You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (4 page)

The group at the elite table hooted and howled at the mention of these names. Smirking, Reed bumped fists with one of his buddies.

“It's not funny!” Tanya screamed at them. “What in God's name is wrong with you people?”

“Cow!” shot back KC Cunningham from the cool table.

Blond, sexy, and impish, KC reminded Spencer of Miley Cyrus. KC seemed unfazed when Damon named her among his tormenters.

Then he mentioned Bonnie Middleton. Everyone at the table laughed and teased her. With a hand on her forehead, Ron's girlfriend turned away from the others and ran out of the cafeteria.

“There are others, but those four are the worst offenders,” Damon continued. “You made my life utterly miserable. And why? Because I have OCD? It's an
affliction
. And who are you anyway? Small, cruel, petty, insecure creeps! You're pathetic. And you'll be sorry. You'll miss me when I'm gone.”

“Shut up and kill yourself already!” Ron retorted. His friends laughed.

They were the only ones being rowdy. Silverware had stopped clanking, and a hush had fallen over the big room.

Spencer gazed at the phone. Damon went out of focus for a moment as he moved closer to the camera. “I want you to understand the full impact of what's about to happen here,” he announced. He picked up his camera or phone, and everything turned blurry for a few seconds. Finally, the black BMW came into focus. But the image was shaky in Damon's unsteady hand. He opened the driver's door to show five sticks of dynamite, rubber-banded together, resting on the front passenger seat.

“It's fake!” yelled some guy in the cafeteria. “I'll bet it's fake!”

Someone else shushed him.

“Oh, God, no,” Tanya whimpered, squeezing Spencer's arm. “He's serious about this. He's really going to do it. Can you tell where he is?”

Spencer shook his head. Queen Anne and nearby Ballard both had a lot of woodsy cul-de-sacs. But most of those were residential streets. Damon couldn't have pulled off this webcast anywhere residential—not without drawing someone's attention and having them call the cops. He was just too loud in his denouncements. He seemed confident nobody was around to hear him. Not once had he even looked over his shoulder.

If anyone watching the webcast had called the police, it wasn't like they knew where to send them. Damon could be anywhere.

“I'm not alone here, you know,” he said, a tiny smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “No one cares about suicides anymore unless the person killing himself takes at least one other person down with them . . .”

The camera panned from the front interior of the car to the back, where a thin, forty-something blonde was sprawled across the seat. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth. Squirming, she rolled over on her side. The camera zoomed in on her hands, tied in back of her. Then the unsteady camera panned up and moved in close to her face—until Spencer could see the terror in her eyes.

“I think some of you already know my mother,” Damon said.

CHAPTER THREE

 

“I
t looks like someone's trying to get in touch with you,
Mom
,” Damon said over Evelyn's “Ode to Joy” ringtone. The ringing came out slightly muffled on the webcast. But Damon's voice was loud and clear—and dripping with irony. He turned away from the camera to glance at his mother, bound and gagged in the backseat of the BMW. She was a bit out of focus on the webcast.

Damon reached into his back pocket and pulled out the ringing phone. He still had the scowl on his face as he turned toward the camera again. “Too bad you can't talk right now,” he continued. “In fact, you've already uttered your last words ever. You're going to die with that tape over your mouth, Mother. But not to worry, you won't be alone. I'm going with you.”

“C'mon, Damon, look at the caller ID,” Luke whispered into his phone. “Please, pick up, c'mon.”

Luke and Andrea were alone in the gloomy theater. The director and leading actress had wandered off a couple of minutes ago, dimming the stage lights before they left. Luke stood at the back, near the lobby doors. Andrea hovered beside him, holding up her smart phone so that he could see the webcast. But the screen was so tiny he couldn't make out any details in the background that might give away the webcast's locale. He had no idea where his son and wife were. They didn't seem to be anywhere near the house on Garfield Street in Queen Anne, where Damon and Evelyn still lived.

Luke had tried twice—unsuccessfully—to get ahold of Damon before realizing the camera on his son's cell must have been recording this webcast. So he'd tried Evelyn's number, figuring Damon would have confiscated his mother's phone before tying her up.

The phone was in Damon's hand, still chiming “Ode to Joy.”

Tears in his eyes, Luke listened to the ringtones on his end.

Damon seemed determined to go through with this murder-suicide. And the poor kid was right to point the finger of blame at him. He was
culpable
. He should have guessed that allowing Evelyn custody would lead to something like this. But Damon had insisted on staying with her.

Luke had known for years that his son was troubled. Yet at times, he could be a very lovable kid. He still had a chance at a good life. Damon needed to know that. Whatever awful thing had led him to want to kill himself and his mother, it was reparable. This grand exit—this horrible, broadcasted murder-suicide—was no solution.

Luke couldn't let it happen.

With the phone to his ear, he counted a fifth ringtone on Evelyn's line. All the while, he anxiously watched Damon on the tiny screen of Andrea's phone.

His son still hadn't looked at the caller ID. He didn't know his father was trying to get ahold of him. “C'mon, Damon, pick up,” Luke said under his breath.

On the webcast, “Ode to Joy” stopped playing.

At the same time, over the phone line, Evelyn's voice mail recording came on:
“Hi! Sorry I missed you. But if you leave a message after the beep . . .”

It was strange to hear her, so perky and confident—and then see her in the backseat of that BMW, trembling, terrified and utterly doomed.

The beep sounded on the other end of the line.

“Damon, it's me,” Luke said into the phone. “I—I'm looking at you right now. Please, son, we can fix this. We can make it okay. C'mon, you—you don't have to do this. Please, call me. I love you . . .”

But Luke wasn't even sure if Damon knew how to retrieve messages on his mother's phone. He clicked off the line and then speed-dialed Evelyn's number again.

He squinted at his son on the tiny screen of Andrea's phone. “Damn it, I still can't make out anything familiar in the background . . .”

Andrea glanced at something on the stage. Then she set her phone on the ledge of a half wall behind the last row of seats. She left the screen side up so that Luke could still see the webcast. Before he could ask what she was doing, she raced down the aisle to the stage. One of the folding chairs made a loud ding as she accidentally bumped it. The sound echoed through the deserted theater. She made her way to the chair where Luke had been sitting, where he'd left his laptop. It was still open. He'd been taking notes on the rehearsal before she'd interrupted them.

Dropping to her knees, Andrea furiously worked her fingers over the computer's keyboard.

Luke still couldn't figure out what she was doing. He looked back at the webcast.

Damon seemed annoyed to hear “Ode to Joy” chiming from Evelyn's cell once more. This time, he glanced at the caller ID.

Luke's heart leapt. At last, his son would see that he was calling him.

“Well, well, well, it's the Seattle Police,” Damon muttered. “So somebody decided to call them.”

Luke was crushed when he heard the busy signal. He wondered if the police had any notion where Damon was. Or were they as frustrated and clueless as he was right now?

On the webcast, Damon stared at the phone in his hand. “All I can say is that I'm very touched someone cared enough to contact the local authorities on my behalf. Where the hell were they when I really needed some help—when I was everyone's punching bag at that fucking school? How many of you stood by and watched me get shit on, huh? How many of you did nothing?”

Andrea raced up the aisle, carefully holding his laptop in front of her. The illuminated screen glowed in the darkened theater. Luke heard Damon's voice echoing—almost overlapping—as it came from two different sources. “Well, the police can leave a message,” his son announced. “They're too late anyway . . .”

“You can see better on this,” Andrea said, out of breath. She tilted the laptop screen toward him. Her hands were shaking.

She had pulled up the webcast on his computer. Luke desperately searched the road and the trees in the background for a clue—any clue that might reveal where his son was.

Evelyn's phone stopped ringing. Damon paid no attention to it. Instead, he scowled at his webcast audience. “I blame some of you teachers, too,” he said. “All of you at one time or another allowed them to call me
freak
in front of the rest of the class. Did you think it was funny? Did you for one minute consider my feelings?”

Andrea nodded at the laptop screen. “It isn't raining,” she said.

“What?”

“Wherever Damon is, it's not raining there. You've been in the theater all morning. It was pouring on my way here ten minutes ago.” She pointed to the BMW behind Damon—without a single raindrop on it. The windows reflected the sun's glare. “He's not in town, Luke. He isn't in Seattle . . .”

Luke kept examining the scenery behind Damon. He spotted three dilapidated, rural-style mailboxes at the edge of the screen—behind the car. He'd always wondered about those mailboxes.

There was a dead end a couple of blocks from their summer home on Lopez Island. When he was just a kid, Damon had been fascinated with one of the three houses on that dead-end road. Whenever they'd gone to the island, the first thing Damon would want to do was “see the big dog.” So Luke would take little Damon by the hand and walk him to the road so he could look at the huge statue in the side yard of someone's house. It was a twelve-foot-tall replica of the RCA Victor dog, sitting in front of a Victrola gramophone. Luke had no idea why it was there, but the kitschy monument fascinated young Damon. That was the last house on the block, but the road curved around for another two hundred yards to a dead end surrounded by a wooded lot. A short path through the trees led to the edge of a cliff—and a spectacular view of the water and the other San Juan Islands.

But at the end of the turnaround—at the beginning of that path—Luke remembered the three slightly battered mailboxes. He never knew why they were there—maybe for an old triplex that had been torn down or a trio of cabins lost in a landslide. Whatever, those three mailboxes were all that remained of what had once been there.

And he saw them now—in the background, at the edge of the laptop screen. Damon had taken his mother to the family's island getaway.

“They're on Lopez,” he said. “Oh, God, Andrea, call the Lopez Island Police, and tell them. He's on—on Timber Trail Place or Timber Trail Court or something like that. It's a dead end. They should know where it is . . .”

Andrea snatched her phone off the ledge behind the last row of seats, and then she set the open laptop in its place. She started working her thumbs over the phone's keypad.

On screen, Damon was still accusing his teachers of negligence: “Did you think
freak
was a—a term of endearment? What's your excuse? Mr. McAfee, you were the worst. I think you actually encouraged guys like Jarvis and Logan. You want to know something, McAfee? In addition to being a bad human being, you're a bad teacher. You didn't come back to high school to educate anybody. You came back for another shot at being popular, and if that meant letting the cool crowd get away with murder, then it was fine by you, wasn't it?”

Luke was about to speed-dial Evelyn's number again when the phone rang in his hand. He checked the caller ID: SEATTLE POLICE DEPT.

“Who is it?” Andrea asked, stopping to stare at him.

“The police,” he said. Luke hesitated for a moment, and then clicked on the line.

“Is this Luke Shuler?” the caller asked—before Luke even said anything.

“Yes. Is this about my son?”

“This is Detective John Reich with the Seattle Police—”

“I don't think my son's in Seattle,” Luke interrupted. “I'm almost positive he's on a dead-end road called Timber Trail Place or Timber Trail Court. It's on Lopez. You need to get ahold of the Lopez Island Police. Do you understand?”

He noticed Andrea putting her phone down.

There was a silence on the other end of Luke's line. “Hello?” he asked anxiously.

“Timber Trail—on Lopez,” the cop said finally. “We'll let the Lopez Police know. Mr. Shuler, do you have any idea where your son could have gotten his hands on that dynamite?”

“No, none,” he replied.

“Was your son in Tacoma this past Monday night?”

“I—I have no idea,” Luke said, baffled at the question.

“Seven sticks of dynamite were reported stolen from the Bourm Construction Company storage facility in Tacoma on Monday evening. Security cameras didn't get a good shot of the culprit, but one picked up a car parked near the site for an hour. It appeared to be a black BMW . . .”

“I'm sorry, I can't—I can't account for my son's whereabouts on Monday night,” Luke said, flustered. “He lives with his mother. Listen, you need to contact the Lopez Island Police, and tell them where my son is—”

“It's being taken care of right now, Mr. Shuler,” the cop said, cutting him off. “We appreciate your help. Can you tell us where you are?”

“I'm in the Seattle Group Theater building on Mercer—in the Center. Listen, please, I'm trying to get ahold of my son. I think maybe I can talk Damon out of this, but I can't get through to him, because you guys are on the line. If you could only—”

“Mr. Shuler,” the detective talked over him. “Mr. Shuler, we've been monitoring this broadcast since a student at Queen Anne High sent us the link several minutes ago. We don't have much time. We counted five sticks of dynamite in the front seat of that car. If your son stole the dynamite from Bourm Construction, that still leaves two sticks of dynamite unaccounted for. He obviously has a grudge against a lot of people at the school. Do you know if he was there earlier today—or perhaps late last night?”

“No, like I said, he's living with his mother. You—you might try his best friend at school. Her name is—Tanya, Tanya—um,
Tanya McCallum
. She might know something.”

“Do you have a phone number for her?” the detective asked.

Luke sighed. “No, I don't, I'm sorry . . .”

All the while, Luke was watching Damon on the laptop. His son had gotten quieter. He didn't seem as annoyed by the “Ode to Joy” ringtone chiming over his mother's phone once again. He just seemed sadly resigned to it. “It's the police again,” he murmured, checking Evelyn's caller ID. “Too little, too late . . .”

Damon looked directly into the camera. “They can't save me,” he said with a tiny smile. “Remember what I said earlier? No one cares about suicides unless the person killing himself takes at least one other person down with them. My mother's not the only one going with me.”

He glanced back at Evelyn, helplessly struggling in the backseat of the car.

Then he turned to his webcast audience again. “I mean, c'mon,” he said. “Did you really think I'd leave this world without getting back at some of you?”

* * *

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” yelled Reed Logan at the cool table. His voice rose above the murmuring and the occasional clang of flatware in the school cafeteria.

Hunched over his phone, Spencer watched Damon's tirade. All the while, Tanya sort of pressed herself against him. He was barely aware of it. He was too focused on Damon's thinly veiled threat against his classmates—and the school. Unlike Reed Logan, he had a pretty good idea what Damon meant when he'd said,
Did you really think I'd leave this world without getting back at some of you?

If Damon had gotten his hands on a few sticks of dynamite, he could have procured several more sticks—enough to take out a substantial number of people in the high school. And what part of the school was most crowded at this time of day? A bomb set to detonate in the cafeteria right now would kill or maim dozens of students.