CHAPTER TWELVE

That afternoon, Guthrie ventured onto the Net, looking for Justin Peiper. Vasquez watched him fish out a SSN and a short list of credit cards with juggled balances. Peiper had trouble managing his finances—tossing debts from one card to another—but cleared all of his balances on the second of August. Most New Yorkers couldn’t manage that. Guthrie searched dates, times, and places to cross-check with LMA, Washington Heights, Melrose, and the twenty-third of July. He reasoned that the districts near the crime scene might turn up a timely purchase, or give him proof whether the dark-haired man was at LMA the night Bowman was killed. He found nothing. Peiper was missing, so to speak, on the night of Bowman’s murder. He registered credit-card bills for LMA and in places in the Heights infrequently, but credit-card charges didn’t place him anywhere on the twenty-third.

“That would’ve been easy,” Guthrie muttered. He searched court documents in Utica to examine the assaults. Both were pled down to misdemeanors from ABHAN, a felony that had sent both of Vasquez’s brothers to Rikers before. Peiper didn’t mind waiting for someone to turn their head before he started trouble. Vasquez went back to her own desk with a shrug. While the hunt was on, she’d watched over Guthrie’s shoulder.

After that, the little detective propped his feet up on his desk, moving only to refill his cup of coffee. A succession of frowns marched across his face. He opened his notebook and slowly turned the pages, but it didn’t seem as if he was reading what was there. “We need another look at him,” he said finally.

“Justin Peiper?” Vasquez asked.

“Sure. We’re going up to the university.”

*   *   *

On the drive up Broadway, Vasquez discovered that Guthrie didn’t mean to stalk Peiper. He called Michelle Tompkins to make sure that she would be on campus. The traffic was moving quickly. Tompkins was in a class, so they would spend a little time on campus waiting for her. They had a long look at a barricade of clouds piled high in the eastern sky. Some invisible wall had the relief penned away from Manhattan, which glowed with ruddy, distorted heat. The dog days were barking along.

The auditoriums of McNamara Hall huddled drunkenly around an atrium roofed with glass. Clever workmanship joined the smaller buildings into a whole but couldn’t quite unite the scattered arrangement. The mezzanine bent in irregular lengths and lolled staircases out like tongues into a disjointed lobby. Guthrie and Vasquez strolled for a quarter of an hour before locating the second-floor door to Tompkins’s auditorium. They waited, watching students also wait and wander. The classrooms attracted fewer customers than the food court, but they seemed the same—a mix of the busy pouring around the slack.

Michelle Tompkins came from the auditorium with a satchel over her shoulder, near the front of a small group of students. She wore a pleated khaki skirt that clung to her hips and revealed muscular calves tapering down to slender ankles. Her chocolate brown hair bounced in unruly waves above the collar of her short-sleeved button-down shirt. When she saw the detectives, her eyebrows knitted into an annoyed frown, but she strode quickly over.

“You have been busy,” she said.

“We have,” Guthrie said. “I believe I found the mess you warned me about.”

Tompkins smiled bitterly. “Wasn’t difficult, was it?” she asked quietly. “I suppose it’s fortunate that most of it’s gone—or unfortunate, since that was Cammie.” She looked at them impatiently and took a hesitant step along the mezzanine. “Perhaps we should go somewhere off campus?”

“We like the idea of an audience,” Vasquez said.

“Then you had a reason for the drama yesterday. I’ve already heard several versions, though, naturally”—she smiled again, but it looked like mockery—“only one call from Sigma. That was Amanda, in a panic.” She walked over to the mezzanine rail and lowered her satchel to the carpeted floor. “I won’t disagree that the method makes sense. You might frighten someone into foolishness. How is it that I can help?”

“You have an insider’s view of what they were doing at LMA,” Guthrie said. “So far, we have the story from witnesses standing too far away, or from witnesses who’re busy trying to hide it.”

Tompkins’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, then drifted back downward into an annoyed twist. “I’m not sure what you think I can tell you. I didn’t even know she was kidnapped outside LMA, until you told me—”

“Quit kidding me, Michelle. You’ve been trying to stay clear since the beginning, but you must’ve thought it was something sexual all along. You were running with her before she met Olsen. You met Olsen after she brought him in, but that’s when your knowing the ropes at Columbia became important. You knew she was up to absolutely nothing before she met Olsen—and I bet she didn’t go outside the Sigma set to bring in an alumna. You had to go to her. You knew what she was doing, because she was some use to you—”

“Okay, I get it! You’re a detective!” Tompkins said. Some passing students slowed to listen when she raised her voice, but then hurried on when Guthrie gave them a hard look. Vasquez propped herself against the railing after peering over; a few faces in the lobby were turned their way.

“It’s true. I went to Cammie. I saw how easily she moved around, and I sold her the idea that I would be useful to her.” She smiled, but with a thoughtful look that tinged it with sadness. For a flashing moment, she was beautiful, but even when her expression changed, the image wouldn’t go away. “That turned out to be true.”

“What was the point of it?”

“Cammie was my way into LMA.” She shrugged, leaned back against the railing, and stretched out a hand on either side of it. The relaxed pose plushed her curves to Hellenic proportions. “If it comes out, it comes out. I suppose it’s too late to worry about exposure—there were too many pictures anyway to keep all of them from escaping.” She laughed. “When I first came to Columbia, I didn’t look like this. I could say that more clearly. I was undeveloped—I suppose I looked like you,” she continued, glancing at Vasquez. “But I didn’t have your face. I was introverted, an outcast forced upon the socially more adept; a plain, unattractive girl with no advantage but money. Despite what everyone might say, money doesn’t make pain go away. When I was an undergrad, I dealt with it by focusing on school, and trying not to get trampled. By the time I realized I did want to be included, my role was already set in stone. I was the outsider.

“Then Cammie came to Columbia. The initial connection was a family one—I was supposed to look out for my cousin—and she was a Sigma legacy, too.” She smiled bitterly. “But imagine anyone asking me to help watch out for Camille Bowman. There was nothing I could do for her.”

“Maybe you’re selling yourself short,” Guthrie said. “She needed you for school.”

“Not really,” Tompkins said, and shook her head. “Cammie was smart, even if it wasn’t easy to see past the face. She only had to apply herself. That wasn’t how it unfolded, though. In the game the houses played, she could decide who played with whom. She could put me with the people I wanted, and that’s where we started. It wasn’t until after she met Greg that I saw she could be something more than that.”

“Like what?”

“An adult.”

“Olsen is your problem here,” Vasquez said. “I think you have a thing for him, and that’s why we’re here. I know you said you didn’t kill your cousin. You sold me on that. But everything we uncover points at you or Olsen. Do you—”

“That’s crap,” Tompkins said. “I didn’t do it. Neither did Greg. Whether I like him really isn’t an issue. The games might have made him look bad, maybe, but they were over before Cammie started with him—but not before they met. At first, they were classmates, like I told you. Once she realized she wanted to be with him, she left the games, but even then she had been following him around for weeks. He knew she was doing crazy things, and he knew that she stopped. He thought it was childish, he told her so, and left it at that. Greg is just cut from a different cloth.”

Vasquez smirked. “That could convince his mother.”

“Does it really sound that stupid?” Tompkins asked with a pained expression. “Then okay, he makes me stupid. I can’t say I have a lot of sympathy for lucky people, like you”—she nodded at Vasquez—“or myself. You’re looks-lucky and I’m money-lucky. I know I helped make this mess, but now I need a way out. Maybe lucky people need help sometimes, too.”

“What’s important is that you were rolling with Bowman before Olsen came along,” Guthrie said. “We’re not interested in the rest of it. Your eyes were on the inside. Who was she with before Olsen? Not hookups. I need to know who spent time at her apartment. Who felt territorial?”

“That could’ve been anyone from the G unit, but I think you already started with the top of the list—Justin Peiper.”

Guthrie shook his head. “Who had a key?”

“I had one, and then there was ‘the key.’ It was passed around.” She shook her head at their frowns. “This time, it isn’t what you think. Cammie’s Greenwich Village apartment was the spot, but not always for her. My apartment on the West Side was our safe house. Grove Street was for playing around. A lot of sisters used it.”

“You mean Sigma Kappa?”

“And Alpha Chi Omega. The boys, too.”

Guthrie whistled. “That’s what you mean by the G unit. Delta Psi fraternity, two sororities—”

“And Kappa Alpha, more guys. Two pairs of houses.”

“I guess I don’t need to tell you that a pass-around key is gonna make it hard to keep this quiet,” he said. “Did she fight with any of them? Why did Olsen get the gun?”

“The sisters were scared of Cammie—they wouldn’t cross her. She wanted the gun because of Peiper. He’s real intense. She didn’t tell Greg that, because he probably would’ve hurt Peiper. She fed him a story about a rash of break-ins.” Tompkins frowned, pausing thoughtfully. “Greg was out a lot at night—he didn’t sleep through nights—so a lot of times he wouldn’t be there. But the gun was crazy. Peiper wasn’t going to do anything to her.…” Tompkins dribbled to a stop.

“That don’t sound right to me, neither,” Vasquez said.

“Maybe that’s the brick I need,” Guthrie said. “Somebody’s going to feel the pressure.”

Tompkins scooped up her satchel and lifted it onto her shoulder. She put on a pair of plastic-framed glasses to hide her blue eyes, and suddenly she was anonymous again, mouselike and plain. Vasquez leaned against the mezzanine rail and watched her walk away.

“She’s real sure you’re gonna protect her, viejo,” Vasquez said.

“It’s something more than that,” Guthrie said, “because she knew that all along. I think she don’t believe we’re gonna find out what she was doing.”

The young Puerto Rican detective frowned. She looked again for Tompkins, who was walking unnoticed across the lobby. More eyes were aimed at the detectives than gave the graduate student even a passing glance. They followed her down the stairs, into the pool of hot sunlight pouring down from the transparent ceiling. Passing outside was like dropping from the pot into the fire. The sun was ascendant, and the clouds skulked in fear along the eastern skyline.

The Columbia campus seemed empty. When they left, they were immediately caught up in the movement of the city, like leaving an empty back bedroom where the coats were stacked to join a dinner party. All of the people of New York rubbed against one another in the streets, no matter how different they were. Going from one world to another could take a lifetime, or it could be as easy as passing through a door. Just when they walked on the streets, opposites could catch a glimpse of each other and dream, anytime they wanted.

*   *   *

Jude Nelson was distracted when Guthrie and Vasquez walked back into his bodega on 149th Street. The bell rang, and their eyes began adjusting from the brilliant sunshine of the street as if the sound were a signal. A half dozen middle school kids, dressed in tones of urban cool, drifted in the two narrow aisles of the bodega. Nelson stood at the counter, frowning, occasionally craning his neck when one of the youngsters rounded the end of the shelves in the back. The streaks of white in the old store owner’s mustache and beard stood out sharply against his dark face.

Guthrie leaned against the counter for a minute, watching, then smiled. “All right,” he announced. “All of you bring a drink and a candy bar to the counter. I’m buying.”

The kids hesitated, gathering, and finally the biggest boy asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Look, kid, I can’t rob the place with a bunch of witnesses in here,” Guthrie snapped. “Bring something on up here, then scram.”

A stream of sodas and candy passed across the counter, and the kids hurried out. Only one lingered to stare for a moment through the window. Nelson settled back on his stool with a sigh. The kids had been nerving up for a half hour, preparing for one of childhood’s rites of passage—shoplifting. Watching was hard, even though he knew that it was just something kids would do, like throwing rocks or splashing their way through puddles.

Guthrie admitted to Nelson that he was a reformed shoplifter. A younger but not too much smaller version of himself usually pocketed chocolate cupcakes. That was before he realized sugar was bad for him, he continued, while he paid for some cupcakes. The old store owner laughed. He’d lived down south when he was little, and he’d slipped into orchards and carried away peaches.

“Kids are gonna find something to steal, sure enough.” Nelson shifted on his stool and smoothed his mustache. He nodded to Vasquez when she drew breath to ask a question, then said, “Ghost Eddy heard me out, but I don’t know if it made much difference, considering that his hands didn’t pause about going in his pockets.

“That big man is hard to read, with that beard covering most of his face, and wearing those mirrored aviators. Maybe he even keeps his eyes closed and smells his way back and forth.” The old man grinned. “I suppose waiting those few days wound me up about it, and then my pitch sounded flat.

“He spent fifty-four dollars on vodka and Kahlúa, a tin of sardines, and some cheese crackers, in case you’re interested, and he had new money, just like usual. He has a lot of pockets. I suppose when he’s drunk, he might forget where he put the money. While he fished in his pockets, I talked. I’ve watched him do that a hundred times, and usually he don’t pay it mind. He might have a particular order he goes about it.”

Nelson grinned. “That was fun. Are you on your toes, young lady?” He didn’t give Vasquez a chance to reply before he continued. “He didn’t say anything, so I asked him if he didn’t mind whether the wrong man might be sitting in jail. After he set out his money, he says, ‘What makes you think they don’t have the man I saw?’”

“So I say, ‘What about you? Do you know?’”

“‘That don’t matter,’ he says. ‘Did a killing ever matter before, except when there was some money in it? Leave it be, old-timer.’

“Can you imagine?” the store owner said. “That big old man may not be quite as old as me—I can’t always tell—but he’s near it. So I says, ‘You’re old enough to know things do change. I own this store, and you’re buying straight from my hands—how’s that? Then look who’s sitting in the White House. Things change. How can you leave a man in jail on maybe when you’re holding for sure? Don’t do that.’

“He heard me, but I couldn’t read him. I’m sure I could’ve said more. You reminded me just now when you walked in on those kids. When I was a child, I stole peaches from white folks in Georgia, dreading what they might do. Now I got white kids stealing from me. The world moves on.”

“But it ain’t made him talk?” Vasquez asked.

“Afraid not,” he said. “I suppose he had some of the right of it. Money’s what’s got you here. That man in jail’s paying, else he would have no one on his side.”

“America’s ugly along that side of her face,” Guthrie admitted.