by Elle Gray
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I scream. “Shut up!”
Pressing my head back against the headrest, I force myself to take a deep breath. Letting it out slowly, I force the words and Moira’s vicious taunting from my mind. I close that door inside of me, locking it all away once more. The pounding in my head eases, and my ragged breath slows.
As I open my eyes, I see Bethany and her friends come around the corner and into the parking lot. They talk and laugh with each other for a moment before giving each other hugs as they part. I watch as Bethany gets into a dark green Prius, quickly noting her license plate number.
The lights all flare to life, and she pulls out of the lot. I give it a few beats before I pull out of the lot and follow her. Bethany is no different from Moira. And she deserves to be punished for being the deceitful whore she is. Just like the others.
I’m not the same man I was when Moira humiliated me. When she threw me away like rotten garbage. I’ve changed. With the help of the Mr. Hyde that lives within me, I’ve become stronger. Much stronger. And I will not let these women treat me like I’m somehow less than. I will not let these women make me feel inferior.
They will suffer. And they will pay.
Six
Cascadia Arms Apartments; University District, Seattle
Paxton
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” I say.
Sonya, Stella’s roommate, nods. “Mr. Hughes asked me to,” she replies. “And if I can help in any way, I want to. She was my best friend.”
I give her a small smile and look around the front room of the apartment. It’s large. Spacious. Tastefully decorated. Even though I know these two girls come from privileged backgrounds, nothing about the place is excessive. It’s understated as if they are trying to hide the sort of money they come from. I can’t blame them. When people find out your family is wealthy, they tend to treat you differently. And of course, there are always those who gravitate toward you with their hands out.
“Are you going to find who did this, Mr. Arrington?” Sonya asks, her voice faint and quivering.
I turn to the girl sitting huddled on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them protectively. She’s got olive-colored skin and rich, brown eyes. Her hair, black as pitch, is tied back into a loose ponytail, her eyes are rimmed red, and her face is etched with grief.
Sonya’s cheeks are flushed, and she wipes at her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt. Sonya, like Stella, is a college junior. But at that moment, she looks like a little girl. A lost little girl.
“I’m going to do my best,” I tell her honestly.
She frowns, and I watch fresh tears roll down her cheeks. I sit down in the chair across from the couch and set back, crossing one leg over the other. I give Sonya a moment to collect herself. Finally, apparently composed enough, she looks up at me.
“What can you tell me about that night?” I ask. “Do you know where she went? Or who she was with?”
She draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. “She went out with a couple of our other friends. Madison and Abby,” she starts. “I think they started at the Husky. I don’t know where they ended up, though.”
“How long have you and Stella been roommates?”
“Since we first got here. Like I said, we were best friends in high school,” she tells me. “We stayed in the dorms together, and then last year, we got this apartment together. It just made sense.”
I nod vaguely. “Do you know if she was seeing anybody?” I ask. “Did she have a boyfriend?”
Sonya shakes her head. “No, she wasn’t seeing anybody,” she replies. “She was more interested in academics than boys.”
“No chance she was seeing somebody that you didn’t know about?”
“No chance at all. We told each other everything.”
She wipes her eyes with her sleeve again and sniffs loudly. I can see how painful talking about all of this is for her, but she sits up straighter, her face etched with a grim determination to continue. I have no desire to deepen her pain, but I need to know what she knows.
“Do you know if she was having trouble with anybody?” I ask.
“What sort of trouble?”
“Did she ever mention being stalked? Anybody harassing her?” I ask. “Threatening calls? Texts? Emails?
“No, nothing like that,” she replies. “And I’m sure she would have mentioned it to me if she had.”
“She never mentioned anything in passing about trouble with anybody?”
Sonya starts to shake her head, then stops. She screws up her face as if trying to recall something.
“What is it?” I prompt.
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Maybe,” I reply. “But you never know what might turn out to be important.”
Sonya nods and pushes herself back onto the couch further. She grabs one of the pillows and hugs it to her chest, staring down at it for a long moment in silence. Finally, she raises her head and looks at me.
“A few weeks back, we went out for a drink after class,” she starts. “I went to the bathroom, and when I got back, there was this guy harassing her.”
I sit forward a bit, my curiosity piqued. “Harassed her how?”
“He was just going off about how all women are liars and cheaters,” she says. “He was yelling about how women just want to manipulate and use him…”
Her voice trails off, and she frowns again. I can see the thoughts swirling through her mind. The questions in her eyes. It’s as if she’s watching the whole scene at the bar play out on a screen inside her head.
“I mean, it wasn’t like he put his hands on her, or threatened her, or anything like that,” she clarifies. “I think he was just drunk and maybe had just come out of a bad relationship or something.”
I can see her already dismissing it in her mind as nothing since the man didn’t actually do anything to them. But I’m not quite ready to let it go just yet. It very well may be nothing, but at the moment, I’ve got less than nothing to go on, so I’ll grasp at any straw I can.
“Do you remember what this man looked like?” I ask.
She screwed up her face again, trying to jog the memory. “He was tall… not quite as tall as you. Maybe five-ten?” she says slowly. “White. Dark hair. Dark eyes.”
“Age?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Late thirties, maybe forties, I guess?” she replies. “I can’t say for sure.”
It’s not much and seems pretty generic. Your garden variety white guy. As if Seattle isn’t filled with plenty of those. But still, it’s more than I had when I walked through the door. If only just barely.
“What was the name of the bar this happened at?” I ask.
“The Husky. It’s a bar near campus over on Witten Street,” she replies. “We went in for drinks now and then.”
“How often is now and then?”
She shrugs. “A few times a month? I mean, it’s not like we were there all the time or anything,” she explains. “But we’d go in after class and whatnot sometimes.”
I nod, vaguely familiar with it, then get to my feet. “Mind if I have a look at her room?”
“Yeah, go ahead. It’s the second door on the left,” she points. “Take whatever you need to help you.”
“Thank you, Sonya.”
I walk down to Stella’s room and step inside. I stand in the middle of the room and turn in a circle, taking it all in for a moment. It looks less like a college girl’s room, and more like a young professional’s. Instead of movie posters or whatever, there are beautiful pieces of art on the walls. Prints of works I recognize. The bedding is tasteful, the colors soft and earthy, and her desk area is neat and very well organized.
The one concession to her age is a board that hangs on the wall near her desk. I step over to it and look closely at the jumble of pictures pinned to it. Lots of shots of her and Sonya, along with other friends from school. There are pictu
res of them at football games, at restaurants, and various other places. Shots of her in action on the volleyball court. They all look so happy, so excited, and like they’re looking forward to their futures. It pierces my heart like a lance that Stella will never be able to live that future.
On the surface, I’d say that Sonya is right. This is the room of somebody who takes their education very seriously. Everything has a place, and everything is in its place. There is nothing frivolous about Stella’s room. It’s all business. In a lot of ways, Stella reminds me of myself. Like her, I was pretty buttoned up in college too. I wasn’t out there running and gunning, partying until the sun came up, and having a good time on my parent’s dime. I was dead serious about school too.
Unlike me, though, Stella didn’t have a strict taskmaster of a father breathing down her neck. She didn’t have somebody like my dad cracking the whip while trying to dictate her future to her. Marcus wanted Stella to find her own path. He wanted her to be her own person. And I can tell Stella had plans and goals for her future. About what she wanted to do. I admire that, and it kills me that she’ll never get a chance to see those plans come to fruition.
I sit down at her desk and open up her laptop. It wakes up and flares to life, and I see that her computer desktop is as well organized and tidy as her physical desktop. All of her files are organized and labeled. I click through a few of the files and find research and half-written papers that will never be finished.
I look through the pictures she’s got stored but don’t see anything of real interest. They all look to be more of the same sort of pictures with her friends she’s got on the board. There certainly aren’t any of her with a generic, thirty-or-forty-something white guy. Of course not. That would just be far too easy. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing is ever that easy. It’d be nice once in a while though.
I close the laptop and unplug it, planning on taking it with me. I’m not the computer whiz Brody is, and if there’s anything to be found on it, he’s going to be the one to find it. After that, I rummage through all of her drawers. I search her desk, her dresser, and her nightstand. I search her closet and her bathroom as well, looking for anything, but find nothing.
There isn’t anything I can find that points to any sort of secret life. Nobody is ever fully, one hundred percent honest with the people in their lives. Everybody lies, and everybody keeps secrets. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. We should all have those things we keep to ourselves. We should have those parts of ourselves that are ours and ours alone. I’ve never met somebody who doesn’t.
So I’m curious to know what secrets Stella had. I want to know those parts of her she kept locked away from the world. Maybe they amount to nothing. Maybe they have nothing to do with her murder. But like the generic white guy who accosted her in the bar that night, maybe they do. I won’t know until I see for myself. If I’m going to find out who murdered Stella, I’m going to need to cast as wide a net as possible.
Picking up the computer, I take one more look around her room but don’t see anything that stands out to me. Nothing that seems overtly important right now. So I walk back out to the front room to find Sonya still sitting huddled on the couch, in the same position I left her in. She raises her eyes, and I hold the laptop up for her to see.
“I’m going to take this,” I tell her. “I’m going to have my tech guy go over it.”
She nods. “Whatever you need.”
“Thanks, Sonya.”
“I just keep thinking that if I’d just sucked it up and went with her that none of this would have happened,” she whispers. “I just…”
Her voice trails off. I know she’s not really speaking to me. Twin emotions of guilt and grief are washing across her face even as she says it. I know she’s looking for something. Reassurance? Somebody to assuage her guilt? I don’t know. This is one of those things Brody is always getting on me about, one of those moments where I need to be kind and compassionate. But I’ve never been great at offering reassurance or assuaging other people’s guilt, even on my best days.
I clear my throat. “You know this isn’t your fault,” I tell her. “There is nothing you could have done—”
“I feel like I could have, though,” she interrupts me. “If only I’d been there—”
“Look at me, Sonya.”
Her gaze drifts up to mine. New tears are slipping from the corners of her eyes. She looks dazed for a moment as if she doesn’t know who I am but then seems to focus.
“There is only one person responsible for this. And that’s not you,” I tell her. “And I am going to find him.”
Her lips compress into a tight line. I can see she’s trying to believe, but the skepticism in her eyes is too thick to overcome. She gives me a nod anyway. And I suppose at the moment, that’s about the best I can hope for.
Seven
Arrington Investigations; Downtown Seattle
I sit in the conference room, scrolling through all of the articles about Stella’s murder I can find online. They’re all fairly generic, most of them talking about her academic accomplishments, her role on the volleyball team, and whatever other pieces of her life they’ve been able to cobble together, which isn’t much. Most of the column space dedicated to Stella’s murder is spent talking about Marcus and his accomplishments on the basketball court.
I find it sad that a young girl is killed, her entire life and future snuffed out by some piece of human garbage, but all the writers can talk about is her dad’s career scoring average or memorable playoff games. As much as I like and respect Marcus, I don’t think his career exploits should be taking precedence over his daughter’s death. And I’m pretty sure he’d feel the same way.
The facts as we know them are these: After Stella placed a call to 9-1-1 to report somebody chasing her at the Gas Works Park, police arrived on the scene and did not find her. Stella’s body was later found in a small copse of trees on the grounds. She suffered multiple stab wounds, though it isn’t clear that was the actual cause of death.
And that’s about it. None of the articles I’ve read have any other pertinent information. It’s all fluff and filler. I’m sure solid information will be coming in subsequent articles as it comes available, but at the moment, facts are scarce.
I know from experience that in murder investigations, the police have keep-back things— information they don’t release to the press to weed out the cranks and attention-seeking false confessors. It makes me wonder what the keep-backs in this case are. Which means I’m going to need to find out who’s working the case. Hopefully, it’s somebody who not only doesn’t hate me but is willing to share information.
“That’s a pretty small list,” I mutter to myself.
I sit back in my seat and rub my eyes. Needing to stretch my legs, I get up and pace around the conference room for a minute before I walk out.
“How’s it going in there, Mr. A?” Amy chirps.
I bristle at the bastardization of my name but bite back the scathing rebuke that sits on the tip of my tongue.
“I see you’re getting comfortable here,” I note.
She nods eagerly. “I am and I just want to thank you for giving me the chance—”
I give her a smile I’m sure looks forced. “You’re doing a great job.”
“Thank you. That means a lot,” she replies. “If you need anything, like for me to order lunch in for you or anything, just give me a shout.”
“I’ll do that.”
I continue across the office and step into Brody’s office to find our new investigator, Nick Moreno, sitting there. He gives me a broad grin. Nick is a nice guy who’s respectful and conscientious. He’s a good looking kid who vaguely reminds me a little of a young Diego Luna. Tall and lean, he’s got tawny skin, dark hair, and darker eyes. He’s not tall, but not short. Not thin, but not fat. There really isn’t anything truly memorable about him. He’s average in every way. A guy you would forget five minutes after you met h
im. Which is probably a good trait to have in this line of work.
“How’s it goin’ this mornin’, Mr. Arrington?” he asks.
“Just fine, Nick. Thank you,” I reply. “I need a few minutes with Brody.”
He nods and jumps to his feet and gives me the finger guns. “You got it, boss.”
I have to work hard to keep from rolling my eyes as he leaves the office. Brody is just leaning back in his chair, a wide grin on his face as he looks at me. I drop down into the chair across from him and shake my head.
“Finger guns?” I ask. “Really?”
Brody shrugs. “It’s kind of his thing.”
“Yeah, you need to make that not his thing.”
“Come on,” he says. “Other than the finger guns, I filled out our crew pretty well, right? I mean, we’re like a fine-tuned machine here.”
“Yeah, you’ve got real middle management potential.”
“Screw you,” he laughs.
“Seriously though, you’ve done a great job. Odd personality quirks aside, I think everybody you’ve hired is doing a great job.”
“You’re one to talk about odd personality quirks.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, well, I appreciate you taking the lead on it.”
“No problem. I’m glad they’re working out,” he grins. “So what can I do for you?”
“I need to know who’s working Stella’s case,” I tell him.
A shadow crosses his face as a frown pulls the corners of his mouth down. He knew Stella as well. Her death has hit him pretty hard, though he’s doing his best to keep his emotions in check. I think that was the real impetus behind him staffing up the office; he wanted to give us more time and freedom to operate and find her killer. Which is something I appreciate.
On another level though, I also think he enjoys running the business side of things. Secretly, of course. But he’s taken such control and ownership of the place; I imagine pride plays a big role in it. And frankly, I’m happy he is enjoying it because I sure wouldn’t. He’s doing a fantastic job, and I owe him a lot for handling it and letting me focus on other things.