“I didn’t!” Doug cries. “You have no proof!” To Steve he says, “She has no proof!”
“Oh, we have plenty of proof,” I say. I’m stalling for time. Steve has to know that. But he seems to have forgotten about Gavin and using him as a means to keep me silent. And that’s all I want. “We found her body today, you know. What was left of it, anyway.”
The look Steve throws me is one of total incredulity. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The body. Lindsay’s body. See, the thing you didn’t take into account was the fact that disposals don’t grind up bones…or navel rings. We found Lindsay’s this morning.”
Doug makes the kind of noise girls sometimes make when I tell them they can’t have a single next year. It’s a sound between a sigh and a protest, and comes out like, “Nuh-uh!”
Steve’s grip on the knife tightens. The blade flashes in the candlelight. “She’s bluffing. And even if she’s not…so what? There couldn’t have been anything to lead them to us. Not after the way we cleaned up.”
“Yeah.” I’m sweating now, I’m so hot in my winter coat. Or maybe it isn’t heat. Maybe it’s nerves. My stomach is in knots. I probably shouldn’t have had that second Dove Bar. Jeff is lying totally still now. I don’t know if it’s because he’s unconscious, or just pretending to be so the kicking will stop. “You guys may be good at partying and putting on fancy initiation rites, but at cleaning, you really suck. They totally found hairs.”
Doug throws a startled look at his brother. “Steve!”
“Shut up, Doug,” Steve snaps. “She’s bluffing.”
“She’s not!” Doug has gone white as a ghost in his robe. “She knew! She knew about the stash!”
“Leaving the head was your first mistake,” I go on conversationally. “You might have gotten away with it, if you hadn’t left the head on the stove like that. They’d have noticed the bones and belly button ring and all, but chances are they wouldn’t have known what they were. It would have been like Lindsay had just disappeared. No one would have known you guys had been there, so no one would have wondered about how you got in. That was your second mistake, trying to off Manuel. He wouldn’t have told anybody about the key if you hadn’t scared him like that. And if he had, what difference would it have made? He’s just a janitor. Nobody listens to the janitor.” I shake my head. “But no. You had to get cocky.”
“Steve,” Doug whines. “You said no one would know it was us. You said no one would know! If Dad finds out what we did—”
“Shut up,” Steve yells. I jump a little at the volume of his tone. So do the guys who still have hold of my arms. “For once in your life, shut the fuck up, you little shit!”
But Doug’s not about to do as his brother says. “Christ, Stevie!” he cries, his voice breaking. “You told me Dad’d never know. You told me you’d take care of it!”
“I did take care of it, you little shit,” Steve snaps. “Just like I take care of all your stupid fuckups.”
“Don’t worry about it, you said. Leave everything to me, you said.” Doug’s practically crying. “You son of a bitch! You didn’t take care of shit! Now Lindsay’s dead, we’re gonna get busted—and I still don’t know what happened to my stash.”
Apparently oblivious to the fact that his sibling has just incriminated them all, Steve shouts, “Yeah, well, who’s the asshole who fucking killed the bitch in the first place? Did I tell you to kill her? Did I tell you to fucking kill her? No, I did not!”
“It wasn’t my fault she died!” Suddenly Doug is stumbling forward and, to my abject horror, clamps both his hands on the front of my coat. A second later, he’s sobbing into my face. “I didn’t mean to kill her, lady. Honest I didn’t. She just made me so goddamned mad, stealing my coke like that. And then she wouldn’t give it back! That whole thing, telling me someone musta stole it out of here—it was such bullshit. If she’d just given it back when I asked…but no. I thought Lindsay was different, you know. I thought Lindsay really liked me, not like those other girls, who only hang out with me because of my last name. I didn’t mean to choke her so hard—”
“Shut up, Doug.” Steve’s voice is hard again. “I mean it. Shut the fuck up.”
Doug lets go of me and spins around to appeal to his older brother, tears streaming down his face. “You told me you’d take care of it, Steve! You told me not to worry. Why’d you hafta do that with her head, huh? I told you not to—”
“Shut up!” Steve, I can tell from the way his hands are shaking, is losing it. The knife he’s holding points one minute at me, and the next at Doug. A detached part of my brain wonders if Steve Winer would really stab his own brother.
The same part kind of hopes he will.
“What did you expect me to do, huh, you little shit?” Steve is so mad, his voice is now no louder than a hiss. “You call me in the middle of the fucking night, crying like a baby, and say you killed your fucking girlfriend. I have to get up, come all the way over here, and clean it up for you. And you have the nerve to criticize me? You have the goddamned audacity to question my methods?”
Doug gestures helplessly at me. “Jesus Christ, Steve! This fucking DORM MANAGER figured it out. How long do you think it’s gonna be before the police catch on?”
Steve blinks at me, then licks his lips nervously, his tongue darting out like a snake’s. “I know. That’s why we have to get rid of her.”
Which is when one of the red-robed figures beside me stirs and says, “Uh, dude. You said we were just gonna scare ’em, like we did the janitor guy—”
“Scare him? He nearly bled to death!” I cry.
“If you say one more word,” Steve says, pointing the knife blade at me, “I’ll kill you now, where you stand, instead of letting you out the easy way.” The tip of the knife travels away from me, and ends up pointing at the glass on the altar. It appears to be filled with water. “Drink that,” Steve commands.
I look at the glass. I have no idea what’s in it. But I can guess, judging by what happened to Jordan the other night. Rohypnol, otherwise known as roofies, a popular sedative on the college circuit. One dose, already dissolved in water, ought to make me much more malleable, when it comes time for cutting.