“Like one of those dwarf-toss contests they used to do in bars?”
“I don’t know. But yeah, Mitchell apparently treated it like a contest. How far could he toss the little freshman today?”
“Jesus. And nobody stopped him?”
Jane shrugs. “He didn’t do it in front of the whole school or anything. The wrestlers used this small gym right by the school entrance. They’d go in there, and Mitchell would do his daily toss, and his wrestling buddies would laugh along. And I guess Simon never complained.”
“Nice.”
“The other thing, apparently—Simon would bring a lunch to school every day and it included a bottle of Gatorade. Well, apparently, Mitchell used to take it. He’d walk up to his lunch table and say, like, ‘Did you bring my Gatorade?’ At least that’s how I heard it. Later. After everything.”
“So maybe you should get to the good part, Jane.”
“Right. It was wrestling season, the end of the season, and I guess they called it ‘regionals.’ Like, the playoffs for wrestling, the next stop is the state championship.”
“The semifinals, regionals, whatever.”
“I guess. Anyway, Mitchell Kitchens, this big-time wrestler, has made it to regionals. But he’s up against another guy who’s also supposed to be great. Same weight class. It’s, like, the battle of the titans or something. My boyfriend at the time, he was so excited. We were hosting regionals at Grace Consolidated. It was Friday night. Apparently, there were college scouts there, too. The best wrestling colleges in the country. Like, Iowa, I remember, had someone there, and that was apparently a big deal.”
“Okay.”
“It was the craziest thing. The bleachers were packed, everyone was excited, all these pumped-up muscle heads running around in these ridiculous tight little costumes that looked like ballerina outfits.”
“And . . .” The chief rolls his hand. “Mitchell Kitchens wrestled this other big wrestler?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” says Jane. “He didn’t. They made this big announcement. Mitchell was disqualified after the drug test. He tested positive for a banned substance.”
The chief sits back in his chair, his tongue peeking out, eyes narrowed.
“I don’t remember the drug,” she goes on. “Chloro-something. I remember it sounded like chloroform. It was some diuretic or a— They called it a ‘masking agent.’ Like, a drug you take to hide the presence of other illegal drugs—”
“A masking agent, right. I’ve heard of them. But what does that have to do with your guy Simon—” The chief drops his chin. “Oh. Are you about to tell me that this boy, Simon Dobias, put a banned substance into his own Gatorade, knowing that Mitchell Kitchens would steal it and drink it?”
“That’s certainly what Mitchell claimed,” Jane says.
“That’s . . . Well, it’s—”
“Diabolical,” says Andy Tate. “No other word for it.”
“And they could prove all this?” the chief asks.
“That Simon spiked his own Gatorade? Oh, gosh, no. How could they prove it? Those drugs stay in your system for several days. Simon could have slipped something into one of the Gatorade bottles Michell took earlier in the week. Several days before the drug test. By the time the drug test came back positive, that empty bottle of Gatorade was long gone, probably in some landfill or under heaps of garbage, even assuming you could’ve discovered traces of drugs in it. There was no way to prove it. Mitchell was sure of it, and a lot of people thought it could’ve happened, but no—there was no way to prove it.”
“Right.” The chief smiles begrudgingly. “Right.”
“Mitchell tried. His family tried. But part of the problem was, to even tell the story, he had to explain why Simon would do something like that. Mitchell had to admit that he routinely stole from a younger kid’s lunch. He said Simon voluntarily gave him his drink every day, but c’mon—nobody believed that. Simon himself said Mitchell would take it every day. Everyone who ate lunch at his table, eight or ten people, confirmed it.”
“Sure, of course.” The chief nods. “Wow. To point the finger at Simon, to show a motive, Mitchell has to admit he bullied the shit out of this kid.”
“Exactly. So now consider Simon’s version,” says Jane. “All he had to do was deny it. He doesn’t know anything about those drugs. He doesn’t know anything about wrestling meets or anti-doping tests. He’s just a nerdy bookworm. Nobody could prove otherwise.”
“And the wrestler, Mitchell, got nowhere with his story.”
“The only place he got was making himself look even worse. All Mitchell proved, after the school investigated, was that he was tormenting a smaller, much younger kid. It didn’t exactly paint him in a sympathetic light. By the time the school was done investigating, Simon was looking like a victim, not a perp.”
“Which he was, actually.”
“Oh, yeah. He was the victim of severe bullying. And you should’ve seen what happened when Mitchell got hold of Simon after the meet. Like, the next Monday, at school. That’s when everything came to a head.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I wasn’t there, but I heard about it. Everybody heard about it. Mitchell was standing there when Simon got off the school bus. He went for Simon right away. Threw him down and started pounding on him. This huge senior beating on a little freshman half his size. The school cop came out and tried to peel Mitchell off him. He punched the cop, too.”
“Mitchell punched the cop?”
“Oh, yeah, by the time it was over, other squad cars had pulled up. It was a whole scene, I guess. They had to use a Taser on him. Mitchell got taken away in handcuffs.”
“Was he arrested? Charged?”
“Yes and yes,” says Jane. “Simon refused to pursue charges, but forget about Simon—Mitchell had punched a cop. And he was seventeen, so he could be charged as an adult. Aggravated battery and resisting. He didn’t serve any time. The judge let him off with probation. But he got kicked out of school and got a felony conviction. I think he . . . I heard he works in construction now.”
The chief takes this all in, shakes his head, and leans forward. “Okay, so maybe just maybe, Simon Dobias is some evil genius. Diabolical,” he adds, nodding to Andy Tate, using his word. “He lulled this bully into basically injuring himself by stealing a spiked drink.”
“And in a way that made it almost impossible to prove,” says Jane. “And forced the bully to basically admit to his bullying to even tell the story.”
“He got him good,” says Andy Tate. “He got him every which way.”
“Okay, and then there’s his father’s death in St. Louis in, what, 2010?” says the chief. “Why does St. Louis P.D. think Simon Dobias killed his father?”
“To understand the story of Ted Dobias’s death in 2010,” says Jane, “we have to go back to 2004. The complaint Simon filed with Grace Park P.D. It ties this all together.”
75
Jane
“Okay, I’m with you so far,” says the chief. “So in 2002, Simon Dobias’s mother has a stroke, a bad one, she’s basically an invalid, living at home in a wheelchair, can hardly take care of herself.”
“Right,” says Jane.
“And the dad—Ted, is it?”
“Yes, sir. Theodore Dobias, sounds like he went by Ted.”
The chief waves a hand. “Ted’s hit it big on some personal-injury lawsuit, has a lot of money, and he’s feeling like Mr. Big Shot now with his cash and success, so he decides having a wife who can’t hardly feed herself isn’t so conducive to his lifestyle of the rich and famous, and he wants some arm candy on the side. I’m right so far?”