“Yeah, but I’m betting Suspect X didn’t care if I hit my head on the door frame,” Shelly pointed out. “Or if I fell and scraped my elbow.” She held up her arm where bits of a lingering scab were a constant and sobering reminder of her assault.
“That is true,” Tom conceded in the sudden silence that fell as they all remembered that this wasn’t just a logic problem or a puzzle to be argued over.
“God,” Shelly said on a giant exhale, “I hate that I was talking or even... Jules, I think we could’ve talked you into doing anything—as long as we promised you that David would come back. I mean, we got you to do things like go up the stairs by telling you that maybe David was up there, that, you know, David definitely wanted you to climb the stairs and... I honestly think you would’ve had sex with Hobbit or Tom or, jeez, evenmeif I told you David wanted you to. It was like...” Shelly looked to Sadie for help.
“Your inhibitions were trashed,” Sadie confirmed. “It was pretty easy to manipulate you.”
“It was pretty funny,” Tom said, but then, as Shelly incinerated him with a sharp look, his flying ashes added, “No, I’m sorry, actually it wasn’t funny at all. Sorry, Shel.”
“Well, so much forFuck you, David,” Jules said weakly. “Apparently, I’m not over him yet.”
“We all knew that,” Hobbit said quietly.
“So finding out that maybe I had sex—willingly—with creepy Suspect X,” Shelly brought them back on topic, “has kind of freaked me out.”
“It wasn’t willingly,” Belle said fiercely. “You were drugged. You didnotconsent?—”
“But what kind of drug does that?” Shelly asked. “Knocks you out, except not completely. I went to the library yesterday to try to find out, but... I couldn’t find anything and when I tried to ask the librarians for help I just... I couldn’t even ask.”
“I will,” Sadie said. “I’ll ask.”
“We’re gonna find out,” Jules said. “My mom’s got a friend who’s an ER nurse. She’s already left a message for her to call.” He’d wanted to do an additional blood test at the hospital, but insurance wouldn’t cover it and his mother had found out that the cost was outrageous. Spending all that money on a test that would probably reveal nothing was a hardno. Still, he wished now that he’d gone for it, taken the money out of his savings. “And yeah,” he told Sadie, “I’ll go to the library with you.” Librarians loved him.
They fell into silence again as he looked back at the evidence board.
“Can I ask,” Tom said from the bed where he’d apparently reassembled his Shelly-incinerated body parts. “Because I’m still not clear on exactly how you were drugged. When you followed Belle inside the house... Did you have something to eat or drink while you were in there?”
“Jules, I’msosorry about that,” Belle apologized yet again for what had absolutely been a menstrual emergency, made worse by her very short shorts. “I really had to get to the bathroom, fast. There was literally blood running down my leg.”
“It’s really okay,” Jules told her yet again, “but thanks for that image that’s now burned into my brain.”
“It was dire,” she pointed out, but she was laughing a little, no doubt at his reaction.
“You,” he said, “have apologized and have been completely forgiven.” He looked at Tom. “And the answer to your question isno. I had absolutely nothing to eat or drink while I was in the kitchen.”
The counters had been filled with bags of chips and popcorn and cookies, but Jules had been too worried about Belle and too anxious about leaving Hobbit with Rodney Burke and his idiots to even think about grabbing a snack. Which he wouldn’t have done anyway because he damn well knew that their suspect drugged people. “The only thing I had all night was that one Dr. Pepper—that,yup—guess who’s at fault?” He raised his hand. “I left the bottle behind when I went into the kitchen after Belle.” He looked at Hobbit. “You asked me while we were at the hospital, and I was so certain that I took it inside with me but... I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think I did. We need to assume that I left it on the picnic table, just out there for anyone to tamper with.”
Hobbit took a deep breath, and turned and made a new heading on the board. “People with access to J’s Dr. P.”
“Rodney,” Belle said, but Hobbit was already ahead of her, listing all of the soccer players who’d surrounded—and hassled—him at the party, starting with, yes, that seething ball of hate, Rodney Burke.
“Shit,” Jules said as he realized... “Topher. And Joey.”
Hobbit shot him anooflook, but wrote both of their names at the bottom of the list. “I don’t know the names of those three boys from out of town,” he reminded them. “But they were definitely there, with Rodney’s crew.”
“Charlie, Bobby, Trent,” Belle reported. “From Ottersfield.Charlie and Trent are on the soccer team. Bob’s a super-fan. I’m pretty sure they’re all stupid-rich. Trent was talking about seeing the World Cup somewhere, maybe... Mexico?”
Shelly spoke up from her seat over at Jules’s desk. “You guys...? Didn’t Rachel used to go out with Rodney Burke?”
Rachel, whom Jules and Sadie had approached, asking if she’d maybe been drugged and assaulted at a party in the recent past. Rachel, who with her friend Diane, had refused to talk to them...
“You’re right,” Sadie said. “She did. Last year. They broke up over spring break. It was really messy.”
“You mean... the spring break that was right before Caroline’s assault?” Jules asked.
They were all silent at that.
“Shit,” Belle finally said. “That timeline really works, doesn’t it? Rodney breaks up with Rachel, and then this horrible string of rapes start with Caroline.”
