Читать книгу The Next Killing - Rebecca Drake - Страница 11

The news of Morgan’s death spread to every member of the St. Ursula’s community before Lauren made it back to her house. She could feel the eyes of dozens of students, not to mention the other teachers and staff who had gathered around the main building.

“We’ll need to talk to you later,” the female cop had said, handing her a card just as if she were some insurance broker and not a homicide detective.

Back in the privacy of her room, Lauren locked her door, tossed the card on the table, and gave in to the temptation to cry.

She sank into the armchair and curled up, dropping her head into her hands and allowing the tears that had been pricking at the back of her eyes since she’d first found the body to spill over.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, but the tears weren’t cleansing. She felt just as sick when she forced herself up and into the bathroom to shower, but as soon as she’d stripped off her sweaty clothes she had to run to the toilet to retch.

Her hands shook on the tap as she started the water and she stood under the hot spray until it ran cold, trying to stop the tears that kept falling down her face, trying to forget the sight of that pale body tied so cruelly to the tree.

She had lied to the police when she said she didn’t know the girl. She knew her, there was no mistaking that red hair. It was the girl who’d been smoking on the steps when she came for the interview, the girl whose mother had been meeting with the headmistress.

Who could have done something like that? It was so strange, so cruel, the rope cutting so tightly into that pale skin. She pressed her hands against her closed eyes, trying to stem the tears, trying to push the vision away, but the girl’s pale body appeared over and over again in shocking detail, a slide show of images that began to merge with others until the sound of rushing water became instead a roar of flames and she saw the flickering of reddish orange before her eyes and she opened them with a gasp.

Panting, Lauren stared at the flow of water down her arms, turning her hands so it collected in her palms, where she could just barely see the etched spiderweb of white lines, like trace embroidery or the nearly invisible veins of a leaf.

She felt just as sick when she got out of the shower. She had less than an hour to get ready for class, less than an hour to forget what had happened and focus on teaching.

When she was dressed, with her hair curling in wet strands against her back, she padded into the small kitchen and made a cup of tea, unable to bear the thought of anything stronger.

She carried the cup into the living room and sank into the chair behind the small desk. Spread out on its surface were her lesson plans for the week, meticulous notes in neat, even printing.

Staring down at the page, she remembered the scrawl that had been Amanda’s handwriting, the large, loopy letters racing across hastily written pages. Laughing over silly notes. A lifetime ago.

She shook her head, trying to forget. Amanda was gone, the flat in London was gone, and Michael was gone. They were the past but the past didn’t want to let her go. And alone in the woods coming upon that body in the fog had brought it all rushing back. Amanda, she’d thought when she saw the girl. Amanda.

The sound of paper tearing brought her back. Lauren stared down at the meticulous notes now crumpled in her clenched hands. She dropped them, springing back from the desk.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t teach, she’d been stupid to apply for this job, stupid to leave the safety and anonymity of the city schools. How long before the police showed up asking more questions? They already seemed suspicious that she was running around campus so early in the morning. How long before one of them accused her of the murder of that poor girl?

The small stack of bills neatly arranged on the opposite corner of the desk caught her eye. All she could afford was the minimum payment and on some of them she hadn’t even been paying that.

Lauren sank back down at the desk and smoothed the crumpled pages with hands that trembled. She willed them to be steady. The important thing was not to panic. The police didn’t know her. No one knew her here. She needed this job and she needed to succeed at it. There was no going back.

Early American History was in the main building of the school, in one of the older classrooms. Taking a deep breath, Lauren pushed open the door and walked in. The hum of conversation ceased, just like that, and the sudden scrape of a chair’s legs against the linoleum floor was loud.

Walking briskly to the front desk, her heels clicking like little castanets on the floor, Lauren put her briefcase down and turned to face the class. Twenty girls stared back at her with frank curiosity, none of them looking especially friendly.

“Good morning,” Lauren’s voice sounded loud and falsely cheery in her own ears. She was unprepared for all the students to repeat her greeting in unison. She jumped and someone tittered.

Feeling her face flush, Lauren turned to the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk. It broke with a squeak as she drew a capital “L” and a muffled wave of laughter rolled behind her. She could feel the color in her face climbing her neck and ears and wished that she’d left her hair down instead of pinning it up so she looked more mature.

Scrawling her name quickly across the board she turned. “I’m Lauren Kavanaugh,” she announced, “your new history teacher. Let’s begin with the roll.”

She picked up the list that had been left in the center of the desk and read off the names, trying to still the shaking of her hands.

Each girl responded with “here,” some of them sounding bored, some of them cheerful, some like automata, as if they were just doing time. When she called out Nicole Morel there was silence and her eyes swept the classroom, looking and failing to find anyone responding to that name.

She’d reached Bonnie Wharton when the classroom door suddenly opened and a small girl with short dark hair slunk into the room, books clutched to her chest. “Sorry, Madame,” she said, with an accent. “I got lost.”

A few titters over this. Lauren frowned at the class then smiled at the girl. “No problem, it’s a big campus. I’m Ms. Kavanaugh and you are?”

“Nicole Morel.”

“Aah,” Lauren checked her name off. “Please take a seat, Ms. Morel.”

She looked back down at the roll and without thinking about it called out, “Morgan Wycoff.”

There was sharp intake of breath from a girl in the front row and someone else gasped. Lauren realized her mistake. So this was the girl. She hadn’t heard the last name before. She moved hastily to the next name.

“Rachel Yarrow.”

A plump, sleepy-looking girl raised a languid hand. “Here.”

When the list was done, Lauren turned immediately to her textbook. “We’ll begin with chapter one.”

By noon, with two classes under her belt, Lauren felt as if she’d been running a marathon. She paused at a drinking fountain on the way to the dining hall, stepping out of the waves of students flowing past and waiting behind a tiny freshman before hastily swallowing some water.

“You should bring a bottle to class with you.” The voice above her was cool.

She straightened and looked at a dark-haired man in a pinstripe suit grinning at her.

“Ryland Pierce,” he said, sticking out a hand. His nails were manicured. “And you must be Lauren Kavanaugh.”

“Must I?”

He laughed. “Well, you match the description I got from our dear headmistress. I’m St. Ursula’s guidance counselor and I’ve been sent in that capacity to guide you through the hazards of your first official school lunch in our dining hall.”

He laughed again and suddenly gripped her just above her left elbow, steering her in the direction of the cafeteria, chattering about the school and traditions and lots of other nonsense that Lauren didn’t hear because she was so annoyed by his handling her that she could concentrate on nothing but extricating herself politely from his grip.

She got her chance when he paused to reprimand a student for running and she briskly stepped ahead of him so that he had to hurry to catch up as she crossed the campus toward the dining hall.

“We’re so sorry that you found Morgan Wycoff,” he said in a stage whisper once he’d caught up. “Not that it would be pleasant for any of us, mind you, but for a new teacher here—” He grimaced and then held the door open for her.

In some ways, the dining hall was much like other school cafeterias, complete with trays, food being kept warm under heat lamps, served by grumpy-looking, stolid ladies wearing hairnets. The similarities ended just past the cashier.

Instead of metal-and-Formica molded cafeteria tables, there was row upon neat row of wooden refectory tables with wooden chairs. The tables were laid with white linen, real flatware, and cloth napkins, and every table had a centerpiece of a small flowering plant.

“There are two prefects chosen from both the sophomore and junior classes and four from our senior class,” Pierce explained. “These girls take turns monitoring the dining hall.”

Pierce led her toward the faculty section, identical to the rest of the seating except that the long tables were separated from the students by a raised platform. It gave the teachers a clear view of what was happening across the dining hall, but it also afforded them little privacy.

“One of the downsides of being a teacher,” a middle-aged woman wearing a tweed suit said with a grin as Lauren sat down. “They say being on this platform is putting us in a place of honor, but the truth is that we’re really just on display for the herd. Feels strange, doesn’t it?”

“Alice, you’ll scare her,” an older man admonished. He stood up and extended his hand across the table. “Leonard Whitecliff, and this is my esteemed colleague in the English department, Alice LaRue.”

“Oh Leonard, you’re the one who’ll scare her with your Masterpiece Theatre manners.” Alice laughed and offered her right hand to Lauren while taking a small roll from a basket with her left. “Personally, I still eat here for these.” She broke open the bread and steam rose from it. “Aah. Warm bread is the true mark of civilization.”

A tall, quiet man seated to Lauren’s right chuckled at that. “My vote goes to indoor plumbing,” he said. “James Bolton, science.”

There was a flurry of other introductions and she promptly forgot most of the names. She’d gotten a salad to eat and there were sweating glass pitchers of iced tea and water with slices of lemon floating in both.

“We understand that you’re the one who found Morgan,” Alice LaRue said. The others paused in their eating and looked expectantly at Lauren.

“Yes,” she said.

“We’ve heard that she was naked? Is that true?” Ryland Pierce asked.

Lauren’s hand faltered and the iced tea she was pouring splashed onto the linen cloth. A pool of amber spread around her glass as she dabbed at it with her napkin.

James placed a hand gently on hers, stilling Lauren. “It’s okay,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve seen worse stains.”

Lauren looked up to see a row of expectant faces. “Yes,” she said. “She was naked.”

Her appetite shriveled as she said it. She had managed to push the image of that girl’s drawn face and purplish skin far from her mind while she was teaching, but now it rushed back with a vengeance. She could feel bile rising and thought she might be ill.

“She was a very strange girl,” Leonard said. “She really didn’t fit in here.”

Alice grimaced. “Oh, Leonard, just because she was a free spirit.”

“Flouting all the rules, repeatedly—that goes beyond being a free spirit.” Natalie Myers, a startlingly thin math teacher said with a moue of distaste.

“I’d say that’s the very definition.” Alice countered, slathering another roll with butter. She munched on it placidly.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to agree with Leonard and Natalie,” Ryland Pierce said, but he didn’t sound at all regretful. “She was quite a handful. It’s just like her to cause controversy even in death.”

Natalie suddenly said, “She’s dead. Let’s not speak ill of her.”

“I’m surprised the media hasn’t shown up yet,” Ryland said as if she hadn’t spoken.

“St. Ursula’s doesn’t need the publicity,” Alice said with dismay. “Not just when we’re recovering from what happened two years ago.”

Lauren asked, “What happened two years ago?”

“Two stupid kids killed driving drunk,” Leonard said.

Alice added, “They crashed into a tree on campus. For some reason it made the national news—you probably saw it.”

Lauren shook her head. “I was out of the country.”

“Oh? Where were you?” Leonard gave her an inquiring smile.

“Studying in London.”

“Lucky you,” Alice said. “Did you get to Paris? I adore Paris—I got these there some twenty years ago.” She fingered the string of long, swirled-glass beads around her neck.

“Heavens, Alice, she was a baby twenty years ago!” Natalie said with a laugh. “I’m surprised Sister Rose hired someone so young to replace Sister Agnes. No offense.” The last directed at Lauren with a little laugh.

She was spared from replying by Alice. “Poor Agnes. That was really awful. It’s amazing how fast the mind can disintegrate.”

“What happened?” Lauren asked.

“Alzheimer’s,” Leonard said. “And the worst part was people didn’t understand, well, at least not until the paranoia.”

Ryland Pierce interrupted him. “Goodness, this is depressing lunch conversation. Let’s turn to something more pleasant, shall we?” He shone his capped-tooth smile on them all and Alice gave a little harrumph under her breath.

“Tell us about your background, Ms. Kavanaugh,” he said. “I understand you attended a prep school outside of Pittsburgh?”

Lauren nodded and took a bite of salad. She hoped he’d move on, but it appeared that he’d just started.

“Where was that?”

“St. Mary’s Academy.”

“Oh, I’m not familiar with that one. It must seem like old times coming to St. Ursula’s. Is it similar?”

“A bit,” she said while thinking, too much. It was too similar to her past, too much a reminder of the girl she’d been and of everything she’d hoped to forget when she went to Europe. “Aah, Catholic schoolgirls wrapped so tight in their little plaid skirts.” Michael laughing as he looked at a class picture.

“Was it a boarding school?” Alice said.

“No.” She’d longed to go to boarding school, wanted desperately to get away from that picture-perfect house and the expectation that it would hold a picture-perfect family. When she thought of those years it was often of the hours spent in a spacious, cold dining room, sitting ramrod straight at that vast polished table while being forced to endure formal meals with older parents for whom she’d been an unwelcome surprise.

They’d had their three children, the five of them a perfect tableau for family portraits and the annual Christmas card. Her mother was forty-two when she found out she was pregnant again. Lauren’s arrival disrupted the plan and she’d grown up with the burden of knowing that it was only because of allegiance to their Catholic faith that she’d been born at all.

“I’m sure many of our traditions will be familiar to you,” the guidance counselor said.

“Yes, we’re very big on tradition at St. Ursula’s,” Alice said. “Everything must be done in the same way as it’s been done for the last one hundred years.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “Not if left to you, Alice. I’m sure we’d be doing liturgical dance in chapel if left to you.” He shuddered. “As a history teacher, Ms. Kavanaugh, I’m sure you’ll find the history of St. Ursula’s very interesting.”

“St. Mary’s didn’t have any ghosts?” James said. “Tell her about our ghost, Leonard.”

“What ghost?” Lauren said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ryland said with an uneasy laugh. “That’s just an old story.”

“I’ve seen her,” Alice said with conviction. “It’s not just a story.” She leaned toward Lauren. “When the school was founded there were eight nuns living on the top floor of the main building. One of them, the youngest, hanged herself from the railing over the main stairs.”

Lauren’s mouth was dry. “Why?”

“She was pregnant,” James said.

“Rubbish!” Leonard wiped his hands briskly with his napkin and threw it down on the table. “There’s no evidence of that, no evidence at all.”

“What are you talking about, Leonard?” Natalie argued. “Her grave’s clearly marked—”

“Okay, one of the sisters died and died young. That doesn’t mean she committed suicide, and as for the pregnancy story, it’s just that.”

“I know what I saw,” Alice said.

Ryland gave a condescending chuckle. “Shadows, Alice. We’ve all seen them in that building late in the day.”

“They weren’t shadows,” Alice insisted. “If Candace was here she’d tell you.”

Lauren saw Natalie shift in her seat. “I don’t know what you saw, Alice, but I do know that there are some things that fall outside our understanding of science.”

“Throwing out the scientific method?” Leonard said, but there was a twinkle in his eye. Natalie smiled, but Alice just shook her head dismissively and leaned across the table toward Lauren.

“She walks the halls at night,” she said. “If you listen you can hear her footsteps on the marble floor.”

She watched the new teacher with the intensity of a scientist studying a specimen under the microscope. It was entertaining to observe somebody new, to note the obvious physical differences and uncover the nuances.

The teacher was eating a salad, though she was already thin. A poor appetite or some sort of medical problem? Perhaps she was prone to anxiety. That would be useful to know.

She took her little notebook out and jotted down “health?” as a reminder to check for this when she went through the files. Nervousness could be exploited.

Miss Kavanaugh spilled some iced tea. That was interesting. What had caused that little accident? She peered over the cover of her book at the teacher, watching for and spotting the faint tremor in the woman’s forearms. The new teacher hid it by tucking them in her lap while sad little Bolton mopped at the stain. Something had upset her. What was it? Were they discussing Morgan Wycoff?

Foolish Morgan with her silly beliefs. She was a liability for St. Ursula’s. Everybody knew that, but only she dared to act.

She remembered tightening the rope around that wet, white skin and felt a delicious shiver running through her. It was a secret vein of gold running like a beacon through the dark mine of her body, that pleasure. When she was little she’d thought that everyone thrummed to its internal pulse.

How old had she been that time in the park? She didn’t know, only that she was young enough that the nanny had been there, sitting on a bench with the other foreign women, all of them twittering about their employers when she came running up with the dead bird hot in her small palm.

Her baby girl’s voice high and bright with the wonder of it, trying to capture nanny’s attention with the story of pressing her little thumbs against the fine bones of the thin neck hidden under that ruff of feathers.

She could still remember the horror on the woman’s round face when she held the bird out to her, its small head twisted to one side, a film already forming on its bead-like eyes.

She’d learned from this that the gift must be kept secret. So many didn’t understand and those that did lacked the strength to follow through if she wasn’t there to push them forward. Even those closest to her didn’t really understand. It was a strange power, this intense feeling. When the others hesitated, she was the one who acted, searching again and again for that exquisite sensation.

She looked up from her notebook and saw that Miss Kavanaugh had gotten up, tray in hand, preparing to leave the dining hall. She stood up as well, following at a discreet distance as the teacher wove her way through the throngs of students clustered outside the dining hall and along the walkways that led from classroom buildings to dormitories.

The wind pulled wisps of Miss Kavanaugh’s blond hair free from the clip holding it tight against the back of her neck. It blew about her face and she pushed it back with an impatient hand. She walked with her shoulders slightly raised, as if expecting an attack at any moment. Where did all that anxiety come from? How could it be exploited?

She followed along behind the teacher, her own shoulders relaxed, her stride relaxed and even, a little smile playing on her lips. No one who looked at her knew what was going on in her mind. They couldn’t know that she imagined placing her hands around that slim neck, feeling the marble column beat its nervous pulse against her fingertips. She imagined the skin cool to her touch, the fluttering of the heartbeat, the pressing of her fingers deeper and deeper into the flesh.

She smiled at Miss Kavanaugh’s back and walked on.