“We want to call her parents before they see this on the news or on the Internet. We could send the local police to her house, and it would be a much more humane way for them to learn about this tragedy.”
“That’s a good idea. But you’ll have to find her computer to figure out where her parents are. I know she Skyped with them every week or so.”
“Okay. That’s helpful,” I said, even though the laptop and cell phone were not among the trophies the killer seemed to have saved. Pictures of prey-especially attractive young women-were usually what these perps held on to, and the ID card with Lydia’s photograph was evidence of that. “How about her friends? Do you know who she socialized with?”
Jean shrugged again. “We didn’t even go to class on the same campus, Ms. Cooper. All my courses were in Yonkers, and hers were in Peekskill.”
“Did she have a car?” I asked, thinking of another place to look, another way to track Lydia’s movement in the last days of her life.
“No way. She didn’t have much money. Lydia took the bus to school, then she worked after class in a coffee shop, I think it was. Took the bus home. Never brought anybody with her.”
Jean Jansen had gotten most of the blue polish off her nails. Now she was concentrating on expanding the hole in the knee of her denim pants, twisting and pulling at the loose threads.
“Never?”
“Maybe once or twice. But she didn’t like my music, so she usually went into her room and closed the door. And my boyfriend didn’t much like her-I mean, like he thought she was very snobby-so that was fine with us.”
“Your boyfriend, what’s his name?”
Jean paused for several seconds. “I’ve gotta ask him if he wants me to tell you. He doesn’t want to be involved in this, really.”
That’s not a choice he’s going to have. “Then help me with a few other things. Did you think she was snobby?”
Jean looked at me when she answered. “Lydia thought she was smarter than me. High and mighty, a bit. Sometimes I felt it was ’cause this was a second language for her, stuff came out kind of stilted. She usually said what was on her mind, though, which could be kind of annoying.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Jean pursed her lips. “Like she was always on me about my weight. You-you’re skinny like she is, Ms. Cooper. Like she was, I mean. Maybe I don’t want to be that way. Maybe I’m happy with how I look. But she was always telling me I couldn’t keep food that she thought was junk in the apartment. That I ought to join a gym. Sometimes she’d even throw out food that I’d left in the fridge, and when I’d call her out on it, she’d say it had gone bad and smelled. Which wasn’t true, by the way. That kind of thing.”
So far, nothing I’d heard gave rise to a motive to murder.
“I’m sorry she did that, Jean,” I said. “The couple of times she brought people home, do you remember who they were? Men or women? How recently?”
“I know there was another Russian girl who was in one or two of Lydia’s classes. She came over a few times. I could hear them laughing a lot from the other room. They’d been Skyping friends back home. You should find her.”
“Good idea,” I said. “We’ll try to do that. No guys?”
“Lydia has a boyfriend in Russia. You’d better talk to him, too. She wasn’t dating anyone here, as far as we could tell. She brought one or two guys home, but they were just friends. They stayed for an hour or two and then they left. You know what I mean? Nobody spent the night with her.”
“Did you meet them, these guys? How recently were they at your apartment?”
Jean gave the question some thought. “One of them was here about a month ago. Like in the middle of July.”
“So maybe he knows something about her. Do you know how we can find him? Was he also a student?”
“She introduced me to him. I know he doesn’t go to our school, because he told me that himself. Lydia and I were in summer school classes, but he looked a little older, and he told me he didn’t go to college.”
“Was he Russian, too?” I asked.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Did you hear his name, Jean? Did he speak with any kind of an accent?”
She yanked on another long string and her plump kneecap popped through the gaping hole in the denim. “Just normal is what he sounded. Like from here.”
“Okay.”
“They were fighting. Arguing really. Not fighting.”
Jean was giving this part of the conversation more thought. She stopped playing with her frayed dungarees and looked at me.
“How do you know that?” I think she sensed my heightened interest in her answer.
“Because it was the night of the All-Star Game,” Jean said. “You know what that is?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” The Midsummer Classic marked the symbolic middle of the Major League Baseball season. It would be easy to put an exact date on the night, if it proved to have any significance in the case. “Could you hear the argument?”
Jean laughed. “The problem was my boyfriend couldn’t listen to the game because this guy got so loud. He was all like screaming at Lydia.”
“Do you know what he was screaming about?”
The girl turned serious again. “Not really.”
“Tell me, Jean,” I said. “You must have heard something. Some of the words.”
She was slow to respond. “I think the guy was trying to get her to do something with him. Maybe for him, not just with him. He was yelling that she was wasting her time.”
“What time? With school?”
“Not with school, no. They weren’t arguing about school.”
“What, then?”
Jean put her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands. “I am so screwed,” she said. “My boyfriend is going to go ballistic about this.”
“The detectives will explain everything to your boyfriend. Nobody’s going to let you get bothered for talking to us,” I said. “Why were they fighting?”
“Lydia is-well, she was-all into causes and stuff. Belonged to organizations, she told me, back home and then here.”
“Political organizations? Is that it?”
“No. Not like that. She was-what do you call it? An actionist?”
“An activist? Do you mean activist?”
“Yeah. For Lydia, it was all about animals. She couldn’t stand seeing animals suffer.”
“I don’t know who can,” I said.
“Not just cats and dogs, though. Like all kinds of animals. Lydia told me her mother had been arrested once, back home in Russia. Went to jail because she broke into some laboratory and saved the chimpanzees from the scientists. I mean, like lecturing me that I didn’t stand for anything. That’s why she joined this group.”
“Is it a club at your school?”
“Are you kidding? These people aren’t just students.”
“Does the group have a name?”
“It must, but I can’t remember it.”
“Was it PETA?” I asked. “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?”
“Nope. It wasn’t that. I don’t know, Ms. Cooper. I think it was something with the word ‘liberation’ in its name.”
“Were they planning violent acts, Jean? Is that what you don’t want to say?”
“No way. Lydia was all about nonviolence. It was just saving the creatures. I showed the cops the poster on her wall. It says FREE THE ANIMALS. EXPERIMENT ON ME.”
“Okay. That’s a good start. That gives the detectives something to work with,” I said. “Did Lydia have animals? Did she have any pets?”
“She rescued a couple of dogs in the spring. But we’re not allowed to have any in our apartment, so she got them all to good homes, like with other students.”
“So why was this guy fighting with her if she was doing decent things with her life?”
Jean shook her head, looking as though she hadn’t thought of it that way before. She almost whispered her answer. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”