Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  “Robbing the cradle again, Mari?” Shannon’s voice boomed from the front door. She, Laurie, and Beth cascaded into the pizza joint like a tsunami that had just rolled over Tiffany’s and the perfume counter at Saks.

  Shannon gave Rod the once-over. “Go home and play with your trucks, son, we have adult business to discuss here.”

  Rod scoffed and slid off the bar stool. I gave him a friendly goodbye smile and a tortured wink as the girls herded me off to an empty booth. Rod remained at the counter by himself, sipping his beer and giving me the occasional glance and smirk as he watched us order.

  We huddled for shoptalk. Shannon went first. “So we’ve got GHB in Hastings and Cummings, and now this Barton girl is coming forward?”

  “And the Hastings blanket was from Health Services,” I added. “Emily Barton had been to see Becker there. Lisa was having weekly sessions and so was Melinda—”

  “Yup, yup,” Laurie said, impatient for her own input. “We found out through subpoena that both the dead girls were seen there, but Holton’s claiming no records of the visits, and the parents have hired lawyers to keep it that way. Did the Barton girl give you any names yet?”

  “No, so I can’t prove any connection with the drugs and Sherman’s parties.”

  “Might not be one,” Laurie said. “Barton may have been raped but she isn’t dead.”

  I quickly answered. “Hastings and Cummings were tortured while they were still alive. And the autopsies would have shown that they died from drug OD, which they didn’t—”

  “So whoever did it wanted them dead. No accidental drug overdose,” Shannon said. “Emily Barton, so far, is a separate incident. Agreed?”

  Nick delivered our pizzas and beers to the bar, where he made me get up and bring them to the table. Nick was intimidated by women who weren’t intimidated by him. He wouldn’t come near us en masse.

  Shannon ripped a slice of pepperoni-laced triple-cheese off the tray before it hit the table and we all chewed pizza and our thoughts for a few silent minutes, until Beth spoke up, and in her quiet, self-effacing manner said, “I have an idea.”

  I grabbed a piece of dry crust abandoned on Beth’s plate, and, since we were all busy chewing anyway, we gave her our undivided attention. Poor Beth usually never got a chance to get a word in edgewise without a million interruptions.

  “Why not have Lucky do some specialized testing on the GHB in Hastings and Cummings? Maybe the chemist at forensics can determine if it’s coming from the same source. I mean, let’s face it, GHB isn’t Bayer aspirin. It’s illegal, so this guy is either making it in his kitchen or it’s coming from the same illegal source. Too much of a co-incidence that they both have it in them and they’re both Holton students.”

  “Jesus, Beth,” I said. “You’ve never spoken this much in the entire five years I’ve known you.”

  “And,” Shannon just had to add, “I’ve never known you to make this much sense.”

  “Maybe that’s because I never get to finish a sentence,” she struck back.

  “Beth is right,” Laurie said. “It won’t tell us who’s doing it, but it’ll tell us if the girls were drinking at the same watering hole.”

  “And just maybe the trough is at Riverside Park.” With that I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to go. You guys call Lucky about the GHB tests. He can’t take orders from me anymore. I’ve got to make a call to an ex-cop with a warm gun in his holster.”

  All mouths stopped chewing and turned to me. Murder is one thing. Our love lives commanded absolute attention.

  “He’s head of security at Holton,” I explained. “But he’s not all haughty and uptight like the rest of them over there. We meet to talk over the newest cases.”

  “And by that little flush on your face, I bet he’s already unholstered that warm gun of his and given you a few shots with it,” said Shannon with her eyebrows raised halfway to her hairline.

  Beth added her own sweet euphemism to Shannon’s tart mix. “You’ve smoked a cigarette with him already? That was fast. Even for you, Mari.”

  “Watch it, Beth,” I said. “And no, I haven’t slept with him yet. But I’ll tell you one thing, if he shoots his gun off the way he kisses, I’m becoming a lobbyist for Philip Morris.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  An Invitation to a Party

  NEXT MORNING AT THE office, I found Rita behind my desk swooning on the phone. She was panting when she hit the hold button and handed me the receiver. “The medical examiner’s office,” she said. “Ooh la la! What a voice.”

  It could only be Lucky’s deep, molasses-smooth drawl that was sending Rita into a pre-orgasmic state.

  “Have him come here for a meeting. I must see what he looks like,” she begged.

  “Morgan Freeman,” I said as I took the receiver from her hand.

  She rearranged her breasts in their uplift bra and walked back to her office.

  “Hi, Lucky,” I said.

  “Miz Melone, I’m sorry to bother you, but can I trouble you for an address on that Cummings girl? I got some documents to send off to her family and we have her dormitory as her legal address.”

  “Why don’t you send the stuff to me and I’ll forward it?”

  Lucky laughed, deep and low. Rita was right; his voice was sexy. “Now, Miz M, you don’t think I’m stupid, do ya, or are you askin’ me to do something not quite kosher?”

  “All right, but do they say anything I don’t already know?”

  “Nope. Just prelim death certificate for insurance purposes and whatnot.”

  I quickly pulled up Lisa’s data sheet, surprisingly not yet purged from our system, and read off her home address to him. “And what’s the official cause of death?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be telling you that either.”

  “Oh, come on, Lucky. How many bottles of champagne did the girls and I bring you? Autopsy tables set with extra-large gauze pads. Chilled lobsters. We toasted Moët in sterilized beakers! Suddenly you can’t trust me?”

  He sighed heavily over the phone to let me know he was telling me reluctantly. It was a warning sigh: Don’t make me regret this or it’ll be the last time I tell you anything.

  “Drugged but not dead yet, then raped, then he cut her face up. In that order. She ends up bleeding to death. And that drug of course . . .”

  “GHB?”

  “Sure . . .”

  His voice kept trailing off. The girls must have already gotten to him with their request for further testing on the GHB.

  “Lucky, I already know about the tests. Can it be done?”

  “We can try, but you know we’re not testing from a pure sample. Not that easy when it’s from different people.”

  “What do you think the odds are of finding anything probative?”

  “I’m not thinking nothing. Thinking is not my job here.”

  “I know you, Lucky. If there’s something there, you’ll find it. You’re the best investigator in the state.”

  “Don’t you go polishing me up. That’s beneath you to use them tactics.”

  “But it’s true, Lucky. You’re the best because you love it.”

  “Are you prosecuting this case? ’Cuz I’m not sure I can tell you so much without getting my wings clipped over here.”

  “You know I’m not an AAG anymore. But I’ll just get Shannon or Laurie to tell me. What’s the difference?”

  “Better that way ’cuz I get to keep my job.”

  “Okay. I understand.”

  “No problem, Miz Melone. And hey, we’re still having them tailgate parties out back. Cold lobsters and beer straight from the chiller. No champagne since you girls ain’t been coming around.”

  “We’ll have a visit soon.”

  THE HOURS TICKED by until early afternoon, when Elliot appeared at my door, two feet imbedded at the thresh old like steel fence posts. When I finally noticed him he looked as if he’d been staring at me for a few seconds at least.

  “Your secretar
y isn’t at her desk,” he said. Without further invitation, he walked in and sat in front of my desk. “I have that story for you.”

  He laid the proposed newspaper article he had written on my desk as he spoke. “Emily Barton. I heard she’s leaving school at the end of this semester and not coming back.”

  Once again I was out of the loop. I hadn’t heard even the whisper of that rumor. Did my little friend Elliot have any other scoop to offer?

  “Elliot, were you tutoring either Lisa or Emily?”

  He shook his head. “Like most of the socialites in this place, they borrow my notes and pass them around like contraband sex magazines and eventually I get them back. But lately a lot of these kids don’t even care about passing their courses anymore.”

  “Emily Barton told me she and Lisa had been studying together the night Lisa was killed. I think that’s messing up Emily’s mind. She might be the last person to have seen Lisa alive.”

  Elliot nodded, noncommittal.

  Okay, nothing additional there.

  “She said she left, and they were supposed to meet up later at a party but Lisa never showed. Was the party at Sherman’s?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

  “And what about Cory Sherman? I just don’t see him cutting up faces, especially while his victims are alive.”

  He shrugged again as if that were the least important element of the murders. “What makes this guy tick? That’s what you have to ask yourself. Figure out where he gets pleasure and then predict his next move.”

  “Pleasure? I never understood that. Pleasure from killing.”

  “Cops always put so much importance on modus operandi. I think they just want to impress people with Latin phraseology.”

  “MO fits on a microscope slide easier than motive.”

  Elliot was in some realm of higher thinking and was barely listening to me. He was staring at the wall over my head as if he was already mentally composing the newspaper article. “It’s like giving someone an aspirin for a brain tumor. The way a killer kills is a symptom of the disease. Figuring out the reason he kills is the cure. That’s when the killing stops.”

  “Forget about the journalist career. How about a career in forensic psychiatry?”

  “Whatever. I never even open a book because I can almost predict what the texts say. And I’ve been tortured with a photographic memory. I see things once and they’re forever embedded in my brain. School is boring.”

  “Oh, right. You scored, what, second in the country on the SATs?”

  “I got one question wrong. And they ended up discounting it because it had two possible answers.”

  “I have a sister who can’t manage to budge from 1200.”

  “I can help her. That’s what I do best.” Elliot spoke with such an audible shrug that I wasn’t sure what drove him. He seemed not to care if I gave him a hot tip for a news story, analyzed the murders with him all day, or hired him to tutor Cassie in her SATs.

  “Why did you come to Holton instead of a big gun like Harvard?”

  “Money. Holton offered a full scholarship.”

  “Do you get paid for the tutoring?”

  “Sometimes. But I don’t do it for the money. I told you I’m bored—and it’s a great way to meet girls, since I can’t impress them with my convertible sports car the way Cory and most of the others do. Except Rod. I don’t think his family’s in the same league with the rest of them either. But he looks the part better than I do. You know, that windblown, I-just-got-off-my-yacht look.”

  “I always liked the nerdy type in college—um . . . not that you’re nerdy . . .”

  “That’s okay. I know who I am. But the problem is, the girls here don’t like the nerdy types. They’re more impressed with money and social status. Ergo, Sherman et al.’s popularity. I guess that’s why I like hanging around you. You appreciate the cerebral type.”

  For the briefest second I thought of Mike McCoy. If Elliot was right about me, I wondered how Mike McCoy had managed to infiltrate my brain trust of “ cerebral-type” boyfriends.

  “Hey, can you get my sister’s SAT scores up before her next try?”

  “Pretty sure I can. I’ve done it before. A lot of it’s just teaching someone the tricks in the questions. You don’t have to know much to score high on SATs.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “People are getting killed on this campus. Not the safest place in the world to be right now—which of course is what has Dean Carlyle so frantic. I can’t imagine that more of the female students aren’t taking the semester off.”

  “A couple have already transferred out permanently. But your sister will be quite safe with me. Especially if she’s anything like you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Out in the open, readable, authentic.”

  “I’m that one-dimensional, huh?”

  “No, you’re like a fine piece of cut crystal. Sharp-edged and multifaceted but as lucid as a Zeiss lens.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, but this conversation is making me uncomfortable, so let’s drop it.”

  “I will make sure no one even gets near your sister on this campus. Satisfied?”

  “Nonetheless, all tutoring shall take place in public areas. Is that clear?”

  “Of course.”

  I gave Elliot Cassie’s home and cell phone numbers and told him to call her. “I’ll let her know to expect your call. She won’t be thrilled, I assure you.”

  I thought I espied a new jauntiness in his demeanor as he popped out of his chair to leave. I had given him another job and he was happy.

  “Figure out the motive, Miss Melone.” He turned to leave. “And I’ll call your sister.”

  After he disappeared down the hall, I read the highlights of his proposed story on Emily’s date rape. Perfect in its sparseness and lack of emotion, the article calmly demanded attention. Elliot’s writing was a cold performance in linear conviction. Holton student to leave school before she identifies her legacied Holton stalker. Elliot had been a little careless in pointing his finger in the direction of legacied students, but I forgave him that. He, like me, wasn’t particularly fond of spoiled brats either.

  At four-thirty I was ready to leave for the day. (Of course, the promise of dinner with Mike made me want four-thirty to be six.) I jingled my car keys in my right pocket as I walked briskly out of my office.

  Trotting down the steps of Langley, I saw Cory Sherman and Rod Lipton approaching with an entourage of other similarly clad prepsters. As they got closer Rod recognized me first and whispered something to Cory. The group of six kids surrounded me. I felt as if I were in the middle of a rumble between rival gangs. And I was the sole member of my own gang.

  “Miss Melone,” Rod said. “How are you?”

  I stopped. “Good evening, Mr. Lipton.”

  Cory then moved easily to the front of the group and took my hand from my side to shake it when I had no intention of offering it to him. I looked into eyes so pale blue that they seemed like amorphous pools melting into the whites of his eyes. In the harsh daylight his skin was without color, pale and thin; blue veins like ink lines were visible on his temples where his straight blond hair was casually whisked to the side. When Cory Sherman was an old man I imagined he would be hunched over and walk with a cane; long, sparse strands of grayish blond hair would be stuck to his balding head; his temples would be sunken in; and his teeth, now white and capped to twice their size, would be the only remnant of his youth, and would protrude from his thin lips like the scowl of a growling dog. In youth, he had an ethereal translucency, but with age he would begin to melt away into a hoary old ghost.

  I quickly withdrew my hand from his.

  Cory’s veneered teeth broke through his thin lips. “Winona Ryder—that’s who you look like, except for your height. She’s tiny. Barely came up to my chin when I was talking to her at the Oscars last year.”

 
“Hey, that reminds me,” one of the other cohorts said to him. “Your uncle promised Carlyle a whole row of tickets. You working on that? Or we’ll be in the soup with him.”

  “A whole row?” I said.

  “He gives them to the bigger Holton donors along with season tickets to the Patriots games,” his friend bragged. “Hey, Rod tells us he invited you to one of Cory’s shindigs. You were just toying with him though, right? You wouldn’t really come.”

  “Sure I would. I get to talk to students only after they’re in some kind of trouble. I like to talk to the students before that. Get to know them better.”

  Rod’s face was a blank canvas. Cory smiled. “This weekend then, come on by.” He looked at Rod. “Friday, Saturday. Right, Rod, old boy?”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take it under consideration.”

  “Stop by. You have no idea how much fun we can be.”

  Rod pulled Cory by the sleeve. “Let’s go, buddy. We’ll see you later then, Miss Melone.”

  The other boys all rallied around them with assorted smirks and supportive laughter as Cory and Rod sauntered away. It was difficult to gauge their sincerity, but little old skeptic me figured there was a good chance Cory would go straight to Carlyle to complain about me and I’d hear about this encounter before the day was out. Give me a good old-fashioned bank robber any day rather than this crew of privileged misfits.

  And speaking of misfits, Mike McCoy awaited. . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Baby, Baby, Baby

  CHEZ PASCAL’S WAS AN out-of-the-way French restaurant on Hope Street, owned by a smart Italian chef from Boston who knew there were some uppity East Siders damn tired of spaghetti and meatballs. I had told Mike to meet me at the bar, and there he sat with a glass of red wine in his hand, watching the silent movie of a college basketball game to the accompaniment of Edith Piaf.

  From the back, Mike was square. If I hadn’t seen his taut muscles at the gym, I wouldn’t know what was underneath his loose-fitting clothes. His navy blue blazer was tossed over the bar stool next to him. The cuffs of his blue shirt were rolled up beyond his wrists, where the dark hairs were sparsely suggesting what lay beyond, and his olive green wide-wale corduroy pants were cuffed and baggy. I couldn’t see his feet, but I imagined his navy and gray argyle socks under rubber-soled loafers.