He asked, “Why was Beckey mad?”
“Who knows?” Kayleigh shrugged, but Jeffrey could guess that she not only knew what her friend had been angry about, but with whom she was angry. “She kicked open my door? And she yells, ‘you bitches’ like she hates us? Then I follow her to her bedroom to see what her deal is? Only, she won’t tell me?”
“Beckey’s room is at the end of the hall?”
“Yes.” She finally managed to phrase a proper answer. “When we first got here, everybody saw the room was the smallest, and we were all bracing for a fight or something, but Becks goes, ‘I’ll take the small one,’ and like that, we were all best friends.”
“Was she seeing anyone?”
“She broke up with her girlfriend over the summer? But there’s been nobody since then. Not even a date. There’s a lot of assholes on campus?”
“Was anyone fixated on her?”
“No way. Becks didn’t even go to bars or have fun or anything?” She shook her head hard enough to make her hair fly. “If someone was, like, fixated, I would’ve gone straight to the cops. The for reals cops, not the mall cops on campus.”
Jeffrey was glad she knew there was a difference. “Did Beckey ever tell you she felt unsafe? Or like someone was watching her?”
“Oh my God, was someone watching her?” She looked at the kitchen, the door, the hallway. “Should I be worried? Am I, like, in danger?”
“These are routine questions. It’s the same thing I would ask in any other interview.” Jeffrey watched the anxiety tease in and out of her features. Within an hour, every woman on campus would probably be asking if she should be worried. “Kayleigh, let’s concentrate on yesterday morning. Did Beckey say anything to you when you followed her back to her bedroom?”
“She was, like, putting on her running clothes? Which, okay, she likes to run but it was super early? And then Vanessa goes, ‘Don’t go out at rape o’clock,’ which was funny at the time, only, now we’re all just so worried because she’s in the hospital? And her dad, Gerald, called this morning and he was crying, which is hard because I’ve never heard my own dad cry, so hearing him cry made me really sad?” Kayleigh rubbed her fingers into her eyes, but there were no tears. “I had to tell my teachers I need to skip classes for the rest of the week. It’s just so random? Becks going for a run, then she hits her head and her life is—her life is, I don’t know? But it’s so sad. I can barely get out of bed because what if it had been me? I like to run, too.”
Jeffrey paged back through his notebook. “Deneshia told me that Beckey spent the previous night at the library.”
“She did that a lot. She was, like, terrified of losing her scholarship?” Kayleigh took a handful of tissues from the box on the table. “I mean, she talked about money a lot. A lot? Like, not the way you talk about money, because you just don’t?”
Jeffrey was familiar with the paradigm. Growing up in Sylacauga, he had known that he was poor, but he hadn’t realized until his first day at Auburn what the opposite of poor really looked like.
He asked, “Is that her backpack?”
Kayleigh looked over at the kitchen. “Yeah?”
Jeffrey returned his notebook to his pocket. He walked into the kitchen. He had to step over empty yogurt cartons and popcorn bags. The backpack was good leather with the initials BC monogrammed onto the flap. He assumed it was a graduation gift, because it wasn’t the kind of thing a poor college kid would spend money on.
Jeffrey carefully laid out the contents on the small square of available counter space. Pens. Pencils. Papers. Printouts. Work assignments. The flip phone was an older model. He opened it. The battery was almost dead. There were no missed calls. The recent calls were cleared. He checked the contacts. Dad. Daryl. Deneshia.
He asked Kayleigh, “Who’s Daryl?”
“He lives off-campus?” She shrugged. “Everybody knows him? He used to go here but he dropped out two years ago because he’s, like, trying to be a professional skateboarder?”
“Does he have a last name?”
“Like, I’m sure he does, but I don’t know?”
Jeffrey recorded Daryl’s number in his spiral-bound notebook. The phone would be logged into evidence, something Lena had failed to do yesterday when she’d talked to Rebecca Caterino’s dorm mates.
He reached into the backpack again. He found a textbook on Organic Chemistry, another on textiles, a third on ethics in science. The laptop computer was a newer model, judging by the weight. He opened the clamshell. The document on screen was entitled RCATERINO-CHEM-FINAL.DOC.
He paged through the exam, which was just as tedious and pedantic as every paper he had written in college.
He looked up at Kayleigh. She was still picking at the skin on her foot.
He asked her, “Can you come over here and tell me if there’s anything missing?”
She heaved herself up from the couch. She flounced over. She looked at the textbooks and papers and she told him, “I guess no? But, her banana clip would be by the bed?”
“Banana clip?”
“It’s, like, for your hair?”
Jeffrey felt his gut instinct send up a flare. Leslie Truong had been missing a headband. Now, Beckey Caterino was missing a hair clip.
He didn’t want to lead Kayleigh. He asked, “Is it still by the bed?”
“No, because that’s the point?” She seemed confused. “Beckey couldn’t find it? And then we all looked, and we couldn’t find it? I told the lady cop this?”
There was only one lady cop on the force. “Officer Adams?”
“Yeah, I told her that Beckey’s banana clip, the one her mom gave her, wasn’t on the nightstand where she always left it and at first, Beckey was mad at me, but then she knew I didn’t take it
