The Abbey (4 page)

“I hope that bit about school policy doesn’t come back on us. Those students are entitled to have someone here with them if they want.”

“It’s still their choice,” she said. “They wouldn’t say a thing if Principal Eikmeier was in here, and you know that. Call the first one on the list. Let’s get this started.”

I didn’t argue with her. Instead, I grabbed the list the students had filled out and read the first name. The handwriting was angular and slanted to the left. I’m not an expert, but it looked masculine.

“Our first guest is Heywood Jablowme,” I said. “You want to get him, or do you want me to?”

Olivia’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“I hate kids,” she said, rubbing her temples. “Find out who he is and talk some sense into him. I’ll start with someone else.”

“Sure,” I said, standing up. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The students were lined up with their backs to the wall while Principal Eikmeier sat across from them on a wheeled office chair. He started to get up, but I motioned for him to stay seated. I counted three boys and seven girls. Two of the boys were in front of the line talking to each other, but the third was in back and looked lost in thought. I ignored him and motioned the first two toward me.

“Which of you is left–handed?”

They both smirked. I tilted my head to the side and raised my eyebrows, but that just caused them to snicker. I was about to turn around and get the list from Olivia when a brunette girl next to the two boys stepped forward.

“Don is left–handed,” she said. “The one with black hair.”

Don shot her a withering, malevolent stare. He was tall with spiked black hair. He didn’t look like he could handle himself well against a grown adult, but he could probably hurt a teenage girl. I stepped in front of him and smiled. He stepped back.

“Is she right?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“So what?” he asked.

“That means you and I need to talk in private.”

Before Principal Eikmeier could stop me, I put my hand between his shoulder blades and gently led him down the hall. The kid came willingly, but the smirk never left his mouth. We rounded a corner, and I led him into a boy’s restroom so we could talk without interruption. It smelled like cigarettes and urine. The walls were covered in an institutional green tile, and the floors were some sort of gray stone. The ceiling was black in spots, probably from years of clandestine smokers, and none of the toilet stalls had doors. At least I knew we were alone.

“You are so totally screwed, taco vendor,” Don said. “You can’t drag me away like that. My Dad’s lawyers are going to be all over this.”

I turned and twisted the deadbolt on the bathroom’s door. The bolt hit home with a clang.

“I’m an Arab, dip shit,” I said. “And your Dad’s lawyers aren’t in here.”

Don’s smirk slowly disappeared. He backed up to the far side of the room, pressing himself flat against the wall.

“What are you doing? Is this like a terrorist thing?”

“No,” I said, walking to one of the porcelain sinks.

I unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and pushed up the sleeves of my jacket an inch or two. I threw water on my face as if I were preparing myself for prayers. I glanced at the kid again. His breathing looked shallow, and his skin was white.

“This isn’t funny,” he said, pressing his back to the tiled wall. “You can’t lock me up here. I know my rights.”

I shrugged and shook water off my hands before drying them with paper towels.

“You’re right. I can’t keep you here, but I didn’t lock the door for you. I locked the door to keep Principal Eikmeier out. You can go anytime you want.”

Don took a step forward but stopped before reaching the door.

“You’re going to hit me or something, aren’t you?”

I leaned my hip against the sink and crossed my arms.

“You’ve got my word. I won’t touch you,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “But you ought to stay.”

He bunched his eyebrows up and took a hesitant step back.

“Why?”

“Because if you stay and talk to me, Detective Rhodes won’t arrest you for providing false information to the police, Heywood.”

“Are you serious?” he asked. I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything. He threw his hands up. “Come on. That thing with the sign–in sheet was a joke. I hardly even knew Rachel. I sat beside her in homeroom and American History. That’s it.”

I took my notebook out of my pocket. Olivia asked me to talk some sense into the kid, but I couldn’t help if he was talkative.

“If you sat beside her, you must have talked to her some. She ever have problems with anybody?”

“We didn’t talk about those sorts of things. We made fun of the teacher. We talked about TV. Stuff like that.”

“Who would she have talked with?”

He gave me a list of five names. He called them her freaky friends. There were three girls and two boys, one of whom was Robbie.

“Before you go, can I give you a word of advice, Don? If a law enforcement official asks you a question, answer it. Don’t be a jerk. If you do, I will send you to jail, and your cell mates will pass you around like a bong at a Grateful Dead reunion concert. Do you understand me?”

Don started forward.

“I get it,” he said. “And I won’t do it again. Can I go now?”

“Yeah. Go.”

We left the restroom after that, although we went in different directions when we got into the hallway. When I got back to the conference room, Olivia had already begun to interview students. The Asian girl I had seen earlier was at the table, but she and Olivia stopped talking when I entered.

“Excuse me, Detective Rhodes,” I said, nodding to Olivia. I turned my attention to the girl. “What’s your name, Miss?”

“Joy Li.”

I looked at the list Heywood had given me for confirmation but came up empty.

“Okay. You can go back to class, Joy. Thanks for your help.”

Olivia coughed, but didn’t say anything until the girl gathered her backpack and left the room.

“I thought we had a plan. I talk to the students while you sit there and look intimidating.”

I handed her my notebook with the five names on it.

“These are Rachel’s actual friends. They’re the ones we need to focus on.”

Olivia scanned the names and nodded.

“I think a couple of them are out here. Your conversation with Heywood went well, I see.”

I shrugged.

“You have to know how to connect with a kid,” I said. “It’s all about building trust. Sometimes it takes a parent’s practiced hand.”

Olivia shook her head and stood up.

“I’ll see if Principal Eikmeier can round up everyone we need.”

We started with a girl named Alicia Weinstein. She looked vaguely familiar, so I might have met her at a birthday party or some other milestone in Rachel’s life years earlier. I didn’t remember her eyes, though. They were calculating and probing, making me feel like a horse being evaluated by a gambler before a big race. I shifted on my seat uncomfortably and glanced at Olivia.

Olivia warmed her up with small talk for a few minutes. She and Rachel lived near each other and had played on the same soccer team when they were younger. She said she was seventeen, and judging by her designer clothes, I doubted she had to work her way through school. My guess was that her family had enough money to have a lawyer on permanent retainer. Hopefully that wouldn’t be a problem.

Before she started the interview, Olivia gave the same introductory speech she had given to the group of students before. Alicia took it in the same glassy–eyed fashion they had.

“So we’re here to talk about Rachel obviously,” said Olivia. “As I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to find out what happened to her. You can help us by filling in some details about her life. What can you tell us about her?”

I thought it was a good question. Young, inexperienced investigators oftentimes jump right in without letting the witness establish his own rhythm. Asking an open–ended question let Alicia dictate how the conversation went early on. It would give her the feeling of control.

“Rachel was the nicest person I knew. Everyone loved her, so this was a surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it was. I don’t know. Forget I said that.”

Olivia and I both sat up straighter. The comment was off. Under most circumstances, it takes prodding for a suspect to make an admission like that. Olivia and I glanced at each other, surprised.

“Why shouldn’t it have been a surprise?” asked Olivia.

Alicia looked down.

“I shouldn’t say anything. It’s not my place.”

“She was your friend. It is your place,” said Olivia. “We need to find out what happened so no one else gets hurt.”

“Rachel had problems,” said Alicia. She paused for a moment and breathed deeply as if talking were difficult. Olivia offered to get her a bottle of water, but Alicia declined, took a couple of deep breaths and started again. “Rachel had problems with drugs. We all knew about it, but we didn’t know what to do. Nobody thought anything like this would happen.”

“What was she on?” I asked, hoping my incredulity didn’t show through my voice.

“The usual stuff,” said Alicia. “I saw her smoke pot once, and I knew she drank at parties, but everybody does that. I heard she started doing more serious stuff lately.”

“What do you mean by serious?” asked Olivia, glancing at me.

Alicia took a moment to respond.

“They were just rumors,” she said. “But I heard she tried cocaine at a college party last month. People said she did some other stuff, too.”

Olivia nodded. I squeezed my hands under the table hard enough that I could feel my nails bite into my skin.

“Have you heard rumors that Rachel was doing drugs on a regular basis?” asked Olivia, reaching beneath the table and tapping my knee. I unclenched my jaw and forced my shoulders to relax.

“I don’t know,” said Alicia, shaking her head. Her eyebrows were scrunched, and her eyes were glassy and wet. She started and stopped talking twice. “We were worried about her. She wouldn’t talk to us about it, though.”

“Do you know where she would have kept her stash?” I asked. “We need to find it so no one else gets hurt.”

Alicia paused again and closed her eyes as if thinking. She eventually nodded as if she had made a tortuous decision.

“Check her locker. She used to keep stuff in a perfume box on the top shelf. She might have put something there.”

Olivia continued asking questions, but nothing pertinent came from it. Alicia denied knowing where Rachel got her drugs or how often she took them. Before she dismissed the girl, Olivia said she had one more question.

“Do you know someone named Azrael or have you ever visited a nightclub called The Abbey?”

Alicia didn’t blink or even pause to respond.

“Vampires aren’t real. A lot of us read books and talk about them, but that’s it. It’s a way to express ourselves and be creative. That’s what we like about them.”

“I didn’t ask you about vampires,” said Olivia, smiling. “So it’s interesting that you bring them up.”

“I thought…” Alicia faltered mid–sentence, her face pale. It was the first honest response we got out of her. It took her a moment to compose herself. “I’ve heard of the club. You have to be twenty–one to get in, though, so I’ve never been.”

I reached into my pocket, took out my cell phone, and snapped a picture quickly. Alicia’s eyes were closed, but it’d do. I turned my phone around and showed her the screen.

“If I show this picture around, they’re not going to recognize you, right?” I asked.

“Right,” said Alicia, not taking her eyes from my phone. Her breathing was shallow. Olivia put her hand on my knee before I could press the point further.

“I’m going to let you get back to class,” said Olivia, reaching into her purse. She pulled out a business card and handed it to Alicia. “If you change your mind about anything you’ve said here, my number’s on the card.”

Alicia nodded, grabbed her backpack, and left the room. Olivia turned towards me. Her head was tilted to the side.

“How much of it do you think she was lying about?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Most, maybe all,” I said. “My niece didn’t do drugs, and my sister has test results that prove it. Alicia is hiding something.”

Olivia looked off into space for a moment, her eyes unfocused. She nodded.

“The question is what.”

Before I could answer that, another girl came in. She gave us nearly the same story as Alicia, and rather than waste our limited time with a third and fourth interview, we decided to check out Rachel’s locker. While I wandered in the school’s main hallway, Olivia ran to her car for her crime scene kit. It looked like a standard–issue fishing tackle box, but it held latex gloves, evidence bags, tags, and search forms. It had everything she’d need to search for and store evidence.

Classes were still in session, so Olivia and I were able to work relatively unimpeded. Principal Eikmeier opened the locker for us. Its interior was about five feet tall and had two shelves for textbooks as well as a hook for a coat. Rachel had personalized it by pasting pictures of her friends on the walls and door. Most of the kids in the pictures were vaguely familiar even if I didn’t know their names. One girl was in more pictures than others, though. She had curly red hair and pale skin. I was sure that I had seen her somewhere, but Principal Eikmeier didn’t recognize her. Must have been at a different school, then.

True to Alicia’s word, we found an Elizabeth Arden perfume box on the locker’s top shelf. Olivia pulled a camera out of her evidence kit and snapped a shot of the box and its placement before putting on gloves. She was almost delicate as she pulled the box from the locker, gently touching only its edges to minimize contact.

“There’s something in here,” she said, tilting the box to the side. “Get a couple of pictures of this, Ash.”

I grabbed Olivia’s camera and took pictures of everything she did. Olivia popped the top. There was a plastic bag inside that contained small clumps of what looked like a hard, white cheese as well as a clear glass tube with a bulb on one end. I had never worked narcotics, but it wasn’t hard to recognize an unused crack pipe and what was probably ten bucks worth of crack. I snapped a picture of both.