Campus Call Boy, page 17
When I see him in the door frame, I recognize the face of a maniacal killer. It’s subtle. His calculating eyes. The scornful, petulant cast to his face, revealing his stunted emotional development. He’s a little boy who believes he can bring the world to its knees to get what he wants. I stare back at him. He’s got nothing to lose and neither do I. If he wants to stop me from getting Carlos out of there, he’s going to have to kill me.
Philip opens the door for me. No smile this time. I keep him in my sight while I walk past him to enter the house. He’s going to have to turn away from me a little to close the door.
I consider using the element of surprise and getting a lock on his throat right then and there. But in the nanosecond while I’m mentally pumping myself up to do it, he swings back from the closed door and points a pistol at me.
“I don’t enjoy doing this, Noah,” he says. “You left me no choice. Now turn around.”
I do as I’m told. He pats me down with his free hand, empties my pockets, letting my wallet and cell phones clop to the floor.
“Into the living room. Take it slow.”
I walk down the hall while he holds a gun at my back. I’m fucked in zero seconds flat. Well, I consider, he hasn’t shot me yet. He’s got to have some plan. Maybe he thinks he can cover up murdering me and Carlos. With Josh there were no gunshot wounds. Head trauma. Drugs. At least if he’s leading up to something like that, it gives me some time.
I step into the living room. His beautiful big couch is covered in a white tarp.
“Take a seat on the couch.”
I turn around to face him. “Philip, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
He sneers at me mockingly. “I’m violating a restraining order right now. Violating the terms of my suspension from the university.” He shouts at me. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t have to be like this. It most certainly does.” His nostrils flare with angry breaths. “It wasn’t enough for you to humiliate me? You had to destroy me by ruining my career. You had to take everything away from me.”
As awful as it is to hear him rant, I realize I need to keep him talking, find some way to throw him off balance. “You said you didn’t care. You said it was worth the risk for the two of us to be together.”
It works for a moment. He blinks, studies me. “That was when I was getting something,” he says.
“I think you’re wrong. You cared all along, and you still do.” I look toward the covered couch. “What’s this? So my blood won’t stain your couch? You want to dispose of me without any evidence. You want your life back, don’t you?”
“My life?” He laughs bitterly. “Oh, I don’t know, Noah. How do you propose I get my life back? I’ll be blacklisted from every university in the country because of you. I’ll be the laughingstock of academia, not to mention all my family and friends.”
I notice his lax hold on the pistol. “So why kill me and Carlos? You want to spend your life in jail on top of that? I know you, Philip. You don’t want that. You think doing this will make your life better?”
“Enough,” he shouts. “You’re a lying, cheating whore.”
I keep my cool. It’s my only weapon. “You let us walk, this will all blow over. Think about it, Philip. No lawsuit. No criminal charges. Don’t you want your freedom?”
His chest heaves, and he wipes his face. “You could have saved us both. Don’t you understand that?”
“Tell me.”
His face turns pained. “You told me it was over. In a Snapchat message. Do you know how much that hurt me?” He raises his voice. “You never once apologized for that.”
I gaze at him gently. “You knew I couldn’t be with you the way you wanted. Just like you knew Joshua Novack couldn’t either. Philip, you can’t solve problems unless you learn from your mistakes.”
He flinches a little, and his eyes go wide.
“You’re leaving trails now. One murder leads to the other. What will you do? Try to make it as a fugitive?”
“Shut up.”
“Do this differently. No one gets killed. We both go back to our regular lives.”
He laughs. It’s quite disturbing, like some private humor has occurred to him at my expense. “I’m sorry, Noah, but I still like my solution better. At least it gives me some measure of control. You see, I’m going to shoot you with this unregistered gun and make it look like Carlos did it. In self-defense, after you tried to bash his head in with one of my golf clubs, which sadly, you succeeded at once the blood drained from his brain. He was breaking up with you after I told him about our relationship. You have his texts now. As do many of his contacts. I sent them as soon as I saw you pull up my driveway. Carlos’s friends will know you came rushing over here to plead with him to take him back. I’ll work in some superficial wounds for myself, and have my story all prepared when the police arrive.” He fixes on me tauntingly. “The campus call boy gone berserk.”
I feel like I’m sinking into the floor. I fight against it. The only thing that matters is getting the gun away from Philip and saving Carlos.
He points the gun at my chest. “Now, sit down on the couch.”
I don’t budge. “You think anyone is going to believe you? Carlos was with me when I filed the restraining order.”
He gives me a cold smirk. “Young love is complicated, isn’t it? Carlos did send me a nice text message yesterday as your valiant protector. But would it be so hard to believe his feelings for you changed when he found out tonight you lied to him about the fact we’ve still been fucking. I’ll make sure the police have some physical evidence of that.”
The fucking demon. I take a half second to gauge the distance to his gun, and then I spring at him, gripping his wrist, overpowering him with my strength. Philip struggles, and I make him drop the gun to the floor. But before I can control his free hand, he strikes out wildly and catches my face with his fingernails. Reflexively, I shrug away from him, swearing in disbelief. He wrenches free from my grip and lurches over to the fireplace.
I see him grab a wrought iron poker. I dive for the gun, but while I’m down there he gets a swing in, bashing my shoulder. I roll onto my back with shooting pains from where he hit me.
Philip lords over me. I play up a plea for mercy, and when he takes a swing for my head, I catch the poker with my hand, give it a vicious tug, and topple him to his knees. He howls from the pain, and I jerk the poker from his grasp.
I push back up on my feet and back away from him. He’s not so spry, still trying to right himself, but then I see he’s not far from the gun. He strikes out for it. I raise the poker at my side, bat-style and sneak up to bludgeon him. Philip twists around and fumbles to point the gun at me. He fires, and the blast is ear-splitting, bone-rattling, holding me breathless for a moment. But he’s way off target, putting a nice hole in his plaster wall.
Philip fumbles with the gun again, trying to get another shot off. I swing for his gun arm, hard enough to shatter bone. He wails in agony and the gun slips from his hand. I pick it up from the floor while he’s clutching himself.
“Where’s Carlos?” I demand.
He doesn’t answer me. He looks like he’s enfeebled from the blow to his arm, but I don’t trust him. I bat up and strike him hard in the hip.
Philip wails again and falls on his side.
“Where’s Carlos?” I shout again.
Banging erupts from the front door.
“Dr. Geary, open up. It’s the police.”
Thank the fucking gods. I stuff the gun in my jacket. I look down at Philip. “You want to get that or should I?”
He writhes in misery. Now, I’m pretty certain he’s staying down there for a while. I bring the poker along with me nonetheless while I stagger to the hall to let the cops in. I prop it on a table along the way and stuff the gun into the drawer. Never a great idea to greet the police carrying a weapon.
♂ ♂
AT THE DOOR, I raise my hands and gasp out to the pair of uniformed officers with their guns drawn.
“I’m Noah Jeffries. Dr. Geary’s got my boyfriend tied up someplace inside.”
The two guys glance at one another. It hits me this is going to be a lot to explain to a pair of cops who were called to take down a missing persons report at the convenience store, and then Louis and Garrett must have told them a new story about meeting me at Philip’s.
“Carlos Maldonado,” I say. “Dr. Geary beat him up and brought him back here.”
“Sir, step back,” the older officer tells me gruffly. “We’re going to enter the house and talk to Dr. Geary.”
I step aside and shut my mouth. After all this, now I’ve got to worry about what the two cops are going to make of the scene they’re walking into? I point to the living room. The older officer goes first, and the younger one nudges me with his gun to follow along.
Philip is still lying on the floor. The older officer takes account of the gunshot in the wall. Then he squats down by Philip.
“Dr. Philip Geary?”
Philip nods his head.
“Where’s Carlos Maldonado?”
Philip tries to say something and winces. Those strikes from the iron poker did a number to his body.
“We’ve got surveillance camera footage from the M&M convenience store showing you striking Mr. Maldonado with a golf club and getting him into your car. You gonna tell us where he is?”
My heart lifts. They saw him on video. They know the score.
The older officer turns to me. “What happened here?”
I explain everything from Philip’s text and the video he sent me to his plan to shoot me on the tarp-covered sofa and make it look like Carlos and I attacked each other. Neither officer appears concerned about me having battered Philip a couple of times with the poker, which puts me at ease. I tell them where the weapons are.
“He’s got to have Carlos somewhere in the house,” I say. “It looked dark, like a basement or an attic.”
The guy tries again with Philip. “We’re going to take you down to the station, Dr. Geary. You think you can stand up?”
The younger officer comes around the other side of Philip with a pair of handcuffs. Philip struggles to push up on his hands and knees. Eventually, with the young officer’s help, he gets up on his feet. He’s not a pretty sight, pale from shock and sweating through his button-down shirt. The officer cuffs his hands.
The older guy talks to him. “You’re under arrest for assault and kidnapping. You gonna make it easier for yourself and tell us where Mr. Maldonado is?”
“In the guesthouse,” he mutters.
The officer nods to his counterpart and tells Philip. “Officer Taylor is going to take you to the car while we have a look at that guesthouse.” While Taylor shoulders Philip out of the house, the older guy, Sergeant McNamara I see from his badge, catches my eye.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” I gesture to the hall. “There’s a back door through here.”
I lead the sergeant out of the house and across the yard to the wood-shingled guesthouse. I’m jumping out of my skin to find Carlos, wishing the guy would pick up the pace. A motion detecting lamp comes on in the yard, but the two-story house is dark inside. McNamara pops on his flashlight and shines it around as we approach. I guess it’s possible Philip laid a trap, though he’s proven he’s no criminal mastermind. He thought he could handle me with a gun, and thankfully, he was quite a bit off with that gamble.
McNamara opens the screen door and gives the inside one a try. The fucker Philip didn’t mention the door was locked. The sergeant knocks on the door, which is really kind of stupid since I told him Carlos was tied up. I call out for him to see if he answers back. Nothing.
I spot a welcome mat and figure what the hell. Sure enough, I find a key beneath, give it to McNamara, and he fits it in the door. He pushes it open, and we enter the pitch black house with the cop’s flashlight pointing the way ahead.
There’s a front room, and a hall leading back to the kitchen. I see a door off the hall back there and point it out to the Sergeant. Just common sense. Philip would want to stow Carlos away in a closed room, and he wouldn’t be able to handle moving the guy upstairs.
I’m right behind McNamara when he opens the door. His flashlight lays bare a sparsely furnished room, and a figure tied up to a chair, hanging his head.
“Mr. Maldonado?”
I can’t take holding back with this guy anymore. I maneuver around him and rush to Carlos. McNamara finds an overhead light to turn on.
I’m physically wounded by the state I find Carlos in. The front of his head is wet and crusted with blood from where Philip hit him with his golf club. I gently prop up his drooping head. He’s still warm and breathing. Drooling a bit. I see a needle prick on his wrist. Philip shot him up with something.
The sergeant’s radio fizzes, and he calls back to his partner.
“We need paramedics ASAP.”
I unstrap Carlos’s hands and feet. Philip used nylon cord. Then I hunch down and put my arm around Carlos, kissing his face, swallowing the lump in my throat.
I tell him, “Baby, you’re gonna be all right. Okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I FOLLOW THE ambulance to the hospital in my car and stay with Carlos at the ER. A nurse helps me clean up the scrape to my face and puts a bandage on it. It’s nothing compared to Carlos’s injury, just three score lines from Philip’s nails that should heal without scarring.
I’ve got a bunch of texts from an out-of-state number that must be Louis. I give him a call, which leads to calling Jae who knows Carlos’s parents’ number in Oklahoma. The hospital wants to contact Carlos’s family. I give the number to a nurse along with a look that says: you’ll have to pry my dead body off of my boyfriend if you’re getting me out of here. She doesn’t try me, and after the doctor on duty does an examination and some tests, she lets me know what’s going on.
“There’s some minor damage to his skull. Some hemorrhaging on the outside. He’ll have a lot of swelling there, which we may need to deal with later. I’ve seen a lot worse, but any head trauma is serious. Whatever drugs he was given probably helped. An opioid like heroin dulls the body’s response. Besides alleviating pain, it makes it less likely that the injury disrupted blood flow to the brain. We’re admitting him to intensive care where we can keep him on fluids and anti-clotting medication. His heart appears to be functioning pretty well, but we’ll keep an eye on that too.”
I sniff back tears. “His family’s in Oklahoma. I don’t want him to be alone.”
“I understand,” the doctor says. “Family and significant others can stay with patients. The nurse will let you know which bed we’re moving him into.”
A short while later, everyone shows up at the hospital. Amanda, Jae, Ian, Louis and Garrett, and four other people from the co-op I recognize by face but not by name. I tell them what I know. They each get a brief chance to see Carlos, and then he’s wheeled up to the second floor of the hospital.
I sit in a chair beside his bed where he’s got an IV line and various apparatuses hooked up to him to monitor his heartbeat and blood pressure. His eyes flutter open a little every now and then. I hold his hand and meditate to him: Keep fighting.
It’s not lost on me that I’m the cause of this. Well, I know only Philip’s responsible for bashing Carlos’s head, but if I hadn’t brought Carlos into my crazy life, he’d be out at Woody’s, just having fun with his friends.
Around one o’clock in the morning, my phone rings with an unfamiliar, out-of-state number, and I take it. It’s Carlos’s mom and dad on speaker phone. They tell me Jae gave them my number. I try to sound reassuring, but hearing their frightened voices makes that lump ball up in my throat again. I sob into the phone.
“I’m so sorry. Your son’s the greatest person in the world. He’s doing all right, but this never should have happened to him.”
Carlos’s father tells me they’re flying up tomorrow afternoon. He says they’re looking forward to meeting me. Carlos told them he’d met someone special. He’s happy Carlos is not alone and thanks me for taking care of him. He tells me to stay strong.
I’m kind of blown away. I understand in a deeper way what an amazing person Carlos is, having parents who showed him how to love unconditionally and never be afraid. I wipe away my tears for the millionth time that night, and I hold Carlos’s hand, imagining I can transmit my love and vitality into his struggling body.
Sometime in the early morning, I notice him getting fussy in his bed, and his eyes open in the most lucid way I’ve seen him do. I lean up close and try to catch his gaze.
“Baby?”
Carlos groans. He’s still weak, but I see in his gaze he recognizes me. In a paper-thin voice, he asks me, “What happened?”
I gently take his hand. This is a great sign, isn’t it? Understandably, his memory is muddled, but I can feel he’s the same Carlos. I was terrified he’d have major brain damage.
“You got attacked, but you’re fine now.” I look to a water pitcher on a stand next to his bed. The nurse said he could drink when he wakes up. “You want some water?”
He nods, cringing a little from the movement.
After I help him drink some water, he looks more alert and replenished. He notices the bandage on my face.
“You got attacked, too?”
“Yeah. But it’s hardly anything.”
“By Philip?”
I grimace, and then I look at him in wonder. He’s really coming back to his old self.
I nod. “He attacked you behind the convenience store and got you into his car. Do you remember any of it?”
Carlos closes his eyes. “Sorry. The room’s spinning a bit. I feel like I was run over by a truck.”
I kiss his hand. “You don’t have to talk,” I tell him. The corners of my eyes burn. I still feel so bad about the pain he’s in.
“He shot me up with drugs. Is that why I feel this way?” he says.
“Yes. Partially. He also hit you in the head.” I glance out to the hospital floor. “I should get a nurse.”
