Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  “Whoa! Chicken wrapped in leaves? Don’t go crazy on me now.”

  Before I could answer him, he was already cooing at the waitress. “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he said to her. “But don’t be jealous. I’ve got enough love for both of you.”

  “Swell,” I said. At any minute I expected him to call her “babe,” and I could feel the arrow strike my heart as my hand slipped off the life raft and I sank into the ocean with the rest of the fish in the sea.

  Our waitress held both her hands in her apron pockets like guns in a holster as she cocked her weary head to the side. “Mike, do you want something or not?”

  “Burger, fries, and another Corona, hold the lime,” he said.

  “We don’t have burgers, McCoy. You know that.” Then, without another breath, she just walked away.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “She loves me,” he said. “They’ll fix me something in the kitchen that I’ll eat. This is the first time I’ve ever been here with a broad—I mean girl—woman, whatever. She must be mad. You know how possessive the young ones can be. But don’t worry. I’m yours for the asking.”

  “What happened to your wife? Did she get tired of your wandering eyes?”

  “Eyes can’t commit adultery.”

  “Yours can.”

  “Don’t start giving me compliments or I’ll be eating you for lunch.”

  “Wife, Mike?”

  “She dumped me three years ago to marry her high school sweetheart. So I’m all yours.”

  Time to change the subject. “I had a private meeting with Carlyle today and frankly I’m still flummoxed as to why he hired me.”

  “Private meeting, huh? I wondered why your skirt was extra short today.”

  “I’m wearing pants.”

  “Oh, then it must be my fertile imagination.”

  I tried to give him a punch to the shoulder the way I’d seen Shannon do so many times, but it didn’t quite come out the same. He grabbed my hand before it even made contact and then he held it until I tugged it gently away.

  Mike gave up and downed the last of his Corona. “Carlyle thought you’d be easier to tame. He’s always been a bad judge of character.”

  “Point well taken. He hired you.”

  “Feeble retort, Marianna. I expect more from you.”

  “In what way, Mike?”

  “Can I start by holding your hand again?”

  “Why?”

  “Because then we’ll be well on our way to second base.”

  “I’m not playing ball with you.”

  He laughed and leaned in close. Someone came into the restaurant and a blast of icy wind slashed through the overheated air. The waitress plopped a second beer on the table in front of him. Mike took a hefty swig.

  “Anyway, this date-rape thing—you gotta ask yourself why a girl like Emily Barton is going to those parties over at Sherman’s.”

  “You know about this already?”

  His eyes closed. “Emily Barton went to Mitsy. Mitsy told me. Anyway, Sherman hosts some fancy shindigs—expensive champagne, designer drugs, and hoi polloi guests. Everyone wants to be on Sherman’s guest list.”

  “So she deserves it?”

  “All I’m saying is that Sherman and his crew are predatory wolves. Women should stay away from them or they’ll get eaten.”

  “Or murdered?”

  “Slow down—”

  “Come on, Mike, why couldn’t there be a connection?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve staked that place out many a night. But it’s goddamn private property, so I can’t bust in.”

  “Melinda and Lisa were drugged. Emily too.”

  “No argument there. But without more, how do you connect the dots?”

  “Well . . . I’m thinking maybe my tack with Sherman has been a bit off course. What’s that old line about bees and honey? Maybe I should just open up my jar of honey and see what I can attract.”

  Mike’s face bloomed into the sunniest smile I’d seen yet. “You, my dear, are a very scary woman. Too smart and too pretty for any man to survive the initial attack.”

  I followed that line with the most coy, girlish smile I could muster. Beth would have been proud of me. Laurie would have rolled her eyes. And Shannon would have broken my nose.

  Mike’s smile morphed into a grin. “And you’ve got one contagious smile,” he said.

  The waitress brought Mike sliced chicken in a pita loaf with tomatoes and mayonnaise. I daresay neither of us had any interest in the kind of nourishment found in chicken sandwiches but we ate anyway while Mike asked me about my home and family. I gave him a pencil sketch of the last ten years of my life. I wasn’t so sure I wanted him to know me that well, mainly because I didn’t know him. Maybe I could trust him as far as Holton was concerned—but about my personal life, I remained mute.

  Mike snagged the check and stuffed some bills into it so fast I didn’t have a chance to object. He walked me down Thayer Street, where my car was parked. The meter had expired. Mike grabbed the orange parking ticket from my windshield and put it in his pocket without letting me see it. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “No. I’ll pay it.”

  He laughed. “Who said I was going to pay? Give me your keys.”

  I handed him my keys in the blind assumption that he intended to drive back with me. He opened the driver’s door and told me to get in and open the window. Again, starry-eyed, I obeyed. Then he dangled my keys through the window. I took them and started the car as he leaned his arms on the roof and stuck his head down through the open window, slipping me a Holton business card with his cell number on it. “I’m gonna make this violation go away. It’ll be our secret.” He winked and slapped the roof. Added to my growing body of feminist perfidy, I’d surreptitiously begun yielding to his winks like sweet Judas kisses. What a traitor I was!

  “And”—he popped his head back in—“you be careful with Sherman and his gang. Remember what I told you that first day at the gym.”

  I smiled at him, only half-listening to the words coming from his lips, inches from mine. When he’d finished talking, I didn’t respond, but neither did I turn my head away. He came closer, and I met him until his lips grazed mine, and for a few brief seconds we seemed to agree that the softer brushing of our lips against the other’s was not merely the prelude to a kiss, but a sensation unto itself that should be savored and drawn out. I was oblivious to time passing, so I can’t say for how long we continued to explore the softness of the other’s mouth, but when he could no longer hold off, he reached his arm behind my head and pulled me into him. We kissed until I couldn’t breathe, and then, without warning, he pulled himself away and stood outside my window, wiping his wet mouth on the back of his hand. I was surprised that he wasn’t smiling. He merely slapped the roof again—no wink this time—and sauntered away.

  I watched him march down Thayer Street. His car was nowhere in sight and I wondered where he was going. I turned the key in the ignition of my tattered Jeep, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jaded

  THE TOXIC EXHAUST FUMES that wafted up through the Jeep’s perforated floorboard knocked me to my senses. I made a swift turn off Thayer Street toward Langley and ten minutes later I was hanging my jacket on the back of my desk chair.

  Within seconds Rita appeared in my doorway holding a mug of steaming liquid. “You are back early?”

  “I am?”

  “From your rendezvous with Mike?”

  “We had lunch, Rita.”

  “Pity.”

  Rita then announced that in my absence an impromptu press conference was convening even as we kibitzed. “Dean Carlyle called for your presence, but I told him you might be unavailable, otherwise indisposed, out to lunch, etc., etc.” She gave her pixied head a few shakes. “Well, I could only assume . . . I mean, Mike has never taken a girl just to lunch. . . . Did he pay the check?”

  “Yes, but
he was still stiffed when I came right back to the office.”

  “Stiff. Ooh la la. You are so clever, Miss Melone.”

  “Press conference, Rita. Where?”

  “President Hatchett’s house. Pronto.”

  I EXITED LANGLEY by its back door and followed a narrow wooded walkway to the rear gates of Haddon Hall, the president’s house. Brick archways bejeweled with wrought-iron chandeliers lined the path to the limestone mansion. News trucks and police cars were taxied up along a circular driveway. Security guards and campus police dotted a two-hundred-yard radius. The static of walkie-talkies came and went in the crisp afternoon air.

  I heard the echo of my skinny heels on the granite steps as I made my way to the entrance. Before I had a chance to lift the heavy brass knocker and send it crashing into the black enamel door, Saint Peter’s gates swung open and Ogden, President Hatchett’s creepy caretaker, met me.

  “Welcome,” intoned Ogden the invertebrate, whose jellied spine was crooked and whose pockmarked skin was set off nicely by oily hair. He attempted a natural smile but his gimpy left eye and stunted gray teeth gave all his expressions the same Transylvanian gleam. I flashed my ID while Ogden asthmatically pushed the door closed behind me before a camera-laden battalion marched up the steps.

  I walked to the main dining room, where a catatonic group of Holton staff shuffled around. A low-lit chandelier and a pair of ostentatious silver candelabra, each holding a dozen candles, made the crystal table settings sparkle. The long dining table was covered in a brocade table-cloth that matched the deep burgundies of the room’s wall-to-wall oriental rugs. Newer iterations covered original rugs that had probably aged in situ into pricy antiques. Nothing gold, gilt-edged, or brass was anywhere in sight. And then—and Beth would have been proud of me—I realized the house looked opulent and not gaudy precisely because of this absence of gold and brass, and because instead there was everywhere the cool quietude of silver, pewter, and glass.

  While I was looking around for Vince, Ken caught sight of me. He and a white-haired gentleman with a full, soft jaw and skin the color of dough kept up their chatter though their eyes remained glued on me.

  Ken met me halfway. “President Hatchett, this is Marianna Melone. Our Assistant Dean of Student Ethics.”

  We shook hands as Ken described my previous career at the AG’s office.

  “A former prosecutor. That is, she brought criminals to justice for the state. I’d say it’s a bit of good fortune to have her on our side now. Agreed, President Hatchett?”

  Hatchett’s thick gray brows almost met in a deep frown. “Yes, yes,” he said in a luxurious baritone.

  The president looked past me at a sudden commotion. There at the front door stood Oily Ogden and a vicious-looking Vince Piganno. Ken snapped to attention and tapped on the microphone a few times. The room grew even quieter.

  “Welcome, friends,” Ken Carlyle said. “Thank you all for coming. The president and I would like to welcome you. President Hatchett has invited you into his home to offer a few brief words on the recent unfortunate events that have occurred in the Providence area involving two of our students. Without further ado, President Hatchett.”

  Carlyle stepped back, motioning Hatchett forward.

  “Welcome,” the great Hatchett began. “Let me get right to the point. Because protection of our students is our primary concern now, we have increased the number of private security personnel on campus and have brought in a few good men from our own Providence police force to maintain a constant presence on the campus grounds—”

  “Thanks to some friendly persuasion from the attorney general’s office.” Somewhere in the throng, Vince had nabbed a WJAR microphone.

  “Well, well,” the cheerful Hatchett went on as if he had just spotted the intruder, “Attorney General Piganno, come on up and assure these worried parents that we have everything in control.”

  Vince surrendered his microphone, offered his parting smile to his press fan club, and glided to the makeshift podium at the dining room table.

  Flesh to flesh, Vince and Carlyle exchanged handshakes, then Hatchett had his turn.

  I held my ground amid the heavily artilleried press group and remained in the front as Vince delivered his first words.

  “Dean Carlyle is quite on point when he says that our main interest should be and is the protection of the student body and the uninterrupted completion of the educational process each student has begun and is entitled to. Until this maniac”—Carlyle winced at Vince’s emotionally charged characterization—“is caught, you should all rest assured that we are acting in concert to find the animal who has committed these egregious crimes against two of your students. And rest assured that no stone will be left unturned in uncovering his identity even if it means finding one of Holton’s own liable.”

  There was an audible gasp in the audience. Ken gritted his teeth before trying to nudge Vince out of the way. But he was no match for the bullish Vince, so Carlyle boomed his voice across the room without the assistance of electronic amplification.

  “But let me make it very clear that absolutely no such evidence exists suggesting that the perpetrator has any connection whatsoever with this school.”

  Hands shot up in the audience. Before Carlyle could end the press conference, a question rang through the air.

  “Is there any truth to the rumors that someone from your student body is indeed under investigation, Dean Carlyle? That a sexual predator may be enrolled here?”

  “None whatsoever. Thank you all,” Carlyle said. “And thank you all again for coming.” He turned abruptly away from the crowd.

  “I want you in my office now,” he hissed at me as he walked away, herding Hatchett with him.

  Vince stood by, registering my reaction to Carlyle’s order. “You’d better go. Your master is calling.”

  “You said this was scheduled for tomorrow,” I whispered.

  “Your boss tried to hoodwink me by moving it up to today, but I was ready, because people like Carlyle are predictable.”

  “Are you happy?” I said to Vince. “This is what you wanted.”

  “Don’t act like a lover scorned, for Christ’s sake,” he spit at me. “And don’t ever let emotion get in the fucking way of business.”

  Words of wisdom from a man who hadn’t let emotion get in his way of firing me. Vince had liked me. I knew that. But he’d still severed the cord because he thought it was what he had to do.

  I left and wove down the front steps of Haddon Hall. Seeing Vince had made me homesick. I wanted to go to the nearest bar and drown my sorrows, but I put on my emotional blinders, and went straight to Carlyle’s office for the second time that day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Too Much Ado about Nothing

  “YOU KNEW PIGANNO WOULD be there?” Carlyle fired at me.

  To protect Vince maybe I would have lied to Carlyle, but as it turned out, the surprise timing of the press conference made my answer mostly honest.

  “Seeing Vince Piganno today was as much a surprise to me as you, Ken. But Vince always does the unexpected. He’s unpredictable. That’s why he’s so good at what he does.”

  “I’ll accept that answer for now. But I want some damage control here. I’ve already conferred with our PR people about a press release that will be shot to all the major networks and newspapers. The PR people will be in touch with you. The gist of our position is that there is no evidence of Holton involvement except that damn blanket. The police have been combing this campus for over a month and have found nothing. As far as Holton is concerned we have been exonerated from culpability. Are you with me so far, Marianna?”

  “That’s not quite true though, is it?” I said calmly as Carlyle held his breath, looking almost afraid to blink. I continued, “The blanket was from Health Services, where both Melinda and Lisa were patients—seeing Dr. Becker, I believe. Maybe the killer was being seen there too. No other way to get that blanket, right, except there? Maybe we
should comb through those records.”

  The ones that don’t exist.

  Carlyle’s jaw was undulating, but he’d still not uttered a word.

  “And weren’t Melinda and Lisa being seen because of their drug use? I know you don’t like that word—‘drugs’—but I can’t think of a better one to describe cocaine—”

  “That’s enough.” He broke his stare and turned toward his desk. “Yes, they may have been seen at Health Services for one reason or another. Let’s say, for a headache, or the flu—”

  “No, Ken. Did you forget I met Melinda Hastings’s parents? Both you and they admitted that Melinda had been seeing Mitsy for counseling at Health Services. And Lisa herself told me she was seeing Dr. Becker weekly. You don’t get counseled for the flu.”

  “That blanket was probably in Miss Hastings’s car when she was abducted, and that’s all there is to that. I understand I’m not as experienced as you in matters of evidence, but one blanket does not constitute a connection between these murders and Health Services. Does it? So you, Marianna, will make a quotable statement in a press release saying that the AG tactics are only so much hysteria. That the police investigation is now focusing outside our campus. Relay, somehow, that your old boss likes to make scenes. Much ado about nothing, etc., etc. Do you understand? And coming from you, a former AAG—and one who knows Piganno pretty well—that will have quite a compelling effect.”

  “Is that what this is about? Why you hired me? Pit me against Vince Piganno and the AG’s office?”

  “I’m not interested in your personal relationship with your old boss. This is business I’m doing here. I’m asking you to disseminate the truth. And the truth is there is no reason to believe these murders are Holton-related except insofar as the victims happen to be two Holton students.”

  I nodded. Why argue? Argument is emotion. My old boss had taught me well.

  BACK IN MY office I put Rita on Elliot’s tail, who, might I say, was not so easy to find. He lived alone, as most of the students did in this exclusive school, and didn’t answer in his dorm room or at class. Rita sent him an e-mail and two hours later he materialized at my office door.