Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
“You can get it in Europe, but in Mexico...? Apparently the drug is widely available,” Jules said.
“Like, you can just walk into a pharmacy and buy it?” Tom was aghast.
“Like, Hello, in which aisle can I find your flunitrazepam?” Belle asked.
As Jules had filled them in on the detailed info he’d gotten from Mr. Harrison, they’d all stumbled over the five-syllable monstrosity until Hobbit phonetically wrote out the drug name in marker on the evidence board, right in the very top left corner.
“Yeah, I honestly don’t know if that’s what widely available means, or if it simply isn’t hard to find a dealer in a dark alley who’ll sell it to you cheap,” Jules admitted. “Bottom line, it’s easy enough to get.”
“Bottom line, that’s fucked up,” Sadie said.
“Yes, it is,” Jules agreed.
He’d sent out a proverbial bat-signal at the very end of lunch period—a message to gather at the summer house after school, and they all showed up.
Belle, Tom, Shelly, Sadie, Hobbit.
And Rodney and his little sister, Meg.
The plan to catch Suspect X had come to Jules in almost its entirety after his conversation with Mr. H. It could work, absolutely—he knew it could—but only with Rodney’s help.
Earlier that morning, Sadie had used Jules’s car to drive Rod and Meg into Hartford, to a women’s health clinic where Sadie had marched in and gotten the girl examined.
Too many days had passed since the assault for a rape kit to be effective, but the doctor there had offered to use one anyway.
Sadie had reported that the doctor was kind, she was warm, and best of all, she’d believed everything that Meg and Sadie told her, but had been respectful about Meg’s decision not to notify the police.
The doctor did a blood draw, complete with a thankfully negative pregnancy test, as well as checking for various STDs—they’d have to wait for those results.
But the good news was that Meg’s internal exam didn’t show signs of ongoing contusion or other physical trauma.
The doctor suspected her continuous bleeding was a result of upside-down hormone levels from intense stress.
They’d returned to school around lunchtime, with Hobbit-forged notes from their “parents”—one for both Rod and Meg, and one for Sadie, with distinctly different handwriting and different phrasing and word choices, too.
The kid really was quite the artist.
Hob had also cut eighth period—no doubt with a Please let Kevin leave early to go to the dentist note of his own—to climb in Jules’s bedroom window to add Meg’s rape, in neon orange marker, to the nearly-full evidence board.
Jules had picked up both Hob and the board on his way home from school, driving them out here to the deserted farm stand.
Where they all now stared at the board.
“With this information about this drug, our suspect list can be narrowed down to people who’ve recently traveled to Europe or Mexico,” Jules said.
“Charlie,” Belle said. “And Trent. And maybe that other kid from Ottersfield, too? Bob? I was on my third beer, so I kinda don’t remember who all went to Mexico, but one of them definitely did and at least one other kid went with him.”
“I remember you mentioning Mexico,” Jules told her. “I think it was Charlie and Trent, although we should look hard at Bob, too.”
“Those motherfuckers,” Rodney said. “I’m going to fucking kill them.” He looked ready to walk out of there to go and do just that.
Jules moved slightly so that he was blocking Rod’s path to the tent flap they used as a door. “How about the kids on our soccer team? Anyone talk about international travel? Trips to Acapulco or Cozumel? Or maybe even Paris?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Rodney said. “No one has that kind of money.”
“But Trent and-or Charlie and-or Bob from Ottersfield do,” Jules pointed out.
“And we know that someone is close enough friends with them to invite them to these parties. Maybe close enough to catch a ride on Trent’s Daddy’s private jet for a long weekend south of the border.
..? Can you, maybe, ask the team about that? ”
“How the fuck do I do that without making it stupidly obvious?”
“You go to your next soccer rehearsal,” Hobbit said, “and while you’re on the field, warming up, or whatever you do out there, you say to whoever’s warming up near you, Hey, I’ve got some money saved and I was thinking about signing up for an international soccer camp in Acapulco next summer but my mother watches too much Fox News and thinks Mexico’s a literal shithole where I’ll be murdered and tossed into a ditch. Any of you guys ever go there?”
“It’s a practice,” Rod said, “not—”
“Rehearsal,” Hobbit finished with him. “I know.” He gave the older boy a tight smile. “I said that on purpose, to annoy you.”
“It’s not that hard to do,” Sadie told Rodney. “You used to be able to act—he was the Cowardly Lion in the fourth grade play.”
“You were the Cowardly Lion?” Hobbit was delighted. “Did you sing? Did he sing? If I were the king of the forest...!”
“Oh, he sang.” Sadie was grinning at Rod’s obvious discomfort.
“Oh, my God,” Hobbit said. “And were you Dorothy, skipping around in a little gingham dress...? Somewhere over the...”
“She should’ve been Dorothy,” Rodney said grimly. “She was so much better than What’s-Her-Face.”
“Paulette D’Amato was really pretty and, I was.
.. Well, I was the Tin Man so at least I got to hang out with Rod and be funny.
But whatever. It was a million years ago.
” Sadie turned to her former musical theatre co-star.
“If you want, I’ll help you rehearse when we’re done here.
Figure out exactly what you’ll say—make sure your lines feel natural. ”
It was more than obvious to all of them that Rod was not going to turn down a chance to spend one-on-one time with Sadie.
He nodded, trying and failing to do it grudgingly. “Okay.” No one was fooled.
“I’ll stay and help, too,” Hobbit chimed in, clearly just to be a dick—which Rodney completely had coming.
“Great,” Sadie said, telling Rod, “Hobbit’s really good at this.”
“Yeah,” Rod said a tad weakly. “Thanks. Great.”
“Good,” Jules said. “How about Topher or Joey?” He looked around from Belle to Tom to Sadie to Shelly and even Meg, getting headshakes and shrugs before landing back on Hobbit.
“Topher’s family has money, but he lost access when he moved out,” Hobbit reminded Jules.
“Right,” Jules said. When Topher’s parents had kicked his brother Liam out of the house for being gay, Topher had gone with him in solidarity.
“It’s not him,” Hobbit insisted. “Or Joey either. But I get that you want to check every box, so I’ll bring up Mexico at the FU Club on Wednesday. FYI, I’ll ask you, too, so it’s not too weird. More weird. I’m gonna look weird whatever I do.”
Jules smiled at his friend. “You are a little weird, so I’m pretty sure you’ll make it work.”
“Thanks,” Hobbit said. “I think?”
“Can anyone get hands on a video camera?” Jules asked.
His mom had one, but it was both ancient and one of her most prized possessions.
There was no way he could take it out of the house and risk dropping and breaking it.
His mother cherished their old family videotapes, made before his father died.
Technology was changing so quickly that if something happened to that old camera, she’d have no way to play back those precious tapes.
“Not that I could borrow without risk of death,” Hobbit said.
“Kinda the same here,” Shelly said as Sadie nodded.
“I could rejoin the school AV club,” Tom offered. “See what they have in their supply closet.”
“I’ll be the plan B if that fails,” Belle volunteered.
“I’ll be grounded until the end of time if I take my parents’ camera—but only if they find out.
I’m willing to risk it—because us having a video camera available is a really good idea.
” She looked at Jules. “So what’s the plan? How do we catch this motherfucker?”
“Rodney’s our secret weapon,” Jules told her, told all of them—including Rodney, who still looked as if his prime directive was to find and obliterate everyone on their suspect list, starting with the Ottersfield trio.
“We’re going to do it again—what we did last weekend.
At the next party, we’re going to bait Suspect X into drugging an allegedly vulnerable girl—and this time we’ll get him.
He knows we’re onto him—but he doesn’t know that Rodney knows, and that Rod’s working with us to catch him.
So between now and the next party, we all have to stay away from Rod when we’re at school.
” He looked from Sadie to Rod. “All of us. And Rod, you’ll need to use some of those Cowardly Lion acting chops to make it look like you actively have it in for us. ”
“That won’t be hard to do,” Hobbit said under his breath.
“And you also can’t say or do anything—at all—to our prime suspects. No getting in their faces for any reason, because if you do,” Jules continued, “they’ll know, and this won’t work, and we won’t catch them. Do you understand?”
Rod nodded.
Jules kept going. “We’ll be relying on you to go to that party, to stay sober—eat and drink nothing—don’t make the same mistake I did—and keep our bait safe.”
Rodney nodded again, the expression on his face now dead serious.
“I love this,” Belle said, “but I really don’t think it can be me. As bait. I’d love to do it, I really would, but—”
“No, I agree,” Jules said. “It can’t be you. That’s just too obvious.” He turned to Sadie, but she was already a step ahead of him.
“I’m not sure how it can be me, either,” Sadie said, “although, sure, if you want me to try, I’m up for it.” She looked at Rod. “I mean, as long as you’ll be there.”
And there it was. Rod was locked in. There was no way now that he was going to screw this up.