Blood Bond (15 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BY SIX O'CLOCK, JOE
had landed in Oakland and picked up his car. Famished, he bolted down a club sandwich at an Applebee's off the interstate. It tasted like nothing.

The drive to Lodi was uneventful, night falling fast, chasing down a band of gold-shot sky as the sun set. Deanne Oberlin met him at the door of a colonial-style townhouse in a newish subdivision at the far edge of Lodi, a maze of cheap tract buildings slotted in between an almond orchard and a mud-rutted lane of decrepit trailers with cars parked in the yards. Even here, where land was comparatively cheap, they were throwing up flimsy boxes on tiny plots of gouged earth.

Before he could introduce himself, Deanne swung out an arm to grab a little girl who was streaking past in pajama pants and no shirt.

“Come on in,” she called over her shoulder. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Joe shut the door carefully behind him and walked into a comfortable, if slightly shabby, living room. Afghans were folded over the backs of worn plaid couches. A battered pine table was marred by water stains and pan marks. Joe took a seat in a threadbare wing chair and watched the battle between mother and daughter; it ended in a fit of giggles as Deanne pulled a fuzzy top over her daughter's head.

“Go watch your SpongeBob movie,” Deanne told her, and the little girl scampered off eagerly.

“I'm Deanne,” she said, holding out a pale, freckled hand. Blunt-cut dyed-blond hair hung past her chin, and her lively eyes were magnified behind her glasses. She wore a lavender sweatshirt zipped over a matching camisole and gray sweatpants; if she was a little on the heavy side, the effect was inviting and lush. A pretty girl grown into a nice-looking woman.

“Detective Joe Bashir.” Joe offered his ID, but Deanne waved it away.

She settled on the couch, picked up a throw pillow, and hugged it to her stomach. “When you said Gail was dead, it brought back a lot of memories.” She sighed, and a deep furrow appeared between her brows, the sort of thing Montair women fixed with Botox.

“From what I understand, Gail left you to take the blame for what happened back at San Diego State.”

Deanne nodded slowly. “I'd like to say it was all just a terrible accident, just bad judgment and bad luck. But it wasn't. Gail Groesbeck—and her boyfriend, maybe even mostly her boyfriend—they set out to avoid the blame and they didn't care who they destroyed in the process.”

Destroyed
—that was a strong word; and Deanne's face as she said it seemed to sharpen, her eyes growing hard. Joe considered his options, wondering how to get her to open up about that night.

“You think it was deliberate.”

Deanne narrowed her eyes but didn't look away. “Everyone knew about Aidan. Gail's boyfriend. He wasn't just at USD law school, he was like, top of his class. People said he could have any job he wanted when he graduated. In any city he wanted. Gail was always talking about how they were going to move to L.A. Live among the rich and famous.”

Joe knew from talking to Marva that Aidan had never made it that far; he was just another personal injury lawyer, one of dozens, maybe even hundreds, in Oakland. “He was . . . charismatic?” he asked, searching for an angle.

Deanne picked at a thread on the pillow and frowned, forming deep lines at the corners of her mouth. “If what you mean is, was he admired, then yes, absolutely. He was a real catch. It was like Gail was moving up in the world.”

“I'm not sure I follow.”

“See, Gail only dated the hottest guys at San Diego State, but there's only so far you can go, you know? I mean, San Diego State was a total party school, and there's this whole rivalry with USD, but everyone knew a guy with a law degree from USD was going to go a lot further than a guy with a finance degree from State. And Aidan was even better, because he was older and he'd worked for a while and he had money and a nice car and he took her out. To restaurants and clubs, not like the rest of us just going to bars with guys.”

That jibed with Joe's impression of Gail—a schemer, looking to maximize the return on her investment. “Were you close?”

Deanne rolled her eyes. “I was a
pledge,
Detective. A freshman. She was a senior, one of the most popular girls in the whole sorority. Do you know how the Greek system works?”

“There were fraternities and sororities at Cal Berkeley, where I went to school. But I didn't spend much time there.” An understatement—Joe had spent most of his time at the library, struggling to maintain a GPA his parents would consider acceptable.

“The Greek system at San Diego State isn't like Berkeley's. It's the heart of the social life on campus. And Alpha Eta is the top sorority—you know, the best-looking girls, the richest, the most drugs. But it comes with a high price. At least, it did back then.”

She was silent for a moment, and Joe waited, watching the sadness seep into her expression, the way the dimples disappeared from her cheeks as she worried her lip with her teeth.

“They say things have changed. Frankly, I doubt that's true. They're probably just a lot more careful about not getting caught. If the girls want to keep hazing, they'll make it happen. I mean, it's tradition. Eight days of hell.”

“So it wasn't just that last night . . .”

“No, it starts before that. Way before that.” Deanne pressed the pillow closer to her torso, hugging it. “The thing is, even though you hear about it, you don't really think it's going to happen to you. I mean, the night we all pledged, the actives had this formal dinner in the dining room. Everyone dressed up, and there was someone playing the piano, and they did skits and told us all how special we were. How we were true Alpha Eta material.

“You have to understand that to get into Alpha Eta you have to be really, you know, pretty, and popular. That . . . wasn't me. I could hardly believe I got in. You know? Some of my mom's friends wrote letters and stuff, but I wasn't a legacy.”

“Legacy?”

“My mom wasn't an Alpha Eta. If you're a legacy it can help. Anyway, the other pledges were nice to me and all, but I couldn't help thinking they were all talking about me behind my back, like, you know,
what's she doing here?
” Deanne smiled bitterly. “Now that I look back on it I probably wasn't the only one who felt that way. Not Jess, though. She pledged with two of her friends from back home, and they had been best friends in high school and they were sweet and gorgeous. I mean, just really, really nice. Even to me. I was so envious, you know? They had each other, they did everything together.”

“So,” Joe said gently. “When did things start going wrong?”

“Nothing much happened until hell week. For a couple of months after we pledged, we just had to go to weekly meetings and do a few chores around the house and memorize stuff.”

“What kinds of stuff?” Joe interrupted.

“Oh, shit, everything . . . the names of all the Alpha Eta founders, all the actives' boyfriends' names and fraternities, dumb things like that. We got to go to the mixers, but we couldn't wear the colors—no burgundy or silver, like that was a real hardship, right? And everyone was still pretty nice to us all the time. Like if you ran into an active somewhere on campus? They'd be all friendly, introduce us to their friends, like that.

“So when hell week started, we were nervous but not, like, terrified or anything. And we knew there would be a lot of physical stuff. But we were kind of almost like, proud? You know, because we were all used to working out or whatever, I mean I was probably thirty pounds lighter then. So the first night when they had us doing the push-ups and the wall sits, running laps around this bench they had in the basement, it didn't seem so terrible.”

“You had moved into the house by then?”

“Not officially. But we were supposed to live there that week. And after the first night we understood why. They would come and get us at any time of night and make us do things like run out for cigarettes or clean the toilets. And an hour later you might have to get up again. We had to do this thing where we went all over campus at, like, three in the morning, holding on to the girl in front of you? Like a long line. I was so tired I felt like I was sleeping while I walked . . .

“But none of that was as bad as the other stuff that they made us do.”

“Like what?”

Deanne's mouth set in a thin line, and she didn't answer for a while. When she spoke again, she stared into the middle of the room, her voice dull. “The second night there was a scavenger hunt. We were thinking, kind of fun, right? We knew we'd have to go to the fraternities and do embarrassing things, but we thought it would be kind of like a party. Skits and singing and stuff. Well, before we left, they wrote things on us . . . under our shirts, where you couldn't see? With Sharpie. And everywhere we went we had to have the guys sign this piece of paper saying we showed them. We could keep our bra on, but . . . on me? They wrote ‘I love to take it up the ass.' ”

Deanne looked angry now, but thirteen years ago she must have been vulnerable, naïve, and frightened. The shame of what she was describing was unimaginable.

“What items were on the scavenger hunt?” Joe asked gently.

“Just what you'd expect. Condoms, jock straps, roach clips, Victoria's Secret calendars, I don't know, stupid stuff. Okay, what else . . . there was this blow job contest, where each girl got a Popsicle and there was a panel of ‘judges' that included guys from the fraternities, and you had to . . . you know. And then Friday night, actually like two in the morning or something, they took us out in teams, three girls on a team, and gave us five dollars and left us all over the city wearing nothing but these long Alpha Eta T-shirts and thong underwear and sneakers and we had to find our own way back. That actually wasn't so bad for me and the girls I was with; they left us in walking distance of an all-night grocery and some woman felt sorry for us and gave us a ride. But some of the girls . . . they didn't get back until the next morning, walked the whole way.”

Joe couldn't believe that what he was hearing was legal. But like Deanne had said, all that mattered was not getting caught. “What happened on Saturday?”

“Saturday they let us sleep, and believe me we were exhausted. I mean, we had to go to class all week, you weren't allowed to skip, and we had like no sleep. They had a late dinner for us, after the regular dinner was served? They woke us all up and we had pizza and then they told us it was time to celebrate, that we were almost there, one more night and we would be Alpha Etas.”

“So they started serving the alcohol.”

“Well, yeah, but that wasn't so bad at first. Everyone was playing drinking games, pledges and actives, too. But as they went on they would make us do things. Like we'd have to do the laps again, but we all had to hang on to each other, you couldn't let go, and girls were starting to get drunk and we were tripping everywhere and at first it was kind of funny. They started up with the markers again, giving us like these tattoos on our butts and stuff and taking pictures and making us do skits and sing all these stupid songs we had to memorize. And everyone was just getting drunker and drunker. Well, I guess you know what happened then.”

“It went from voluntary to forced,” Joe said.

“Yes. And it was like, you almost didn't notice? I mean, you know how when you get drunk kind of fast, you're like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine and then bam—suddenly you just want to go to sleep?”

Joe did, in fact, know the feeling, though it had been a while. “Yes, sure.”

“But that's when all of a sudden the actives were all over us and you realized they weren't really as drunk as you were. And after that it was just, you had to keep drinking and they would do whatever it took to make sure you did. There was an active assigned to every one of us, kind of like your own personal trainer or something. And their job was to make sure you kept going.”

“How did they do that?”

“Just, whatever they could think of. Walking the halls, going under a cold shower for a few seconds, or longer if that's what it took. If you had to puke they'd take you to the bathroom and aim you at the sink or the toilets and then it was right back to the other room.”

It was amazing only one girl had died, Joe thought. “Didn't the girls start to pass out?”

“I'm sure more would have. Jess was the first.”

“Why was that?”

“Well, part of it had to be that she was so petite. I mean, maybe five-two and she weighed practically nothing. And she wasn't used to drinking much. And the other thing? Gail was the one taking care of her.”

“Ah.”
That said plenty,
Joe thought.

“Gail was just, I don't know, I mean you could tell she thought the whole thing was funny, right? But she was also kind of competitive about it. Like she wasn't about to let her girl fall behind because it would make
her
look bad.”

“When Jess did pass out,” Joe said. “When she did fall down. Were you there?”

Deanne shook her head. “No, because they were out in the hallway. I was still in the big basement room, where they had some couches and chairs and card tables set up. I'd thrown up and I didn't want to stand. I could tell something was going on, because actives kept getting up and leaving the room, but honestly I couldn't tell you what happened when, I was so drunk, I was kind of like passing out for a few minutes at a time and then Cheryl, that was the active who was on me, she would wake me up again. Really the next thing I remember is walking outside with Aidan and Gail's sister next to me, and the cops and getting into the police car. Oh, and throwing up one more time on the ground outside the police car after I got in.”

“Do you remember what Aidan and Marva said?”