Literally Offed

by Eryn Scott

  “Thanks, Fergie.” I shot out of the chair and gave her a wave. “See you tomorrow!”

  “I hope you’re ready for Advanced Poetry Workshop, Pepper dear. I know iamb!” She called the terrible poetry pun after me making me smile even in my haste.

  My feet flew over the tiled halls of the English building, then over the concrete walkways of campus, and finally over the industrial carpet of The Student Services Office. I probably should’ve gone to see if my mother was done with her meeting first or maybe called Alex to tell him what I was about to do, but I was too excited about the prospect of finally learning the truth about my dad, that I couldn’t stop.

  Gregory having been at the campground that night definitely made him a suspect, but this was my dad’s old friend. I’d known him since I was a baby, back in the old days we’d even had dinner over at his house a few times. Plus I knew for a fact he was over six foot, so he sure didn’t sound like he fit the murderer’s profile.

  His secretary showed me back, only pausing briefly when I told her I didn’t have an appointment. I insisted it was important I see him now, and her smile widened into that fake, customer service range, eyes flicking up and down uncomfortably while she called into his office to see if he was free. Luckily, he agreed to see me, and in I went.

  Gregory Wilford wore a big grin as I entered. He stood and came at me from around the desk, hand outstretched, body looming over me. Okay, maybe he was even taller than I’d remembered. The guy was almost as tall as Nate. Definitely not the throat slasher, then.

  “Pepper Brooks! Gosh, it’s great to see you! What has it been, years?” His voice boomed around his office. I got the feeling his secretary could hear every word through the thick wooden door.

  “Three, just about.” My gaze fell to the floor, along with my stomach. The last time I’d seen him was at my father’s funeral.

  Gregory shook his head, running his hand across his chin. “Right. Sorry. I still can’t believe it sometimes.”

  I gave him a quick smile to show him it was okay, that I felt the same way. “Dr. Wilford, there’s something I need to ask you.”

  “Sure, sure. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk and then made his way back around to his side, sitting at the same time I sunk into the worn leather seat. “What’s up?”

  Swallowing, I took a quick moment to gather my thoughts. “You and my father spent a lot of time together during college, right?”

  “We were roommates our first year on campus, actually.”

  “Right.” I’d remembered Dad saying something about that once. “Can you tell me about his involvement in the fraternity called the TriAlphas?”

  Gregory’s jaw tightened. “Sorry, but I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Oh. I just thought…” The leather chair squeaked as I shifted uncomfortably. I turned my attention downward so he might not see the disappointment on my face. Discomfort filled the room, taking up the space left behind from his booming voice. I babbled, trying to create some noise in the awkward silence. “I stumbled on something of his and—never mind, just because he wrote a symbol in a book doesn’t mean he was a part of the fraternity. And just because some of its members are crooked doesn’t mean he was, too. We were at the campground at Silver Falls this weekend, just like you, and I don’t know if you heard yet, but—”

  “How do you know I was at Silver Falls?” Gregory asked, pulling my attention back up to his face.

  Heat flooded my cheeks. “Oh, I—there was—my boyfriend is a cop. He’s looking into the case. I may have glanced at the registration sign in at the campground.”

  Gregory’s face darkened for a moment, like a cloud passing overhead. A chill skittered down my spine at the anger behind the look, and I wondered if maybe I was wrong to exclude the man so quickly from the suspect list. Whether or not he was keeping something from me about my father, he was definitely keeping some sort of secret and it didn’t seem pleasant.

  “You mentioned a case?” he asked, rubbing his face with his palm, looking very tired all of a sudden. “Are you talking about the kid that was killed?”

  I nodded. The rangers had obviously filled in the campers as they were asking questions the other morning.

  Gregory’s eyes closed slowly, his face losing its rosy coloring. “They didn’t say how he died, just asked if we’d seen anything.”

  “Someone slit his throat.” I gritted my teeth, hating to be the bearer of such dismal news.

  Oddly, Gregory’s face softened at this news, as if he was relieved to hear it. My face hardened at the sight, and he must’ve noticed because he said, “Sorry, I’m not happy about that… per se. I’m just happy to hear it wasn’t another overdose situation.”

  Taking a stab based on how oddly Dylan had acted when I’d brought the name up yesterday, I asked, “Like Ethan Emsworth?”

  Gregory puffed out his cheeks. “Yes.”

  “Dr. Wilford, what do you know about Ethan’s death?” I asked. I’d heard about it, of course, three years earlier. But it had happened right before my dad passed away and I was just trying to get by, catch up in my classes, so it hadn’t really made my radar.

  Whatever had been holding Gregory back seemed to snap at the mention of Ethan. His body slumped forward slightly, making his tall frame shrink behind the desk.

  “I know the poor boy deserved better. His family deserved better.”

  “Better than what?”

  Gregory sighed, blue eyes filled with pain as he looked at me. “Pepper, your dad and I…” He swallowed, then dropped his gaze to the floor. “You were right, Jackson.” The statement was a whisper.

  Hearing my dad’s name devastated me into stunned silence. What did he have to do with Ethan Emsworth’s death?

  The floor creaked outside, and the sound of a cupboard shutting reverberated through the room. I sucked in a worried breath.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Gregory said after a moment. “You deserve to know the truth. It’s the least I can do since the last thing I did for your father was let him down.”

  My heart pounded, loud and overwhelming in my ears as he opened his lower desk drawer and fumbled around for a moment. After locating what he was looking for, he pulled it out, facing it toward me. I laid my eyes on the TriAlpha symbol again. This time it was printed on a swatch of fabric about the size of a notebook.

  “I lied earlier. I have heard of the fraternity. In fact, your father and I were the ones who created it.”

  18

  It felt as if Gregory’s words materialized into a fist and landed right into my stomach, completely knocking the wind out of me.

  “What?” I wheezed as I sank deeper into the leather office chair.

  His face wrinkled in concern. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how you found out about it or what you’ve heard, but you have to believe me, the TriAlphas are not the same now as they were when we started all of those years ago.”

  I felt like my throat was raw with questions. “What was it like?” I asked, finally settling on one of the many swimming through my mind.

  Gregory’s lips quirked up in a quiet nostalgia. “We were out to change the world, for the better.” His eyes, which had been wandering off again, locked onto mine. “One night during our freshman year, your father and I were up late and we got to talking about Thoreau, about Walden, but mostly about Civil Disobedience. Our young minds couldn’t seem to fathom the unfair world we were preparing ourselves to be a part of. We felt caged in by rules, misunderstood by those in charge, and disenchanted with the idea of becoming just another cog in a failed machine.

  “So we thought up the fraternity, a way we could watch out for each other, a way we could get around at least some of the imbalance we saw in the world, like the clever loon Thoreau writes about, slipping just out of reach. It would be a brotherhood unlike any other. We would vow to always support our members, to always recognize the symbol of the TriAlphas, and to help whenever there was a need.”
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  I listened, trying to picture my father as an impressionable eighteen-year-old who just wanted to make the world a better place.

  “We’d only just started gaining steam when there were those deaths during rush week and the university decided to ban anything to do with the Greek system. But we weren’t like the others. We were all about supporting our fellow man. We didn’t even rush at the same time, picking spring when life was given a new start instead of fall like all the rest. And we weren’t ready to let all of that go just because the others had screwed things up.

  “So we went underground. Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty, after all. We only invited a select few to rush each spring, we picked only the best of character and the brightest of minds. And because your dad and I both stayed around after graduation, we continued on as president and vice president for a few years. Eventually, though, our lives got a little more hectic; we both married, started having kids, and we handed the reigns over to someone else, someone we trusted implicitly.

  “But over the years, our ideals were slowly lost, as it goes when something is copied many times over. The brotherhood became more like a true fraternity and the new presidents started to care more about the elite nature of being a secret fraternity. They began to take advantage of the knowledge that the alumnus would have their back, get them out of sticky situations, and because they could, they began to get into stickier and stickier situations.

  Gregory shook his head. “I convinced campus security to look the other way when they caught them partying, I changed a member’s grades when they got behind in their coursework and started to fail classes. I’m not proud of any of it.” Gregory locked eyes with me. “And your father hated it. Once he realized the whole thing was going downhill, he stopped coming to their rescue, told me I needed to cut ties too; it wasn’t what we’d created any more. But I was already in too deep. The things I’d done could be used as blackmail, easily be grounds for me losing my position.

  “James was the first president to bring hazing into rush week. We tried to put a stop to it, but he wouldn’t listen, said we were old and washed up, what did we know? Ethan Emsworth was in the first batch of pledges to be put through what James liked to call, Civil Obedience. He created a trivia game about Thoreau and for every question they got wrong, pledges had to take a shot.” Gregory sighed. “There were a hundred questions, so even if they only missed a few, it’s a lot of shots.

  “Ethan missed thirteen.”

  “And you helped cover it up.” My voice sounded small after so much of Gregory’s consuming the small space of his office.

  He met my gaze, then looked down. “I did. Your father was absolutely furious with me. He told me I’d become just like the striped snake, oblivious to what was really going on around me.” Dr. Wilford pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and pointer finger. “I told him if he told anyone about what we’d done, I would make sure everyone found out it was he who started it, and I would ruin his career. It was the last thing I said to him. He had his heart attack a week later.”

  Gregory swallowed, then swiped at the corners of his eyes.

  “I don’t even care if I get fired anymore. Living with this burden for so many years has been eating away at me. Just like Jackson told me I should, I need to finally accept the consequences for my actions, once and for all. It’s the least I can do for him since the stress from our fight, from the position I put him in, could’ve been what brought on his heart attack.”

  In that moment, my own heart felt like it was simultaneously breaking and mending. Watching this man’s guilt over his actions hurt, especially since he’d obviously cared about my father. But I couldn’t help the lightness which came over me at the news that, not only had my father not been behind the ugly side of the fraternity, but also that he’d been against hiding what happened to Ethan.

  I got up. Maneuvering around the desk, I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders in a sympathetic side-hug.

  “We did the same thing—a lot, at first,” I said, pulling away. “We blamed ourselves for what we didn’t see, what we could’ve done. But the doctors assured us it was a mix of a lot of factors. He wasn’t overweight and he didn’t seem particularly stressed at any given time. He definitely should’ve gone in for a physical every now and then, but…” I sighed. “We can’t go back in time.”

  It was possible I needed to hear those words even more than Dr. Wilford, because as they left my mouth, I began to feel a bit of calm settle over me. After operating under a high level of paranoia and worry since finding the symbol in Dad’s book, I began to let go.

  “Thank you, Pepper.” Gregory dipped his chin in appreciation as I moved to sit down again. “Your father was a good man and I miss him very much.”

  “Me too.” Now that my emotional baggage was clearing, separating from the case, something from my conversation with Chloe came back to me. “You weren’t in any kind of contact with James before he died, were you?” I asked.

  Gregory grimaced for a moment before saying, “I was helping him with the plan to move the fraternity to Southern Washington University. I know a few of the professors and one of the deans down there and I thought maybe if I could get the TriAlphas away from here, I could get out of having to do their dirty work anymore.” Suddenly, Gregory’s expression fell. “Wait. You don’t think our plan is what got James killed, do you?”

  I shook my head. “I did at first, but then the vice president, Matt, was attacked, too. He’s in the ICU, still hasn’t woken up. He was completely against the move. He’d been my biggest suspect, up until he became a victim as well.”

  “Yes, I heard about Matt. You think the two incidents are related?” Gregory’s brow furrowed.

  Sighing, I said, “My gut tells me they are, but there’s no proof, yet. They weren’t attacked in the same way, of course, which doesn’t help my theory.”

  “I guess we won’t know for sure until Matt wakes up,” Gregory said.

  “If he wakes up,” I added somberly, remembering how Alex had described his injuries.

  Gregory rubbed his palms over his face and took a deep breath. “This whole thing became so much bigger, so much more complicated than Jackson or I could’ve ever predicted.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I got an idea. “So would you help me figure out how to clean it up, if you could?”

  Dr. Wilford nodded. “Absolutely. Anything you need.”

  I leaned forward. “Tell me about Sheriff Jefferson Langley.”

  Gregory’s face darkened. “Rushed about ten years ago when I was still involved with looking over pledges for them. He’s a power-happy punk, that’s all.”

  “Well, he’s a punk with a lot of the evidence we need, and I think he might be hiding something.”

  Gregory pushed his shoulders back. “Got it. Let me make a few calls. I’ll see what I can do.”

  I smiled, standing. “Anything you can get him to share with Detective Mateo Valdez at the Pine Crest Police Department, would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  Biting my lip, I thought about it. “I’m guessing you know all about Chloe French.”

  He dipped his chin. “The girl who wrote the blog earlier this year.”

  “And making her seem crazy so no one would take her seriously was yet another string you pulled to keep the TriAlphas a secret?”

  He held his thumb and pointer finger up, only leaving a small space in between the two. “I only had to do a little on that one, she did the rest. She hid the fact that she and Dylan Oakes were an item.”

  I shuffled my feet on the carpet as I thought through what I’d just heard. “Why would that matter?”

  “Discredits her story. Makes it seem like the only reason she believed him was because they were dating.”

  Blinking, I remembered how Chloe had gotten all weird when she’d told us about her and Dylan dating, adamant they’d gotten together because of the fallout from the article, not
before it.

  “That lie only came to light after her big mistake, though,” Gregory said, thoughtfully.

  “Big mistake?”

  “I’m assuming she told you all about how the fraternity planted the failed drug test that got him kicked off the team?”

  “Yep.”

  “They found traces of amphetamines in his urine. Chloe, sure Dylan hadn’t been taking anything, must’ve looked up how long amphetamines can stay in the body.” Gregory stopped, looking to me as if I might know the answer.

  I shrugged.

  “Forty-eight hours. She promptly went to the athletic department and told them she’d been with Dylan for the last forty-eight hours other than when he was in class and that there was no way he’d taken any drugs.”

  “Which he hadn’t, right?”

  “Correct, but at the same time Chloe was telling them about one alibi, Dylan was giving a completely different one to his coach.”

  Sighing, I shook my head.

  “So even though Dylan was probably telling the truth, between this being his second offense—the alcohol overdose and then the failed drug test—and the confusion between his story and Chloe’s, the coach couldn’t take a chance on him.”

  My mind rewound back to Alex asking Dylan where he’d been that weekend. The way he’d paused, asked if we’d asked Chloe the same question, and then had shared that look with his roommate, it all screamed something was up.

  “Pepper, is everything okay?” Dr. Wilford asked, leaning closer toward me.

  “Uh—I—yeah… I just—that’s interesting information. It just changes a lot.”

  “For the better, I hope.”

  Licking my lips, I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. Thanks, Dr. Wilford.” I waved and spun on my heel to leave.

  “Be careful, Pepper. Please,” Gregory called after me as I reached the door.

  I smiled, nodded, and then pulled open the door. Once I’d jogged out of the student services building, I dug my phone out of my pocket then dialed Alex.