Chapter 22 #2
“Good afternoon, Ms. Matthews,” the officer in the front says, eyeing us warily over her shoulder. He gives us a nod of acknowledgment, but otherwise ignores our presence. “We had some questions for you regarding an active missing persons case.”
Berlyn looks over her shoulder at us, confused and a little dismayed. “Umm,” she stumbles over her words, turning her attention back to them. “I don’t think I know anyone who’s missing?”
The two officers trade looks. “You are one of Professor Richard’s students, correct?”
Color drains from Berlyn’s face as she nods. Summer is quick to step to her side, wrapping her hand around her arm. “We both are,” she answers, drawing the attention of the cops. “Is he missing?”
They nod slowly, reading the body language of both women. “His wife reported him missing a couple days ago. You had a meeting with him last week, correct?”
Berlyn’s eyes are wide and her body begins to slightly tremble. Summer squeezes her arm in comfort and I place my hand on her lower back in silent encouragement. This is all too much at once for her.
“Yeah,” she says, voice shaky. “It was for revisions for a project,” she explains, looking even paler than when she first woke up. She might even be turning a little green.
Sympathy and understanding soften the officer’s body language. Are they here because they suspect her? Suspect a connection to her? They’re playing their cards close to their chest, but watching how shaken up Berlyn is, there’s no doubt, they’re starting to let their guard down.
One officer grabs his notebook and pen from his pocket and begins to take notes as the other one asks, “Was there anything odd you noticed during that meeting?”
Berlyn and Summer trade looks and neither one knows how to answer. If they should answer. If they should tell the officer about what happened that day.
He reads their silence as needing clarification. “Did he seem agitated? In a rush? Distracted? Anything like that?” he prompts.
“The project,” Berlyn starts, the thought cutting off as she tries to get a grip on her emotions.
“It’s—he chooses a winner, like a competition.
You get a highly-sought after internship,” she explains, her voice in almost a dream-like state.
It feels as if she’s searching for the right words in a fog where nothing is clear.
One of the officers starts to interrupt her, but the other one shakes his head, allowing her to continue.
Berlyn doesn’t even notice the interaction.
She clears her throat. “It’s a big deal,” she emphasizes and Summer nods her agreement.
“He offered it to me,” Berlyn continues, her voice growing smaller. Weaker.
“With strings?” the officer who allowed her to talk infers.
Berlyn nods, and seeing how broken up she is about it makes me wish we had dragged out the killing a little longer. It wasn’t nearly satisfying enough after the pain he’s caused our girl.
“I didn’t report it,” she whispers.
“We were looking into it,” Summer interjects. “Seeing if he’s done this before. We wanted more than just our word that it happened before we went to the administration.”
The officer studies Summer. “Did you witness the interaction?”
“Okay, her word,” she corrects, shaking her head.
“Did you tell anyone else about this incident?” he asks, and both women shake their heads. The officer eyes us over them and Ezra and I both shake our heads, keeping our faces neutral.
“What happened after he made the offer?” the officer prompts and Berlyn looks over his shoulder at nothing in particular.
“Nothing,” she finally whispers. “Another student knocked on the door and I ran out of his office.”
They nod like she just confirmed what they already knew. That has to be what brought them to her door so quickly. Another witness.
“Did you give him any reason to believe you were going to take the incident to the administration?”
Berlyn shrugs and I rub her lower back. She presses back into my touch, leaning back on me and I step closer to her in support. Her shoulders relax a fraction. “I froze,” she says with another small lift of her shoulder.
“Just a couple more questions, Ms. Matthews,” he assures her, his tone somewhat gentle. It feels like there’s something we’re missing from this. Something they know. Something they’re looking for. “Have you had any other incidents with your stalker?”
She reels backs in surprise, obviously not having suspected the change in topic. Even I wasn’t expecting the sudden jump even if I knew they would eventually circle around to it. Do they think the stalking is related?
It is.
But impressed they’ve put those pieces together so quickly.
Berlyn grimaces, slowly turning to look at me and my brothers. I arch a brow, but don’t say anything. It’s hard to act like we’re surprised and didn’t already have this information, but we all have excellent poker faces. It’s saved our lives on more than one occasion.
Sometimes, in our line of work, you gotta bullshit your way to survival.
She clears her throat, turning back to the waiting officers. “I’ve gotten flowers, but not much else since the security system,” she hedges. Not quite smoothly, but passable.
My expression and body language doesn’t shift in the slightest, but inside I’m fucking beaming. She knows we were here last night. Knows we purposefully let her catch us on video. She could have handed it all over to them right now, and she didn’t.
“Anything this week?” they prompt and Berlyn tenses under my touch. This is a more direct lie if she chooses to follow through.
She shakes her head, and fuck I’ve never been more proud in my life. She really does want us.
“You did get that package today,” Summer interjects to keep Berlyn from starting a ramble and oh fuck.
Didn’t see this one coming. Damn, there’s no way they’re going to let her keep our present now.
“A package?” the officer prompts and Berlyn nods.
“It was delivered just a few minutes ago,” she explains. “I haven’t opened it yet.”
The officers trade looks once more. “You’re sure it’s from the stalker?”
She shakes her head. “I wasn’t expecting anything, but I hadn’t really put much thought into it at all.”
“Would you mind opening it now?”
My brothers and I stay silent and move out of the way while Berlyn invites the officers in. We made damn sure there was no trace of evidence connecting back to us in that package, but now we’re going to have to get her something else.
It’s like the vibrator all over again. Why do they keep taking away our gifts from her?
Ezra elbows me in the side and I stop moping as Berlyn grabs scissors and opens the box. She looks confused at first, taking out the extra packing materials before she finds the note. She swallows thickly.
“It is from him,” she says carefully, watching her words.
One of the officers steps closer to her, putting on gloves. “Do you mind?”
She shakes her head, and allows him to take her place. The other officer begins snapping photos as they carefully grab the note.
“He never should have touched what wasn’t his,” the officer reads aloud, before slipping the note into an evidence bag.
This is really not how I saw this whole thing going. At least we always cover our bases.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Summer murmurs.
They lift the jar, taking pictures from every angle, but you can’t see what’s inside because we wrapped it in bubble wrap to make sure it wouldn’t break during delivery. What a disgusting mess that would have been. Though it’s made an entirely different sort of mess.
No one reacts to the jar until they begin to cut and tear the bubble wrap off. Summer is the first to react, seeing the organ and gasping. Both officers grimace. It takes Berlyn a second longer.
She stares at the liver in the clear liquid, her head tilted to the side.
“That’s a fucking liver,” Summer blurts and Berlyn turns green. Not quite the reaction I was expecting.
She grabs the discarded bag that held our food and heaves as she pukes inside it.
“Oh shit,” I curse, jumping into action but West is already there, holding her up while Summer grabs her hair.
“Can you get that out of here?” she yells at the officers, but they ignore her and continue to document everything about the package before bagging it up as evidence.
Berlyn throws up several more times before Summer and West are able to get her to the bathroom.
He throws a glare at me over his shoulder as they exit the room.
How was I supposed to know the souvenir would make her sick?
Maybe it was just the timing with the hangover. She’s always swooned over it when it’s happened in her books.
Ezra slips into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the officers and failed present. I watch with distaste as they finish bagging up the evidence and taking everything with them.
“She okay?” one of them asks, while the other takes everything they’ve collected back to the car.
I debate how to answer that. She’s fighting a hangover from hell—our bad—just found out her professor who sexually harassed her is missing—also our bad—and received an organ presumably from said professor, indicating he’s not missing, but dead—our bad again.
Hm, maybe this part of the plan could have been executed a little better. We’re gonna have to make this up to her. We may have missed the mark a bit.
“Overwhelmed, I think,” I finally answer, pondering how we’re going to fix this.
The officer nods. “Anyone would be.”
I click my tongue, not sure what to say or do. “Do you think it’s real?” I ask. Feels like something I would be wondering if I hadn’t been the one to put it in the jar.
He eyes me up and down. “We’ll have to run tests to be sure,” he hedges.
Annoying. He recognized the scent of formaldehyde.
He knows it’s real. I could tell as soon as he brought it closer to examine and lost some of the color in his face.
“We’re going to have to ask Ms. Matthews some follow up questions. ”
Just then, she comes back into the room, leaning on West. Ezra walks in with some water for her and they get situated on the couch. She looks up at the officer, unshed tears welling in her eyes. “Do you think that was Professor Richards?” she asks, looking almost scared of the answer.
“We’ll have to run some tests to be sure,” he repeats. Boring. “Are there any other men in your life you’ve had relations with recently? Or anyone who has made you feel uncomfortable?”
Her eyes dart to us and she licks her lips, panic in her expression.
“Weston took her on a date after her meeting with Richards to the pumpkin patch and we all went out to a party together last night,” Ezra answers for her, pointing to West first and then gesturing to us as a group.
The officer makes a couple notes, nodding his head. “Anyone else?” he asks her and she shakes her head. He sighs, looking Berlyn in the eye. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he starts and she holds her breath. “We thought Professor Richards may have been your stalker.”
Everyone in the room reels back at the unexpected twist except for Summer who has a somewhat vindicated smile on.
“He had pictures of you on his computer that dated back to the beginning of the semester. None of which you seemed to be aware of.”
The little color that had returned to Berlyn’s face drains once more. Mother fucker. We should have done way worse to this prick. We should have dug deeper into him, but we never thought his obsession went past the obvious.
Does he do this with every student he targets? Or was Berlyn special to him? Guess we’ll never know.
“My gut is telling me that liver does belong to your professor though,” he continues. “Your stalker may have taken him out because he saw him as competition or perhaps as a threat to you.”
“I’m going to be sick again,” Berlyn murmurs and West begins to rub soothing circles on her back while Summer hands her the water and instructs her to take deep breaths.
Through it all though, she doesn’t bring up the footage she has from last night. That has to mean something. We haven’t messed up too terribly.
“We’re going to set up a car to patrol your street, okay?”
She nods slowly, taking another sip of water when Ezra prompts her too.
He closes his notebook and gathers his stuff. Berlyn gets up to walk him out but he hesitates at the door. “One last thing,” he says. “Do you happen to know where you were Tuesday night?”
Ezra steps in between them. “Does she need a lawyer?”
The officer raises his hands and shakes his head. “Easy now. It’s pretty clear Ms. Matthews is a victim in this situation. This just helps us eliminate even the possibility. All protocol.”
Berlyn rests her hand on Ezra’s arm and he backs down. “Home probably?” she guesses, not putting much thought into it.
“Anyone who can corroborate that?”
Berlyn hesitates, thinking back.
“Wasn’t that the night we got the email from Richards cancelling class on Wednesday?” Summer interjects.
“Oh yeah,” Berlyn agrees. “Umm, everyone here was over that night,” she offers and the officer looks at all of us.
“We spent the night after falling asleep watching Halloween movies,” Ezra adds.
The officer looks down at the doorbell camera and nods. “I may need to request the footage from this as evidence,” he warns Berlyn.
“Yeah, okay,” she agrees and he gives her one final speculative glance before turning in his heel and walking to his car.
We all stand in the doorway, watching them pull away, unsure what to do next. We all look at each other and Berlyn just shakes her head.
“I’m going back to bed.”