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“That bitch betrayed a member of our order,” he snaps. “She had to be punished!”
“Right,” I say. “By chopping off her head and grinding her body up in a garbage disposal?”
Jeff throws a shocked look in Steve’s direction. “Dude. That was you?”
“Oh, it was Steve, all right,” I say. “Just because Lindsay stole—”
“Something that didn’t rightfully belong to her,” Steve barks. “Something she wouldn’t give back—”
“She tried,” I insist. “She let your brother in here—”
“And it was gone!” Steve shouts over me. “She claims someone must have stolen it. Like we were supposed to believe that! She was a liar as well as a thief. She deserved to be put to death for her betrayal!”
“Dude.” There’s hurt as well as disbelief in Jeff’s face. “Lindsay was my girlfriend’s best friend.”
“Then you ought to be thanking me,” Steve says imperiously. “For if your girlfriend had continued to consort with the likes of that woman, she’d have eventually learned her ways and betrayed you, too, the way she betrayed one of our brothers.”
It seems to take a minute for this to sink in for Jeff. But when it finally does, he doesn’t hesitate a second longer.
“That’s it.” Jeff Turner shakes his head. “I’m out. I only joined this stupid frat ’cause my dad was in it. I did not sign on to go around killing people. You want to hit my butt with a paddle? Fine. You want to force me to chug a twenty-four-pack? No problem. But kill chicks? No way. You guys are fucking nuts—”
As he’s saying this, he’s reached down to pull off his robe. Steve, watching, shakes his head sadly. Then he nods at two of the robed figures in the circle around his altar, and they cross the room to deliver several blows to Jeff’s midriff—while he’s still floundering around in his robe, no less—until he finally falls to the ground, where they begin kicking him, heedless of his screams of pain. The other pledges, seeing this brutal treatment of one of their peers, stand frozen in place, watching.
They’re not the only ones who feel frozen. I ca
Knowing there’s only one person who’s going to be able to put a stop to this—or die trying, anyway—I say loudly to the other pledges, who are just standing there watching their friend get the snot kicked out of him, “Just so you guys know, the thing Lindsay stole? It was Doug Winer’s stash of coke.”
It’s impossible to tell what the boys’ reaction to this information is, since their faces are still hidden beneath their hoods. But I see them stir even more uneasily.
“Don’t listen to her,” Steve instructs them. “She’s lying. It’s what all of them do—try to demonize the order by spreading malicious lies about us.”
“Um, we don’t have to demonize you guys,” I say. “You do a good enough job of that on your own. Or are you saying your brother Doug didn’t strangle his girlfriend to death because she stole his nose candy?”
One of the people kicking Jeff Turner stops, and a second later Doug Winer is striding toward me, his hood down.
“You take that back!” he cries, eyes blazing. “I didn’t! I didn’t kill her!”
Steve reaches out to grab his little brother’s arm. “Doug—”
“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 fuck-ups.”
“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 go
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.