The Last Good Girl (26 page)

She still didn't see anyone. “Cooper?” she called. Her voice echoed off the bare walls, resonating through the vast interior. Puddles of dirty water pooled on the floor. The scent of decay—dust, mold, dampness—filled her nostrils. She sneezed, creating an echo of sneezes.

“Hey, Anna! Over here.”

She didn't recognize the male voice, but she heard no malice in it, and whoever said it knew her. She followed the sound across the arcade, through a back door, and into an even darker part of the building.

It was completely black except for the beams of two flashlights in a far corner. She realized how alone she was, how remote this place was. How no one would hear if she screamed. She didn't move toward the flashlights. “Who's there?” she called.

“Lamar,” said the voice. “And De'Andre.”

These were Cooper's interns, sweet local kids who worked on his farm. She walked toward them, slowly because she still couldn't see in the darkness. One of the flashlights came toward her. It tilted upward and lit Lamar's face, which although familiar, looked gargoyle-like with the shadows going up. “Hey, Anna,” he said. “Watch your step.”

Lamar crooked his elbow and she held on to his forearm. He led her through the rubble-strewn darkness, shining the flashlight on the ground in front of her. She stepped around a big chunk of concrete with rebar sticking out of it. The generally musty smell mixed with a distinctly worse one. Rottenness. As he led her to the figure with the other flashlight, the smell grew stronger. She gagged and covered her nose with her shirt.

“Anna, hey,” said De'Andre when she reached him. He had wrapped a bandanna around the lower part of his face, covering his mouth and nose. “Be careful where you step; there's a big hole here.”

Lamar turned to her. “You sure you want to see this? Like my mom would say, there are some things you can't unsee.”

Her mind flashed to a few of the things she couldn't unsee: a young gang member stabbed to death in a courtroom; a call girl dead on the Capitol steps. She nodded.

Lamar turned and pointed his flashlight to where there should be a wall, but there wasn't. Anna realized it was an elevator shaft, gaping wide-open. He pointed his flashlight down the shaft. She walked carefully to the edge, held firmly to the corner, and looked down.

The elevator shaft went down several stories. At the bottom was a body encased in a pool of black ice. Above the ice, Anna could see a strip of pale white flesh: an arm and a shoulder, the side of a woman's face, and a swirl of long dark hair, all encased in the ice. The rest of the body was hidden below the surface.

The ice itself was thawing and watery in parts. Garbage covered the surface and was also encased in the ice. Beer cans, syringes, dirty socks, used condoms. The corpse's pale arm looked like it was reaching for a bottle of Colt 45.

Anna stepped back from the ledge.

“Let's get you guys out of here,” she said quietly.

Lamar let her keep hold of his arm as they carefully wended their way around the rubble, through the terminal, and out onto the front steps. Anna sucked in a lungful of cold outdoor air. A sob bubbled up in her throat, and she choked it back. She turned to the young men. Correction: boys. They were only seventeen years old, seniors in high school. “Are you okay?” she asked.

De'Andre nodded. “That's terrible. But I gotta tell you, the kids at school are gonna wanna hear this story.” He gave her a weak grin. She knew he was both telling the truth and using it to cover the fact that he was deeply disturbed by what he'd seen. And if they were all disturbed, how was the army vet with PTSD?

“Where's Cooper?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Lamar said. “He left after we showed him the body.”

“Okay. You stay here—outside. The FBI, police, and coroner are coming. Tell them where the body is. Don't go back in yourself until they get here. I'm gonna try to find Cooper.”

A
ll this can be yours.”

No one actually said it. But that was the message, loud and clear.

Wyatt stood on the deck of the yacht, sipping Amstel Light and looking across Lake St. Clair at Grosse Pointe and some of the priciest real estate in Michigan. Lined up on the water was a row of mansions, each architecturally unique, each trying with great success to outdo the other. Three-story walls of windows, saltwater pools with cabanas bigger than most homes, trellises climbing with wisteria, stone walls erected in the 1800s and maintained through the decades by the best architects money could buy. Of course, each house had prominent signs announcing which security system it used.

The Highsmiths' yacht sailed past these lesser mansions. Among impressive houses, the home of Dylan Highsmith was the most impressive of all, a massive Tudor that sported both historic turrets and the finest modern amenities.

Every year, Beta Psi took the pledges on a road trip to Robert Highsmith's house for a luncheon near the end of Hell Week. It was a carrot among sticks.
Hang in there, pledges, and this will be your rich reward.

On this day, instead of scrubbing beer scum off the basement floor, Wyatt and his pledge buddies got to mingle with Beta Psi alumni, who regaled them with beery stories of their own youthful misadventures. The alumni were the 1 percent of the 1 percent—CEOs, CFOs, lawyers, and execs at the top of the American corporate food chain. The long circular driveway was parked up with their Jags, Cadillacs, and Teslas. Several alums came with a wife or girlfriend who had been nipped, tucked, highlighted, Pilated, and paleo-dieted into a physical state as close to a Barbie doll as humanly possible. Dylan's mother wasn't there. Someone whispered that she spent most of her time at Canyon Ranch. The pledges were not invited to bring dates.

Almost all the pledges wore blue blazers, khakis, and loafers, the uniform of privilege. Wyatt hadn't owned a blue blazer before he pledged Beta Psi. He never mentioned that to anyone else, and he never asked for guidance. He just did his best to observe and replicate the behavior around him. One kid wore bright red pants instead of khakis, but that kid had a trust fund bigger than some countries' GDP. Wyatt would never have the confidence or pedigree to wear bright red pants. At least by now he knew enough to get into the standard uniform. He was never free of the nagging fear that he would get something wrong and expose himself for what he was. An interloper. But he'd learned that if you just looked good and shut up, you could get through 90 percent of all parties.

Like now. The founder of a high-tech company was talking about how he used to piss on the wall of a dormitory that had just been named after him. Wyatt laughed along with everyone else. But he couldn't concentrate.

Wyatt stood next to Dylan and his father and had to work hard not to stare at either one. Robert Highsmith commanded attention because of who he was. Dylan was Wyatt's pledge master. But that wasn't why Wyatt's eyes were constantly drawn to the Highsmith men.

It was the secrets he carried for them. He wanted entrance to this clean riverfront world, away from the dirt and manure of the farm, away from the assembly line where most Holly Grove kids worked after high school if they were lucky. He just had to stick to his plan, which was simple. Keep his mouth shut. What could be easier? It wasn't even like he had to do anything. Stand still, enjoy the ride. Enjoy the cold beer and the feel of the powerful boat purring under his feet. Smile and nod and shut the fuck up. Everything else flowed from that.

So why was it so hard? The secrets sometimes felt like a physical thing, a live creature with teeth and claws burrowing in his chest, trying to find a way out. He wasn't sure he could get through his whole life with it chewing on his heart. Forget his whole life—he wasn't sure he could get through another day without letting it claw its way up his throat and out his mouth.

He took another sip of beer and laughed at a joke he hadn't heard. He'd hurt no one. He had no responsibility. He did his homework, cleaned the frat floor, occasionally went home and helped with farm chores. That was enough. If other kids did bad shit, that wasn't his fault or his problem.

The only thing that was his problem was finding his way as a young, unconnected, average white male in an economy that was more and more the terrain of geeks, legacies, and outsourcing. Wyatt wasn't a geek—he wasn't smart enough to write code or devoted enough to stay up all night studying for an exam. He wasn't going back to the farm. That left only one option, as he saw it, which was to throw his lot with the legacies, the kids whose position at the trough had been ensured from the moment they were born. He wasn't one of them, but if he could approximate them closely enough, he could eat at their table.

“What are we gonna do about the bones?” a CEO asked Dylan's father.

The whole boat seemed to shift as the weight of attention turned toward the lieutenant governor. Robert waved a hand nonchalantly. “It'll blow over. Beta Psi'll have a couple weeks of bad press. But it's just hijinks, which happened years ago. Most of those bits and pieces were collected by brothers in the 1920s through '50s. Ancient history. I'm not worried. What I'm really worried about is whether to refurbish this boat. Now
that's
a disaster waiting to happen.”

Everyone laughed.

“Do you get out on the water much, sir?” asked a pledge.

“I grew up in a little town downriver. Saw boats going past and knew if I made it out, I'd spend as much time sailing as I could.”

That got murmurs of approval, and a palpable feeling of relief as they launched into a new subject. Robert talked about how he worked his way up, founding several companies before entering politics. Every rich man had a tale of pulling himself up by the bootstraps, Wyatt thought, even the ones who'd been born in Burberry boots. They seemed to like this story, the American dream of forging a fortune through their bare hands. But Robert's story was a myth. Wyatt had read the Wikipedia page. Robert's father was the downriver scion, and Robert had merely added to his father's already considerable fortune. That didn't make as good a creation tale. Robert sold himself as a self-made man.

“Unlike young Dylan here,” Robert said, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder so hard it looked like an assault. “Who seems intent on spending the family's fortune faster than I can amass it. And he's shown himself quite adept at that, if nothing else.”

It took a moment, but Dylan smiled back and gave a hearty good-old-boy answer: “Everyone's got their talent. I'm glad ours work together so well, Pop.”

Father and son laughed, though the smile didn't reach Dylan's eyes.

The yacht docked on a private pier, and the men walked along a winding path up through a long yard and into the house. Inside the big vermilion dining room, they lunched on prime rib. Pity the pledge who asked if there was a vegetarian option. Wyatt didn't need to see the eye rolls to know that pledge wouldn't be receiving an invitation to become a member of Beta Psi.

After six courses and dessert, they had scotch and cigars. Wyatt sipped eighteen-year-old samples of Talisker, Lagavulin, and Laphroaig. They all tasted like smoked moonshine to him: strong, fiery, and barely palatable. But apparently they were quite fine, because the older men murmured their appreciation.

When everyone was good and liquored up, Robert stood at the head of the table and lifted his hands. The crowd quieted.

“I want to thank you for coming this afternoon,” Robert said. “This has been a tradition for many years. I was a Beta Psi myself. Being in the brotherhood helped me become who I am today. It taught me about self-reliance. About being a man. It gave me lifelong friendships, many friends I see here tonight. And most of all, it was a damn good time.”

The men chuckled.

“These days, there's a lot of bad press for fraternities. Like our little cadaver kerfuffle.” That got a laugh. “But for each negative story, there are dozens of powerful examples of the very positive side of Greek life. We all know how the lessons of confidence and trust in your brothers sets young men on the path for lifelong success. But it's not just us. It's science.”

He read from a sheet of paper: “Eighteen former presidents were in college fraternities. Since 1910 fraternity men have made up 85 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices, 63 percent of presidential cabinet members, 76 percent of U.S. senators, 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives, and 71 percent of men in ‘Who's Who in America.' ”

A “Hurrah” came from the crowd, reminiscent of an “Amen” at church.

“And then we have the activities of the current generation,” Robert continued. “Several of which were orchestrated by my own son, Dylan. Let's see.” He looked at his paper. “The ‘Zip Ties and Mai Tais Party' of 2013, where each Beta Psi gentleman was zip-tied to a female guest. The 2014 ‘Beauty and the Beast' party, where Beta Psis were each encouraged to bring a date and put her up for an award—prettiest, ugliest, hairiest, et cetera—although the girls didn't know that's what they were being rated on. At least not until the end, when the awards were revealed. That was an interesting one to hear from parents about. And of course the 2015 ‘Save the Ta-Tas Wet T-shirt Contest' with proceeds going to breast cancer research, until breast cancer research refused to take the proceeds because they were so offended by the contest. Way to go, Dylan.”

The men at the tables wore expressions between cringes and smirks. Wyatt didn't think it was fair. Sure, some of those ideas had been stupid, but Dylan at least was trying, and a couple of the events had been for a good cause, even if they were kind of immature. But what really struck him was the look on Dylan's face. A thin-lipped grimace. He was trying not to cry.

As much as Wyatt was ashamed of his farm upbringing, much as he wished he had parents who knew how to navigate the mysterious landscape of wealth and power, he had to take a moment to be thankful for his mom and dad, for the simple reason that they were kind. His dad would never purposely embarrass him in front of other people. Craig Bolden loved his sons, and that was that.