Jamie opened his eyes and the room was moving. Not just the people, or the crowd, but the room. He turned his head and a girl’s smile caught his eye, then hung in the air before him, even as he looked around, taking in the rest of the scene. Outlines of faces, figures and shapes, all shifting around him in a swirling, drunken blur. The tequila had raced through his bloodstream. His mouth tasted of silver. A silver spoon.
He laughed. He didn’t know why.
Had Jamie Pepper been born with the taste of a silver spoon in his mouth?
Christ he was drunk.
He looked to the side again, that girl was there. All blond streaks and skin-tight clothing. When you thought of sorority girls, you thought of her. She floated through the crowd. Jamie laughed again. All part of the experience, right? All part of the experience. She came in closer, raising her hands up to his arms, slipping her fingers down to his waist. She was dancing now, moving forward and backward, her legs spread apart, just on either side of his left leg. Jamie was dancing. He was really drunk. He smiled and she leaned forward. He could smell her shampoo. She was wearing perfume. White Musk. Christ almighty, this was too much.
“What’s your name?” she shouted over the noise.
“Jamie!” he thought he shouted back.
Another smile.
Her fingers moved below his waist to the tops of his jeans, where they hung on the fabric. Then they slipped under the edge of his t-shirt, tickling his skin. Jamie felt stirrings, blood flowing to all the right places. Or all the wrong ones. She came in closer and stared him in the eyes. He watched the lines of skin at the corners of her mouth. Her lips fell open slightly, a pink flash of tongue behind white teeth. He glanced from the mouth to the eyes, nervous. She smiled at him again.
Jesus.
It seemed like she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear what. He closed his eyes and circled her waist with his arms. Her body was taut and warm under his hands, under her shirt. He felt just the slightest movement of skin over ribs, supple perfection. He opened his eyes again, his head lolling back in a slow, heavy roll. The girl’s smile faded, replaced by a seductive, determined stare as she pressed herself against him, kissed the side of his neck, and looked up at him. Jamie leaned forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth and kissed him back. The room was still turning as he closed his eyes.
At dawn, something in his head popped. He felt hot liquid, hot syrup, running down his head. Down the inside of his head. He opened his eyes, suddenly expecting to see the girl beside him. The girl! Christ! Instead he felt the dull pain of sticks and leaves. Hard, compacted earth and tree roots. Where the fuck was he? Though still early, the light was blinding. He stared up above him, through tree branches, and up to the dark, overcast sky. He was outside. His back ached. His body was stiff. He moved slowly, deliberately, hearing the sounds of crunching, frozen leaves around him. He brought a hand to his head. Christ. Where was he? What had happened? Where was the girl? What about the party?
There were flashes. Images. But nothing he could pin down. Had they had sex? Who knew? Oh God. Kelli… What else? From the moment on the dance floor, when he’d kissed the girl, to now, what had happened? It must have been hours since he’d been at the frat house. Since Fritz had poured the shots. Since he’d talked to that guy, that asshole Victor.
Victor.
There were other flashes now. Flickers of the woods. Moonlight. A chase through the trees. First hiding, waiting for someone, then a chase. Then? Nothing. No faces. No words. Nothing to hold onto.
Jamie fell back to the ground. His hands and body were sore. He’d missed at least one of his medication times, assuming this was only the next day. He had to get back to the dorms, back to campus if that were the case. He struggled to his feet. His head throbbed, the pain growing sharper, even as he dug his thumb and index finger into his temples and rubbed deeply. He turned around. Must have wandered away from an access road and into the woods. Jamie felt his way through the trees, eventually coming out in a clearing, where he could just make out the tall brick outlines of the dorm towers. How he’d made it this far was beyond him.
A ray of sunlight broke through the clouds overhead, blinding him. In the burst of light, he saw more flashes of the chase, again felt the rush of pursuit. It couldn’t be real, but then again, he was in the middle of nowhere, with no idea how he’d gotten there. That wasn’t imagined. That was real. Walking through this field was real. A face again popped up his mind. Victor. Something with Victor. Every time he blinked another image flickered across his eyelids.
He stopped, closed his eyes, and focused on the darkness. He squeezed his lids together. Stop thinking about this.
You’re making yourself see these things now.
Stop it!
He opened his eyes and continued on.
***
This was certainly the most disturbing crime scene John Gridley had handled in the fifteen years since he’d left the force to take the campus safety gig at the Institute. Way back when, he’d spent the majority of his time showing up to crime scenes to direct the first response and make sure the blood puddles got mopped up properly. Name a time of year and he could name a horrific public incident he’d dealt with downtown. He’d seen drive-bys at Easter egg hunts. A strangling in the Fifteenth Ward over corn beef and cabbage. The last year he’d been on the force he’d seen a stabbing in line to see Santa at the mall. Two days later he’d shown up at the same mall to deal with the stabbing of Santa himself! That was the last straw for him. When little kids waited in line to request Red Rider air rifles, and instead saw the man in the red suit get slashed to death, one had to ask if the city was losing its battle to reclaim downtown for the suburban shopping crowd.
The next morning he’d poured a cup of coffee, taken his cholesterol medication, and opened the paper to the want ads. The interview was a snap, the job was a match, and that had been that. Aside from the odd sexual assault, and the occasional frat house altercation, it was mostly an administrative job: Submitting paperwork to insurance companies for car break-ins and collisions in the parking lots. Doing quarterly safety presentations for University Chairs. Once or twice a year he’d deal with a suicide from one of the residential towers. Those were always disturbing. The sheer waste brought about by some kid’s foolish belief that a C in programming, or a stumble in mechanical engineering, could so thoroughly disgrace their family that a face-plant onto the sidewalk a dozen stories down was the only remedy. Still, just as frat guys had been banging sorority sisters since time eternal, uptight bookworms had been offing themselves on college campuses since well before he’d been born, and they’d continue to do so long after he’d retired to spend his days watching football on his big screen TV.
The point was that he no longer dealt with events that scared the shit out of him. No longer came face to face with the blood and guts of violent crimes. At times he even asked himself if he’d gone soft too soon. If he lacked the stomach, or the courage, to really pursue the career he had chosen. Maybe he’d end up back downtown someday, take a position in the investigations unit, work on the murder and assault cases that sat molding in file cabinets year after year. One glimpse at this crime scene, however, told him he’d never go back
They got a call around nine that morning and sent a car to the outer campus loop. A young woman had been taking her morning run on one of the nature trails, when an undulating scream and a claw of bloody fingers had reached out for her from the bushes to the side of the path. The girl had grabbed her cell phone, high-tailed it for the main road, and dialed campus safety. The first officer on the scene called for an ambulance and asked that Gridley to come out there himself. Which he had done. They were just hauling the kid out on a stretcher when he got there. From the smell of him, the guy was still flying high on vodka fumes, but he was starting to sober up enough to feel the pain setting in. And there was pain. There’d be more soon enough, but by the time the medics got to him, he was hurting plenty.
F
rom the look of him, he was some sort of artsy type. Definitely a student. Definitely not the typical crime victim. Possibly annoying. He had long black hair, a spattering of piercings, and what looked like eye makeup. At least, what looked like makeup on one eye. It wasn’t clear if he’d worn it on both. The left eye was blue, with long lashes, and a thin ring of black liner around the edge. But the other eye. The other eye was a pulpy, bloody mess. His face and neck were covered in cuts and scratches. Chunks of the kid’s hair has been ripped from his head. From the way he held his side, he’d taken a hell of a beating in his midsection, might even have a stab wound or two, but it was the eye that was the thing. Primarily, it was the absence of the eye, the sight of the torn, shredded tissue that hung from the bloody, clumping eye socket - that was what turned the stomach, what gave Gridley and his men that little tinge of panic in their guts. In the midst of whatever attack had taken place, someone had take a knife or a piece of glass, and slashed this poor kid down the front of his face, splitting his forehead, tearing his cheek open, and rupturing his eye in the process. The face would take a lot of plastic surgery to patch up. In Gridley’s unprofessional opinion, the eye was a goner. Just looking at the kid as the medics worked to get him stable, Gridley thought he could make out portions of the kid’s eye itself; the iris, the white stuff, which lay shiveled and destroyed on the kid’s cheek, a popped balloon. He was still alive, in shock, but breathing. The medics tried to speak to him as they struggled to get the gurney up the hillside and into the back of the ambulance.
“We’ll have you to the hospital in no time kid,” one of the men was saying. He and his partner grunted as they worked their way up the embankment. The ground was still slick with icy grass and weeds, and their feet kept slipping before catching hold.
They made it to the top and the other guy leaned down. “Can you tell us your name?”
The boy looked up, confused. He tried to lift one hand to his face as the first medic held him still.
“Try not to move son. Try not to move.”
The kid’s mouth was a straight, serious line. His eye rolled from one medic to the next. A third EMT opened the doors to the ambulance as the two men lifted the gurney and rolled it inside.
“Lets get going.”
“You taking him to Strong?” Gridley asked.
“Yeah,” one of them shouted.
Gridley looked up one last time as one of the men took the victim’s wallet from his baggy jeans. He flipped through the cards, then pulled out a student ID and tossed it to Gridley. “You may want to call this kid’s parents.”
Gridley nodded.
The doors closed, the lights blinked on, and the ambulance drove away, turning onto Perkins Road, then switching on its siren as it took a left onto John Street.
Gridley looked down at the student ID, where a picture of the kid in better days looked back at him. The name in the bottom right corner read: Victor Smallwood.
***
“Where were you Jamie?” Kelli asked him again.
He looked around, exhausted.
“I told you, I fell asleep at the party,” he mumbled.
“Why didn’t you come back with Fritz? He was here this morning, he was back last night.”
Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He needed his meds.
“Did something happen?” Kelli continued. “You look like hell.”
“I feel like it,” he replied.
She had cornered him at the door as he came up the back stairway. She’d been sleeping on the couch in the small lounge around the corner from his room. Must have been there all night.
“Hold on a minute,” he held up his finger in a pausing motion and unlocked the door to his room. Kelli glared at him as he ducked around the corner, shook some pills from his dresser, and tried to swallow them dry. They caught in his throat, nearly causing him to gag. He walked back into the hall and took a drink from the fountain.
“Jamie,” Kelli started. “Will told me what happened last night.”
Jamie stopped, his back to her.
“What was that about?”
He was quiet. “I don’t know.”
“Where were you last night?” she asked.
He turned around and looked at her. “I don’t know. I had a, I had a thing, a blackout or something.”
She was looking at him differently now, staring with a tinge of skepticism that melted into concern.
He looked like shit. His clothes were caked with mud, mud and... it couldn’t be. Not that.
Jamie was still looking at her, his mouth open, wanting to speak.
“All right,” Kelli said finally. “I believe you.”
She walked over and put his arms around him. They held each other tight.
“Do you need to see your doctor again?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think I might.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
She didn’t ask anymore about the incident with Will. Hell, Will had already told her everything, in detail. Rattled off the story like a little kid tattling on his older brother. ‘Jimmy knocked down my block tower. Jimmy smashed my fire engine with a rock.’ To Will’s credit, he didn’t come running to her room right away. When he didn’t show up at her dorm with The Apartment, and as her swinging, key-party roommate and her companions were getting into high gear, Kelli had grabbed her coat and rushed over to Gibson G to see what was happening.
Jamie and Fritz had left for the party by the time she arrived. Some of the other residents were out for the night. Doug and a few of the Film/Video geeks, including Gabe, were sitting in the lounge watching Return of the Jedi. Gabe glanced up as she stepped into the lounge. Kelli gave him a questioning look and he shrugged his shoulders, motioning to the door just to the left of the public area, where light from a reading lamp shone out from a crack in the door. Will lay on the bed, his back to the entrance, his face to the wall. A book was on the mattress in front of him, face-down. He was brooding, his eyes burning a hole through the cinder block wall.
Kelli stepped into the room, glancing out into the lounge, where the better part of the Star Wars crew had turned to watch her. She closed the door with a click, leaving Jaba and the other freaks outside.
She stood for a moment, not saying a word.
Will didn’t look at her.
“What’s the matter, Will?” she asked finally.
“What do you mean?” he said to the wall.
“What happened to our movie night?”
“What’s the point? You didn’t really want to watch it with me.”
She hadn’t. That was true. But now she didn’t know what to think.
“I was looking forward to it. We haven’t watched a movie in ages now.”
“Yeah?” Will huffed. “You missed it?”
“Will, what is wrong with you?”
Nothing.
She knew what was wrong. He wanted to be with her, had wanted that for years now, but she was never interested, and now she was with someone else. Someone who hadn’t even needed to pursue her, who she’d gone after with the same intensity that he felt for her. Now Will was pissed at her, was letting out the anger over being rejected.
“Jamie told me to leave you alone,” he said finally.
“He what?”
“He told me to stop bugging you. Choked me, actually, then said the other stuff.”
“He choked you?”
Will rolled over, one hand to his throat. Kelli stepped closer to have a better look at him in the light. There were a series of bruises under the tips of his fingers, which were massaging the skin on his neck. Kelli breathed in deeply, then took Will’s forearm and lifted his hand out of the way. A bruise was forming around his neck, a bruise in the indistinct, but recognizable shape of a hand.
“Were you two fighting?” she asked flatly.
“No. I went to talk to him about… you guys, and he just came at me. I don’t even remember him saying anything.”
Kelli was quiet
. Embarrassed and angry. She looked at Will. Stared him in the eyes. He looked back for as long as he could hold her gaze, then he cast his eyes down to the surface of his bed.
Kelli let out a sigh and looked up, “You still want to watch the movie?”
He had. And they did. They stayed up talking afterwards. Movie stuff. School. They didn’t discuss the two of them; that was all said in the silences. Kelli started to nod off around two in the morning, and Will seemed barely conscious himself, so she’d hauled herself up, wandered down the corridor, and lay down on the small couch around the corner from Jamie’s room. She fell asleep immediately.
Around four o’clock she awoke to the sounds of Fritz fumbling drunkenly with the lock on his door. She looked up and mumbled to him.
“Where’s Jamie?”
Fritz looked over at her and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“He wasn’t with you?”
“He was,” Fritz slurred, “but he wandered off at some point. He’ll probably be back soon.”
Kelli had nodded, then fallen back asleep.
She woke three hours later as the sun was just beginning to rise. The hallway was silent. Anyone who’d been listening to music or pulling a Saturday study session was now fast asleep. She heard the sounds of the building, the rumbling of the steam heat, but little else. She got up and walked down the hall a short ways. No light under Jamie’s door. She tried the doorknob. Still locked. Maybe he’d come in without seeing her and passed out. Locked the door behind him. She tapped on the wood with her knuckles. Once. And then again, louder.
On/Off - A Jekyll and Hyde Story Page 21