“Future captains of industry,” Epps muttered.
“God help us,” Roarke agreed.
They were met at the door by a tall, buff, square-jawed young man, fully dressed, with a practiced smile—and gray eyes as cold as steel.
“Agent Roarke?” The young man stuck his hand out toward Roarke without having to be told which agent was which, then turned to Epps with suspiciously exaggerated courtesy.
“And Agent Epps. I’m Topher Stephens, chapter president. Our IFC liaison said you were coming by.”
As he ushered them into the front hall, there was thumping on the staircase beside them. A group of guys trampled down, looking the agents over as they passed, en route to the front door.
Stephens nodded to the group before he turned back to the agents. “Kirk called ahead,” he said. “He said you’d want to talk to Cutler and Vogel. I’ve got them in here.” Stephens led the agents through double doors into a smaller, more private, library-ish room. “Where you can talk in peace.”
Roarke glanced around at glassed-in bookcases, an impressive bar. Two young men were seated in the room, both white and tanned, blandly good looking. One was taller, one was heavier, but they were otherwise indistinguishable from each other.
“Rick Cutler, Neal Vogel,” Stephens said, gesturing to the taller one first, then the heavier.
“Thanks. We’ll take it from here,” Roarke said to Stephens, and looked at the double doors.
Stephens frowned, but he left the room, closing the doors behind him.
The agents turned to the boys, and Roarke got straight to the point. “Why don’t you take us through what happened the night before last?”
The one called Vogel answered first. “We were studying at the house and needed some munchies to keep going?” The question mark at the end was typical Southern California—not a question, just a verbal tic.
Epps gave Roarke a neutral look that said exactly what Roarke was thinking. “Studying at the house” was code for “partying.” Going for “munchies” was code for “beer run.” They were maybe even meeting a dealer.
Cutler took over the narrative. “We were just going a few blocks to the 7-Eleven, decided to walk along the bluffs.”
Roarke tracked this in his mind. The campus was a five- or ten-minute walk from the frat house. Cordoba Road ran right into the campus at Ocean Road, which ended at the bluffs. Everything was close in Isla Vista.
“This was about what time?”
“After midnight. Prolly close to one.”
“Kind of late for a stroll, isn’t that?” Epps suggested. “Any particular reason you headed for the bluffs?”
The bulkier one, Vogel, was instantly belligerent. “Why shouldn’t we be out on the bluffs?”
“Not saying you shouldn’t be,” Roarke said.
Cutler shot the big one a look. “We were just walking.”
“Not really much in that area, though, is there?”
Cutler stared at him. “The ocean. The lagoon.”
“Out for the scenery, then,” Roarke suggested. “In the dark.”
The boys were silent.
Epps spread a campus map out on the table. “Show us.”
Cutler traced a path with his finger—Cordoba Road to Ocean Road, then onto a trail that wound past two dorm complexes.
“So you were on the bluffs and . . .”
“We didn’t see her coming,” Cutler said. “All of a sudden she was just there. This—hooded thing. Cape and hood. And the face was a skull. I mean, yeah, right, it was a mask. But for a second . . .” He shuddered.
“So this figure was wearing a mask and cape.”
“A cape, or a poncho, maybe. Something flowy.”
Roarke nodded. “If this person’s face was covered, and their body was covered, how do you know it was a female?”
Vogel frowned. “Well—a dude wouldn’t do that to a dummy, right?”
“The dummy hung from the tower?” Roarke asked. “Which you didn’t know about until the morning after, right?”
Vogel looked confused. “But . . . we know now.”
Cutler gave Vogel another warning glance. “We figure it was a girl by the way she moved. Definitely not a guy.”
Roarke raised his eyebrows. “The way she moved? Slinky? Girly?”
“No, she was fast. Really fast. But it wasn’t the way a guy would move.”
Roarke looked over the map Epps had spread on the coffee table.
The dummy had been hung from Storke Tower, which was just a minute or two away from the lagoon. Roarke figured there had been more than one—Tagger? Vandal? Bitch? He was at a loss for words to describe the perpetrators here.
But the Lagoon Trail looped around to the bluffs. So conceivably the hooded figure had been one of a few who had hung the dummy, then made a beeline toward the Lagoon Trail and ran straight into the boys.
“Did this person confront you?” he asked. “Attack you? Did she touch you?”
The boys shifted, without speaking.
“Did she try to injure you? Did she threaten you at all?” The brothers were silent.
Roarke walked in a circle, exasperated. “Look, guys. You reported that she attacked you—”
Vogel blurted out, “We didn’t say ‘attacked.’”
Roarke frowned. “That’s what Kirk Sandler told us.”
“Well, we didn’t say ‘attacked.’”
Roarke backtracked in his own mind. So it was Sandler who had exaggerated the incident.
But why?
“All right, so you didn’t report an attack. But you did report an incident.”
Cutler spoke up. “Hey, we didn’t know what we were dealing with. If this chick was armed, or what . . .”
“Did you think she was after you in particular?”
The boys exchanged a glance. Again it was Cutler who answered. “Well . . . she came right at us. No joke, she was barreling down.”
“How tall was she?”
Cutler stood and indicated a spot at about his collarbone. Five-six, five-seven.
Epps nodded. “Not too big, then. And there were two of you. Big guys.”
They squirmed a bit, embarrassed.
Epps continued. “But you were stoned, weren’t you? That’s what freaked you out.”
“It wasn’t just that,” Vogel said. Cutler shot him a look, and he amended, “It wasn’t that. She was, like, hyped up. It wasn’t normal.”
Adrenaline, of course, Roarke thought. If she’d just hung the dummy off the tower, she’d be flying with it.
He shook his head. “Seriously, guys. You’ve walked those paths before, hundreds of times. I assume you’ve been high before. You’ve seen people in costume. So what I don’t get is—why was this so freakish to you? Why did you feel a need to report it?”
“We didn’t. Not at first,” Cutler protested.
“It was when we saw what they did to that dummy. You saw that, right?” Vogel asked pointedly.
Roarke looked at him. “But the painting on the tower was very specific.”
The boys looked blank.
“What it said was, ‘You’re next, rapist.’ Any reason that should scare you?”
Cutler looked away. Vogel muttered, “Some crazy bitches are out there. How do I know what they’re thinking?”
“But do you have a particular reason for thinking these protesters will come after you?”
Cutler understood the question. He looked up, glared at him. “No.”
“Then is there anyone in the house who might be a more likely target than anyone else?”
The boys were silent.
“Because the targets here are really specific. You get that, right? If there’s anyone here under suspicion of rape, for any reason, whether that’s right or not, that guy is vulnerable.”
Still no answer. Just a lot of seething.
Roarke and Epps looked at each other. Both stood at the same time, and Roarke spoke. “Guys, here’s the thing. You’re playing
victim here—you seem to want us to protect you, but you’re not telling us why. We can’t help you if you’re not going to be straight with us. You think a little harder about those questions, and when you’re ready to answer, you let us know.”
Chapter Thirteen
The IX meeting was on the fourth floor of a building on Storke Plaza, in a classroom with generic tables and chairs . . . and a wall of windows that overlooked the ocean.
The view actually stopped Jade in her tracks for a moment as she came through the door. Crazy that you could go to class and have the whole ocean right out there in front of you.
There were fifteen other girls scattered in the room, different sizes, different ages.
One girl stood at the front, beside a whiteboard with a huge scrawled IX. She was blond, white. She looked Jade over as she came in, and Jade stiffened, but the other girl’s gaze was direct, friendly. “Hey, I’m Liz. This your first meeting?”
That was easy. “Yeah. I saw the flyer. I’m Tory,” Jade lied without a second thought.
“Welcome, Tory.”
Jade saw an empty seat and took it. No one even asked her if she was enrolled at the school. But really, people almost never asked that kind of thing. If you were there, they assumed you had a right to be there. She looked enough like the rest of them—but the truth was she was just sixteen. The street will do that to you. She knew she could pass for thirty, if she felt like it. So much of life was about playing into what people thought they were seeing.
By the time the meeting started, the room was packed, standing room only, students drawn by the vandalism at the tower.
The girl named Liz said, “I know we have a lot of new people here, so we want to talk about what Nine is all about. We call ourselves ‘Nine’ after Title IX: a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in an educational institution’s programs and activities. Title IX requires institutions to take necessary steps to prevent sexual assault on their campuses and to respond promptly and effectively when such conduct is reported . . .”
Jade found herself fidgeting.
She knew the kind of cases Liz was talking about. Roofies in a drink, separate the girl from the pack—up to your room or down to the basement—invite your dudebros in for a turn. Boys will be boys.
Well, fuck that. Time to shake this shit up.
“So who did the hanging?” she asked abruptly.
Everyone turned to look at her. There were glances, some low key, some not.
“And seriously, how’d you get the dummy up there? ’Cause that was off the hook.”
“That wasn’t Nine,” Liz said.
Jade widened her eyes. “FR? It must’ve been one of y’all.” She looked around the room. “You musta had a plan about the campus cops and security cameras, right?”
There were exchanged glances all around her.
“I have no idea who did that,” Liz said firmly.
Jade smiled. “Riiight. I get you. I just wanted to say, that was savage.” She lowered her voice. “Is there another meeting for that?”
Liz looked uncomfortable. “We’re working through the Title IX program. We collect data for lawsuits—”
Jade interrupted her, feigning innocence. “But Title IX is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education, right?” She’d heard all about it at the ranch. “And who’s running the Department of Education now? That Holy Roller flake? How are those Title IX cases going under her?”
Liz was completely flustered now. “That’s why we have to keep the pressure on—”
Jade had had enough. “But what do you want?”
“In general?” Liz asked.
“In everything. What do you want?” Jade turned to others in the room, challenging.
After a beat, she heard murmurs from the girls: “No more rape culture.” “End rape culture.” “End rape.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Jade looked deliberately around at all of them, a hard stare. “And you think that’s gonna happen? With laws? Really? When sixty-seven percent of judges are men? When eighty-eight percent of cops are men? Eighty-one percent of Congress? Seventy-nine percent of senators? WTF, y’all?”
She’d been listening in those Bitch meetings, all right. She’d heard the numbers. She’d heard more than what she needed to hear to understand that shit wasn’t changing without some serious revolution.
“You have actually seen what’s running the country right now, haven’t you? Well, good luck changing that in our lifetime.”
She could feel the tension in the room, the girls shifting, the anxiety and fear. There were some whispers, but she ignored them. So what if it was harsh? It was true. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Someone raised a hand, asked tentatively, “What are you saying we should do?”
“I’m saying that you need to step this shit up.” Her voice was hard and merciless. “You want to end rape, you need to start thinking about ending rapists.”
Liz looked aghast. “That’s not us. That’s not what we do.”
“Well, someone out there sounds ready.” Jade stood, walked to the whiteboard, picked up the pen, and printed an anonymous email address on the board in bold strokes. “That’s who I am. And that’s the someone I want to talk to.”
She turned around and walked out.
Coming out of the building, Jade was hyper. Her face was flushed, her skin felt too tight. She walked with a jerky stride back toward the plaza.
Inside she was roiling. She didn’t know what to feel. Some of these girls—the single worst experience of their life was something she’d gone through on a nightly basis, sometimes four or five times a night. Sack of shit losers using her body as if she were some kind of trash dump.
You think one night can ruin your life? Try living it for a year. Or two. Or four. That was how long ago it was that Darrell and his dumbfuck friends . . .
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
She is back in the farmhouse . . . men crowded around . . . hands holding her down on the bed . . .
She gasped aloud.
She was standing still on the path. A couple of girls looked at her warily as they approached.
She stared back at them until they moved on in a hurry.
Well, she wasn’t about to say anything about all that to anyone. And have them look at her the way they would? Fuck that. She wasn’t talking.
But someone—someone out there is ready to do some business. Maybe not anyone in that meeting. But someone.
She felt something, like eyes on her back, the feeling she used to get when she was being cruised on the street. Sometimes you could just tell somebody was watching.
She turned, glancing around her.
She saw a pale flash of face in the shadow of a building and froze.
The skeleton.
Then that someone stepped into the late afternoon sunlight.
Another girl.
She moved toward Jade. Short black hair and a bowler hat. A black leotard under overalls. Older than Jade by a few years, but she looked older than that. Her face was strained and pale.
She jerked her head toward the building where the IX meeting had been.
“You said you wanted to know.”
Chapter Fourteen
When the agents left the frat house, Topher Stephens was at the door to see them out. Roarke would have bet money he’d been within earshot during the whole interview.
The agents said their goodbyes and walked out to the street. Once they were a safe distance away, headed for the car, they looked at each other under the darkening sky.
Epps spoke first. “Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. ‘Attacked,’ my ass.”
“That was the one thing we did get out of them. It was Sandler who was calling it an attack.”
Epps was silent, thinking on it.
“So why this intense reaction from Sandler?” Roarke asked, thinking aloud. “It’s not just that those guys are spooked. Sandler is
spooked.”
“So he hauls out the FBI connections, calls in whatever chits he has with Reynolds or whoever to investigate this crap . . .”
Roarke shook his head. “That’s not quite how he told it, though. Sounded like that frat council made a complaint, and someone inside the Bureau homed in on these guys here as potential witnesses.”
The men had reached the car, but Roarke stopped beside it without getting in. He was sure Topher Stephens was watching them and Roarke figured it couldn’t hurt to make these boys nervous. They weren’t exactly rocket scientists—and he wanted them jumpy enough to slip up.
He stared off toward the ocean, a visible gleam four blocks away at the end of the street. Finally he said, “Someone’s going to have to decide to talk to us. Until they do—” He ran his hand through his hair. “Go back to the hotel and call room service. Charge it to the room.”
After all, Sandler was paying for it.
Epps stared at him, then laughed, catching on. “A steak would taste just fine . . .”
“Lobster. A nice bottle of wine . . .”
“All this hard work we’re doing.”
“Got to keep our strength up.”
“Got that right.”
“Fortify yourself,” Roarke ordered. “Call your woman. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Epps looked at him questioningly. Roarke nodded toward the ocean, the sunset. “I’m going to take a walk. Clear my head. I’ll Lyft back.”
Chapter Fifteen
Bowler hat girl’s name was Kris.
She was interesting. There was almost a trans vibe about her—or a femme who was experimenting with butch. But not really. “Genderfluid” was the word.
Which was cool. Gender was just another trap. But Jade got the feeling that whatever transition was going on was recent.
By silent agreement, the girls didn’t speak as they walked down from the tower and along the lagoon path. The water was alive with waterfowl: ducks, pelicans, even a flock of white herons standing knee deep in the murky shallows, dipping for fish. The breeze smelled of the ocean. It was so peaceful, a whole sanctuary right here in the middle of campus.
The trail ended at a small beach cove, and other paths went up the bluffs on either side.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 7
