by Vera Kurian
Andre pursed his lips together. “I’m pretty sure it was just sounds. Like pain. So right before I called 911, there was a guy there.”
“Another guy?”
“Yeah, I saw him, and I was like relieved someone could help me because I don’t really know first aid. I said, help call 911 or whatever and he...”
“He...”
“He made this gesture.” Andre got up to act out what he could only call a shrug—nothing else could do justice to how weird it had been. The cops looked at each other and frowned.
He felt a tiny grain of relief when it became apparent from their facial expressions that they, too, thought this was bizarre. “Can you describe him?” Bentley asked.
Andre sat back down. “He was white. Maybe like somewhere between my age and...thirty-five?”
“What was he wearing?”
Andre chewed his lower lip. He shook his head.
“Can you describe his face?”
“Uh... Just like...normal?”
“Anything distinctive? Hair, eyes?”
“He definitely didn’t have red hair. Black or brown, I don’t know, maybe it could have been dark blond.”
“How tall was he?”
The more Andre tried to think of who he had seen, the less clearly he could see him in his mind’s eye. “I was on the ground, so...” Andre got off his chair and sat on the floor, then looked up at Deever, who was starting to look annoyed at Andre’s failure to be the perfect witness. “Maybe your height.”
“Any tattoos, piercings?”
Andre exhaled slowly. “I can’t remember, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. I just saw him for a split second.”
“You said he was white,” Bentley said. “White like me or white like Deever?”
Andre’s eyes went from one man to another. Bentley was closer to what white people called “swarthy”; Deever looked like he sunburned. “Uh...somewhere in between?” What if he just gave them a description? Any description, a detailed one, whether it was true or not. Wouldn’t that lead them to someone else, away from him? He felt a wave of nausea. “I’m sorry. If you had a picture of him I think I could say yes or no.”
“What kind of feeling did you get from him?” Bentley asked. “What kind of presence did he have? Did he seem angry?”
Andre blinked. He understood what Bentley was asking, but he hesitated about saying what he was thinking. “If he had just looked at me and walked away, I would have thought it was really weird. But that gesture he made, it like... It makes my skin crawl.”
* * *
When Andre finally returned to his dorm room, exhausted, his heart felt even heavier when he realized Sean wasn’t home. He hadn’t been sure how he was going to begin telling the story of what had just happened, but now it wasn’t an issue. He was alone in an empty dorm room and suddenly had a terrible urge to turn tail and head back to Northeast to his parents’ house. What the hell had just happened? And now what would happen? Would the police question him again? Would they start poking into his background just because he happened to be there? Why not just leave Adams, head home and never pick up the phone?
Andre rubbed his temples and opened his laptop. His head was swimming with emotions, but the one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about was the fact that this had happened in Wyman’s experiment room, not ten yards from his office. Was it too much of a coincidence that a guy got stabbed to death right next to an office that had a special program studying psychopaths? And what was it about Wyman that was so weirdly familiar?
Andre skimmed through the search results for “Leonard Wyman psychologist” on Google, some part of him dimly aware that he was only doing this to distract himself from the images that kept repeating in his mind—the man slipping on the bloody floor, the gurgling sound his throat made—and the temptation to call his parents. Most of the results were articles Wyman had written with long, complicated titles. Others were blurbs about conference presentations. One link about Elena winning a dissertation scholarship.
But then Andre saw two words that made him freeze. Forensic Files. Suddenly he knew exactly why Wyman had sounded familiar.
In the two years that followed Kiara’s death, Andre cut class often, sometimes to hang out with his friends, but sometimes to simply return home and be there alone. He would lie on the couch eating Cheezy Poofs, watching old episodes of Forensic Files and 48 Hours. A true-crime rabbit hole appeared, and Andre fell into it, the darkness of the material matching his macabre mood. He watched old documentaries, subscribed to podcasts, and even poked through message boards online of self-described sleuths.
There were two cases in particular he became obsessed with because they were local: the DC Sniper and the CRD Killer. The former was actually two men who had randomly gone around shooting people with no rhyme or reason, Zodiac-style. But their shooting spree was dwarfed by the activities of Gregory Ripley—CRD or the Rock Creek Killer. From the mid-nineties to the early 2000s, a series of murders dotted across the mid-Atlantic, concentrated in Virginia, Maryland, and DC. The repeated MO led to the killer’s moniker: CRD, choke, rape, dismember. When he was finally caught, he admitted to twenty-two killings, and was given the death penalty based on the solid physical evidence from nine of those killings.
Andre clicked around, finally finding a sketchy website that would allow him to watch the old episode of Forensic Files about the CRD Killer that he had already seen before. He skipped past all the stuff about the hunt for CRD and got to his arrest. A voice-over said that the one person who understood CRD was a psychologist, the only person who had extensively interviewed him and who had testified during the trial. That psychologist had been Dr. Leonard Wyman. Then there was the grainy video of him behind a desk—he had aged a lot since then, but this voice was the same. Andre had forgotten one other peculiar aspect of the case. After the jury reached its verdict, Wyman had rushed out of the courthouse while reporters shouted at him—he had argued for clemency when the entire nation was screaming to put Greg Ripley to death. Greg Ripley, who smiled at the jury during his trial and doodled during gory testimony. “I do not think that Gregory Ripley deserves to die,” Wyman said to the camera, making the hairs on Andre’s arms stand up. Wyman’s own hair had had almost no gray in it back then. “He’s not the monster you think he is.”
What exactly, Andre wanted to know, was this fucking program for psychopaths at John Adams University that he had gotten himself into? It was run by a man who defended the CRD serial killer. If he could defend CRD, what else would he defend?
11
Day 45
I was in a car heading to Charles Portmont’s estate. Billy the Crew’s brother was driving and Billy rode shotgun, messing with the radio. I was sandwiched between two Kappa Delta girls, one of whom I surmised was fucking Billy’s brother. Another guy, a pledge they called Reek, was squished against the far window, not even accorded a seat belt.
Me and Reek were the only ones who had never been to one of Charles’s parties. “It’s sooooo open bar,” one of the girls said. “Like I asked the bartender to make me a Manhattan and he knew what it was. It was gross but I drank it anyway.”
Clumped together in the trunk were our personal effects—the boys’ clothes were stuffed into a couple of plastic Safeway bags. I had a book bag with a number of items: a cocktail dress, some toiletries, and two vials of a liquid Rohypnol solution. “I’m going to land a sugar daddy who will pay off my student debt,” said Kappa 1.
“Yeah, if you’re into jowls,” said Kappa 2.
The drive down was pleasant. It was mostly one highway the entire way down, the sides of the road thickly lined with trees, their leaves just starting to turn. We turned onto a smaller local road and then a narrow street with a Private Property sign. The woods had been dispensed with, replaced with an expansive green yard leading up to a sprawling Tudor-style estate. Ahead of us I could see C
harles getting out of his Jaguar and Kristen getting out on her side.
We piled out of the car. “We’re the first ones here,” Charles said. “But I’m only giving one tour because I’m going to be too plastered later.” There were supposed to be about thirty of us coming, but the others were still trapped in traffic.
We followed Charles inside, and as soon as the double front doors were open, I could see the bustle of activity to prepare for the charity event. People in catering uniforms were scurrying about with chairs, and one woman was on a dangerously high ladder so she could dust the massive chandelier. A double staircase curved up behind it.
“Charlie!” came a voice. An older woman—his mother, I presumed—entered the foyer and held her arms out to hug him. She was the type of extremely well-put-together that can only exist among wealthy women with little else to care about. “My Charlie Bear, look at you.” She went on to hug Kristen next. Charles refused to be embarrassed by being called Charlie Bear.
He introduced us as his friends and then took us on a brief tour of the house. I mentally cataloged all the rooms: a library, a dining room, a formal dining room, his father’s study, which had animal heads in it, and a kitchen so massive it made me want to learn how to make pie crusts. Huge windows in the kitchen overlooked the backyard. There was a substantial patio, a covered pool, more yard, then a dock leading directly out onto the river. I considered each of the places for my interrogation.
I had researched all I could about truth serums. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a real truth serum. I needed the next best thing: something that would make Will’s mouth loosen, lower his inhibitions, but also something that would make him forget it the next day. Alcohol had many of those characteristics, but wasn’t entirely reliable. I definitely needed alcohol to be involved, because getting drunk and blacking out presented an obvious explanation to the question “What happened last night?” Rohypnol is illegal in the US, but enterprising people can still obtain it online. Back in high school, I had experimented with creating a concentrated liquid form of it. I selected boys I estimated were about the same size as Will, cornering them at various house parties and bonfires, leading them away to the woods. Of course they thought they were going to get laid, but in reality I just held bizarre conversations with them, extracting private information and seeding them with strange stories so I could question them the next day to see if they remembered.
“I have to make some rounds—meet me back here in an hour. We can eat and drink whatever we want, but just stay out of people’s hair,” Charles said.
“What exactly is this benefit for?” Billy asked.
“Conservation.”
“Isn’t your dad in fracking?” I couldn’t help asking.
“He’s also a hunter,” he replied. This also didn’t make sense to me, but I accepted it.
We dispersed to get ready upstairs, where Charlie Bear said we could take any room that didn’t have a closed door. Although the house was huge, it didn’t have thirty bedrooms, so I imagine there were some shenanigans of bed sharing anticipated for tonight. The machinations that would probably be taking place very late at night were critical: I needed to be well-placed with Will already wrapped around my finger, drunk but not too drunk. (The last thing I needed was for him to have a bout of uncontrollable vomiting, which would make it hard to question him.)
Myself and the two Kappa girls took a bedroom that overlooked the backyard. While they tried to steam their dresses in the adjoining bathroom, I peered out at the landscape. It would be dark out at the river soon. In the long expanse leading out to the river, there were two small, detached guesthouses.
Not too far away, but fairly isolated, the guesthouses seemed ideal. I couldn’t one hundred percent count on Will being docile—things could get violent. I had taken a bunch of self-defense classes, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t risk involved. On TV, the good guy always wins; in real life, if someone outweighs you, they can easily overpower you. The key thing was to stay levelheaded so I would have the upper hand.
“Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?” Kappa 2 asked, looking at me with her lips outlined in lip liner.
I wriggled into my dress. It was a short, formfitting Sue Wong cocktail dress with an art deco flapper feel to it, blush-colored with black lace accents and black ostrich-feather trim. I had no jewelry other than a black cuff-style bangle I had brought to cover over my smartwatch, which didn’t really go with the outfit. The Kappas futzed over their hair for a while, while I left mine in loose waves.
I was standing outside the door to the bedroom, slipping into my heels, when several of the upperclassmen appeared from a room down the hall. Sigh. Here was Charles in a slim-fitting dark gray suit, his pocket square perfectly folded into three points. Kristen was beside him in an emerald dress that made the color of Charles’s eyes pop. “You look nice!” he said in the same exact bland tone one uses on one’s sister.
I didn’t want him to think I looked “nice.” There were times I wanted to be invisible, usually for practical purposes, but not right now. Seriously, Kristen in her plain sequined green dress? Vom.
Guests had started to arrive since we had shown up. I followed Charles and Kristen down the curving staircase. He shook the hands of several people who must have been friends of his parents.
The first floor of the house was now crowded with older people in cocktail attire. Waiters circled with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. In the kitchen, Charles snatched a tray of canapés in one hand and three bottles of champagne with the other. Separate from the main party, we sat on the patio and drank the champagne directly from the bottles until a waiter appeared with some glasses. I kept a glass that always had some champagne in it, but only mimed drinking, pretending to get progressively sillier.
By the time the others showed up, it was already dark, the patio lit by strings of small globe lights. Here was Cordy with Will in tow. Bottle after bottle of champagne appeared, but also the occasional waiter delivering a cocktail someone had requested. I cawed the way a drunken girl would, laughing helplessly when people made stupid jokes. I made sure I was in the vicinity of Will, monitoring how much he drank while showing my drunkenness like a peacock spreading its plumage. I could feel him looking at me.
I ate a miniquiche, then pronounced it an awesome idea when someone suggested we go check out the dock. The girls walked carefully in the grass, their heels sinking into the sod. It was dark on the dock, the water looking black. There was lighting, but no one had turned it on. I leaned at the edge of the dock as far as I dared and looked to the left. The estate was isolated enough that you could not see any neighbors. “You and Derek are totally vibing,” one of the girls observed.
The other giggled. “I mean, what if I want something to happen, you know?”
I looked back toward the house. We were about as far away as I would be if I were in the northernmost guesthouse, and from where I stood I couldn’t hear the rest of our group talking even though I knew they were being loud.
Just as we got back to the patio, Charles produced a baggie of cocaine. Not everyone did it—I noticed that Kristen never did, and that her eyes lingered on her boyfriend when he did (you bet I filed that nugget away!) although he only did one line. I pretended to do some, smearing the line of powder with my finger as I pretended to snort. A couple of the SAE brothers were on the lawn, shoeless, arguing, and started hitting each other. A few girls were dancing. Charles was laughing, holding a bottle of champagne, while Kristen cried, “Noooo, that’s not what I said!”
People were very drunk. One girl headed for the woods to throw up, another coming to hold her hair. I was amazed at the brothers’ ability to consume alcohol. The girls couldn’t keep up in terms of volume. A few pairs of people disappeared into the house, possibly to hook up somewhere. The benefit, whatever it was for, was winding down, and now there were only staff cleaning up.
; I was the only one with my wits about me.
I started to make moves. My hovering near Will became more direct. I touched him on the arm and laughed wildly at anything he said resembling a joke. He teased me about my name, saying it was a hippie name, and I pretended to pout. We sat at the end of one of the patio tables, picking at some appetizers, talking about lacrosse. God, did he really think I wanted to talk about lacrosse? I leaned forward, hanging on every word, at one point putting my hand directly on his knee.
Our crowd was thinning as people had turned in or been taken upstairs to lie down and drink water at their friends’ urging. Only a handful remained, and I had to outlast them and make sure that Will had enough of an idea in his head about getting laid that he would stick it out with me. Charles had loosened his tie and he and Kristen were making out so hard I could see their tongues. She was mussing up his hair and they, too, no doubt, would disappear into the house to have sex. Perfect Charles and his perfect girlfriend—please go away and leave me to my business.
Derek then headed inside with one other brother and two girls, leaving the four of us.
“We’re gonna head in,” Charles mumbled, his hand on Kristen’s ass as they left to go upstairs.
Will and I sat on the patio alone. I stood up slowly. “I guess we should turn in, too,” I said, trying to sound reluctant. Will stood up, wavering on his drunken feet. “I feel so bad leaving such a mess,” I said, gesturing to the discarded plates and glasses. I started to stack them.
“Yeaahh,” Will said, clumsily helping me. Charles and Kristen were good and gone by then. No staff in the kitchen. I looked at Will directly.
“Do you want to check out one of those guesthouses?” I asked.
“Sure!”
I made sure to squirrel away half a cup each of a mixed drink in two glasses. I carried them carefully as we walked across the grass toward the houses. I was barefoot, having shed my heels to have better purchase just in case I needed to run or kick. My purse was tucked snugly against my side, the vials and a switchblade inside. Will was bigger than me, but I was smarter. I was ready.