Chapter Twenty-Five
Jaxon
The chairs in the police station waiting room are not at all meant for waiting. They’re hard plastic and are making my back hurt. We’ve been waiting here for close to an hour and the irony of this moment is not lost on me.
We started this entire ordeal with me sitting in an uncomfortable hospital chair waiting to find out if Annika was okay. Before I even knew her name or who she was.
Now, we’re sitting here together, on equally uncomfortable police station chairs, waiting to find out if this nightmare is almost over.
Except for getting in and out of the car, I’ve not stopped touching Annika since getting to her dorm room. The look on her face when I told her the news…fuck, I will never forget that. It was part fear, part sadness, part humiliation, and a whole hell of a lot of anger.
Reaching out her hand, she places it on my shaking knee. “Stop,” she says quietly, stopping my bouncing. “You’re making me more anxious.”
“Sorry,” I mumble and rub my hand down my face. I’m trying really hard to be strong here, but the anticipation of what’s coming has me on edge. The scenes from that night keep flashing through my brain, and I have a bad feeling we’re about to plummet right back into nightmares. I’m praying that’s not the case, but regardless, it might be time to set up another appointment with my counselor, Harold.
I only agreed to meet with Harold after Coach gave me an ultimatum. I went, I participated, and I felt better. Then I stopped going. Now I realize that might not have been a smartest idea. Like maybe I’ve been pushing all these issues aside instead of dealing with them. Or maybe this is how everyone feels, even after years of waiting for answers.
A door slams in the distance, and my ears focus on the squeaky footsteps. Looking to my right, I see him coming towards us. It’s the detective I talked to outside of Ambrosia. I’d recognize him anywhere. Bushy mustache. Big beer belly. A little bit of waddle to his walk. Why do police departments always have one guy who looks like a walrus?
There is no doubt in my mind he’s coming for us, so I stand to greet him, pulling Annika up with me.
“Jaxon, nice to see you again.” He puts his hand out for me to shake, me mumbling my greetings in response, then he turns to Annika. “I’m Detective Bellerini. Sorry we haven’t met before. I took over the case a couple weeks ago when the lead detective retired.”
“Annika. Annika Leander,” she replies, her voice strong.
He looks back and forth between us for a few seconds, clearly confused. “I didn’t expect to see you here at the same time. I assume that’s not a coincidence.”
Annika smiles shyly at me. I know how much she hates explaining herself. It makes her uncomfortable for people to know this much about her. She prefers to keep her private life private. “No, we uh, we’ve been hanging out for a couple months,” she says by way of explanation.
The detective just nods. “It’s actually not terribly surprising. Over the years I’ve seen my fair share of people who’ve been thrown together due to a tragedy, and they end up having very happy lives together. Funny how fate works that way.”
I put my arm around Annika’s shoulder and squeeze her to me. He just said the exact opposite of what our counselors have been warning us of. It’s nice hearing from someone outside the therapy session that this does happen. People do fall in love amidst tragedy. This is real.
“I’m assuming y’all are here for the same information. If you wanna follow me, I can do this once with both of you, or I can split you up. Totally up to you.” He looks back and forth at us again, waiting for a decision.
Annika reaches down and grabs onto my pant leg, like she’s worried I’ll take off without her. “We want to do this together, please.”
He nods again. “Follow me.” He turns around, squeaky shoes going back down the same hallway he just came from.
Once we’re settled into his small, bare office, in chairs that are much more comfortable than the ones in the waiting room, he pulls out a file. “We got a call about a week ago from a girl who was assaulted at a frat party.”
Annika gasps next to me and my jaw drops open. He certainly didn’t waste any time before jumping right into that information.
“I’ll leave out most of the details. What I will say is somehow, someway, she was coherent enough to call her mother. Girl happens to be a local, and when she told her mother where she was and that she felt funny, her mom called her own brother, who’s a cop, and they tracked her down.”
“How’d they do that?” I ask. It all sounds too easy, too simple.
“The brother happens to be a cop in this department.” That explains it. “Wasn’t hard to track her phone. Found her at the Kappa Phi house pretty easy.”
“Kappa Phi?” I exclaim, stunned.
“Yeah. You know the place?”
“I was there at Halloween.” I was this close to the scene of yet another crime. Visions of the drunk girl I saw come back to me. All I can do is pray that the rapist wasn’t there that night and she ended up home safe. I feel Annika bristle next to me. She knows I was there.
“I can’t say much more about that,” he continues. “The guy isn’t part of the fraternity, so we can’t hold them responsible. Anyway, when the mom and her brother got there, they searched the rooms and found her upstairs, passed out cold. The guy who assaulted her was still there.”
Annika gasps, throwing her hands over her face.
“What the hell?”
“He was in the bathroom trying to dispose of some evidence, but he was in cuffs before he could. It was a lucky break, one we’ve been waiting for. Once we collected DNA evidence at the scene, we were able to link it right back to him.”
“Holy shit,” I exclaim. “That seems too easy.”
“It wasn’t easy. It was lucky. Sometimes luck is all we have to go on. I wish it would have been sooner, though.” His face falls slightly. “The girl called her mom before the attack, right as she was starting to feel sick. From what we can figure, he didn’t see her make a phone call before she passed out or he probably would have altered his plans. It’s just unfortunate we didn’t get there sooner.”
The weight of his words hang heavy in the room. They finally cracked a case they’ve been working on, but it came at the expense of yet another girl being raped.
Annika clears her throat before speaking. “Um, my dad had said there was an increase in sexual assaults in the area.” I grab her hand and intertwine our fingers. She squeezes. “How did you know that this is the guy who…who…how do you know I’m involved?”
“That’s a good question,” Detective Bellerini answers kindly. “There’s a bit of a backlog of getting all the sexual assault kids processed. However, yours had been done. When we ran the DNA into the system, yours popped up as a match.” He sighs like he’s choosing his next words carefully. “Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I feel like you have a right to know.”
I sit up straight, immediately on alert. This feels like information overload now.
“The DA is taking this case before the Grand Jury because we want this guy off the streets. But I’m not done investigating. My gut says there’s more. And I want to find them.”
Annika gasps again and my head drops. Before he continues, I recognize that her breathing is getting irregular. I look up and see the fear on her face. Grabbing her face in my hands, I force her turn toward me.
“Annika, look at me.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks and my heart breaks, knowing this is the beginning of what is going to be a rough few months.
“Baby, look at me.” She holds my gaze. “You’re okay. You’re safe. They got him, honey. The police got him.” She tries to smile, but it comes out like a sob. I continue to stroke her hair and rub my thumbs over her cheeks as she works on getting her breathing under control.
Detective Bellerini sits quietly, giving her a moment to pull her herself back together. When she finally opens her eyes, I can see the fiery determination has come back. She will not let this crush her. She refuses. I smile and nod once, because I get it. She doesn’t need me to ask if she’s okay. She is absolutely okay. She’s shell-shocked and probably afraid of the near future. But she’s ready to help the police in any way possible.
Pulling away from me and turning back to the detective, she confirms my assessment. “Sorry about that.”
“No apologies necessary.” He leans forward on his desk. “Just part of the job.”
“What happens now?” Annika asks, ready to face the future.
“He’s been sitting in holding for the last week. The judge denied bond until the DA has more evidence. Now that we’ve collected it all, he’s gonna sit for a while. We’re hoping the judge will think he’s dangerous enough to keep him locked up, but it could go either way. We’ll have another hearing tomorrow where the District Attorney will present everything to the Grand Jury, and we’ll go from there.”
“What do we need to prepare for?”
“The Grand Jury will want to hear both your testimonies.” I grimace at his words. “It’s not going to be a picnic, but they try to be respectful, especially since neither of you are the ones on trial.”
We sit in silence absorbing all the possibilities. Annika scooches forward on her chair, looks the detective right in the eye, and asks, “What is his name?”
In all of this mess, I never even though to ask that question.
Detective Bellerini looks back and forth between the two of us. When he seems satisfied that we won’t have any more emotional breakdowns, he opens the file on his desk. “Jonathan Ronald Campone.”
“Ron,” Annika says quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“He introduced himself as Ron.”
He nods. “Doesn’t surprise me. Guys like this usually use an alias when they’re on the prowl. Got a mugshot here if you’re interested in seeing it.”
As much as I don’t want to see his face, I absolutely want to see his face. He turns the file around and flips the page, and there’s a mugshot. Sure enough, he has blond floppy hair hanging partially in his face, just like I remember.
We stare for a while, memorizing his features. He better hope he doesn’t bond out, because if I see him out somewhere, I’ll be the next one in jail.
Of course, I don’t say that. Instead I look at my girl who is narrowing her eyes, staring at the picture. I know she’s riffling through her memories, trying to see if anything triggers at all.
“How come we haven’t seen him on campus before?” I finally ask. “He doesn’t look familiar at all.”
“He graduated a couple years ago so he’s not on campus anymore. It’s also part of the reason I’m still digging.”
As much as I hate it, I understand his meaning. College is the first taste of freedom for many of us. Hell, it was my first chance to get away from my parents and figure out who I really am. For someone like this Ron fucker, that means a new crop of potential targets every single year.
Finally satisfied, Annika pushes the file back across the desk. “Thank you.”
He nods and closes the file, immediately putting it in the bottom drawer of his desk. “Here’s the thing.” The detective leans back in his chair. “You two are dating?” We nod simultaneously. “Jaxon, if this goes to trial, you’re an eye witness so you’ll probably be called to testify. The DNA that was collected puts him at the scene of the crime. Annika, unless you want to, you can make a very good case against testifying.”
“Why?” she asks, just as confused by that as I am.
“Partially because we don’t need you. Sure, you could tell us what you remember up until you blacked out, but we’ve got enough DNA. You don’t have any memories. I know at first it seemed like a curse because the lack of memory didn’t give us anything to go on. But in this situation, consider it a blessing. Also, being that this may be considered a serial rapist case, be prepared for the media to swarm. Jaxon I’m going to try my hardest, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to keep your name out of the papers.”
“Shit.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. Not because my head hurts, but because this is bad news.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Detective Bellerini tries to reassure us. “Usually they’ll try to contact you a couple times, maybe write a story about what a hero you are. But it goes away pretty quick.”
“You don’t understand,” Annika says, rubbing my back like I’m the one that needs comforting right now. “His dad is Jason Hart, the retired Dallas Cowboy.”
Detective Bellerini freezes for a moment before blurting out, “Well, that’s definitely going to put a kink in things. In that case, you need to let your family know pretty quick this is coming. Annika, you may need to let yours know too.”
I don’t have to look to know she grimaced. She really, really doesn’t want to tell her dad.
“Typically, journalists won’t print the name of the victim, but that doesn’t mean they won’t connect the two of you. And once they connect the two of you…”
“Everyone on campus will know your name. Annika,” I turn to look at her, apology in my eyes. “We’ve got a lot to figure out with this one. I’m sorry.”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “Why are you sorry? You didn’t do anything.”
“I’m sorry the secret you’ve been keeping is about to be outed.”
Her lips quirk to the side and she sighs. “I really didn’t want anyone to know. But now that I know I’m not the only one, if this is the price I have to pay to make sure his ass is behind bars for a long, long time, I’ll deal with it.”
I hold her gaze, finding truth in her words. I think after Lauren’s reaction and everything the detective has told us, she feels like this horrible thing can finally be used for some good. It’s going to take a minute to wrap our brains around it, and it won’t be easy, but we’re ready. We’re ready to help take this asshole down.