Paper Cuts: A Novel

By Terry F. Torrey

Freshman Jesse Creed has settled into campus life at a quiet college in upstate New York.

 

But on the cold morning after his girlfriend is murdered, the police come knocking at his door, and everything changes.

 

Now, Jesse must track down the killer, because the authorities are only focused on him and his friends. The problem is, one of them might have done it, and one of them might be next.

 

Fans of clean cozy mysteries will enjoy Paper Cuts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Provocative Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781961042131

Terry F. Torrey

Born and raised in upstate New York, Terry F. Torrey now lives in Arizona with his amazing wife and awesome daughter. A lifelong learner, his most prized accomplishment is completing the acclaimed Creative Writing program at Phoenix College. Now, Terry spends his days writing page-turning vigilante action novels, riveting suspense novels with shades of noir, campy but realistic pop-culture monster novels, and an assortment of other quirky, compelling, and heartfelt books and shorts. Be sure to join his e-mail list to be notified of promotions, special events, and new releases of things worth reading, and find all of his work online at terryftorrey.com.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

On the night the Slasher finally found the courage to kill, the quiet campus of the State University of New York at Alfred lay under a dusting of dry snow. Though the calendar showed it to be the third week of February and the fifth week of the spring semester of classes, nature worked to prove that it was still winter, and had blown the coldest temperatures of the year 1986 over the hills and trees of the little rural campus. A brilliant panoply of stars shimmered in the cold sky above, and a slice of moon slipped through thin clouds toward the western horizon.

Later accounts indicated that Tuesday night passed largely unnoticed. Though there was the usual bustle of evening activity among students brave or bundled or bold enough to test the cold, none stayed out long. By ten o’clock, almost all students had returned to their dormitories, even those who were old enough or had fake IDs good enough to get a drink at Gentleman Jim’s. By eleven o’clock, even the activity in the dorms had subsided. The students had retreated to their rooms, and the campus had largely dozed off to sleep.

Over an hour later, however, after midnight, on the top floor of the Main Gate B dormitory, Melody Parker did not sleep. A freshman in her second semester at college, she had spent the evening at the Hinkle Memorial Library, doing research for the English assignment due on Friday. She had needed to get the research done tonight because she and her roommate planned to take a road trip right after their Wednesday classes. They were going for a short tour of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where they hoped to transfer next semester. Her roommate had family in the area, and they planned to stay overnight with them on Wednesday, then to return early Thursday for their classes.

When she’d returned to her dorm room, however, she’d found a note from her roommate that the dean of the school would be present for the tour. Because of this, Melody wanted to wear her best clothes, which meant doing laundry tonight.

Out of consideration for her sleeping roommate, she did not turn on the light in her dorm room. Instead, she propped the door open so that light shone in from the suite’s hallway and common room, then went through her dirty clothes, pulled out what she needed, and put it into her laundry basket.

When she had a load ready, she dropped a blue plastic bottle of laundry detergent into the basket with the clothes, took a handful of quarters out of the bowl on her dresser, and left room G in suite 405 for what would be the last time.

No one would later recall seeing Melody as she made her way from her room on the top floor of the dormitory to the laundry room in the basement, but her movement could easily be imagined. She kept her long blond hair pulled back in the ponytail of an athlete or a dancer, both of which she was, and she moved with the poise and grace of a young woman finding her way in the world. She wore the pink cotton nightgown and fuzzy slippers her parents had given her at Christmas. From where the door of her suite connected to the hallway, it was a few steps to the side stairs, and there she descended eight flights to the basement.

Like most colleges, SUNY Alfred had started out small and had added buildings as the curriculum and student body grew. As the campus evolved, some functions were shoehorned into awkward spaces while other buildings were erected for specific functions. The Main Gate dormitories A and B, built just inside the main entry gate of the campus, had been built specifically as dormitories, but already their functions had begun to diverge from the original plan. When Melody emerged into the basement hall of Main Gate B, she entered a dimly lit hodgepodge of assorted rooms.

A dusty odor of concrete and steel and heat dominated the basement halls. The fluorescent lights hummed, and she could hear the deep throb of some unseen machinery as she made her way past the boiler room. Her pink slippers whisked over the worn carpet. She walked past the intensive-study lounge, through a fire door held open by a large electromagnet, and past the half-suite G5 where no one ever seemed to live.

As she passed the basement exit door, her laundry basket bumped the corner and her hand slipped from the handle. Before she could catch it, the basket swiveled down in her grip, and some of her clothes tumbled out onto the carpeted floor under the wall clock. The blue bottle of detergent thumped and skidded a short distance away, and her handful of quarters danced and spun away from her. At that moment, another student crossed her path. Seeing Melody and the little mess, he stopped in his tracks and offered to help. As he stooped to help pick up the clothing, however, a shock of embarrassment hit him as he realized he was about to pick up her panties. Her face red, Melody waved him away, and he was happy to comply. A moment later, Melody had reassembled her clothing into the basket, and she resumed her journey.

She followed the hallway as it angled right to match the L shape of Main Gate B. The last leg of her trip took her past the quiet doors of suite G6, past the industrial door to the main stairs and the blank door of the cleaning closet, through another fire door, and finally through the open door into the laundry room.

The architect had designed this section of the basement for other uses, though no one remembered them anymore. Down the hallway beyond the laundry room lay various storage and utility rooms, as well as a cavernous and strange recreation room. In the laundry room, a large fiberglass sink and a half-dozen coin-operated washers sat on the cold tile floor along the wall to the left, but the exposed hoses fastened to the wall gave the impression that the installation was temporary and the space designed for something else. On the right, a single-legged table abutted a stacked row of dryers pushed into the corner of the small room. Two of the dryers hummed quietly, their operating lights glowing. The air held the scent of soap and lint and damp clothes.

Melody worked quickly. She dropped a pair of quarters into the first washer, pressed the buttons to set the wash cycle, then loaded her clothes into it. This done, she poured a generous measure of the laundry detergent from the bottle onto the clothes and closed the lid. This part of her work complete, she recapped the bottle of detergent and put it into her now-empty laundry basket. She was about to leave when she spotted something and stopped. One of her pink and white socks lay on the floor beside the washer. She stooped to pick it up.

As she stood, sock in her hand, she felt a firm bump against the back of her shoulder. She turned around, frowning.

In the doorway of the laundry room stood a man who looked like a pulp fiction character. He was dressed all in black, with baggy black jeans, a dark shirt, an oversized black trench coat, and even a black fedora on his head. He had the hat pulled low, hiding his face in the shadows under the brim.

His manner of dress was so unusual, and his demeanor so outlandish, it took Melody a moment to notice that he held a knife in his right hand. A red liquid streaked the gleaming blade and dripped from its point to the tile floor of the laundry room.

Seeing it, Melody felt the back of her shoulder with her left hand, then held her fingers in front of her. Blood.

Hey! she said.

But he was already on her.

Melody Parker’s nineteenth birthday was only two weeks off, but she would never see it. Twenty minutes later, when the embarrassed student who had nearly picked up her panties returned to retrieve his own laundry from the dryers, he would find her on the floor of the laundry room, a river of blood flowing from her body to the floor drain. It would take him several minutes to recognize that she was the same girl he’d seen only a few minutes before. And it would take him decades to recover from the violence of the crime.

CHAPTER ONE

Another knock, this time followed by a sentence: Open up, it’s the police.

Jesse Creed loathed getting out of bed at seven in the morning on a day that he didn’t have an early class, but the declaration of policehood convinced him to open one eye and give it some consideration.

Another series of knocks, and Jesse was sure that whoever was doing the knocking was either a real policeman or someone who had seen an unhealthy number of cop shows.

All right. All right. I’ll be there in a second. He looked over at his radio-alarm clock, and an 04 clicked into place beside the 7. Frowning at the new day, he pushed the blankets aside and stood up. Police? What could this be about?

As he hurried out of bed and pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt, his mind searched for a reason the police might be visiting him. He came up with nothing. Sure, he had already missed several classes, despite the semester being only a few weeks old, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t a police matter. They probably just wanted his help finding one of his suite-mates. Some of them had always seemed kind of sketchy.

He unlocked the door and opened it. Two men stood outside his door. The man on the left had his hand up, knuckles out, and had been apparently about to knock again when Jesse opened the door. He seemed to be in his late forties, with brown hair that was graying at the temples and thinning on top and a brown mustache speckled with gray. He was dressed in business attire, with a blue shirt and dark blazer over black slacks. Jesse also noticed a badge in a leather holder clipped to his belt. The man on the right was dressed in a uniform that reminded Jesse of a bicycle cop, but which Jesse recognized as the uniform of the Public Safety officers of Alfred State. He looked to be approaching thirty, with a lean build and a square jaw, and he was tall, taller than Jesse’s five feet, ten inches. Both men looked terribly grim.

The plain-clothed glanced at a notebook in his left hand. Jesse Creed? reading Jesse’s name from it.

Yes, Jesse said. So much for the theory of the wrong room.

"We’re sorry to bother you this early in the morning. I’m Detective Brewer of the Alfred Police Department.

And I’m Lieutenant Foster with Public Safety, the uniformed man said.

Okay, Jesse said, feeling bewildered. What do you want?

Is Melody Parker your girlfriend? Brewer asked.

Yes, Jesse said. A sense of cold dread chilled his limbs.

I regret to inform you that early this morning, we think between the hours of midnight and one, Miss Parker was attacked in the basement of this building, Brewer said. He was studying Jesse’s face as he talked. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Hornel with multiple lacerations, but they were unable to save her.

This took a while to register with Jesse. It was early in the morning, and he hadn’t yet had a cup of coffee. What? he said.

I’m sorry, Brewer said, she’s dead.

Jesse stood in the door with his mouth hanging open, looking back and forth between the two men, incredulous. Someone— he started to say, but cut himself off when the weight of the idea hit him. Someone killed her?

Yes, Brewer said.

Jesse felt completely flustered and lightheaded, almost disembodied. On purpose? he said. He looked at Foster, who was looking at Jesse with a penetrating gaze, then looked back at Brewer. Who?

We don’t know, Brewer said. That’s why we’re here.

Jesse inhaled sharply. "You think I did it?"

It’s possible, Foster said right away.

Brewer’s eyebrows knitted together, and he gave Foster a dark look. Turning back to Jesse, he said, We don’t have any suspects at this time. Right now, we’re just starting our investigation. That means we’re asking everyone who knew Miss Parker a few routine questions, that’s all.

A few of the guys at the other end of the suite had stuck their heads out of their doors to see what was going on, so Jesse stepped back and invited the policemen inside his room. Please excuse the mess, he said. I wasn’t expecting visitors.

Brewer and Foster stepped inside, and Jesse closed the door behind them. Brewer immediately began to look around Jesse’s room, eyes narrowed with interest, at the unmade bed, the unkempt desk, the clothes on the floor by the closet, the messy interior of the closet.

Jesse immediately regretted inviting the detectives into his room. He didn’t have anything to hide, exactly—at least, nothing criminal, but he had no interest in the police or anyone else making official notes on the cleanliness of his room. He cleared his throat. You said you have some questions for me, detective? he said.

Brewer was looking at the dirty clothes on the floor in Jesse’s closet with a hint of revulsion in his expression. Taking a deep breath, he straightened and turned to face Jesse. That’s right, he said. He took his pen in his right hand and raised the notebook in his left hand in front of his chest to a position good for making notes. He glanced down at the page, then back up at Jesse. How would you describe your relationship with Miss Parker?

Jesse frowned. You already know, he said. She was my girlfriend.

Okay, Brewer said. And you saw each other every day?

Jesse shrugged. I guess so, yeah.

And when was the last time you saw her? Brewer asked.

The question hit Jesse like a punch to the gut. The last time. He hadn’t thought about that yet. He swallowed hard. Last night, he said.

Brewer made a note in his notebook, then looked up at Jesse. What time would that have been?

It was—I don’t know. I didn’t check the time, really, Jesse said. She came down to see me when Denis and I were playing chess. Maybe ten? Closer to eleven? He rubbed at his chin. I’m not sure.

Denis? Brewer asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Yeah, Denis Grey, Jesse said. He lives in 305B next door.

So, your girlfriend came to see you, but you decided to play chess with this Denis guy instead? Foster asked, an expression of disbelief on his face.

Brewer gave Foster a look of disapproval, then looked at Jesse.

No, Jesse said, shifting on his feet. I was over in Denis’s room when she came down. We talked for a little bit, but she didn’t stay long because she wanted to do laundry.

Brewer made more notes in his notebook, nodding, then raised his eyebrows. Did Miss Parker have any enemies?

What? No, Jesse said. Everybody who knew Melody liked her.

Brewer nodded, making another note in his notebook, then gave Jesse a direct look, his brown eyes keen. Can you account for your presence between the hours of midnight and four this morning?

Jesse gasped. I thought you said you didn’t think I did it?

Brewer’s mouth made a grim smile under his bushy mustache. We just have some basic questions we need to ask.

The lover is always a suspect, Foster said.

Brewer gave Foster another look, darker this time, then turned to Jesse expectantly.

Jesse looked back and forth between them, then shook his head and raised his eyebrows, trying to remember. I think I was in Denis and Hack’s room until after midnight, he said, but then I came here and went to sleep.

I see, Brewer said, and did you go out again for anything?

No, Jesse said. I didn’t even open the door until you guys knocked on it.

Brewer made another note in his notebook, closed it, and straightened. All right, Jesse, he said. I’ll be in touch later if I have any further questions, and we’re sorry for your loss. He gave Jesse a curt nod and turned to go.

Foster looked surprised and disappointed that Brewer was leaving, but he Jesse a wry smile and turned to follow Brewer.

Brewer opened the door, and they stepped outside into the hall, then Brewer stopped and turned back to Jesse. Just one more thing.

Yeah, I know, Jesse said. Don’t leave town.

No—you’ve seen too many cop movies, Brewer said. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket again, and this time pulled out a business card, which he handed to Jesse. If you can think of anything—anything at all—that might help us find out who did this, give me a call. He looked Jesse in the eye. Anything at all.

Jesse took the card, glanced at it, then looked up at Brewer. I’ll be sure to, he said.

After the police left his room, Jesse stood blinking at the back of the closed door for what was either several minutes or several seconds—later, he couldn’t remember which it was. He kept thinking he had to go tell Melody about this crazy thing that had happened, then feeling the shock again at the realization that she was gone. He felt his body spasming at the contractions in his brain, and his breathing quickened, then grew ragged. He felt nauseous, and he leaned over and put his hands on his knees to try to catch his breath.

He heard a knocking on another door, and from how close it sounded and what he had just told them, he knew it must be the police knocking on Hack and Denis’s door. Checking his story.

He felt his heart racing.

The knocking stopped after a moment, then he heard talking in low tones. He thought he recognized Denis’s voice, though he couldn’t hear clearly enough to make out the words. The voices faded after a moment, and Jesse thought they must have stepped inside Denis’s room.

He was still standing at his door, listening intently, when another knock sounded at his door. Though it was a softer knock, it caught Jesse completely off-guard, and he startled violently, then put his hand against the door frame to catch his breath.

SUNY Alfred was an old school, old enough to have gone through several periods of additions of different architecture. The oldest dormitories on