The faulty connection was instantly severed.
With a groan of frustration, Jules dropped the phone into her purse, gripped the steering wheel, and pressed on into the blowing storm.
God only knew what she’d find when she finally made it to the academy.
CHAPTER 17
Jules was coming here? To Blue Rock? As a teacher? What good was that? Shaylee stashed Nona’s phone in her book bag and sauntered into the rec area. The deputies had taken most of the students’ statements, and kids were collecting in groups throughout the large hall. All were talking excitedly, all speculating on what had happened to Nona.
“I think she killed herself,” Maeve Mancuso said smugly. With eyes as wide as pathetic dolls, Lucy and Nell listened intently, as if Maeve actually knew what had happened. The three girls stood in a circle away from the conversation pit, in a more private corner filled with overstuffed chairs and end tables with lamps. One wall was windows, the other lined with bookcases.
“And I think Drew tried to kill himself, too.” Maeve stared off dreamily as she snapped the bracelet on her wrist. Always snapping at the band there, that one. What a freak. “It was a double suicide,” Maeve went on. “Kind of like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Really?” Nell was eating this up, like it was some great
romantic tragedy. She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and leaned closer to Maeve. “That’s just sooo—”
“Awful!” Shay cut in; she couldn’t help it. These ninnies were getting it all wrong. “It’s not romantic, or cool, or anything but sick!”
Maeve’s little face crumpled, and she glared at Shay as if she were Satan incarnate. “Of course it’s really, really, really sad about Nona. She was my friend. But I know for a fact that she and Drew were in love.”
“You mean really, really, really in love?” Shay mocked. Maeve was acting like an idiot!
“Who knows how it went down?” Eric Rolfe, a major tool in Shay’s estimation, sauntered over. Zach and Ethan were hanging with him. “Or who went down on whom?” he added with a nasty grin, thinking he was clever. “Could be that Nona fucked him, then tried to off him. Then, once she realized what she’d done, she took a flying leap.” Eric crooked his neck at a weird angle and stuck out his tongue with an ugly expression as he held his fist over his head as if he were hanging from an imaginary rope.
“Gross!” Maeve recoiled, waving her hands spastically. “She’s dead, Eric! God!”
“Show some respect,” Nell agreed, repulsed.
Shay’s anger simmered. Rolfe was such a dirtbag.
“Just trying to lighten things up.” Eric let his “noose hand” drop as he made another goofy face. “Everyone’s so emo and down about it. BFD. She was a psycho, anyway, a real nutcase, always sneaking out. And now everyone acts like it’s the damned end of the world.”
“Because a friend of ours died, dick-wad!” Lucy Yang stood and got into Eric’s grill. “Get a life!”
“I bet that’s what Nona’s saying!” Eric laughed in a grating, high-pitched cackle, a wheezing laugh, so at odds with his football-player physique.
Lucy slugged him. Hard. In the belly.
“Ooof!” He doubled over, and she rounded as if she planned on bringing her knee up into his crotch. “You bitch!” One of his fists balled.
“He’s not worth it.” Shay took hold of Lucy’s arm and kept her from taking a second strike.
Lucy rounded on Shay, her face a mask of disgust, her short black hair flying. “Did you hear what he said about Nona?”
“Shows how dumb he really is,” Shay said, deliberately goading Eric. Instinctively, she rolled onto the balls of her feet just as she’d learned years before from Mr. Kim, her martial-arts instructor.
Eric growled, incensed. “You sick twat.” His nostrils flared, his lips curling. “You’re going to regret that.”
“I doubt it.” Shay kept him in her sights, measuring, calculating. Electricity crackled in the air as everyone turned to the center of the action. Kids cheered and jeered.
From the corner of her eye, Shay saw two people hurrying across the room. “Hey!” one of them, a woman, shouted, but Shay couldn’t turn away from Eric; she couldn’t break her concentration.
“Eric!” a male voice boomed.
As if on cue, Eric lunged, his right fist coiled, ready to lay Shay flat. At the last possible second, she sidestepped the attack, grabbing his arm and catching him in midair.
“Wha—?” He gaped as she flipped him onto his back in one quick motion.
Thud!
The building shook as his back smacked into the hardwood floor.
The initial impact was followed by a smaller jolt as Eric’s head smashed against the floor. He let out a yowl of sheer agony.
Maeve screamed.
“You twisted bastard!” Lucy cried as Eric tried to climb to his feet.
“Fight!” One of the boys, probably that pansy-ass Ollie Gage, yelled in excitement.
The circle of students widened as Eric staggered to his feet, crouching like a boxer, his fists clenched.
Shaylee remained alert, ready for him to come back at her.
Just try it, prick,
she thought.
“Stop!” Dean Hammersley yelled while that stupid Maeve screamed and screamed.
Eric’s face turned nearly beet red. “Jesus Christ!” he hissed, springing to his feet with surprising agility. “You little bitch! You can’t get away with this!” Again he ran at her, swinging wildly.
Shay feinted.
His fist glanced off her upper arm.
Pain shot through her.
He spun and pulled back, both fists curled, his bared teeth glistening. She noticed spittle had collected in the corners of his mouth. Bastard!
“I said stop this, now!”
The pounding of running footsteps almost caused Shay to take her eyes away from Rolfe. Almost.
“Did you hear me? Stop!” a woman yelled.
On the balls of her feet, circling, Shaylee focused on Eric. “Try it,” she goaded, ready for another round. He kept his face toward her, his disgusting snarl in place, his eyes as dark and hard as onyx. Good. If he thought he could take her, he had another thing coming.
“I said, stop, this instant!” The woman again.
Suddenly Dr. Hammersley and Mr. Taggert cut between Shay and Eric, barricading them from hitting each other. Some of the other kids receded, only to linger a little farther away but close enough to watch the action.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Dean Hammersley demanded in a harsh whisper, her gaze riveted on Shaylee. Her bird face was flushed, anger radiating from her slim body.
“Dealing with a loser.” Shay wasn’t backing down.
“Fighting isn’t the answer, Shaylee, and you know it. Nor is name-calling.”
Shaylee rolled her eyes at that.
“Hey!” Father Jake was running across the room, and Shay saw that his face, usually charming and friendly, had turned deathly serious. “What’s happening here?” He glanced at Taggert and Hammersley. “Let them go.” He turned his gaze to the group that had gathered. “Anyone want to explain?” he asked calmly.
“It wasn’t Shaylee’s fault!” Lucy Yang stepped forward from her group of friends, leaving Nell and Maeve to gape at her. In an act of honesty Shaylee couldn’t believe, Lucy added, “Shaylee’s right. Eric was being a real jerk about Nona. He wouldn’t shut up about it, wouldn’t quit making sick jokes, and I snapped. I slugged him in the gut.”
Way to have my back, Lucy,
Shay thought.
“Is that so?” Father Jake said, folding his arms over his chest, his gaze on Eric.
“See. It wasn’t my fault,” Eric said with a sneer as he swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yang started it.”
Lucy sent him a withering glare, then turned to Hammersley. “Before he had a chance to hit me back, Shay stepped in and stood up for Nona.”
“You were gonna coldcock me!” Eric accused, pointing at Lucy, his face twisted in hatred.
Father Jake held up a patient hand. “Slow down.”
“You deserved it!” Lucy wasn’t backing down an inch.
“We aren’t here to judge.” Wade’s goateed jaw was rock solid as he glared at Eric Rolfe.
“That bitch slugged me!” Eric said, motioning toward Lucy.
“So she admitted,” Wade agreed.
“I was just defending myself when she”—he hooked a thumb at Shaylee—“butted in and came at me!”
Hammersley studied Lucy Yang. “You put your hands on him first. Is that what you said?”
“That’s right!” Still enraged and trying to hold on to some of his bravado, Eric sniffed and touched the corner of his mouth again. “Stupid, fuckin’ cunt!”
“Hey!” Father Jake was having none of the swearing.
“That’s it!” Wade grabbed the TA by one arm and escorted him out of the building.
Hammersley’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone else witness what happened?”
Of course all the students turned away, afraid to be drawn into the fray. Shay didn’t really blame them; it wasn’t their fight.
“Lucy’s right,” Ethan finally said. “Eric was mocking the details of Nona’s death. Lucy told him to knock it off, and when he didn’t, it went down just as she said. She, uh, Shaylee”—he pointed at her—“was just helping Lucy out.”
“Doesn’t seem like she needed any help,” Hammersley observed as an exit door opened and one of the deputies in full uniform, holster unbuckled, sidearm within his grasp, hurried inside the building.
“Is there a problem here?” he demanded.
“I think we’re cool,” Father Jake said, and then to Hammersley, “We can handle it.”
Nodding, she said to the deputy, “Everything’s under control. Right?” she asked Shay.
“Right,” Shay said quickly, eager to be out of trouble, but that, of course, was impossible. She felt Father Jake’s gaze following after her as she left the room, but she wasn’t kidding herself that things were okay here.
She knew in her heart that she’d just made an enemy for life out of Eric Rolfe.
“I need a favor,” Trent said, praying that his cell phone connection wouldn’t fail as he drove on the winding road to the gatehouse.
“What’s that?” Larry Sparks’s voice was interspersed with static but was still audible. Sparks was an old friend and a detective for the Oregon State Police. When the OSP had needed assistance locating an escaped prisoner who’d crossed both the Oregon and Idaho state lines, ending up in Montana, Trent had helped track down the suspect and send him back in cuffs to Oregon. Sparks owed him at least one, maybe more.
“I’m down at Blue Rock Academy; there’s been trouble,” Trent explained, downshifting again for a sharp curve.
“I heard. Bad news. One dead, the other critical.”
“That’s right. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m hoping you can help me out. Get official info for me if I need it, ‘cause down here all I’m getting is double-talk. It would be legit. I’m going to try and get myself deputized by the local sheriff, a yahoo named O’Donnell. I’ll give him your name as a reference.”
“Got it,” Sparks agreed, one step ahead of him. “Once you’re officially on the force, we’ll talk.”
Where the hell was the damned school? It had been over thirty minutes since she’d turned off the main road, five since her connection to Shaylee had been severed.
Her muscles were beginning to ache, her eyes straining from following the narrow tunnel of her headlights in the snowy darkness.
All her worries converged on her as night closed in.
Jules passed another sign, and finally the open space of a lit parking lot loomed ahead. She steered the Volvo around a corner of the parking lot toward the guardhouse. She drove slowly, awed by the sight.
Security lights blazed, illuminating a massive stone wall and guardhouse built at the narrowest point of the gulch. There were two wide steel gates that swung open on either side of the gatehouse, the entrance to what appeared to be a fortress.
A few vehicles, covered with four inches of snow, were scattered near the edges of the parking area while a dirty news van with the logo and call sign for a television station from Medford was parked near the gate. Inside the idling van, visible through the windows, two people sipped from thermoses. The last vehicle parked near the guardhouse was a cruiser from the Rogue County Sheriff’s Department.
Stomach in knots, Jules nosed her car into a spot in the area marked
STAFF
and told herself everything was going to be all right.
A door of the sheriff’s vehicle opened. A deputy climbed out and headed her way.
Here we go,
Jules thought, hoping she didn’t have to stretch the truth with the police. She cut the engine and rolled down the window, the warmth of the interior immediately chilled.
The deputy was short and stocky, his thick jacket adding extra weight, a broad-brimmed hat covered in plastic protecting his head. His name tag identified him as Frank Meeker.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said through her open window. “The school is closed tonight.”
“I understand.” She flashed him her most sincere smile.
“I’m a member of the faculty.” God, it was cold. The wind cut through her sweater, and she clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
Meeker frowned. “Then you’ll be on the list.” It wasn’t a question.
“I assume so, yes. Julia Farentino. I was hired only this week. Dean Hammersley called and said someone would meet me here.”
“Did she mention the school is part of a crime scene?”
“She said there was an accident.”
His eyebrows rose over the tops of his glasses as he leaned closer to the open window, his gaze sweeping the dark interior of her car. “I’d like to see your ID.”
“Sure.” She dug through her purse, found her wallet, and managed to wiggle her Oregon driver’s license from behind its plastic window.
“Just a minute.” Meeker turned back to his cruiser. Shivering, Jules grabbed her jacket from the passenger seat, slipped her arms through the sleeves, and hastily zipped it. Too late. Her insides felt like ice, and she turned her car on again, cranking up the heater as she found an old pair of knit gloves in her pockets and pulled them on just as she heard the rumbling sound of an engine in the distance. She looked toward the sound and spied headlights cutting through the darkness on the far side of the gate.
Her ride.