Bad Monkeys (4 page)

Voices approaching the van?

Voices off in the distance. Boys’ voices, shouting, excited, like in a playground. Then I heard a wooden
crack!
, and I thought, ball field, and I thought, oh shit.

I really didn’t want to die, you know? But I didn’t
think I could just sit quiet if the janitor started with the monkey noises again. If it came down to that, I thought I was probably going to have to bash him over the head with the toolbox.

But he kept his fly zipped. Maybe he was worried this spot was too public, or maybe he was storing up images for later. Whichever, he just sat and watched, and smoked—first the joint, then half a dozen cigarettes.

Finally he’d had enough, and got moving again. He drove another three or four miles up the highway before turning off on a side road. The road was in bad shape, and the toolbox lid started jumping again—and just to make things more exciting, we were going uphill, so the blanket kept sliding underneath me. I had to hook my hands under the bottom of the driver’s seat and hang on.

We made a last turn, onto gravel, and pulled into a garage. The janitor parked and got out. My adrenaline level spiked as he walked to the back of the van, but he continued around to the passenger’s side without stopping, jangling his keys. There was a hum of an electric motor as the garage door rattled shut, followed by more key jangling, and the squeak of another door opening and closing. And then, incredibly, I was alone. He hadn’t even come close to discovering me.

I crawled back to the toolbox and got the knife. I thought about taking everything, but I didn’t want to overload myself without knowing how far I might have to run. I figured the knife was the most important piece of evidence, not to mention the most useful if I happened to get cornered.

I got out of the van on the passenger’s side and looked for the button that activated the garage-door opener. I couldn’t find it, but on the wall right where you’d expect the button to be, I saw a small metal panel with a keyhole in it. I whipped out one of my paper clips and with
a couple deft moves managed to break off the tip in the keyhole.

Shit. A quick check of the garage door confirmed that I’d need superstrength to open it by hand. I thought seriously about trying to crash the van through it, but it looked sturdy enough to withstand a collision, and anyway, my j.d. skill set didn’t extend to hot-wiring.

I was going to have to sneak out through the house. Worse, now that I’d jammed the garage-door opener, I was going to have to do it soon, before the janitor decided to go out to dinner or another Little League game.

I went and pressed my ear to the house door, and when I didn’t hear heavy breathing on the other side, I tried the knob. I expected it to be locked, which was going to create additional problems, but I guess the janitor wasn’t a total security fanatic after all. The knob turned, and I opened the door a sliver.

Water was running somewhere in the house. I opened the door wider, and the running-water noise resolved itself into the sound of a shower.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I
didn’t
believe it: as I slipped through the door, I held the knife at the ready.

I found myself in a little alcove equipped with a washer and dryer. The alcove opened into a kitchen. To my left as I came out of the alcove was another doorway; it led into a bedroom, which led, in turn, to the bathroom with the shower. I hovered at the bedroom doorway, listening.

The janitor was definitely in the shower stall; I’ll let you guess how I knew that. My nose wrinkled in disgust, but at the same time I relaxed, sure that I was safe now for at least the next few minutes.

Relief made me stupid. Instead of beating it for the front door, I started snooping around, opening drawers and cabinets. I was over by the pantry, trading glances
with the Trix rabbit, when the phone on the kitchen table rang.

I reacted as if a burglar alarm had gone off. I dropped the knife in a panic, and snatched at the phone before it could ring a second time.

The shower kept on running. I raised the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” I said.

There was a pause, and a series of sharp clicks, and then a man’s voice said: “Jane Charlotte.”

It was the janitor, of course; he’d tricked me. All this time he’d been stringing me along, letting me think he hadn’t noticed me. The sounds in the shower stall must have been some sort of recording, meant to lull me into a false sense of security. The game was over now, though, and in a moment he’d tell me to turn around, and he’d be standing right behind me, and then I would die.

But what the voice on the phone said next was: “You don’t want to be messing around in there, Jane. He’s a bad monkey.”

Then the voice broke up in a screech of static—or maybe it was me who screeched—and the next clear thought I had I was outside, running screaming for the road.

Two state police cars were pulling up in front of the janitor’s house. Felipe’s pickup truck was right behind them, with Felipe, Carlotta, Señor Diaz, and the school librarian all jammed into the cab together.

A cop got out of the lead car, and I ran straight into his arms, shouting: “He’s the Angel of Death! He’s the Angel of Death! The janitor is the Angel of Death!” The cop grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to get me to tell him what had happened, but I just kept on shouting: “He’s the Angel of Death!”

The other cops drew their guns and advanced on the house. They were almost at the front door when the janitor came out, still damp from the shower, wearing
a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. I’d started to calm down a little, but when I saw him I lost it again, screaming “Bad monkey!” and scrambling around to the far side of the police cars.

The cops pointed their guns at the janitor and told him to put his hands up, and he did. He was smooth. Instead of looking scared he acted bewildered, like he was this totally innocent guy who couldn’t imagine what the police were doing on his property.

They handcuffed him. “Come on now,” the lead cop coaxed me. “It’s all right, we’ve got him. Talk to me.” So I started babbling about the hunting knife, and eventually he nodded and said, “OK, just stay here,” and went inside the house.

The Diazes formed a protective huddle around me. “Are you OK, Jane?” Carlotta said. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head. “Just scared me out of my wits is all…But it’s fine now.”

Only, it wasn’t fine. I started figuring that out as soon as the cop came back with the wrong knife.

“Is this it?” he asked, holding out a scrawny little steak knife with a five-inch blade.

“No,” I said. “I told you, it was a
hunting
knife. It was
big.
”

“Show me.” He took me back inside with him. The hunting knife had disappeared; when I pointed to the spot on the floor where I’d dropped it, the cop said, “That’s where I found this,” and held up the steak knife again. “Are you sure this isn’t it?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I said, annoyed. “The janitor must have hidden the real knife before he came outside.” Then I remembered the toolbox: “Wait a minute…This way!”

I led him into the garage and around to the back of the van. “In there,” I said. “You’ll probably need his keys…” But the van’s back doors were unlocked now. The cop pulled them open.

“So,” he said, “what am I supposed to be looking at?”

The back of the van was empty. No blanket, no plastic sheeting, no luggage straps, no toolbox.

“Damn it!” I said. “He must have hidden this stuff, too.”

“What stuff?”

“His kidnapping equipment.”

“Equipment, huh?” The cop’s expression changed, in a way I didn’t like. “And you think he gathered up this…equipment…and hid it away just as we were arriving?”

“The stuff was here before, and now it’s gone. So yeah. What’s your problem?”

“No problem. It’s just, he must have been moving awfully fast, don’t you think?”

“Look, I’m not making this up.”

“I didn’t say you were making it up. Why would I think you were making it up?”

I should have just shut my mouth then. The thing was, he was right—the janitor would have had to move quickly, which meant he couldn’t have hidden the stuff very well. I’m sure I could have found it.

But the cop was giving me the same I-see-through-your-bullshit look that Officer Friendly had—only not, you know, so friendly—so not only did I keep on running my mouth, but I immediately brought up the one subject you never mention when you’re trying to get somebody to believe you.

“Take a whiff,” I said.

“A whiff?”

“Inside the van. Smell it.”

He leaned in and sniffed. “Air freshener?”

“Pot.”

His eyebrows went up. “Marijuana?”

“The janitor smokes it.”

“Really. You’d never guess that, looking at him.”

“Not to get high,” I said. “I mean, that too, but he smokes it to excite himself. Before…”

“Oh! Before he uses his kidnapping equipment, you mean…And you’re familiar with the smell of marijuana, are you?”

It was a fast trip downhill from there. The more skeptical he became, the more I talked—when he asked me what had put me on to the janitor in the first place, I actually told the truth, or at least enough of it to make myself sound like a complete idiot. “Monkey noises, eh? Well, I can see why you’d be suspicious of a man who made noises like a monkey…”

To complete my humiliation, he brought me back outside and asked Carlotta whether she knew anything about these monkey noises. “Monkey
what
?” said Carlotta.

“That’s what I thought,” said the cop, and told his buddies to turn the janitor loose.

My mouth wouldn’t stop running: “You’re letting him
go
?”

“You should be worried about whether I’m going to let
you
go,” the cop said. “If this gentleman wants to press charges against you for trespassing, I’ll be only too happy to run you in.”

But the janitor, still playing the innocent, said he didn’t want to press charges—he just wanted to know what was going on.

“Just a big misunderstanding, sir,” the cop told him. He shot me a look: “One that had better not happen again.”

The Diazes took me home. Señor Diaz made me ride in the back of the pickup, which I didn’t particularly mind, since he and Carlotta spent the entire trip arguing in high-decibel Spanish; when we stopped at the school to drop off the librarian, she stumbled out of the cab looking pale and half-deaf. Then when we got to my stop, Señor Diaz had a quieter conversation with my
aunt and uncle. I didn’t need to listen in to know that I’d be taking the bus to school from now on.

After the Diazes left, my uncle told me that it “might be best” if I didn’t go by the diner or the gas station anymore, and my aunt added that they wouldn’t need my help at the store “for a while,” which I understood was her way of saying I was grounded. I got really mad, and started going on about how stupid it was that no one believed me, and how it wasn’t going to be my fault if the janitor killed another kid; but my aunt and uncle just shook their heads and left me alone to rant and rave.

It was Friday, so I had the whole weekend to feel sorry for myself. Monday was a little better; I got to sleep an extra hour and a half, which almost made up for having to take the school bus. I didn’t see Carlotta until second-period English. She ignored me during class, and afterwards I had to run out into the hall to catch up with her.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you, Jane,” she said. “My dad thinks you’re a bad influence.”

“I am a bad influence. It’s one of the reasons you like me.”

The joke fell flat, but at least she didn’t walk away. After a moment, she asked: “Did you hear about the janitor?”

“What about him?”

“He quit his job over the weekend. The librarian told me he called up the school superintendent on Saturday and said he was leaving.”

“Leaving as in moving away?”

“I guess so.”

“Well don’t you see what that means? He’s guilty! Even though the cops let him go, he’s afraid they’ll remember him next time a kid disappears.”

“Maybe,” said Carlotta. “Or maybe he’s afraid people will jump to conclusions when they hear the cops were at his place.”

“Carlotta, I swear, I didn’t make any of that stuff up.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I mean, if he’s really gone for good.” She looked at me. “You should probably be careful until we know that for sure, huh?”

The thought had already occurred to me. Friday afternoon, as we were about to leave the janitor’s house, I’d caught the janitor eyeballing me. The cops were already in their cars, and Felipe was revving the pickup, and I looked over and saw the janitor standing in his front doorway, still in his underwear, staring at me. He’d dropped the bewildered routine and put a whole new face on.

A hostile face?

No. He didn’t show any emotion at all. He was just…
intent.
Like he wanted to make really sure he’d recognize me next time we met up.

It was good for a few weeks’ nightmares. In my dreams, he’d drive up to my aunt and uncle’s place after midnight with his headlights off, and sit smoking dope and looking up at my bedroom window. Sometimes he’d just sit there, thinking about how he was going to get even with me, and other times he’d get out and walk around the outside of the house, looking for a way in. One night I woke up in a sweat, sure I’d just heard a van driving away, and when I opened my window to look out, I smelled pot smoke.

I also dreamed about that voice I’d heard on the phone in the janitor’s kitchen. When I was awake I didn’t think about it so much—I mean, it’s not like I forgot about it, but it was just so
weird,
I sort of pretended I forgot about it. But it got into my dreams, and in my dreams, it wasn’t scary. I’d be like clutching this phone in the dark, petrified because the janitor was coming for me, and then the voice would say my name, “Jane Charlotte,” and there’d be this wave
of relief, because somehow, dream logic, I’d know the voice was
good,
and it was on my side, on the side of
all
good people. And it was more powerful than the Angel of Death.