by Hughes, Chip
They nodded.
I stood and turned toward my car, then turned back again and said, “Oh, one last thing. Do either of you know any reason why someone might want to harm Ryan?”
The two friends looked startled. Predictably it was Heather who spoke. “Why would you ask such a question?”
“Sorry, I have to.”
“Then all I can say,” Heather responded, “is not really. Ryan was a super nice guy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
I walked back to my car wondering what these Paradise College students and their professor weren’t telling me.
eight
The next day I got an email from Marie. She said in a P.S. she was in Stuttgart, Germany, and heading for Heidelberg.
Dear Kai,
It’s so sad about Ryan. I really miss him.
Yes, the police report was correct. I was away from Paris when Ryan died. An officer interviewed me after I returned. I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful because I hadn’t really talked much with Ryan since early February.
I sent him an email then trying to explain about Pierre. I told Ryan he would always be a dear friend. And that I hoped he would understand. We didn’t talk much after that.
I still feel terrible about what happened. He was such a sweet guy. Everybody liked him. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t.
Please send my condolences to Ryan’s parents and let me know if you have more questions.
Aloha, Marie
I didn’t see the need, at that point, to question Marie further. A girl who’s broken a guy’s heart has little reason to wish him further harm. If she has a conscience, as Marie apparently had, she feels badly enough already. So unless Marie was an accomplished liar and unless the others were covering for her—highly unlikely—there wasn’t much reason to suspect her of anything other than the bad timing of Ryan turning up dead on her twenty-first birthday.
nine
That afternoon I drove to the Outback Steakhouse in Hawai‘i Kai to interview Scooter. The restaurant was perched on Kalaniana‘ole Highway across from Maunalua Bay and flanked by the twin volcanic mounds of Koko Head and Koko Crater. Walking to the restaurant from my car I watched a windsurfer etch a frothy white trail across the bay and remembered that I hadn’t heard from Scooter’s buddy, Brad. I would ask about that.
A big guy with curls framing his baby-boy face smiled when I asked for Scooter. I should have looked at his nametag. He had fifty pounds on me, easy. I recalled Serena saying Scooter and his pal Brad had played high school football together. We sat in the empty waiting room during the lull between lunch and dinner.
Scooter removed his server apron with meaty paws and said, “Too bad about Ryan.” His voice was soft for such a large man. And he sounded almost sincere.
“Too bad,” I said.
He then gave me a version of the same story I’d heard before. It was consistent with his earlier statement, but like the other students, he sounded rehearsed. Somewhere near the end of his spiel he said he hadn’t gone into Ryan’s room on the night he died.
“But you did go into Ryan’s room at other times?” I asked.
“Yeah, hanging out. We hung out in each other’s rooms.”
Hanging? Hung? Scooter seemed oblivious to his inappropriate choice of words. But I said nothing and pressed on.
“Professor Van said you and Brad hit some clubs with Ryan,” I carried on, “but you didn’t do much with him after that. How come?”
“We were into different stuff—that’s all.”
“I’m curious, Scooter”—I shifted gears—“why does a business major with no background in French go to Paris and study French history?”
“I dunno.” He looked bewildered. “A buddy of ours took Professor Van’s course and liked it, so Brad and I decided—why not go to Paris?”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah . . . well, we had to apply and get financial aid, but—”
“You didn’t have trouble with the language?”
“Not really. They spoke English in the courses we took.”
“Serena said you did well in Professor Van’s course.”
“Uh . . . ‘cause I liked it, I guess.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Say, do you know how I can get in touch with Brad? He didn’t answer my email.”
“Yeah, he’s working in Waikīkī at the Moana Surfrider— front desk.” Scooter rattled off Brad’s number.
Finally I asked if Scooter knew of anyone who might want to hurt Ryan, and got the same response I had from the others—a startled look and the professed disbelief that such a fine person could be harmed by another.
Leaving the restaurant, I turned back and saw Scooter pulling out his cell phone. He was calling Brad to tip him off that I was coming. So I waited.
By the time I got back to my car, I tried Brad. He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. And he didn’t sound enthusiastic when he agreed to meet at the Surfrider.
ten
I parked at the foot of Diamond Head and walked down oceanfront Kalākaua Avenue into Waikīkī. The Surfrider was the first hotel on the beach. A balmy breeze wafted through the open-air lobby. Beyond it, tourists glistened on the white sand and bobbed in the turquoise sea. Two clerks were working the desk—a redheaded girl and a tall guy with ice-blue eyes. Brad had the looks of a TV anchorman and the physique of an NFL all-star. Even in his hotel uniform he looked powerful. A tight end to Scooter’s lineman.
We shook hands and Brad said: “I can talk until we get traffic at the desk.” He turned to the redhead. “Uh, this is Amber.”
Amber said, “Hi.”
So we got the formalities out of the way and moved beyond her earshot.
“Really too bad about Ryan,” Brad said, sounding like his buddy.
“Too bad,” I said again. It was becoming my automatic response.
“His death hit us all hard,” Brad continued, “and kind of pulled us together.”
“How’s that?”
Just then a twenty-something in a dripping bikini glided up to the desk. His eyes locked on her. I remembered Van’s commenting on Brad’s appetite for cabaret dancers. But the bikini went to Amber. A shadow crossed his face.
“Look, I shouldn’t tell you,” he bent toward me and lowered his voice, “but you’ll probably find out anyway.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“About Heather and me. We started up a kind of thing in Paris.”
“And?”
“Well . . . man, she’s pregnant!”
I tried to keep a straight face. Then I remembered the extra flesh Heather was carrying. Could be.
“Her roommate doesn’t even know,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I was curious. “Does it have anything to do with Ryan?”
“No, but you’re a detective. You’d find out about Heather and me anyway. I’m telling you the truth about us so you’ll know I’m telling the truth about Ryan.”
I shrugged. “Okay, so tell me.”
Then he started in on the same story Scooter and the others had told. And, like them, he sounded canned. He stuck almost precisely to his statement in the police report. Often people alter something, if ever so slightly, in the retelling. But Brad’s reprise was dead on. I just let him talk. The more he thought I believed him, the better my chances to gain his cooperation later, if necessary.
When I asked if he knew anyone who might want to hurt Ryan, Brad said the only person he could think of was Marie.
“I meant bodily harm,” I said. “Do you think Marie was capable of that?”
Brad shrugged. “She sure could have thought more about Ryan’s feelings.”
“I suppose.”
I asked Brad several more questions, he answered them halfheartedly, and then I walked back to my car, sorting out what he had said. Why had he told me Heather was pregnant? And why had he pointed suspicion at Marie? Brad seemed smart enough not to
simply blurt these things out—unless he had a reason.
eleven
I drove to Starbucks, ordered a decaf, and waited. It was about the same time I had interviewed Meighan the previous day. If she was a creature of habit, like most people, she’d show up before long.
No sooner had I sat down with my coffee than the Michigan blonde pushed open the door, walked to the counter, and ordered a latte. When it was ready she turned to look for a table. I stood and waved.
“What a surprise,” I said. “Do you come here often?”
“Funny,” Meighan said, “I didn’t think you were much of a coffee drinker.”
“I’m not,” I said.
She gave me a look.
“As long you’re here, what do you say we talk a bit more about Ryan? You know, just to clear up loose ends.”
“Fine.” She glanced down at her latte; the aroma made me wish I’d ordered one.
“You said Heather asked you to check on Ryan. Right?”
“That’s right.” She sipped her latte.
“Then you went down to his room, the door was open, and you walked in.”
She nodded and took another sip.
“Then what?”
“I saw Ryan hanging and then I ran and got Heather and Kim.”
“But what did you do inside his room?”
“I didn’t go in.”
“But you just said you did.”
She turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Look, Meighan, if Paradise College finds out you withheld information about Ryan’s death, you don’t want to know the consequences.” It was an empty threat, but the best I could come up with.
She sat in silence, sipping her latte and apparently weighing what I had said. I had no idea which way she’d go. The defiance in her eyes suggested I’d lost the battle. But suddenly her look softened and she said, “Okay, I did find Ryan hanging in his room, but not like everybody thinks. He was naked.”
“Naked—as in nude?” She nodded.
“No board shorts?” My instincts about his attire were apparently right.
“He had nothing on.” Meighan gripped her cup. “I didn’t want him to be found that way, so I slipped on the shorts.”
“You weren’t embarrassed seeing him naked, or squeamish touching his skin?”
“Well, no”—she blushed—“I’d, uh, seen him before.”
“You had?” If Meighan had been intimate with Ryan after Marie left, maybe he wasn’t as brokenhearted as everybody but his own mother was saying? I kept that thought to myself.
“I’d rather not go into it.” Meighan looked away. “Okay, then what happened?”
She faced me again. “I left the room. And when I came back with the others, I didn’t say anything about the board shorts.”
“Did Heather or Kim say anything beyond what you already told me?”
“Not much. Well . . . Kim whispered to Heather. And then Heather put her finger to her lips.”
“And what did you make of that?” I knew the answer but I wanted to hear it from her.
“That they already knew Ryan had hung himself?” I left my decaf on the table on my way out.
twelve
A crack had opened in the wall of deceit. Concerned that Meighan might talk to Heather and Kim, I drove immediately to their apartment. I parked in view of their second-floor flat at the Pi‘ikoi Arms, a faded, low-rise slab building near Ala Moana Center. I called their number. No answer. It was around the time they’d come home from their jobs. I trusted my stake-out wouldn’t last long.
I was wrong. I waited a half hour. Then another. I was about to pack it in when Heather strolled by and climbed the stairs. I let her go. I didn’t want her—I wanted her sidekick. I waited. Kim eventually walked by and I popped out of my car.
“What are you doing here?” She looked curious, even cracked a smile.
“I was in the neighborhood and was worried about you.”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“Because you don’t deserve to go down for Ryan’s death. I doubt you had anything to do with it. But you’re putting yourself at risk by sticking with your friends who did.”
“What do you mean? Ryan committed suicide.”
“Take a deep breath, Kim, and please listen to reason.”
She stood silently.
“You and Heather knew Ryan was dead that morning before you asked Meighan to check on him.”
Her smile faded. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“I know, but why pretend to have Meighan find him?”
“Heather knocked and Ryan didn’t answer,” Kimberly explained. “But we figured he was there because I’d heard noise in his room at about nine the night before.”
“What kind of noise?”
“Like furniture moving.”
“Heather didn’t hear it?”
“She wasn’t there. Heather had a stomachache that night and went to the pharmacy.”
It wasn’t a stomachache, I thought. But Kim didn’t need to know her roommate was pregnant until Heather was ready to tell her.
“So what really happened the next morning?” I asked.
“When Ryan didn’t answer we opened the door and saw him hanging. And I guess we just got scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of finding him like that.” She shrugged.
“C’mon, Kim, I’m trying to keep you out of trouble—but you have to cooperate and tell me the truth.”
“Believe me,” she said, “I had nothing to do with it. I liked Ryan. I would never dream of hurting him.”
“I know you wouldn’t hurt Ryan. But somebody did. I need to know who and why.”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“I think you do. You can tell me or you can tell HPD.” Another empty threat, but she thought it over.
“Kim?” I coaxed her. “What’s it going to be?”
She hesitated, then finally opened her mouth and the words tumbled out: “I think Ryan’s death might have had something to do with cheating.”
“Cheating on who?”
“Not cheating on a person. Cheating on exams.”
“Whose exams?”
“Professor Van’s.”
“Ryan cheated?” That didn’t sound like him.
“Not Ryan. He caught someone with the answers to all the exams. I don’t want to say who . . . .” She hesitated. “Ryan didn’t think it was fair for this person to party while the rest of us worked.”
Most college students party. The seven who went to Paris would be no exception. But only two of them were reputed party animals. It would most likely be one or the other, or both. I didn’t press Kim. I didn’t need to. But I did ask: “Why do you think Ryan’s death had to do with this cheating?”
“He told the person to stop or he’d go to Professor Van.”
“Did the person stop?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t Ryan go to the professor?” I recalled that Van had said nothing to me about cheating.
”Ryan did go to Professor Van.”
“He did?” Was Van involved too?
“Yeah, Ryan told me the Prof. would speak to us about it.”
“Did Professor Van speak to you?”
“Not to me or Heather.”
“Did he speak to anyone? Did he do anything?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Before I could respond, she ran into the Pi‘ikoi Arms crying, “Shit! Heather’s going to kill me!”
thirteen
First thing the next morning I took up Serena on her offer to see the professor’s grade computations. I couldn’t help wondering about Van. Why had he apparently done nothing to stop the alleged cheating? Why had he withheld information from the college and the Paris police? And from me?
I picked up a large brown envelope from Serena’s assistant and opened it as I stepped back into the morning sun. Inside was a single sheet with the names of the se
ven students and columns displaying exam scores, semester averages, and letter grades. What immediately stuck me as odd was that all seven— except Ryan, of course—finished the term with an A. There were a few minuses and one plus—for Marie, as Van had told me—but no grade less than A. Not one B. Not one C. How often does that happen in an undergraduate course?
I checked the students’ individual exam scores and found, not to my surprise, that both Brad and Scooter—the business major-party animals—had the highest marks in French History next to Marie’s. From one exam to the next, a few points separated the two. But their scores, otherwise, followed a nearly identical pattern. Then I remembered two things: Van telling me he used the same exams in Paris as he had in Hawai‘i; and Scooter telling me a friend had taken Van’s course in a previous term. Bingo: Scooter got the exams from his friend and brought them to Paris.
Then I noticed something else curious. Heather’s and Kim’s scores began in the 70s, but about mid-way through the term, when Ryan had died, their scores rose nearly twenty points into the 90s. Did they suddenly start studying? When I checked their grades for the later part of the term against Brad and Scooter’s, I found the same pattern. Mulling it over, Heather’s and Kim’s dramatic improvement made sense. If Heather and Brad were lovers, he would naturally share the exams with her. And Heather would share them with her friend Kim.
But what I wasn’t prepared for were Meighan’s scores. Hers started higher than those of the other girls—fitting for a scholarship student—then shot up even further about mid- term, following the same pattern. Were they all cheating?
Not the best and brightest of the bunch. Not Ryan’s unrequited love, Marie. Her A-plus clearly distinguished her from the others. But, just to be thorough, I checked her record. Marie’s scores began exceptionally high. On the first exam she hit 98 percent. On the second, a perfect 100. She stood head and shoulders above the pack. When I scanned her scores to mid-term, my jaw dropped. They continued high—but took on the same pattern as Brad’s, Scooter’s, and the others. Had she quit studying and started coasting? Why would a brilliant student, who could earn an A-plus on her own, cheat?