4 The Killing Bee (6 page)

In the office, Meckel tells Sylvia to shut up and get the hell out if she can't control herself. He's not listening to her anymore, her kid is screwed up and that's that. Sylvia can't take it. She snaps. Grabs the nearest weapon, not wanting to kill him necessarily, jus
t hurt him like he hurt her. . .

Were there any flaws in this scenario? I gazed thoughtfully at the darkened school
—

And suddenly
a light came on inside Sam Meckel's office.

It was so small and dim and stayed on so briefly that at first I thought I'd just imagined it. But then it came on again.

It was a flashlight.

Who was snooping around with a flashlight in Sam Meckel's office in the dead of night?

I moved closer to the office window, hoping it was too dark outside for the mysterious intruder to spot me. But before I could see who was in there, an unseen hand pulled down the Venetian blinds. Now I couldn't look in anymore.

Should I just stay put and wait for the intruder to come back outside?

But what if he or she slipped out the back door and I never even found out who it was? I'd feel like a flaming idiot. Chief Walsh would never believe I'd seen what I'd seen.

Should I call the cops right now? But where was the nearest pay phone? Probably Washington Street. How long would it take me to run over there?

Seven or eight minutes, probably. Too long.

I made up my mind. I ran swiftly across the
schoolhouse lawn. I almost tripped on a thick branch that must have just fallen from the big oak tree that shaded the front of the school. On an impulse I reached down and found the branch in the darkness. Then I snapped it in two with my feet, so I had a manageable weapon about as long as a baseball bat.

Then I hurried toward the front door again, taking my AAA card out of
my wallet as I went. From experience I'd learned that certain AAA cards—the flexible ones—do a better job of opening locked doors than your average credit card.

It
’s funny, I'll bet I get more emotional satisfaction from my successful burglaries than I get from my hit movie or any of the stage plays I've written. In my most primal reptilian soul, being a macho-type lawbreaker is a lot more fulfilling than being a sensitive
artiste
.

I looked around for security alarms and motion sensors, but didn't see any; Saratoga's not as security conscious as larger cities. I put my hand on the door handle and was about to work my AAA razzle
-dazzle, but then stopped quickly. It looked like I wouldn't get a chance to showcase my amazing lock-picking skills tonight. Somebody had already unlocked the door.

How rude of them.

I opened it and walked in, then closed it gently behind me. Not a sound. No scurrying mice, no electronic hums. It was pitch-black. The Exit sign at the far end of the hall shed no light way over here.

Holding the branch in my left hand, I put out my right hand and felt my way along the wall. After a few steps, the wall turned into a window. This, I knew, was the window to
the front office, Ms. Helquist’s domain.

The window gave way to empty space. I'd come to
the intersection of two hallways. I turned the corner, reached out, and felt the window again. Still the front office. But then the window ended and my hand felt another wall. I kept going, slinking as softly as I could in my Nikes. At last the wall gave way to a door.

Mr. Meckel's door.

It was shut. And the intruder was inside.

Doing what
—looking for something?

Maybe something that would im
plicate him or her in the murder... if the cops ever got hold of it?

Suddenly it struck me: that couldn't be Laura in there, she was in jail. Despite my fear, I was thrilled. This could mean Laura didn't kill Meckel after all.

I put my ear up to the door crack. Stone-cold silence. Damn, had the intruder heard me? Was he or she inside there lying in wait? I doubted it; I'd been awfully quiet. Probably the intruder was moving around in there, and I just couldn't hear any noise through the solid wooden door.

I stood there, mustering up my courage to burst inside. Then I decided I'd be better off staying where I was, and ambushing the intruder when he or she came out. That felt safer than barging in. So I held my branch high and waited.

And waited some more.

Seconds passed. Minutes. Actually I don't know how much time passed, but it was excruciating. My inner eye summoned up an extremely disturbing movie scene:

INT. DEAD MAN'S OFFICE - NIGHT

Intruder tiptoes to window. He or she did hear footsteps in the hall. Even as Jacob Burns, the world's most absurd P.I., stands out there waiting, the intruder is carefully, noiselessly lifting the Vene
tian blinds and the window… then jumping out through the opening, falling onto the soft ground outside, and running off down High Rock Avenue, leaving nary a trace behind.

And Jacob Burns would waste his one and only chance to find out who killed Sam Meckel.

I strained my ears. To no avail.

This was insane. My reptilian brain began to rebel. What was I so damn
scared of? First of all, the intruder was probably a woman, not some big bruiser of a guy. I was betting that the intruder was the same woman Barry had heard screaming in Meckel's office. Second, there was no way she had a gun. Or at least that’s what I told myself. The murder had been a freak accident, I thought, a sudden momentary emotional spasm, not some kind of well-planned contract hit by a well-armed gunman.

I should quit acting like a mouse. Sam Spade would never stand out here in
the hallway scratching his armpits while the killer eased out of a window barely ten feet away and headed home for a cup of hot cocoa.

So I took a deep breath. I stealthily slid my hand down the door until I found the handle. My body tensed, I bent my knees
—

And threw the door open, brandishing my branch. "Freeze!" I shouted immediately, without
even thinking. I guess I wanted to sound like a cop. I wonder, did I really think yelling "Freeze!" was going to stop a murderer?

But there was nobody there. Or nobody I could see. The flashlight was off. Was the intruder gone? Had my nightmare scenario come true? I stepped around the door
—

Suddenly I became conscious of movement to my left. Branch held high, I whirled quickly.

But not quickly enough. A hard object—the flashlight?—smashed into the back of my head. Then another hard object—the floor—smashed into the front of my head.

And then my brain gave an angry squawk and went on hiatus.

6

Why was I lying on my stomach on a cold hard floor?

Had I passed out in a bathroom or something? Was I back in college suffering the aftereffects of a Wild Turkey overdose? Did that explain why some evil imp was hammering at my skull?

Suddenly, in between the pounding, it all came back to me. The realization of what had just happened hurt even worse than the physical pain. Damn, had the bad guy—or bad girl—escaped for good? Leaning on Meckel's desk for support, I struggled to my feet. Then I wobbled to the school's front door. I opened the door and looked out.

Nothing.

So I wobbled to the back door and looked out that way.

Still nothing.

I teetered back down the dark corridor to the boys' bathroom. I went inside and turned on the light. It seared my eyes. My brain was on fire. I turned on the cold water and dunked my head in the sink.

My body shivered, but meanwhile my brain began to cool off. I turned my head sideways and let some of the water flow down into my mouth. I gave my head another turn with the increasingly frigid water, then took another drink, and in a couple of minutes
I felt more or less fit enough to stumble back to Meckel's office.

I had a job to do. I was going to redeem myself.

First I went over to Meckel's window and felt the blinds to make sure they were still down. They were. Thus reassured, I turned on the overhead light.

The office looked neat and untouched, aside from the branch lying on the floor. If the intruder had indeed been searchin
g the place, it was done so circumspectly nobody would ever know. The only thing that seemed a little off was that the middle right drawer of Meckel's desk had been left partially open. The intruder must have been in the process of going through it when he or she heard me.

Now I was hoping it turned out to be a
he
. Okay, call me sexist, but I'd feel better about getting knocked cold if a guy did it.

Since the middl
e right drawer was where my predecessor had left off, that's where I started. I found cafeteria menus, classroom schedules, and an open bag of pretzel sticks.

Now there was
a new theory of the crime: somebody was ripping off Meckel's pretzel sticks, and when Meckel caught him in the act, the thief whacked him.

I took a guess that the intruder had started with the top drawer and was working his way down. So I decided to work down, too. In the bottom drawer I found more pretzel sticks, lying on top of about a million folders containing about a gezillion memos. They came from s
chool board members, superintendents, assistant superintendents, and others of their misbegotten ilk. Sifting through these memos, which covered every minute aspect of school life from insurance to radon testing to the price of light bulbs, gave me a touch of sympathy with Meckel's stubborn resistance to tackling any new projects. The man had his hands full just answering memos.

But none of these memos, however aggravating
, seemed worth killing over.

I opened the drawers on the other side of the desk and rifled through them. Nothing jumped out at me. Then I went over to the bookshelf, where a bunch of manila folders lay flat. I didn't want to press my luck and spend any more time in Meckel's office than I had to, so I searched especially for files with labels that might relate to Sylvia and Lou, like "ADHD" or "Psychological Reports" or, simply, "Robinson."

I drew a blank. But underneath a three-inch-thick pile of memos about officially sanctioned procedures for hiring janitorial assistants, I did find a folder marked "Terra Nova." Out of curiosity, I opened it.

The folder contained the Terra Nova test results for every child in High Rock Elementary School. I was surprised Meckel had gotten the results back from the test scoring service already. The students had taken the Terra Novas only two weeks ago.

Then I read the cover page at the top of the folder and realized these were just preliminary Terra Nova results, put together and presumably scored by Meckel himself. The cover page explained that he was using these unofficial results for administrative purposes, including giving him a head start with placing kids in the gifted program. Also he was using the scores to help him evaluate teachers.

As I flipped through the folder, I noted that in general the High Rock kids did quite well. Most had scored above the seventieth percentile for the state. Saratoga Springs schools usually scored pretty high in the statewide standardized tests; but High Rock was the poorest elementary school in town,
socioeconomically speaking, and tended not to do as well as the other local schools. These scores would give High Rock parents something to crow about this year.

I turned to the page with the second-graders' scores. Since it was alphabetical, Adam Braithwaite was near the top. In English, he had scored a 98. In math, though, he only got an 89.

It was just as Laura had predicted. Her son hadn't scored high enough, according to Meckel's rigid criteria, to make it into the gifted and talented program.

No doubt Chief Walsh would view this as further evidence that Laura killed Meckel in her outrage over her son's academic placement. And I suppose I couldn't argue with that line of thinking. A few years back, a mother in Texas tried to kill somebody in order to get her daughter onto the high school cheerleading squad. So why shouldn't Laura Braithwaite kill somebody to get her child a good education?

There were plenty of worse motives for murder. In fact, if our public schools get much worse, maybe "disgruntled parents" will replace "disgruntled former employees" as the most common crazed killers. Instead of "going postal," people will "go parental."

I found Latree's test numbers right below Adam's. His name was circled. He had scored 100 in English and 96 in math, which meant he made the cut. Of course, with Meckel dead, these criteria might no longer be in effect.

Barry's kid Justin made the cut too. He had scores of 97 and 96. I noticed Justin's name was also circled—evidently Meckel had circled the names of the kids he was planning to include in the gifted program.

As I searched further in the folder, I noted that Susie and Elena's third-grade daughters, Christine and Luce, did not have their names circled. Both of
them fell just shy of the magic 95—they got scores in the low 90s.

I shook my head, giving my concussion a little added thrill. This whole Terra Nova business was nuts. I'd spent time with both Christine and Luce, and there was no question they belonged in a more challenging program. Why is this whole country so hopped up on standardized multiple-choice tests? All they do is teach children to give quick answers to superficial questions.

And as for placing kids in gifted programs . . . instead of using these lame tests as the ultimate criteria, why not use grades and teacher recommendations? And what about kids who are super-gifted in one area, like English, math, art, or music, but not others? Children aren't computer statistics, and their educational program should reflect that—

Suddenly my musings were cut off by a soft noise. A small
bink
. I stood still. Where did that
bink
come from, the hallway? Was it just a random night noise—or was it, as I feared, the front door closing?

Then I heard
a new sound. This one was unmistakable.
Clomp clomp clomp
—footsteps. Coming closer.

Was the killer returning? With a gun?

I had left Meckel's door open. I sprang up and shut and locked it, all in one motion.

Just in time, too. Because as soon as I turned the lock, somebody rattled the doorknob. Then pounded on the door.

"Police. Open up—now!" shouted an angry voice, which I instantly recognized as Lieutenant Foxwell's.

Well, at least it wasn't the murderer. But the cops weren't all that m
uch better, as far as I was concerned. Chief Walsh and his minions would sneer at my explanation of how I ended up in Meckel's office, and would take great joy in nailing my derriere to the wall. I better make tracks, fast. I dashed to the window, pushed the shade out of my way, and tried to shove the window upward—

But there was nothing to grab onto, for me to shove. Then I realized it was one of those windows with handles. You're supposed to turn them round and round and gradually the window opens. So I tried to turn the handle
—but it was stuck. I turned harder . . . and it came off in my hands.

And meanwhile Foxwell kept pounding on the door. "Open up or we break it down," another voice yelled
—Sergeant Balducci.

Should I call out and explain there was no need to break the door down, they could simply use their AAA cards? No, maybe that wouldn't be wise. I looked down at the handle in my hands, then up at the window. Suddenly
I realized I'd forgotten to unlock the window. That's why the handle didn't work. I quickly unlocked it, then started to stick the handle back on its appropriate screw.

But I couldn't get the handle back in place. My panicked hands were too fumbly.

Behind me, either Foxwell or Balducci was throwing his shoulder at the door. The wood began cracking and splintering. If I didn't jump out that window pronto, it would be too late.

Finally the handle went onto the screw. I turned it, an
d the window began opening… but slowly. Then it got stuck. The handle was still screwed up somehow. I pushed the window hard, but that didn't help. The window wasn't open enough for me to jump through—

Crash!
The dynamic duo charged the door again, and the wood split even worse. A long vertical crack ran from the top of the door down to the doorknob. One more assault and that door was history.

I jumped onto the radiator by the window. Then I squeezed my body through the narrow opening and dove down onto the ground outside. Luckily my hands hit the ground first, not my head.

Behind me there was a huge violent crash as the door burst open, then more crashes as it fell down and smacked into the desk and floor.

I did a quick roll, leapt to my feet, and ran off through the bushes to my left. My adrenaline must have been pumping big time, because I no longer felt the pain in my skull. I did feel a stabbing pain in my left shoulder, though, when I tripped on a tree root and landed hard on the shoulder as I went down.

I scrambled back up and looked behind me. Foxwell had figured out some way to get the window wide open, and now he was tumbling outside. Meanwhile Balducci was running out the front door of the school. They must have decided to split up.

I took off again. I tried to run quietly, but I snapped some twigs. Balducci shouted, "He's over there!"

I turned the corner and tore down Walworth Street, with maybe a fifteen-yard head start. Foxwell shouted, "Stop! Or we'll shoot!"

How
clichéd. I kept on running. Of course they wouldn't shoot—

BANG!

Damn. I zigzagged left into Marvin Alley. There was a van right near the corner, and I hit the ground and rolled under it. My shoulder was killing me. Seconds later the cops raced up to the corner too. Then they halted. They breathed heavily as they looked around. I tried to silence my own breathing. From underneath the car, I could see the dark outlines of their legs. They were so close, if I were a gorilla I could have reached my arm out and touched them.

"You see him?" Foxwell said.

"No," said Balducci. "Could be in one of these backyards."

"You get a good look at him?"

"Not good enough."

My heart leapt. So they didn't know it was me! I had a fighting chance to make it out of this mess.

"Go back to the car, radio for backup," Foxwell said. "I'll try down the alley."

I watched Balducci's feet run off in one direction and Foxwell's feet run off in another. That backyard idea didn't sound half bad. I waited about twenty seconds, then crawled out from under the van and scuttled behind a hedge. From there I crab-walked through backyards and side streets, managing to wake up about five sleeping dogs before I made it even halfway home.

More frightening than the barking dogs were the police cars that began streaming into the West Side. There must have been ten of them. They kept their sirens off, but I could hear their tires squealing and see their headlights flashing as they rushed to the scene.

On Ash Street, I
came out from behind some juniper bushes and started across the street. But then two cops on foot rounded the corner and headed up the sidewalk. They must have heard me, because they shone their flashlights in my direction. I dove back into the junipers.

"Who's that?" one of the cops called out.

I crawled around to the other side of the bushes, silently cursing every dried leaf that crackled under my knees.

"You hear someone?" the cop asked his partner.

"Yeah. I think he's behind those bushes."

I couldn't see the
cops. But I could feel them approaching, and I could see the lights from their flashlights sweeping through the bushes in front of me.

I thought about running. But the cops were too close, and except for the junipers, the yard I was hiding in was way too open to give me good cover. Maybe the other cops had been shooting in the air, but maybe not, and I was in no mood to get shot at again.