Blindfold (25 page)

She was right. She could tell by their faces that they hadn't heard that part. Good.

Warning Helen with her eyes to keep her mouth shut, Maggie opened her notebook to begin taking notes.

The boy received one week of detention for his foul mouth. He was angry, and stayed in his seat arguing with Ralph after the sentence had been announced.

Bored, all of the peer jury but Maggie went to get their backpacks.

But the boy was so angry, as he left, he gave the bench a hefty kick, spilling out notebooks and hairbrushes and pens and textbooks and paperback novels and schedules on Post-It notes and tissues and combs and even a clean pair of white socks. A handful of objects skidded across the hardwood floor to Maggie's feet.

She bent to pick them up.

A packet of tissue. A roll of breath mints. A small, silver key. And a bus ticket. Maggie had no idea whose backpack it had spilled out of, but assumed it was Scout's because he had gone to the bus station. The ticket was for his mother's trip to rehab. She glanced up to wave at him, but he wasn't looking in her direction. No one was. They were all crouched, their backs to her, scrambling to retrieve their belongings.

Maggie looked at the ticket again. There was something not quite right about it. Its destination wasn't California, where Scout said his mother was going. It was Phoenix, Arizona. So maybe it wasn't Scout's. Maggie pursed her lips. Which of her friends, the only people left in this room, was planning a bus trip to Phoenix, Arizona?

The school year had just begun. Traveling from Ohio to Arizona by bus took a while. You couldn't go there and return in just one weekend. Which one of her friends was planning to take time off from school to go to Arizona? And why would they?

Maggie looked at the ticket again. Something else was wrong with it. It was a one-way ticket. The person who had bought it wasn't planning to return any time soon.

She heard again the eerie, falsetto voice in the law library saying, tt l want this to end now, so I can split before it's too late!" Split. As in depart, exit, leave town.

Someone on the peer jury was planning to leave town. And they were not planning to come back.

Scout had gone to the bus station. And Scout had said he never knew Christy Miller, but his mother and the sheriff said he had. Scout didn't like cheats, and rumor had it that Christy had definitely cheated. How many times had Scout said, "Three is a crowd"? Three ... as in Scout, Christy, and Dante? Scout was possessive, even jealous.

And he had gone to the bus station.

He had been in the basement when the beam collapsed, and he had been at the bazaar where the stove blew up. And he knew how to handle a small power saw. Maggie knew that because he had worked on a construction crew headed by Lane's father the summer he turned sixteen.

Everyone was stooping, laughing, wailing over the mess.

She bent to pick up the small, silver key. She knew what it was immediately. The key to a locker at the bus station. She knew that's what it was because it had been lying right there with the ticket, and because if you were planning a really quick getaway, you would stash your packed stuff in a bus

station locker so that it would be right there, ready to go, when the right moment came.

Phoenix was a good-sized city. You could probably hide there fairly easily. And the climate was supposed to be nice. If you were planning to get away with murder and escape, you might as well choose someplace with a nice climate.

The bus ticket was in her hand. Without even thinking about it, she scooped up the key, too. Then without even grabbing her own backpack, only her shoulder bag, and without saying good-bye, she ran from the gym, expecting at any moment to hear Scout shout, "Hey, come back here with my bus ticket!"

But he didn't.

Maggie went straight to the bus station, on foot.

"How would I know who I sold it to?" the clerk, a middle-aged woman in a lime-green pantsuit, her hair long, gray, and straight, said irritably. "Coulda been anybody. I don't keep track."

And although Maggie pressed, the woman was adamant. She had, she said, better things to do with her time than memorize every single person who bought every single ticket.

Giving up on that, telling herself the sheriff might have better luck because he had a badge and a uniform, Maggie went to the pay telephone and called Scout's house. She could tell by his mother's voice when she answered that she had been asleep.

"Phoenix?" she repeated in answer to Maggie's question. "I'm not going to Phoenix. Why would I be going there? I'm not going anywhere. I loathe travel---

ing. Did Scout tell you I was going somewhere? Well, Fm not He lies, you know. He always has. He tells people things about me that aren't true."

"Did he know Christy Miller?" Maggie demanded.

"Of course he knew her. Scout knows everybody. And everybody loves him. He's just like his father," she added bitterly, and then she hung up.

Next, Maggie slid the small, silver key out of her skirt pocket, and went straight to the wall of metal lockers, murmuring, "Sixty-two, sixty-two, sixty-two ..."

The locker opened by the key contained only three things.

A gray tweed suitcase, bulging at the seams. An athletic jacket, Bransom's blue-and-white, neatly folded and perched on top of the suitcase. And on top of the jacket, a baseball cap. Cleveland Indians, just as Whit had said.

Maggie reached in and located the label on the inside back of the jacket.

Dante's name on the label, in black felt pen:

GUARDINO.

How foolish, how stupid, to keep the jacket of a person you'd murdered. And Helen thought Maggie was arrogant!

Other than Dante's name, she found no other identification in the locker. There were no name tags on the suitcase.

But Scout's mother wasn't planning a trip. She had said so. Not to California, and not to Phoenix. Scout was. Because he needed to leave town.

SOI

You just never really know people, do you, Maggie thought, an incredible sadness filling her. He'd been in love with Christy Miller at thirteen, the way Maggie had been with him? And Dante had got in the way?

Maggie glanced up just then, and drew in her breath sharply. Scout. Approaching at a rapid pace, his face dark with anger.

Of course. He knew she'd taken the ticket, and he was furious.

"Is there a back door?" she called to the clerk.

The clerk waved, and Maggie jumped up and ran to the left and out a side door just as Scout came in the front entrance.

She ran through the alleyways from Second Street to Fourth, avoiding the main streets where she would be an open target.

At the last minute, she veered into a drugstore, grabbed a quarter out of her shoulder bag, and called the sheriffs office. No way was she going anywhere near the old courthouse, not now, not ever.

"He's not here," the deputy told her. "He's over at the new courthouse. Third floor. They're bringing his desk in today. Can't call him there, though, phone's not in. Want me to try his pager?"

She wasn't afraid of the new courthouse. And it would be better to show him the ticket and the key in person. "No. I'll go on over there. Thanks."

Lady Justice was lying on her back on the unseeded lawn beside the new building. If she hadn't been blindfolded, she would have been staring up at the bright blue sky, or perhaps at the top of the

building, her next destination. The scale in her hands spilled over to one side, the scoops lying facing up, as if waiting for something to drop into them. Maggie couldn't imagine what it would take to get that gigantic thing all the way up to the top of a four-story building. But she couldn't worry about that.

Inside, the building was so different from the old courthouse. So fresh and bright inside, everything so clean and new. The black-and-white tile on the floors sparkled under the faint carpet of dust created by moving things in, sunshine streamed in through the wide windows, the walls had been newly painted white, and where there was paneling, it was rich, dark wood. The paint smell was still pretty pungent, but Maggie loved the newness of it all and puzzled again over her mother's attachment to things old and decaying.

The building seemed to be empty, which surprised her. Where was everyone? Shouldn't there be work crews in here?

Her footsteps echoed like gunshots as she hurried across the tile and up the stairs.

The sheriff wasn't on the third floor, although the huge, wooden desk was already in place in his new office.

Maggie glanced around the hallway fearfully. The sheriff was supposed to be here. She should have had him paged, if only to find out exactly where in the building he might be.

She hadn't seen him on the first or second floors while she was climbing the wide, curving stair-SOS

cases. In fact, she hadn't seen anyone. It wasn't lunchtime yet, not even close. Where was everyone?

Couldn't that ticket have fallen out of someone else's backpack, not Scout's?

But Scout had been to the bus station. And he had lied about knowing Christy.

Besides, she didn't want the killer to be any of her other friends, either.

If the sheriff wasn't on the first or second floor, and he wasn't here on the third, that only left the fourth floor. What would she do if he wasn't up there?

She was running up the last flight of stairs to the fourth floor when she first heard the foot steps. Coming up the stairs. CHekety-clack, clickety-clack.

Maggie stopped, held her breath. It could be anyone. A secretary, a member of the work crew, the sheriff...

The sheriffs footsteps wouldn't clickety-clack.

She leaned over the thick, wooden railing to look, but saw nothing. If it was someone who could help . . . she should call out, tell them to hurry, hurry up here and tell her how to find the sheriff without going near the old courthouse.

"Maggie? Are you up there?" Lane's voice. "Wait up! What are you doing in here?"

Maggie heaved a sigh of relief. "Up here! Fourth floor." Then, "Are you alone?"

"Yep. Wait for me. I know about Scout, Maggie. And it's worse than you think."

SOU

Worse? How could it be worse? Maggie leaned against the railing and waited for Lane.

Lane continued calling out to Maggie as she climbed the steep stairs from floor to floor. "I know you're upset, we all are. But at least the truth is out."

"How did you know?" Maggie called down over the railing.

"I've always suspected it was him." Clickety-clack on the stairs. "I knew how he felt about Christy. I never told you because he made me promise not to. But I knew."

Maggie stood very still at the railing, but her mind was racing. "Has Scout been arrested?" If he had, she'd be safe now. But she'd hurt inside, a lot.

"No. Not yet. But he will be as soon as the sheriff has that bus ticket and the locker key. You do still have them, don't you?"

"Yes. They're in my purse."

A laugh, the sound closer now. "Can you imagine someone picking Phoenix to run to? Yuk! So dry and dusty and hot! Why not New York City? Lots more fun."

"Phoenix?" Maggie's palms on the railing felt clammy, as if the wood were wet. But it wasn't. She heard birds cackling outside and remembered that the walls on this floor weren't finished. They were open to the outside, with only sheets of plastic as protection from the elements. "How did you know it was Phoenix?"

"What?"

Maggie took a step backward, letting go of the railing, the heel of her boot on the top step. "How

did you know Scout was planning to go to Phoenix?" Lane hadn't seen the ticket. She couldn't have. Her back had been turned when the ticket skidded across the hardwood floor and landed at Maggie's feet. And Lane had been searching frantically among the mess, as if she were missing something valuable. Something like ... a bus ticket? One-way? To Arizona?

Lane's clickety-clacking footsteps stopped on the stairs. "Oh. Well, I... I saw it. I saw it fall out of Scout's backpack."

Not a chance.

Maggie went up another step.

Lane, too, had been in that basement, been at the bazaar, could even have come back to the law library instead of coming to this building. Could have struck Alex on the head, sent that ladder flying, then shouted from the doorway as if she'd just arrived. Could have then quickly run across the room in the dark, slammed a door as if someone were leaving, and then flown back to the door to turn on the lights. Could have done all of that.

But... Lane was the one who had fallen into the well.

Maggie remembered then why Dante Guardino's picture in the paper had seemed so familiar. She had seen that face before, and she wasn't remembering it from years ago when he'd been on trial. She was remembering it from Lane's wallet. That was his picture in there. Lane hadn't actually shown her the picture. Maggie had happened to notice it when Lane was paying for something at the

mall. And then she had said it was a college boy she was dating, someone named Scoop.

But it wasn't. It was Dante Guardino.

How foolish, how arrogant, to carry around with you the picture of a boy you'd killed. Almost as foolish as keeping his jacket and baseball cap.

Lane's father drove a black truck. Much bigger and heavier than Chantilly's old blue sedan. It wouldn't have been much of a contest on a dirt road slick with recent rain.

Maggie fought her thoughts. Lane was her close friend. They'd had sleepovers, they'd talked about boys and hairstyles and clothes and books they'd read. They'd gone through freshman and sophomore years together, and sometimes they'd even cried on each other's shoulders when life seemed to really stink.

But... Lane couldn't possibly have known that ticket was for Phoenix unless she had bought it herself. She was the one planning to leave town. Because she had to. Because Maggie Keene had discovered the boy Lane had killed in the coal bin of the old courthouse.

It wasn't Scout. The person who had killed that girl, and then Dante, the person who had driven James and Chantilly into that culvert, the same person who intended to kill Maggie Keene because she'd found that body and ruined everything, was Lane Bridgewater.