“What the hell are you talking about?” Hugoson wanted to know.
“You guys have been all hot and bothered ever since I began asking questions about Elizabeth Rogers. No one would talk to me except Josie Bloom, and you killed him for it.”
“He committed suicide,” Dr. Peterson said.
“No, he didn’t,” Mallinger told them.
They all seemed genuinely surprised by the news.
“I announce that I’m going to the BCA”—I was staring at Dr. Peterson, it annoyed me that I couldn’t see his eyes—“and less than an hour later someone tried to kill me. Then someone killed Josie. Now we know why.”
“Why?” asked Hugoson.
“Elizabeth Rogers was raped before she was murdered—raped by at least three men with type A negative, B positive, and O positive blood.”
“Who are you, Kojak?” Hugoson wanted to know. “You expect us to jump up now and say, ‘Yes, we did it, ha, ha, ha, and we’re glad?’ Get lost.”
Here it comes, my inner voice announced. The big bluff.
“As soon as I leave here I’m going to visit the Nicholas County attorney and then we’re going to visit a judge. We’re going to get a search warrant and then we’re coming back here and take blood samples from each of you. Back when you killed Elizabeth, they didn’t have the technology. All they could identify was blood type and that couldn’t be used to differentiate between suspects with the same blood type. But a miracle has occurred since then, gentlemen. DNA testing. We’re going to take your blood and match it to the semen you left in Elizabeth Rogers and then the mighty Victoria Seven, the do-or-die kids—you’re all going to prison for the rest of your lives.”
“I ain’t goin’ back to prison,” Hugoson announced.
“If not for Elizabeth, then for Josie,” I said.
“I had nothin’ to do with that.”
“Were you his partner, convict? Were you and Josie dealing meth?”
“Fuck no.”
“How ’bout you?” I was staring at Reif. “Were you trying to pick up some extra cash to support your KKK club, or whatever it is?”
“No,” he insisted.
“But you knew he was dealing.”
“I knew,” Hugoson said. “I seen enough crankheads in stir to know one when I see one, only I had nothing to do with it. That’s bad shit and I had nothing to do with it.”
“Who was helping him?” Mallinger asked.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Someone was helping him.”
Neither Hugoson nor the rest had anything to say to that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “When we get the search warrants for Elizabeth, all the rest will fall into place, too.”
“We didn’t kill Beth,” Dr. Peterson said. He had a high, almost squeaky voice. It was the first time I had heard it.
“Shut up.” Hugoson was snarling. “They don’t have squat or they wouldn’t be here. You think I don’t know how things work?”
“We didn’t rape her, either,” Dr. Peterson said.
“Shut up, I tell you.”
Hugoson went toward Dr. Peterson, but Mallinger stepped between them.
“It wasn’t like that.” Reif was doing the talking, now. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“What was it like?”
“Beth, she found us. We weren’t looking for her. She found us. We were in Josie’s basement drinking beer, and we had a lot of it, and then she was there. She came over because she was looking for Jack. Jack Barrett. Only he wasn’t there. We didn’t know where he was and then—”
“She said she’d take us all on.”
That from Hugoson. I spun toward him.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? She said she wanted to fuck us all.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not a lie,” Reif insisted. “That’s what she said. She said Jack was sleeping with another girl and that she wanted to teach him a lesson. So she, we . . .”
“So we let her,” said Hugoson. “All of us. Together. We took her every way we could think of. A regular orgy.”
I was forced backward by his words until my back was against the wall. My mind reeled at the information I suddenly didn’t want to hear.
“All of you?” I asked.
I looked at Axelrod. He nodded.
“It was no big deal,” Hugoson said.
I wasn’t surprised that he thought so.
“She was seventeen,” I said.
“So were we,” Hugoson said.
“She was drunk.”
“So were we.”
“Beth came down to the basement and took off her clothes,” Dr. Peterson said. “Just like that. She was standing there wearing nothing but her locket. A beautiful girl like her. What would you have done?”
Not that, my inner voice said. I wouldn’t have done that. Not even at seventeen and drunk with my friends urging me on.
“You took advantage of her,” I said.
“She took advantage of us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
But I did.
“That’s what happened,” said Reif. “That’s all that happened. We all did it and then she left.”
“Just left?”
Reif glanced at Hugoson and looked away quickly.
