“What’s going on? Is the school year over already?”
“Yeah, this is the last week of finals.”
“Okay, now I get it. All the parties in town…”
“Yeah, it’s kinda crazy, but I’m sorry, do you want to sit down or anything? I mean, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
“Sure, I’ll sit down for one minute. I won’t take up much of your time, I promise. I just have a couple more questions for you.”
“Okay…” He looked confused, but he cleared off two chairs and half of the dining room table.
“How’s Rebecca?”
“Oh, she’s good. I’ll be seeing her in a few minutes. At the Downtowner.”
“That was the bar where I talked to everybody,” I said. “All of Charlie’s friends.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Well, I’ll get right to it, Wayne, so you don’t miss your date. A lot of crazy things have been happening ever since I first came out here. I now have reason to believe that Charlie didn’t really kill himself.”
I watched that one sink in.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What kind of crazy things are you talking about?”
“There were more deaths, in Sault Ste. Marie, in Marquette, a few other places.”
“I didn’t hear about anything like that. Although, you know, I’ve got so much going on here at school…”
“Charlie’s father was murdered,” I said. “That’s the first thing I should really tell you. It happened just after I came out here.”
The color drained from his face. He tried to say something, but couldn’t make the words come out.
“You didn’t hear anything about that?” I said.
“Nobody told me. I swear to God.”
“You know what, I should have called back out here myself. I apologize. I guess I just assumed you would have heard.”
He shook his head. He was staring down at the table.
“So here’s my question,” I said. “I want to run a name by you…”
“Mr. McKnight, is that you?”
I looked up and saw one of the other roommates walking down the hallway toward us. It was the big kid, with the bad skin. He was carrying a framed poster of a woman in a bikini sitting on the hood of a red Ferrari.
“Bradley,” I said, pulling the name out of nowhere. “You’re Bradley, right?”
“That’s right, you got a good memory. What brings you to town?”
“Just asking Wayne a couple questions here, and actually, if you’ve got a minute…”
“Yeah, hey, I’m sorry about the loud music. Why didn’t you guys tell me you were talking out here?”
He leaned the poster against some boxes and retreated down the hallway.
“Guys talking out there and they don’t even tell me I should turn the music down…” His voice trailed off as he went back into his bedroom. That was the other thing I remembered about him. That kid was a real motormouth.
“He’s actually a great guy,” Wayne said. “You just have to put up with a few things. Like his fine taste in art.”
I smiled at the comment and looked down at the artwork in question. Hot girl in bikini, hot sports car. How can you go wrong?
That’s when I noticed what was behind it. It wasn’t one framed poster he was carrying. It was two framed posters. He had fanned them out when he leaned them against the boxes. I got up and pulled the first poster so I could see the second in its entirety.
A young Clyde C. Wiley, sitting on his bike. It was the movie poster for Road Hogs.
“Okay, I’m all set,” Bradley said as he came back down the hallway. “What kind of questions do you have for me? I hope it’s not geography.”
I put the poster down.
“Wayne,” I said, “didn’t you say you have to go meet Rebecca?”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“Go ahead. You don’t want to keep her waiting.”
“It’s really okay, she’s going to be-”
“Just get out of here,” I said to him. “Tell her hello for me.”
He stood there for one more awkward moment, then he grabbed his coat and left. Bradley had picked up on the sudden change of mood. He stood there looking at me and for once in his life he wasn’t babbling away.
“Sit down,” I said.
“What’s going on?”
“Just sit down.”
He did as he was told. I took my own chair back. I looked at him across the table and waited a few seconds.
“Mr. McKnight, tell me what’s going on.”
“You know, you complimented me on remembering your name, but you picked up my name right away.”
“You came out here to ask all those questions about Charlie,” he said. “Of course I remember you.”
“But I had a lot more names to remember. That’s what you’re saying.”
“You must have talked to a dozen people that night. So, yeah.”
“I think Bradley’s a fine name. Maybe that’s why I remembered it.”
“Um, okay. Thanks?” He was looking more rattled by the second.
“Good, strong name. Bradley. It’s distinctive. Don’t you agree?”
“Um, yes.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I leaned in for the kill. “Is Bradley your real name?”
“Yes.” He said it without blinking, and he looked genuinely surprised at the question.
“Where’d you get that poster?” Time to switch gears.
“A poster shop. I know it’s kinda dumb.”
“Not the girl and the car. The other one.”
“What, the movie poster?”
“Yes, the movie poster.”
“RJ left it here.”
“RJ?”
“Our other roommate. You met him. He left it here so I figured I could just take it. Is that a big problem? If you don’t think I should have taken it, why don’t you just-”
“Bradley,” I said. “Shut up a second. Where’s RJ?”
“I told you, he left.”
“When?”
“Like a few weeks ago. Three weeks? Four weeks?”
“Okay, wait, stop.” I had ten questions in my mind and I had to take a moment to put them in order. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say where he was going.”
“He just left? Without saying a word?”
“Yeah, pretty much. It was kinda weird.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. RJ. Yeah, I remember him now. Tall guy, dark hair?”
“Yeah…”
“And those initials. RJ…”
I stopped dead. I didn’t even have to ask him, but he told me anyway.
“Robert James,” he said. “Everybody called him RJ.”
“His last name?”
“Bergman.”
“Son of a bitch.” I slapped the table loud enough to make him jump.
“What’s the matter?”
“I was right here. Right in this apartment. I talked to him. I asked him questions.”
“You’re starting to scare me here. What’s going on?”
“This is very important,” I said. “You have to help me figure out where RJ is right now.”
“I told you, he left. He just didn’t come back one day.”
“Come back from where?”
“Well, he was always leaving for a few days at a time. He said he was going to the cottage for a while.”
“The cottage?”
“Well, that’s just it. He said he was watching a house for a professor of his who retired and moved down south, but he’d never say where the cottage was. I asked him about it once and he said he didn’t want all of us going up there and trying to have a big party or something. He was kind of a strange guy sometimes-have I said that yet?”
“I believe you, but get back to that cottage. Do you think he could be up there right now?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just weird because I haven’t seen him around at all since what, the beginning of the month? Like right after you came out here. But how do you just ditch all your classes like that?”
“I got news for you,” I said. “RJ left school last year.”
“That’s impossible. He lived here. He was going to school. He went to class every day.”
“Did you have him in any of your classes?”
“No. I’m electrical engineering. He was video production or something like that.”
“So you never actually saw him attending an actual class.”
“No-but wait, that’s just weird, then. What kind of person would pretend to be in college and not go to any classes?”