A.W. Hartoin - Mercy Watts 04 - Drop Dead Red (26 page)

“What’s her shoe size?” I asked.
 

The girl popped out an eight without hesitation. Faith’s shoe size? She had no clue. Weird. She did know the name and room number of their resident advisor. Peaches Skelton on the third floor. I didn’t know girls got called Peaches anymore.
 

The girl went in her room hastily before I could ask any more questions. I stood there for a second, mulling the encounter over. It wasn’t what I would’ve expected at all. Girls are gossips in my experience. Why didn’t she want to spill it all about Faith, a girl who accused a popular frat boy of rape? If that wasn’t ripe for the rumor mill, I didn’t know what was.
 

“That was kinda weird,” said Derek, picking a pimple on his chin.
 

“You don’t know either of them?”
 

“They haven’t been to any of our parties.”
 

“Well, let’s go visit the RA and see what Peaches has to say.”
 

We headed down the hall and I heard the door to the stairs slam. I whipped it open and sprinted down the stairs with Derek close on my heels. I caught a glimpse of brown hair on the stairs below us. I leapt down the rest of the flight, cornering with the help of the metal handrail, and caught the guy at the entrance where he got tangled up with some other students trying to come in. He attempted to squeeze between two girls carrying multiple pizzas, and I snagged him by the grey hoodie.
 

He shot out one arm and hit a stack of pizzas, which tumbled to the floor.
 

“Hey, asshole,” the girl yelled, diving down after them.
 

“You are such a freak, Grayson,” said the other girl.
 

Grayson made a break for the door, but I’d wrapped his hoodie around my hand and he was going nowhere fast.
 

“Let go,” he yelled.
 

“Forget it, Grayson,” I said, pleasantly. “We’re going to have a little chat.”
 

“Tell him to stop being a freak,” said the girl who’d dropped the pizzas.
 

The girls stomped up the stairs after giving Grayson venomous looks and Derek got in front of him. He towered over our captive, but Derek wasn’t all that large. Grayson was pretty small for a guy. He was barely taller than me, maybe five foot five, and delicate with slender wrists and narrow shoulders. I felt hefty next to him, not something that happens with guys very often. He could be the one Jonas and Bea saw on Nana’s garden wall. Size was hard to gauge from a distance and personal feelings about size do factor into a witness’s impressions.
 

I gave Derek a don’t-let-him-get-away look and let go of Grayson’s hoodie. “Why are you following me?”
 

Grayson’s brown eyes lost their fear and went blank. “I wasn’t following you.”
 

“Oh, really. Why’d you run?”
 

He looked at the well-worn Vans on his feet and said softly, “I’m not supposed to be up there.”
 

“Up where?” asked Derek.
 

His voice got even softer. “On Faith’s floor.”
 

Derek raised his eyebrows and flushed with excitement. “Why not?”
 

Grayson tried to dart away, but Derek caught him by the arm easily. He squirmed and said, “Peaches told me not to. Okay?”
 

He wasn’t my guy. I guess that would’ve been too easy. “What did you do to Faith?”

“Nothing. I just liked her. Okay?”
 

“Apparently, it wasn’t okay. What did you do?” I asked.
 

“I just talked to her. It was no big deal.”
 

It was a big deal if the RA had to intervene, but that wasn’t my concern at the moment. “So you were listening to us talk. What’s up with that?”
 

“I heard you mention Faith before you went inside. I thought you might know where she is. That’s all,” said Grayson, a bit defiantly.
 

“Why didn’t you ask around?”
 

“I did. Nobody will say anything about Faith and I’m not exactly popular, in case you didn’t pick that up.”
 

“I picked it up just fine. Why is everyone protecting Faith?” I asked.
 

Grayson snorted. “Protect Faith. Nobody protected Faith. If they did, she’d still be here.”
 

“Then why don’t they tell you where she went?”
 

“Because they like me even less than they like her.”
 

“What were they supposed to protect her from?”

We stopped talking as a group of guys came down the steps. They casted curious glances at us and left.
 

“You already know,” said Grayson when the door closed.
 

“I do,” I said. “Did you want to protect Faith?”
 

“Of course I did. Faith was the only one around here that understood me or anything worth understanding and that fucking frat boy…” He turned away, his eyes reddening.
 

“Would you like to kill him?” I asked.
 

“Yeah, I would. He’s the son of a bitch who—” Then he stopped. “Did something happen to Chris Berry?”
 

“Do you know him?”
 

“I’ve seen him. Did something happen? Is that why you’re here? Who are you?”
 

“You don’t know?” asked Derek, clearly astonished. “She’s Mercy Watts. She’s a famous detective.”
 

Grayson jerked backwards, knocking against the wall. “He’s dead. I’m fucked for sure.”
 

“He’s not dead.”
 

He stuck his finger in my face. “Then he should watch his back. I’m going to beat the shit out of him the next—”
 

Derek started laughing. “Come on, man. You couldn’t beat up a twelve-year-old girl.”
 

Grayson shoved me into Derek and darted past us, slamming open the door. I lunged for the door, but stopped. Grayson was small, but quick, and already out of sight.
 

“I’m sorry,” said Derek, hanging his head. “I shouldn’t have laughed. It was just so stupid.”
 

“Don’t worry about it.”
 

“He really is a freak, isn’t he?”

“I suspect so. Let’s go see Peaches.” I went up the stairs, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in Derek’s head. Grayson was a very nice suspect. He knew about the rape and something was off about him, but he hadn’t been hanging around the frat house. He’d been at Faith’s dorm.
 

“Derek, do you know his last name?”
 

“That guy? No.”
 

I stopped on the stairs and faced him. “I need you to go find out. Try the girls we talked to before.”
 

“What makes you think they’ll talk to me?” he asked.
 

I smiled at him in my most winning way. “Nothing, but you have to start interviewing sometime if you’re going into law enforcement.”
 

Derek grinned up at me, full of confidence, just like a guy who’s never been spit on, drugged, or chased by dogs. That would be me. He’d be safe with girls who carried
A Handbook to Literature
and French dictionaries.

“What else should I find out?” he asked, not doubting that he could.
 

“Where he lives? The problem with Faith? Anything and everything. Call me when you have it?” I said and trotted up the stairs to the third floor. Derek would probably get the basics, but mostly I needed to get rid of him. As helpful as he was, I didn’t think an RA was going to say squat to me about a rape with a guy from his frat there. She’d have to be the world’s worst RA and stuck with a name like Peaches, she couldn’t be.
 

I was right about Peaches, sort of. She was a good RA and a careful one. It took me ten minutes to talk my way in. I’m sorry to say it was a video of Dad on Dateline that did the trick. Peaches loved that Lester Holt, and she was about as big as the anchorman at a good six two. I assumed when she opened the door, and completely filled it, that the name Peaches was one of those cruel joke things that stuck. It turned out Peaches was her real name and she was thrilled to be wide, a real advantage in the crease, whatever that was.
 

Peaches talked to me about lacrosse for a solid fifteen minutes before I got her back to Faith Farrell. I had the feeling Faith wasn’t someone she wanted to think about.
 

“I can’t really talk about it,” said Peaches, squeezing her muscular body in her desk chair.
 

“Why not?” I asked, directly with a pleasant, conversational tone. That disarmed her as I knew it would. Some things are assumed to be right and people are always surprised when you don’t assume it.
 

“Because…because it’s private,” she said.
 

“Are you saying you have some sort of RA/dorm confidentiality?” I hated to push, but I needed to know what happened.
 

“No, but this is Faith’s private business.”
 

“And Christopher’s.”
 

Peaches wrapped her arms around her waist and said, “He doesn’t get any privacy.”
 

“Why not?” I asked.
 

“Because…he…” she trailed off.
 

I raised an eyebrow. “Because you’re sure he did it?”
 

“Yes,” she said loudly.
 

“Why?”

“She reported it to campus police.”
 

That’s when I got a feeling, not a pleasant one. A report makes you guilty? I sure hoped not. There were plenty of
reports
about me. From the set of Peaches’ jaw, I knew this wasn’t the path to go down, but there was a little self-righteousness in me that took away my common sense.
 

“Anyone can make a report,” I said.
 

“People think it can’t happen or that it’s…it’s the girl’s fault. It wasn’t Faith’s fault.” Peaches shrunk down in her chair, diminished from the kickass goalie she obviously was, and I instantly regretted every word.
 

“No,” I said softly. “It wasn’t her fault. I didn’t mean to imply that it was. I just want to know what happened. I’m not here to prove Christopher’s innocence. It’s about his brother and sister. That’s all. Nothing else.”
 

“But you’d protect him, if you could. Guys like that always get protected.”
 

It was a question I hadn’t thought about. Christopher. Would I protect him? No. No, I wouldn’t. I’d seen too many rape victims in the ER to seriously consider it. The pain would hang in the air, always just a breath away. If Christopher caused that, he deserved what he got. Donatella was a different story. I very much wanted to protect her and to a lesser extent Ameche. He was a good guy and a good cop. Having a rapist in the family wasn’t great for the career. The truth, all the truths, would have to come out. The truth about the listeriosis was first on my list.
 

“I won’t protect him. You have my word on that.” Then I told her about the listeriosis and the Tulio murders.
 

Peaches went pale and clinched her strong hands. “I can see why you’d want to help his mom, but I don’t know how I can help.”
 

“Tell me about Faith.”
 

If anything, she went paler. “You think she tried to poison Christopher?”
 

“If he did what she claimed, revenge isn’t unheard of,” I said.
 

“She wouldn’t. She’s not that kind of person.” Peaches shook her head. “No, no way.”
 

“Okay. What kind of person is she? How well did you know her?”
 

“Not well at all. She was a typical freshman, busy with classes.”
 

“And boys?”