“Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “We’re only trying to—”
Wrong answer. One cop jammed me in the midsection, doubling me over. His partner clipped me as I fell...
Somebody shook my shoulder.
“Get off me!” I growled. A stranger was leaning over me. Brushing his arm away, I sat up. Huge mistake. Huge. Felt like crap on a cracker. Glancing around, I took stock. I was sitting on a metal rack, no blankets, in some kind of a steel and concrete cage. What the hell?
“C’mon buddy, I need to have a look at ya.”
I started to protest, then an acid stew of bile and beer came rocketing up. Tried to cover my mouth. Too late! Rolling off the rack onto my hands and knees, I started retching up everything but my name.
“Damn!” The guy who’d shaken me awake backed against the bars, standing on tiptoe to save his shoes. Black guy, pudgy, moon-faced. In some kind of uniform.
Not a cop, though. EMT.
Finished, I wobbled slowly to my feet. The floor was uneven. The concrete sloping down to a metal drain in the center of the cell. I stood there a minute, head down, pulling myself together. At least I knew where I was now.
Drunk tank. Westover cop shop, probably. I stifled a groan as images started shouldering their way into my memory. The pig party. Delta House. The screaming girl with the golf club. And then the cops...
Whoa! I remembered getting hit, going down.
Swallowed hard, trying to remember if I’d fought back. Battery on a police officer was serious trouble.
“You done hurling?” the EMT asked.
“Sure hope so. Who the hell are you?”
“Joe Lockwood, from Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Cops called me down to look you over. Worried you might have a concussion. I need to check your pupils.”
“What time is it?”
“About seven.”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure. Since... maybe ten o’clock last night.”
“Yeah? How do you feel?”
“Worse than I look.”
“That ain’t humanly possible, dog. You’d be dead. Might be yet unless you let me check you over. How about it?”
“Yeah, okay, why not?” I said, sagging back down on the metal bunk.
Leaning in, Lockwood aimed a narrow flashlight beam into my eyes. It pierced my brain like an ice pick. “What happened to you, anyway?”
“Long story.”
“Looks like a sad one to me. Raise up your arms.” He palpated my ribs, checked both collarbones. “Okay, good news, bad news. You’re bruised up some, but nothing serious, no sign of concussion. You’ll probably live.”
“Is that the good news or the bad?”
“Definitely the good. Bad news is, you’re still in jail.”
Not for long. Half an hour later I was ushered into a gray concrete interrogation room with a single metal chair bolted to the floor. A police lieutenant who looked too young to vote sat me down, read me my rights, then explained the facts of life.
The frat boy I decked could file assault charges against me but probably wouldn’t. He had legal troubles of his own. The officers I had assaulted could also file charges — I tried to protest, he ignored me — but... if I was willing to sign a release absolving them of any liability for the... misunderstanding, I’d be free to go.
The “free to go” part got my attention. “Basically, you’re saying... it never happened? We let bygones be bygones?” I asked.
“Exactly,” the boy lieutenant nodded.
“Where do I sign?”
The newspapers were already on stands when I hit the street. Campus Orgy Raided! Fraternity members charged: drunk and disorderly, furnishing alcohol to minors, and — much more seriously — statutory rape. According to the papers, one of the girls at the party was only fifteen. I was fairly sure I knew which one.
Faced with photographic evidence, the Westover administration went into top speed cover-your-butt mode. Over the next few days, fourteen students were expelled or voluntarily withdrew. Drew Braxton lost his scholarship, the security guard was fired. And the boys weren’t the only ones in trouble. A half-dozen girls left school as well, including the one I’d tried to rescue in that room. The papers withheld her name because of her age, but it didn’t matter. I already knew her name. Emily. And Westover’s a small campus.
Not all the news was grim. Sara Silver, the gutsy Westover Wildcat reporter who’d gone undercover to break the story, became an overnight celebrity. A reporter’s dream. USA Today carried the story of the raid with Sara’s byline; Time and Newsweek both ran print interviews with her. She even scored face time on Oprah and Larry King.
With her star on the rise, Sara was already fielding offers from the networks. She’d have her pick of jobs by graduation.
But I wouldn’t be around to see it. A few days after the pig-party raid, Jack Shannon let me go. He said it was for my own good. If I stayed on, sooner or later there’d be trouble. He was right. And to be honest, I didn’t much care. The fun was gone. It’s tough being a bartender in a college town when the kids treat you like Benedict freakin’ Arnold.
Jack gave me two weeks’ severance pay, plus an envelope somebody left for me at the bar.
No return address. Just fifty bucks in tens. And a note from Sara Silver asking me to meet her at the Coffee Beanery on campus the next day.
A perfect Indian summer afternoon, Westover’s maples flaming red and gold. College kids strolling hand in hand. Damn. I was really going to miss this place.
I hadn’t seen Sara since the bust. Scarcely recognized her. She was sitting at an open-air table in front of the coffee shop, looking sharp enough to stop traffic.
The night of the pig party, she’d shocked me by turning herself into a brown wren, plain as wallpaper paste. Now, the transformation had gone the other way. A full-blown extreme TV makeover. The cute coed had blossomed into a picture-perfect butterfly. Honey blond hair impeccably coifed, trimmed to nape length and swept to one side. Eyebrows plucked and patterned to perfection. Ice blue contacts, Donna Karan suit. Primped, polished, and ready for prime time.
“My, my, what a difference a few days can make,” I said, taking the chair facing her. “You look absolutely dynamite.”
“I wish I could say the same, Malloy. You look like crap.”
“I had some trouble sleeping in jail.”
“I got you out as soon as I could. Did my best to keep your name out of it.”
“I noticed that none of the news stories mentioned me. I guess I should thank you.”
“No need,” she said briskly. “Mr. Shannon said you’re leaving town. Because of the pig party? Have either of you been threatened?”
“Are you suddenly worried about my welfare, Silver? Or just looking for another byline?”
“That’s unfair. If you’re having problems, you certainly can’t blame me for them. I never intended to cause you any trouble.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t. You smelled a story and went after it without a thought to what the fallout might be for me. Much less for Emily Kaempfert.”
“Who?”
“Come on, Silver, it’s Malloy, remember? Your partner in crime. We both know who Emily is. Emily Kaempfert. The underage girl I hauled out of the pig party. The one you took me there to find.”
“But her name was never released,” she said carefully. “How do you—?”
“You called out to her at the bust, remember? And Westover’s a small campus. I had no trouble finding out who she was. And where she lived.”
Sara’s face went suddenly still. Unreadable as a mask.
“Kappa Rho,” I went on. “The sorority for promising academics. And Emily was very promising. A math whiz who graduated from high school at fifteen. Valedictorian. Precocious, but also pudgy and plain. With no social skills at all. But you know all that, don’t you? Because you live at Kappa Rho, too. In fact, you’re a mentor there. For freshmen like Emily. You knew her, didn’t you?”