74
Jane
“Simon and I were freshmen together,” says Jane. “I didn’t know him well. We had some classes together freshman year. He was this little guy. He grew a lot by senior year, and he was a pretty good runner, one of those skinny track guys. But back when we were freshman, he was this small, skinny, shy, super-smart kid. And he got picked on.”
“Sounds right,” says the chief.
“When we were freshman, there was this senior named Mitchell Kitchens,” she says. “Big wrestler. Like the best in the state at his weight class. I was dating a sophomore on the wrestling team back then, and to him, to the younger kids, Mitchell Kitchens was like this god, right? This senior stud wrestler? All-state, looking at a scholarship, that whole thing?”
“Okay,” says Chief Carlyle.
“So apparently, Mitchell bullied Simon pretty badly. This all came out afterward.”
“After what?”
“Well, so here’s the story. Apparently, Mitchell would pick on Simon. They said when Simon got off the bus every morning, Mitchell would pick him up and throw him.”
“He’d—What do you mean, ‘throw him’？”
“I mean, like, pick him up by the shirt collar and belt and toss him through the air.”
“Like one of those midget-toss contests they used to do in bars?”
“I don’t know. But yeah, Mitchell apparently treated it like a contest. How far could he toss the little freshman today?”
“Jesus. And nobody stopped him?”
Jane shrugs. “He didn’t do it in front of the whole school or anything. The wrestlers used this small gym right by the school entrance. They’d go in there, and Mitchell would do his daily toss, and his wrestling buddies would laugh along. And I guess Simon never complained.”
“Nice.”
“The other thing, apparently—Simon would bring a lunch to school every day and it included a bottle of Gatorade. Well, apparently, Mitchell used to take it. He’d walk up to his lunch table and say, like, ‘Did you bring my Gatorade?’ At least that’s how I heard it. Later. After everything.”
“So maybe you should get to the good part, Jane.”
“Right. It was wrestling season, the end of the season, and I guess they called it ‘regionals.’ Like, the playoffs for wrestling, the next stop is the state championship.”
“The semifinals, regionals, whatever.”
“I guess. Anyway, Mitchell Kitchens, this big-time wrestler, has made it to regionals. But he’s up against another guy who’s also supposed to be great. Same weight class. It’s, like, the battle of the titans or something. My boyfriend at the time, he was so excited. We were hosting regionals at Grace Consolidated. It was Friday night. Apparently, there were college scouts there, too. The best wrestling colleges in the country. Like, Iowa, I remember, had someone there, and that was apparently a big deal.”
“Okay.”
“It was the craziest thing. The bleachers were packed, everyone was excited, all these pumped-up muscle heads running around in these ridiculous tight little costumes that looked like ballerina outfits.”
“And . . .” The chief rolls his hand. “Mitchell Kitchens wrestled this other big wrestler?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” says Jane. “He didn’t. They made this big announcement. Mitchell was disqualified after the drug test. He tested positive for a banned substance.”
The chief sits back in his chair, his tongue peeking out, eyes narrowed.
“I don’t remember the drug,” she goes on. “Chloro-something. I remember it sounded like chloroform. It was some diuretic or a—They called it a ‘masking agent.’ Like, a drug you take to hide the presence of other illegal drugs—”
“A masking agent, right. I’ve heard of them. But what does that have to do with your guy Simon—” The chief drops his chin. “Oh. Are you about to tell me that this boy Simon Dobias put a banned substance into his own Gatorade, knowing that Mitchell Kitchens would steal it and drink it?”
“That’s certainly what Mitchell claimed,” Jane says.
“That’s . . . Well, it’s—”
“Diabolical,” says Andy Tate. “No other word for it.”
“And they could prove all this?” the chief asks.
“That Simon spiked his own Gatorade? Oh, gosh, no. How could they prove it? Those drugs stay in your system for several days. Simon could have slipped something into one of the Gatorade bottles Michell took earlier in the week. Several days before the drug test. By the time the drug test came back positive, that empty bottle of Gatorade was long gone, probably in some landfill or under heaps of garbage, even assuming you could’ve discovered traces of drugs in it. There was no way to prove it. Mitchell was sure of it, and a lot of people thought it could’ve happened, but no—there was no way to prove it.”