Failure is Fatal (14 page)

The diner was all but deserted, and we were seated immediately. Der chose the pot roast, while I decided to have the chef's salad. The comment about “middle-aged fat woman” made by the frat boy really got to me. I could stand to lose a few pounds.

“So what's our strategy at the frat house?” I decided I might as well feign cooperation early into the project so that he wouldn't change his mind about taking me along. I really wanted to get a better look at that file folder in the bedroom. I reached out for one of Der's fries with a “do you mind?” Since he signaled no to me, I grabbed a handful more.

“I'm going to scare them a little by directly connecting the frat boys with a criminal investigation,” Der said.

“You already tried that when we talked to our subjects. What you got for your efforts was a threat from one of them to hire a lawyer. What makes you think it'll work this time?” I shoved a few more fries into my mouth.

“This time I'm going to allude to a witness, not specifying male or female, but indicating that someone knew the fraternity was behind writing story endings in your research, which were evidence in a crime.”

“It could work, I guess. What's my role?”

“Just stand there and be observant.” There was a note of warning in his voice.

I was observant already, and it only created more questions, not fewer. I just had to get back into that bedroom and look at the file folder.

“Murph, do you know what you did?” Der's question startled me. I wondered for a moment if he was going to ask me straight out if I'd been in the frat house last night.

“You just ate all my French fries!”

“We can get another order.” I waved my hand at the waitress.

“Never mind. I'd better cut them out. I think I'm getting a middle-aged paunch.” He patted his flat belly. I narrowed my eyes at him and wondered what he meant by that.

When we arrived at the frat house, every light appeared to be lit, and rock music played loudly inside. Our knock at the door was not heard above the sound of drums and electric guitar so we let ourselves in and stood at the door to the living room. The young men seated in the chairs and lying on the couches in the living room appeared to be adding to the décor, which I remembered well from the night before: cigarettes, pizza cartons and beer. The only thing missing was the snake cage. It must have been moved, I guessed, looking around nervously. The guys were all watching a football game on the television (it was difficult to say what they were getting out of the game since the commentators could not be heard). Between the music and the television, it took a while before they noticed Der and me in the doorway. One of the young men finally rose from the couch with beer bottle in his hand and approached us.

“Whazzup?” His speech was none too clear.

“I'd like to speak to someone in charge, perhaps, your president,” Der said. He flashed identification.

The frat brother stepped to the foot of the stairs and yelled up the stairs, “Cops are here again.” He then returned to his seat on the couch.

“Come on up,” said a voice from upstairs.

Der and I climbed the stairs. At the top the same voice directed us to the room in which I found the folder. “In here. This is the crime scene.” Obviously the brothers were under the mistaken impression that we were there about the intruder the previous night.

Two fraternity brothers looked at us as we entered the large bedroom. Each held the requisite beer bottle. The smaller of the two lay on the bed. The taller one of them stepped forward and addressed Der.

“You were already here once today. What are you bugging us again for?” he said.

“And you would be?” said Der.

“I'm the frat president, Adam Stokes.”

Der turned his attention to the other brother.

“And you?”

“Ryan Cleates.”

Adam was of average height with dark brown hair, shushed into a spiky style, individual strands separated by glossy hair gel. His shirt and pants shouted casual costly, as did the Rolex watch on his wrist. His eyes were blue and his features regular. He looked like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad. Had it not been for the belligerent tone of his voice and arrogant posture, he could be a poster boy for the bright, contemporary college man on his way to success.

The other frat brother, Ryan, was smaller, not more than five and a half feet. His face still contained a smattering of pimples from late adolescence, and his eyes were gray. His hair was cropped so close to a bumpy head that it was impossible to guess at its color, something brownish. But the most striking feature about Ryan was that he just plain looked sick. His color was poor, and he kept wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. The beer bottle appeared to be merely a decoration in his hand. I identified him as the young man in the room last night. When he shifted his eyes in my direction, he appeared to be looking at me somewhat suspiciously. However, his gaze moved on from me to Der's figure and then to the frat president.

“Tell 'em what happened, Ryan,” Adam said. “As if we haven't gone over this again and again.” Adam sat back down on the bed and took a pull of his beer.

I looked at Der wondering how long he was going to let this go on before he informed them of the true purpose of his visit. But Der seemed content to do nothing to correct their assumptions about his presence.

“It's pretty simple, as I told you guys before. I was sick so I stayed here while everyone went out to the bars. Most of the guys were in the city for the weekend. I was asleep when I heard a noise and saw someone over by the desk with a flashlight. I called out to the person, and they swung the flashlight around so that it caught me in the eyes. I only got a glimpse of her. I mean I think it was at her, some old, fat woman, I think. Probably a bag lady looking for a handout and a warm place to settle.”

“Bag lady!” I said. “That's disgusting.” I caught myself before saying any more. And here I was feeling kind of sorry for him with his cold and all.

“Yeah, we thought so. Those people rarely bathe. We sure don't need them crawling around in our house,” Adam said from his position on the bed.

“Might add too much class to this dump,” I said under my breath.

Der laid a hand on my arm to restrain me from saying anything out loud and said, “Actually we're here for quite another purpose. We have a witness who says that you and this fraternity have been involved in criminal activities.”

Ryan's face turned visibly whiter and greener, and I thought he might throw up. Adam set his beer bottle on the bedside table and, for the first time in the evening, looked interested in what Der was saying.

“Let me introduce you to Dr. Murphy from the college if you've not met her before. She's conducting some research on campus and finding that subjects are coming into the sessions with made-up stories, provided, our witness says, by this fraternity.”

“So what?” said Adam. The arrogance was back in his voice and the beer bottle once more in his hand. “That's just a prank, not a crime.”

“If the stories provide a connection to a crime, then it's criminal.”

“What crime?” Adam set his bottle back down and eyed the overflowing desk across the room. I followed his gaze and saw his eyes fasten on the file folder I'd picked up the night before. He arose from the bed and approached the desk, beginning to shift the objects on the desk around. As he reached for the file folder, I launched myself across the small space that separated us. We collided over the desk, sending the file folder flying to the floor.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, “I thought you were reaching for these to give to Ryan.” I held up a box of tissues. “I just thought I'd help. I didn't mean to bump you. Oh, but what's this?” I snatched up the folder and the papers that were in it before Adam could retrieve it from the floor. “It looks like some papers from my research. How would you get them?”

“Let me see those.” Der held out his hand while I collected the papers and put them into the folder to hand to him. Der perused them quickly. “Very interesting. I think I might want to take these for now.”

“You can't. You need a search warrant,” Adam said.

“These were in plain sight, so I'm allowed to confiscate them,” Der said. “But perhaps now you'll be willing to talk a little about what these are and how you got them.”

I thought Der had them, but Adam appeared to collect himself, saying, “That bag lady must have left them here when she broke into the house.”

“Well, she didn't break in,” I said.

Three pairs of eyes looked at me suspiciously.

“The door was open tonight when we came in. I just assumed you leave it open most of the time.”

“I don't think we have anything more to say to you, so you'd better leave. We aren't up for any police harassment tonight. Poor Ryan here is ill as you can tell, and his recovery was set back by last night's intrusion. He just can't handle a lot of stress right now,” Adam said.

I thought it very unlikely that Adam cared anything about Ryan or his illness, but the line about stress was probably correct. I'd bet a little pressure put on Mr. Ryan Cleates out of earshot of Adam might scare him into a very talkative mood.

As Der and I were getting into the SUV, Adam ran out of the house and knocked on the driver's side window. Der hit the button and it rolled down.

“What the hell are you guys trying to pull here? Ryan told me this car looks like the one being driven by the intruder last night. If cops were in here messing around, we'll have our lawyers on you.” With that, he turned and ran back into the house. I could see Ryan in the upstairs window, wiping his nose on his sleeve when Adam returned and delivered a whack across his head. Now I was even more convinced that Ryan might be interested in talking openly to a more sympathetic ear, unless, of course, he was too terrified.

“Murphy,” Der said.

“Hmmm?” I opened the folder and examined the contents.

“You knew about this folder, didn't you?”

“Uh, kind of.”

“Because you paid a visit to the house last night.”

“Didn't find much though.”

“That's against the law, you know.”

“What if I told you I needed to use a phone, went in there, no one was home, so I went upstairs and…”

“I warned you about sticking your nose into stuff you shouldn't.”

“But look at it this way. We got the file folder.”

“What's in there?” Der maneuvered the car over the snowy roads, while he sneaked peaks at the papers I was holding.

“Keep your eyes on the road, and I'll tell you.”

“There's the hypothetical harassment story, which must have been taken from my lab somehow, and a sheet headed ‘Suggestions,' but I can't read much on that sheet cuz I don't have enough light in this car. We'll have to wait until we get to the lake.”

Der pressed on the accelerator, and the SUV leaped forward. I gripped the armrest and prayed that the car would prove as steady with Der's speed as it had with my more cautious approach.

Several minutes later, we pulled into my drive. After opening the door for Sam to run about in the yard, we settled on the couch with the folder. He examined the first page.

“Identical to yours, right?”

I nodded. He then turned to the “Suggestions” page. It was neatly typed and contained a list of items, sequentially numbered one through five and read:

1. A really gruesome story with mutilation and stuff

2. Make the endings really sexy

3. A personal note to Dr. Murphy with some kind of warning to scare her

4. Someone disappears

5. Write suggestive stuff to the assistants

A handwritten note was scrawled next to item #2 that read “That's already been done.”

“I wonder if they meant they already wrote sexual endings or that they knew someone did it already.”

Der looked at me as if he didn't understand my concern.

“Well, if those endings with all that sexual detail we found earlier in our research were the work of these frat boys, then this so-called prank has been going on for months,” I said.

Der nodded. “This is enough information for me to take some further action.”

“Like what?”

“I'm going to call these guys into the station and have talks with each one of them, starting with the president, Mr. Stokes.”

“I think you might learn more if you talked with Ryan Cleates. He's your weakest link in this chain,” I said.

“You think that little twit knows anything about what's going on in that house? I don't think so.”

“He may be a little twit, but I suspect he's Adam's gofer, a nerdy little guy that Adam dismisses as being not very important. I bet Ryan knows a lot.”

“What do you suggest? ”

“Let me talk with him. It'll be less threatening, and I'd prefer it be accomplished without Adam knowing. I thought I'd ask him to meet me in the lab tomorrow. I intend to be sympathetic to his position with Adam and play up how badly Adam has treated him, and he has, I assure you.” I shared with Der that I saw Adam hit Ryan when we were leaving the house today.