Home for the Haunting(77)

“’S open,” came the voice. Groggy, it came in that tone I was used to from my stepson and others who seemed to equate vagueness with coolness.

I opened to see a large room with several beds, all of which appeared disheveled as though the room had been tossed. But I wasn’t fooled; I’d been to college, and Greeks or no Greeks, I knew what the average dorm room looked like . . . especially the average guy’s dorm room.

Jefferson was lying on the bed, in approximately the same position and attitude as the guy on the porch. I reminded myself that these were UC Berkeley students, and Berkeley was one of the more competitive universities in California, or perhaps the world. Surely they were smarter than met the eye.

“Hey,” said Jefferson, bloodshot eyes meeting mine. “Wait, weren’t you the chick from the community service whatever?”

“Yup, that’s me. The chick from the community service whatever. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

“What’s up?”

“Could you walk me through how you found the, um . . . ?”

“The body? Dude, that’s all I can think about. I mean, you don’t come across something like that every day—you know what I mean? It’s not like I’m a doctor or whatever.”

“You should go into the construction business,” murmured Zach. I elbowed him and heard a muffled ooofh.

“I’m, like, an architecture major,” Jefferson answered seriously, not getting Zach’s joke. “That’s sort of the construction business.”

“It is, sort of. So, about the body?”

“I mean, seriously? It makes a person think about, like, mortality or whatever. And the fact that we don’t really deal much with death in this society. It’s, like, all handled by doctors and whatever behind closed doors.”

“True,” I said, shifting my attitude. Like my stepson, Jefferson had a certain mien that distracted from his thoughtfulness. “I know it was hard for you. Do you think you could walk me through it?”

“I already told the police, like, a few times.”

“I know, but I’m looking into it for a friend, for her brother.”

“Dude, her brother? What a drag for him. Is it true he’s, like, a totally famous poet?”

I nodded. “Yep. Poet laureate. It’s a pretty big deal.”

“Yeah, I told it to my girlfriend—she’s a lit major—and she was all, like, that guy’s a genius. Poor guy.”

“Yes, he’s dealt with a lot. So when you found the body . . . ?”

“Okay, so like I said, I was just pushing in the door to the shed, but it wouldn’t really budge. And then, like, I saw hair, so I knew it wasn’t good.”

“Did you see anything else, anything that seemed out of place, anything like that?”

“She had, like, vomit on her. And what really bothered me—I don’t know why exactly, but what bothered me was she was all swollen.”

He was right; Linda had looked terrible. Not much of a surprise. After all, she was dead.

As though reading my mind, he went on: “I mean, she looked bad because she was dead; I get that. Kind of a weird gray color, not the normal color. But what I keep thinking is, dude, you kill yourself with painkillers because it’s like a sweet way to go, right? No pain, just ride right on out of this life. But dude, what rotten luck that you’d be allergic and instead of just having a nice trip to the beyond, you blow up and get all itchy and weird. You know? But if you don’t know your pills, I guess you wouldn’t know.”

But Linda did know her pills. She had been using one thing or another—Hugh had mentioned prescription drugs specifically—for years. Wouldn’t she have known she was allergic to opioids? Jefferson was right—it would be surprising for someone to knowingly dose herself with the sorts of drugs that would cause her such discomfort on the way out.

So did that prove that someone else was there, that someone gave her those pills? And whether she had taken them willingly or not we might never know . . . unless we could figure out who that person was, and he—or she—told us the truth.

“Oh, one other thing? One of the sorority girls told me she saw a lot of vials of pain pills in Monty’s bathroom. Maybe she got into those somehow?”

• • •



We picked Caleb up from school and headed to Monty’s house.

Caleb remained silent in the back seat. When we pulled up and Zach got out, Caleb leaned forward. “So, like, are you with Zach now?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I’m not ‘with’ anybody.”

“Oh. ’Cause I sort of, like, invited Graham—”