Majoring in Murder

Chapter 6

I walked from Evans Hall to my dorm, occasionally looking around for any suspicious cars or people nearby that seemed to be watching me. There weren't but when you're in a heightened state of paranoia the way I was, your mind has a way of convincing you otherwise.

I went into my room, knowing Daniel would still be in class, and lay on my bed, listening to my iPod. There had to be a way I could get out of this mess, one that would leave my family unharmed. Turning the gun on Carlo was out of the question, so I pitched that idea out. I couldn't run away because that would leave my family in jeopardy. Besides, my dad always told me that running from your problems only seems to make them worse.

Perhaps I could persuade my parents to leave with me. We could all go out West, some place rural, where the mafia hadn't yet reached. I could explain to my parents what happened and how I became involved in it. That it wasn't even my fault. Carlo pulled me into the quagmire against my will. He was blackmailing me. The more thought I gave to these ideas, the more I realized it wouldn't work.

For one, my parents probably wouldn't believe it. Hell, if I wasn't involved, I'm sure I wouldn't believe it either. After all, this kind of shit only happens to other people, right? If we ended up leaving, my parents would have to find new jobs. They would get behind on bills before they could find work. I'm sure they're already strapped for cash as it is with all of the financial responsibilities they have. Without selling our house first, we would lose it and that would ruin my parents' credit. Again, it seemed like another impractical dead end. No matter what problems arose to counter my solutions, they couldn't measure up to someone blackmailing me to be their puppet.

Every idea I could think of to free myself from this situation was, I quickly realized, just another way of stirring up the hornet's nest and making things worse. I soon understood that there was no easy solution to my problem. The fact that I was under someone else's thumb enraged me. I wanted to fight back but I didn't know how.

What if the police captured me?

It would devastate my parents and my life as I knew it would be over. If I didn't get the electric chair, I'd certainly wind up in a maximum-security prison for the rest of my life. I tried to imagine myself in a Super-Max prison that they often featured in documentaries about prison life. Thinking of the inmates from those films, I found myself wondering what it must be like to kill another human being.

My thoughts turned to Professor Ginley. He had been my professor in Business Accounting last semester. While the subject matter was tediously boring, Professor Ginley used his odd humor to make the class more exciting. Although I never knew him on a personal level, he seemed like he might have been a fun person to know. Remembering him again, I felt a pang of guilt for delivering that package to his house. Of course, if I hadn't I'm sure that box would have found its way there somehow.

I took the folded papers out of my pocket again and stared at the grainy picture of Hector Ramirez. I tried to imagine looking at him through a riflescope, lining up the crosshairs, pulling the trigger, to get a sense of the feeling afterward. Having some connection to a person that dies makes the death more personal, I realized, because the thought of pulling the trigger on someone I'd never met didn't trouble me the way it did when I thought of Professor Ginley's death. Having that emotional distance between one's self and another person helped quell the overwhelming sense of regret and made the violent act much less personal.

When I thought about it, I could only remember fantasizing about killing one person. That person was Dalton Fuller, a running back on my high school's football team, who shoved me against a locker and chastised me to impress the friends in his clique. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That incident embarrassed me so much that I went home and wondered how he would feel if I humiliated him in front of a crowd by putting a gun to his head so everyone could watch as he cowered and whimpered. Later, reliving those emotions in my mind, I actually considered pulling the trigger. It was just a way to make myself feel better, of coping with the trauma that asshole had inflicted upon me in front of other people. Aside from him, I'd never thought of killing anyone else.

* * *

Daniel came into the room after his class and waved at me. I took off my headphones and said hello.

"How come you're back early?" he asked.

"I wasn't feeling well so Dr. Pettinger excused me from class."

Daniel plopped down and said nothing else. I replaced my headphones and listened to music with a magazine opened in front of me. I looked at him over the pages, recalling the day we met and how well we got along. Those thoughts led me to my current problem. I resisted the urge to go over to him and...and what? I'm not typically a violent person, but I actually considered hitting him. I guess that best shows how desperate I was to pin the blame on someone for winding up in my current situation. If it weren't for Daniel, I wouldn't be in the mess I was in. Of course, in retrospect, that was another way I tried coping with my situation, looking for some way to comfort myself.

Carlo said he didn't think Daniel knew what kind of business he conducted. I gave Daniel more credit than that, though. After all, Daniel's a smart guy and I figured he must know what kind of shit his uncle did. Of course, if Daniel did know, he was very good at concealing the fact. If I were him, I doubt I would have said anything about it either. Maybe that's just it, perhaps Daniel suspected his uncle was a crook and simply tried to ignore it, subscribing to the philosophy that ignorance is bliss. I suddenly regretted leaving my old roommate. If I hadn't, my only problem would be confronting my dad about bad grades. In spite of everything, it now seemed like something I could deal with.