2 Death Makes the Cut, page 21
He waited patiently beside me. More people had arrived: even more patrol officers, a photographer with a camera, and a plainclothes cop who was probably another detective. The latter two vanished inside the ladies’ restroom, wading gingerly through the water. A moment later, Alonzo, the school janitor, arrived with a bucket on wheels and a mop, and began cleaning up the water in the hall. He mopped quickly, his movements jerky, sneaking glances at the cops from under half-lowered lids.
I finally drew in a deeper breath, feeling somewhat less cold and a little more alert. Colin noticed. He knelt beside me again, looking into my eyes and taking one of my hands in his. The warmth of his big hands made me aware that mine were little more than hand-shaped ice cubes. I flexed my fingers, puzzled.
“Feeling a bit better?”
I gave a small nod.
“I need to ask you some questions, then.”
I sat up a little straighter, trying to clear my head. Of course he needed to ask questions. Someone had done this to Laura. Someone we needed to find.
“Okay, I’ve seen the bathroom. Can you tell me exactly how you found her?”
“I got here early and slipped in the water. I figured one of the toilets was overflowing, and I thought I’d try to shut off the water at least.”
“Uh-huh. And when you walked in the bathroom, was she lying on the floor like that?”
My eyes filled with tears. “No,” I whispered.
“Where was she?”
A hot tear spilled down my cheek. I could not find my voice.
“Was she in one of the toilets?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and nodded.
“Do you know who she is?”
“Her name is Laura Esperanza,” I whispered. “She’s a Spanish teacher here.” I swallowed, tears now coursing down my cheeks. “She’s … she’s my friend. My best friend. We eat lunch together, we go shopping. She’s…”
“Oh my God,” he said, appalled. “Oh, Jocelyn.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and I buried my face against his chest, sobs wracking my body.
“Look, we’ll get you home. I’ll call your cousin. Just … is there anything else you can tell us that would be important right now?”
I raised my head a little. “She’s tiny. And someone stuffed her head in a toilet. Some bastard. I want you to find him, and I want to kill him.”
“Yes,” said Colin.
“I mean it,” I said fiercely.
“I know.”
* * *
I don’t remember much about the next few hours. Colin called Kyla, then drove me home himself in my car. He waited with me until she arrived and a patrol officer came to take him back to the school. It was only later that I thought that he probably should have stayed at the scene instead of babysitting me, but I was grateful.
Kyla was perfect. Instead of fussing or asking questions, while I showered and scrubbed my skin until it was pink, she turned on the television and mixed drinks. She settled me on the sofa with a blanket and a box of tissues.
I took the glass she handed me and took a big gulp, thinking it was orange juice. I sputtered for a few minutes as the warm glow of the alcohol burned a path to my stomach, and then settled back to sip the rest down.
In the middle of the afternoon, the phone rang, and I answered it without looking at the caller ID. You’d think I’d learn not to do that.
“What the hell is going on at that school of yours?”
My ex-husband, Mike Karawski. Oh joy.
“I called over there, and they said you’d gone home. Something about you finding the body. Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you find the body?
“What do you want, Mike?”
Kyla had been listening intently and at that name, her puzzled expression cleared. “Gimme that,” she said, trying to take the phone from me.
I fended her off.
“Murder in our public schools,” Mike was saying. “It’s a fucking publicity nightmare. My phone here is ringing off the hook, news stations, the public. Every jackass in the city has pulled his finger out of his ass and is using it to dial me! And I don’t know a goddamned thing. Who is the principal there? Obviously his security is not up to snuff. Who is the investigating detective? And what do you know about the woman who was killed? No one is saying anything.”
He finally had to pause to draw in a breath.
“How nice of you to call.”
“Ah. Um,” he floundered at this.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to pull your own finger from wherever you keep it and call someone else. Don’t call me again, Mike. I would hate to have to get a restraining order,” I added, and hung up.
“Nicely played,” said Kyla.
I shrugged. I felt exhausted and a little drunk. “I hope he doesn’t really run for judge or whatever it is he’s going for. Seeing that smug face on television would just about make me sick.”
“Judge? Mike? Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah. Can you imagine having anything important decided by that man?”
“Makes me want to yack. But even if he is running for judge, why do you think he’s calling you?”
“That’s just what he does. He networks. Anyone he’s ever known is just someone he might be able to use at a later time.”
* * *
Colin came over at about four o’clock. He had showered and changed his clothes. His dark hair still curled damply along the nape of his neck. I felt a warm rush of gratitude toward him. For coming so quickly, for taking care of me, for his consideration.
Kyla let him in, and I tried to straighten myself on the sofa.
“Don’t get up,” he said quickly. “I can’t stay. I just thought I’d drop by and see how you were doing. Well, that and ask a couple of questions. If you’re up to it.”
I braced myself, but nodded.
“Do you know a guy named Mike Karawski?”
Not what I expected. “Unfortunately, yes.” I wished I could leave it at that, but with a sigh, I added, “I was married to him for almost a year.”
Now it was his turn to be surprised. “You’re kidding. The guy’s a giant…” He hesitated.
“Douche bag” I supplied. “Yeah, I know. What’s he doing now?”
“Mostly trying to pry confidential information out of anyone who will talk to him. He’s saying that he’s a relative of yours and has the right to know.”
“Neither one of those is true.”
“I thought so.”
Kyla broke in at this point. “You on duty, Colin? I make a killer screwdriver or we have beer.”
“Better not. I need to get back soon.”
“Tea, then?”
“Sure, thanks.”
Kyla went into the kitchen, and Colin slanted an odd look at me. “Married? Really?”
Some mistakes haunt you forever. I shrugged. “I was young and stupid. And although it’s not obvious now, he can be both funny and charming. When it suits him.”
Colin made a sound very near a snort. “Well, I’ll put the word out that we can safely ignore him.”
“I don’t know how safe it is,” I cautioned. “When he was trying to get information out of me, he let slip that he’s going to be running for judge.”
“Super.”
I laughed a little at that, then grew serious. “What have you found out?”
“Off the record?”
Kyla returned with tea and a sugar pot. “Record? Who the hell would we be on record with?”
“He’s worried we’ll talk to Mike,” I said, trying not to feel hurt.
Colin hastily busied himself with the sugar bowl, dumping three large spoonfuls into the amber liquid and giving a quick stir. Sugar crystals swirled and settled at the bottom.
The look on Kyla’s face said, “Want some tea with that sugar?” but before the words had a chance to come out, I said, “Of course off the record. I wouldn’t give Mike directions to a Dairy Queen, much less tell him anything important. And neither of us will talk to anyone else, either.”
“Yeah,” agreed Kyla.
He said, “It’s not that much anyway. We’ve been going over the security cameras. Unfortunately, the ones at Bonham are old-style. Probably been there since the school was built.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning half of them are fakes and the other half produce terrible quality video. There’s only one working camera in that hallway, and it doesn’t include the bathrooms or even the doors to the bathrooms.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Privacy concerns, according to your principal, along with practicality. There’s not much worth stealing down that hall, and nothing other than the bathrooms to vandalize. And again, taping kids going to the bathroom gets pretty close to invasion of privacy, so Dr. Gonzales and the school board felt a prominent but fake security camera would be enough of a deterrent.”
“But surely the cameras near the doors work?” said Kyla, then held up her hands. “I know, I know. Don’t call me Shirley.”
He laughed. “Yeah, they work. Or rather, the ones on the doors that lead to the parking lots work. Anyone could enter or exit by the courtyard doors, and from there, they wouldn’t necessarily have to pass another camera, not if they were smart and knew about the cameras. Even if they didn’t do that, the school is like Grand Central Station. The cameras caught kids, parents, and teachers coming and going until after eleven o’clock.”
“So even if you caught the right person on tape, you’d never know it because you don’t know if they were in the hallway.”
“Exactly. And the quality of the video is too poor to tell if anyone had wet clothes.”
“Wet clothes?”
Colin hesitated, looking at me. “Ms. Esperanza put up a gallant fight. The killer would have been soaked.”
His words dropped into a pool of silence. A single tear spilled down my cheek, and I wiped it away angrily.
“What time?” I asked when I could control my voice. “Do you know what time it happened?”
“Not exactly. The initial estimate is between eight and midnight.”
“See, that’s wrong. She had no reason to be at the school so late.”
“We’ve spoken with her husband. Apparently, she told him she had to work late and wouldn’t see him that evening. He works the night shift at St. David’s Medical Center—seven to seven. He only noticed she was missing when he got home this morning, and he called it in right away. But you’d already found her by then.”
“She had no reason to be there,” I repeated.
Kyla was thinking hard. “It was a terrible risk for the killer, wasn’t it? A girls’ bathroom. Pretty busy spot.”
“Yeah,” Colin agreed. “We figure it had to have been closer to midnight for that reason. Any earlier and someone would have noticed the water if not the body.”
I swallowed. “It wasn’t flowing that much, though.”
“What?”
“I mean, the amount of water. It wasn’t just pouring out. It was more of a steady trickle. It had only made it to the hall because it had been running for so long.”
“Yeah, the mechanism couldn’t quite close, probably because of her hair. When you pulled her out, it stopped,” said Colin, then winced at my expression. “Sorry.”
I swallowed hard, but kept going. “So, since the stall door was closed, I don’t think anyone would think much of a trickle of water.”
“They’d report it, wouldn’t they?”
“An adult would report it. But a kid? At Bonham? Water and worse on the floors in the bathrooms isn’t anything new. You should ask the drama kids. I’m assuming they were the ones up there until eleven?”
“Yeah. Seriously, you think it’s possible that a kid could have gone into that bathroom and not noticed anything?”
I closed my eyes, not so much to remember, but to get the vision out of my head. “Other than the water, there wasn’t anything to notice. She … she was in the last stall. The door was closed. If you used one of the first two stalls, you wouldn’t see a thing. And why would you go closer to a running toilet?”
“We’ll check,” he said, his face alert, the hunting instinct kicking in. He rose to his feet.
He started to carry his glass to the kitchen, but Kyla stood and took it from his hands. I stood as well, a little stiff from being curled on the sofa so long. Ridiculous or not, his presence was comforting, and a big part of me didn’t want him to leave. It was all I could do not to clutch at him and pull him back.
He must have seen something of my emotion in my face, because he turned back and took me into his arms, holding me close, resting his cheek against my hair. I buried my face against his shirt, feeling his warmth through the thin fabric, aware of how solid and comforting his body felt. I felt him patting my back, soothing me as he might have soothed a child. I could have stayed just like that forever, but it was feeling a little too good. I straightened, sniffing and rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. He released me, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. With a flash of blue from his eyes more intimate than a caress, he turned and left without a word.
Kyla followed him to the door and locked it after him. Then she turned to me.
“Damn,” she said.
Chapter 18
GRIEF AND GUNS
There had been talk of closing the school for a few days, but the massive wheels of the Austin Independent School District turned quickly for once and the powers that be decided that 2,800 kids need their education, and, more importantly, the district needed the federal funding.
Kyla protested, but I sent her home after Colin left and somehow rose the next day and went back to school. I did not, however, cut through Building A, and instead parked in front and walked through the main entrance beside the administration building. A glance through the windows showed the office was overflowing with strangers, all talking at the same time. Larry Gonzales stood in the middle of them, looking harried and grim.
Curious, I went in, sidled past the group, and slipped behind the front desk. At the sight of me, Maria Santos jumped to her feet and rushed to throw her arms around me.
“Oh, Jocelyn, I didn’t think you’d be here today. How are you? How are you holding up?”
I patted her shoulder awkwardly. Over her head I could see Pat Carver sitting stiff and disapproving behind her computer monitor. She gave me a sour look and turned her attention to the screen in front of her.
“I’m fine,” I said, which was precariously close to being an outright lie. However, I was upright, so I thought I could get away with it. “What’s going on? Who are all these people?”
She released me and stepped back, pulling me down into the chair beside her desk. Lowering her voice, she said, “Grief counselors.”
I looked at the group again. “Seriously? There can’t be this many in the entire city. They must have imported some from out of state.”
“Yeah, basically. They figure the kids are going to be really upset. Teachers and staff, too. They’re going to have grief-counseling sessions and then let everyone who wants to sign up for one-on-one meetings.”
“Waste of money and time, if you ask me,” said Pat grimly, continuing to type.
“No one did,” retorted Maria. She leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “All she cares about is who is getting charged.”
“Someone has to care,” snapped Pat, again proving the efficiency of her hearing.
I looked over at Pat, taking in the large shoulders and grim set of her jaw. A new thought niggled in the back of my mind, nebulous and just out of reach. I thought about the papers Colin and I had found in the clock. Did they mean something? Was Pat cooking the books in some way, maybe embezzling money? And if so, what did that mean regarding Fred? Or Laura? I looked at Pat again. She was taller than I was, a big woman who looked like she was in fairly decent shape. Physically, could she have killed someone? I looked at the hands flying over the keys. Large for a woman, which didn’t mean they had been used to hold Laura’s head under water until she’d drowned. It only meant they could have been.
“I found those receipts you were looking for, Pat,” I said.
She jerked as though I’d given her a jolt with a cattle prod, then said stiffly. “Well, fine. Please turn them in as soon as you can.”
“They were with some of Fred’s things, so I turned them in to the police.”
This time she went absolutely white. “That’s extremely inconvenient. I’ll need to request copies from the merchant now.” With a malevolent glare at me, she rose and walked away.
Well, that touched a nerve anyway, I thought with some satisfaction. I just didn’t know how a few fifty-dollar coolers could be involved with anything criminal.
I realized Maria had said something and was now looking at me with sympathy. I drew myself together. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Nothing. Are you sure you should be here today? Everyone knows you and Laura were close. Even Larry would give you time off if you needed it.”
I shook my head. “Better to be working than sitting at home doing nothing.”
She considered this, and then nodded. “Okay. But if you do want to talk to one of the counselors, just give me a call. I’ll make sure you get priority.”
I walked to my classroom still wondering about Pat. How did she fit into this mess? And how did Laura’s death relate to Fred’s? Or were they entirely separate things? I didn’t think so. I didn’t see how they could be connected, but the likelihood of two murders in the same small community not being related had to be miniscule.
A small group of kids was sitting on the floor in the hallway outside my door. McKenzie Mills, Dillon Andrews, Eric Richards, and Brittany Smith hopped up as I approached and rushed me, McKenzie and Brittany hugging me in a death grip. Dillon hung back, probably worried that someone else might see them fraternizing with a teacher, then finally managed an awkward pat on my shoulder as though I were a dog. Kids. No one on earth could be more generous, open, and loyal than teenagers. The good ones, anyway. These kids were the reason I loved teaching and the reason I put up with the kids who weren’t so good. I hugged them back and then extricated myself as gently as I could.
