What Lies Beneath

by Archer, David

  They could drink alone, or they could hang out with some of their fellow students. Some of the guys they knew from class hung out there, as well, so they could get up and dance when they felt like it. As long as the boys understood that they weren’t looking for relationships, those nights could be a lot of fun, and occasionally one or both of them would end up getting laid. It was all casual and consensual, without complications or commitments, and both girls wanted it exactly that way.

  But they didn’t date. It only took a couple of weeks for all the guys to catch on, and Cass and Abby found themselves permanently relegated to the “friend zone.” That didn’t mean they were perfect little angels, of course, but it did mean that any of the rare guys who got lucky with one of them knew it was something that wasn’t likely to happen again. For most of them, that was perfectly fine.

  It wasn’t going to happen on this night, they all knew. Abby was in one of her moods, the one that declared loudly that all guys were cretins who should be lined up in front of a deep ditch and mowed down with a machine gun, just to be sure they’d never break the heart—or the bones—of another girl. Surprisingly, a number of the less popular guys often expressed their agreement with this philosophy, always excepting themselves from the implied death sentence, of course. They weren’t heartbreakers, they reasoned, so they shouldn’t suffer the same fate. After all, they couldn’t break a heart if no girl would even date them, right?

  “But you got a willy,” Abby said drunkenly to one who had tried that approach. “A willy is what makes all guys the same, and you got a willy…”

  “Willy, the one-eyed pocket snake,” Cassie explained helpfully. “Every guy has a willy, so you’re all buttholes.”

  The boy was almost as inebriated as the girls were. “I don’t… I don’t call it Willy,” he stammered.

  Abby managed to focus her eyes on him, with effort. “Then wha’s his name is?” she asked.

  “Um… I, um… I’s, I calls it Romeo,” he said, blushing as he did so.

  Abby burst into laughter and fell onto Cassie beside her, who also laughed and fell off her barstool. It took two of the bouncers to get her back up onto it, at which time the bartender, an unfortunate young man whose name was Scott, said they’d had enough and called the courtesy driver. The same two bouncers had to carry Cassie to the car, while Abby barely managed to walk.

  “Oak Hall, right?” the driver asked, and Abby admitted that was their destination, but when they got to the building, the driver let out a whistle. “Might be a bit before you get inside, girls,” he said.

  The place was surrounded by police officers, and there were half a dozen squad cars parked in front of it with their lights flashing. Abby’s face suddenly paled as she looked over the back of the front seat and saw a gurney with a sheet-covered body rolled into an ambulance. She turned to Cassie, who had passed out in the seat, and started shaking her.

  “Wake up, Cashie… Cassie, you gotta wake up, somebody’s dead, I think!”

  A cop saw the car sitting there with its lights aimed at the activity and came walking over, a flashlight in his left hand and his right hand resting on the butt of his gun. The driver rolled down the window and then made sure both his hands were visible.

  “Evening, Officer,” he said. “Courtesy car from Flanagan’s. I was just bringing these young ladies back to their dorm.”

  The cop relaxed his grip on the gun but shined his light into the back seat. “Who’s in there?”

  Abby tried to look sober even as she was holding Cassie’s head up and slapping her face. “Abby Jordan,” she said, “and this is my room maker, I mean roommate, Cassie McGraw. We’re just coming in from dinner…”

  “Whew,” the cop said, waving a hand in front of his nose. He looked at the driver. “How often do you have to clean that car out? Smells like a liquor store in there.”

  “That’s not the car,” the driver said. “That’s them. At least they haven’t puked. I have to wash that seat off five or six times a night.”

  The cop laughed and turned to the radio on his shoulder. “7 Mike 15, this is 4 Charlie 7. What were the names you were looking for again?”

  “Wait one,” came a voice through the radio, and there was silence for a few seconds. “4 Charlie 7, we’re looking for Abigail Jordan, Cynthia Winstrop, and Cassandra McGraw.”

  “7 Mike 15, 4 Charlie 7,” the cop said. “I’ve got two of them, but they’re wasted. Flanagan’s courtesy car just brought ’em back.” He turned and waved his flashlight toward a patrol car with its own lights flashing. “See me?”

  “10-4, be right there,” said the voice.

  Abby kept trying to rouse Cassie as another man approached the car, but this one yanked open the back door and told her to get out.

  “Offsicer,” she stammered, “I’m, I’m tryin’ to get my friend…”

  “We’ll take care of that,” the man said. “I need you both to come downtown for questioning.”

  Abby’s eyes opened wide, and she stared at him. “Questioning? Why?”

  “Do you know a Letitia Jackson?” the man asked, and Abby felt her stomach sink.

  “She’s our roommate,” she managed to say. “Is she…”

  “I’m afraid she’s dead,” the man said, and that’s when Abby’s stomach came back up and spewed its contents all over the inside of the car, the driver, and the handsome young detective, who had been kneeling beside the open door.

  The next two hours were a blur of confusion. The girls were taken out of the courtesy car and placed into the back seat of a squad car, then driven to somewhere else in the city and hustled into a holding cell. Cassie was awake, but hearing that Letitia was dead had only sent her into a weeping fit that was seemingly endless. Abby sat beside her as she cried, her own sobriety approaching more rapidly as she wondered how Letitia had died and why the two of them were being held.

  Finally, the detective returned from wherever he’d gone to clean up, and the girls were taken out of the cell and escorted into two separate interview rooms. Cassie laid her head down on the table and promptly fell asleep again, so the detective entered the room where Abby was being held and dropped a file folder onto the table in front of her.

  “Abigail Jordan? I’m Detective Mike Kendall of the St. Louis PD. I need to ask you some questions, but first I have to inform you of your rights.” He held a card in front of his face. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you would like to consult an attorney but cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights that I have just read to you?”

  Abby swallowed. “Yes,” she said. “Am I being arrested for something?”

  “Not at the moment,” Kendall said. “I need to ask you some questions, though, so I’m required to read you your rights just in case you’re arrested later on the basis of your answers.” He opened the folder and took out a photo, showing it to Abby. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  The picture showed Letitia lying on her bed, her eyes open and her face looking terrified. There was a wide, jagged gash across her throat and she was covered with blood, and if Abby hadn’t already thrown up everything inside her, it would have happened then. “Oh, God,” she said, “oh, my God. What happened to her?”

  “Ms. Jordan, do you know the woman in this photograph?” Kendall repeated.

  “Yes! God, yes, that’s Letitia Jackson, she’s our number four. One of our roommates. What the hell happened to her?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Kendall said. “When did you last see her alive?”

  Abby tore her eyes away from the photo and looked up at him. “I think… I’d say it was around four this afternoon—or I guess it’s yesterday afternoon, now. She came into my room and wanted to know if she could borrow a blouse from me. I said s
he could, and she took it and left.” She hesitated for a second, then said, “It’s—it’s the one she’s wearing in that picture.”

  Kendall made a note. “And do you know where she might have been going when she left?”

  “No. I mean, I thought she just went back to her room, you know? I don’t know if she left the suite right then or not, but Cassie and I left a little later to go get something to eat, and I didn’t see her again.”

  Kendall nodded. “Ms. Jordan,” he said, “other witnesses have said that they saw her in the company of three men about ten o’clock last evening. Would you know who she might have been planning to see?”

  Abby shook her head. “No,” she said. “She has friends here in the city, she always said, but she never brought any of them around us. She’d always go out and meet them somewhere else.”

  He looked up from his notes into her eyes. “She never brought anyone up to your rooms?”

  “No, never,” Abby said. “She always said it was ’cause she was afraid one of us would steal their attention, but I thought she just didn’t want us to know she was from ‘the hood,’ you know? I think her friends were like that, maybe gangbangers, and she didn’t want us to know it.”

  Kendall made another note. “Do you know anything about her drug use?”

  Abby looked at him sharply. “Drug use? No way,” she said. “Letitia was planning to be a nurse, so she’d have had to take drug tests pretty regularly. And I never saw any sign she was using anything.”

  Kendall looked at a paper in the file. “We haven’t gotten the toxicology report back yet, but we found quite a supply of oxycodone and cocaine in her purse, and more cocaine hidden in her dresser. We also checked the building security videos and found that she arrived at the room at just after ten p.m. There were three men with her at the time, but all of them were wearing hoodies and we were unable to see their faces clearly. Would you have any idea who they might be?”

  “No, no idea at all,” Abby said. “Like I told you, she never brought any of her friends around any of us. If she brought somebody back tonight, she must’ve been pretty sure nobody was there.”

  “Did you hear from her during the evening? Did she call to ask if you were home or not?”

  “No. But to be honest, I can’t remember the last time she called me about anything. I’m pretty sure she didn’t call Cassie, either, because she would have told me.”

  Kendall narrowed his eyes. “Why do you think she would’ve told you? I mean, did the two of you always tell each other about every phone call you got?”

  Abby managed a faint grin. “No,” she said, “but you’d have to know Cassie. When she’s drinking, she tells you everything, and I mean everything. Every time she goes to the bathroom, when she comes back I get to hear every little detail. If she’d gotten a phone call, she would’ve told me everything about it, down to the minutest tidbit of information.”

  Kendall looked at his notes for a moment. “What can you tell me about your other roommate, Cynthia Winstrop?”

  “Cindy? She’s British, and some kind of genius.” She suddenly looked suspiciously at Kendall. “Why? Has something happened to her, too?”

  Kendall didn’t answer.

  Chapter 4

  Cassie woke up when the door opened and blinked for a moment in the harsh light of the interrogation room. A loud slapping noise made her wince as it sent a shock wave through the headache that was already building.

  A tall, good-looking man was sitting down in the chair on the opposite side of the table she had been leaning on.

  “Ms. McGraw? My name is Detective Mike Kendall, and I’m with the St. Louis Police Department. I need to ask you some questions, but first I have to explain your rights to you.” He held up the card again. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you would like to consult with an attorney but cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights that I have just read to you?”

  Cassie’s mind was racing. The last time she had heard those words had been on television, one of the police procedural shows that her father loved to watch. “Am I being arrested for something?” she asked, her eyes wide as she stared at him.

  “Not necessarily, and certainly not at the moment. I just need to ask you a few questions about one of your roommates.” He took the photo of Letitia out of the folder and laid it in front of her on the table. Cassie’s eyes went wide as she realized what she was seeing.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, God, I thought it was just a bad dream…”

  “You thought what was a bad dream?” Kendall asked suddenly.

  “What Abby said,” Cassie went on. “We were in a different room, and she told me Letitia was dead, but I thought it was just a dream.” She raised her eyes from the photo to lock onto Kendall’s. “What happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to determine,” Kendall said. “Can you tell me when you last saw Ms. Jackson alive?”

  Cassie looked down at the photo again, then jerked her eyes back up to his once more. “It was before Abby and I left to go eat,” she said. “She said something about going with her friends to a movie, and I remember she asked Abby if she could borrow a shirt or something. I was in the bathroom at the time, but I think she left right after that.”

  Kendall nodded and made a note. “Did you hear anything from her during the evening? A phone call, maybe?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. To be honest, um, most of the time since then is kind of a big blur, right now.”

  “Yeah, you were pretty wasted when you got back to the dorm. Do you always drink a lot?”

  Cassie shrugged and looked sheepish. “Lately it seems like I do,” she said. “It started a couple months ago, when I found out my boyfriend had a new girl. Kind of a regular thing for me and Abby, now, on Friday nights.”

  “Only on Friday nights?” Kendall was having trouble hiding the grin that was trying to peek out.

  Cassie gave him a dirty look. “Pretty much, yeah. During the week we have to get up and go to class the next day, and we use Saturday to sober up so we can finish any weekly assignments on Sunday.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Ms. McGraw, what can you tell me about Cynthia Winstrop?”

  Like Abby, Cassie suddenly looked at him warily. “Oh, God,” she said, “don’t tell me something happened to Cindy, too.”

  “I actually can’t say, at the moment,” Kendall said. “We haven’t been able to locate her, and I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on her whereabouts.”

  Cassie put a hand to her pounding head and forced herself to focus on what he was saying. “Cindy—Cindy’s been dating some guy she met in one of her classes. She’s majoring in biotechnology, and I think the guy’s name was Vince, or Vinnie, something like that.” She looked around for her purse, then looked back at Kendall. “Do you know where my purse is? I’ve got some Excedrin in it, and I could really use it right now.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “What kind of drugs was Ms. Jackson normally using?”

  Cassie’s eyes went wide. “Drugs? Letitia? None, I guarantee it. She’s—she was the most outspoken advocate of stricter drug laws I’ve ever known. If she had her way, selling most drugs would get you the death penalty.”

  Kendall’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Really? Can you give me any reason she might have oxycodone and cocaine in her possession?”

  It took Cassie a couple of seconds to close her mouth; then she looked down at the photo again. “The only reason she would have any such thing is if somebody planted it on her. I’m guessing you found it after she was dead, right?”

  Kendall nodded. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because anybody who tried to put it in her purse or pocket would probably have to kill her before they
could accomplish it. I don’t know why she was so against drugs, but she was. Ab—another girl we know mentioned getting some pills to help us stay awake and study one night, and Letitia went off like a bomb. One of the other girls on our floor offered us some pot, once, and I thought Letitia was going to attack her. Abby and I got between them, and she finally went in her room and slammed the door.”

  Kendall scribbled another note. “I…”

  The door to the room opened suddenly and another man stuck his head in. He motioned with a finger for Kendall to come out, and suddenly Cassie was alone again. She sat there for a minute, then glanced down once more at the photo of Letitia. The shock had worn off, and she found herself possessed by a morbid curiosity. She picked it up and began to study it, looking at the entire picture.

  Kendall stepped back in suddenly, and Cassie looked up at him excitedly. “Look at this,” she said. “Did you see this?” She laid the photo on the table and pointed at one part of it, behind the bed on which the body lay. Kendall leaned close and looked where she was pointing, and then his eyes widened. Something, a little square box, was mostly hidden behind a pile of clothes on a dresser, and there was a bright red dot plainly visible.

  “What is that?” he asked. “Some kind of red light…”

  “That’s her GoPro. She used it to make videos of some of her lessons so she could study them over and over. That little red light means it was on and recording.” She handed him the photo so that he could look more closely. “She had this app on her phone, so she could put it wherever she wanted, then turn it on and off by remote control.”

  Kendall instantly took out a phone and made a call, telling someone to get back into the room and grab that camera. As soon as he had done so, he turned off the phone and put it back into his pocket, then looked at Cassie. “That was a good catch,” he said. “Nobody else had even noticed it was there, let alone that it was on. With any luck, it may give us a new lead. In the meantime, though, I’ve got some good news for you. We found your friend Cindy, safe and unharmed. Apparently she tried to come back to the suite this morning and ran into our crime scene technicians. She’s on her way down here, now, so we can see if she knows anything about what might’ve happened to Ms. Jackson.”