Stalking Death (22 page)

This hive of activity suggested that Shondra wasn't alone here, and that if she wasn't alone, she couldn't be in trouble. But that was what I wanted to believe, not what I did believe. Anxiety made my stomach was so tight it hurt. I was already wondering where we'd look next when we didn't find her here. We paused in the hallway, the other three looking to me for direction, even though they knew the place and I didn't. I shrugged. "Search the building, I guess."

I got the women's locker room and bathrooms, peering dutifully into toilet stalls and shower stalls, under benches and into dark corners. Twenty minutes later we were back in the hall again, empty handed except for the discovery that Jamison's locker had been broken into.

"Did you look everywhere?" I asked. "Basement? Closets? Coaches offices?"

The shorter, smarter security guard, whose badge read Dwight Cotton, looked at his companion. "You check the offices, Ron?"

"They were locked."

Cotton shook his head and started down the hall. "Might as well finish the job."

She was sprawled on the couch in Jenna Adams' office, feet over the end, one arm folded across her chest, the other touching the floor, palm up, in what looked like a plea for help. She wore a tank top, tearaway pants and hightops. There were bruises on her arms. With her expressive eyes shuttered and her face relaxed, she looked touchingly young and vulnerable.

She appeared to be sleeping, but nothing we tried could wake her. Cotton checked her pulse and respiration, looked at her eyes, and shook his head. "Drugs, maybe? She's pretty far under, whatever it is. We'd better get her to the hospital." He looked at me. "You want us to drive her? It'd be a whole lot quieter. I don't think this place needs any more bad publicity."

"Do you think that's safe?"

"It's ten minutes away. Take that long for the ambulance to get here anyway."

I looked at Margolin. "It's your call."

"Go ahead and drive her," he said. "I'll get my car and meet you there."

"Could you let the Headmaster and Dean Dunham know what's happened?"

"I'll take care of it," he said.

Ron pulled the car around to the back and we carried her out. Not an easy job, even with four of us. She was limp and heavy and so tall we had to fold her into the seat, arranging her on her side to be safe. Once she was in the car and the door shut, I pulled Cotton aside. "I know we don't want to draw attention to this, but I'm concerned about those bruises."

"She's an athlete," he said. "It happens."

"It can," I agreed. "Still, if you can manage it without too much fuss, I'd like the hospital to take pictures."

He gave me a funny look, but I've had plenty of those. I shrugged. There wasn't time to argue. "If you can."

The security guys drove off, and Margolin sprinted away to get his car so he could follow. I was left alone in the office. My car was fifteen minutes away across the campus and I wasn't eager to take another long walk in the dark. What was going on was too strange. Eventually, I'd have to, but I decided to stall a little. Stay here where it was brightly lit and there were lots of people noises on the other side of the wall.

I looked around, wondering if there were clues here that could tell what had happened? If I should be careful not to touch anything. There were two things I knew I should do—call Lt. Bushnell and Jenna Adams.

I put Bushnell on a back burner, knowing he'd probably resent it and make my life miserable, and called Jenna Adams. She answered on the first ring, an expectant, hopeful "hello," like she'd been waiting for news.

"Coach Adams? It's Thea Kozak."

"Tell me you've found her," she said. "That she's okay. I've called and called. Gone by her room. Asked her friends. No one's seen her and I've been so worried."

"I'm here in your office," I said. "A few minutes ago, we got security to unlock the door and found her collapsed on your couch... unconscious... looks like it might be a drug overdose. Security officers have taken her to the hospital."

"The hospital? I'll get right over there."

"Hold on," I said. "I'm still in your office. It would be great if you could go to the hospital... she's going to need a friendly face, but I was hoping you could come by here first. Take a look around, see if anything unusual strikes you."

"Five minutes," she said, and put down the phone. No argument. No discussion. Too bad she wasn't running this school.

It was twenty minutes before she flew through the door with a red face and set jaw, followed by Al Sidaris. Her coat was unevenly buttoned. Sidaris wore track pants and his sweatshirt was wrong side out. She might have been waiting by the phone, but she hadn't been twiddling her thumbs.

"Sorry. I had a flat. Had to call Al to pick me up. If I ever get my hands on those stinkers..." She halted, recalling her purpose. "You want me to look around and see if anything's amiss, huh?"

Despite the necessary clutter and the walls lined with photographs of herself and her players, it was a neat room. No papers on the desk, and where there were stacks along the wall, they were carefully aligned. She stayed rooted to the spot, her eyes circling the room in a scrutiny thorough enough to have satisfied a detective. Twice her eyes came back to the wastebasket, once to the window. Then she stepped behind her desk and surveyed the bank of drawers. Carefully, she hooked a fingertip under the center drawer and tugged. The drawer slid open.

Nodding, she stepped back, plucked a tissue from the box on the desk, wrapped it around her finger, and gently prised open the bottom drawer. Still keeping the tissue around her finger, she poked among the contents, then straightened up, nodding again.

"It's gone."

"What's gone?" Sidaris said.

But Jenna Adams was on a roll. She reached behind the door, pulled a yellow slicker off a hook and spread it out on the floor. She swept up the wastebasket and dumped the contents onto the raincoat. Nestled among the papers, apple cores, sandwich wrappers and other detritus was a small orange pill container. She used her finger to open the center drawer again, picked out a pencil, then knelt down and used the eraser to roll the container toward her and turn it so she could read the label.

"Vicodin. Better call the hospital so they'll know what they're dealing with."

I bent down and peered at the label on the bottle. Cassandra MacLeod. Cassie. The girl who seemed to be everywhere. "What's the story?" I asked.

Jenna Adams poked at the pill container a few times, sighed, and looked at me. "I wish I knew."

"You know something," I said. "You knew enough to look in the drawer, and in the trash. You knew the pills were there. Why?"

"Why shouldn't I know what's in the drawers of my desk?"

"Why suspect they might be missing or that Shondra might have taken them?"

"A hunch," she said. "Shonda knew I had them. She was there when they rolled out of Roland Shurcliff s pocket and I picked them up. And the wastebasket had been disturbed."

Just a sharp coach's eye or something more? She and Al knew a lot about what was going on around here. I only wished they'd tell me. Tell someone. How many bad things had to happen before people started sharing what they knew? And Roland Shurcliff was a new player in the game. "And Roland is?"

Al Sidaris answered. "On the basketball team."

"Quite briefly, Shondra's boyfriend. Currently, Cassie's boyfriend... and an FOA," Jenna added.

"Friend of Alasdair?" She nodded. "How would Shondra know they were in your desk?"

"I don't know. I don't know that she did. I don't know that anyone did. Maybe somebody was just looking to see what they could find, and this was it. Or maybe..." She didn't finish her speculation. "We should put this in a plastic bag... just in case."

"Just in case what?"

"I don't know. Just in case something happens to Shondra... just in case... oh, hell, Ms. Kozak, I don't really know. I only know things around here aren't right and we can't act as though they are." Her ponytail swished angrily. "That's all I'm saying."

"So would it be your guess that Shondra didn't break into your desk and swallow those pills because she was upset about her brother? Do you have an idea who else might have been involved? Cassie maybe, or this Roland Shurcliff?"

The ponytail swished again. "Don't make me speculate about any of this, okay? Not until I've had some time to think. Come on, Al. Let's go see about Shondra." She hesitated. "I just think you might want to put that thing in plastic, just in case."

"If you mean to preserve it as evidence, paper would be better. Plastic can ruin the prints."

Jenna Adams had appeared to be the one person who would step up. Now, having done her dramatic investigation act and mouthed concern for what was happening, she'd reverted to her earlier practice of speak no evil. I felt like I was in the middle of some silly gothic thing, where everyone trembled in fear of the unknown. The unknown what? Blackmail about their affair? The ghost of raises past?

"Could you finish the room, please? See if there's anything else out of place or unusual."

Reluctantly, she turned back. "The window's unlocked," she said, "and there's a soda can under the couch."

"You leave your office locked?"

"Yes."

"Any idea how Shondra got in? You think she used the window?"

"She's got a key." Adams hesitated. "I gave her one. Sometimes she needed a place to be alone. Sometimes..." Another, longer hesitation. She was torn about telling me this. "Sometimes she slept here, to get away from the phone and... and the fact that her room didn't feel safe."

So she knew, too. I felt an impotent fury at all these adults willing to sacrifice Shondra, and who knew how many others, to Chambers' megalomania.

"What did Alasdair and his friends do to girls?"

"We're going," she said, bolting for the door.

"Maybe Mr. Sidaris would like to fix his clothes first."

"Good idea," he agreed. They hurried from the room.

I'd been going to hitch a ride back across campus with her but she was gone before I could ask. Reluctantly, I found a nice clean paper bag in her trash, used the pencil to roll the pill container into it, and added the soda can. I thought I already had enough jobs without adding evidence tech to the list, but unless it was some crazy form of playacting to point me in the wrong direction, her behavior had to mean something.

I tucked the bag into my briefcase, an item that's become so attached to me it's like another appendage, and left the office. I've done briefcases in the snow and briefcases in paradise and now I was doing briefcases in the London-thick fog. As I headed off across the dark campus, slithery tongues of fog crept like ghosts into the orbit of the few lights, and left a slick of wet across my face.

Fog distorts sounds, so that though I caught the occasional sound of someone else in the night, I couldn't tell where they were, and I couldn't see three feet in front of me. Somewhere in the distance, footsteps clattered and someone laughed. Then, closer, a branch snapped and I heard the slap of wet pants.

I stopped to listen. The slap stopped. When I started walking again, the slap followed. I stopped again. The slap stopped. I walked faster, heading toward some brighter lights I hoped were a building.

I'd be a fool not to be concerned. Someone had been killed here last night, and I'd been told people were looking for revenge. What if I'd foiled some plot by finding Shondra when she wasn't meant to be found? I gripped my case with both hands, swinging it in an arc in front of me, testing the heft. Ready to use it if necessary. It wasn't a great weapon, but swung forcefully, it might do some good.

I never had time to use it. There was a sudden, rapid, slap, slap, slap, the sound of something whipping through the air, and Chicken Little's sky came falling down on the back of my head. I tucked my briefcase under me as I fell, face first, onto the gritty path, scraping my out-thrust hand on the rough asphalt and burying my nose in a slimy mound of wet leaves.

Chapter 17

I wasn't out for long. Even unconscious, I never lost my pitbull grip on the briefcase. Whoever had turned out the lights was trying to wrest it from my grasp when a voice yelled, "Hey, what's going on!"