“It’s a navel ring.”
“Whose navel ring is it?”
“Lindsay’s.”
“That’s right,” I say. “It’s Lindsay’s. Do you know where we found it?”
“No.” Kimberly is starting to sound congested. I wonder if she’s starting to cry or merely coming down with something.
“In the garbage disposal,” I say. “They tried to grind your friend’s body up, Kimberly.Like she was garbage .”
“No,” Kimberly says. Her voice is growing even fainter. Which is unusual, for a cheerleader.
“And you know what the person who killed Lindsay did to Manuel Juarez at the game the other night,” I say. “Just because they were afraid Lindsay might have said something to him about them. What do you think about that, huh, Kimberly?”
Kimberly, her voice still faint, her face now swollen with tears, mumbles, “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Don’t mess with me, Kimberly,” I say. “First you tried to tell me Lindsay’s roommate might have killed her out of jealousy. Then you tried to make me think Coach Andrews and Lindsay were romantically involved, when you know perfectly well Coach Andrews is same-sex oriented—”
I hear, from behind me, a little gasp. I know it’s come from Cheryl Haebig.
“Face it, Kimberly,” I say, not turning around. “You know who killed Lindsay.”
Kimberly is shaking her head, hard enough that her hair has fallen into her eyes. “No, I—”
“Do you want to see it, Kimberly?” I demand. “The disposal they tried to stick Lindsay down? It’s all clogged up. With her blood and bones. But I’ll show it to you, if you want.”
Kimberly lets out a little moan. The firemen are staring down at me like I’m some kind of sick freak. I guess they’re right. Iam a sick freak. I don’t feel bad at all about what I’m doing to Kimberly. Not even a tiny bit.
“You want to know what they did to Lindsay, Kim? Do you want to know?” She shakes her head some
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more, but I go on anyway. “First, someone strangled her—so hard and for so long, the capillaries around her eyes burst. She was probably gasping for air, but whoever had hold of her didn’t care, and didn’t let go. So she died. But that wasn’t enough. Because then they chopped her up. Chopped her up and put the different parts of her body down the disposal….”
“No.” Kimberly is sobbing now. “No, that isn’t true!”
“It is so true. You know it’s true. And you know what else, Kimberly? You’re next. They’re coming after you next.”
The tear-filled eyes widen. “No! You’re just saying that to scare me!”
“First Lindsay. Then Manuel. Then you.”
“No!” Kimberly jerks away from me—but unfortunately ends up in front of Cheryl Haebig, who has risen to her feet and is standing there, eyes blazing, glaring at Kimberly.
Only Kimberly doesn’t seem to notice the glare. She cries, “Oh, thank God,” when she sees Cheryl.
“Cheryl, tell her—tell this bitch I don’t know anything.”
But Cheryl just shakes her head.
“You told her Lindsay and Coach A were involved?” she snaps. “Why would you do that? Why? You know it wasn’t true.”
Kimberly, seeing she’s not going to get any support from Cheryl, backs away from her, still shaking her head. “You…you don’t understand,” she hiccups.
“Oh, I understand, all right,” Cheryl says. For every step she takes forward, Kimberly takes another step back, until Kimberly’s back is up against Magda’s desk, where she freezes, looking fearfully up into Cheryl’s face. “I understand you were always jealous of Lindsay. I understand you always wanted to be as well liked and popular as Lindsay. But it was never going to happen. Because you’re such a fucking—”
Only Cheryl doesn’t get to finish. Because Kimberly has collapsed against the cashier’s desk, sliding slowly down it until she’s on the floor, a puddle in New York College white and gold.
“No,” she sobs. “No, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill her!”
“But you know who did,” I step forward to say. “Don’t you, Kimberly?”
She’s shaking her head. “I don’t! I swear I don’t! I just—I know what Lindsay did.”
Cheryl and I exchange puzzled glances.
“What did Lindsay do, Kimberly?” I ask.
Kimberly, her knees curled up to her chest, murmurs softly, “She stole his stash.”
“Shewhat ?”
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“She stole his stash! God, what are you, dense?” Kimberly glares up at us through her tears. “She stole his entire stash, about a gram of coke. She was mad at him, ’cause he was so stingy with it. Like, she’d blow him and he’d just give her a line or two. Plus he was seeing other girls, too, on the side. It was pissing her off.”
Cheryl takes what seems like an involuntary step backward when she hears this. “You’re lying,” she says to Kimberly.
“Wait,” I say, confused. “Whose stash? Doug Winer’s? Are you talking about Doug Winer?”
“Yes.” Kimberly nods miserably. “She didn’t think he’d miss it. Or if he did, he’d think one of his frat brothers took it. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Cheryl!” Kimberly is glaring at her fellow squad member.
“Lindsay wasn’t a fucking saint, you know. No matter what you and the other girls want to think. God, I don’t know why you guys could never see her for what she was…a coke whore. Who got what she fucking deserved!”
Kimberly’s sobbing has risen to hyperventilation level. She’s clutching her arms to her stomach as if she were suffering from appendicitis, her knees to her chest, her forehead to her knees.
But while Cheryl has backed off, looking horrified, I’m still not about to let Kimberly off the hook.
“But Doug did miss the coke,” I say. “He missed it, and he came looking for it, didn’t he?”
Kimberly nods again.
“That was why Lindsay needed to get into the caf. To give him his coke back. Because she hid it in here, didn’t she? Because she didn’t think it would be safe to leave in her room, where Ann might find it.”
Nod. “So she got the key from Manuel, let herself in here, smuggled Doug into the building somehow, and…Then what? If she gave it back…why’d he kill her?”
“How should I know?” Kimberly lifts her head slowly, as if it were very heavy. “All I know is that Lindsay ended up getting what she deserved after all.”
“You…” Cheryl is glaring down at the other girl, her chest rising and falling rapidly with emotion, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You…you…bitch!”
Which is when Cheryl draws her arm back to slap Kimberly, who cowers—
But Cheryl’s hand is seized before she can bring it down across Kimberly’s face.
“That,” Detective Canavan, who has come up behind us, says calmly, “is enough of that,ladies .”
25
Now there’s a storm front coming over me
High winds, choppy sea
Don’t know how long I can stay afloat
A chocoholic in a sinking boat.
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“Sinking”
Written by Heather Wells
“So there you go,” I say to Pete, as we sit at the sticky table in the back of the Stoned Crow after work.
“There’s your motive, plain as day.”
A glance at the security guard’s face reveals that he’s at least as confused as Magda. “What?” they both say at the same time.
“That’s why he killed her,” I explain patiently. “Lindsay was going around, shooting her mouth off to her friends about his drug dealing. He had to silence her, or risk getting caught eventually.”
“You don’t have to cut someone’s head off just to shut them up,” Magda says indignantly.
“Yeah,” Pete agrees. “I mean, murder’s pretty extreme, don’t you think? Just because your girlfriend’s a little gossipy, you don’t have to kill her.”
“Maybe he killed her as a warning,” Sarah says, from the bar where she’s sitting watching a college basketball game on one of the overhead television sets. “To his other customers. Warning them to keep their mouths shut, or suffer a similar fate. Oh, Jesus! Charging! CHARGING! Is the ref blind?”
“Maybe,” Pete says, poking at the microwaved burrito he picked up in the deli down the street. But that’s the price you have to pay when the cafeteria at your place of work is shut down again so forensic teams can extract body parts from the kitchen slop sink. The burrito is the first thing Pete’s had a chance to eat since breakfast. The beer and popcorn I’m currently enjoying is mine. “Or maybe it was just the kind of thing a sick pervert like Winer thinks is funny.”
“We don’t know for sure it was the Winer boy,” Magda points out.
Both Pete and I stare at her.
“Well,” she says, “you don’t. Just because that girl said he was the one Lindsay was supposed to meet doesn’t mean he was the one whodid meet her. You heard what the detective said.”
“He said we should mind our own business,” I remind her. “He didn’t say anything about whether or not he thought Doug—or his brother—did it.” Even though I’d taken him aside and, after telling him what I’d observed at last night’s frat party, had added, “It’s obvious that Doug—and Steve, remember what Manuel said, that Steve was the name Lindsay mentioned—killed her for shooting off her mouth about their drug dealing, then left her head as a warning for the rest of their clients. You have to arrest them.
You HAVE to!”
Detective Canavan, however, hadn’t appreciated being told that he “had” to do anything. He’d just frowned down at me and said, “I should have known that was you at that party last night. Can’t you go anywhere without causing bedlam?”
At which I took umbrage. Because I’ve been lots of places where fights didn’t break out. Lots of them.
Look at me here at the bar across from Fischer Hall.
And okay, it’s only, like, four minutes after five, so hardly anyone else has gotten off work yet and the place is pretty much empty except for us.
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But no bedlam has broken out. Yet.
“So when are they going to do it?” Magda wants to know. “Arrest those boys?”
“Ifthey’re going to arrest them,” Pete corrects her.
“But they have to,” Magda says, blinking rapidly over her alcoholic beverage of choice—a White Russian. Pete and I can’t even look at it without gagging a little. “I mean, they took that Kimberly away with them to interview her after she said all those things in front of us…even if she lied to them later, they heard what she told us in the cafeteria.”
“But is that evidence?” Pete asks. “Isn’t that—what do they call it onLaw and Order ? Hearsay?”
“Are you telling me they didn’t get one fingerprint from that kitchen?” Magda demands. “Not one stray hair they can get DNA from, to find out who did it?”
“Who knows what they found?” I say, mournfully shoving a handful of stale barroom popcorn in my mouth. Why is stale barroom popcorn so delicious, anyway? Especially with a cold beer. “We’ll probably be the last to find out.”
“At least Manuel’s going to be all right,” Pete says. “Julio says he’s getting better every day. Although they still have policemen posted outside his hospital room.”
“What’s he going to do when they discharge him?” Magda wants to know. “They aren’t going to post a policeman by his house, are they?”
“They’llhave to have arrested Doug by then,” Sarah says, from the bar. “I mean, Doug has to be the one who strangled her. The only question is, did he do it accidentally? Like did he asphyxiate her during sexual play, then panic? From what you told me, he doesn’t seem like the type who has much control over his temper—”
“Yeah. Did I mention he totally head-butted me in the gut?” I ask.
“But putting her limbs down a disposal to get rid of the evidence?” Sarah shakes her head. “Doug doesn’t have the brains for something like that—even if it did turn out not to work thanks to the disposal breaking. Oh, my God, foul! FOUL!”
I look up from the empty popcorn basket and notice that Pete and Magda aren’t the only ones staring at Sarah in disbelief. The bartender, Belinda, a punk rock waif with a shaved head and overalls, is blinking at her with astonishment as well.
Sarah notices, looks around, and says defensively, “Excuse me, a person can have multiple interests, you know. I mean, I can be interested in psychology and sports, too. It’s called being well-rounded, people.”
“More popcorn?” Belinda asks her, looking pretty scared for someone with so many nose rings.
“Uh, no,” Sarah says. “That stuff is stale.”
“Um,” I say, “I’ll take some. Thanks.”
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“On that note,” Pete says, rising from his chair, “I have to get home before my kids tear the place apart.
Magda, you want a ride to the subway?”
“Oh, yes,” Magda says, getting up as well.
“Wait,” I protest. “I just got more popcorn!”
“Sorry, honey,” Magda says, struggling into her faux-rabbit fur coat. “But it’s about twelve degrees out there. I’m not walking to the subway. See you on Monday.”
“See you guys,” I say mournfully, watching them leave. I’d leave, too, but I still have half a beer left. You can’t just leave a beer like that. It’s un-American.
Except a minute later I’m regretting not having made my escape when I had the chance, since the door opens, and who should walk in but…
Jordan.
“Oh, there you are,” he says, spotting me at once. Which isn’t hard, since I’m the only one in the bar, with the exception of Sarah and a couple of Math Department types, who are playing pool. Jordan slides into the chair Pete just vacated, and explains, as he peels off his jacket, “Cooper told me you sometimes come here after work.”
I glare at him over my beer. I don’t know why. I guess it’s just that he mentioned Cooper’s name.
Cooper’s not high on my list of favorite people right now.
Actually, neither is his brother.
“Nice place,” Jordan says, looking around. It’s clear he’s being sarcastic. Jordan’s idea of a nice place is the bar at the Four Seasons. Which isn’t exactly in my price range. Anymore.