The Eighth Casualty

“Jeffrey Blair, the biology teacher, was the first one to die,” said Detective Cassie Ward thumbing over one of the pages of the stapled police report.

            “Yeah,” mumbled Jeremy Bullock, whose eyes were locked on the quarter rolling across his fingers.

            “Did you ever take his class?”

            “Yeah, last year,” Jeremy replied keeping the quarter in constant rhythm.

            “Did you know that he had a wife and daughter?”

            “No, not really.”

            “His daughter’s name is Paige and she misses her daddy very much,” Cassie emphasized with a hint of pity in her voice.

            “Yeah, bet she does.”

            “I think Paige and her mom would appreciate some answers.”

            “It’s not gonna change anything,” Jeremy replied with a long sigh.

            “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

            “He’s gone,” Jeremy hissed letting the coin fall on the table with a loud tap. “Besides, I’ve already told all I know.”

            “You told us what happened, but you didn’t tell us why,” the detective dropping the report and leaning forward. “I’ve got all day, Jeremy.”

            “This is stupid. I want to leave now,” he barked.

            “Well, you’re not,” she countered without changing the volume of her voice.

            “You can’t keep me here and—

            “Yes, I can, Jeremy.”

            “I’m calling my Mom,” he spat before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone.

            “I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” She shot him a serious look.

            “You don’t scare me,” he sneered thumbing down his contact list.

            “Okay,” she relented. “The judge isn’t going to be happy.”

            “What judge?” Jeremy asked looking up.

            “Judge Howell. He’s probably not going to like it when I tell him that you won’t talk with me.”

            “So what?”

            “He might just send you got to juvie for a while,” Cassie explained stuffing the report inside her briefcase.

            “What’s that?”

            “Juvenile hall.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Just like jail except it’s for teenagers.” She closed her briefcase and stood up from her chair.

            “You can’t send me to jail,” he shouted. “I’m freakin’ seventeen!”

            “I don’t want you to go jail, but you don’t want to listen.” Cassie pushed her chair in and started walking towards the door.

            “Okay,” Jeremy said, but Cassie reached for the door knob. “OKAY!”

            She turned to face him. “Okay, what?”

            “Fine, I’ll talk,” he groaned collapsing back into the chair.

            “I’m not fooling around with you, Jeremy. You’d better be serious.”

            “I said I’ll talk,” he grumbled crossing his arms.

            “Okay, let’s talk,” she said walking back to her chair and setting her briefcase on the table. “This is your last chance,” she warned pulling out the chair and sitting down.

            “This sucks!”

            “I know it does,” she replied gently. “But we have to know.”

            “Know what? I’ve told the story a thousand times.”

            “I know you have, but you’re still not telling us why Mr. Blair and six other students had to die.” She opened her briefcase and presented the report again. “Let’s start with Joshua Douglas and Daniel Rude.”

            “Well, Josh and Daniel were jerks,” Jeremy complained. “They got away with everything, because they played football.”

            “Does that mean they deserved to die?”

            “Well…no.”

            “How about Shanti Patel, the foreign exchange student?” Cassie asked flipping the page of the report. “Any trouble with her?”

            “No, not really. She was…really nice actually,” Jeremy answered.

            “Really?”

            “Yeah,” Jeremy muttered while nodding his head. “She was my lab partner in Chemistry.”

            “Nice people don’t deserve to die do they?”

            “No, they don’t.” He covered his face with his hands.  

            “Isaac Beaumont?”

            “Oh, him,” Jeremy snorted. “Always looking for a fight. Always struttin’ around in his leather jacket acting like he’s big stuff just because he was 19 and still in school.”

            “Didn’t like him very much?”

            “No, not really.”

            “Guess you didn’t like Melanie Blake either.”

            Jeremy let his hands fall from his face to the table. “She was weird, but I didn’t know her very well. I think she smoked pot and worshipped Satan.”

            “Who told you that?”

            “Guess Stephanie heard it from somebody,” he said shrugging.

            Cassie laid the report down. “You really loved Stephanie didn’t—

            “DON’T!” Jeremy’s hand shot up like a traffic stop. “Just don’t.”

            “We have to talk about it, Jeremy.”

            “Why?! She’s gone!” he bellowed.

            “I know that,” she said gently. “But, we have to know.”

            “Know what?!”

            “Why it happened.”

            “No!”

            “Why did it happen, Jeremy?”

            “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

            “Why did it happen?”

            “It’s not a good school. Bad things happen all the time that no one was knows about,” Jeremy cried before standing up.

            “Tell me, Jeremy.”

            He began pacing. “Shanti, Isaac, and Melanie were innocent, but Josh and Daniel weren’t and Blair knew it.”

            “Why?”

            Jeremy stopped and began sniffing. “It smells like blood in here.”

            “There’s no blood in here, it’s been cleaned,” Cassie replied motioning for Jeremy to sit back down.

            “It smells just like the locker room.” Jeremy covered his hand and began coughing as he leaned against the table. “Oh, it’s awful.”

            Cassie smelled the air herself this time. “It doesn’t smell like blood in here. You need to sit down and breathe slowly.”

            “Did you see the blood in there?” he asked his eyes wide with fright.

            “Yes, I took the photos, but—

            “—thought I was going to puke! But they deserved it.”

            “But you just said that three of them were innocent.”

            “I didn’t mean them, I meant Josh and Daniel.” Jeremy finally sat down dropping his head to the table and covering himself as if the roof might cave in.

            “What did Josh and Daniel do?” asked Cassie, quickly pulling out a legal pad and a pen.

            “I hope they’re burning in hell!”

            “Why?”

            “They…they…” he stuttered as his whole body shook.

            “What?”

            “THEY—RAPED—HER!” the boy bellowed with tears flowing down his face and his cheeks glowing red.

            Cassie reached her hand across the table taking Jeremy’s in hers. “Raped who?” she asked as meekly as possible.

            “Her!” he whimpered.

            “Are you talking about Stephanie?”

            “Y-Yes!” he sniffled.

            Cassie used her free hand and wrote down what he said. “Josh and Daniel raped Stephanie?”

            “Yes!”

            “When did she tell you?”

            Jeremy sniffed and wiped his face. “The day before it happened.”

            “Will you please tell me what she said?”

            “She came over to my house and said that she had something to tell me. I asked her what it was and she pulled out a pink pregnancy test—

            “Was it positive?”

            “Yeah,” he mumbled with nod. “I was mad and told her she was cheater.”

            “You knew it wasn’t yours?”

            “No, it wasn’t mine,” he answered, his lip quivering. “We never did anything like that, we promised we wouldn’t until marriage.”

            Cassie scribbled more words on the pad. “So, you didn’t believe her?”

            “No!” he sobbed. “But then she showed me the bruise on her chest and then the one on her arm.”

            “I saw those too when I was taking the pictures,” she informed him.

            “I felt so bad. I hugged her and told her I loved her and that I would always be there for her and would even help her with the baby.”

            “Sounded like you were a really good boyfriend,” said Cassie squeezing Jeremy’s hand.

            “I wish! I let those two idiots do that to her and then that freakin’ Mr. Blair told her she was lying.”

            “Why didn’t he believe her?”

            “Because he was the assistant football coach and Josh and Daniel could do no wrong,” he growled through his tears.

            “Mr. Blair knew and he didn’t tell anybody?”

            “I guess not.” Jeremy let go of Cassie’s hand and raised the bottom of his shirt to this face. “I don’t think anyone in that stupid school would have believed her.”

            Cassie wrote more on the pad before asking, “Is that why Mr. Blair died first?”

            “I guess.”

            “Then that’s when everything happened in the locker room?”

            “Yeah,” he sighed.

            “Do you know why Shanti, Isaac, and Melanie were in the locker room with Josh and Daniel?”

            “Um…I think they were all doing that work study thing for Coach Kelley. I think there was a rag in Shanti’s hand and Isaac had a broom.”

            “You would be right,” affirmed Cassie. “I checked with Coach Kelley, because I wasn’t sure why there were two boys and two girls in the locker room together.”

            “You mean three?” Jeremy asked breaking into new sobs.

            Cassie nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

            “I wish I had never gone into that stupid locker room. It’s always in my head!”

            “I wish you didn’t either,” she agreed. “There were already seven victims and you became the eighth.”

            Jeremy’s tear stained eyes looked up at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

            Cassie put the cap on her pen and moved the legal pad aside. “I mean that you became a victim the minute you walked into that locker room and saw what Stephanie had done.”

            “I should have stopped her,” he whimpered.

            “You didn’t know, Jeremy,” said Cassie.

            “But I should have!”

            “No one knew and I think that’s what she wanted. She told you that Daniel and Josh raped her and one of them got her pregnant. So, she goes to Mr. Blair, who doesn’t believe her and won’t let her speak badly about his players. Right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Here she was, a senior in high school and would graduate in the spring and then these two boys do something horrible to her. She finds out she’s pregnant and probably thinks her life is ruined. All the other kids at school probably wouldn’t have been very nice to her belly started showing.”

            “No, they wouldn’t,” Josh remarked.

            “She might have thought that she wouldn’t get to go to college and it sounds like she was worried about losing you, too.”

            “Yeah.”

            “How long were two together?”

            “Since we were freshmen,” he replied cracking a small smile.

            “She wanted revenge against those boys and went into that locker room with her father’s gun and started shooting the minute she saw them.”

            “She didn’t mean to—

            “I know it. She didn’t know that Shanti, Isaac, and Melanie were in there, too. But it was too late before she realized that she was shooting at more than two people. Once she saw what she had done, she was probably thinking that her life was over.”

            “Oh, Steph!” he cried throwing his arms across the table.

            “That’s where you came in, Jeremy,” she began standing from her chair, walking over to him and putting an around him, “you walked in and saw them all laying there. You saw her holding the gun and you knew it.”

            “I should have saved her.” He buried his face into Cassie’s shirt.

            “But, she didn’t let you.” She squeezed him tight. “She stopped anyone from helping her when she pulled that trigger one last time.”

            “Oh my g…” the rest of his words were muffled as he dug further into Cassie’s chest.

            “We know why she did it now, Jeremy. You’ll never have to do this again. I promise!”

            Jeremy lifted up his head. “Really?”

            “I’ll make sure of it. No more reporters badgering you and your family, no more interrogations, no more nothing. Okay?”

            Jeremy nodded. “What am I gonna do?”

            “I don’t know right now, but I want you to know that none of this was your fault,” Cassie explained holding his arms like a mother comforting a child. “You didn’t know the girl you loved would murder six people, because she was angry. You’re a victim, too!”

            “Yeah.”

            “So was she. Something horrible happened to her and no one wanted to listen to her, but now everyone will know what happened to her and why she did what she did.”

            “Yeah.” Jeremy wiped his face and sniffed. “Can I call my Mom now?”

            “She’s already here. I had them call her before we started talking,” Cassie replied with a smile. “I’ll give her my number in case you ever need anything.”

            “Thanks, Cassie!” he cried as they embraced one final time.