The Biker (Nightmare Hall) (3 page)

But the person she’d seen the boots on at school … couldn’t be the person who’d been on that bike. Couldn’t possibly. She tried to imagine that person racing on a roaring bike into a crowd of people, deliberately aiming straight at them, and almost laughed aloud. Right. That was about as likely as her showing up at a sorority party. Never happen.

So she held her tongue. No mention of the unique boots passed her lips. She would talk to him first, hunt him down and confront him. After all, she couldn’t fling accusations around like confetti until she had more to go on. Maybe she’d be able to tell when she talked to him if she was way off base. And if she was right and he admitted it, maybe she’d find out the
why
of it.

She did like to know the
why
of things, although it seemed to her that she seldom got the chance. There were a million things she’d never learned the why of, and not just why her parents had dumped her. There were plenty of other things. Some were trivial, like why every other girl at school ranked the importance of their makeup right up there with three meals a day. Some things, though, were more important, like why it was so crucial for everyone to be the same. To dress the same, talk the same, behave in the same way. If you insisted on being different in any of those areas (and a few others), you were shoved into a box labeled “Not One of Us” or and you stayed in that box until you saw the error of your ways, repented, and became like everyone else.

Why
was
that?

Echo had thought that college would be different. Had hoped, had prayed, that it would be.

But it wasn’t. Not really. She knew a girl named Johanna, a really pretty girl who was also smart and funny, who had been popular at the beginning of the year. Then, halfway through first semester, she had pierced her nose and hung a tiny gold ring in one nostril.

Presto chango! Into the “Different” box she went. And as far as Echo knew, there she stayed.

And there was that boy in her psych class. John Dover. He was short and very, very overweight. She had heard people calling him “Double-Dover.” In class, at his desk, his body hung over the seat like a soufflé baked in a too-small dish.

He, of course, had gone into the box on the very first day of school. But then, he’d probably been in that same box all through high school and was used to it. Probably hadn’t expected anything else of college.

“Regular” people on campus didn’t wear boots like the ones she’d seen on the biker. Ever. They wore pretty, heeled boots with skirts and dresses, and ankle boots with jeans. But “regular” people at Salem U. didn’t wear high-heeled cowboy boots made of snakeskin with wine and green diamonds running up the sides and a silver chain fastened around the instep.

Was the person on whom she had seen those boots in class “different” enough to climb on a motorcycle? She wasn’t sure. He wasn’t very popular. But he was in a fraternity, and Deejay, Marilyn, and Ruthanne all knew him. That didn’t mean they liked him, though. Maybe he was as much of an outsider as she herself was.

But she just couldn’t picture him in black leather, racing a motorcycle into a crowd.

Still, Echo thought as she climbed aboard the small, yellow shuttle bus with a group of very shaken, frightened people glad to be out from under the mall canopy, you just could never tell about people. Could you?

His name was Pruitt. Aaron Pruitt. He was in her psych class. He was tall, and thin, and pale-faced, even this late in the spring. His sandy hair was cut short, precisely parted in the middle and neatly plastered flat with gel, except for the cowlick at the crown, which could probably only be subdued with a hefty application of glue. His glasses were wire-rimmed and he had a nice, straight nose to sit the glasses on. But he was basically an unsmiling, silent creature.

Maybe he didn’t have anything to smile about, Echo thought.

He was always neatly dressed. His long-sleeved shirts were perfectly pressed and always tucked in, never without a belt. He didn’t wear jeans, although he had, she was sure, been wearing them last night. Maybe you had to wear jeans on a motorcycle. Even his backpack, she had noticed once in class, was always clean. It was a navy blue canvas affair that looked expensive and was completely free of grease spots and loosely flapping papers and slashes of black or blue or red from felt-tipped pens.

Pruitt?

Nah.

In psych class, she sat behind him and over one row, which was how she’d come to notice the boots. He always slid down in his seat as far as possible without actually lying down, and most often, stuck his long, skinny legs out into the aisle, sometimes propping his feet up on the seat opposite his, even if it was occupied. If a guy was sitting in the seat, the guy might not care, might just ignore the feet at the edge of the seat. But the girls who sat there gave the boots a contemptuous push, sending the skinny legs to the floor with a thunk.

Remembering the expression of cold contempt on Pruitt’s face when a girl did that, Echo could almost imagine him racing into the crowd at the mall on a roaring motorcycle.

Almost. But not quite.

She began to feel glad that she hadn’t gone to the police. She’d have felt like a total fool giving them the name of someone like Pruitt in connection with the bizarre attacks. When they first laid eyes on him, they’d have thought she was nuts.

That look she’d seen on Pruitt’s face probably just meant that he had little patience with people. That was something they had in common. So maybe she
wasn’t
crazy. Maybe, like her, he sometimes got bored and restless. If he was the biker, maybe, also like her, he just craved a little adventure.

I could stand a little adventure, too, Echo thought as the shuttle made the sharp left turn onto campus. And he really
hadn’t
hurt anyone. It was awful that people had been hurt, but that wasn’t his fault.

Maybe Pruitt, if that’s who it was, wouldn’t mind sharing the fun.

The first thing she had to do was make sure she had the right guy.

By morning, Echo had convinced herself that she was being ridiculous. Pruitt couldn’t possibly be the biker. The boots had to be a bizarre coincidence, that was all.

Glad she hadn’t made the mistake of confronting him, she put the whole nasty business out of her mind and, after attending her Saturday morning classes, went to work at the infirmary.

The whirlpool was empty because of the university picnic.

Echo settled into a corner of the whirlpool room and started cramming for finals, stopping only occasionally when a picnic-goer came in with a bee sting or a bug bite.

When she left the infirmary, the picnic-goers were just beginning to return to campus. Carloads of people were pulling up in front of Lester and Devereaux dorms and letting their occupants spill out, sunburned and laughing.

For just one small moment, Echo felt a painful tug of regret. They
did
look like they’d had fun. And she
had
been invited.

But in the next few seconds, all thoughts of a picnic she might have attended if she weren’t so “antisocial” were erased from her mind as the ear-splitting roar of a motorcycle’s engine filled the air.

At first, Echo assumed someone had ridden a bike to the picnic and was returning to campus with everyone else.

Then someone screamed. That was quickly followed by another scream. Then a chorus of terrified shouts rose above the grumbling of the bike’s motor.

Just like at the mall last night, Echo thought with alarm, and broke into a run.

She arrived on the Commons, a wide area of green grass bordering the parking lot, to find chaos. The scene was so similar to last night’s, she felt dizzy with déjà vu. People were running and scrambling to get out of the way of the maniacal motorcycle, shouting and screaming, stumbling over one another in their panic, like victims in a Godzilla movie.

The bike veered in and out, slowing to a crawl, then revving its engine and racing off again into another small group of white-faced picnickers.

He hit no one. But Echo saw one girl, in her rush to escape, fall forward and slam her right arm into a large boulder fronting a bed of flowers.

A boy Echo knew from psych class, looking over his shoulder in fear at the bike as he ran, crashed straight into a red fire hydrant and yelled out in pain when his kneecap took a powerful blow. His other knee caved, and he went down.

Knowing there was nothing she could do for the victims until the motorcycle left, Echo concentrated her attention instead on the biker. He was wearing the boots again. She moved to one side slightly to get a better view. Was he the same size as Aaron Pruitt? Maybe. The black leather jacket could be providing more bulk than Pruitt had. The helmet and face shield made it impossible to distinguish any facial features, but there did seem to be something familiar about the way he was sitting on the bike.

Before she could get closer, the bike veered suddenly and raced away, leaving a dozen or more people sprawled on the grass, dotting the Commons like snow angels.

He
still
hasn’t actually hurt anyone with the bike, Echo thought as she hurried to the boy from her psych class. It’s pretty mean, scaring people half to death, but it’s not
his
fault they’re all so clumsy.

In the bedlam that followed, she made up her mind to find Pruitt and confront him. While she helped take the injured to the infirmary, she told herself that if it wasn’t him, she’d forget about the whole thing.

But if it
was
him, she thought, as she handed a nurse fresh towels, she wanted to know why he was doing this. And … while she was finding out, she just might ask for a ride. Not one that involved scaring the life out of people, of course. She wasn’t interested in accompanying him on one of his terrorist attacks. But a regular ride, with the wind blowing in her face and hair as they flew along the highway, could be a lot of fun. Echo Glenn could use a little fun in her life.

W
HEN THINGS ON CAMPUS
had calmed down and she’d been dismissed from the infirmary, Echo went looking for Pruitt.

She found him in a dark corner at the back of the library, reading. He was reclining in a wooden chair with thick, dark arms. His legs and feet dangled over one arm, while his upper body reclined against the opposite arm. He was wearing khaki pants and a plaid short-sleeved shirt.

And he was wearing the snakeskin boots.

Echo peered more closely at the boots. The shades of wine and green weaving their way up the sides were not lighter or darker than the diamonds she’d noticed the night before and again just a few hours earlier. They were exactly the same colors.

But staring at Pruitt in the chair, his head down, the cowlick sticking up like a flag, she found it nearly impossible to believe that just a little while ago he’d been terrorizing a part of campus on his motorcycle.

Still, there were the boots …

She took a seat beside his chair. “Hello, Pruitt,” she said, smiling. “Echo Glenn. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, nine o’clock psych.”

“I know who you are,” he said coolly, not taking his eyes off the book in his lap. “The question is, what do you want?”

Nothing like getting right to the point. Good. That meant he wasn’t a game-player, like so many others on campus. She wouldn’t play any stupid games, either. “I was wondering if you’d like some company on your next bike ride.”

If she had expected his head to shoot up guiltily, she was disappointed. He kept his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses fixed on the page in front of him. “Bike ride? Boy, have you got a wrong number! I haven’t been on a bike since my sophomore year of high school.”

That didn’t surprise her. That was probably the year he’d switched to motorcycles. Someone who could handle that Harley as expertly as he did had to have been riding it for a long time. “Not bicycle, Pruitt. Motorcycle. I want to go along the next time you take it out.” She grinned. “But you have to promise not to ram it into any crowds while I’m with you.”

He did lift his head then, fixing pale eyes on her. He laughed without mirth. “Do I look like a biker to you?”

Echo laughed, too. “No. That’s what’s so perfect about it. It makes so much sense to me now that I think about it. No one on campus would ever suspect you of being the Mad Biker. That
is
what they’re calling you, you know. But,” she waggled a finger at him, “I noticed the boots. First in class, when you put your feet up on Marilyn’s desk, and then I noticed them at the mall, and again this afternoon when you panicked those students at the Commons. Those are pretty special boots, Pruitt. I couldn’t possibly be wrong about them.”

He lifted a leg and waved one foot. “They’re just boots.”

“No, I don’t
think
so. They are very unusual boots. But they’re just a part of it. A part of the whole package. The Harley, all that black leather, even a face shield so no one will recognize you, those things are the rest of the package. And that package is having a lot more fun than I am, Pruitt. I want to see what it feels like to fly down the highway on the back of a Harley. You can help me do that. After all,” Echo added slyly, “I’m doing you a favor, right? I mean, I haven’t yet gone to the police or the administration and told them about the boots.”

“Like they’d believe
you,”
he said flatly. He lifted his head again. “Take a good look at me, Echo. Do you actually
know
anyone who would take you seriously if you accused me of being the Mad Biker? Or
any
biker, for that matter.”

Echo shrugged. “Maybe not. But I would at least make them
think
about the possibility, and that would spoil all your fun, wouldn’t it? I mean, once the suspicion had been raised, you wouldn’t dare climb on that motorcycle again, not for a long time. That would be really stupid, and I don’t think you’re stupid, are you, Pruitt?”

“You don’t?” Now he looked interested. “I didn’t know you thought about me at all.” He paused, then added. “You don’t look like the biker type any more than I do.”

“I’ve never been on a motorcycle in my life,” she said. “Never even thought about it until I saw you riding yours. Of course, I didn’t know at first that it was you. And I have to admit, you would never have been on my list of possibles.” She leaned forward, closer to him, and lowered her voice, although their dim little corner was deserted. “Is that why you’re doing it? Because it’s something no one would ever, ever suspect you of doing?”