Born Under a Blond Sign Page 5

  As I was moving them over, I dropped one of the notebooks.

  It fell on the floor, open.

  When I picked it up, I noticed something poking out of the pocket. It was one of those notebooks where every divider has a little pocket folder. Those folders had seemed empty, so I hadn’t searched them before.

  But there was something inside this one.

  I eased it out with one finger.

  It was a tiny envelope. Not a standard size or anything. It was the perfect size for…

  Tickets.

  Yup. There were two tickets in here to a concert. It was a big deal event at Keene every year. They called it Keenefest, and they always got some big name musical group to play. This year, according to the tickets, it was some hip hop group I’d barely heard of.

  Keenefest wasn’t until next month.

  There was a receipt in the envelope as well. I checked the date.

  No way.

  The receipt was dated for the Monday of the shooting.

  I left the notebook where it was, and spread the tickets and the receipt out on my desk. I stared at them.

  “Brigit?” I yelled.

  “Yeah?” came her voice.

  “Come in here,” I said.

  A few seconds later, she poked her head inside the office. “What?”

  I beckoned. “Explain to me, Brigit, why a person who’s planning on killing himself and five other people decides to buy tickets for a concert a month in the future? And why does he do that hours before he commits mass murder?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m not doing any more interviews,” said Karen Sirk as she peered out of her dorm room. “I signed an exclusive with Connie West at UNC, and that’s the only person I’m talking to.”

  “We’re not reporters,” I said.

  “Oh, sure, you’re not,” said Karen. “You think you’re going to trick me with that?”

  I handed her a card.

  “Ivy Stern,” she read. “Private Detective.” She looked up. “So? Anyone could get cards made up.”

  “She’s the detective that brought down Ralph the Hatchet,” said Brigit.

  “Ralph the who?”

  “The serial killer who stalked the girls on the interstate?” said Brigit. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about that. Were you living under a rock or something?”

  “Maybe I remember something about that,” said Karen. “So, um, what do you want?”

  “We want to ask you some questions about the shooting,” I said. “We know you were there, because we’ve seen you on every major news station talking about it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not the only person talking. Besides, people want to know what happened. That’s why you guys are here, right?”

  “We’ve been hired by the family of Gilbert Pike to find out why he did what he did,” I said.

  “Well, everyone wants to know that,” said Karen. “I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t even know the kid.”

  “But you were there when the shooting happened.”

  “I was in the other room,” she said. “They were all back in the bedroom, but we were in the living room. So, we heard the shots and everything, but we weren’t in there. If we’d been in there, we’d be dead. He shot everyone in the room.”

  “Right,” I said. “I understand that. Maybe you can explain to me why all of you were gathered in that dorm room in the middle of a Monday afternoon.”

  She licked her lips. “It was a party.”

  “A party? At two o’clock? Is that a typical time for a party?”

  “Well, Mason—that’s the guy who threw the party—he was always saying how anytime was a good time to party. Besides, I think he was always on crystal or molly or something. Everyone’s always doing molly around here on account of the supply, you know?”

  She was referring to an urban legend that there was some guy just outside of town living in a grove of sassafras and making tons of ecstasy. But that wasn’t true, at least I didn’t think so. There were a lot of drugs in our area, but it was because of the Irish mafia, not because of some mythical ecstasy cook. I decided not to get into that with her, just skip to the salient points. “So, you’re saying that there were drugs at this party?”

  “Everyone back in that room was waiting for something,” she said. “In fact, Bix even showed up. He must have brought them something. Bix is a dealer, by the way.” She wrinkled up her nose. “Oh, shit, I didn’t get him in trouble or anything, did I? You guys aren’t cops?”

  I whipped out my notepad and scribbled down the name. “Bix?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Can you arrest him or anything?”

  “No,” said Brigit reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Besides, we aren’t even interested in that kind of thing. We don’t care about drugs.”

  “Cool,” Karen said. She turned back to me. “Bix Coltrane. I think he goes here, and he’s always around at parties and stuff. He deals molly, and I’m pretty sure he works for Professor X.”

  I rolled my eyes. “There’s no Professor X.”

  “There is,” said Karen, looking shocked that I would deny it. “Anyway, the point is, he has the good stuff, not like the crap that the Irish guys always have. Not that I personally would know or anything, because I don’t do stuff like that.”

  “Right,” I muttered dryly. “Look, it doesn’t matter, like my associate here said, we don’t care about drug use. We’re just trying to figure out what happened that afternoon. So, maybe you could start at the beginning and go through it for us.”

  “Well, there’s not much to tell,” said Karen. “I showed up at the party, and there were some other people back in the bedroom. I didn’t even know they were there until Bix showed up, and then I asked someone who was back there.”

  “Who’d you ask?”

  “Um…” Karen was thinking about it. “Misha Bigby, I think. Anyway, she said that they were probably back there doing coke. You know how people get when they’re doing coke. They don’t want to share with anyone else, so they hole up somewhere.”

  “Right, right,” said Brigit, as if she totally understood that.

  I was clueless about that kind of thing, but okay, I guess that was the way things went with cocaine.

  “But then Bix showed up,” said Karen, “and I don’t think he deals anything except molly, so I don’t know if they were doing coke or not.”

  So, Gilbert Pike was blitzed out of his mind when he shot all these people then? How many drugs had he been on? I bet Miles hadn’t had any idea his brother was doing all that shit.

  “And then,” said Karen, “there were all these shots, and everyone was screaming and running out of the dorm and eventually campus security showed up and then the cops. And that’s really all I know.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You said that Bix showed up and then there were shots?”

  She nodded.

  “So, Bix was in the room while the shots were being fired?”

  “Oh,” said Karen. “I don’t know…” She furrowed her brow.

  “Did you see him leave?” asked Brigit.

  “I…” Karen bit her lip. “I wasn’t really paying that much attention. But he must have, right? Because everyone in that room died, and Bix isn’t dead. He’s fine. Alive and well.”

  Brigit and I locked eyes.

  That was curious, wasn’t it?

  * * *

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” said Porter Farley, the coroner, arms folded over his chest.

  I’d made a quick stop on the way back to the office.We’d spent the morning talking to other people from the party, and now we were heading back to digest and discuss. Brigit was waiting in the car.

  “Look, I just need to know a couple things about the shooting at Keene,” I said.

  “I got no reason to talk to you,” he said.

  I glared at him. “I got a video that says otherwise.”

  His eyes widened. “You told me you deleted that.�
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  “Yeah, I lied,” I said. “Can you just tell me if you tested for gun powder residue on Gilbert Pike? Are you sure he fired the gun?”

  “You told me you deleted it.” His face was turning red.

  A few weeks ago, I had seduced Porter and taped it. Now I was blackmailing him with the sex tape. It was kind of underhanded, sure, but it was also damned useful.

  “Do I look like an idiot, Porter? Why would I delete something that I might need? I’m a resourceful person.”

  “You’re a fucking bitch is what you are.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Powder residue?”

  He made a sour face, but he nodded. “Yes, we tested. Yes, the kid had powder residue on his hand.”

  Oh. Damn it.

  Porter sighed. “But the pattern was a little odd. There may have been some kind of struggle between him and one of his victims before the gun went off.”

  “Really?” I said, perking up. “Thanks, Porter, that’s great. Really great.”

  “I don’t want to know why you’re asking this, do I?” he said.

  I was already backing away. “I appreciate it. Thanks again.”

  “Hey!” he said. “Are you ever going to delete that video?”

  “Of course I will.” I waved at him.

  “You’re a damned liar, Ivy Stern.”

  * * *

  “I don’t know,” I said, pacing in front of Brigit’s desk. “Maybe I’m just so used to working murder cases that I want this to be a murder case. Maybe it’s completely cut and dry, and we’re looking for twists where there isn’t anything.”

  “Maybe,” said Brigit, who was perched on the front of her desk, legs crossed. “But I said that to you last time about the Gunner Bray thing, and I was wrong. I think if your instincts are telling you that something’s off that we should follow your gut.”

  “No, no, no,” I said, waving that away. “I don’t trust my gut. I don’t believe in a gut. I believe in evidence. And we don’t have any evidence that this didn’t go down exactly the way they said it did.”

  “I guess not,” said Brigit. “Unless you count those tickets.”

  I turned on my heel, still pacing. “But it is weird that this drug dealer was there and no one knows anything about it. If he was there at the time of the shooting and didn’t get shot somehow, when everyone else did, that’s suspicious.” We had the word of two other witnesses that Bix had gone into the room. No one, however, had seen him leave.

  “Because he should have shot the dealer?”

  “Exactly. He was shooting everyone else. Why leave this other guy alive?”

  “Unless the dealer left before the shooting started.”

  “That’s a possibility,” I said.

  “But you don’t think that’s what happened?”

  “Well, let’s just think about what’s most likely here, Brigit. Is it more likely that Gilbert Pike, a good kid that no one can believe would ever shoot anyone went nuts and killed five people? Or is more likely that a drug dealer did?”

  Brigit hopped down off her desk. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds obvious that it’s Bix.”

  “But,” I said, “I probably just want this to be a murder. I’m probably so biased from always working murders that I see murders even when there aren’t any murders to see.”

  “Well, it’s not really a murder,” said Brigit.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “What I mean is that it’s already a murder,” said Brigit. “Gilbert murdered those kids.”

  “Right,” I said, “but because he was nuts, not because he had some kind of motive.”

  “And if it’s this Bix person, then it’s the same thing. He does it because he’s a drug dealer, not because he’s got an agenda against one of the people.”

  “No,” I said, “people don’t just kill five people—”

  “Six,” she said.

  “Six,” I agreed, “because they’re drug dealers. Even drug dealers have motive. They shoot people because they don’t get paid or because they’re afraid of getting caught or because they get orders from someone higher up. There would be a motive of some kind. It’s only that a drug dealer would be more likely to have that kind of motive than Gilbert.”

  “Oh.” Brigit nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. So, he came there with a gun, and then someone didn’t pay him, and—”

  “No,” I said, “and that’s where this thing falls off the rails. Because Gilbert came with the gun. Miles told me that it was his father’s gun. He even thinks that maybe Gilbert went home over the weekend to get the gun. And when I stopped to talk to the coroner, he confirmed that there was gun powder residue on Gilbert.”

  Brigit wandered around to the back of her desk. “So then Gilbert had to do it.”

  I stopped pacing. “Yeah, I guess so.” I massaged the bridge of my nose. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why leave that Bix guy alive? Why does he get away? And apparently the evidence suggests that Gilbert may have struggled with someone. What’s that all about?”

  Brigit didn’t say anything.

  I started pacing again. “Okay, what if Bix sees that Gilbert has this gun? Like maybe Gilbert brought it to school to show off or something, just to let everyone see it, some innocent reason, I don’t know. And maybe Bix goes into the room to sell them drugs, sees the gun, and flips out.”

  “Yeah, maybe he goes for Gilbert, tries to get the gun away from him?”

  “They wrestle over it,” I said, “and the gun goes off, and Gilbert gets shot.”

  “Bix panics,” said Brigit. “He’s just shot someone. He didn’t mean to.”

  “But there are witnesses,” I said. “Five of them.”

  “So, he doesn’t have a choice,” she said. “He shoots all of them and then he runs.”

  I nodded. “Karen said it was chaos afterward. Everyone running all over the place. He could have gotten away.”

  “It could have gone down that way,” said Brigit.

  “But does it make anymore sense than thinking that Gilbert did it himself?”

  “Nothing about this makes any sense. It doesn’t make sense for Gilbert to have shot those kids. It just doesn’t. So, I think that if there’s another option, well, we have to pursue it.”

  * * *

  “You want to buy X?” said Bix Coltrane, looking me up and down.

  “Actually, no,” I said. “I want to ask you a few questions about the shooting on campus.”

  Bix backed away. “You’re a fucking cop? I can’t believe that Karen set me up with a fucking cop.”

  “We’re not cops!” said Brigit from behind him. It hadn’t been my plan to box him in like that, but I had to admit that it worked pretty well.

  Bix whirled, coming face-to-face with Brigit. “Holy fuck,” he said.

  “We’re private detectives,” I said.

  He turned back to me.

  “It’s just a couple questions,” said Brigit.

  Bix held up both his hands as if to ward us off. “All right, all right. But I don’t know anything about that shit. I wasn’t there or anything.”

  “Oh, don’t try to deny it,” I said. “There were witnesses. People who saw you enter that room.”

  “Yeah, okay, I was in there,” he said, “but way before the shooting happened. I was out of the building before anything went down.”

  “Funny thing,” I said. “People saw you go in, but they don’t remember seeing you come out.”

  “So what?” he said. “They were all drunk or stoned or some shit. It was a party. They might not have seen me leave, but I sure as hell did.”

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a Monday afternoon party,” I said. “Was this typical?”

  “The guy whose place it was, he was hardcore,” said Bix. “He was always hitting me up for product, any time of the day or night, any day of the week. He was a good customer, which was the only reason I was out there anyway.”

 
“So, it wasn’t typical.”

  “Well, I don’t make a lot of house calls, if you know what I mean. People usually come to me, not the other way around. Still for Mason, I made an exception. I went over to his place, sold him the molly, and then I left. I swear that I didn’t see anything.”

  “You didn’t see that Gilbert had a gun?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, what if you had seen a gun? What if you walked into a room where you were intending to do a little easy business and you saw that one of the people there had a gun? What would you do?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Pretend I didn’t see it. Unless it was pointing at my head or something. It’s pretty tough to pretend you don’t see someone threatening you with a gun.”

  “You wouldn’t try to engage the person with the gun?”

  “No, fuck no,” he said. But he didn’t meet my gaze when he said it.

  “So, you weren’t there when the shots were fired, and you didn’t see the gun.”

  He still wasn’t looking at me. “I didn’t see anything, lady.”

  * * *

  “He’s lying,” I said.

  “How can you know for sure?” said Brigit.

  We were climbing the stairs in our building, heading back to the office. “Did you notice how he kept avoiding eye contact with me?”

  “Kind of,” she said. “But maybe he was only doing that because you’re kind of scary?”

  “Me? Scary?” I smirked.

  “You can be scary,” said Brigit. “Sometimes, you kind of freak me out.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “He’s hiding something. He was nervous.”

  “Because he’s a drug dealer. Those kinds of people are nervous all the time.”

  We reached the top of the steps and began walking down the hall to the office. “Maybe so. But maybe he’s our killer.”

  “So, say you’re right,” said Brigit. “How would we prove that?”

  “Well, we could look for prints on his gun?”

  “The crime lab at the station would do that, wouldn’t they?” said Brigit. “We’d just need to get that information from them.”

  I opened the door to the office, and we walked inside. “Yeah, well, if there were other prints on this gun, they wouldn’t have ruled it the way they did, I don’t think. But I guess I could ask Miles.”