He shuddered.
Distantly, Emilio heard the phone ring. He didn’t have an extension in his room, but he figured it would be a neighbor complaining about the noise. Hopefully Rory would handle it before Evelyn got on the phone and told whoever it was to mind his or her own goddamn business. Emilio had handled similar calls more times than he cared to remember.
A knock at his bedroom door caused Emilio to tense up. There hadn’t been time for his mother to reach her remorseful stage, so he figured it could only be more of her haranguing come calling. Wiping away tears, he yelled, “Just go away and leave me alone.”
“Em, it’s me,” his uncle said from the other side of the door. “You have a phone call.”
Frowning, Emilio made his way back through the maze, stubbing his toe on one of the heavier boxes and cursing under his breath. Opening the door for his uncle, he said, “Who is it?”
“Don’t know, some girl.” Rory had a sly grin on his face, suggesting he was pleased someone of the opposite sex was calling his social misfit of a nephew who’d never had a single date in high school.
Emilio took the phone, shut the door, and said, “Hello?”
“Emilio, thank God I finally got you.”
“Connie? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve been trying your cell since early this morning.”
“Sorry, I ran out of minutes and haven’t gotten anymore yet.”
“Jesus, Em, when are you going to join the rest of us in the twenty-first century and stop using that pre-paid phone.”
“Sorry, Connie, but my ass is not an ATM; I can’t just pull cash out of it.” Emilio had expected Connie to laugh at his little joke. When she didn’t, he asked, “How’d you get this number?”
“I badgered Phil into going through the caller ID on the phone in your room until he found your mother’s number.”
“Why go to so much trouble? I’ll be back on campus tonight.”
Silence from the other end, then, “I figured I’d better give a head’s up since the police will probably want to talk to you when you get back to Gaffney.”
“The police? Why would they want to talk to me?”
Another moment of silence, and when Connie spoke again, her voice was trembling. “Em, I don’t even know where to start. I’m so mixed-up, I don’t know what to believe.”
Emilio moved a couple of small boxes off a metal folding chair and sat down. “Connie, just tell me what’s going on.”
“For starters, Patty’s missing.”
“Missing? Like Leslie Butler?”
“Yeah, the police think the two are connected. Only Patty was definitely on campus when she disappeared.”
After Connie gave a rundown of the previous night’s events, Emilio felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He didn’t know Patty well, but she seemed like a nice enough girl, and he found himself remembering her thumbs up just before he’d started his speech last week. “That’s just horrible. Do the police have any suspects?”
“Yeah, they’re looking for someone they’re calling ‘a person of interest.’ ”
“Who?”
Silence again, this time for so long that Emilio began to think the call had been disconnected. “Connie? You there?”
“It’s Dale. They think it’s Dale.”
The punch to Emilio’s gut suddenly became a knife, slicing upward and spilling his intestines, leaving him completely hollowed out. He tried to speak, couldn’t seem to work up the breath, then tried again. “That’s…insane. Why would…why would they suspect Dale?”
“They have video footage of him carrying Patty out of the dorm.”
A high-pitched, nervous laugh tripped out of Emilio’s mouth. “No way. Anyone who knows Dale would never believe that.”
“Well, they didn’t let me see the video or anything, but they seem pretty convinced. Why would they lie about it, Em?”
“So why do they want to talk to me?”
“They’re questioning anyone with a connection to Dale. Friends, teammates, professors.”
“They already question you?”
Connie barked a humorless laugh of her own. “Oh yeah, I had a two and a half hour grill session, practically gave me the third degree.”
“Jesus, why so long?”
“They seem to think I might be involved.”
“What? Why?”
“They say Dale used my keycard to get into the building, the one I lost early last week.”
“But I thought you told me you dropped that card in the Quarry.”
“I did,” Connie said, a miserable pleading quality to her voice. “I watched the damn thing sink beneath the water. That’s why they didn’t bother to deactivate it when I reported it lost.”
“So how would Dale have gotten his hands on it?”
“I don’t know, Em. I can’t make heads or tails of any of this.”
Emilio was quiet for a moment, the gears in his mind whirring. “Do you think he went down there again?”
“Where?”
“The Quarry. Do you think Dale went for another dive?”
“Damned if I know, but even if he did, what are the chances he’d be able to locate my keycard. Those have to be needle-in-a-haystack kind of odds.”
“I just can’t believe it, Connie. Dale isn’t capable of hurting anyone.”
“If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have agreed, but now…”
“You think he’s guilty?”
“He’s just been acting so weird lately, like a total stranger. I don’t think he did it, but I don’t think he didn’t do it either.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just means I’m not ruling anything out at this point. I was actually thinking about going back home to Louisiana for a week or so, but Sheriff Powell suggested I might not want to leave town during the investigation.”
“God, this is a nightmare.”
“For the time being, I’m bunking with Kasey Gregory; her roommate dropped out last month so she has a room to herself. I just don’t feel safe being alone.”
“Connie, you don’t think—”
“I told him I’d be doing my laundry, Em. And then he snatched Patty out of the laundry room. You really think that’s just coincidence?”
“So you think he was coming after you?”
“I don’t know what to think. Look, I need to go. I just wanted to let you know what was going on around here.”
Emilio opened his mouth to respond but then Connie hung up. He let the phone drop from his ear and briefly considered calling Connie back. Instead, he jumped up and started hastily packing. Uncle Rory hadn’t been planning to take Emilio back to Limestone until 5, but Emilio couldn’t wait. He needed to get back to campus as soon as possible.
* * *
The administration instituted a campus curfew of 8 p.m. The dorm buildings were locked up tight, police and extra security guards patrolling the area on and around the school. Anyone spotted out after 8 was to be detained and questioned. The ID photo of Dale Sierra had been passed around to all the cops and guards on duty, and a lot of coffee was consumed to keep everyone alert.
Presently, Norman drove his cart down Quarry Drive, headed toward the dining hall. He wished he was anywhere else in the world but here, doing anything else but this, and yet he was lucky to still have a job. The security log had proven that Norman was out on rounds at the time Sierra carried the girl out of the dorm, confirming that there was no way he could have seen the abduction. But he’d been in the office when Sierra entered the building almost a half an hour before. He’d probably been distracted by the paper he was trying to write for class. However, since Sierra couldn’t actually be identified on that bit of footage and wasn’t doing anything exceptionally suspicious, Beckman had begrudgingly admitted that Norman hadn’t been derelict in his duties.
Norman felt guilty all the same. There was a girl missing—two girls, actually—and if he had only been a bit more attentive, a litt
le less distracted, maybe he could have done something to prevent it. He was campus security, after all, and he doubted that anyone on campus felt particularly secure at the moment.
As he approached Stephenson, his eyes were drawn to the field behind the building. There were no lights over the field, but he thought he detected movement.
Stopping the cart, he climbed out and snapped on his flashlight. He shined the pale beam down the incline, but it didn’t reach very far. Something was definitely moving down there. Probably just ducks, but Norman knew he’d better check it out; no sense letting something else get past him. Putting a hand on his holster but not yet drawing his gun, he started down the hill.
Halfway down, he made out a figure several yards away, dragging something along the ground. Definitely not a duck, his mind screamed.
Norman called out.
The person did not stop.
“Oh shit,” Norman muttered.
Walking more briskly, he swung the flashlight in the direction of the figure, and what he saw caused him to stop in his tracks and his breath to catch in his throat.
It was Sierra, still wearing the same pair of cargo pants and hooded sweatshirt. He dragged a woman by the legs toward the Quarry. Sierra seemed oddly unaware of Norman’s presence, despite the light dancing across his face.
“Freeze!” Norman screamed, fumbling the 9 mm from the holster. He held the gun out in front of him, trying to aim straight along the beam of his flashlight. His hands shook, causing the gun and light to quiver. Suddenly, despite the chill in the night air, he was coated with sweat, and he felt like he might be sick.
In the months that Norman had been working at Limestone, this was the first time he had ever had to draw his weapon, and honestly he’d never expected he’d have to. As security on a small college campus, his job mostly consisted of escorting drunk students back to their dorms, breaking up the occasional fistfight, dealing with pranksters like that streaking jock last week. He never dreamed he’d have to deal with anything like this.
He was terrified.
When Sierra did not react to Norman’s command—continuing to drag the woman toward the water as if he didn’t have a care in the world—Norman advanced, trying to look menacing. “I said freeze! Move one more step and I’ll shoot!”
The boy took notice. He stopped and glanced up at Norman, the light reflecting off his eyes and making them look dead. He let the woman’s legs drop heavily to the ground, and his lips twisted in a sneer. “I cannot lose this vessel,” he droned. “I have waited too long for this chance; I will not wait for another.”
“Look buddy, I don’t know what you’re on, but I want you to step away from the woman. Now! Do you understand?”
Sierra didn’t move. His eyes didn’t register understanding.
Norman had a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt; he could use it to request assistance. However, he couldn’t grab the walkie-talkie without lowering the gun or the flashlight, and he didn’t want to risk fucking up more than he already had.
Suddenly, the boy reached down, grabbed the woman’s legs again, and backpedaled quickly toward the Quarry. Norman called for him to halt, but Sierra just laughed and picked up speed, hauling the woman through the gate to the Quarry.
Saying a silent prayer and trying to remember everything he’d learned in the gun course he’d taken, Norman aimed—
Sierra was almost at the water’s edge.
—and fired.
The recoil sent a jolt up Norman’s arms and knocked the flashlight from his grasp. Just before the light pin-wheeled away, he saw Sierra jerk backwards, grabbing his left shoulder; the boy cried out and then there was a splash.
Norman quickly retrieved the flashlight and directed it back toward the water. Much to his relief, the woman was still there, lying in the dirt. Sierra, however, was nowhere to be seen. The splash suggested the boy had fallen into the lake. But Norman didn’t want to take any chances. He walked forward slowly, keeping the gun and light held out in front of him. When he reached the woman, lying still with her eyes closed, he knelt down next to her. He glanced around and could see that the boy was not hiding behind either of the outbuildings, which meant the only place he could have gone was into the water.
Putting the flashlight down, he reached out and placed two fingers against the woman’s neck. Her pulse was there, faint but steady; she wasn’t dead, just unconscious. Norman recognized her as one of the English professors, Brighton he thought her name was. She had a black eye and a split lip.
Snatching the walkie-talkie from his belt, Norman called for back-up while he stared out at the dark rippling water of the Quarry.
Part Two
Rising to the Surface
April 2010
Chapter Ten
CONNIE STOOD OUTSIDE the Student Center, trying to work up the nerve to go in. In the past couple of weeks she had done little other than go to class and hide out in her room. She rarely even went to the dining hall. Kasey had tried to coax her out a few times to see a movie or go shopping at the outlet mall, but Connie always declined. She’d heard that some had started calling her “The Hermit,” but she didn’t mind. Let them call her whatever they wanted; she just wasn’t up to socializing.
She didn’t know why she’d let Emilio talk her into coming out tonight. He’d pestered her all week, and she’d finally agreed to meet him for a soda. A quick soda. If she had her way, she’d be back in her dorm room after no more than a fifteen minute chat.
Steeling herself with a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped inside the Student Center. Just to her right, on the small stage, a senior from the Music department was playing an acoustic guitar and singing in that slightly off-key fashion made popular by Katie Perry and her countless clones. A group of maybe half a dozen students had gathered to listen to the performance.
Several people glanced in Connie’s direction, and a few of them whispered and pointed.
She turned away quickly and walked further into the Center.
A couple of guys Connie recognized from the lacrosse team were playing foosball, and she gave them a wide berth, refusing to meet their eyes. She could feel stares boring into her like laser beams from all over the room, and she once again wished she’d said no to Emilio.
She was thinking about turning around and marching back out the door when Emilio called out and motioned her to a small sofa in the far corner.
“I went ahead and got you a drink,” Emilio said, handing her a can of Diet Dr. Pepper as she sat next to him. He was sipping a Coke. “I was afraid you were going to bail on me.”
“I won’t lie, I thought about it. I’m still thinking about it.”
“Come on, Connie, it’s about time you rejoined the land of the living.” Emilio winced. “Sorry, maybe a bad choice of words.”
Connie sunk down in her seat and tucked her head in like a turtle. “Everyone’s looking at me.”
Emilio glanced around the room. “No one’s paying us the slightest bit of attention. I think maybe you’re a little paranoid.”
“I’m no fool, Em. I know what they’re all saying behind my back. ‘Hey, there’s that girl. She was dating a psycho.’ Most of them probably think I helped him.”
“You told me that Sheriff Powell no longer thought you had anything to do with it.”
“That’s what he said,” Connie agreed, crossing her arms over her chest. “But his eyes told a different story. I know he still wonders how Dale ended up with my keycard.”
“Yeah, that is a puzzler.”
“I dropped it in the Quarry, Em!”
“No, I’m just—”
“I suppose you think I’m an accomplice, too,” Connie snapped.
Emilio held his hands up in surrender. “Hey now, I’m your friend here.”
Connie remained tense for a few seconds, but then her expression softened and her posture relaxed. “Jesus, Em, I’m sorry. I’ve just been wound a little tight lately.”
“It’s understan
dable.”
“No, there’s no excuse for me lashing out at the people who care about me. I just hate feeling as if everyone’s watching my every move.”
Emilio leaned over and put a hand on Connie’s knee. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with what happened. As a matter of fact—”
“Don’t!”
Emilio removed his hand. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Don’t I? You’re going to start in again about how you’re still not convinced Dale is guilty.”
“Are you?”
“I’d say the evidence against him is pretty compelling. They searched his room and found the necklace Steve gave to Leslie for Valentine’s—with traces of her blood on it!—as well as one of Patty’s little butterfly earrings, which I saw her wearing the night she disappeared. Oh, and let’s not forget that the security guard caught Dale dragging Dr. Brighton toward the Quarry. Do you really think that leaves much room for doubt?”
Emilio went silent, looking almost hurt.
“I don’t mean to be so harsh, Em, but we both have to face facts here. We didn’t really know Dale like we thought we did.”
“That’s bullshit,” Emilio said a bit too loudly, and now people really were staring. Lowering his voice, he went on. “The two of us were closer to Dale than anybody else on campus. He was a sweet guy that went out of his way to make everyone feel included. He didn’t have a wicked bone in his body.”
“You’re glossing over all his weird behavior there at the end.”
“So one week of weird behavior is supposed to erase everything else I knew about him? I just can’t buy that. Should I believe that he lost his mind just like that, all of a sudden?”
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