The Dance (18 page)

The wind had died. The cold had deepened. She had to get her homework from her locker before she could go home. Outside the tent, striding across the empty basketball courts toward the silent black buildings, Jessica looked up at the clear sky punctured with stars. Thoughts of Alice had come and now they would not leave. Jessica decided not to fight them. Sometimes when she was sad, she would remember everything in her life that had ever brought her unhappiness, and then whatever was depressing her at the moment would appear less significant, and she would feel better.

She spotted the red star she had been wondering about the night she had gone out with Bill. Again, she wished she had Michael by her side to tell her its name.

Strange how she could not remember Alice without thinking of Michael. He was always there, deep in her mind, standing beside Alice, as he had been in the painting her lost friend had been working on before she died.

I’ll have to find that picture and hang it above my bed.

Lowering her gaze, Jessica quickened her pace. Soon she was under the exterior-covered walkway, her sneakers squeaking on the smooth concrete, cursing again the fact that Tabb was too cheap to keep a few lights burning throughout the night. With the roof from the class wing above her head and the branches of some of Tabb’s oldest trees off to her side, she was in a dark place, so dark she could barely see her hand in front of her face.

As a child, the dark had both fascinated and frightened her. During the day, when the sun was bright, she had loved nothing better than to go exploring with Polly in a big sewer that was the sole source and inspiration for a creek that ran through a jungle of a lot not far from their houses. The lot was later to become a park, and then the site of another housing tract, but in those days, it had been
the
big outdoors. They must have been five or six at the time. The last time Jessica could remember exploring the tunnel with Polly—their legs spread wide so they wouldn’t step in the smelly water that ran down the center, their heads bent low, flashlights swiped from Polly’s garage gripped tight in each of their tiny grubby grips—had been the time they had brought Alice with them.
That
had been a mistake.

They were farther into the tunnel than they had ever been before. They had been walking forever. They were excited. Of course it was a big dream of theirs to get to the other end of the thing. They had this idea that if they could get that far, then the dimensions of the world—or at least of their neighborhood—would make more sense. Then they would know where they stood in the scheme of things.

They could see no light up ahead. But a noise had begun to throb around them, a slow thumping sound that reminded Jessica of a giant heart—not the heart of a person, but the heart of a huge machine, a machine that she imagined made all the cars and buildings and sewers. When they got to that noise, she thought, they would really know what was happening.

She never did find out what the noise was.

Alice slipped, smack into the slime in the center of the sewer. Turning to rescue her, Polly dropped her flashlight and broke it. And naturally, in the heat of the moment, Jessica imagined that her flashlight was beginning to fail too. She told the others it was, and the thought of what it would be like to be trapped in the sewer without any light was enough to send them racing back at warp speed.

Oddly enough, however, once they were out, Alice had begged them to try again to reach the other end. But Alice’s stinking clothes alerted their parents to what they had been doing. Their subterranean exploration days were over.

The heart of a machine.

Jessica stopped in midstride in the black walk-way. There was a noise coming from up ahead. Not the noise she had heard in the tunnel a dozen years ago. That had been deep and rhythmic. This one sounded like someone chopping wood. Yet as she listened more closely in the dark, holding her breath, her heart pounding steadily harder and harder, the gap between the chops seemed to shorten, to almost disappear altogether, to blur with her heartbeat, until they were practically a single sound, until she was feeling smaller and smaller, and standing, not in a school outdoor walkway, but far beneath the ground, with a machine over her head that made
everything
—maybe even little girls.

The sound stopped. Silence. Her heart could have stopped.

Then Jessica heard the crash. Glass, metal, and wood exploding.

Help!

She turned and ran back the way she had come. But this was not a tunnel, with only two ways to go. Suddenly it was a maze, and she didn’t even have a failing flashlight to show her the way. She went right, she went left. She didn’t know which way she was going. It was insane; she spent five hours, five days a week at this school. And now she was lost!

Then she froze, holding on to the corner of an exterior wall, on to the tunnel wall. When she was a child, this had never happened to her. Although as a child, she had, like every other child in the world, dreamed it a million times.

Footsteps. Rapidly approaching footsteps.

Someone was chasing her!

Jessica let out a soft moan, remembering how when the three of them had escaped from the sewer into the wonderful sunlight, they’d discovered Alice had skinned her head. How the blood had trickled from the side of Alice’s head through her bright blond hair.

And how the blood had
flowed
out the back of Alice’s head as she lay dead on her back on the hard floor in her parents’ bedroom.

And Michael said she’d been murdered.

Jessica bolted away from the footsteps, around the corner, back down a walkway she had the terrible feeling she had run up a moment ago.

God help me. God save me.

Apparently God only helped those who helped themselves. Or those who had a better sense of direction.

She ran smack into her pursuer.

He grabbed her. She screamed.

Michael was confused, and all because of a paragraph Dr. Kawati had added to the end of the autopsy report. The other ninety-five percent of the information had been much as he had expected.

The coroner had detailed how a twenty-two-caliber bullet had entered through the roof of Alice’s mouth, torn through her cerebral cortex, ricocheted off the top of her skull, and finally exited via the base of the skull. In his notes, the doctor referred several times to a sketch he had drawn tracing the path of the bullet, and to X rays he had apparently taken during the examination—neither of which was available in the data Bubba had swiped. But the absence of the sketch and the X rays was not what had Michael stumped. Nor was the analysis of her blood out of line. Alice had had no unusual chemicals in her system at the time of her death, not even alcohol. There had also been no sign that she had undergone a struggle immediately prior to her death: no flesh under her fingernails, which might have been scraped from an assailant; no scratches on her face or arms; and, at first glance, no bruises anywhere on her body.

In conclusion, the doctor had stated that the cause of death was a severe cerebral hemorrhage brought about by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Then he had added a note at the end.

Because the bullet traveled a complex path before exiting the head, the girl’s brain was left in extremely poor shape. It is, therefore, difficult to know if the hemorrhage found in the region of the hypothalmus and thalmus was brought about by the course of the bullet or by the force of the blow to her nasal cartilage. The cartilage has a significant fracture across its entire width, which could not have been a result of the bullet’s trajectory. It is the opinion of this coroner that Alice McCoy must have fractured her nasal cartilage upon hitting the floor with her face after shooting herself. As she was found lying on her back, I must assume that someone rolled her over before the police arrived. It is suggested to the investigating officers they pay special attention to this point when questioning all those involved.

A fractured nasal cartilage? That was a fancy way of saying Alice had a broken nose in addition to a hole in her head. Michael was angry—but not the least surprised—that Lieutenant Keller had withheld this information. But Michael did remember the detective repeatedly asking if anyone moved Alice after they had found her. The lieutenant had obviously been anxious to clear up the discrepancy; and yet he had closed the case without doing so.

There were two possibilities. Either someone had moved Alice’s body before they reached the room, or else something other than the fall had broken her nose.

Did someone break it for her?

The bullet had clearly snaked around inside her skull before exiting at the base; nevertheless, the bullet hole in the wall had been at best only three feet off the floor. And straight into the plaster. The chances remained that Alice had been sitting when she was shot. And if that were true, it would be almost impossible for her to have broken her nose in a fall.

Did someone hit her, hit her hard, in the face?

The coroner had also referred to an area of hemorrhage that was possibly unconnected to that caused by the bullet. That raised another question, one that was in many ways far more confusing than the others.

What
?

Something large and loud crashed outside.

Michael leaped to his feet. He was out the door before he could finish asking himself the hard question.

The dark caught him off guard. For a moment he couldn’t see far enough to know in which direction to run. He paused, straining to listen. It was then he heard the footsteps, racing along the hallway on the other side of the wing that housed the computer lab. He assumed the footsteps belonged to the person who had caused the crash. He set off after him.

Whoever this individual was, he couldn’t make up his mind which way he was headed. He was fast, though. Michael chased him up one hallway, down another, without catching so much as a glimpse of him. But the idiot was going in circles. Michael finally decided on a different approach. He stopped and silently jogged the
other
way, away from the guy. The strategy proved effective. A minute later he ran right into him.

“Hold on there, buddy,” he shouted, grabbing him by the wrists. The fellow—he wasn’t that tall—struggled furiously.

“Let me go! Help!”

Michael let her go in a hurry. “Jessie?”

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered, collapsing against his chest, sobbing. “Someone’s chasing me, Michael.”

“
I
was chasing you.” He held her in his arms. He never would have believed a person could shake so much and still remain earthbound. He could hardly see her face, but he could feel her hot panting breath on his neck. He brushed her sweaty hair from her eyes, hugged her tight. “Shh, you’re OK. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“There was this strange sound,” she said, weeping. “It was like in the tunnel, and then it just blew up, and I started running, and I—I don’t know.” She pulled back, wiped at her eyes, dazed. “What was it, Michael?”

“Let’s go see. I think the crash came from the courtyard.”

Jessica grabbed his hand. “Do you think it’s all right?”

He spoke calmly, although inside he was not exactly coasting along himself. “We’ll be fine.” He didn’t want to leave her alone, even back in the computer room.

They found the varsity tree—it was lying across the snack bar. The trunk had caved in one entire wall of the building. Branches poked out dozens of glass windows. It was quite simple; someone had chopped it down. They discovered the ax resting in the grass on top of a pile of wood chips scattered beside the splintered stump. Jessica knelt to touch it. Michael stopped her.

“There could be fingerprints,” he warned. He glanced about, but didn’t see anybody. “Why are you here by yourself this late?”

“I was helping Sara and Maria clean up the mess from the dance. Then I was going to my locker to get my homework. Michael, why would anyone want to kill this tree?”

“I don’t know. Are Sara and Maria still at the tent?”

“Yes. I think so.”

The tree had not fallen in a random fashion. The angle had been purposely chosen to cause the most destruction possible. Only a crazy person could have been behind this. In the wake of reading the conflicting details surrounding Alice’s death, the thought sent a shiver through Michael. “Let’s get the girls and get out of here,” he said.

Before they left the scene of the crime, however, Michael changed his mind about the axe. Getting a handkerchief from Jessica, he grabbed it by the blade and took it with them.

Sara yawned. She was as beat as Jessica had complained about being. The day had gone on forever. But she was sort of sad it was all over. Russ had been disqualified in his race, Jessica had not been crowned queen, and yet many good things had happened. Ten years from now, she imagined, if she was still alive and the world was still here, she would have fond memories of homecoming.

“Maria, I’m stacking these trash bags together and then I’m out of here,” Sara called.

Maria was wandering about on the float, her royal flowers in her hands. Sara had to chuckle. There was someone who was definitely unhappy to see the evening end. No doubt Maria would find it hard to fall asleep, remembering what it had been like to hear her name called out, how it had felt to ascend to the top of the queen’s tower with the whole school cheering her on.

“OK,” Maria said, disappearing into the back of the float.

She’s doing it all over! But can I blame her?

Thoroughly amused, Sara watched as Maria slowly wound her way up the tower steps. Once at the top, Maria set down her flowers and picked up her crown, holding it high above her head in both her hands.

“We should do this every week!” Maria called.

“Somehow, I don’t think it would be the same, Sara said, glancing down, twisting the tie on the trash bag in her hands. As a result—with her attention divided—she had only a vague idea of what happened next.

Out the corner of her eye, Sara received the impression that Maria had placed the crown on her head and did a little skip into the air. That was it. Then Maria appeared to dematerialize. The illusion persisted for a fraction of a second. Until Sara heard the scream and the crash, and knew the top level of the float had caved in and taken Maria with it.

She can’t be dead. Please, God.

Sara scarcely remembered crossing the tent and leaping onto the float. The next thing she knew, she was staring down into a deep, mangled hole. There was sufficient light to see the worst. Maria lay sprawled over the truck’s shattered windshield, her body bent at a grotesque angle. There was blood on the glass and glass in her face. She was not moving.

“I’m coming, Maria,” Sara said. “I’m coming.”

It was well that Michael and Jessica showed up at that moment and that Michael had an ax in his hands. Sara had no idea how to help Maria without doing more damage. Shouting for Sara to get down, Michael peeped through a crack in the tower wall, and then began to hack away with the blade. Apparently he did not feel it would be wise to attempt to free Maria by coming in from beneath the float. Sara trusted his judgment. Hanging on to Jessica in the middle of the drawbridge, Sara felt more helpless than she had ever felt in her entire life.

Michael was through the wall in a couple of minutes. Pulling away the cracked boards, he stepped down on top of the hood of the truck. Jessica and Sara crouched beside his chopped opening.

“Is she alive?” Jessica whispered, staring in horror. There was not a great deal of blood. It was the way Maria was lying—her torso twisted like Gumby, her chest and face pressed into the roof; her legs jammed into the steering wheel—that filled her with dread.

“She’s breathing,” Michael said, taking her pale wrist in his hands and feeling for a pulse. “She’s alive.”

“Let’s get her out!” Jessica exclaimed.

“No,” Michael said firmly. “We can’t move her She could have a spinal injury.” He pointed to Jessica. “There’s a phone at the entrance of the gym. Dial nine-one-one. Describe the situation and our location.” He nodded. “Hurry.”

With Jessica gone, Sara carefully stepped onto the hood beside Michael. “It’s just like the party,” she said bitterly.

He sighed. “It doesn’t surprise me.”