15 Seconds

But the only real connection between them was me.

I turned on the news, basically just to keep me company, until my eyes finally got heavy and I started drifting off to sleep.

What I heard almost sent my heart through my chest.

“The Jacksonville Murder Spree suspect,” the commentator said. “This is not the first time. He’s done it before.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The news report said that a television station in New England was claiming that as a student at Amherst, I’d been involved in a fraternity hazing accident in which someone had mysteriously drowned.

“No,” I shot up in the car and shouted. “No, no, no, no…”

I pulled out my iPad and clicked on Google news until I found the link. It was from the website of a WNME in Portland, Maine.

How did they know what had happened back then?

The article read, The Palm Beach surgeon wanted in connection with the murders today of a Jacksonville Florida policeman and a successful businessman has apparently done it before.

My eyes almost bugged out of my head.

A college classmate of Dr. Henry Steadman, a person of interest sought in connection with the cold-blooded killings today, claims that while a student at Amherst College in the 1980s, Steadman and a fraternity brother were involved in the unexplained drowning of a fellow student in a fraternity hazing ritual gone tragically wrong.

Thomas E. Boothby of Bangor, Maine, claims he was a member of a student judiciary board at Amherst called to investigate Steadman’s role in the mishap, which occurred at a local swimming hole known as the Quarry.

As Boothby recounted, a freshman pledge at the Chi Psi fraternity, Terrence Gifford, plunged into the lake from a fifty-foot height in the dead of night, struggled in the icy water, with Steadman near him, and drowned. The incident was ultimately deemed to be “accidental,” and while Boothby claims, “No one can be sure what actually happened in the waters that night,” no charges were ever filed.

“This poor freshman from Minnesota was dragged out at night and ordered to jump into the freezing pond,” Boothby, an EPA administrator in Bangor recalled, “which was about fifty feet down. All anyone knew is that three students went up there and only two came back. While there was never any firm evidence to warrant an arrest or expulsion, there was significant drinking going on; other people nearby heard arguing and thrashing in the water.” He recalled that although Steadman was ultimately dismissed from the fraternity, he was not asked to leave school.

I felt the blood rush in anger into my face. Who the hell was this guy? Boothby. I’d never even heard of him. Whoever he was, he’d twisted the entire thing around. The article also provided details about the events in Jacksonville today and how the suspect’s successful and likable veneer and his stature in the medical community seemed at odds with the heinous nature of the crimes.

“I know everyone feels that way,” Boothby went on to say, “but when I heard who it was, it immediately took me back. All I can say is, I always felt something suspicious took place up on those rocks, a lot more than ever came out. So this doesn’t surprise me.”

School officials have not yet commented on the twenty-two-year-old incident.

“Screw you!” I shouted in the darkened SUV, my blood hitting a boil. A cold sweat sprang up all over my back.

The story wasn’t completely made up, at least not technically, but everything else was twisted. Nothing happened up there. Only a tragic accident. The kid fell. He didn’t want to go through with it and he panicked up on the ledge. I was actually the one who told him he didn’t have to go through with it. And “the argument” this asshole was referring to was actually between me and another Chi Psi dude named Luke Chappelle, who kept insisting that if Giffie didn’t jump, he could kiss Chi Psi good-bye. The kid tried to break away from Chappelle and head back down when he tripped and tumbled over the edge. I’m the one who jumped in after him and tried like hell to bring him back up. The incident killed me for a while. I almost left school. But it wasn’t because I was guilty. We never pushed him. This Boothby jerk had it all wrong. It was a frat ritual. We’d all made the jump multiple times.

I knew this was bad. It was only going to throw more hot coals onto the fire of my alleged guilt. Worse, anyone who happened to believe me would now have doubts.

And it would make it even harder for anyone to believe me about the blue car.

I’d never told anyone about it before. Well, maybe I told Liz once, years before. I mean, it all happened twenty-two years ago. It didn’t have any bearing on who I was. And while the event was tragic, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I lay back and closed my eyes, and I realized how trapped I was. How the person who was doing this to me must be cackling with enjoyment.

I was even burying myself now!

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cars were already streaming into the office lot the next morning as I woke up in the backseat.

I remembered finally falling asleep, still fuming over that Google post, praying I’d wake up in my own bed and that everything in the past twenty-four hours would have been nothing more than a horrifying dream.

No such luck.

I wiped my eyes, reality colliding into me again. Realizing that I was on the run. That my college buddy Mike was dead. That my daughter had been abducted. Kidnapped by a killer who had turned my life into a living hell.

I looked up at the car owner’s evergreen air freshener hanging from the dash. Other than that, everything was just peachy!

Then it hit me. With the sudden clarity that only comes when your mind is completely at rest.

I went over the sequence of events for maybe the hundredth time: how Martinez was writing me out a summons from his car; the blue car pulling up beside him; how I was thinking how the whole barrage of questions had just been some kind of made-up cover; out of nowhere, the two, crisp pops. The blue car lurching away.

But this time I saw it! Coming into focus as if I was once again looking through my side mirror:

ADJ-4.

That was it! The license plate from South Carolina. There were more numbers, of course, but I was sure it began with those. Not ADF or A4N, or whatever I’d come up with the day before.

ADJ-4…

In the panic of all that happened yesterday, I hadn’t been able to fully bring it to mind.

For the first time, I had something to act on. If I could somehow get access to motor-vehicle-department records in South Carolina. I didn’t know whom to call. An attorney might be able to get it done. The police, of course. Fat chance of that! I could call Liz, but I wanted to keep her out of this as much as I could.