Under Cover (16 page)

On Monday, we both took the afternoon off.
Maddie had qualms about that, she’s so law-abiding. I told her that
was the only way to do it and it was for a good cause.

“It’s for justice,” I said. “We don’t want
the wrong guy punished. Even if he is my brother.”

I felt weird, talking about a brother. I
still wasn’t used to it. Almost seventeen years old and this was
the first time I ever had a brother. Maddie had grown up with one.
For her it wasn’t so strange.

She did some primping before we set out. I
reminded her once again, these guys were killers.

“All the better,” she said. “How can we pull
this off if we don’t get them interested?”

She had a point there. I hoped she expected
to keep our own interest where it should be.

We didn’t try to get into the school. We
pretended we were sightseeing and walked over to look at the
river.

“Magnifique!” Maddie exclaimed. “That’s the
same view you can see from your house. You don’t have to come all
the way here.”

“It’s not why I came here,” I reminded her in
a whisper, even though nobody was nearby.

It seemed like forever that we stayed there
looking at the river. We wanted to be where we could spring into
action as soon as the bell rang.

I pointed out River Edge Park. “We can go
there later,” I said, and then remembered it was her car. “If you
want to.”

“Oh, I do.” She looked back at the school
entrance, from which the student body would soon be pouring out and
down the steps. “It’s too bad you don’t have some pictures of those
guys.”

“Well, I don’t. They wouldn’t let me. I think
that in itself is suspicious. Don’t worry, I’ll recognize
them.”

The bell rang. We started walking toward the
steps, with me scanning each face that came through the door. It
wasn’t easy because there were torrents of faces. I wished I had
told them when I was coming, but I hadn’t been sure.

“There!” I said, as Austen appeared.

I didn’t want to holler and wave. Instead I
unclipped the barrette from my ponytail and readjusted it, shaking
my head as I did so. Stacie used to do that before she cut her
hair.

Then I got embarrassed. It was such an
obvious gesture. Stacie didn’t mind being obvious, but I did.

Anyhow, it worked. Austen noticed. He was
starting down the steps, but jerked to a stop and stared at me.
With those glasses he might have been nearsighted. I had never
thought of that. I walked quickly into the torrent of kids,
stretching my neck as if looking for someone, but not him.

They scattered away from him as he came
striding toward me. I pretended to see him for the first time.
“Austen! Is that right? Austen?”

“And you’re—” He aimed a finger at me.

“Peggy Mellin,” I said before Maddie could
open her mouth. I was pretty sure I’d told her about the new me,
but I didn’t want to take chances.

“This,” I said, “is my friend Madelyn. She
wants to see the place, too.”

Maddie didn’t need an alias. She had nothing
to hide.

Austen eased us out of the crowd. “What are
you ladies doing here? Don’t you have school?”

Maddie said, “We got out early for good
behavior.”

Austen looked over his shoulder, maybe to see
what was so fascinating about Hudson Hills High School.

“It’s lucky you caught me,” he said. “I was
thinking of taking some time off, too.”

“What about exams and stuff?” Maddie
said.

“Hell with it.”

His attitude puzzled me. Unless he was so
brilliant he didn’t need to study. “Where are your buddies?” I
asked.

“They’ll be along.” He moved us still farther
away, across the lawn to where there were picnic tables. What a
school!

Maddie said, “This is nice. We don’t have
anything like this at Southbridge.”

Austen put his fingers to his mouth and
whistled. The two slaves came running. Fred seemed delighted to see
me. Sam was more the unemotional type. I introduced Maddie and
explained that she wanted to see their school. It seemed like an
awfully stupid reason. We should have done better. When you’re
snooping, your cover story has to make sense.

“We can’t stay long,” Maddie told them. And
then to me, “I should have brought a sandwich.”

Austen peeled some bills from a wad in his
pocket and gave them to Sam. “You guys go get a pizza. Large. What
do you want on it?” he asked Maddie and me.

“Uh—anything,” I said.

“Whatever anybody else wants.” Maddie came
close to batting her lashes. I noticed her eyes twitching. “And
could you get me a diet Pepsi? I’ll pay for it.” She already had
her wallet out. Austen made her put it away. He called on his cell
phone, ordering the pizza so they could start getting it ready.

“You were right, Cree,” Maddie said. “It’s a
wonderful school. Wonderful people.”

“Who?” said Austen, with a questioning look
at me.

I did a quick patch job. “She’s the only one
who calls me that. Because I’m part Cree Indian. But I
really
prefer
to be known as Peggy. Or Peg. Either one. I like Peggy
better. Peg makes me think of those peg board toys that babies play
with.”

Maddie spent a few seconds looking abashed at
her mistake, then rose to the occasion. “Not only babies. My father
has a peg board in the garage for hanging his tools. It’s a little
different from the baby kind.”

I cut my eyes in her direction.
Not too
much detail, please.

“You call Fred Gravitz, Freddie?” I asked
Austen. “So now we have a Freddie and a Maddie. That’s cute.”

“Adorable,” said Maddie.

Austen got up from the bench where he was
sitting and moved next to Maddie. “You live in Southbridge,
too?”

“Yes. Lake Road.”

“It’s near Fremont,” I said quickly, “where I
live. It goes off from it. But it’s easier for her than for me up
in those hills. She has a car.”

Austen looked pleased with that. And envious,
I supposed. He’d had his chance, with a car and a chauffeur in the
person of Liam, and he blew it. He should learn to treat the
servant class with more consideration.

The two guys came back, Fred carrying the pie
and Sam, a box with our drinks. They’d gotten two toppings, half
mushroom and half pepperoni. We had a feast, with Austen turning on
his charm for Maddie’s benefit, and Maddie gobbling it up. I had
noticed on my last visit that Aus actually did have charm when he
wanted to. He kept leaning in close to her and murmuring. He
laughed when she said clever things. How could he laugh when he was
responsible for taking someone’s life?

Because he was a psychopath. Other people’s
lives meant nothing to him. After all the trouble Maddie went
through with her ex, how could she want to get mixed up with
another such person?

Or was this all a big act on her part? If
that was true, then it was, as Grandma would say, a helluva good
one.

“Is your graduation the same day as ours?”
Maddie asked.

Austen said nothing. Freddie said, “I guess
so. End of the month, sometime.”

“All of you are graduating?” She looked
around at the three guys. Freddie shook his head. “Me and Sam have
another year.”

Austen only shrugged. Freddie gave him a
strange look.

Maddie kept up her questions. She must have
read in some article that guys like to talk about themselves. “What
are you aiming for?” she asked.

“Aiming for?” Freddie said.

“In the long run. Like I think I might go
into law, like my dad. But not real estate law. That’s his field.
I’d want something more interesting. And, uh—” She’d forgotten my
alias and almost said Cree. “—wants to be a ballerina.”

“Not anymore,” I corrected her. “I might try
child psychology.”

“Psychology!” Freddie looked as if it gave
him a bad taste. “What for?”

“It’s interesting,” I said. “People’s minds.
Are interesting.”

“Doesn’t sound interesting to me,” said
Austen.

“To each his own,” I replied. “What’s your
ambition?” If he had one.

He rocked back and looked up at the sky. “I’m
thinking maybe the priesthood.”

“Really?” I tried to catch Maddie’s eye, and
couldn’t. He might have been looking for absolution. I said,
“Well—okay.”

“It’s okay with you?” I couldn’t tell if that
was a challenge or he was kidding.

“Whatever makes you happy,” I mumbled.

“Very happy.”

Could Liam possibly have lied to me?

The party lasted till almost five. Then we
really had to leave.

Maddie insisted on checking out River Edge
Park, so I showed her the way. Just as we were on the overpass, a
train went under it, rattling our bones. It blew its loud diesel
horn to announce it was coming into the station. I was used to
that, living not far from the railroad myself, but for Maddie it
was new. “Ouch!” She slapped one ear and then the other. “How can
you stand it?”

She forgot all about it once we were in the
park. “This is neat. I’m really liking Hudson Hills.”

“You want to move here with me?” I asked,
kidding, of course. “We could spend our last year of high school
here.”

“We could get an apartment together. Wouldn’t
that be a hoot?”

She must have been kidding. Who was going to
pay for us to get an apartment?

She drove along the macadam road until we
were right by the water. Then she got out of the car, stretched her
arms, and looked out over the Tappan Zee. “I don’t think I was ever
so close to it before. There’s always that railroad track in the
way. I don’t count being close to it on the train.”

“This is where it happened,” I said.

“It?”

“The murder. Right here.”

“That
murder?”

“What murder did you think? Poor Johnny
Kinsser. He was having fun with what he thought were his friends,
admiring the moon on the water, and then whammo. It must have hurt,
too.”

Maddie said nothing.

I said, “I don’t see how people can do things
like that. Austen had it all planned in cold blood. How could he?
You were right about psychopaths. They are weird people. And
horrible.”

Still nothing.

“Mads?”

She gave me a dazed look, as if she just woke
up.

“That was brave of you,” I said, “acting so
natural with him after all you went through with the other
psycho.”

“They’re not
crazy,
” she said. “Not
psychotic.”

“They seem crazy to me.”

“I know I like the term psychopath because it
sounds as if they are. Psycho, I mean. But officially they’re not
insane. They’re just—sort of—twisted.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is they’re not out of touch
with reality. It’s just—it’s hard to explain.”

“Well, Austen certainly is twisted if he
could do a thing like that.”

She stared out at the water and again said
nothing. I stared at the water, too, thinking of how it must have
been that night.

Then she said, “I’m seeing him again.”

“How can you?”

She lifted her chin in defiance. “I thought
that was the idea.”

Now I was getting confused. “It’s the way you
said it. As if you actually want to see him.”

“I do. I—feel something there.”

“Maddie!”

“I can’t help it. He’s not like Evan
Steffers, that psycho ex of mine. Evan struts. With Aus, I feel
some kind of pain underneath.”

“It’s not pain for Johnny Kinsser, that’s for
sure,” I said.

“I don’t know. It’s just there. A sort of
hurting.”

“Maddie, have you gone off your rocker? Not
only Johnny, but my brother. How would you like it if somebody did
that to Ben, what Austen did?”

When I talked about Ben that way, it
hurt.

“I think if we got to know Austen better . .
.” She started back toward her car, “we might begin to have some
answers.”

I hurried to follow her. “So you’re going to
tackle Austen?”

“Tackle him? What do you mean? You want me to
confront
him?” She turned on her engine and backed away from
the river.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “He mustn’t have
any idea what’s on our minds.”

“Then what are we doing it for?” She crept
along the overpass and up to Hudson Hills’s main drag.

“According to Liam,” I explained, or tried
to, “Austen didn’t like Johnny Kinsser hanging around. So he
decided to get him out of the picture permanently.”

“That’s a stupid reason.” Maddie clearly
thought Liam was rewriting the whole story.

“It makes sense to a psychopath,” I said.
“You don’t like the mosquito buzzing around, so you bop it.”

“Not just because it’s buzzing,” Maddie
pointed out. “You know it’s going to bite you.”

I remembered something else Liam said. Austen
claimed Johnny was a snitch.

What did he snitch about? Something Austen
did or was going to do? I wished I had gotten more information. I’d
been too busy ranting even to think of it at the time. Now I’d lost
my chance.

For several miles, Maddie drove in silence.
As we passed the green sign announcing Southbridge, she shook her
head. “I still can’t see him as a killer.”

I said, “You’d better believe it, lady.”

“How can I, without proof?”

I could, because—because—Liam was my
brother?

Because he was sincere. Somehow I just knew
that. But it was hardly proof, so I didn’t say it.

Chapter
Sixteen

Grandma was in the kitchen when I got home. I
braced myself and asked her if I could borrow Archie. Again.

She turned from the sink where she was
washing spinach. “What is it this time, kiddo?”

“Just a short trip into town.”

“This
is
town. What did you think it
was?”

“Um—I left something at school.”

Grandma knew all about lying and she could
see through me. “Think school’s still open?”