Say No More

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “So we’d like to—” Fiola began.

  “You have no hidden cameras, correct?” Apparently Elaine wasn’t ready to cede the floor. She eyed the two of them, not trying to hide her suspicions. “I’m even concerned about notebooks. We’re intense about privacy.”

  “I understand,” Jane said. This was make or break. Either they got Elaine’s trust, or they didn’t. “This is simply—”

  “Background,” Fiola interrupted. “We’re only here to listen, to hear your thoughts, and what—”

  “What you think can be done, perhaps,” Jane put in. The producer/reporter dance was a constant one.

  “Fine. This way, then.” Elaine pointed them to a short hallway, a single elevator. The door opened and she pushed the button for 3. “We’re in the stacks—no one ever goes there. It’s like an academic graveyard. All the dissertations are stored up here, master’s theses and PhD stuff. Years of work, not to mention obscene tuition, now mostly gathering dust. Perfect meeting place, though.”

  They watched the lighted numbers change, silent. The doors opened onto a room full of industrial shelving, row upon row of binders and metal-clamped papers. It reminded Jane of her own journalism thesis, “Pretty Crazy Girl,” about reporter Nellie Bly, titled from the 1887 newspaper headlines about Bly’s groundbreaking undercover investigation of an insane asylum. Far as Jane knew, it remained untouched in her college library. Maybe she should browse through some of these, see what kids were researching and writing about now.

  Jane’s favorite research discovery about her role model: Nellie’s real name was Elizabeth Jane. Jane’s full name was Jane Elizabeth. Sometimes the universe had a sense of humor. She shot a glance heavenward. Thanks, Mom.

  “Everyone?”

  Jane and Fee stepped back, at the same time, as Elaine explained who they were and what they were doing.

  Ten women, by Jane’s quick count, sat around a long table scattered with coffee cups and soda cans. Three other folding chairs, battered beige metal, were empty. How could silence instantly feel so awkward?

  “So it’s only preliminary, understood?” Elaine wrapped up her brief introduction. “No names, no notes.”

  She glanced at Jane and Fiola.

  Both nodded, confirming.

  “I—” Fiola began.

  “We—” Jane said at the same time.

  “And,” Elaine went on, giving them an I’m-not-finished eyebrow, “Ms. Morrello has given me her word you can say what you want without fear of attribution. Right, Fiola?” Elaine paused, holding out her open palms toward the group. Nods all around, including Fiola’s. Elaine dragged a chair away from the table, sat next to the wall. “Okay, then. Agreed. No names. Who wants to start?”

  Jane felt ten pairs of eyes on her, but heard only silence. Mentally she assigned each one a name, trying to keep them straight. The dark-skinned brunette in the white T-shirt and oversized round eyeglasses at the end of the table could be “T-shirt.” Sitting next to her was “Ponytail,” with chestnut hair and in a skinny-striped tank top. “Headband,” an oddly elegant blonde wearing a headband and pearls. “Yale,” supershort hair in a pink Yale sweatshirt with matching pink lipstick. And “Red,” a waif of a girl in a Red Sox baseball cap.

  College girls, Jane thought. We didn’t look like this, but we had the same experiences. This backdrop of scholarly effort made the scene somehow ironic. Shelves holding what college was supposed to be, a table of women illustrating what it actually was.

  “Could I—ask a few questions?” Jane pulled out one of the folding chairs, gestured Fee to sit in the other, hoping to break the ice. Sometimes it was easier to get people to talk about someone other than themselves. If a subject was reluctant, sometimes addressing a hypothetical was effective. A wide shot instead of a close-up. “When you first came to Adams Bay, were there any, oh, assemblies, or convocations about potentially iffy, um, social situations?”

  No one spoke, but a couple of the women shrugged. Looked at the table. A few took sips from their Starbucks cups. Okay, then. Pressing on.

  “Was there, like, a handbook of rules of conduct? Or, where to go, who to tell if … something happened?” Jane felt about a million years old—how was thirty-four suddenly ancient?—and realized she didn’t have the vernacular anymore. How did young women talk about this? Probably more straightforwardly than she did. She started again.

  “Were you cautioned about sexual assault? Guided? Warned?” This was the topic, after all. Why they were all here.

  “I’ll start.” Corner of the table. Yale. “I’m—”

  “No names.” Elaine stood, arms crossed. “Okay?”

  “’Kay,” Yale said. “I mean, okay. Not that my name is Kay.” She laughed, just once, but it was enough. The atmosphere changed.

  “Okay, not-Kay.” Jane, smiling, tried to look patiently encouraging.

  “I felt so pressured,” not-Kay began. “They told us—just say no. Make it clear. So I did. I said no. I said it again and again, but…” She paused, her face reddening. Pressed her lips together. “I ran. And got away. Barely. But that jerk—” She shook her head. “Whatever.”

  “It’s okay,” Ponytail said, reaching over to pat her arm.

  “Like hell it is,” Headband said.

  “We don’t need to talk about our personal situations yet.” Elaine made the time-out sign. “Fiola, you said you wanted to know how we take care of the newcomers each year. Why we formed the group?”

  “Yes, so—”

  “I’ll start,” Ponytail said. “When we got here, they told us a lot of stuff.” Heads nodded around the table. “But it wasn’t real life.”

  “We found that out, like, on our own. Luckily, you know, roommates talk. And friends.”

  “We don’t make a big, you know, freaking deal about it,” Yale said to the tabletop, then looked up at Jane. “We’re just, like, sick of it. And the pressure and the fear.”

  “We don’t, like, march in protest, or shame guys who are assholes.”

  “We should,” Ponytail said. “Seriously.”

  “That’d backfire.” T-shirt shook her head, took a sip from her paper cup.

  “Why, because we’re the problem?” Yale cocked her head, derisive. “We are so not the problem.”

  “Back on topic,” Elaine said.

  “We just—protect each other, okay? Make sure we go places with buddies. We’re not against having sex. We just want sex when we agree, not when we don’t.”

  “Half the time, the guys wouldn’t even call it rape.” Ponytail waved a dismissive hand. “They’re like, it’s fun. It’s sex. It’s, you know, what people do. Which is nuts.”

  “We haven’t really gone public, you know.” T-shirt seemed to be the most frightened one of the group. “We just deal with it. Like, in-house.”

  “In-house?” Jane asked. “Are you all in a sorority? Or do you live in the dorms?”

  “Some do, some don’t,” Elaine said. “It’s not a sorority thing, or a nonsorority thing. It’s a woman thing.”

  “A safety thing.”

  “We’ve written to the school. Called, too. Talked to Edward Tarrant. He’s the dean.”

  “Jerk,” Headband said.

  Tarrant was the man she and Fee had interviewed yesterday, the patronizing dean of students who’d drawn a hard line in their discussion—no names, no specifics, many platitudes.

  “We know him, yes,” Jane said. “Why a jerk?”

  “You know him?” Elaine’s voice went taut. She narrowed her eyes at Jane.

  “We interviewed him,” Jane explained.

  “Why?” Elaine asked.

  “What’d he say?” Headband again. She touched her pearls, pursed her lips. “Probably something about how all campuses are dealing with this ‘problem.’ How Adams Bay is no different from anywhere else. Did he tell you how many calls he gets from women? Complaining? And their parents? And what happens to them?”

  “Like what?” Jane said.

>   “Like nothing,” Elaine said.

  Nothing? Jane had a flash of impatience. They’d promised to keep this confidential. If there was all this hesitation, what was the point?

  “Uh, listen, Elaine,” she began. “If we’re going to understand—”

  “No.” Elaine shook her head, cutting Jane off. “I don’t mean ‘nothing’ in the sense of we’re not going to say anything. I mean it like—we report to him what happens. Every time. We have to put it on the record. But then nothing happens.”

  “He’s dismissive and disrespectful,” Yale said. “He says he’ll take care of it. He says—”

  “Do you tell him the boys’ names?” Fiola asked.

  “Of course,” Elaine said. “And they’re men.”

  “You said ‘parents’? Call?” Jane longed for a notebook. She and Fiola would have to talk the whole thing through the minute they got back to the station. Compare mental notes and re-create the conversation. Make sure they didn’t lose any of this.

  “He wants to ‘protect the school’s reputation’,” T-shirt was saying.

  “Which is bull, because what about our reputations?” Red pointed to herself. “Our lives?”

  “Did any of you go to the police?” Jane scanned the faces, each one looking at her, one teary-eyed, a few stoic, two looking down at the table.

  Yale shook her head. “It’d be a mess. I mean, then what? A big investigation, or a trial, all public, and all over the news, and what good would it do?”

  “Victims don’t always look hurt,” T-shirt said. “You know?”

  “‘He said, she said,’ they can say.” Headband made quote marks in the air. “Or, ‘It’s difficult to judge.’” She puffed out a derisive breath. “Bull.”

  Jane thought about the police photos Fiola had shown her—the ripped clothing, the grotesque positions, the splayed limbs. The young women in this room hadn’t been killed. But their lives were forever changed.

  “Disgusting,” Ponytail said. “But we decided to, to use our shitty experiences as a lesson, and a weapon, and use what we know to prevent it happening to anyone else.”

  “So, buddies. Teams. Partners. We watch each other’s drinks.”

  “We go to parties together. Like tomorrow’s student welcome party. We won’t go alone. Or let anyone else go alone. Or leave alone.”

  “We made a creep list, too,” Headband said. “So we can keep track.”

  “Man!” Ponytail said. “Um, I’m not sure we should—”

  “It’s all off the record,” Jane reassured her. A creep list? That was irresistible. A list of names, on paper or a computer somewhere, of college students who were suspected—or guilty—of sexual assault? Lawyers would go ballistic, never allow it to be used in court. But then, she wasn’t a lawyer. Journalists had different rules.

  “Can we see it?” Might as well go for it, Jane thought. She wished Tosca were here. Maybe she was? If not, she should find out how to connect her with these young women. And what if whoever attacked her—allegedly attacked her—was on the creep list?

  “No way,” Elaine said.

  “Why not?” Headband said.

  “What would you do with it?” T-shirt asked.

  Jane and Fee exchanged glances. They didn’t have to discuss anything to agree this would be a pretty interesting item to have. Jane’s brain was already calculating how she could track down student disciplinary hearings, or administrative actions, suspensions, or expulsions. The privacy laws would make it all semi-impossible. The college was not required to release—could not even consider it—personal information on student discipline. The reports the school was required to make under Title IX regulations could not include student names. Only if there was an open hearing or a public document would they be able to discover whether any student, male or female, had a pattern of sexual misconduct. So yeah, what would they do with the list?

  Jane decided not to answer, maybe let that question percolate a bit. “Well, let me ask you this. You said there’s a welcome party tomorrow.”

  “Yes, big blowout,” Yale said.

  “Crazy-full of the new students.” Headband.

  “School-sanctioned?” Fiola asked.

  “No,” Elaine said. “It’s like a tradition. School kind of ignores it, so they don’t have to deal with it. Almost the end of summer semester, beginning of the fall. It’s at the Spotted Owl—you know it, Fiola?”

  “I, uh…” Fiola looked at Jane.

  “Fiola’s new in town,” Jane said. “But sure, over behind Fenway Park. So, are you all going?” She looked at each woman, questioning. They all exchanged glances, seemed to agree.

  “We have to,” Elaine answered. “Part of our…”

  “Mission,” Headband said.

  “Passion.”

  “Responsibility.”

  Documentary, Jane thought.

  “Is there room for another guest or two?” she asked.

  32

  JAKE BROGAN

  “Who keeps calling you?” Jake had been tempted to go lights-and-siren to get the hell out of Kenmore. His growing annoyance—with the traffic, with the unhelpful attitude of Edward Tarrant, and with the possible murder of Avery Morgan—was intensified by the insistent tuba notes of DeLuca’s Jaws ringtone.

  Whoever was calling his partner was relentless. Jake tried to ignore it, tune it out and focus on his own life. He finally made the turn onto Charlesgate Road, heading for HQ and his desk, more coffee, and possibly a moment to connect with Jane. He and D had a load of stuff to do. Track down the students in the video. See who knew who. Follow up the leads in Avery Morgan’s personnel file. Handle the authorities in California, who should be calling him back.

  If Avery was an informant, it would color this whole investigation. But he couldn’t confirm that without info from the West Coast. And no way he would pull an all-nighter over this. Detectives were real people, with real lives and real schedules. The BPD resisted paying overtime. So, all good. It was either Jane’s condo, wine, and, eventually, sleep. Or his own place, some kind of dinner, sleep.

  “No one ‘keeps’ calling me.” DeLuca clicked off his phone. “I have a life outside of work. Like you do, right, Romeo?”

  Before Jake could answer, the tuba rumbled again from DeLuca’s pocket.

  “I rest my case,” Jake said.

  D gave him the finger, talked into the phone. “DeLuca.”

  Then silence.

  More silence.

  “D?” Jake said.

  “Hang on,” D told him. And to the phone, “You sure?”

  “D?” Jake said again.

  “On it,” D said. He hung up, took a deep breath.

  Jake knew it. All those phone calls? All those conversations? No one? Bull. Something was up with DeLuca, big-time. And he was about to hear it.

  “D?” Jake stopped at the light on Mass Ave, watched the shopping-bag-toting tourist parade saunter by. Jane, wine, whatever, sleep.

  “Lights-and-siren, bro,” DeLuca said. “And turn right. Now.”

  EDWARD TARRANT

  No wonder he hadn’t been able to reach Reg Buchholz. No wonder he hadn’t been able to reach his wife. Edward Tarrant flew down the Mass Turnpike, weaving his SL past the morons who insisted on clogging the left lane and making driving impossible for everyone. Green numbers on the dashboard’s digital clock taunted him, valuable time ticking by. Buchholz was treating him like a peon. A lackey. Not with the respect due a colleague and goddamned son-in-law.

  Edward had tried to call them, warn them, let them know about the Avery debacle, and that he was handling it. Certainly that was his responsibility. He’d assumed they simply hadn’t gotten his messages, or hell, were drinking at some vineyard, or touring cathedrals. But now he knew Buchholz hadn’t responded, and his wife hadn’t responded, because instead of calling him back, they’d decided to return to Boston. Without telling him. Until they reached New York.

  Edward downshifted, the motion punctuating his
memories, and veered across three lanes to the airport exit. Manderley had left a message before she left—early, naturally—saying President Buchholz and Mrs. Tarrant were flying back from France. And they’d arrive at Terminal C, 8:23 P.M.

  All he needed. All.

  Moreover, he was supposed to pick them up? At the airport? Had they never heard of a taxi?

  He rolled down a window, left the AC on, tried to adjust his attitude, adopt the role of attentive son-in-law. Husband. Responsible college administrator. Power broker.

  Yes. He nodded, agreeing with himself. It would be better to have President Buchholz on campus. Better to have him publicly handle the Avery situation. Better to keep himself, Edward Tarrant, behind the scenes making sure everything worked.

  “Make it work,” he said out loud. His words floated out the open window, dissipating into the fumes and exhaust.

  He’d shaken off the parasitic Sasha Vogelby. Why that woman insisted on sticking to him, burr on tweed, he’d never understand. I know you’re upset, he’d told her, trying not to look at his watch. Go home, have a glass of wine. And then, good Lord, she’d asked him to come share it. It was all he could do not to laugh. He’d peeled her away, figuratively, insisting they’d talk tomorrow. She’d have to take Avery’s classes this fall, he told her.

  “Oh, of course,” she’d agreed, theatrical palm to her chest, ever the drama. “It’ll all be in her honor. We’ll do tragic deaths—Bohème, maybe. Or Tosca.”

  He hated how she talked, he thought while changing lanes again. Like everything was theater, like she was the star.

  With her finally out of the picture, he’d used his cell to leave a terse “Contact me” message for Trey Welliver. The know-it-all cops—“real cops,” he said out loud—had not been savvy enough to ask who’d been behind the camera for the party video. Now he could tell Trey that the shit was about to hit, maybe get ahead of the story.

  The pretzel of Logan Airport exits appeared, and Edward, almost not speeding, tried to decipher the constantly changing signs and get to the correct terminal, wondering how he could save his reputation.