by Linda Ladd
Ducking into her room, he found the clothes she’d been wearing at the court scattered around on the floor, and he quickly took them and stuffed them inside his pajama top. He wasn’t any authority on crime scenes, but he knew about DNA and rape kits from watching The First 48 on A&E network. Nobody was gonna find out that he was with her last, uh uh. He glanced around for a note, found one propped on her pillow, and stuffed it inside his shirt alongside her soiled clothes.
Biding his time until a couple of paramedics rushed down the hallway with a rolling gurney, he managed to use the confusion that caused to return to his room undetected. Buddy was gone who knew where, so Tee opened the note Lotus had left and silently read:
Good-bye. It won’t stop. Not ever. I can’t take it anymore. Yang Wei, I love you and I’m sorry about this.
That was all the scrap of paper said and was way too sketchy to figure out. He went back to the doorway and ran into Buddy a few yards down the hall. He was sobbing his head off. “She’s dead. Dead. They can’t revive her.”
Tee took Buddy back to their room and watched him fall on the bed and weep like his best friend had just offed herself. He was such a little sissy of a boy. The girl had made this decision. Nobody else. What had happened was her own fault. Certainly not Tee’s. He wasn’t about to feel guilty for what she’d done to herself.
During the next few weeks, Tee settled into the clinic’s routine and made damn sure everybody liked him so he wouldn’t be suspected of any kind of wrongdoing in Lotus’s death. It was easy as pie, too. But sometimes he was plagued by Lotus killing herself. Yang Wei had gone off and not come back, and nobody knew where he was. Tee grew more and more intrigued by the girl’s sudden rash act, and that he was involved in a real suicide this time, not one he’d conjured up to explain the “accidents” he caused in his own family.
Deciding that the only way to find out what had driven the stupid girl to end her life would be an in-depth look into her medical files, he made his plans. By now, Buddy was wrapped around his little finger. Buddy just loved Tee, to the sick point even, but more important, Buddy loved the way he got to be both the constant companion and roommate of the most popular kid at the clinic. If Tee told Buddy to keep his mouth shut, the kid did it, no questions, and that did make everything so much easier.
So they made their little pact. Buddy got to be the lookout, his mission to distract the nurses while Tee snuck into the office wing, especially the one named Maggie, who had seemed to hate Tee on first sight. That part went off just fine, and Tee crept up toward the offices of the staff doctors. This late at night, that area of the clinic was all dark, except for a few night-lights positioned along the base of the corridors to lead people outside, in case of fire. Moving along, he tried every door all the way down to his own therapist’s office. He had learned to pick locks a long time ago, when his mom hid her daily journal in a locked drawer and he’d wanted to know all her secrets. He’d found out lots of useful information that way, and he’d also found his dad’s will in there; he was a little disappointed to find that the family’s considerable wealth would be divided equally among all his children. That was a bummer and hit Tee hard at the time. Tee was the favorite and should get it all. And maybe he would someday.
The tumblers finally clicked into place, and he tiptoed inside and glanced around. All darkness and crouching shadows from the faint illumination of a dusk-to-dawn lamp affixed to the end of the building. He knew from watching his doctor that he kept his files in a locked cabinet hidden under one of the bookshelves. Tee moved to it and shined his penlight on the lock. It was even easier than the one on the door. He found Lotus’s file listed under her false name and opened it up on the floor behind a leather couch.
Taking his time, he read through the whole thing with interest and found her medical history all laid out for him. He also found she had been sexually abused by her dad when she lived in China, so forcefully at times that she ended up damaged inside her womb and couldn’t ever have children. She’d been raped again when she was on tour with the Olympic team, this time by her trusted coach. Gee whiz, that kid was a rape magnet. Of course, he hadn’t really raped her. She hadn’t struggled, had she? She had just lain there underneath him, as if she was secretly enjoying the whole thing but wouldn’t admit it. Of course, she had been enjoying it. What girl wouldn’t? Everybody talked about how good looking he was.
When he finished perusing the last page, he closed her file and clicked off the penlight. So that was the problem. Lotus had been traumatized by rapists her whole life, and his lovemaking might have pushed her over the top. She had probably gone into some kind of psychological state where she thought he was not Tee but one of her real rapists. Wow. He felt a certain sense of power glow hot inside him and got really excited about such a revelation.
Was it possible that he could manipulate any of the kids around here into killing themselves? How handy would that be if they annoyed him or got in his way? Man, alive, what an awesome thought! He could control what they did, how they got well, or better yet, didn’t get well. All without dirtying his hands or tying their hair to a swimming pool drain or pushing them off a cliff. The possibilities were splendidly mind-boggling.
Alive with the thrill of it all, he switched the light back on and pulled out Buddy’s file. Aha. Buddy was paranoid, afraid everybody was out to get him. Now that was interesting as hell. And that kind of psychological problem would be incredibly easy to provoke. Tee smiled to himself. He had a feeling he was going to learn a lot at this place. He was gonna have a real good time messing up these freaks.
Thoroughly intrigued, he took some time to read through some other kids’ files, just for future reference. Man, what a sick bunch of losers. There was no telling how much damage he could do to their eggshell psyches, and most of the kids were in here being treated for their suicidal tendencies anyway. He could probably make the whole lot of them kick themselves off, and nobody would be the wiser. Chuckling softly at the thought of how easy it was all gonna be, he turned off the flashlight and headed swiftly and silently back to his room.
ELEVEN
Missouri State University lies in the heart of the city of Springfield, Missouri. It is a great school in a great town with an enrollment of about ten thousand students. Bud’s liaison officer at the Springfield PD, an old friend of his named Dak, identified the missing girl’s dorm as Hammons House. It was pouring rain and had been all the way down to the university. We stopped out front, across Harrison Street from the eight-story, high-rise dorm, and waited for a couple of cars to pass by before we ran through sheeting rain and mist to the front doors.
On our mad dash, we passed about twenty coeds running hither and there in very short shorts and halter tops. Bud eyed each in turn, an equal opportunity leerer, and no doubt rating most of them a 10 in his trusty black book. Thus he became more rain spattered than I, because I ran like hell for the lobby. Actually, most of those young things were a 10 in anybody’s black book. Where were all the MSU guys?
Once inside the building, I found out the answer to that question quick enough. There was a Cardinals baseball game on the big-screen TV, broadcast out of Atlanta. We’d heard on the radio on the drive down when Bud was scarfing down fish, hush puppies, and apple pie that the game was running late, due to a rain delay, but now the bad weather was apparently over. Lots of college boys attending the summer session, or should I say, young men, were lounging around, drinking sodas, and eating hot wings and pepperoni pizza. I guess their dates had to wait until after the ninth inning. I wiped some of the rain off my face with my sleeve, never big on umbrellas, and we walked to the front desk, flashed our badges, and nearly made the young woman manning it faint with trepidation.
“Hey, you’re not in trouble, miss,” Bud reassured her, “At least, not yet.”
Well, that didn’t help.
I said, “We’re here about the Missouri State girl who went missing. The Springfield police gave us permission to enter her room
and look around. They were supposed to call and pave the way.”
“Oh, yeah, they did. A real cute guy named Dak told me to do whatever you want me to. Poor Li. I don’t know what happened to her, but I bet it’s not something good.”
If Li was our gal, it definitely wasn’t good. “Her name’s Li? What’s her last name?”
“Li He. But they say it the other way around in China, I think.”
Li He. Sounded like a subtle chuckle. “Could you leave the desk long enough to escort us upstairs?”
“Sure, there’s a girl in the back room who can cover for me. Or I can just give you a key to Li’s suite and let you take a look around. Her suite mates are still living there, though, so you might ought to knock.”
“Okay, we’ll take the key and let you do your job. Thanks for your help.”
She handed the key to Bud, because he was a hot guy and girls had a habit of giving him keys, I guess. But he was really hitting the jackpot in that regard on this case. Debbie Winters came to mind. We headed for the elevators, just as somebody hit a home run. Bud said, “Just a sec, I wanna see if that was the Braves or the Cards. Please God, let it be the Braves.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Bud, watch the replays later on Sports-Center. It’s getting late.”
My idea didn’t appeal to him, and I stood leaning against the wall beside the elevator as he hightailed it to the lounge and checked out the score. A true Atlantan, his face showed joy and so did the whoop he let out. I could’ve told him it wasn’t the Cards who scored by the lack of uproar of young male voices. I heard a couple of jeers aimed in Bud’s direction and was glad he was armed.
When he reached me, I said, “Being a Braves fan around here is not healthy, Bud. You gotta know that.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I thought they were gonna attack me, but I got big money riding on this game in the department pool. I am gonna win this time, just watch.”
“What’d you call big?”
“Twenty bucks.”
We rode up in a smudged stainless-steel elevator with a girl who had a cloud of perfume hanging off her that made me think I needed to prune some lilac bushes. She was carrying neatly folded clothes in an oval-shaped wicker hamper. Now there was a mother who taught her daughter well. Most of us saved our dirty clothes in a big smelly duffel bag for the next time we went home. I remembered that much about my brief college days at LSU, not that I ever had a real home to go to. I spent most college breaks in the dorm by myself, or with a couple of foreign exchange students from Zimbabwe or Kenya, but it was better than trying to survive some of my foster parents’ holiday uncheer.
Li He lived on the third floor. Way down at the end. The corridor was dead silent, all the gals out baring their bodies and all the males whooping and hollering at the TV or Bud. Except for one room we passed, where some loud music blared out into the corridor. John Mayer, I think. Whatever happened to Quiet Hours? Probably nonexistent now, a thing of the past. Nobody came to college to study anymore. Or maybe iPods were alien devices and had taken over the campus.
Room 315 overlooked the street running behind the dormitory. I caught a glimpse of the Hammonds Tower in downtown Springfield, looming up in all its black-windowed glory. I always thought it looked like some evil monolith out of a science fiction movie, the kind that took over your mind if you touched its sleek dark walls. Maybe it did, who knows? I always heard there was this super exclusive eating place on the top level with only hotsy-totsy types imbibing of its salad bar. I heard you had to have a special key to gain entrance. How pretentious is that, I ask you. Probably served some of those gross snails, too.
Tapping a knuckle on the door, Bud blew on his palm and said, “Does my breath smell like onions? Harve put tons of them in those hush puppies.”
“Who’re you expecting to answer the door? Charlize Theron?”
“Man, I wish.” Bud fumbled around for a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, his favorite breath freshener, found it, folded a piece, and popped it in his mouth. He stuck the wrapper in his jeans pocket with the rest of them.
When nobody answered after about five minutes, I knocked on the door and made it loud enough to wake up the dead. Not a good analogy. Sorry. We had a key, but we didn’t want to walk in on anything x-rated. On a college campus, you just never knew.
Bud leaned against the door and I looked at a poster thumbtacked on a door just across the hall. It was Brad Pitt in his little loincloth/skirt thing from that Troy movie. Must be a girls’ suite. He looked pretty damn hot, if I say so myself. I said, “Brad Pitt’s from Springfield, you know that, Bud?”
“Yeah, I heard about it. You think he’ll bring Angelina around here or better yet, up to the lake, and maybe we’ll get to bust them for disturbing the peace, or jaywalking with baby carriages, somethin’ like that, and then we’d get to sweat them at the station? I’ll take Angelina. You can have Pitt. I think his looks are overrated.”
“Yeah, right. Tell that to any woman you pass on the street and see how bad they beat on you.”
“They’ve been seen around Springfield. It could happen.”
“In your dreams. They’ve got way too many kids now to have time to create disturbances, unless it’s for excessive baby crying.”
“I heard John Goodman’s from around here, too. You know, he’s the husband on Roseanne. That true?”
I said, “No, he’s from St. Louis, I think, but somebody said he went to school here on a football scholarship.”
“Know what else? Jenna Fischer, that girl that plays Pam on The Office? She’s from Missouri, too. I heard that her parents or somebody kin to her lives up around Camdenton.”
“What’s The Office?”
“Don’t you ever watch TV, Claire?”
“Sometimes I watch Dr. Phil, but I’ve got to be really bored.”
Tired of our rendition of Inside Edition, I knocked again. We’d be giving each other movie reviews next. I’d barely got my fist off the door before it swung open. A girl stood there in her underwear. The skimpy kind with both pieces made out of a single handkerchief. Bud was immediately attentive. He just might need that Juicy Fruit, after all.
“You guys are cops.”
Yeah, we get that greeting a lot in the places we frequent with our big shiny badges hanging around our necks. Go figure. “Yes ma’am. I’m Detective Morgan and this is Detective Davis. We’re here to take a look at Li He’s room. Did we get you at an inconvenient time?” I joined Bud in looking pointedly at her less than attire.
She pointedly didn’t get my drift. “Yeah, I guess, but it doesn’t matter. I mean you can take a look at Li’s room without bothering me. I’ve been studying Ancient Greek history and fell asleep. My other suite mate’s not here. Mel went home for her cousin’s wedding.”
“Okay, then.”
The girl kept standing there so I gave her a blatant hint, “May we come in then? Now?”
“I guess so.” She stepped back.
“And your name is?” Bud asked, surreptitiously glancing down her body, while I looked around the living room of the suite.
“Delia.” While Bud and I waited, poised breathlessly for her last name, she sighed deeply, yawned, then said, “Winston. Delia Winston. I’m just a freshman. Li was a sophomore.”
Bud jumped on that, even before I could. “Was?”
“Yeah. I assume somebody got hold of her and murdered her. Like, why else would she miss her psych final?”
I stared at her. “Well, there could be other reasons.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Like she’s been in an accident and is in the hospital in a coma or she took off with a boyfriend without telling anyone?”
“The police already checked out all that kinda stuff. I say she’s dead, whacked by some psycho freak who probably buried her in a shallow grave in the woods where she’ll never be found unless some hunter with a bird dog happens to find the hole he put her in.”
All righty now. I suspected this kid was a
criminal justice/abnormal psych major, or perhaps just a textbook example of the latter. Then I saw the Stephen King book lying open on the couch and wasn’t sure.
Bud said, “We hope she’s just run off with her boyfriend, like Detective Morgan said, something like that.”
Delia said, “Well, I do, too. Duh-uh.”
“Yeah, duh-uh.” I pronounced “duh” with two syllables like she had in a rather sarcastic manner, but she only smiled and seemed pleased that we were in agreement.
Bud said, “Could we have a look-see in her room?”
“I guess so, but the other policeman already spent a lot of time poking around in there. You aren’t going to find anything new. He was a real hottie, too. Name was Dak.”
I said, “We won’t take long, Delia. And we’d love to interview you, too, once you’re more fully awake and have on a bathrobe of some type.” Now that was pretty damn pointed, too, and a little flush of color moved up into her face, so I assumed she began to remember that she was nearly nude. With strangers around, and everything.
“Her room’s right over there, that last bedroom. Mine’s on the other end, and Mel’s is the one in the middle.”
“Thanks, Delia. You’ve been a big help to us.”
Delia nodded, as if that were actually true, and flounced off to the couch, if one can flounce without any clothes on. She lay down on her back and opened her King novel, to hell with ancient Greece and Odysseus and his tormented life, and Achilles and all that rot. Back to vampires and/or transmitting cell phones. Bud and I snapped on our protective gloves and stepped into our cute paper booties, and Delia took note. She peered over her tome and said, “They do that on CSI New York, too.”
“Yeah, that’s where we got it from,” said Bud.
“Yeah, I’m learning a lot from that show, too. You can call me Dee.”
