Deep Pockets (8 page)

Who did you trust with your love letters, Denali?

I flipped a mental coin.

I wiped glazed-doughnut sugar off my fingers and
glanced at my watch. Leaving my car in the lot behind Pearl Art, I walked up Mass Ave, skirting the Yard, passing the Fogg Museum and slipping between the ziggurat-topped Graduate School of Design and magnificent Memorial Hall. I might have found a parking space closer to McKay Hall, behind the Science Center, but it was doubtful at best, and I enjoyed the walk. One thing about a university town, people walk. Some folks in Cambridge and Boston consider cars an abomination; they don’t even know how to drive.

The ones who do drive, most of them don’t have a clue, either.

I found a convenient tree to lean against and waited for Jean St. Cyr, Jeannie, the roommate, the dark girl with the notebook on her belly and the questions in her eyes, who’d told nasty Gregor she couldn’t meet him at eleven because she had a class at McKay. Across Oxford Street, a scrawny student tried to launch a kite despite an almost-total lack of breeze and an abundance of trees and telephone wires. I watched him fail over and over, wondered if it was a class experiment in futility.

I was starting to think I’d missed her, when I caught a glimpse of a girl speeding across the grass, her backpack flung across one shoulder, wearing a raggedy tight red T and bleached jeans. She saw me at the same time and stopped in her tracks, glancing quickly from side to side like a cornered animal.

I moved, and she ran like a deer.

She darted around the Science Center and made for the Yard. She was fast and agile, but hampered by the crowd near the gate. I was gaining, shoving kids out of the way, pushing past a clot of robed priests. She raced through the gate, sprinted to the right, away from the crowd, toward Memorial Church and Robinson. She was weighed down by her backpack, hampered by short legs and clunky shoes. She tripped and almost went down, regained her footing, and charged ahead.

I was on her heels, close enough to hear her pant. I didn’t waste breath ordering her to stop. What the hell was I gonna do if she didn’t, shoot her? I put my head down and ran hard, ran till I could grab her shoulder.

At my touch, she sank to the ground, like a stone plunging to the bottom of a pond. She was gasping for breath and crying. In a minute, I’d have a full-blown incident on my hands:
Hey, lady, what the hell you trying to do to that girl
?

“It’s okay,” I assured the closest hoverers. “My friend’s okay. Just give her some space.” There were murmurs of concern, but no one intervened; I don’t look like a bruiser. I knelt beside her, inhaling the scent of fresh-mown grass, and put what must have looked like a comforting hand on her shoulder.

She wasn’t going anywhere, and I wanted her to know it. Running makes a suspect look guilty as hell. Maybe I’d guessed right on whom to question first, the boyfriend or the roommate.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God.” Defenseless, out of breath, out of guts, tears rolled down her cheeks. My sympathetic side felt like patting her on the back. I kept it in check and waited till the crowd dispersed. Then I grabbed her chin and tilted her face so I could see into her dark eyes.

“You needed the money? Is that why?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Or did you want to teach the bastard a lesson?”

“What the—”

“You’ve got Denali’s letters, don’t you?”

“I don’t have any of your stuff, honest!” She started wailing again, and a new audience began to gather, eager for a show. I helped her to her feet, careful never to release my grip. Her eyes were wide and staring; I wondered if she was taking some kind of dope.

“Come on, Jeannie,” I said gently. “Let’s take a walk.”

Speak gently, it disarms folks. Call somebody by their name, people assume you know them.
No, Doris, don’t butt in. It’s not like it’s some stranger trying to abduct a kid
. Abductors know it; they always use a name.

“I don’t want to talk to you.” She was too breathless from running to summon any volume. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t. Oh God.” If I hadn’t been holding her, she’d have fallen to her knees again. “It’s all my fault. Everything’s my fault.”

If she collapsed, the guy in the rimless glasses was definitely going to come over and make a stink. She seemed so painfully young, so pathetically scared, I could hardly buy her as a blackmailer.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked.

She shook her head no. See, there it is; I’d tell Paolina.

I half persuaded, half dragged her to Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, a Harvard Square institution where the waitresses have seen everything, breakups and hysterics, drug ODs and marriage proposals, would-be grooms dropping to their knees on the saggy linoleum. After manhandling her into a booth near the rest room, I ordered a Pepsi for me and a breakfast burger for her, a glass of milk, as well.

By God, I’d make somebody drink milk.

“I’m missing class. It’s, like, finals review.”

I’d blocked her exit, sitting next to instead of across from her. To escape, she’d have to crawl under the table.

“I’m Carlotta,” I said, “by the way.”

She ducked her head like a turtle retreating back into its shell. “Jeannie.”

“So how’d you get to be Denali’s roommate, Jeannie? Luck of the draw?”

Nothing in these easy questions to cause another outbreak of hysterics. Her eyes slid sideways as she considered her plight. I had custody of her backpack. I had her socked into the booth. I was bigger than she was and I could run faster. She stared at me as if I were the matron of some terrifying prison camp.

“I guess they figured we’d have something in common. Like we were both freshmen, both hoping to be psych majors, interested in education.” Her voice was small and hiccupy.

“Both in Professor Chaney’s class?”

She responded almost eagerly, anything to shift the topic away from Denali. “Isn’t he, like, wonderful? Like most of the lectures, with his TA, it’s like she drones and we take notes, but when he comes in, everybody wakes up. It’s like this big challenge, like he wants to hear what we think.”

The waitress plunked dishes on the table; I was happy to let Jeannie prattle on about Chaney.

“Like this one class was about like who should get medicated? Like if we medicate students who are behavioral problems, instead of finding other ways to cope, what are we saying? I mean, I totally believe in all that chemistry shit. My mom, she’s like depressed for no reason, and I figure if they could just like give her a blood test and readjust her serotonin, she’d be way happier. But Chaney wanted us to think about who we’d do that for, and why we’d do it, and whether we’d do it if the kid wanted it, or if the parent wanted it, or if the school wanted it. Like it might not be such a great thing after all.”

Right, I thought. Start by filing the rough edges, pretty soon you’re working with a cookie cutter instead of a file. Jeannie picked at her food, breaking the bun to pieces with nervous fingers.

I said, “What about Denali — did she like Chaney, too?”

Jeannie’s eyes narrowed. “Everybody wants to know about Denali, and then when I don’t answer, they think I’m hiding something. I don’t know if she liked Chaney or hated his guts. I don’t know where your stuff is! And I didn’t make her move out. I liked her. I mean, like, I never had a roommate before. I don’t have any sisters or brothers. She was pretty and smart, you know, blond and all, but really strong.” Abruptly, she was crying again. The brunette waitress gave me the eye from behind the counter, checking to make sure I wasn’t slapping the kid around. “Like, all the other girls, they got along fine with their roommates. They were like sisters.”

I nodded encouragingly at the waitress, patted Jeannie on the shoulder. “But not you and Denali?”

“Like, I tried; I had a lot of friends in high school. Everybody told me my roommate would be like my best friend, but Denali didn’t want to spend time with me or talk to me or anything. I mean, like the only time she ever started a conversation was when she had a toothache and wanted to know did I know a good dentist. Honest to God. And my mom’s college roommate, she was, like, maid of honor at her wedding, and she’s still her best friend. But that’s in Illinois. You know, this place is so weird.” She lowered her voice to a throaty whisper. “They tell you its not like cliquey here, not like high school, but everybody sorts themselves out: future presidents, business leaders, lawyers, and shit.” She tried to force a smile, but it only made her look more miserable. “Then there’re the also-rans.” She didn’t add “like me,” but she might as well have.

“And Denali?”

“Oh, she was no also-ran. I mean, she was an athlete and everything, a rower. Maybe that’s another reason they paired us. I’m, like,
interested
in rowing, but she was here on a rowing
scholarship
. She was world-class. She had, like, boxes of trophies. What, am I gonna talk to her about, like, the time I came in first at camp?”

She was thin and small, with a plain, earnest face and close-cropped dark hair. Her T-shirt was frayed, but it fit like a glove. It might have cost her twelve bucks at a discount store, but I thought it had probably run a hundred at a boutique on Newbury. She had rings on her fingers that weren’t dime-store merchandise and small diamond studs in her ears. Her sandals tied at her ankles and her toenails were painted pearly orange.

Food was steadily disappearing off her plate; she seemed to be regaining some color. “I mean, how am I supposed to concentrate? This is, like, almost finals week, and here I am, talking about my ex-roommate instead of going to class. How can I study or anything when there’s, like, this stupid lawsuit looming over everything?”

I’d been about to order another Pepsi, more milk. Instead, I froze and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, I repeated that single word
lawsuit
, raising my pitch to make it a question.

She moistened her finger and stabbed at some wayward crumbs. “Well, Denali’s family — it’s, like, a wrongful-death suit. Like she shoulda been in the dorm, and they’re gonna make me testify, and then they’ll blame it all on me, on how I was such a shitty roommate.”

“Jeannie, look at me. Nobody kills herself because her roommate tries to be friendly.”

“Worst of all, I didn’t tell anybody when she left. I mean, I was, like, so embarrassed. What was I supposed to say? Excuse me, but my roommate moved out ’cause she can’t stand me? I mean, I didn’t know what to say.”

“She didn’t leave a note or say good-bye?”

“You knew her, right?”

“A long time ago,” I said, lying.

“Well, believe me, she didn’t do a whole lot of explaining. Like when she first moved in, she had almost no clothes, you know, and sometimes she’d borrow my stuff, but she’d never ask. It’s not like I minded or anything. I didn’t complain when she kept her kayak in the middle of the floor or her trophies under the bed. And when I said maybe we should buy curtains and bedspreads and stuff, she said no, the room was fine the way it was, just bare. I mean, she didn’t even sleep on the bed, just rolled her blanket out on the floor.”

Guilt poured off the kid in waves.

“I got mad at her because of the stinking kayak. I mean, why couldn’t she leave it in the boathouse? Did she think somebody would, like, steal it?”

I shrugged, but I don’t think she noticed.

“It was like the only thing she had. I mean, she hardly had anything, like she coulda put all her stuff in a cardboard box, another box for the trophies. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t mind when she borrowed my clothes. I even tried to give her my sleeping bag.”

“Jeannie, did she have a place where she kept special things? A place for jewelry or old photographs?”

“Like where she maybe kept your stuff?” She placed her tongue between her teeth and frowned in concentration. “Well, she had this old candy box, not even like Godiva, some drugstore thing. An old Whitman’s Sampler box. Yeah.”

“Did she leave anything behind, a slip of paper, something you might not have thought was important?”

She avoided my eyes, staring down at the table. “I found one of her trophies, a small one, under the bed. I was going to give it back to her sometime. I didn’t throw it away. Do you want it?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I
want
you to have it. I mean, you were her friend.”

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? Why did you run away?”

“They told me not to talk about her. They told me not to talk to anybody. Grayson and Miranda and this guy they sent over from Legal Services.”

Grayson was one of the housemasters.

“You won’t tell anybody I said anything? Like you’re not gonna testify I said I didn’t like her, are you? I didn’t really mean it. She didn’t like me, so I was glad when she left. And now she’s dead and I just fucking missed my science class and I’m going to flunk out before they kick me out, and my parents will be so upset.” She shoved her plate away and her head sank until her cheek met the tabletop.

When I was twenty-one, a close friend killed himself. Last person in the world to do it, I thought, so I didn’t accept it as suicide. I saw it as another kind of murder, and I wanted to find the culprit. I blamed his parents, blamed his friends, blamed myself. Why the hell hadn’t I been sharp enough, smart enough, to see it coming, head it off?

“Come on.” I urged her out of the booth, plunked money on the counter, and raised my eyebrows at the inquisitive waitress.

Chaney seemed to have put his feelings for Denali Brinkman in a box, locked it, and buried it six feet under. Chaney might not blame himself for Denali’s suicide, but this girl did. I grabbed her hand and explained where we were headed. For a moment, I thought she’d run again, but then I caught a glimmer of relief in her eyes.

Harvard Health Services is four floors up, in Holyoke Center. The waiting room was far from crowded, and after twenty minutes of “fill in the forms” inaction, I made myself unpleasant. The reception gorgon was brittle and defensive. Her nameplate said Jo, and she wanted me to know she was overworked.