Murder in the Rue Ursulines

again. “The bed’s going to feel pretty good. Oh, yeah!” He rolled his eyes at me. “You know, it would have saved me a lot of time if you’d told me Freddy’s real name.”

“Huh?” I kicked myself. Some investigator you are.

“Freddy Bliss is his professional name. So, when I first, um, gained access to the Emporia State records, I couldn’t find any record of him-because Freddy Bliss didn’t exist back then.” He grinned at me. “So, I had to do some more hunting. I found an interview he did where he talked about going to Emporia State, so then I had to find his birth name.” He winked. “Frederick Bliss Osborne, of Newton, Kansas, enrolled at Emporia State thirteen years ago.”

“Good work.” I replied, still pissed at myself. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Freddy Bliss was a stage name?

But it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the Internet research I’d done, which was kind of unusual. I opened the file and looked at his transcripts. “He wasn’t much of a student, was he?” He’d barely scraped by-mostly C’s. The few B’s he’d earned were offset by an equal number of D’s. Even in acting classes his grades had been average.

“Skip that shit-that’s not the good stuff, trust me.”

I turned a few pages. “What’s this?” I scanned the page. I couldn’t help myself, I smiled. And here it is, Mr. Bliss. The big secret you don’t want anyone to know about.

“It’s a disciplinary hearing.” Jephtha grinned. “They erased it-afterwards. But nothing ever is truly erased from a computer hard drive unless you scrub it completely-and whoever deleted the file thought it was gone. It was still there, on the hard drive. It took me a few hours, but I was able to reconstruct it.” He preened a little bit. “I kick ass, don’t I?”

I started reading. Karen Zorn, a sophomore, had gone to the dean and accused Freddy Bliss of raping her at a party at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, where Freddy was a brother. She claimed that Freddy had gotten her drunk-feeding her tequila shots-and when she was so drunk she could barely stand, she’d asked if she could go lie down for a while. Freddy had taken her up to his room, and once they were inside, he locked the door and attacked her. She’d tried to scream but he’d put a sock in her mouth and raped her.

Freddy denied the rape, and two of his fraternity buddies-Bobby Wallace and Tim Dahlke-had sworn that Karen had been chasing Freddy for weeks. Freddy got drunk at the party and had slept with her, but it was consensual; it was her idea. In the morning, Freddy had buyer’s remorse-and Karen threatened to accuse him of rape. And she had. Based on Bobby and Tim’s testimony, the dean had dropped the whole thing.

I remembered my experiences at Beta Kappa. Would a fraternity brother lie to get another brother out of trouble?

Hell, yes. They wouldn’t have had to be asked twice. The fraternity mentality was that all women were pieces of garbage to be used and abused-they weren’t people.

They were just pieces of ass for the brothers to fuck and toss away.

Oh, yes, I could even understand why the dean would sweep it all under a rug. No university wants to deal with a campus rape trial.

It hadn’t helped Karen much that the rape had occurred at a Friday night party, and she’d done nothing about it until the following Monday. There’d been no rape kit, no trip to the emergency room, no police report.

Poor thing, I thought, getting a little angry. She should have gone to the police. I’d dealt with a few rape victims when I was on the police force, and I could understand her mentality. She was ashamed, she blamed herself, she didn’t want anyone to know about it…and it had taken her a few days to get herself together and decide to do something about it.

And when she did, Freddy and his fraternity brothers had lied. The dean was more than willing to believe them.

I wondered what had happened to her.

“It gets even better.” Jephtha went on. “I dug up the files on her and the other guys. The girl dropped out, and Freddy dropped out the next semester. Bobby and Tim went on to graduate-with honors. But get this-I was curious by now-so I tried to track them down.” He flushed a bit. “I hope you don’t mind. I know you didn’t ask me to do that, so you don’t have to pay me for that.”

I flipped the page. The next page was the printout of Wichita Herald newspaper clipping from seven years ago. Bobby Wallace was killed in a car crash when his brakes apparently failed. He’d been driving drunk, on his way home from a bar. He’d slammed into a tree and had been killed instantly. According to investigators, there’d been no brake fluid in his car-but he’d just had his car serviced. The lines hadn’t been cut, but the fluid had drained out somehow. The mechanic swore he’d checked the brake fluid.

I felt a cold chill go down my spine.

“Go on.” Jephtha urged.

The next page was another newspaper clipping. Six years ago, Tim Dahlke had been shot to death in his house. There were no signs of forced entry. Nothing had been stolen. There were no leads.

There was one more piece of paper in the folder. I looked at the last one. TWO KILLED IN MYSTERIOUS FIRE: Victims were Emporia State Dean and his wife.

“Holy shit.” I looked at Jephtha.

He nodded, his eyes dancing. “I tried to find out what happened to Karen Zorn, but she disappeared after she dropped out. I couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere.”

Freddy was the only one left alive.

“Thanks, Jephtha. Send me a bill.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You should think about getting a private eye license. This is some really good work. I’ll be in touch.”

I walked outside and stood in the sunshine for a moment.

I had to find Karen Zorn.

There was no way it was a coincidence that everyone involved in the cover-up of the rape had died under mysterious circumstances.

By the time the killings had started, Freddy was a movie star and not easily accessible. His stardom had, in a way, saved his life.

So far.

Outside, I stood for a moment. I dialed Loren. I got his cell phone.

“Hey, Loren, this is Chanse MacLeod. Tell Freddy and Jillian I want to meet with them.” I took a deep breath. “Tell them I know about Karen Zorn.”

I closed my phone and went home.

Chapter Twelve

Maybe the reason Karen Zorn had disappeared was because no one had found her body.

The thought hit me as I was driving up Camp Street. It caught me so offguard I almost hit a parked car. But it made sense. Three of the men involved in the rape and cover-up were dead. She’d disappeared. Out of everyone involved, the only person still accounted for was Freddy Bliss-the one person who had the most to lose.

It made more sense that Karen had been killed than that she was the killer.

E-mails alluding to the rape had been sent from Glynis’s computer, and she’d been murdered.

All roads led back to Freddy Bliss.

The hyena pack in front of my house wasn’t as big as it had been when I left for the gym, but they still swarmed my car as I turned into the driveway. I turned up the stereo so I couldn’t hear anything they were shouting at me. I parked in my spot and ran for the back stairs. The shouting died away once I was out of their sight.

I headed straight to my computer, and logged into the Internet. I opened the folder Jephtha had given me. Damn, he’d done a good job. I did a directory search for Zorns in Olpe, Kansas. About ten listings came up. I started dialing. I struck oil on the sixth call.

“Karen?” a tired female voice asked in a flat Midwestern accent. “What has she done now?”