Confessions: The Private School Murders (34 page)

The traffic light
was against me on Sixty-Ninth, so I crossed over to the park side of CPW and kept up my pace, stepping around a dog walker coming toward me with a yappy pack on twisted leashes.

It was after I was clear of the dogs that I thought I felt someone behind me. I turned my head casually and saw a man maybe fifteen feet back and holding steady. This was a public sidewalk, of course, and a fellow traveler on the dark side of the street was not exactly weird. But still, I felt uncomfortable.

There’s a low stone wall that runs between Central Park and the sidewalk. At Sixty-Ninth Street, there’s a break in the wall for a pedestrian walkway that leads straight into
the park. I took this detour, hoping the guy would just keep walking straight.

Guess what? He turned into the park, closing the distance between us. Was I paranoid, or was I in trouble?

I walked up a little rise and veered to the left onto a path I’d walked many times before. But this was different. It was getting dark, and I was nervous.

The walkway was descending now to where it intersects with a bridle path. Just beyond the path is a two-lane road that loops around the park. There was a steady stream of cars on the road, their headlights cutting through the deepening dusk.

I kept walking, faster now, heading north toward home. I looked both ways and behind me. I didn’t see the man anymore, or anything else suspicious, but still, as I crossed the road, I grabbed at my shoulder bag, feeling for the outside pocket where I kept my phone.

I whipped it out and, still walking, sent a text.

Ahead of me was an outcropping of batholithic rock, overgrown in some places with grass, within view of a statue called
The Falconer
.

Harry and I sometimes went there to sunbathe.

I climbed this knoll because it was a pretty good lookout. If anyone was coming for me, I’d see them. I was surrounded by a stand of six trees ahead of me and six behind
me. Through the trees, I could see the Dakota only a few short blocks away across the avenue. I could actually pick out the lights in our apartment.

I took a few moments to catch my breath and was gathering myself to run home when I felt a stunning crack at the back of my head, followed by radiating pain.

I grabbed air, then went down and rolled to the foot of the slope. I covered my head as I grappled with the inescapable fact that my attacker was right behind me.

And then he was standing right over me.

I peered through my fingers and saw his face. I was seeing double, but I recognized him. It was the guy from the pharmacy, the scraggly teen who had opened the door for me.

Gary.

He’d had a nice smile then, but now his smile was cruel and cold and his eyes totally black, as if his sockets were empty.

I was terrified, but I refused to whimper or scream or beg. Cowering encourages tormenters and makes them even more aggressive. I couldn’t show fear.

“I heard you asking Alan about those dead girls,” he said with a sneer. “Your parents should have taught you to not be so inquisitive.”

He could have been right. After all, this wasn’t the first
time I’d been harshly punished for being inquisitive.
Especially
by my parents.

“You’re about to take your last breath,” Gary said. “Sound like a plan?”

“Not a very good one. We can do better,” I told him, my heart pounding in my temples. “Help me up. If we put our heads together, I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“You’re not funny.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He leaned down, and for a brief, surreal moment, I actually thought he was going to reach out his hand and help me up. Then I saw the gun.

76

As my gaze fixed
on the black eye of the gun barrel, time stretched so that each second broke into a hundred little fragments, each one amazingly sharp and clear.

I saw Gary’s finger on the trigger and I knew that this was the man who had murdered at least four girls like me, in places not far from where I lay in leaf mold and lichen at the foot of an outcropping.

I was sure he had followed them from the pharmacy, tracked them through the trees, and waited for an opportunity. I visualized each of the dead girls’ faces: Stacey, Lena, Adele, and Marla, and knew I was the next in line. That this was the last moment of my life.

Still, I had questions: Why hadn’t Gary just shot me from behind?

Why didn’t he pull the trigger now?

Maybe he wanted to draw out the moment because he was having a good time. Maybe he got off on watching my terror.

My fractured thoughts shot out to Harry and Matthew and Hugo and C.P. and Jacob. And I thought of James. I thought about my life ending, here and now, before I’d had a chance to really live, to find out who I was going to be.

That was too unfair. I couldn’t die now.

Something inside me snapped and instinct took over.

“Please don’t hurt me,” I said. “I have a family who needs me. I swear I won’t tell anyone what I know.”

“What you
think
you know,” Gary spat.

“Exactly! I actually know nothing!” I rambled, my eyes wider. “Nothing about anything at all.”

Gary tightened his grip on the gun, and my mind just went blank. I tried to scream, but my throat was rigid and gagged by fear.

“
Noooo
,” I croaked.

He laughed. “Well, if that’s all you have to say, time’s up—”

And then my throat unlocked. I let loose a loud, shrill banshee shriek that could have been heard over the traffic
on the road. Suddenly the gun and Gary’s looming face jerked violently back, as if I’d blown him away with the force of my scream.

I sat up and saw that a second figure had joined us in the little copse of trees. A man had Gary on the ground and was sitting astride him, hitting him again and again with his fists. Gary screamed as I had done, and I saw him try to protect his face from the storm of blows.

With a brilliant shock of relief, I recognized his attacker.

It was Jacob.

He had gotten my text.

Come quick. I’m on the rock near the Falconer.

And now Jacob was on his feet, kicking Gary again and again and again. In the fight between a nineteen-year-old loser and a highly trained military commando, the loser had no chance.

Gary groaned and foamed and pleaded with Jacob to stop. And finally, Jacob did. He twisted the killer’s arm around, pulled it up high on his back, and sat on him hard.

I stared through the gloom, utterly transfixed, until Jacob called out to me, “Tandy? Tandy, would you mind calling the police?”

77

The name of the boy
who had just tried to kill me was Gary Semel. Because of the beating he’d taken from Jacob, he had broken ribs and a busted nose and probably internal injuries.

I hoped Gary was in serious pain and suffering a lot.

Caputo bent down to where I sat on the ground. “Christ, Tandy. Look at you.”

“What’re you doing here?” I demanded, wincing as I turned my head. “Shouldn’t you be at—”

“I left the other crime scene in the capable hands of the Sixth Precinct,” Caputo said. He put a calming hand on my shoulder. I stared at it, surprised that he was capable of being that gentle. “Not that I don’t enjoy having you
wrap up my cases and making me look bad, but if you get injured or, God forbid, killed, I’ll never forgive myself,” he said. “That’s the truth, by the way. So take care of yourself, Tandy. Please.”

Detectives Caputo and Hayes took possession of Gary’s gun and arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon. Then they cuffed him and stuffed him into the first of the two ambulances idling nearby, got in after him, and raced toward Roosevelt Hospital.

“Can we go home now?” I asked Jacob, wincing as a fresh stab of pain slammed through my skull.

“We have to get you to a hospital to be checked out,” Jacob replied.

“You’ve been pistol-whipped, miss,” one of the EMTs told me. “That’s no joke. You don’t want to take chances with a blow to the head.”

So I was placed on a gurney and loaded into the second ambulance. Jacob climbed up, took a seat on the bench beside me, and held my hand.

I don’t love clichés, but there are times when the only way to say something is the way it’s been said hundreds of times before.

“You saved my life, Jacob,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

There were tears in Jacob’s eyes. “Just doing my job,” he replied.

“Your job? You’re supposed to be our babysitter, but you keep risking your life for us. It’s insane. Uncle Peter can’t be paying you enough.”

He smiled, then bent over and kissed my forehead.

“Who said I’m being paid?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Close your eyes, will you? Focus on your breathing. Try to calm yourself.”

Believe it or not, I did as I was told. I chilled for the next two minutes, but my eyes snapped open as I was being jostled, unloaded, and then rolled through the ambulance bay and into the emergency room.

Jacob kept his hand on the rail of my gurney as he gave the nurse my information. I was rolled into a curtained stall, where another nurse undressed me and helped me into a paper robe.

I flashed on Fern Haven, of course. How could I not? Here I was, in a small enclosure, all white, with overhead lights and a narrow bed. I yelled for Jacob, and he parted the curtain.

“I’m here. I’m right here.”

A young Dr. Magnifico asked me questions, and I
admitted I had suffered double vision for a minute. I confessed to brief paralysis. I said my head still hurt. The doctor put his moving finger in front of my face and asked me to follow it with my eyes. I tried to do it.

“Let’s not take any chances,” he said.

Panic flared as I was strapped onto another gurney and wheeled down a corridor, then lifted onto a slab at the mouth of a high-tech machine. I was given a dye injection, and then a nurse came toward me with headphones. I jerked away as if she was holding a flamethrower. Or a snake.

“You need to wear these so we can talk to you, Tandy, during the CT scan.”

“No! I don’t want this!” I shouted, my head pounding. “I won’t do it!”