Page 8

8

Hagen had met a thousand guys like Patrick Marrion’s roommate. Or at least, it felt like that.

In the three years he’d spent as an officer with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, barely a week went by without arresting at least one college kid for possession, public drunkenness, driving while intoxicated, minor in possession, or even violent behavior.

He’d haul them in. They’d call their dads, and within half an hour, a lawyer with the same tailor his father used would slide a briefcase onto the table of the interrogation room. He’d explain why keeping the kid for a second longer would end Hagen’s career and produce a lawsuit big enough to bankrupt the police department.

Jake Tripp was sprawled across his bed. A half-eaten burrito rested on a plate by his pillow. He only needed to turn his head to grab a bite hands-free. But that would’ve meant taking his eyes off the screen of his Nintendo Switch.

He’d been holding the device when he’d shouted to Hagen that the door was open. Even when they’d flashed their badges and told him they wanted to ask him questions about his deceased roommate, he neither sat up nor put the device down.

The Switch beeped. Tripp made a small fist-bump.

They’d only been in the room for about a minute, but Hagen’s anger at this punk was rising almost to a breaking point.

The way Ander rested a shoulder against the door of the dorm room suggested he, too, was in familiar territory. Ander hadn’t been a cop. But his graduate degree meant he’d spent plenty of time on college campuses and far too many evenings in student dormitories.

A CTSU Pelicans pennant was pinned to the wall above his bed. Two dirty t-shirts, three unmatched socks, a sweater, a pair of jeans with the boxers still inside, and three pairs of expensive-looking sneakers were scattered around the floor. The air smelled of weed and unwashed clothes.

The bed on Patrick’s side of the room had been made. Sloppily, so that the top of the blanket was crooked, and the pillowcase surely needed to be changed, but at least it had been made. There were no clothes on the floor, and the books on the bedside cabinet made a neat pile. Jake Tripp’s bedside cabinet held two empty cans of Red Bull and a packet of rolling papers.

Another beep bleated from Tipp’s game console like an annoying sheep. He winced and jammed a button on his device. Hagen had a strong urge to take the machine from his hand and hurl it through the window.

Instead, he reminded himself to breathe. “So, Jake, what can you tell me about Patrick?”

His gaze didn’t leave the screen as he shrugged. “Not much. We weren’t friends or nothing. What do you want to know?”

“You know what he was studying?”

Tripp shrugged again. The move seemed to be his standard response. Teachers must’ve found it infuriating.

“Seriously? You’ve been his roommate for…what? Three months now? And he didn’t tell you what he was studying? You didn’t think to ask?”

Jake shrugged a third time.

Ander pushed into the room. He stood on Tripp’s dirty clothes. “Hello? Can you hear me? Can you put that down, please?”

Once again, Tripp didn’t answer. Something on the screen had caught his attention and held it.

Ander reached over the bed and yanked the Switch out of Tripp’s hands. “That’s more than enough of this.”

Hagen pleaded silently for Ander to open the eighth-floor window and send the thing flying over the sidewalk to smash into the middle of the street.

Tripp finally met their eyes.

Hagen got up into the punk’s face. “We’re not playing around here, Jake. This is a murder investigation. If you want this thing back, you’d better focus and answer our questions. Otherwise, we’ll be having this conversation in a more official setting.”

Tripp glared but didn’t move. “This is bullshit, man.”

“You want to know bullshit? Your roommate is dead, and you don’t seem to give two fucks about it. You know what that looks like to us? Looks like maybe you didn’t like your roommate. Looks like maybe you might have reason to hurt your roommate. Do you want us to believe that you would hurt your murdered roommate?”

The two of them locked eyes, and Tripp blinked first. “All right, fine. What do you want to know?”

Hagen took a deep breath. “What was he studying?”

Tripp shrugged yet again. “I dunno. History, I think. We didn’t talk much. I’m out a lot. He wasn’t. We didn’t see much of each other. And what I saw of him was too much, you ask me.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“Wouldn’t say I didn’t like him. Nothing to like or not like, you know. Just sort of a nothing person.”

That was too much. Hagen fumed. “You better change your attitude, kid. You don’t speak ill of the dead. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

Tripp rolled his eyes. “If he wasn’t lying there with some history book, he was usually on his phone or something. He was boring, man. A gold-plated geek.”

Hagen turned and took a seat on the edge of Patrick’s bed. From his position, all he could see was Jake Tripp and his stuff and his mess. Tripp left little space for a roommate to make his own.

“Who were his friends?”

The shrug returned. “No idea. Honestly, man. Don’t think he had any. Not in the real world anyway.” He chuckled.

Ander kicked the pile of clothes from under his feet. “What does that mean?”

“Just that no one ever came here, man. The only people I ever saw him talking to were, like, on his phone or online.”

Hagen’s interest rose. “So he did talk to people. You hear what he said?”

“Naw, he didn’t talk to anyone. He just texted. Like on some messaging app or something.”

Ander opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet. There were more pens, a small bottle of ibuprofen, and a short stack of plain paper. He shook his head and looked at Hagen. “Nothing of any interest.”

Hagen peered at Jake. “Where are his phone and computer?”

Another beep blared out. This time from Tripp’s person. The punk pulled his phone from his pocket and started texting.

Hagen could hardly believe it. “Where are the phone and computer?”

“What? Whose phone and computer?”

Hagen clenched his fists to stop himself from smacking Tripp across the head. But, once again, he remembered to breathe.

“Patrick’s phone and computer. Although if you want to give us yours, as well, we’d be happy to take them.”

Tripp’s head jerked up. “You’re not taking my stuff. I’ll call my dad. You can’t do that.”

Hagen leaned against the closet door, not even needing to get up from the bed to do so. No matter the money, dorm rooms still always managed to be tiny. Tripp was right, of course, they couldn’t take his computer and phone, not without a better reason than Jake Tripp being a world-class douche. But at least they had his attention.

“You said Patrick was always on his computer and his phone. Where are they?”

The screen beeped again. “How the heck would I know?”

Ander eyed Hagen then glared at Tripp. “We’re going to go through Patrick’s stuff now.”

Tripp lowered his phone. “Just don’t touch anything of mine. You can’t do that.”

Hagen and Ander searched Patrick’s bedside table and desk. They looked through his sheets and under his mattress and bed. They rifled through his closet and searched the small backpack that hung behind the door that Tripp identified as Patrick’s.

But the phone and the computer weren’t there.

Tripp glanced at them, then back down at his screen, his burrito still half-eaten. “The cops already searched there, you know.”

Not for the first time, Hagen wished there was a law against being a dickhead so they could haul this kid in. “You mentioned Patrick was active online. Do you know who he was talking to? What platforms? If it was someone local?”

Tripp shook his head, a welcome change from a shrug. He waved a finger in the air. “Oh, there was one thing. He got amped recently. Some friend of his had moved to the city. They were going to meet up. I think it was the day he was found, you know?” He lowered his phone for the first time. “Maybe that was where he went. Huh.”

When Ander met Hagen’s gaze, he looked like he was also aching to pummel answers out of Tripp. “What friend?”

“You didn’t think to open with this information, Jake?” Hagen was ready to send Jake himself out the eighth-floor window.

There was that signature shrug again.

“Patrick didn’t mention a name?”

“Don’t think so. I dunno. Maybe. I just tuned the guy out most of the time, you know?”

“You know where the friend lived?”

“Uh-uh.”

“How about where he moved from?” Ander stepped closer, shoulder to shoulder with Hagen now.

Shrug.

“Jake, who was this friend?”

Another shrug.

Hagen had enough. He plucked the phone out of the kid’s hand. “I’ll ask you again, who was this friend?”

“I don’t know, man. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. All I know is he was yapping about meeting some friend who’d just moved to town and how he was gonna show him around and all that crap. Dude, I figured he was lying. Like, who’d be friends with Patrick?” He held out his hand. “Now give it back.”

Hagen tossed the phone on the bed, while Ander dropped the Switch. It fell through Tripp’s hands, bounced off his belly, and clattered to the floor. Only the dirty sweater by the bed saved the screen from a nasty crunch.

“You shithead cop.”

“If I see you again, you’ll learn what a shithead cop really is.”

As they headed out of the dorm, shutting the door firmly, Hagen considered that their trip hadn’t been entirely in vain. Patrick Marrion had a friend, after all. Now they needed to find him.

They were walking down the hall when Hagen heard a “psst” from behind him. He turned and saw a young man of South Asian heritage in pajamas, standing in the doorway of his dorm room.

“Are you guys cops?”

Hagen took out his badge and showed it to him. “Shithead FBI cops according to the occupant of the room behind us. What’s up?”

The young man looked up and down the empty hallway. “Yeah, I saw you talking to Jake Tripp. Between you and me, I hate that guy. He’s a dick.”

Hagen was taking a liking to this clearly intelligent college student. This kid was going places. “Yes, we were asking about Patrick Marrion. Did you know him?”

The young man shook his head. “No. Well, I mean, yeah, we met. But I didn’t know him. Really sad, though. No one deserves that.”

It didn’t seem like the student was looking for grisly details of the murder. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Rohan Dhar.”

“Why do you hate Jake Tripp?”

The student smiled. “You mean, besides the obvious?”

Hagen smiled in return. “That’s right.”

Rohan looked up and down the hall again, the very picture of paranoid. “He’s a crook, you know? Like, a thief.”

Hagen’s interest was piqued. He took his notebook out of his pocket. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, he tried to steal from me.”

“What do you mean? How did he try?”

“Like, a month into the semester, I had a little party in my dorm. And Jake was there. He just showed up. Like, I didn’t invite him or anything. Anyway, the party ended, and as I was cleaning up, I realized my tablet was missing.”

Hagen was taking notes. “And why do you think it was Jake?”

“Well, at first, I didn’t. I thought I’d just lost it or something. But I went around asking the people who were there, including Jake. He gives me some shit about how I should be more careful with my things. Starts giving me some bull about being responsible.”

Ander snorted.

“Right?” Rohan rolled his eyes. All three of them were on the same page about Tripp. “And he goes on and says he’s made sure the tablet’s in a safe place. All I need to get it back is to pay a responsibility tax.”

What the hell? Heat rose up Hagen’s neck, and he resisted pulling on his collar. He also resisted the urge to go break down Tripp’s door. “What’d you do?”

“Demanded it back. He said for two hundred dollars I could have it back. I told him to fuck himself and that I was calling campus police.” Rohan’s jaw clenched. Hagen imagined that confrontation had been quite heated.

“Did you? Call campus police?”

Rohan blew out a deep breath. “No. Jake said if I told, I would find my tablet in the school’s fountain and there’d be no way to prove anything to anyone. I ignored him and went to call, but my friend told me not to do it. Jake had taken his laptop, and he’d called the campus police. The cops didn’t find anything in Jake’s room…and the laptop keys were found in the back of my friend’s toilet.”

“He’s stealing people’s valuables and holding them hostage.” This squared with Hagen’s impression of Jake Tripp.

Rohan nodded. “I was really pissed. I paid. He left it on my bed somehow. Apparently, he does it when he’s strapped for cash. Sometimes he’ll sell stuff I’m pretty sure is stolen on eBay or Craigslist. Everyone knows it. We all know his freaking username. We just don’t want our stuff destroyed.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “What’s his username?”

“It’s trippinballz12. Like, you can’t make this shit up.” Rohan spelled Jake’s username for him.

Hagen noted this in his notebook. “We’ll get somebody to monitor this account. Thanks for your help. How can we get in touch with you?

After Rohan gave him his number, Hagen only had one thing to add. “And Rohan?”

“Yes?”

Hagen held out his hand. “In the meantime, let’s just keep this conversation to ourselves. No need to let Jake know, for now.”

Rohan seemed deeply relieved. “You got it.”