Bitter Past

by Caroline Fardig

  He grinned, gathering up our gear. We left the room exactly as we had found it and headed over to the Voice office. It was in the Ashmore Student Center, where the dining halls, student life offices, bookstore, and campus radio station were housed. It was a newer building, mostly glass and steel, with fewer Gothic touches than the rest of campus.

  The Voice office was about the size of two classrooms, crammed with desks and short cubicles. Private offices lined one wall. Several students were hunched over computers, typing away. Other than the clacking of keys and the occasional chair creaking, the room was silent.

  Baxter walked up to the nearest desk and showed his badge to the kid sitting there. “I’m Detective Baxter with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, and this is Ms. Matthews. We need to ask everyone on staff a few questions.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. He cleared his throat. “Questions? Is it…is it about Eli?”

  “Yes. We’d like to use one of your offices for privacy as we speak to each of you individually.”

  “I’ll get Al. He’s the one in charge at the moment.” The kid hurried off and disappeared into one of the offices.

  Baxter leaned toward me and murmured, “Is there a weird vibe in here, or is it just me?”

  “There is. But honestly, the whole campus is giving off a weird vibe.” I sighed. “These poor kids don’t know what to think. There have been two murders of two well-known students within a week, and one of their professors has been arrested. Everyone is sad, scared, confused, and even kind of…excited, for lack of a better word. Living on campus is like living at Disneyland—it’s like they’re in this magical bubble where everything is perfect and safe and politically correct. They don’t know how to process real-world situations.”

  “That’s an astute observation, Dr. Freud.”

  “Shut up.”

  The boy Baxter had spoken to came out of the office trailed by another boy I recognized from one of my classes a couple of years ago. I couldn’t remember his name, but I did remember that he’d dropped out of the criminal justice program and changed his major to communications. Communications seemed to be a good fit for kids who didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up—if they ever did.

  He approached us. “Hey, Professor Matthews.” He stuck out his hand to Baxter. “I’m Albert Nishimura. My friends call me Al. I’m sort of in charge since Tad bailed and Eli…um…you know. You guys need to talk to the staff?”

  “Yes,” Baxter replied. “Can we use one of your offices?”

  “Sure thing, brah. Who do you want to start with?”

  Baxter flicked his eyes my way when Al called him “brah” but otherwise didn’t react. He replied, “Why don’t we start with you?”

  “No probs,” Al said, showing us into his office. After we sat down, Al smiled at me. “Yo, Professor, did you ever get the blood off that dress of yours?”

  I hesitated, taken aback by the question. Then I thought back to that night. I vaguely remembered Al being one of the onlookers during the blood incident. “Um, no. It was pretty much a total loss.”

  He chuckled. “I’m sorry about the dress, but that had to have been the funniest freakin’ thing I’ve ever seen when you slammed that bucket down on Justin’s head and started smacking it.”

  A slow smile spread over Baxter’s face. “I think I need to hear more of this story.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Al was full-on laughing now. “Oh, you should have been there, brah. It was epic. There she was, smokin’ hot in that pink dress. Then my dipshit friend Justin runs up and dumps this whole bucket of pig’s blood all over her. He thinks she’s just some random fancy lady from the party, but then he realizes who it is and how screwed he is.” He gestured to me. “Steam is pouring out her ears, and she grabs Justin by the collar and starts ripping him a new asshole. The rest of us are like freaking out, because the Prof here is usually pretty chill.”

  Covering his grin with his hand, Baxter replied, “Yeah, she doesn’t get worked up often, but when she does, watch out.”

  I glared at both of them, but it didn’t stop them from going right on with their conversation. As Al related the rest of the incident, Baxter was trying to hold his laughter in so hard he was shaking. I kicked his shin under the desk, and he lost it. He started cracking up, and it took him a good minute to get it out of his system. Needless to say, I was not amused.

  Wiping the tears from his eyes, Baxter said, “That was a great story.” He turned to me. “Your version was not nearly so interesting.”

  “I hate you so much right now,” I said to Baxter under my breath, which only broadened his smile. I said to Al, “We’d like to know if Eli was mixed up in anything dangerous. Was he still supplying Adderall to the Voice staff?”

  Al’s eyes widened, and he shifted in his chair. “Whoa. That’s…um…”

  Baxter said, “I’m not a narco cop. I’m only trying to find out who murdered Eli Vanover. If he was dealing, that’s something I need to know.”

  Grimacing, Al said, “Yeah, Eli is, I mean was, our hookup for Adderall. Sometimes…sometimes he had other stuff, too.”

  “What kind of other stuff?”

  “Weed and Molly.”

  It was one thing to befriend a college kid with a legitimate Adderall prescription and convince him to pass on the drugs to you, but dealing marijuana and MDMA put Eli in a whole new category. If he was selling street drugs, he had to have an external source, and that meant he was consorting with some people who were way out of his league.

  “Who’s supplying him?” Baxter asked.

  Al shook his head. “He never said. The only thing I know is that he always had a full stock on Fridays.”

  “In his desk?” I asked.

  “He usually had some in there, yeah.”

  Baxter said, “We’ll need to go through his desk before we leave. One more thing. Eli was known for his inflammatory articles and his invasive videos. Did anyone ever get pissed off over one of them and threaten him?”

  Al snickered. “Only all the time, brah. He got hate mail out the ass, and people were always stopping him on campus and bitching him out.”

  “Did any of them ever get physical?”

  “Yeah, he’s had a couple of black eyes over the years.”

  “How about recently?”

  “Eli and Tad went at it over a story earlier this week. It got pretty intense around here.”

  “What was the story about?”

  “Hell if I know. Eli didn’t want it leaking out before he had a chance to break it. Tad was the only other one who knew anything about it.”

  “Tad left campus. Do you know where he might have gone?” Baxter asked.

  Shrugging, Al said, “No. Sorry, brah. Tad and I aren’t so tight.”

  “Thanks for your time, Al.”

  “Yes, thank you, Al,” I said. “Can we look through Eli’s office now?”

  “Knock yourself out, Professor. It’s two doors down.”

  Baxter and I found Eli’s office and went inside, closing the door after us. He went around behind the desk and started opening drawers. The bottom right drawer was locked, a sure sign there was something interesting in it.

  “Damn,” he said, jiggling the handle. He began rifling through the other drawers again, looking for a key. Finding none, he slammed the top drawer shut in frustration.

  I didn’t want to do this, mainly so Baxter wouldn’t have more ammunition to make fun of me, but in the interest of time, I caved. “Are there two paper clips in the drawer?”

  He wrinkled his forehead. “Yeah,” he answered, producing two paper clips from the top drawer and handing them to me.

  Without a word, I unbent one end of each paperclip and fashioned two crude lock picking devices—one rake and one tension tool. Shooing Baxter away from the desk, I said, “You never saw me do this,” and got to work on the lock. I inserted the tension tool into the lock, turning it slightly to the right. Once that was in place, I
inserted the rake tool and began scraping it against the lock’s pins. After several scrapes, the pins all bounced around and reached the shear line. Then I used the tension tool to slowly turn the lock. I pulled the drawer open and stepped back for Baxter to have a look.

  He kept his eyes on me for a long moment, causing me to start fidgeting under his gaze. “Where in the hell did you learn how to do that?”

  I blushed. “In high school, um…my friends and I would steal tests from teachers’ desks and sell them. It was my job to pick the locks.”

  His mouth twitched. “And now you’re a teacher.”

  “The irony is not lost on me.”

  “Just when I think I have you all figured out, you throw me a curve ball.”

  “Things I’ve seen and done would curl your hair. I really should have been put in juvie,” I admitted.

  Shaking his head, he took out the camera and shot a couple photos of the drawer. He then began taking items out, including several packs of cigarettes, a silver flask, and two Altoids tins. He opened the tins and, no surprise, they were filled with small orange pills instead of mints.

  “There’s Eli’s Adderall, right where your sister said it would be,” said Baxter, setting the tins down on the desk to take photos.

  I looked over his shoulder into the drawer. “What, no ‘weed and Molly’ like Al said?”

  “Not in here.”

  “Anything else incriminating?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How about this computer?” I asked, pointing to the computer on the desk. “Can we take it to the nerds in Cyber and have them paw through it? Maybe they’ll find a shocking article or video Eli hadn’t released yet. I want to know what that fight was about.”

  Baxter studied the back of the tower. “This is property of Ashmore College. I’ll need a separate warrant for it. Go give Tad’s office a once-over while I make the call.”

  I went next door to Tad Ogelsby’s office and began looking around. Unlike his dorm room, his office was neat enough. I took photos of a few notes on his desk, but again, nothing jumped out as a lead on where he’d gone. Tad’s desk drawers were all unlocked, but they only held a benign mix of office supplies and snacks.

  Baxter stuck his head in and said, “We’ve got more staff to talk to. Let’s do it in Vanover’s office. Being in there might get them off-balance and make them blurt something out.”

  “That’s twisted, Detective. I didn’t think you had it in you,” I said, impressed. Baxter was such a straight shooter. I was surprised he would use psychological manipulation as a tactic.

  We interviewed student after student, but they all said the same thing: Eli and Tad had a fight over a story, but no one else knew what it was about. They also all corroborated that Eli was the resident drug dealer, and that he dealt in more than just “study enhancers.”

  I drummed my fingers against the desk, annoyed that the last staff member was taking his dear sweet time coming to Eli’s office.

  “What’s your problem? You in a hurry or something?” Baxter asked.

  It was nearly four, which meant my date was in two hours. I had to finish up here, meet Rich to get the results from my swabs, and drive back to Noblesville to meet with the coroner for a post-autopsy briefing. After I finished all that, I had a mountain of work ahead of me in the lab. I really didn’t have time for a date, but it was the only thing I actually wanted to do this evening. There was no way to get my running around done in time to meet Rob at my office at six o’clock.

  “You know that date I missed last night?” I said to Baxter.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we rescheduled for tonight, and I’m running out of hours in the day.”

  He shrugged. “So call it off.”

  “That’s the thing—I don’t want to call it off.”

  I decided against phoning Rob and having to verbally explain my problem in such an agitated state. I shot him a text instead, asking nicely if we could change our meeting place to Noblesville and push the time an hour later.

  “Is this the date with the rent-a-cop?” he asked.

  I gave him a dangerous glare.

  Holding his hands up, he said, “Just making conversation. Don’t kill me.”

  The last staff member walked in. It was the nervous kid we had talked to when we first arrived.

  “Have a seat, Trent,” said Baxter, checking the kid’s name off his list.

  Trent sat down slowly, not taking his eyes off Baxter and me.

  “How long have you worked for the Voice?” Baxter asked.

  “I’m…um…just starting my second year,” replied Trent.

  “And how well do you know Eli Vanover?”

  He looked down. “Pretty well. He kind of thought of me as his unofficial assistant. He said he’d groom me for the editor’s job if I, uh…took care of his busy work.”

  Baxter sat up straighter in his chair. “What kind of things did you do for him?”

  “Oh, you know…running out for coffee or picking up dinner, answering his emails, filling out forms, taking his calls, um…writing his research papers… Things that assistants do.”

  “Trent,” I said gently, “Eli shouldn’t have asked you to write his research papers for him. That’s not the work of an assistant—it’s cheating. You didn’t have to do that for him.”

  His shoulders slumped. “But I thought it would help free him up to do important things, like writing hard-hitting articles and exposing the truth.” Eli had done a number on this kid.

  “Do you know if there was a story he was working on or had published recently that would have made someone angry enough to kill him?” asked Baxter.

  Trent flicked his eyes down. “There was one, but he wasn’t ready to run it yet. He had a video of a conversation, but he said he needed to do a little investigative journalism to round out the story. He said he felt like he was sitting on the biggest news the Ashmore Voice had ever reported.”

  “Bigger than a professor being arrested for the murder of a student?” asked Baxter in disbelief. “Does this news have to do with the Vasti Marais murder?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Where is the video?” asked Baxter.

  Trent blew out a nervous breath. “I don’t know, but I do know he was keeping it safe. I think he had it stored on a flash drive because he didn’t want someone hacking his phone or computer and scooping him.”

  “Had that happened before?”

  “The hacking? Yeah, it happened once last semester when he pissed off a few of the computer science majors. They hacked the crap out of his laptop and posted his personal notes and article ideas all over the school website. They got in big trouble, but he also caught a lot of hell about inventing stories that weren’t true. That’s when he got paranoid and started saving everything to a flash drive.”

  “Where did he keep the flash drive?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know that, either. Sorry.” Wiping sweat from his brow, he asked, “Can I go now?”

  I didn’t like how squirrely this kid was being, and from the expression on Baxter’s face, neither did he.

  “We’re almost finished,” Baxter said, getting up to go over and stand in front of Trent. “We know that Eli was dealing.”

  Trent squirmed in his chair, but didn’t say a word.

  Baxter crossed his arms and stared the kid down. “I need to know where he was getting his drugs. Who’s his supplier?”

  Trent shrank back in his chair. “I…I don’t…”

  Leaning down and placing a hand on each arm of Trent’s chair, Baxter growled, “You know something. You can either tell me here or down at the station after I book you for obstruction of justice.”

  Trent was either about to cry or mess his pants. “I can’t…”

  I was impressed by Baxter’s bad cop routine. He had this kid ready to crack. In one swift motion, he tipped Trent’s chair back and caught him just before he hit the floor. Trent was stuck in the chair,
flailing from the sudden loss of balance.

  Wild-eyed, he wailed, “Okay…okay…I…I…had to drive Eli to their…exchange every Thursday night. He didn’t have a car so…he needed me to take him. I know what his supplier looks like, but I don’t know his name. Please don’t throw me in jail! And don’t tell my parents!” He dissolved into broken sobs.

  Baxter returned Trent and his chair to an upright position. I could have sworn I saw a smile playing at his lips. “Where do they usually make the exchange?” he demanded.

  “Behind the…behind that crappy strip mall at Ninety-Sixth and College,” he sniffled.

  “What time?”

  “Nine thirty.”

  Baxter got in his face. “I’m going to let you go—for now. But if I hear that you’ve left town or if you’re not keeping your nose clean, I’ll find you. I’ll throw you in jail, and then I’ll tell your parents everything. Do you get me?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “Good. Now get out of here.”

  Trent scrambled out of his seat and ran for the door. He was out of the office in a flash, probably heading to his dorm room to change his underwear.

  Smiling at Baxter, I said, “You’re such a goodie two-shoes, I never thought I’d see you pull off the bad cop routine.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m a total badass. You just haven’t had the chance to witness it until now,” he said, puffing out his chest. “A bad cop needs his good cop, though. You weren’t much help.”

  “You had this. I was enjoying the show. And don’t forget, I’m not a cop.” I checked my watch. “I have to go. I need to pick up some lab results back in the science building before I meet with Dr. Berg.”

  “Catch you later. After I’m done here, I’m going back over to Tristan Sellers’s apartment to see if I can find Eli’s stash. Now that the autopsy’s over, we need to release the scene, so this is our last chance to look around.”

  “Good luck finding it. I’m betting it’s in his backpack, along with his cell phone, laptop, and flash drive with the incriminating video.”

  “The way this investigation is going, I wouldn’t doubt it.” He grinned at me. “Have fun on your date.”