by Vera Kurian
Charles, I tried to call him psychically. I didn’t care if it turned out that Kristen was right behind us. I didn’t care because it was obvious that we wanted each other and that she was garbage.
Suddenly the lights went garishly bright and the crowd groaned. “That’s closing time, folks!” the DJ called out. Charles pulled away from me and in the next moment he was turning aside, speaking to Derek. There was a clump of people heading out the door and I was carried out in the tide.
Everyone stood around, making arrangements to go home. I saw Charles slip his arm around Kristen and say something into her ear, making her laugh. I hated him.
Someone called a Lyft saying we could all share, but when the car came, people crowded inside, leaving me and Traci, a friend from my dorm, out in the cold. Traci was wearing stilettos she couldn’t actually walk in and was wavering—eighty percent chance she would vom. “Chloeeeeeee...they left.”
I called a Lyft myself, calculating the cost that would go onto my terrible secret credit card that came with a free burrito when I signed up for it. The car they assigned was fifteen minutes away. “We can walk closer at least.”
She clutched my arm. “Nothing’s safe anymore.”
“I have this,” I said, holding up a small can. “Wasp spray. Better than mace because it can’t blow back on you.”
“I’ve a cat key chain—” hiccup “—you can stab with the ears.”
We stumbled along. It was 1:30 a.m., but I thought it seemed safe because cars were still driving up New York Avenue. Still, I looked around, trying to make it seem like I wasn’t looking around. It wasn’t until we got around the Convention Center that Traci gripped me tighter. The place is bustling during the day, but at night it’s just this big hulking building with nothing and no one around it. This is the problem—sometimes things seem safe until they seem unsafe, and at that point it’s too late. Traci took her shoes off and walked barefoot, suddenly seeming more sober.
They tell you to get a guy friend to walk you home, not realizing that guy friends can rape you. Take a cab—but the cabdriver could rape you! Take an Uber—but they’re even more rape-y! Take the Metro—rapists ride free! What if everyone was like me, I wondered, and hunted down their respective Wills. Would the economy collapse?
When I got to my room, Yessica was zonked out in front of the TV. I still had her necklace and wondered if she would notice if I forgot to return it. I knelt to tuck it into the shoebox where I kept my jewelry but then had a sudden thought. Where was the bangle I had been wearing the night I brained Will with the geode? I hadn’t worn it since. I started digging through my closet, searching for the little clutch purse I had used that night.
I found the bangle in my purse, but not everything that was supposed to be inside it. Irritated, I texted Charles. Did you take my brownies the night of your party? There were two in my purse. Hopefully he wasn’t dumb enough to think that I was actually talking about brownies. What was missing was the remaining vial of Rohypnol, which had not been easy to come by. (It isn’t just date rapists who buy it, but bodybuilders also use it as an anabolic steroid. I had acquired it as a powerlifter with the username Ripped69 online.)
Finally, he replied. You already ate one brownie, I thought you had enough.
Those were mine
Not anymore
33
“Shh,” Chloe hissed. “You look suspicious.”
Andre threw up his hands innocently. On a crowded street of pedestrians, they were walking down 7th Street like any other two preoccupied students—Chloe with her phone, Andre with the camera he wore around his neck. A full block ahead of them walked Leonard Wyman, wearing a long black coat and carrying a briefcase. Andre’s stakeout idea hadn’t led to any real developments, and neither, at least so far, had Chloe’s befriending of one of the program’s RAs. Investigations took time, but Chloe was impatient. Andre had only reluctantly agreed with her to follow Wyman after work; all it took was him turning around and they would be spotted.
“He’s texting—I think he’s going to meet someone,” Andre said.
Chloe jabbed her elbow into his side—Wyman had abruptly slowed down, looking with confusion at the door to a restaurant. Andre huddled next to Chloe, pretending to adjust his camera, praying that the man wouldn’t turn around. Charles had never said if there had been any consequences to his attempt at following Wyman home. “He’s got the restaurant confused—look, he’s going into that other one,” Chloe said as she turned to him, the look on her face urgent. “Wait sixty seconds and go in there after him and take a picture of whoever he’s with.”
“What! He’ll see me!”
“Then make up an excuse! I’ll get them from the outside through the window.” It was too late to try to refuse—she didn’t understand that he couldn’t make up excuses as glibly as her, that he was, understandably, reasonably scared, that the place was a wine and cheese and charcuterie place that he was wildly out of place in—let alone his being underage—but also considering that wine and cheese and charcuterie places were not intended for people like him. But then there he was, standing in one, aware that Wyman was to his left, thankfully his back to Andre. Andre edged to the bar, which was half-full of patrons—the bartender was busy giving a long-winded explanation to a couple at the end.
There was a girl sitting across from Wyman. His heart pounding, Andre tried to size her up without it looking like that’s what he was doing. She was college-aged. She had nothing-color hair and an indistinct face and wore jeans and a pale sweater that was strangely too close in shade to her skin. She had her hands curled around a mug, her expression riveted on Wyman, who was talking. Who was she? One of his grad students?
Andre held up the wine menu, pretending to examine it as he fumbled to turn his camera on. People took pictures of menus, didn’t they? He had to act quickly before anyone noticed. He zoomed in on the girl and opted to snap a short video rather than photos. He wondered if he could get close enough to hear what they were saying.
“Can I get you a taste of anything?”
Andre jumped. The bartender, clad in all black, was now directly in front of him, smiling. “Ah...” He pretended to peruse the menu. “I was hoping for something from Chile.”
“We have a beautiful Syrah if you’d like to check that out.”
“Sure.”
“Great, if I can just see your ID.”
Andre grinned, embarrassed. “It’s in my car?”
“Right,” the bartender said, wrapping his knuckles against the bar and smiling.
Andre scurried from the place, ducking his head, and then nearly skipped past Chloe. “I got a picture, too!” she cried, running after him. Andre didn’t stop until they were around the block. His video turned out better than her pictures, which were in profile. “Do you know her?” Andre shook his head. “I’ve never seen her.”
“Look how they’re sitting,” Andre said. “How close.”
“Clearly they know each other. Do you think he’s having an affair?”
“She’s like our age.”
Chloe snorted.
“Look,” Andre said, zooming in so she could see one particular segment when Wyman appeared to put his hand on her arm in a reassuring way. “She could be a patient.”
“Why would he meet a patient outside the office at a nice restaurant? That’s completely inappropriate.”
Good point. They both watched the video a few more times. He could not read the look on the girl’s face, and apparently neither could Chloe. An idea formed in his head. “Wyman’s, what, seventy or so?” he said. Chloe nodded. “She’s about our age. What if she’s his daughter?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s never mentioned kids. And he’s the type that would have a picture of them in his office.”
“I wouldn’t have a picture of my kids in my office if I worked with psychopaths,” Andre pointed
out. In the dim lighting, Chloe’s pupils were huge, like the eyes of a cat. She didn’t understand how other people might see her, how they might see straight through her, as if her looking at a picture of Wyman’s kids or asking a question about them would ever be entirely innocent.
“Charles might know if he has kids,” she said doubtfully.
“What if she’s his secret daughter?”
“They seemed like they knew each other well. Maybe she’s a graduate of the program. Or the most boring explanation—she’s one of his graduate students.”
“Upload her to Facebook, see what comes up,” he said.
“I don’t have it on my phone. I’d have to sign in the stupid mobile site.”
“Ugh, let’s just go to the computer lab,” he suggested. They were only two blocks from one of the twenty-four-hour ones that consistently smelled like Cheetos. Andre was familiar with them all, because at a school this size they were always a place to go if you didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t feel alone or afraid when he was with Chloe, he realized, which didn’t make sense because how on earth did standing next to a smallish white girl make him safer? It was just that Chloe was always moving, always thinking and scheming—it was easy to get caught up in her current. Maybe it was because if some dude in a hockey mask carrying a machete appeared in the computer lab, Chloe would not be cowering under the table, sobbing like some girl in a horror movie, and would expect him to not be, either. It was weirdly easy to slip into the role of someone with a huge ego and no fears because it wasn’t that different than the person he was pretending to be in the years he was fucking up his life. He hadn’t cared if anything bad would happen to him because the worst had already happened.
They each took a computer, Chloe signing into Facebook as Andre emailed her the video file. “Try a couple different stills and see if it says the same thing,” Andre suggested.
Chloe did just this, taking two stills from his video, then one of her pictures of the girl, which had been in profile. She opened three separate tabs and quickly uploaded the three different photos. For all three, the same tag suggestion popped up: Is this Megan Dufresne? With rapidity that was almost frightening, Chloe was already opening up more tabs with Google and had Instagram pulled up.
Andre turned to his own computer to search for “Megan Dufresne Adams University.” After a few clicks he found an account on Instagram. He looked over Chloe’s shoulder and saw that she was looking at a Facebook profile for Megan Dufresne. Here she was laughing, her arms wrapped around a friend. Here she was smiling over a latte with a heart floating at the top. Andre felt the exhilaration of figuring something out before someone else. The girl on Chloe’s Facebook—Megan Dufresne—had auburn hair, not the nothing color of the girl they had just seen.
“Chloe,” he said, but was unable to get her attention, so he had to physically turn her head to look at his own computer, to the Instagram page he had found for Emma Dufresne. “They’re twins.”
34
Kristen bustled behind him, getting ready, and Charles was eager for her to leave her house. “Why aren’t you dressed?” she asked.
She was wearing an autumn dress that showed off her long legs. “My head hurts,” he said, massaging his temples.
“And this just happens to occur an hour before we’re supposed to go to dinner with my sister?”
“Is that tonight?”
“I asked you weeks ago. She’s only in town for one night.”
“Do you mind if I don’t go?” he asked.
“You’re just sitting here staring into space.”
“It’s a migraine—I had to sit through a two-hour student council meeting, and I just want to lie down.”
“I guess you didn’t realize that winning the election means you might actually have to do some work.” She exhaled air sharply. “Okay, good night.”
Uh-oh. He would have to quell her annoyance later, have her chalk it up to his occasional selfishness rather than explaining what he was up to. The last thing she needed was a reminder that her perfect boyfriend was not in fact perfect, but had a variety of unsavory problems.
The door clicked shut and, relieved to be left alone, he looked at his watch. Mercer would be getting here soon, and true to his word, soon came a knock at the front door.
Mercer was tall and burly with salt-and-pepper hair, and behind him was a smaller man he introduced as Mal the Tech Guy. Charles led them to the living room and showed them Kristen’s laptop, which was sitting beside his own. Charles had forgotten about seeing the webcam light on the night they had gone to Old Ebbitt Grill until Kristen mentioned that the computer was acting strangely. Charles had had a sudden, sickening realization of what was going on.
“The webcam’s been broken for months, but then I saw it go on on its own,” he explained. Mal sat and Charles gestured for Mercer to follow him to the kitchen.
“Is this related to the other stuff?” Mercer asked.
Ah, the other stuff. Covering up Will’s accident, the request that he search Wyman’s house, and the most recent request that he do a background check on Andre Jensen. “I’m not totally sure. There are people who don’t like me, and I think spying on Kristen is a way to get under my skin.” Mercer nodded, and Charles followed him around the house as he began his search.
He tested the window locks and the dead bolts on the front and back doors, both of which had wrought-iron safety doors, as well. Then he turned on a small gadget with a dial and began to sweep the house with it. “Radiofrequency detector,” he explained. “To check for bugs. You can have a rest, Mr. Portmont. I don’t think this will take long.”
Charles went back upstairs and sat at the kitchen table, eyeing the tech guy as he worked on Kristen’s laptop. He uncapped a pen and pulled a notebook toward him.
Michael. He made a list of people he thought hung out with Michael, cobbled together based on what he could tell from social media.
Then he made a list of Kellen’s crowd, but the only overlap between Michael and Kellen was that they were both in the program. Kellen, for all Charles knew, could have been the one who killed Michael, or maybe the same person could have killed them both. Charles began to list people from least likely to have done it to most likely.
Elena, he thought, was the least likely. Pleasant, friendly Elena, whose life was filled with grant applications. Killing the subjects in her own research study seemed awfully stupid from a career perspective. Elena was too smart to do something like that.
Dr. Wyman. Charles just couldn’t see him committing such violent acts against—as Wyman would put it—youngsters. But with the calm, collected way he conducted therapy, Charles could almost picture him doing something questionable if he thought it was in the interests of science.
Slightly higher on the list—Wyman’s research assistants. Charles didn’t know them all because some stayed and some worked for only a semester. Some only did data entry but the more senior ones were directly involved in experiments. They made for good suspects because they knew about the program and likely had access to a list of all the participants. But he couldn’t think of why—why them and why now?
Andre. The moment Chloe proudly unveiled her conclusion that Andre couldn’t possibly have done it, Charles made a note to look into him. A scrawny freshman kid—how bad could he possibly be? Particularly if he had well-documented alibis for both murders. Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? The alibis were a little too good, almost as if they were made on purpose.
Charles had asked Mercer to dig up what he could and it turned out Andre had some history of “juvenile delinquency.” But other than a few schoolyard fights, nothing seemed that violent or unusual. Charles himself had crashed a car or two when he was younger, and more than dabbled in drugs. Charles had spied Andre in the cafeteria with a baker’s dozen of multiethnic friends having the most absurd conversation about politics and how ev
erything was going to change. Andre had been carefully listening, not contributing much. That, Charles knew, was a sure sign of someone who was into political manipulation, someone who was guarded and cautious. He wouldn’t kill someone and then fake an attempted rescue and call 911 himself. He wouldn’t use an MRI machine.
Will, he wrote slowly. Nothing about Will seemed to fit the bill of a psychopath—he didn’t seem a master manipulator and he didn’t seem more impulsive than the average frat bro. But Charles officially knew three psychopaths other than himself, and they did not at all seem cut from the same cloth. If what Chloe had implied about Will was true, that Will was capable of attacking a prepubescent girl and filming it, it didn’t seem statistically improbable that he was a psychopath. If he was behind these killings, it might make perfect sense to help Chloe.
But... Chloe. She had to be high on the list—he had already seen her bash someone in the head. But maybe what was happening between her and Will had nothing to do with the program, and she certainly seemed surprised when he suggested they were in danger. He had no idea of what her motive could be, and she put on a show about wanting a weapon to protect herself. But maybe she didn’t need a motive—maybe she just enjoyed killing. Maybe she got a sexual thrill out of it the same way serial killers like the CRD and Richard Ramirez did. And no one would suspect her because she was a girl. Charles liked Chloe. He found her interesting. Possibly more interesting than anything that had happened to him for a while. Perhaps her flirting was a cat-and-mouse thing, her playing with her prey before she struck.
Charles took out his phone and Googled her. Social media accounts popped up. Her Instagram was populated by the standard stuff: pictures of food, selfies, random dogs. No glamor pics of knives or MRI machines. He paused on one selfie—her in a blood-colored tube dress looking none too coyly at the camera. Elsewhere on the internet, she was identified as a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship. Charles swam through a couple pages of junk ads for white page listings until he found a local newspaper article.