parker’s eyes widened. “For real?”

  I took a deep breath. “Did you do it?”

  “Me?”

  “Well, you kind of have a motive,” I said. “You were mad that she cheated on you, weren’t you?”

  Parker shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Molly. Get the fuck out of my room.” He upended the can of beer into his mouth.

  “I have to ask,” I said. “Where were you over break?”

  “Home,” he said. “In Michigan.”

  “The whole break?” said Levi.

  “I had to leave on Saturday morning, because I couldn’t get a flight on Friday,” he said. “But yeah, other than that, the whole break.” He glared at us. “Now leave.”

  * * *

  “Why do you keep asking all these questions about Cori?” Jill stood behind the desk in the art building. She was sorting folders by color.

  “Just because I’m curious about her,” I said. “I sleep in her bed, you know.”

  “Well, can we just put it on hold for a second?” she said. “Did you talk to Parker?”

  I bit my lip. “Actually, I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was drunk,” I said. “In the middle of the afternoon. Wh
ich wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it didn’t look like he hadn’t showered in days. Or changed clothes.”

  “Oh god.” Jill put her fingers to her lips. “He’s not okay, is he?”

  “He seemed out of it,” I said. “And angry. He said he didn’t want to talk to you. Or anyone.”

  She sat down heavily in her desk chair. “That’s bad. He’s in a bad place. I know that if I could just talk to him, I could help. But he won’t let me in.”

  “Yeah, we had to sneak into his room.”

  “We?”

  “Oh, Levi came with me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You brought Levi? You guys are hanging out a lot.”

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Try all the time,” she said. “He likes you. I’d bet on it.”

  I thought about the almost-kiss this afternoon. “Even if he did, it couldn’t go anywhere. He’s like a drug dealer, and he’s all…”

  “Fucking gorgeous?”

  “Well, he is nice to look at.” I twisted my hands together. “But I don’t think it would work. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Levi.”

  She sighed. “You want to talk about Cori.”

  “Kind of. Just… did you ever meet the guy she was dating before Parker? Chase?”

  Jill stood up. “Chase O’Shaunessy?”

  O’Shaunessy again. Could it be the same…? Did that even make sense?

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

  “Oh my god, Molly, that guy was so scary.”

  “So you did meet him?”

  “Once or twice,” she said. “He was at some of the parties that Cori and I went to. He’s really tall, and he has his head shaved, and he always looks down at you with this expression… I don’t know how to describe it. Like he’s the king of the world, and you’re a centipede or something.”

  “Did you ever see him… hurt Cori?”

  “No,” said Jill. “But there was this one time that she had this black eye, and she said that she ran into the wardrobe in our room, but I’m not sure if it was true.”

  “You think maybe he hit her.”

  Jill fiddled with the folders she was sorting. “I don’t know. All I know is that guy made me really nervous. He was serious all the time. Cori and I would be hanging out, laughing. And he’d come over, and he wouldn’t even crack a smile.” She shivered. “She ended up getting close to him because she was always getting people drugs, you know.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Running to 7-Eleven for beer. That’s what you compared it to.”

  “Yeah, except she was running to Chase O’Shaunessy all the time. I guess she must have had time to flirt while she was buying drugs for everyone else. Of course, Cori flirted with everyone.”

  That seemed to be the consensus. “How come you never mentioned him before?”

  “She dumped him like a week after that black eye thing, and it was all the way back in October. I guess I forgot about him.”

  “And you never saw him again after that?”

  “No.”

  “Did Cori ever have a black eye or bruises after she broke up with him?”

  Jill furrowed her brow. “Not on her face or anything. But at the beginning of December, she came home, and she was really frustrated and angry. And she was sore. When she was changing into her robe to go to the shower, I saw that there was this big bruise on her back. And when I asked her about it, she was too mad to talk about it. She said, ‘Not now, Jill.’”

  “Do you think that had anything to do with Chase O’Shaunessy?”

  “Well, they were broken up then.”

  “Yeah, but abusive guys sometimes think of girls as their property or whatever, and maybe he was angry at her for leaving him. Maybe he had to come and show her who was boss.”

  Jill stacked all the folders together. “Molly, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but your interest in Cori is kind of becoming obsessive.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s like you think there’s something more to her, but there isn’t. She’s not deep or anything. She was just a girl. A wild, crazy girl who got herself in too deep and got in trouble.”

  “Do you think that this Chase guy could have killed her?”

  “I guess so,” said Jill.

  “Why? What would his motive have been?”

  “I really don’t know.” Jill gave me a disapproving look. “You need to stop thinking about this. It’s going to drive you crazy.”

  “No,” I said. “I have to figure this out.”

  “Figure out what?”

  I hesitated, thinking again about trying to explain it to her. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Jill sighed. “Okay. Hey, do you want to help me deliver cameras to the storage closets again?” She gestured behind her at two cameras which were sitting on a desk.

  “Um… actually, I can’t. I got… stuff I have to do. I’ll see you later, okay?” I started away from her desk.

  * * *

  “Chase O’Shaunessy,” I said into the phone. I was pacing in my dorm room. “Jill thinks that he probably gave her that black eye.”

  “Shit,” said Levi. “This all makes sense.”

  “What does?” I said.

  “Well, when I first got here, all of the good X, the real pure stuff, was coming from the O’Shaunessys. You probably don’t know who they are, but they’re this huge organized crime family—Irish mafia, you know? They’re all up and down the east coast, and they got their fingers in all kinds of drug business. Everything from cocaine to heroin, you understand?”

  Actually, I did. It was those O’Shaunessys. Geez. What were the odds? “Yeah.”

  “Well, anyway, sometime around late October, early November, the product that the O’Shaunessys started dealing changed. A lot of times it was pills, not pure molly in capsules. And it was cut with shit, like that pill you got the other night. Meanwhile, Cori’s suddenly got the good shit. She must have somehow used her connection with Chase to get to Professor X and convince him to stop distributing to the O’Shaunessy family and distribute to her instead.”

  “She did?”

  “She could be really convincing,” said Levi. His voice got quieter, almost as if he was talking to himself. “But why would Professor X agree to that? Cori couldn’t possibly get the distribution that the O’Shaunessys could. She couldn’t move nearly as much product as they could. He’d be losing money. It doesn’t make sense.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  He seemed to recover. “Uh, anyway, after I found out that Cori had the good stuff, I started palling around with her, because I’ve been trying to get hooked up with Professor X for a long time.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “This is all about me trying to get better product.”

  “I know that.” This conversation was getting off topic. “Look, if what you’re saying is true, then Chase has motive. He was angry with Cori for taking away his family’s hookup to Professor X. Maybe he figured that once she was dead, Professor X would have to come back to them and start giving them his molly again.”

  Levi was quiet. “Could be.”

  “Jill said that sometime in early December, Cori came home angry and frustrated with a big bruise on her back, and she wouldn’t talk about it. So, maybe Chase beat her up again.” I thought about it. “You know, if he was hitting her, it almost doesn’t matter. Because an abusive guy might kill a girl just because. Those guys are like sociopaths.”

  “Cori got beaten up in early December?”

  “Well, Jill doesn’t know what happened, but it sounds like that, doesn’t it?”

  “You know what? Maybe we’re not thinking about this right.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “We’re not asking the right question,” he said. “We’ve been so focused on how Cori was killed or who might have her money. But we’re not asking the obvious question. Why did she owe Professor X that much money in the first place?�
�

  “Well, he gave her product, and she dealt it, right? So, she obviously owed him the money for selling the drugs.”

  “No, you don’t get it. That’s not how this works. Someone like Professor X doesn’t just give out E on consignment and wait for a dealer to pay him back. If a dealer goes to a cook, she’s going to pay him for the product, and then she’s going to mark it up and make her profit that way. So… if Cori owed Professor X money, then something must have gotten fucked up somewhere.”

  “Okay…” I was confused. “What does that have to do with Chase O’Shaunessy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe nothing. Maybe what happened is that Cori got beaten up and mugged in the beginning of December, and that’s why she was bruised. Maybe the mugger took all of her money. Maybe that money was what she was going to use to buy her next batch of pills from Professor X. And then maybe she went to him, and somehow convinced him to front her product.”

  “You just said that he would never do that.”

  “I know,” he said. “But it would make sense, wouldn’t it? That would be a reason why she might owe him money? Because he’d given her a freebie, and she had to pay back what she owed.”

  My head was spinning. “It still has nothing to do with Chase.”

  “Well, what if she wasn’t mugged? What if Chase beat her up to steal her product? What if he took the E she was going to sell?”

  “But then why would he have killed her if he’d already gotten the drugs?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he tried to do it again, and it went wrong? He accidentally hit her too hard on the head? He thought she was dead, and he tried to cover his tracks by dumping her body in the river.”

  I chewed on my lip. “Maybe.”

  “I need to talk to some of the O’Shaunessys. I think I know where I could find some guys that might be able to clear some things up for me. I’ll head over there tonight. You hang tight, and I’ll call you back tomorrow if I find anything.”

  “What? No, if you’re going somewhere, I’m coming with you.”

  “Molly, this is dangerous. You don’t want to mess with these kinds of guys. This is the mob, you know. It’s better for you to stay out of it.”

  “Trust me, I can handle it.”

  “There’s no way you’re coming along.”

  “Levi, I am coming, and you can’t stop me.”