by M. A Wallace
She said, “Maybe. I guess I can try.”
Ross pulled an eight-by-ten photograph from somewhere and held it up before him. She recognized the man as Beady Eyes. That had been her nickname for him, since he always went about with his eyes squinted, as though he needed glasses but chose not to wear them. She had not seen the man who had stood over her before he sprayed the chemicals into her face. Then she had not been able to see anything at all.
She said, “Yeah, that's Beady Eyes. Not a friendly person. Are you saying that's the guy who tackled me? He's the reason why I'm here?”
Ross and McGee shared a glance with each other, one that looked like they were sharing thoughts telepathically. McGee pulled a toothpick out of his pocket, pushed it through its clear plastic wrapper, and put it in his mouth. She found that he looked even more ridiculous than he had before. He said, “Yeah, that's the man. Kevin Bailey. If you had a nickname for him, does that mean you two met before?”
She frowned, trying to think back. Her college career had at times flashed by her like lightning and at other times had dragged by at a snail's pace. Much of her sophomore year was lost in the haze of insomnia, bad dreams, and weekly counseling sessions. She had made it through, though she had been on academic probation by the end of her second year. The notice that she received in the mail—at her campus address—had been all the warning she had needed. If she flunked out of college, she would end up back at her father's house, the dark and weary place that she dreaded. She never returned there, even when school let out for its many breaks and holidays. She instead stayed with a friend, whose parents were more understanding than her own. She had desperately wanted to do something—anything—to avoid the fate of seeing her father once more against her will.
That had led her to studying and studying, cramming sessions and tutor sessions, all of which ate into her social life. She felt miserable at not being able to see her friends as much as she was used to, but with the melatonin to put her to sleep every night, and a hot shower every morning, she had managed. She found herself with nothing but A's for the next four semesters. She expected that she would have gotten on the dean's list, if not for her injury.
She said, “I think I met him once for a service learning project. He showed me how to change a tire.”
Ross said, “Is there any reason why Officer Bailey would have had to hold a grudge against you?”
“Not that I can see, why?”
Ross hesitated, and she knew he was holding back information. That was the way of it with interrogations, she thought. Only side got to know as much of the story as could be known. She didn't want to think of detective work as ferreting out the truth; nothing about the two officers in front suggested that they were interested in that.
Instead of answering her question, he said, “How long have you been at Shippensburg, Miss Moore?”
“Three and a half years. The spring semester would have made it a full four.”
“Would have? You mean, you're not staying to graduate?”
“Of course not, why would I? After what they've done. Sure, they'll issue an apology. Maybe they'll force the president to resign. Maybe I'll get an out-of-court settlement. Maybe all that will happen, but nothing of any significance will change there. It's the system, not the people. You can plug in any different kind of person you want, you can interview applicants a dozen times to get the very best candidate, and still if the system is broken, you're going to get bad results. Like this.”
She tried to shrug her injured shoulder upwards. A flare of pain greeted her. She winced, trying to breathe.
Ross said, “I'm sorry for your injury. I know this must be a difficult time for you. If you'd only bear with us for a little longer, we'll leave you alone to recover.”
At that moment, the door opened, revealing the diminutive form of Rachel Moore. She had purple hair that had resulted from an ill-conceived dyeing experiment, and square-rimmed glasses pushed up against the bridge of her nose. She wore a ski jacket and snow boots, both of which she had not taken off despite having spent the whole morning indoors with her daughter.
Of the very few occasions that she dared to speak up, Rachel chose the moments when she believed that her daughter, her only child, needed her protection from anyone other than her husband. This pattern had persisted for so long that instead of thanking her mother for her kindness, Shannon instead felt indignant whenever she was treated like a child. She often felt that her mother would never see her as anything other than a young girl on her first day of kindergarten. She had cried then, on that breezy September day. Shannon recalled with distinct clarity not being bothered by the bus, or the smelly boy beside which she had to sit. She was able to leave the house; that was all that mattered.
For Rachel, it had been quite different. She clung to her daughter as though afraid that she would one day disappear completely. She held on tight as often as she could, whenever she could. Though she never said a word to Shannon inside the house save for her usual remonstrance not to make anyone angry, she nevertheless behaved as though her whole life was contained in the beating heart of a person who had emerged from her own body. The result was a smothering that left Shannon feeling sorry for her mother and confined within the woman's emotions at the same time.
Upon seeing the police officers, Rachel said, “Excuse me, I don't believe I know who you are. I'd like you to leave at once, please.”
Ross stood up and offered his hand. He said, “I'm sorry for the intrusion. I'm Detective Ross, this is my partner Detective McGee. We're from the Shippensburg Police Department.”
Rachel shook hands with both detectives then said, “Have you been asking her questions? She's just a child, you know. She should be accompanied by a legal guardian or a legal representative.”
Shannon coughed into the one forearm she could move, but no one noticed. She wondered why it was that her mother was so knowledgeable about the law in regard to any person not involving her husband. What she knew, she knew from reading John Grisham novels and watching Law and Order. Though it did not amount to much, Rachel had chosen to ignore the words, assault, assault and battery, and torture.
Ross put his hands in his pockets and said, “Actually, I did some checking on that. She's twenty years old. The legal age for consent begins at eighteen. We entered the room and asked her permission to ask her questions. She consented, and here we are. Had she refused, we would have then gotten a warrant.”
Shannon froze in place when she heard the word warrant. It took her a moment to regain her composure. When she did, she said, “Mom, don't be a nuisance. Just let the man ask his questions.”
As if physically struck by a hand across the face, Rachel stepped back, then retreated out of the room. Shannon knew that she would hear a lecture from the woman later on; she expected that she would ignore it as usual. Her mother's lectures had lost their efficacy when she was sixteen and had purchased condoms with money she had earned from mowing grass around the neighborhood.
Both detectives sat down again. Ross said, “I just have a few more questions. Then we'll go.”
Shannon said, “Okay.”
Ross paused for a moment, collecting himself. He said, “It's just a small point. Under the law, you're not required to answer if you don't want to. You'll be giving away information protected under HIPAA laws. So if you say you don't want to answer, just say that and we'll leave.”
Another pause. Then he asked, “What time were you admitted to the hospital?”
She tried to make sense of why the question was so important to him. When she was unable to come up with an answer, she said, “This morning, at 7 a.m. I came into the ER. They sent me to the outpatient clinic. Why, what's so special about that?”
Both detectives shared another conspiratorial glance, this one with more weight than the first. McGee said, “So after your injury occurred yesterday morning, you did what? Stayed around campus the rest of the day and the rest of the night in your condition?”
/> Though Shannon felt herself being led into a trap, she decided that no matter how much they found out, they would not be able to do anything with what she told them. She said, “Yes, I stayed on campus through the night. I couldn't sleep very much. The pain's really intense. I guess I made it through, but I'm not sure how.”
McGee asked, “Did you sustain any permanent injuries resulting from being pepper-sprayed in the face?”
“No. The whole group, we went back to my dorm room. Someone looked it up online, how to treat exposure to that. They told me I would just have to wait it out. I only left when my vision started clearing up.”
“And what did you do before you came to the hospital?”
“Why is that question important? Am I a suspect or something?”
McGee waved a hand in front of his face, as though clearing away flies. He said, “No, ma'am, we're just trying to establish the facts here. As you know, what Officer Bailey did is illegal. It's our job to investigate what happened after that.”
Shannon looked from the detective to the television, upon which a rerun of an old sitcom played. She forced herself to look back in his eyes, those eyes that held neither compassion nor sympathy, but instead held something that she could only call intransigent disregard. She knew at once that none of what he was doing mattered to McGee. He was out on a Saturday, away from his family, from his leisure activities, pursuing a case. She did not think he was happy about that.
She said, “I don't see what bearing my whereabouts have on what he did. You've got a crime, done in broad daylight, in front of all those witnesses. It's open and shut, isn't it? Just arrest him and be done with it.”
Ross put a hand on his partner's forearm, then said, “Miss Moore, I'm afraid that Officer Bailey is dead. He was murdered sometime last night. That's what we're investigating.”
Everything became clear to Shannon at once. She said, “And I'm a suspect, aren't I? You think I did it?”
Ross said, “I'm not sure what I think right now. This case is too muddled. There's too much up in the air. For now, we're just following threads to see where they lead. You can see how this plays out, can't you? Campus cop uses excessive force on a student, then winds up dead the next morning. The student then says she spent the night at the campus even with a serious injury. So the last question I have for you is, why did you stay? Why not seek medical attention at once?”
Shannon bit her bottom lip. She had not wanted to say it, especially with her mother lurking outside the door. She had not wanted to give voice to what she had decided she would do. Though she knew it had to be done, it was too painful to contemplate. She would be leaving all her friends, everything that was familiar. She would also be giving up her stable life, her ability to be away from her family, all on a roll of the dice. She had decided on an uncertain future, one that could very well lead to her moving back in to her father's house, or into a homeless shelter. She had chosen it because she knew she could not stay. Staying would have meant spending an entire semester always on the lookout for Beady Eyes, always looking over her shoulder for the next misfortune to strike. She could not live like that, even if it meant getting a degree sooner. She could not stay at a place where she had given everything she had toward her studies only to pass by Ravney Hall, whether they condemned it, repaired it, or tore it down. She couldn't stay in a place that reminded her of Wednesday milkshakes with a friend she had known for too short a season. She had to leave.
She said, “I stayed so that my friends could take my stuff out of my room. I moved out, as of this morning. I won't be going back to Shippensburg.”
The final sentence brought her such relief that she could hardly credit how she felt after she had said it. Now that it was out in the open, now that two, perhaps three people had heard it, she could say it again. She could keep saying it as many times as she wanted. She had never said it to the friends who had gathered to help her while she, blinded and in agony, cried out in pain. As soon as she told them to pack her things, they understood. No words needed to be spoken on that subject, save for Carly's sympathetic, “We'll miss you.”
Detective Ross stood up. His partner followed suit. He said, “Thank you, Miss Moore. You've been very cooperative.”
Shannon blurted out, “That was weird.”
Ross smiled. He said, “It can be, sometimes.” He opened the door, then turned back to her and said, “Take them for everything they've got. Bleed them dry. You hear?”
Chapter Four
1
In the hospital parking lot, Michael watched his partner yawn into a cupped hand. Though they had stopped for coffee on the way out, the few sips that Billy had managed of the steaming hot liquid did not immediately revive him. Michael knew officers who had pushed themselves through double shifts, though seven-day work weeks, often at the expense of their personal well-being. He'd also seen officers who had done the bare minimum that was required of them. Those officers worked single shifts, five a days a week and weren't heard from otherwise. They held cookouts with other officers in the summer, and stayed in their homes during the winter. They were, as his drill instructor had said, just in it for a paycheck.
Billy McGee was sometimes in it for the money, and sometimes in it because he genuinely enjoyed his job. He didn't enjoy it every day, especially not on the days when Internal Affairs came calling. Those days were becoming more and more frequent. Even officers with a completely clean track record were now being investigated as a matter of course. Billy often said that police work was more about minutiae than about making streets and neighborhoods safer. The passion went out of him then. During those times, he could no longer bear the waiting that came with establishing a chain of evidence to link a suspect to a crime. Though he had more good days than bad days, Michael knew upon the leaving the hospital that he had found Billy on a bad day.
Michael said, “What do you think? Are you buying it?”
Billy threw his toothpick into a bush. He said, “Fifty-fifty, I'd say. She held some things back and told us some things she didn't have to tell. She didn't trust us, and I can't say as I blame her for that one.”
Michael opened the door of Billy's car. The scent of evergreen emanating from an ornament hanging from the rearview mirror struck him at once. He leaned on the roof and said, “What I mean is, do you think she did it? Went out in the middle of the night and shot Bailey in the chest?”
“Yeah, I've been thinking about that. See, Bailey wasn't supposed to be on campus then. So there's no one that could have known he was there. Now either you have someone with a gun staying up all night hoping this man will show, or you've got a murder done on the spur of the moment. Or, it's premeditation. A clandestine meeting gone sideways. What do you suppose Bailey was into?”
Michael sat down in the car and closed the door. When they were both in the car, he said, “You mean he was using the campus as some kind of smuggling operation, something like that? Trading in drugs or other contraband?”
“Maybe, who knows? I'm not going to say that's a fact, but I think we have to look at the victim as much as the killer on this one. We can establish Moore's alibi easily enough. She said she was with friends. We find those friends, the members of that group you mentioned, ask them what they did Friday night into Saturday morning, and we can either cross her off the list or put a circle around her name in red ink.”
Michael thought that on that one, she was telling the truth. She had not lied when she said that she stayed the night to pack her things so she could move out. There had been too much emotion in her voice when she said that. He knew that he heard a secret confessed for the first time, one that she had not been willing to say. The question was, did she stay behind to move out and kill Kevin Bailey in the same night?
He said, “Okay. I think the next thing we do is we get a judge to write us up a warrant to search Moore's dorm room, and for the president to turn over the phone numbers and addresses of any student connected with the love group. If we can get that do
ne by this evening, then tomorrow, we can go to St. Andrews, see if the pastor there knows anything about Bailey. The card that was in his wallet, that's the kind of thing only a pastor carries around in his office. He thinks it could be neat to have business cards of his church printed, so he orders some. They arrive, printed nice and neat, only he realizes that people get put off when they're handed small cards by religious people. So instead the cards sit in his office. He hands them out to people who are seeking help. Some people still do come to churches for financial help. I think we can rule that one out for Bailey. Others come to the church for spiritual guidance. That seems the more likely case here. If that's true, then Bailey might have told the pastor a few things he wouldn't be willing to tell anyone else.”
Billy turned on the car and put it in reverse. He said, “I keep forgetting all those years you spent at your father's church. You must be the only atheist expert on religion.”
Michael put his seat belt on. He said, “You'd be surprised.”
2
The chill of the morning had given way to a slight warmth in the afternoon. Once noon came, temperatures rose above freezing so that the snow began to melt once again. What had begun as a bleak, dismal morning had turned into an even more dismal, even bleaker day. Gray clouds gathered over central Pennsylvania, without which temperatures would have risen higher still. A smattering of rain began to fall across the mid-state region. It was a cold, heavy rain—one that turned all the unmelted snow into slush. Cars driving past the courthouse in Carlisle, PA splashed slush on to the sidewalks, for despite the town's best efforts to maintain its local roads, potholes had appeared as they always did every winter.