He closed his eyes for a moment and visualized his sergeant naked. That always worked.

Jordy stopped laughing, forcing a serious expression onto his face. “Actually, I do. I suppose that seems heartless to you.” He watched Joe’s face for a reaction. Getting none, he went on. “I wasn’t laughing about Chad falling. I was laughing because some of my so-called brothers are a bunch of mean-spirited assholes always ready to believe the worst.” He rolled his eyes. “I was laughing at the hypocrisy, Detective. I spent an entire semester getting the ideals and mission and all this other high-minded bullshit about integrity and brotherhood shoved down my throat, and the worst part is, I believed it. I believed every word of it, and it was all just a bunch of bullshit. My so-called brothers don’t have the first fucking clue as to what brotherhood is, or what the fraternity supposedly stands for. Were you in a fraternity, Detective?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” Joe snapped. In spite of himself, he remembered his own days at CSU-Polk. No, he hadn’t joined a fraternity. He’d worked two jobs to put himself through school, and when he wasn’t working he was studying in his roach-trap, run-down, crummy apartment. He hadn’t lived in a luxury apartment complex or joined a fraternity. He’d hated the Greeks who’d come into the restaurant where he worked, so condescending with their money and privilege, the sorority girls all stuck-up bitches, the guys all condescending assholes. He pushed those memories out of his head. Stay objective. Don’t let your personal prejudices color your investigation. “So, you’re saying you didn’t, in fact, push Chad York out the window of his room?”

Jordy’s face darkened for a moment. “I’ll bet it was Bobby Dunlap who told you I pushed him, right? And after Bobby said it, the others joined in.” He shook his head. “Look, Detective, I’m sorry Chad fell and I hope he’s okay. But the notion I pushed him is, well, preposterous.” He shrugged. “I don’t want Chad dead. We aren’t friends, we’ve had some issues, but I didn’t want to kill him or anything. I didn’t push him out the window.” He chewed on a thumbnail. “No matter what my brothers might say, I didn’t push Chad out that window.”

“I’d like to believe you, Jordy.” Joe raised his eyebrows. “I really would. But what I don’t understand—and maybe you can clear this up for me—is why didn’t you stick around after he fell?” Joe spread his arms and smiled, keeping his eyes on Jordy’s face, watching for a reaction of any kind. “I mean, if I’m talking to someone and they fall out of a second-story window, I’d yell for help and then bust my ass getting down to him to make sure he was okay, to see if he needed an ambulance or some help. But you didn’t do that, Jordy. You didn’t shout, you didn’t go check on him, you didn’t do anything. All you did was walk out of the fraternity house, get into your car, and drive away.” Joe leaned back against the sofa cushions and folded his arms. “That’s the part I don’t get, Jordy. Can you explain that to me?” This was the heart of it. No one had seen anything. There had been Beta Kappa brothers in the yard below the window, but they had been sitting at a picnic table drinking beer (and probably smoking pot, given how red their eyes were and how disoriented they’d been) and saw nothing. The upstairs hallway of the fraternity had been empty. The only two people who really knew what happened were Chad York and Jordy Valentine. But several brothers had seen Jordy run out to his car and leave without checking to see if Chad was okay.

And Jordy was right. Bobby Dunlap had been very quick to insinuate that Chad’s fall might not have been an accident.

“Jordy hates Chad and everyone knows it. They hate each other, and you can’t be neutral. It’s pretty much ripped the house apart. You have to choose sides. And really, what was Jordy doing up there in his room anyway? So Jordy is up there in someone’s room that he hates and that person just happens to fall out the window and Jordy doesn’t call for help or stick around to see if Chad is okay or if he needed help or anything. He just took off.”

Bobby Dunlap was a square, squat young man of about twenty with dirty hair and a soft body. He’d been wearing a white T-shirt with food stains on it over a pair of long shorts. His feet had been bare, and there was dirt under his toenails. He smelled bad, a vague combination of sour sweat and urine and armpits and stale beer that slightly turned Joe’s stomach. And Bobby’s voice was breathless and low, his face becoming more animated as his insinuations became more squalid. Bobby reminded Joe of a kid from his own school days, a kid he didn’t like, who liked to talk about everyone else, always in that same mean-spirited conspiratorial tone.

Jordy was right—he’d been on the verge of dismissing everything Bobby had said when some of the other brothers came forward and began hesitantly confirming the gossip. One of them—he couldn’t remember his name, just that he was a strawberry blond with freckles and cute in an Opie Taylor kind of way—said, “They were always fucking with each other, trying to steal each other’s boyfriends, posting nude pictures of each other online. It was terrible the way they kept going at each other, and that made it hard on all of us here at the house. I mean, we’re supposed to be brothers.”

Joe had fought down his own contempt for the Greek system—which had obviously become a lot more gay friendly than when he’d been in college. Wasn’t it the Beta Kappas, he wondered, who’d burned the Lesbian-Gay Student Organization’s booth in the Quad?

Things at CSU-Polk had certainly changed in thirteen years.

“I didn’t see any point in sticking around.” Jordy shrugged. “He fell. I heard shouts from the courtyard, so I figured someone would call 911, and there were guys out there to help him out.” He looked out the window. “I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t push him. Chad was sitting in the window. He lost his balance and fell. One minute he was there, the next minute he was gone.”

“So, you just stopped by to have a chat with Chad? What about?”

“Chad called and wanted me to come by.” Jordy’s face was impassive. “He wanted to talk, maybe cease hostilities.” He smiled faintly. “I mean, I was getting sick of the whole situation between us, and I went because I thought it would be nice to get everything settled between us once and for all.” He shrugged. “It kind of didn’t work out that way.”

“Some of your fraternity brothers heard the two of you arguing.” Joe kept watching Jordy’s face, trying to read it, but without much luck. It was unsettling. Joe was usually good at reading faces, able to tell if someone was lying to him. He was almost always right. But he couldn’t get a read on Jordy. Maybe because he’s so good looking you can’t be impartial? You can’t think clearly? You can’t get beyond being attracted to him?

Joe cleared his throat, never looking away from Jordy’s eyes. “What were the two of you arguing about?”

Jordy rubbed his eyes. “It’s not important, and it doesn’t have anything to do with him falling. It was an accident.”

“A lot of people heard you yelling at each other.” Joe watched him, evaluating his body language. There’s something he’s not telling me, something he doesn’t want to talk about. I don’t think he’s lying about not pushing Chad York out the window, but there’s something more to this story and he doesn’t want to tell me about it.

Jordy got up and walked over to the window. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t push him. He fell,” Jordy insisted. He sighed. “I’m so sorry I came here. It was a mistake. Everything has been a mistake.” He laughed again, but it had a bitter ring to it. “That’s where it all really began, Detective.”