Chapter One

 

“All respect due, sir, have you ever been in a gunfight?”

Seated opposite, Sgt. Martin Culvin simmers and shakes his head.

“No.”

A table separates the two. Cigarette burns and gashes pock its linoleum surface, on which an empty legal notepad and an outdated tape recorder lie.

“Then I wouldn’t expect you to understand what I’m talking about.”

Culvin boils at the suggestion, recognizing almost immediately that his agitation was surely intended.

If your enemy is temperamental, provoke him.

Collected, Culvin answers by pulling his lip-corners into a taut smile, revealing neat rows of white teeth but little else. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

Across the table is one of his own, a former cop. Someone familiar with the process – as familiar as one could be, that is, sitting on that side of the table.

The door snap opens and Culvin’s partner, Sgt. Ray Dice, enters. He’s tall, like Culvin, but young and white and wearing a tailored suit. Dice takes a seat next to Culvin and sifts through the plastic bag he carries.

“They didn’t have any of that hipster shit,” Dice says, as he slings the bag’s items – Jack Link’s beef jerky and a diet Mountain Dew – across the table. The jerky settles at the table’s end, but the soda can has too much zip and clatters precariously as it strikes pockmarks in the linoleum.

With the incoming soda set to hurtle off the table’s edge River Johnson, sitting upright in her chair opposite the detectives, shoots out a steady hand and snatches the now-angled can in a pincers grasp. In an instant her grip shifts, her movements measured and deliberate as she drags the Mountain Dew her way.

“That’s fine,” she says, as she snaps the pull-tab and brings the perspiring aluminum to her lips.

Johnson’s face is angular, her eyes piercing and blue as ice with light crow’s feet tugging at their edges. She is older than Dice but younger than Culvin and moves only to drink. Her posture is erect but loose, with auburn strands that would drop past broad shoulders wrapped instead in a tight bun. Stillness seems her natural state.

Culvin is pissed, and this time he may have shown it.

That was some JV, frat-boy shit by Dice right there, he thought.

Best-case scenario, you spray soda everywhere and we depose her in a room that’s stickier than a movie theater. All for some semblance of authority, when we’re without the necessary warrant that keeps her here. Worst-case, following Dice’s back-ass logic, is she catches the can and he looks like a jackass – which, of course, she did and he does because this is not some ordinary woman we pulled off the street.

It’s all in the case file – a retired cop with ten years on the force, eight of those as an investigator in State Homicide, a tour in Afghanistan, probably the only veteran alumna from Oberlin College. This was one tough bitch, a woman who made it further and faster in the man’s world of law enforcement than any man Culvin knew. And she wasn’t lying – she has been in a gunfight.

That’s precisely what Culvin wants to discuss.

 

Chapter Two

 

River had stopped listening to her new RA, Zoe from Chicago, about ten minutes before, but could still follow the monologue.

“Personally, I cringe whenever I see a door decoration on the floor disregarded or, as we’ve even had in the past, vandalized. Also, the bulletin boards. . .”

River is focused instead on her pale legs, spotting previously unnoticed bruises and lesions under the harsh dorm lights. She finds the largest, a purple oil slick that had settled just below her right shin, and presses a thumb into it. A sharp jolt up her calf and knee, more pain than expected.

Zoe drones on. “Everything we do for you guys requires a lot of time and effort. . .”

River thumbs the bruise again, this time less pain. There’s a girl seated next to her, staring at her through horn-rimmed glasses in a loose flannel shirt. When River catches her gaze, Flannel looks away.

Zoe coughs. “Sorry, guys, I’ve got the sniffles. I know it’s the worst time to have them, but I promise I’m not contagious!”

The room breaks into laughter. River is confused about what part was funny, but she laughs along anyway.

“So, enough about orientation. Let’s get to know each other more! I have this fun idea for a name game.”

Zoe bends and rummages through the chevron JanSport at her feet, a Stepford smile at her lips, before emerging with a plush toy in hand.

“This is Chip the Calico Cat! I have five other beanie babies, but Chip is my favorite!”

River finds every part about this funny and laughs. Flannel does too, the sole other to join in.

Through furrowed brows and pursed lips, Zoe from Chicago glares at Flannel as if to silence her, before turning her cold gaze towards River. But she bristles when their eyes meet, and, with eyebrows now arched and her mouth slightly agape, Zoe adjusts.

"So," she continues, "The game is, we all sit down and we pass Chip along, and whoever is holding Chip has to introduce themselves by giving their name, where they’re from, and a fun fact about themselves. Let’s all rearrange in a circle!”

River didn’t want to be the first volunteer for some icebreaker activity, so she takes her time to stand and find her place among the others. She scans the room for Flannel but can't find her.

As River sits the first student, a disheveled guy in a skintight turtleneck, introduces himself.

“Hey everyone, I’m really excited to be a freshman here at Oberlin! My name is Kevin, I’m from Brooklyn, and I’m super into the kazoo, I actually have a few electric ones in my room if anyone wants to come by and see!”

“Wow, thank you so much for that offer, Kevin!” Zoe responds.

River isn’t sure what a kazoo is, but is certain she won’t head to Kevin’s room anytime soon to learn. She outstretches her legs, watching Kevin as he passes Chip the Calico Cat to Kelsey from San Francisco – an ardent unicyclist – and she returns to her bruise.

She knew this was what it was going to be like, but the affirmation still cut. She had nothing in common with these people. But it was this scholarship with these hipsters for four years or Lorrain County Community College, and this was the highest ranked school in the state.

She feels shuffling to her right and peers over – Flannel is right next to her. River is jarred for a second, unsure how long Flannel’s been seated there, before feeling a tap on her left shoulder. She turns again and everyone is looking directly at her.

“Excuse me? It’s your turn.”

River takes the beanie baby from an outstretched palm, swallows, and then speaks.

“I’m River, I’m from here in Ohio, out west though, and I’m on the kickboxing team.”

The room’s vibe hushes noticeably at the suggestion of violence and River, more uncomfortable with the silence than her hematomas, strains to fill it.

“It’s like boxing, but with kicking,” she stammers through dry throat.

Zoe attempts to recover.

“Oh wow, River, that’s such a cool name! I didn’t even know we had a kickboxing team!”

Zoe’s voice goes high at the end, River notices. She sits silent for a beat, then adds, “Its our first year, we’re just a club team this year, but I’m the captain.”

Silence. Blank stares.

“Very cool – River, could you pass Chip along?”

“Oh – uh, sure.” River responds, her pale cheeks now flush.

She tosses the cat to Flannel, who doesn’t even raise a hand before the plush toy strikes her nose and sends her glasses scattering across the floor.

“Sorry!”

Flannel’s face reddens and her eyes water. No one else speaks. Her gaze never lifts as she picks her frames from the tattered carpet, smashing the horn-rim wingtips over pierced earlobes before stammering, “H-hey guys, I’m Jessica and I-I’m from New York, I really love movies. . .”

---

River leaves the meeting the moment it ends and races to the dormitory stairwell, bounding down the three floors to the exit. She ignores the ‘Alarm Will Sound’ sign and kicks a sandaled foot into the emergency exit door, her hip-flexor loose as she lifts her front knee and snaps the ball of her foot into the crash bar.

No alarm sounds and a rush of crisp September air tousles her brown locks, bare toes cooled with each sweeping stride through the grass. Dressed in a faded Pearl Jam shirt and jean shorts, River knows she’d be warmer in a sweatshirt but prefers the chill.

She doesn’t know where she’s going but it’s not to sit in her dorm room to wait for the first day of classes. She spots three more flannel-wearers smoking cigarettes near the dorm’s bike rack and approaches.

“Hey, could I bum one?”