Chapter 14

“You do? How?” Brad asked.

“I do a mean Star Trek uniform insignia tattoo. You’d be surprised how many of those little twerps have cried their way through having me ink that on their chests.”

“Call everyone of them you can think of and spread the word. Maybe we can get to this bastard through his roommate,” Brad said.

“What if he does this again?” Karen asked. “How many of those pills did he get from Jerry?”

“I don’t know,” Mountain admitted.

“Shit, we have to work fast or some other poor girl could get hurt. If he does that, I’ll hunt him down and kill him myself!” Karen sobbed.

“Calm down, baby. You’ll have to wait your turn in line. But you’re right. We have to make a plan to catch him, and to do that, we need more info. I wonder if he’s done this before,” Brad said.

“If he did, he didn’t use Roofies,” Mountain said. “Jerry said he had to tell the kid what they were.”

“I would think if there were a violent rapist loose on campus, we would have heard about it,” Brad said, “so maybe this was his first time. We just have to make sure it was his last.”

“We should go to the police,” Karen said.

“With what?” Brad asked. “There’s no physical evidence to connect Derby with Anna’s rape. Sure, we can all say that we saw him with her. So what? Any dumb public defender can point out how circumstantial that evidence is. The cops and doctors already hinted that they had nothing. No semen, no fingerprints, no DNA, no evidence. Even if Anna says she thinks it was Derby who raped her, they can say she was drugged by someone else, and it’s only because she herself got so drunk before she got drugged that she doesn’t remember any other guy. Hair samples? Clothing fibers? So what? They were together. One of the guys even saw them kissing in the back yard. There’s no case. But, we know what happened, and we’re going to take care of it.”

Joel, who had been listening quietly, spoke up. “The little fuck has a nasty temper. You saw the way he came at me.”

Brad said, “Well, you were out of line.”

“You made that clear last night,” Joel said dryly. “Shit, I was fucked up. I apologized. But with the way he blew up on me about Anna, are you sure they hadn’t been seeing each other before?”

Karen said, “Anna told me she met him the for the first time the other day when she was moving in. He helped her with some of her stuff. Then he called her out of the blue last night and offered to walk her over to my house. I invited them both here. Oh, God, this is my fault!”

Brad hugged her. “Baby, don’t say that. How could you have known he was like that? If he hadn’t gotten to Anna, he probably would have gone for someone else. That certainly wouldn’t have been your fault, would it? No, he’s a predator.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Joel said. “Did you ever see one of those nature shows when predators fight over their kill? That’s what that douchebag was like. Some rogue killer animal fighting over his prey.”

“So, how do you catch a predator?” Mountain asked. “Bait a trap?”

“I bet I could get one of my sorority sisters to serve as bait,” Karen said.

“Pretty risky,” said Brad. “Besides, they’re all sophomores and up. This kid’s a freshman. I remember when I was a freshman. I would never have dreamed of chasing an upperclassman chick. They were out of my league.”

“Wait a minute,” said Joel, “one of your sorority sisters, Maribeth, teaches a martial arts and self defense class. I took it last year. That little blond is a foot shorter and probably eighty pounds lighter than me, and she routinely kicked my ass. Maybe she could do a rape-prevention crash course type of thing for the freshman girls.”

“Good idea,” Karen said, “but we need to do something even more proactive. I know, my house can host a welcome party for the new girls. We have money in the treasury. When I explain to them the issue, I’m sure it will be a rubber stamp to appropriate the funds. We can have a bikini car wash later to replenish the money.”

“I’ll direct traffic,” Mountain said, pulling himself up to his full height. “I’m sure I can persuade a lot of people that their cars need to be washed.”

Drake, who had wandered in during the conversation, said, “I’ll hit up my girl over at the Delta house. I bet if some of you girls get together, you can get all the sororities to chip in. That way, no one will think you’re trying to get a jump on rush week, and you’ll be able to reach more of the freshman girls. I’ll go talk to the guys in the other frat houses. I’m sure some of them will help with the work. We can set up stands around campus, hand out invitations, that sort of thing. Make it into some kind of festival, but with a real serious purpose.”

“Yeah,” Mountain said, “if we attract enough people, maybe this asshole will show up, too. He can think it’s an opportunity to stalk new prey, but there will be some safety in the sheer numbers. And if we spot him, I can have the fun of breaking him in half.”

Brad said, “I like everything about this except the breaking him in half part. We have to do something to him that won’t get us in trouble, but that will make sure that he’s finished as a rapist. All right. Do we all know what to do? Let’s go!”

In a matter of a few hours of phone calls and text messages, making plans, creating and printing materials, and general running around, every fraternity and sorority house had become involved in preparation for an entire weekend of activities. The events were to start the following evening, Friday. Different sororities would be hosting events at their houses all day on Saturday, and the fraternity houses would play host to still more activities on Sunday. A steering committee consisting of the presidents of all the houses had been formed to coordinate and manage all the separate events, and these people had created groups within their own houses to run events, whether the event was run by a single house or by the joint effort of several houses.