Gwen Martin and Dominic Brendan had been partners on the rape detail of the Boston Police Department for almost seven years. They were both from big Irish families, and had grown up in the same neighborhood. Gwen was thirty-seven years old, and had four older brothers, three of whom were cops and one was a priest, and her father and grandfather had been precinct sergeants. Being a policeman was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do growing up. She had worked vice for a while, as a decoy, and had somehow wound up in the juvenile rape detail instead, filling in, and stayed because she felt as though she was making a difference in the world. It broke her heart to see what happened to some young girls. Some of them were raped by fathers or brothers, or hoodlums in the slums where they lived.
Dominic Brendan was the oldest of seven children, and had been responsible for his younger siblings, when his father, also a policeman, had been shot in the line of duty. As a result, he loved his nieces and nephews, but he had never wanted to marry or have kids of his own. “I gave at the office,” he always told his siblings when they nagged him about when he was going to get married. At forty-six, he loved being single, did what he wanted with his spare time, and enjoyed his job. He told Gwen that listening to her complain and spending five days a week arguing with her was close enough to being married. They had never dated each other, but made a great team, and he had a magical touch with kids of all ages. His mother still regretted that he hadn’t become a priest.
They had spent the previous afternoon going over the evidence in Vivienne’s case with the local police. It was still pretty thin. They had seven sets of prints on the tequila bottle, five of which they couldn’t tie to anyone yet, and a victim who claimed she remembered almost nothing of a heinous crime, didn’t know her assailant, admitted to being drunk at the time, and the local detective on the case was convinced she was lying, either out of fear of retaliation by her attacker, or to protect him if they were her friends. Either way, she was no help at all, which wasn’t entirely unusual. And they had a boy with a violin case, whose prints were on the bottle found at the crime scene, whom they suspected was lying too, but were almost convinced wasn’t the rapist. Ultimately, DNA tests would tell.
“So where do you want to start?” Gwen asked him. “They’re fingerprinting the whole school today. That should keep the local guys busy. Nine hundred and forty students, not to mention faculty and other staff.” And the hospital was running all the DNA and semen tests from what they had taken from the victim when they brought her in. “Sooner or later, they’re going to get a match. It’s going to be the scandal of all time at a school like this. I worked one of these fancy prep school rapes when I started. Six boys raped a freshman girl, and seven others watched. They practically sold tickets. And the parents were so rich and important that no one went to jail. The judge gave them all a break. They got six months’ probation, and they blamed the girl. That was ten years ago, it doesn’t work like that anymore. At least not in the real world.” They both knew that the Massachusetts rape shield laws prevented defense attorneys from attacking a victim on the issue of consent. But they could attack her on other issues, like sexual history or reputation, which scared some victims off from reporting a rape. And there was still the possibility that Vivienne knew the boy and had consented to have sex with him, but the local detectives didn’t think it likely, in the drunken condition she was in.
Dominic glanced over at Gwen. She had bright red hair and freckles, and looked more Irish than anyone he knew. “Their parents are still going to fight like lions if any boy at the school is convicted and sentenced to prison. Saint Ambrose is about as fancy as it gets. Kids like that always make me nervous. They’re so smooth and sophisticated, they always make me feel like I’m not good enough.” He was a little rough around the edges, but the smartest cop Gwen had ever worked with. Their professional relationship was based on unspoken affection and profound mutual respect.
“Good enough for what? To send a kid who raped a girl to jail? You’re good enough, Dom. You’re plenty good enough for that.”
She was wearing jeans and sneakers and looked like a kid herself. She didn’t want to scare them. As a policewoman, she wanted them to talk to her. She liked to hang out and get the lay of the land when they started a case as confusing as this one. Vivienne should have been desperate for them to find her attackers, but she wasn’t. She was reticent and uncooperative, which wasn’t unusual, but made the case harder. She wasn’t their ally, yet.
Gwen was startled when they parked in one of the school lots, and she saw that the students were all wearing uniforms, the boys in blazers and ties, the girls in plaid skirts, with white blouses or navy sweaters and blazers too, with the school emblem on it. It was a very traditional school.
“Shit, maybe I should have worn a dress and heels.” Dom laughed at her as they got out of the car and looked around. It was a beautiful school. “It looks like Harvard,” she said, impressed. It was hard not to be.
The two detectives headed toward the administration building to meet with Taylor and Nicole, and were shown into the headmaster’s wood-paneled office. Nicole was there, going over schedules with Taylor. Classes were going to be disrupted all day, with the fingerprinting going on. Both detectives introduced themselves, and they sat down on two couches in front of the fireplace with Taylor and Nicole, who looked harassed and worried.
“Things are a little chaotic right now,” Taylor said somberly. “We’re all unnerved and devastated by what happened.” Gwen nodded and felt a little foolish in her kid-friendly clothes. She hadn’t realized that the school would be this formal and sedate. Nicole was wearing a dark gray suit and heels and did on most days. And Taylor’s secretary came in to tell him that Joe Russo was on the phone and it was urgent. He excused himself and left Nicole to talk to the detectives and bring them up to date on what was happening at school. No new evidence had surfaced, and no one knew anything about what had happened that night. No one was talking.
“It’s still early,” Gwen said to her. She liked Nicole immediately. She seemed like a smart woman and a straight shooter. “There’s always a kid around somewhere who knows or saw something and eventually squeals. They can’t help it. They have to. It’s too heavy a weight for them to carry. Sooner or later, they talk. Somebody must have seen something that night, or heard it.”
“There’s no sign of it yet. We just told the seniors that they’re going to be fingerprinted today. It made more sense to start with them since Vivienne is a senior. It’s unlikely she was raped by a freshman boy.” Dom didn’t comment.
“When are they starting?” Gwen wanted to know.
“The police got here half an hour ago. They’ve already started. They have a hundred and ninety-four kids to get through.”
“They should be able to do that pretty fast,” although Gwen often found that away from the cities, the police were understaffed and sometimes slower than she liked. But they were caring and methodical too. They had handled the case efficiently so far and hadn’t missed any important steps in their initial investigation. Nothing had been overlooked, and the school was cooperating fully.
“We’ll bring the juniors in as soon as they’re ready for them,” Nicole confirmed.
“I’d like to hang around where they’re doing it, and see if we hear anything or if anyone will talk to us,” Gwen said thoughtfully.
“We’ve told them that Vivienne Walker has been sent home with mono. But they’re not stupid, and I think they all figured out yesterday that she was the victim, when she wasn’t here. But we can at least do that for her,” Nicole said and Gwen nodded. The senior girls had guessed but hadn’t said anything and were protective of her.
While they were chatting, Taylor was trying to calm down Joe Russo, who was livid that his son was about to be fingerprinted like a common criminal, as he put it. Rick had called and told him, and his father was outraged. He was threatening never to make another donation to the school if Taylor didn’t pull him out of the line immediately.
“You know I can’t do that, Joe. We have to cooperate with the police. There can’t be exceptions. If we refused to let them fingerprint him, it would implicate him. And we owe this to the victim and her parents. If she were your daughter, you’d want everything possible done to find her attackers too. They’re going to print me, for heaven’s sake, and the entire faculty. And I didn’t do it. They’re fingerprinting the whole staff and everyone on the grounds, women too.”
Joe was slightly mollified when he heard that. “Rick said it was just seniors.” He sounded confused.
“This morning. After that, we’re fingerprinting all students, and everyone else. We’re just starting with seniors. We had to start somewhere.”
“I guess that’s not quite as bad, but I don’t know why you bother with kids you know as well as Rick, Jamie, Chase, the star students of the school. Are you fingerprinting Chase too, or is he getting preferential treatment?” It always irritated him that Chase’s parents were famous movie stars, and he had a chip on his shoulder about them.
“Of course he isn’t getting special treatment. Why would he? No one is. His father being an actor doesn’t make him exempt from what happens here.” And Chase’s parents hadn’t asked for it either, if they even knew about it. But they never asked favors of the school.
“I just wondered,” Joe said gruffly. “It’s a hell of a thing to happen,” he admitted, shaken by it too, and he felt sorry for the girl and her parents.
“Yes, it is,” Taylor agreed with him, as his secretary slipped him a note that Shepard Watts was on the phone, and he nodded to indicate that he would take the call. “I’ve got to go now. There are two detectives here who came up from Boston, from the juvenile rape detail. Keep in touch.”
“Yeah, I will,” Joe said, sounding off balance after his initial attack, and Taylor hung up, and switched to the line Shepard was holding on.
“Hi, Shep. It’s crazy here. What can I do for you?” Before he could say another word, Shepard unleashed a torrent of fury into his ear. How dare they fingerprint his son. He was the head of the board, Jamie was their best student, and finest athlete, Taylor knew the whole family, they were friends, what the hell was wrong with them, didn’t Taylor have any notion of propriety and courtesy? Any loyalty to them? His son wasn’t a rapist. The idea that his son was being fingerprinted had driven him into a frenzy, and Taylor spent fifteen minutes calming him down, and finally had to cut it short. He got back to the two detectives with Nicole, looking harassed and even more stressed than before, after talking to Gwen and Dom about what lay ahead.
“The parents are starting to call and complain about their kids being fingerprinted,” he said, looking tired. Charity was right, it was getting worse before it got better.
“I guess everyone here thinks they’re special,” Gwen said quietly. “That must be hard to deal with at a time like this.” Taylor nodded agreement.
“They’re all special, but no one gets special treatment. It wouldn’t be fair to the others.” Listening to the headmaster, Dominic decided he liked him. He was conservative and traditional, but he seemed honest and sincere, and genuinely wanted to find the rapist, whatever it took.
“Why don’t I take you over to where the seniors are now,” Nicole suggested, as much to give Taylor a break as to accede to their requests.
The police had set up shop in the auditorium, and there were three long lines of seniors waiting for their turns, talking quietly among themselves. Nicole left the detectives to their own devices then to go back to her office.
“You know where to find me,” she told them before she left, and Gwen noticed a number of the students staring at them, wondering who they were. The process was moving relatively quickly. The policemen filled out a card with their name and date of birth, their class at Saint Ambrose for reference, fingerprinted them, and they were done. It was a painless process, but the implication of it was unpleasant, that among them was a rapist, whom the police were determined to find. And for lack of information, no one was above suspicion.
Jamie passed Chase in the line on his way out. They had gone in separately, and had made a point of not spending too much time together for the past two days. Chase had already asked him what had happened to the bottle, and neither of them could remember. No one knew, except Taylor and Nicole, that it was in the hands of the police, and they had lifted prints from it. Chase and Jamie were extremely nervous, and Rick had said earlier that he had been throwing up for two days. He didn’t know if it was alcohol poisoning or stress. When Jamie turned to leave, he saw Gwen Martin watching them and he had no idea who she was. She didn’t look like a cop, but she didn’t look like a teacher either. She looked out of place in her jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers. And the man with her was badly dressed and looked bored.
Gwen wanted to ask someone who the two handsome blond boys were, but there was no one around to question. She would find out from Nicole later. They were distinctly good-looking and confident. She watched the lines continue to move forward, and by lunchtime, they were finished with the seniors. The juniors were going to be told after lunch that it was their turn.
Gwen and Dominic stayed until after lunch, and then Gwen told her partner she wanted to drop in on Vivienne.
“Is she up to a visit?” he asked her.
“I think so. She talked to the local guys yesterday. Let’s find out.”
They drove the ten minutes to the hospital, and when they got there, the nurse at the station on her floor pointed to her room just down the hall. Her parents weren’t there, which was convenient. The nurse said they had left for lunch. Vivienne was awake when Gwen knocked and walked into the room. She left Dominic in the hall. Vivienne looked startled to see her. She didn’t know who Gwen was. Gwen gave her a sunny smile to put her at ease. “Are you up to a visit?” She wasn’t sick or injured, but she was still a little under the weather from the effects of the alcohol poisoning.
“Sure.” Vivienne smiled back at her. She thought she was a worker from the hospital, or maybe another shrink. She had already seen one that morning.
“I’m from the Boston Police Department,” Gwen said as she sat down, and Vivienne’s face tightened immediately.
“I talked to the police yesterday,” she said in a plaintive tone, and suddenly acted as though she was in pain. “Actually, I have a headache.”
“I’m sure you do. So do we, Vivienne. We want to help, but we don’t have much to go on. Do you think you can jog your memory a little, and try to remember something, anything that happened that night, even way at the beginning of the evening, someone you saw hanging around?”
“I told them yesterday, I drank a lot of tequila and passed out.”
“But you don’t remember who you were drinking with?”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t know them well. What difference does it make? I was just drinking with a bunch of girls.” She had come up with a great cover story. She was too drunk to identify them, didn’t know the boy who raped her, and passed out while it was taking place. “My mom and dad will be back in a minute,” she said as though that would put Gwen off, but it didn’t. Nothing ever did. She was dogged in her pursuit of the truth.
“I’ll just keep you company till they get back.” And then Gwen had an idea. She wanted to know anyway, and Vivienne was as good an information source as any. “I was watching them fingerprint the seniors today,” she said casually, as though it was an everyday occurrence like PE.
“They’re fingerprinting them?” Vivienne looked surprised.
“They’re fingerprinting the whole school, it’s just routine in a case like this. Even the headmaster.” Vivienne smiled at that. “I noticed two really handsome tall blond boys in the line of seniors. Friends of yours?”
Vivienne shrugged in answer as though it wasn’t important, but her eyes said something different, they were suddenly wary.
“Yeah, I know who they are. The one with the curly hair is Jamie Watts, his father is head of the board, and the other one is Chase Morgan. His parents are Matthew Morgan and Merritt Jones. They’re both away making movies, his dad in Spain and his mom in the Philippines.” She seemed to know a lot about them. But there were only two hundred in the class, so it wasn’t hard.
“They must be the big guys on campus, good-looking dudes.”
“I guess. They’re just boys.” She acted as though she didn’t care.
“Have you ever dated either of them?” Gwen sounded as though it was just idle girl talk but she could see that Vivienne didn’t trust her. She remained guarded at all times.
“No, I haven’t dated anyone since I’ve been here. I think it would be weird, living at the same school.”
“Or convenient.” Gwen grinned and Vivienne smiled. Gwen had an easy way about her.
“Maybe. The boys here aren’t that cool. They’re cooler in L.A.”
“That’s probably true. They’re not cool in Boston either. You should see my work partner. He looks like he gets his clothes from Goodwill.” Vivienne laughed at that. “So what happens now, Vivienne? What do you want to happen?” It was a seemingly innocent question, but Vivienne fell right into the trap. Gwen knew exactly where she was leading her.
“I just want to forget what happened the other night,” she said, looking pained, and Gwen nodded.
“The night you don’t remember, right? What is it you want to forget, if you don’t remember?”
Vivienne caught herself quickly. “Getting drunk and everything that’s happening now. The fuss everyone is making about it. Police, fingerprinting, trying to get me to remember what I told them I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened, except that I got drunk with a bunch of girls. I don’t even think they were seniors and I can’t remember what the boy looked like.” None of it was true. Gwen could sense it and see it in her eyes.
“Yeah, getting drunk like that can kill you. And nothing good ever happens when you add alcohol to it. That’s true for adults too. But whoever the boy was, he needs to be accountable for what he did. You can’t just let that go by, Viv, or he’ll do it to someone else. A lot of high school boys get drunk, but they don’t rape girls when they do. This boy did. That’s a terrible crime, and he has to be punished for it. We have to find him, we can’t just give him a pass. That wouldn’t be fair to you.”
Vivienne looked sobered by what she said. “What if he was drunk when he did it?”
“That’s not an excuse. There is no excuse for what he did. Did you know him, Vivienne?” Gwen asked gently and Vivienne looked scared and angry.
“I told you I didn’t know him. He must have been a stranger on campus. No one at Saint Ambrose would do that.”
“Maybe they would,” Gwen said kindly. “Whoever he is, he needs to be stopped and brought to justice for what he did to you.” Tears sprang to Vivienne’s eyes and she nodded.
“He probably won’t do it again,” she said as though she knew him, as Gwen watched her closely.
“You can’t be sure of that. You don’t even know who he is. There’s something wrong with him to want to rape you like that. Good guys don’t rape women.” Vivienne nodded and then looked panicked, as though Gwen already knew too much.
“My head really hurts now,” she said, in a thin whiny voice, like a child.
“I’ll leave you so you can rest. I’ll come back another time,” Gwen said gently and stood up. Vivienne didn’t look happy to hear it, and Gwen left the room, so Vivienne could lie quietly and mull over their exchange. She had a lot to think about, and Gwen was better at this game than she was. Vivienne couldn’t stay in hiding forever. Sooner or later, Gwen knew she would talk. She had to. She was carrying too heavy a burden to hold on to it forever, and Gwen could outlast her, however long it took. She wanted the boy who had raped Vivienne Walker caught. She wasn’t going to let go until he was.
“How was she?” Dominic asked Gwen when she came out, and they walked down the hall together. Gwen was pensive, thinking back to what Vivienne had said.
“Scared,” she said finally. “I’m not sure of what yet. The boy who did it, herself, us. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll get painted as a slut if there’s a trial, and that she’ll get blamed somehow. That’s what usually happens. There are some powerful parents involved. I spotted two boys on the fingerprinting line this morning. She says one of them is the son of the head of the school board, the other one is Matthew Morgan’s son. People like that aren’t going to take it lying down if their son is accused of rape. We’re going to need some pretty solid evidence if this case goes that far and we finally get a perp.”
“We’ve got the medical evidence,” Dominic reassured her, “and the prints on the bottle, of the people she was drinking with.”
“The two may not necessarily be the same, according to her. According to her, the prints on the bottle were a bunch of girls’.” It was why the girls at the school were being fingerprinted too, to see if that part of the story held up. Out of nine hundred and forty students, someone got drunk with Vivienne. Gwen knew she wasn’t wrong to be nervous about that part of the story. Defense counsel would make mincemeat of her for being drunk, so drunk she barely remembered being raped, according to Vivienne. What kind of girl would do that? She had backed herself into a serious corner with her story, which Gwen suspected wasn’t true anyway. She was protecting someone, and Gwen wanted to know who. And even a girl blind drunk off her ass on tequila had the right not to be raped. Maybe she was just afraid of having everyone know she got drunk and was raped and was afraid of what people would say.
“I don’t know,” Gwen said to Dominic with a sigh, as they got into the unmarked police car they had driven up from Boston, “there are pieces of this case I just don’t like.”
“Like what?” He always trusted her instincts, and had learned to listen to her theories. They were usually sound, even when they seemed crazy to him at first. He used to argue with her when she told him what she was thinking. Now he paid close attention. She’d been right too many times and had an incredible instinct for kids.
“I don’t know. Everybody’s scared for one reason or another. She’s scared, although we’re not sure of what, the school is scared. The other parents are going to go crazy if their kids are implicated in some way, or accused of rape. This won’t be easy to bring to justice, especially if she won’t cooperate with us. It serves everyone’s best interest to put it behind them and try to forget it, except that’s not right, and it’s not how we work. We have a victim and a heinous crime, and they all want us to forget about it, even the victim, the school, the guy who did it, parents. We’re swimming upstream here, Dom, against strong currents.” She looked serious as she said it. In most cases, they got more support than this. And Gwen sensed clearly that Vivienne wasn’t on their team. They had to get her there.
“This isn’t the first time,” her partner reminded her. “We’re not always the heroes in the piece,” especially when a victim got torn to shreds on the stand, and was made to look guilty in some way. It could happen to Vivienne with an unsympathetic jury and they both knew it. She was new to the school, and had admitted to being drunk to the point that she passed out, and her blood alcohol level had been sky high. If she hadn’t been raped, she’d have been expelled by then, according to the school’s “one time you’re out” drinking policy, which seemed a little extreme to Gwen for kids that age. Apparently schools of this caliber didn’t want drunks in their student body, although she was sure that some of the parents were. But the school had zero tolerance for alcohol.
Vivienne could get on the stand, if they got that far and found the boy, and she could be made to look like a drunk, and maybe even a slut. That was how many rape cases used to work, but not anymore. The tides had turned and were in Vivienne’s favor, if they found her assailant, and she cooperated with them. The world was listening to women now, but she had to be brave enough to speak up. Gwen wanted to help her do that, and stand up against a crime that violated her as a human being. All they had to do was convince her of that, which was no easy feat. The attitude about men raping women had changed. It wasn’t tolerated now anymore, at any age. The courts were more savvy now and tougher than they used to be. But Gwen still had no idea what had really happened here and what they were dealing with, and she intended to find out.
“Do you think they’ll try to drop the case, the girl and the school, I mean,” Dom asked her. He had just thought of it for the first time. It had sounded like a straightforward case at first, but it wasn’t. A recalcitrant victim was a major problem. They couldn’t help defend her if she wouldn’t ally with them and help herself.
“They might,” Gwen said thoughtfully. “But it’s not up to them. The police have it now, and if they want to pursue it, they will. It will depend how ballsy they are. A school like Saint Ambrose is a big dragon to take on. There will be lots of fire breathing on the cops. It depends too what happens when the press gets hold of it, and they will, for sure. Somebody in town will call them, or a disgruntled parent, either way. I’m surprised it’s not on the news yet, and the TV crews aren’t parked outside. I’d say they may get another day or two of grace, and then it’ll be the latest hot story. Schools like this always get national attention when something major happens.” Dominic nodded agreement. A lot was going to happen in the next few days on every front. They just had to wait and see what turned up, and what came out of the fingerprint matches. That would tell its own story, and it might force Vivienne to tell them the truth.
“Let’s go get something to eat, I’m starved,” he suggested. “Then we can check and see what’s happening with the seniors’ fingerprint matches.”
“Yeah, I’m starving too,” she agreed.
“Now I know you’re worried.”
“How do you know?” She grinned at him.
“Because you only eat when you’re worried about a case. The rest of the time a hamster couldn’t survive on what you eat.” Gwen was small and had a thin frame, which made her look younger than she was, she could almost pass for a kid sometimes, which was one of the reasons why they related to her. Dominic was a big man, and carrying fifteen or twenty pounds more than he wanted to. But he liked to eat, especially when they were working on a difficult case.
They went to a coffee shop he had spotted earlier near the hospital. They sat down in a booth and she ordered a hamburger, and he the meatloaf special with mashed potatoes and gravy.
“If I were married to you, I’d put you on a diet,” she said while they waited for their food.
“That’s why I’ll never be married to you,” he said happily. “Or anyone else. Freedom is happiness.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said and listened to her messages. She had twenty-two of them about new cases. She was going to have to refer them to someone else on the detail for now. They had work to do at Saint Ambrose, and had only just started.
Taylor and Nicole were discussing the issue of the press, and how to handle it, at that exact moment. They were both amazed that the media hadn’t contacted them yet, but they knew they were on borrowed time. Taylor would have liked to talk to the head of the board about it, but after his unpleasant conversation with Shepard Watts that morning, he wasn’t eager to call him. But they were going to have to make some fast decisions once the media got wind of the story.
“We don’t know where this is going yet. For all we know none of our boys were involved in it. And even if they drank a bottle of tequila with her, that doesn’t mean they raped her. It’s going to take more than that,” Nicole said hopefully. “We’ll have to see what the DNA matches tell us. It’s early days yet, Taylor, don’t panic.” They wanted to bring Vivienne’s assailant to justice but they wanted to protect the school too, and the two goals might not be compatible. Vivienne’s needs had to be served first. But it could cost Taylor’s and Nicole’s jobs, and they knew it, if the parents weren’t happy with how they handled it.
“I’m not panicked, but I’m getting there,” Taylor said honestly. He hadn’t seen Larry Gray yet in the two days that they’d been dealing with it in crisis mode, but he knew he’d have plenty to say about it. “Let’s sit tight for another day or two, if we get away with it, but we’d better have a statement ready when they call us. I want to write to the parents too, but I’d like to wait till we hear what turns up in the fingerprints before I do that. I’ve already had calls from parents, particularly the girls’ parents. I’ve assured them that we’ve increased security, the police are on campus, and we’ve instituted the buddy system. But the parents of the whole student body need to hear from me soon,” he said and Nicole nodded. “I’ve got the letter ready to send.”
“I’ll start drafting a media statement. That may be more pressing,” she suggested. They were in full agreement, and he was discovering that she was a great person to have on hand in a crisis. She was levelheaded, smart, discreet, loyal, brave, and honest, which was an unbeatable combination, and she was unfailingly clear about her allegiance to the school although she’d only been there for two months. She and Charity were proving to be an invaluable support system, although the final responsibility for all decisions rested on him. “The police said we’d hear from them by tonight if they come up with any matches from the bottle. They’re going to run it all through a computer in Boston, which is faster and more state-of-the-art than anything they have here.” He nodded and Nicole left a few minutes later, and Taylor sat at his desk, staring out the window, and he suddenly felt a deep compassion for the captain of the Titanic. They had hit the iceberg, and he just hoped that Saint Ambrose wasn’t going down. It was the most potentially explosive situation he had dealt with in his entire career, and he hoped that they’d all come out of it in one piece, students, faculty, the victim, and the school. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and looked it.
Steve Babson and Rick Russo came to Jamie’s dorm room after class that afternoon, and he looked shocked to see them.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered. “Together.”
“We just had to see you,” Steve said miserably. “I’ve been on academic probation for three years. If our prints turn up if they find the bottle, I’ll be kicked out in five minutes, for the alcohol rule, if nothing else.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jamie said in a low voice with a look of anguish. “You won’t have to get expelled. We’ll all go to prison, for what Rick did and our knowing about it and not reporting it. We’re all accessories. And maybe we deserve to go to prison,” Jamie said, thinking of Vivienne. But they had promised Rick not to give him up, and all felt honor-bound to stick by him, out of loyalty and friendship, even if what he did was wrong. But there was risk in it for them too.
“My father won’t let that happen,” Rick said more confidently than he felt. “He’d get us out of it somehow. He says money always wins the day in the end. Why the fuck didn’t any of us remember to take the bottle with us?” It bothered Jamie that Rick was showing no signs of remorse, only terror for himself.
“We were out of our minds that night, and we panicked,” Jamie said about the bottle. Chase heard them from next door then, and came to see who was visiting Jamie, and looked angry as soon as he saw them.
“What are you idiots doing here? We agreed to stay away from each other,” he whispered.
“They have our prints now,” Steve reminded him. “If they found the bottle, they’ll know we were drinking with her.”
“It’s not our prints we should be worried about,” Chase said with a dark look. He had been tortured since it happened, and looked like he’d lost five pounds in two days, and probably had. None of them looked well. They felt sick and hadn’t been sleeping, thinking of Vivienne. And Chase was tormented by what Vivienne must be going through, and so was Jamie, but they didn’t talk to each other about it. They couldn’t. Some kind of absurd male rivalry had suddenly exploded between them, and the match to the dynamite fuse was the tequila.
“They’ve got to have the bottle by now,” Steve said anxiously.
“Fuck the bottle,” Chase reminded them, “they’ve got Viv. If she talks, we’re dead. And she has every right to blame us, and Rick.”
“I don’t think she will,” Jamie said quietly.
“They have Tommy’s violin case,” Rick told them. “I saw him yesterday. He forgot it there, but that doesn’t prove anything either. That’s circumstantial evidence. It wouldn’t hold up in court.” But it wasn’t good news either. Tommy was afraid to come near any of them, and was staying well away from all of them. He had his own terror to deal with. “He told the police it was stolen when he went into the haunted house. He says they believed him.”
“Who knows what they really believe,” Chase said cynically. “You guys should go. We just have to wait and see what happens with the fingerprints they took today. Have you talked to your parents yet?” Steve shook his head, that was the last thing he wanted to do, in his case. Talking to the police was easier.
“Have you?” Steve asked him, and Chase shook his head too. They were still on location.
“I have,” Jamie spoke up. “I called my dad, he had a fit that they were going to fingerprint us. He called Houghton about it. He said everyone on campus is being fingerprinted, the girls too, staff, faculty. My dad said he couldn’t stop him.”
“My dad called him too, Houghton told him the same thing,” Rick added.
Rick and Steve shuffled toward the door, and the four of them looked at each other, wondering how it had ever happened. None of them could stop thinking of Vivienne and how she had looked when they left her. No matter how drunk they were, some of the worst memories of that night were still vivid, especially when they realized Rick had raped her, while Jamie and Chase were fighting.
“See you guys,” Rick said as they left, and he and Steve parted company outside the dorm.
Adrian Stone was in the infirmary at that exact moment with his second severe asthma attack in two days, and Betty the school nurse had just called the doctor. His inhaler no longer seemed to be working.