Murder in the Rue Ursulines (22 page)

“He looks fine now, but that’s because I didn’t have a fair shot at him The next time, he’s losing his teeth.” I walked past him into the house. “Did I wake you?”

“Shhh, keep it down, Abby’s still asleep.” He yawned again. “You want some coffee?”

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “Sorry to get you up.”

“I haven’t been to bed yet.” He led me back into the computer room. He handed me a folder full of paper. “You know me, once I got started digging, I couldn’t sleep until I got everything you wanted.” He yawned and stretched again. “The bed’s going to feel pretty good. Oh, yeah!” He rolled his eyes at me. “You know, it would have saved me a lot of time if you’d told me Freddy’s real name.”

“Huh?” I kicked myself.
Some investigator you are.

“Freddy Bliss is his
professional
name. So, when I first, um, gained access to the Emporia State records, I couldn’t find any record of him—because Freddy Bliss didn’t exist back then.” He grinned at me. “So, I had to do some more hunting. I found an interview he did where he talked about going to Emporia State, so then I had to find his birth name.” He winked. “Frederick Bliss Osborne, of Newton, Kansas, enrolled at Emporia State thirteen years ago.”

“Good work.” I replied, still pissed at myself. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Freddy Bliss was a stage name?

But it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the Internet research I’d done, which was kind of unusual.  I opened the file and looked at his transcripts. “He wasn’t much of a student, was he?” He’d barely scraped by—mostly C’s. The few B’s he’d earned were offset by an equal number of D’s. Even in acting classes his grades had been average.

“Skip that shit—that’s not the good stuff, trust me.”

I turned a few pages. “What’s this?” I scanned the page. I couldn’t help myself, I smiled.
And here it is, Mr. Bliss. The big secret you don’t want anyone to know about.

“It’s a disciplinary hearing.” Jephtha grinned. “They erased it—afterwards. But nothing ever is truly erased from a computer hard drive unless you scrub it completely—and whoever deleted the file thought it was gone. It was still there, on the hard drive. It took me a few hours, but I was able to reconstruct it.” He preened a little bit. “I kick ass, don’t I?”

I started reading. Karen Zorn, a sophomore, had gone to the dean and accused Freddy Bliss of raping her at a party at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, where Freddy was a brother.  She claimed that Freddy had gotten her drunk—feeding her tequila shots--and when she was so drunk she could barely stand, she’d asked if she could go lie down for a while. Freddy had taken her up to his room, and once they were inside, he locked the door and attacked her. She’d tried to scream but he’d put a sock in her mouth and raped her.

Freddy denied the rape, and two of his fraternity buddies—Bobby Wallace and Tim Dahlke—had sworn that Karen had been chasing Freddy for weeks. Freddy got drunk at the party and had slept with her, but it was consensual; it was
her
idea. In the morning, Freddy had buyer’s remorse—and Karen threatened to accuse him of rape. And she had. Based on Bobby and Tim’s testimony, the dean had dropped the whole thing.

I remembered my experiences at Beta Kappa. Would a fraternity brother lie to get another brother out of trouble?

Hell, yes. They wouldn’t have had to be asked twice. The fraternity mentality was that all women were pieces of garbage to be used and abused—they weren’t people.

They were just pieces of ass for the brothers to fuck and toss away.

Oh, yes, I could even understand why the dean would sweep it all under a rug. No university wants to deal with a campus rape trial.

It hadn’t helped Karen much that the rape had occurred at a Friday night party, and she’d done nothing about it until the following Monday. There’d been no rape kit, no trip to the emergency room, no police report.

Poor thing,
I thought, getting a little angry. She should have gone to the police. I’d dealt with a few rape victims when I was on the police force, and I could understand her mentality. She was ashamed, she blamed herself, she didn’t want anyone to know about it…and it had taken her a few days to get herself together and decide to do something about it.

And when she did, Freddy and his fraternity brothers had lied. The dean was more than willing to believe them.

I wondered what had happened to her.

“It gets even better.” Jephtha went on. “I dug up the files on her and the other guys. The girl dropped out, and Freddy dropped out the next semester. Bobby and Tim went on to graduate—with honors. But get this—I was curious by now—so I tried to track them down.” He flushed a bit. “I hope you don’t mind. I know you didn’t ask me to do that, so you don’t have to pay me for that.”

I flipped the page. The next page was the printout of
Wichita Herald
newspaper clipping from seven years ago. Bobby Wallace was killed in a car crash when his brakes apparently failed. He’d been driving drunk, on his way home from a bar. He’d slammed into a tree and had been killed instantly. According to investigators, there’d been no brake fluid in his car—but he’d just had his car serviced. The lines hadn’t been cut, but the fluid had drained out somehow. The mechanic swore he’d checked the brake fluid.

I felt a cold chill go down my spine.

 “Go on.” Jephtha urged.

The next page was another newspaper clipping. Six years ago, Tim Dahlke had been shot to death in his house. There were no signs of forced entry. Nothing had been stolen. There were no leads.

 There was one more piece of paper in the folder. I looked at the last one. TWO KILLED IN MYSTERIOUS FIRE:
Victims were Emporia State Dean and his wife.

“Holy shit.” I looked at Jephtha.

He nodded, his eyes dancing. “I tried to find out what happened to Karen Zorn, but she disappeared after she dropped out. I couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere.”

Freddy was the only one left alive.

“Thanks, Jephtha. Send me a bill.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You should think about getting a private eye license. This is some really good work. I’ll be in touch.”

I walked outside and stood in the sunshine for a moment.

I had to find Karen Zorn.

There was no way it was a coincidence that everyone involved in the cover-up of the rape had died under mysterious circumstances.

By the time the killings had started, Freddy was a movie star and not easily accessible. His stardom had, in a way, saved his life.

So far.

Outside, I stood for a moment. I dialed Loren. I got his cell phone.

“Hey, Loren, this is Chanse MacLeod. Tell Freddy and Jillian I want to meet with them.” I took a deep breath. “Tell them I know about Karen Zorn.”

I closed my phone and went home.

Maybe the reason Karen Zorn had disappeared was because no one had found her body.

The thought hit me as I was driving up Camp Street. It caught me so offguard I almost hit a parked car. But it made sense. Three of the men involved in the rape and cover-up were dead. She’d disappeared. Out of everyone involved, the only person still accounted for was Freddy Bliss—the one person who had the most to lose.

It made more sense that Karen had been killed than that she was the killer.

E-mails alluding to the rape had been sent from Glynis’s computer, and she’d been murdered.

All roads led back to Freddy Bliss.

The hyena pack in front of my house wasn’t as big as it had been when I left for the gym, but they still swarmed my car as I turned into the driveway. I turned up the stereo so I couldn’t hear anything they were shouting at me. I parked in my spot and ran for the back stairs. The shouting died away once I was out of their sight.

I headed straight to my computer, and logged into the Internet. I opened the folder Jephtha had given me. Damn, he’d done a good job. I did a directory search for Zorns in Olpe, Kansas. About ten listings came up. I started dialing. I struck oil on the sixth call.

“Karen?” a tired female voice asked in a flat Midwestern accent. “What has she done now?”

“I’m just trying to find her.” I replied. “Do you know how I can get hold of her?”

“I haven’t talked to her in years, and good riddance, thank you very much.” She sighed.

“Mrs. Zorn—”

“What has she done now?” The voice was resigned. “I can’t say as I’m surprised to hear she’s done something else. Lord, what a trial that child has been to me, she’s been nothing but
trouble
since the day I got pregnant.” She gave a great heaving sigh. “Them pro-life people can carry all the signs they want to, and I know it’s a sin and murder and all, but I should’ve had an abortion, is what I should have done. If I knew then what I know now…”

Whoa.
 
“Mrs. Zorn—“

“You know, I got pregnant when I was in high school.” She went on as though I hadn’t said a word. I got the feeling she’d just been waiting for an audience to come along. Now that she had one, she was going to cut loose and let it all hang out. “Her daddy didn’t want to marry me, of course, but his daddy and my daddy made him do the right thing by me. And back then I thought abortion was murder, the nuns said so and the nuns were supposed to know, so I had that damned baby. Talk about being punished for your sins for the rest of your life! The marriage was a mistake—he made it clear he thought I got pregnant just so he’d have to marry me. Wasn’t that a nice thing to say to me? His wife? The mother of his child? And then he went and got himself killed in a car accident.” She made it sound as if he’d done it deliberately, to punish her. “So, what has she done now? Something terrible, I’ll bet. I was probably too easy on her. I should have beaten some sense into that girl. I don’t care what Father Manion said, it says right there in the Bible you spare the rod you spoil the child.”

Oh my God, what a horrible woman.
I broke into her tirade. “I’m, um, actually just looking for some background information—“

“Well, what do you want to know? Speak up. You want to know what she was like? She was a horrible child, always causing trouble. She cried all night when she was a baby. I used to pray for guidance, for some relief, but no, she would just scream and scream and scream.” She sounded aggrieved, like the baby had done it just to spite her.  “And it didn’t change as she got older, you know. She was always a handful. Always into everything, always getting in trouble—and if she didn’t get her way, she would just scream and throw a tantrum, no matter how hard I spanked her. I could never believe a word that came out of her mouth. She lies as easily as she breathes. She
believes
her lies, even when you catch her at them, catch her red-handed, she’ll look you right in the face and lie to you all over again. Like that time she claimed she was raped.”

“I beg pardon?” My mind was reeling. This woman should have never been allowed to have a child. My sympathy for Karen was growing.

“I said, like the time she claimed she was raped.” Irene went on, her tone making it clear she thought I was an idiot.  “I broke my butt working two jobs to pay for her to go to the college over in Emporia. She wanted to go to college, of course—getting a job and working hard wasn’t good enough for her, you know, even though she wasn’t a good student—she never was much good at anything, to tell the truth, wouldn’t even do her chores around the house, to help me out so I could come home from work and just relax, you know? I worked hard. And she could just drive there—even though the car I got her of course wasn’t good enough for her— and live at home to save money, so of course I sent her to Emporia State.” Her voice clearly showed she thought I was an idiot. “It’s only about ten miles down the road. But that wasn’t even good enough for the ungrateful little bitch.” She let out a heavy sigh. “And then after she was caught in her lies there, she dropped out and went to work. Wasted all that money, and you think she offered to pay me back? Of course not, not Little Miss It’s-All-About-Me.”

I interrupted her, before she launched into another tirade. “You said she claimed she was raped?”

“Yes, I said it twice, I believe. Aren’t you listening to me?” Her voice rose in agitation. “She went to some damn fool fraternity party. I told her and told her, those fraternity boys are nothing but trouble, everybody knows that. Find some nice Catholic boy, I told her, but oh, no! She couldn’t be
bothered
with a nice boy. Probably had some damned fool idea one of them rich boys would marry her. Huh. There’s only one thing rich boys want from girls like Karen, and it isn’t to marry them, I can tell you that.” She paused for a moment, and I could hear her breathing into the phone. I was about to ask another question when she started talking again.

 “The Sigma Pis, I think it was. She came home early one morning and told me someone drugged her at a party and some boy raped her in his room while some other boys watched! How my heart broke for my poor baby! I was furious. So Monday morning, I marched right into that dean’s office and filed a complaint. Had to take the day off from work,  and for what? More of her lies. Turns out she’d been stalking the boy, telling people they were in love, and threw herself at him at the party. There were witnesses. And not just the boys, either. Some of the girls at the party said so, too.  Everything she’d said to me was a lie. That boy just didn’t want her, and she wanted to make trouble for him. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. Turned out she was doing all these things for him—and
sleeping
with him, and she made up her mind that he loved her and was going to marry her—and it was all in her head.” She snorted. “If only she hadn’t been too old to spank!