Page 57 of M for Murder

When she had returned home for Thanksgiving, her family had all noticed the change. Her father didn’t approve. He didn’t say anything, but she could tell from the way he kept looking at her clothes and from the odd comments that he made. Her mother, on the other hand, just seemed pleased that her little Jennifer had fitted in so well.

She saw Michael once before she returned, and it had been then that things had officially ended. He was already seeing someone else, her old school friend Vickie, and when she told him it didn’t bother her, she was telling the truth. Nothing seemed to bother her much these days.

Thanksgiving ended and she returned to college. Life carried on in much the same way. Both she and Miranda continued to burn the candle at both ends, studying during the day and partying during the night. Due to lack of sleep, they began to skip the odd classes and eventually their grades started to slip.

It was around that time that the whole business had started.

Danielle Adams, a loud-mouthed senior with peroxide hair and a reputation for being an easy lay, had disappeared a couple of weeks before the Christmas break. No one knew where she had gone or what had happened to her. The police investigated, but drew only blanks, and it was rumoured that she had skipped town. After Christmas, when she still failed to materialise, the stories stopped circulating and eventually interest in what had happened to her died completely.

The next one was Patrick Bell, a freshman like Jennifer, whom she knew only enough to say hello to. His attendance record was already pretty bad due to his fondness for taking extended weekend breaks to go surfing with his beach buddies. Therefore, not many eyebrows were raised when he failed to show up one Monday morning and no one thought any more of it when he still hadn’t appeared by the end of the week.

It was Lydia Chapman’s disappearance that caused the main stir. Like Danielle, Lydia was a senior, though that was where the similarities ended. Unlike Danielle, Lydia was clever, sophisticated and came from a secure family background. She didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and didn’t like to party. Despite this, she was still a very popular figure around the campus and had been dating the college star quarterback, Billy Vale, since her freshman year.

She vanished while on her way to meet Billy one Tuesday evening. It had been their two-year anniversary and the two of them had planned to have a romantic dinner to celebrate. Billy had a big game beforehand and had offered to come back to the campus to pick Lydia up. She had refused, arranging instead to meet him at the restaurant. Three hours later, when she hadn’t shown up, Billy had gone back to the college and found her Volkswagen still parked in the parking lot.

Lydia wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

The police launched a big search for Lydia Chapman. Her father, Drake, worked for the governor’s office and demanded all the manpower possible to help find his daughter. A week after she disappeared, a local bum was arrested on flimsy evidence and later released. Three days after his release, Lydia Chapman’s body turned up. She was discovered by sewage workers floating in one of three plastic sacks beneath the city streets. The other two sacks contained the bodies of the now forgotten Danielle Adams and the never missed Patrick Bell.

The whole campus was buzzing with gossip. Cops seemed to be everywhere, and the local police chief came down to talk to the students, to warn them to take precautions, but also to reassure them that they were safe and to quash the rumours that there was a psychotic killer on the loose, hungry for more victims.

No one believed him. Three students were dead, and Jennifer had heard details of what had happened to them all. Libby Trehearn, a friend from her English class whose brother-in-law was a cop, knew all the gory details and was only too willing to share them with anyone who wanted to listen. All three of the victims had been taken somewhere deserted and either strangled or suffocated. The killer had then carved their bodies up using some kind of sharp instrument. Libby had been quick to point out that it was possible the students may have just been unconscious, not dead, when they were cut. When the killer had finished mutilating them, she told them, he wrapped their naked bodies in plastic sacks and dumped them in the sewer.

The stories unnerved Jennifer a little. Miranda assured her they would be safe, just so long as they stayed together, and by the time the killings had made the national news and her worried parents had called wanting her to come home, she had decided she would stay, believing that both she and Miranda were invincible as far as the killer was concerned.

Her attitude didn’t change, even when her classmate, Jonah Devlin, became victim number four. Miranda and Jonah had gone out a couple of times before Christmas and, as her roommate seemed unaffected by his death, Jennifer decided she wouldn’t let it bother her either.

They seemed to be the only two on campus who were carrying on with life as normal, though at the time Jennifer was too caught up in her own little world to notice.

The clubs and bars had pretty much died a death as a result of the murders and on Friday and Saturday nights the streets that had at one time been filled with partying students now bore more of a resemblance to those of a ghost town.

After Jonah’s death things did seem to quieten down a little.

There were no more murders and, while the police still seemed no closer to catching the killer, a sense of normality gradually returned to Juniper College. Easter came and went, the weather started to warm up and Jennifer found herself preoccupied by a senior student.

They hadn’t actually spoken. In fact, she’d only seen him on campus for the first time just after she returned from Easter break, and didn’t even know his name. All she did know was that he had sexy dark eyes and that, on the couple of occasions he had noticed her, her legs had gone weak at the knees. She couldn’t help but wonder how come she hadn’t seen him around before.

This was the first secret she had kept from Miranda. So far, she had shared everything with her roommate, from details of her split with Michael to more recent worries about her plunging grades.

Jennifer hadn’t had any serious crushes on guys at college. Sure, she had dated a few students: Nick the footballer had been a laugh; Marcus the editor of the college paper had been more problematic. He had been cute, and she’d liked him as a friend, but Marcus had wanted commitment that she wasn’t prepared to give, and things had ended badly. Both of these brief relationships had been the topic of many late-night discussions with Miranda, with her more streetwise friend offering, often quite forcefully, her opinions.

This time, if there was to be a this time, things were going to be different. Although they hadn’t yet spoken, Jennifer liked this guy and was determined to play things her way, not Miranda’s, which meant not throwing herself at him for one thing. So she kept her crush to herself and looked forward to every Friday afternoon when she was guaranteed a chance of seeing him as she awaited her late afternoon English class.

He had the class before her, and she always made sure that she was there early for when he left the room. Occasionally he didn’t see her; often, though, he would notice her waiting and smile.

Jennifer wasn’t sure if he realised she fancied him. If he did know, he never let on, and he never ever reciprocated.

Gradually she grew more and more frustrated. She began to wonder if maybe he had heard bad things about her. Miranda, she knew, was notorious around campus. Maybe he thought that she wasn’t serious enough for a proper relationship. Conscious of this thought, Jennifer slowly but subconsciously began to change. She wore less make-up, cut down on the smoking and drinking, and began to distance herself from the crowd that she hung around with. The change was so gradual that no one really made any comments. Except Miranda, of course, who occasionally remarked that her best friend was becoming a bit of a killjoy.

It was during this period that the murders started up again.

This time the first victim was a second-year student named Erika Estes. Both Jennifer and Miranda knew Erika quite well, though neither was aware that she was actually missing until reports that her body had been found started pouring in. Almost as though to prove he was back, the killer struck again almost immediately, claiming another two victims in the space of forty-eight hours, the bodies of Willard Frey and Pamela Gilcrest, bringing his grisly total to seven.

This time, the murders shook Jennifer enough from her daydreams to make her miss her Friday afternoon rendezvous and, for the first time since Danielle Adams had gone missing, she actually started to seriously contemplate the events that were taking place around her. The one thing that shook her more than anything was the conversation that she had with Miranda in their room late on the Saturday night following the discovery of Pamela Gilcrest’s body.

Neither of them had talked much about the college murders. It was as though they both felt that by blocking everything out, they didn’t have to accept the harsh reality of what was really happening. Aside from the pep talks they regularly gave each other about sticking together and everything being fine, this was the first time they had actually discussed what was going on.

Miranda had initiated the conversation. She had been sitting by the window, her long fingers curled around a cigarette as she gazed thoughtfully out across the playing field.