The police brought Dave Bendix in for questioning. His father was an engineer with claims to numerous patents, and he refused to let Dave be interviewed without lawyers present. They rolled up to the precinct in a chauffeured town car. The detectives didn’t have any evidence, or any that pointed to Dave.
They found the squirt bottle in the stairwell with traces of latex glove dust, no fingerprints. The bottle was new technology, coated on the inside with a flexible glass weave that was resistant to extreme heat, cold and in this case battery acid. This sports drink company that was trying to compete with Gatorade had developed the bottle. Volta-Shock was their name. They made a big deal about the bottle back in my freshman year, giving one to every athlete in school. The top athletes got hoodies too, Day-Glo orange with double helix lightning bolts on the sleeves. Dave was given one of those.
The vast majority of Hollows students respected Dave Bendix not just because he was a remarkable competitor but also because he had founded an anti-bullying support group. A few cynics said Dave was doing ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DOMINANCE to look great to the Harvard admissions officers, but he was a shoo-in anyway. His father and grandfather were Crimson, and even if they hadn’t gone there, Dave was top ten of our class academically. More than that, I had proof that he was sincere in his efforts to quash bullying.
I knew Dave from before I quit wrestling freshman year. I was definitely an outsider, not a geek but a loner by choice. When you’re a freshman, it doesn’t matter how you see yourself. The upperclassmen on the team are going to give you hell either way, especially when you beat one of them in a scrimmage the first day of practice. His name was Richard Kerns. He wore his hair in a Mohawk dyed bloodred. The way he was looking at me, licking his lips like I was puff pastry, I was pretty sure he was going to honor his word when he promised he was going to break both my arms. My fear must have provoked a serious self-defense adrenaline surge, because I ended up pinning him. Just headlocked him, flipped him pretty hard, knocked the wind out of him. After practice the guys stuffed up the sink and held my head under water, until Dave came in. He shoved everybody back, said anybody who touched me would have to deal with him.
Dave was All-State since freshman year, 195 lb. weight class, and he benched 385. Those same few who doubted his sincerity about his anti-bullying efforts said he was shooting anabolic steroids. Back two years ago, when I was still on the team, I was 152 lb. class and three inches taller than Dave. Figure if I was just over six one back then, that made Dave a five foot ten killing machine who was, if the rumors were true, willing to do anything to win, including possibly giving himself steroid-induced testicular cancer, while I was pretty much a tall skinny newbie who was only going all fours in the goofy suit because his old man forced him to do an after-school activity. Wrestling was what my dad had done, so you bet it was good enough for me too. Those mats stank of anger. A desperate fear of letting your parents down, of not getting recruited by some overpriced country club that passed for college, Dartmouth or wherever.
As grateful as I was for Dave’s protection, he scared me. When he was wrestling, he had this look, the intense stare of somebody who wants to beat you, sure, but more than that he wants to eat you, caveman style.
The detectives interviewed him for half an hour, and then they let him go. Dave was a weak pick on motive. They were looking for somebody who hated Nicole, not somebody who was trying to bone her.