CHAPTER THREE

 

“I’m not doing any more interviews,” said Karen Sirk as she peered out of her dorm room. “I signed an exclusive with Connie West at UNC, and that’s the only person I’m talking to.”

“We’re not reporters,” I said.

“Oh, sure, you’re not,” said Karen. “You think you’re going to trick me with that?”

I handed her a card.

“Ivy Stern,” she read. “Private Detective.” She looked up. “So? Anyone could get cards made up.”

“She’s the detective that brought down Ralph the Hatchet,” said Brigit.

“Ralph the who?”

“The serial killer who stalked the girls on the interstate?” said Brigit. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about that. Were you living under a rock or something?”

“Maybe I remember something about that,” said Karen. “So, um, what do you want?”

“We want to ask you some questions about the shooting,” I said. “We know you were there, because we’ve seen you on every major news station talking about it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not the only person talking. Besides, people want to know what happened. That’s why you guys are here, right?”

“We’ve been hired by the family of Gilbert Pike to find out why he did what he did,” I said.

“Well, everyone wants to know that,” said Karen. “I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t even know the kid.”

“But you were there when the shooting happened.”

“I was in the other room,” she said. “They were all back in the bedroom, but we were in the living room. So, we heard the shots and everything, but we weren’t in there. If we’d been in there, we’d be dead. He shot everyone in the room.”

“Right,” I said. “I understand that. Maybe you can explain to me why all of you were gathered in that dorm room in the middle of a Monday afternoon.”

She licked her lips. “It was a party.”

“A party? At two o’clock? Is that a typical time for a party?”

“Well, Mason—that’s the guy who threw the party—he was always saying how anytime was a good time to party. Besides, I think he was always on crystal or molly or something. Everyone’s always doing molly around here on account of the supply, you know?”

She was referring to an urban legend that there was some guy just outside of town living in a grove of sassafras and making tons of ecstasy. But that wasn’t true, at least I didn’t think so. There were a lot of drugs in our area, but it was because of the Irish mafia, not because of some mythical ecstasy cook. I decided not to get into that with her, just skip to the salient points. “So, you’re saying that there were drugs at this party?”

“Everyone back in that room was waiting for something,” she said. “In fact, Bix even showed up. He must have brought them something. Bix is a dealer, by the way.” She wrinkled up her nose. “Oh, shit, I didn’t get him in trouble or anything, did I? You guys aren’t cops?”

I whipped out my notepad and scribbled down the name. “Bix?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Can you arrest him or anything?”

“No,” said Brigit reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Besides, we aren’t even interested in that kind of thing. We don’t care about drugs.”

“Cool,” Karen said. She turned back to me. “Bix Coltrane. I think he goes here, and he’s always around at parties and stuff. He deals molly, and I’m pretty sure he works for Professor X.”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s no Professor X.”

“There is,” said Karen, looking shocked that I would deny it. “Anyway, the point is, he has the good stuff, not like the crap that the Irish guys always have. Not that I personally would know or anything, because I don’t do stuff like that.”

“Right,” I muttered dryly. “Look, it doesn’t matter, like my associate here said, we don’t care about drug use. We’re just trying to figure out what happened that afternoon. So, maybe you could start at the beginning and go through it for us.”

“Well, there’s not much to tell,” said Karen. “I showed up at the party, and there were some other people back in the bedroom. I didn’t even know they were there until Bix showed up, and then I asked someone who was back there.”

“Who’d you ask?”

“Um…” Karen was thinking about it. “Misha Bigby, I think. Anyway, she said that they were probably back there doing coke. You know how people get when they’re doing coke. They don’t want to share with anyone else, so they hole up somewhere.”

“Right, right,” said Brigit, as if she totally understood that.

I was clueless about that kind of thing, but okay, I guess that was the way things went with cocaine.

“But then Bix showed up,” said Karen, “and I don’t think he deals anything except molly, so I don’t know if they were doing coke or not.”

So, Gilbert Pike was blitzed out of his mind when he shot all these people then? How many drugs had he been on? I bet Miles hadn’t had any idea his brother was doing all that shit.

“And then,” said Karen, “there were all these shots, and everyone was screaming and running out of the dorm and eventually campus security showed up and then the cops. And that’s really all I know.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You said that Bix showed up and then there were shots?”

She nodded.

“So, Bix was in the room while the shots were being fired?”

“Oh,” said Karen. “I don’t know…” She furrowed her brow.

“Did you see him leave?” asked Brigit.

“I…” Karen bit her lip. “I wasn’t really paying that much attention. But he must have, right? Because everyone in that room died, and Bix isn’t dead. He’s fine. Alive and well.”

Brigit and I locked eyes.

That was curious, wasn’t it?

* * *

“You’ve got to get out of here,” said Porter Farley, the coroner, arms folded over his chest.

I’d made a quick stop on the way back to the office.We’d spent the morning talking to other people from the party, and now we were heading back to digest and discuss. Brigit was waiting in the car.

“Look, I just need to know a couple things about the shooting at Keene,” I said.

“I got no reason to talk to you,” he said.

I glared at him. “I got a video that says otherwise.”

His eyes widened. “You told me you deleted that.”

“Yeah, I lied,” I said. “Can you just tell me if you tested for gun powder residue on Gilbert Pike? Are you sure he fired the gun?”

“You told me you deleted it.” His face was turning red.

A few weeks ago, I had seduced Porter and taped it. Now I was blackmailing him with the sex tape. It was kind of underhanded, sure, but it was also damned useful.

“Do I look like an idiot, Porter? Why would I delete something that I might need? I’m a resourceful person.”

“You’re a fucking bitch is what you are.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Powder residue?”

He made a sour face, but he nodded. “Yes, we tested. Yes, the kid had powder residue on his hand.”

Oh. Damn it.

Porter sighed. “But the pattern was a little odd. There may have been some kind of struggle between him and one of his victims before the gun went off.”

“Really?” I said, perking up. “Thanks, Porter, that’s great. Really great.”

“I don’t want to know why you’re asking this, do I?” he said.

I was already backing away. “I appreciate it. Thanks again.”

“Hey!” he said. “Are you ever going to delete that video?”

“Of course I will.” I waved at him.

“You’re a damned liar, Ivy Stern.”

 

* * *

“I don’t know,” I said, pacing in front of Brigit’s desk. “Maybe I’m just so used to working murder cases that I want this to be a murder case. Maybe it’s completely cut and dry, and we’re looking for twists where there isn’t anything.”

“Maybe,” said Brigit, who was perched on the front of her desk, legs crossed. “But I said that to you last time about the Gunner Bray thing, and I was wrong. I think if your instincts are telling you that something’s off that we should follow your gut.”

“No, no, no,” I said, waving that away. “I don’t trust my gut. I don’t believe in a gut. I believe in evidence. And we don’t have any evidence that this didn’t go down exactly the way they said it did.”

“I guess not,” said Brigit. “Unless you count those tickets.”

I turned on my heel, still pacing. “But it is weird that this drug dealer was there and no one knows anything about it. If he was there at the time of the shooting and didn’t get shot somehow, when everyone else did, that’s suspicious.” We had the word of two other witnesses that Bix had gone into the room. No one, however, had seen him leave.

“Because he should have shot the dealer?”

“Exactly. He was shooting everyone else. Why leave this other guy alive?”

“Unless the dealer left before the shooting started.”

“That’s a possibility,” I said.

“But you don’t think that’s what happened?”

“Well, let’s just think about what’s most likely here, Brigit. Is it more likely that Gilbert Pike, a good kid that no one can believe would ever shoot anyone went nuts and killed five people? Or is more likely that a drug dealer did?”

Brigit hopped down off her desk. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds obvious that it’s Bix.”

“But,” I said, “I probably just want this to be a murder. I’m probably so biased from always working murders that I see murders even when there aren’t any murders to see.”

“Well, it’s not really a murder,” said Brigit.

I raised my eyebrows.

“What I mean is that it’s already a murder,” said Brigit. “Gilbert murdered those kids.”

“Right,” I said, “but because he was nuts, not because he had some kind of motive.”

“And if it’s this Bix person, then it’s the same thing. He does it because he’s a drug dealer, not because he’s got an agenda against one of the people.”

“No,” I said, “people don’t just kill five people—”

“Six,” she said.

“Six,” I agreed, “because they’re drug dealers. Even drug dealers have motive. They shoot people because they don’t get paid or because they’re afraid of getting caught or because they get orders from someone higher up. There would be a motive of some kind. It’s only that a drug dealer would be more likely to have that kind of motive than Gilbert.”

“Oh.” Brigit nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. So, he came there with a gun, and then someone didn’t pay him, and—”

“No,” I said, “and that’s where this thing falls off the rails. Because Gilbert came with the gun. Miles told me that it was his father’s gun. He even thinks that maybe Gilbert went home over the weekend to get the gun. And when I stopped to talk to the coroner, he confirmed that there was gun powder residue on Gilbert.”

Brigit wandered around to the back of her desk. “So then Gilbert had to do it.”

I stopped pacing. “Yeah, I guess so.” I massaged the bridge of my nose. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why leave that Bix guy alive? Why does he get away? And apparently the evidence suggests that Gilbert may have struggled with someone. What’s that all about?”

Brigit didn’t say anything.

I started pacing again. “Okay, what if Bix sees that Gilbert has this gun? Like maybe Gilbert brought it to school to show off or something, just to let everyone see it, some innocent reason, I don’t know. And maybe Bix goes into the room to sell them drugs, sees the gun, and flips out.”

“Yeah, maybe he goes for Gilbert, tries to get the gun away from him?”

“They wrestle over it,” I said, “and the gun goes off, and Gilbert gets shot.”

“Bix panics,” said Brigit. “He’s just shot someone. He didn’t mean to.”

“But there are witnesses,” I said. “Five of them.”

“So, he doesn’t have a choice,” she said. “He shoots all of them and then he runs.”

I nodded. “Karen said it was chaos afterward. Everyone running all over the place. He could have gotten away.”

“It could have gone down that way,” said Brigit.

“But does it make anymore sense than thinking that Gilbert did it himself?”

“Nothing about this makes any sense. It doesn’t make sense for Gilbert to have shot those kids. It just doesn’t. So, I think that if there’s another option, well, we have to pursue it.”

* * *

“You want to buy X?” said Bix Coltrane, looking me up and down.

“Actually, no,” I said. “I want to ask you a few questions about the shooting on campus.”

Bix backed away. “You’re a fucking cop? I can’t believe that Karen set me up with a fucking cop.”

“We’re not cops!” said Brigit from behind him. It hadn’t been my plan to box him in like that, but I had to admit that it worked pretty well.

Bix whirled, coming face-to-face with Brigit. “Holy fuck,” he said.

“We’re private detectives,” I said.

He turned back to me.

“It’s just a couple questions,” said Brigit.

Bix held up both his hands as if to ward us off. “All right, all right. But I don’t know anything about that shit. I wasn’t there or anything.”

“Oh, don’t try to deny it,” I said. “There were witnesses. People who saw you enter that room.”

“Yeah, okay, I was in there,” he said, “but way before the shooting happened. I was out of the building before anything went down.”

“Funny thing,” I said. “People saw you go in, but they don’t remember seeing you come out.”

“So what?” he said. “They were all drunk or stoned or some shit. It was a party. They might not have seen me leave, but I sure as hell did.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a Monday afternoon party,” I said. “Was this typical?”

“The guy whose place it was, he was hardcore,” said Bix. “He was always hitting me up for product, any time of the day or night, any day of the week. He was a good customer, which was the only reason I was out there anyway.”

“So, it wasn’t typical.”

“Well, I don’t make a lot of house calls, if you know what I mean. People usually come to me, not the other way around. Still for Mason, I made an exception. I went over to his place, sold him the molly, and then I left. I swear that I didn’t see anything.”

“You didn’t see that Gilbert had a gun?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, what if you had seen a gun? What if you walked into a room where you were intending to do a little easy business and you saw that one of the people there had a gun? What would you do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Pretend I didn’t see it. Unless it was pointing at my head or something. It’s pretty tough to pretend you don’t see someone threatening you with a gun.”

“You wouldn’t try to engage the person with the gun?”

“No, fuck no,” he said. But he didn’t meet my gaze when he said it.

“So, you weren’t there when the shots were fired, and you didn’t see the gun.”

He still wasn’t looking at me. “I didn’t see anything, lady.”

* * *

“He’s lying,” I said.

“How can you know for sure?” said Brigit.

We were climbing the stairs in our building, heading back to the office. “Did you notice how he kept avoiding eye contact with me?”

“Kind of,” she said. “But maybe he was only doing that because you’re kind of scary?”

“Me? Scary?” I smirked.

“You can be scary,” said Brigit. “Sometimes, you kind of freak me out.”

“Whatever,” I said. “He’s hiding something. He was nervous.”

“Because he’s a drug dealer. Those kinds of people are nervous all the time.”

We reached the top of the steps and began walking down the hall to the office. “Maybe so. But maybe he’s our killer.”

“So, say you’re right,” said Brigit. “How would we prove that?”

“Well, we could look for prints on his gun?”

“The crime lab at the station would do that, wouldn’t they?” said Brigit. “We’d just need to get that information from them.”

I opened the door to the office, and we walked inside. “Yeah, well, if there were other prints on this gun, they wouldn’t have ruled it the way they did, I don’t think. But I guess I could ask Miles.”

“Maybe we could get the evidence ourselves—”

“You know what? Forget the prints,” I said. “Sometimes, I forget I’m not still a cop. I can’t do things the way I used to. Besides, if this guy was smart enough to stage the crime scene so that it looked like Gilbert did the shooting, then he was smart enough to wipe the gun clean.”

Brigit set down her purse on her desk. “Okay, so what’s our next move?”

I tapped my chin. “Well, if we don’t have prints, we could use eyewitnesses. But there aren’t any, because they’re all dead. We do have the word of three people that he was in the room, but they were all trashed drunk, so I don’t know how reliable—”

The door opened.

Huh. That was odd. If someone was coming into the building behind us, I thought that I would have seen them. But no matter.

A man walked in wearing a suit and a briefcase. “I’m, um, looking for…” He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Ivy Stern?”

“That’s me,” I said. “Can I help you?”

He crossed to me, holding out his hand. “Al Jones, ASPCA,” he said. “I’m here to investigate your call about your neighbor and her dog?”

Brigit’s eyes got big. “Oh my God, Ivy, you can’t let this man think—”

“Ignore her,” I said, taking the man by the arm. “Let me take you upstairs to Kitty’s apartment.”

“Well, that’s okay,” said Al, “I don’t need to speak to her yet. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“All right,” I said.

Brigit folded her arms over her chest. “Ivy, you have to stop this right now. You can’t possibly think that you can—”

“Actually, Al,” I said, “I think we’d be more comfortable in my office. Alone.” I gave Brigit a pointed look.

Her nostrils flared.

I escorted Al back into the inner office and shut the door after us.

“So, how can I help you?”

He opened up his briefcase and took out a clipboard. “Why don’t you just start by telling me what exactly made you call us?”

“The dog’s miserable,” I said. “I hear her crying and whining all day long. She’s shut up in a space that’s too small for her as a punishment, and I don’t think the punishment fits the crime.”

He nodded. “Okay, then. Have you observed the dog in the space?”

“I have,” I said.

“Is the space littered with broken glass, feces, or garbage?” he said. “Is the space located so that there is no shelter during inclement weather? Does the animal have adequate access to food and water?”

“Um…” Technically, none of that really applied. “Well, it’s a bathroom,” I said, “and if the dog is in there for long periods of time, she wouldn’t be able to go outside to do her business, so yes, I think there could be feces littering the area, and I don’t think there’s any access to food or water either.”

“Mmm hmm,” said Al, scribbling on his clipboard. “Have you observed the animal? Is the animal badly groomed, badly injured, or far too thin?”

Well, not really. But if I said that, would Al really take me seriously? “All three,” I said. “You need to get that dog away from Kitty Richards as soon as possible.”

* * *

“Did you find out anything about the computer yet?” I asked Miles. This time, he’d let me inside his house, all the way into the living room. It was a sparse room, containing only two black leather couches, and it usually looked clean, but this time, I really felt like the place was practically antiseptic.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Damn it, I forgot. I swear I’ll check, though. Really.”

“It’s all right.” I gestured. “Can I sit down?”

He cringed. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded fiercely.

So, I sat down the couch.

He swallowed.

“Miles, what is up with you?”

“It’s just that you’re… contaminating…”

I raised my eyebrows, and then I got up off the couch. “Sorry. I’m really—”

“No,” he said, and the force of it surprised me.

I jumped.

“Sit back down,” he said in a quieter voice. “If you play along with me, it only serves to enforce the phobia.”

“Play along?”

“It’s not rational, is it? You and I both know that sitting on a couch does not actually make it dirtier than it was.”

“Well…” I considered. “I mean, I guess it does. They are always saying that there are microscopic amounts of germs on everything—” I broke off. Maybe that was a bad thing to bring up.

“Sit down,” said Miles.

I sat down.

He took a deep breath. “See, germs are not actually scary, though. They’re there, but they don’t actually… hurt you that much. And you can’t protect yourself from getting sick. Or from getting dirty. And, oh hell, I don’t even know what that means anymore.” He thrust his hands into his hair.

“Miles—”

“All I’m saying is that nothing bad is going to happen from you sitting on my couch, and I know that. So, you should sit there.”

“But if you know that,” I said, “then why…?”

“Why does it bother me?” He sat down next to be, letting out a helpless laugh. “I don’t know. No one knows that. Figure that out, Ivy, and you can cure us all.”

I looked at my hands. I felt very uncomfortable all of the sudden. This was a such a bald display of Miles’s weaknesses, and I hadn’t seen him like that very often. The Miles I knew was very ordered and controlled. He was strong. The only time I’d seen him so vulnerable…

I remembered his voice in the darkness as we lay naked together, our bodies pressed close, asking me if he’d done it right. My heart surged at the thought of it. I loved him. I wanted—

And I shut that down. It was best not to think about that kind of thing if I could help it.

“But you didn’t come to talk about this. You came to talk to me about what you’ve found out about Gilbert. So, what do you know?”

“Not much,” I said. “What I do know isn’t good.”

“How could it be good? He shot five people.”

“Apparently, he was doing drugs that day,” I said. “No one is sure what kinds, but there’s some speculation about cocaine and ecstasy.”

“Neither of those things would make him violent,” said Miles. “That doesn’t explain anything.”

“It doesn’t upset you to know he was doing drugs?”

“He was a kid.” Miles shrugged. “A lot of kids experiment with that stuff.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Well, I never did. Did you?”

“No,” he said. “I always knew I wanted to be a homicide detective, so I never let myself get distracted that way. But that doesn’t mean I hold it against Gil. Honestly, I don’t hold anything against him. I forgive him for all of it. He’s my little brother, and I could never turn my back on him. I just want to know why. That’s all.”

“I don’t know that yet,” I said. I wanted, with all my heart, to tell him our theory that Gil wasn’t responsible at all. I wanted to give him that. But we had no proof yet, and it wasn’t a good idea to get his hopes up.

I needed to ask him some more questions, but I needed to tread carefully. I didn’t want him to suspect what I was up to.

“Listen, Miles, about the gun,” I said. “Can you tell me a little bit about that gun? Like where did your father keep it?”

“My father has a collection of guns,” said Miles. “He keeps them all in the study in a big glass case.”

“Is the key to the case hidden?”

“Not really,” said Miles. “When we were kids, we weren’t allowed to know where it was, but once we were older, Father didn’t mind if we knew about it. He trusted us to be responsible.”

“So, it was okay to take the guns.”

He furrowed his brow at me. “Why are you asking me this?”

“I’m just trying to figure out his state of mind. I’m wondering if having that gun means that he planned the whole thing out or if he might have had the gun for some other reason. If he shot all of those kids on the spur of the moment.”

“Does that matter?”

“You know it does,” I said. “So, was there any other reason he might have taken that gun?”

Miles massaged the bridge of his nose. “Well, I guess so. Father allowed us to take them to go to the shooting range if we wanted, although I don’t remember Gil ever doing that. Shooting was more my thing, if you know what I mean.”

“But it’s possible,” I said, clinging to that.

“What are you after, Ivy?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to sound innocent. “That’s all I wanted to know. You’ve been very helpful. I promise I’ll let you know when I know something more concrete.”