Page 58 of Hell Bent

“Hurry up.”

“Okay, okay.” Alex noted his very full-looking backpack and wondered if he’d squirreled away more food in there. Hard times for Tripp Helmuth.

“How’d you get in?” Alex asked as he locked the doors and they headed to Turner’s Dodge.

“I never turned my key in.”

“And they didn’t ask about that?”

“I told them I lost it.”

That had been enough. Tripp was so hapless it was easy to believe he’d lose his key and anything else that wasn’t stapled to his pockets.

“Oh God,” Tripp said as Alex joined him in the back seat of the Dodge. “Are you a cop?”

Turner glanced in the mirror and said sharply, “Police detective.”

“Of course, yeah, I’m sorry. I—”

“You’d best stop talking and use this time to think.”

Tripp hung his head.

Alex caught Turner’s eye in the mirror, and he gave a small shrug. If they were going to get Tripp in on this, they needed him scared, and Turner was very good at being intimidating.

“Where are we going?” Tripp asked as they headed down Chapel.

“Lethe House,” Alex replied.

Most of the members of the societies viewed Lethe as a tiresome necessity, a salve to the Yale administration, and most had never bothered to set foot inside Il Bastone.

“What are you doing on campus?” Alex asked.

Tripp hesitated, and Turner snapped, “Don’t try to put some kind of spin on this.”

Bless Turner for playing along.

Tripp took off his cap, ran a hand through his greasy hair. “I … I was allowed to walk with my class, but I didn’t graduate. I didn’t have enough credits. And my dad said he wouldn’t bankroll another semester, so I’m just … I’m doing marketing stuff for those Markham real estate guys? I’m actually getting pretty good at Photoshop. I’ve been trying to save up so I can finish, get my degree and all that.”

That explained the backpack full of food, but Alex wondered why Tripp hadn’t just lied on his application to whatever investment bank or trading firm he wanted to work for in Manhattan. The Helmuth name would open every door, and no one was going to raise questions when a third-generation legacy wrote B.A. in Economics, Yale University on his CV. But she wasn’t going to say that. Tripp was just dopey and sincere enough that he wouldn’t consider an outright lie.

He wasn’t a bad guy. Alex suspected he’d go through his life described that way: not a bad guy. Not too bright, not too handsome, not too anything. He went on nice vacations and burned through second chances. He liked to get high and listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and if people didn’t necessarily like him, they were happy to tolerate him. He was the living, breathing embodiment of “no worries.” But apparently Tripp’s father was done not worrying.

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

“Well,” Alex said slowly. “We can let the Bonesmen and their board know you were trespassing.”

“And committing larceny,” Turner added.

“I didn’t take anything!”

“You pay for that food?”

“Not … not exactly.”

“Or,” said Alex, “we can keep this quiet and you can do a job for us.”

“What kind of a job?”