Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy) (11 page)

“She’s right here and she can hear you,” Ruth said. “May I ask what you’re doing?”

“May I ask why you’re snooping?” Tommy said. “We’re trying to figure out what Abbie Gardener was saying when we talked to her at the nursing home.”

“There isn’t anything . .. suspicious?”

“No,” Tommy said. “I just wondered what Carl thought. What do you know about this, Aunt Ruth? ‘This Native American sorcerer’s black magic killed the daughters of Hiawatha’?”

“I’m old enough to remember when we had to read
The Song of Hiawatha
by Longfellow,” she said. “People used to consider him America’s greatest poet. Today nobody’s heard of him.”

“I’m old enough too,” Carl said. “I don’t recall any black sorcerers in the poem. I don’t think Longfellow was writing about vampires and zombies and the things kids are reading these days.”

“Maybe he should have,” Aunt Ruth said. “Then people would remember him. Why don’t I look into it for you? That’s what a reference librarian does, you know. People ask me to help them with questions all the time. Just this morning, that English art historian was in here asking me about old maps.”

“Old maps of what?” Tommy asked.

“Of the town,” she said. “Who owned what, when.”

“Did he say why?”

“He’s a historian. That’s what historians do,” she said. “I’ll look into
Hiawatha and tell you what I can find out. Actually, I came in to tell you Dani called. She said she sent you a text but she didn’t hear back. She’ll be here in—oh, there she is now.”

Tommy saw Dani wave to him from the reference desk.

He held the door for her and then opened his arms to hug her. She hugged him back, gave him a quick kiss, and then gave Carl a brief hug.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I had to meet with the medical examiner. I have a number of very strange things to tell you.”

“We’ll match you strange for strange,” Tommy said, pulling out a chair for her. “Let’s get everything we know so far on the table.”

She glanced at the words he’d written on the Smart Board and the six questions they’d come up with.

“Good idea,” Dani said. “And if we’re talking about everything we don’t know, we’re going to need a bigger table.”

Once Ruth was out of earshot, she turned to Carl. “I’m really glad to have you on the bus.”

“Bound for glory.” Carl smiled. “One way or another.”

9.

After they’d debriefed each other for another hour, Tommy suggested they all get dinner somewhere. Carl begged off, his body language conveying a you-two-lovebirds-probably-want-to-be-alone message. He headed over to the nursing home, saying maybe there was something he could find out about the circumstances of Abbie’s death that Detective Casey had missed. “I feel like sushi,” Tommy told Dani. “There’s a new restaurant just across the state line in Ridgefield—want to try it?”

“I feel like a wet noodle,” Dani said. “But if they don’t have that, sushi’s fine.”

At the restaurant a waitress in a black kimono took their order quickly and left them with a pot of tea and two small cups. Dani wrapped both hands around her cup as she sipped.

“I just can’t get warm today,” she said. “Did playing in cold weather ever bother you?”

“I never noticed,” Tommy said. “If you keep your body temperature up on the sidelines by jumping around or riding a stationary bike, it cancels out the cold. It’s like jumping out of a sauna into a frozen lake.”

“You’ve done that?”

“Even better—I’m a member of the 300 Club.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a sauna at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where the research scientists set the sauna 300 degrees higher than whatever it is outside. So if it’s 83 below, they set the sauna to 217, and then once you’re so hot you can’t stand it, you run out from the sauna around a flagpole fifty yards away and then back into the sauna. If you make it, you’re a member of the 300 Club.”

“What if you don’t?”

“You freeze to death.”

“Who says scientists don’t have any fun?”

“So far everybody’s made it. The cold is very motivating.”

“When were you in Antarctica?”

“A couple years ago.”

She saw that her question had made Tommy uncomfortable.

“Look—I went with Cassandra,” he said.

Now Dani felt uncomfortable. She trusted Tommy’s affections completely, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed hearing about Cassandra.

“
Why
did you go to Antarctica?”

“I’d promised I’d take her someplace she’d never been before,” he said. “Which wasn’t easy. She’d already been to St. Tropez and Thailand and all the usual places celebrities go when they want to pretend they don’t want to be recognized.”

“Is she a member of the 300 Club?”

“Dani, I’m okay talking about this if you really want to, but I’m sorry if it makes you feel as weird as it makes me feel. The past has passed.”

“Agreed,” she said, smiling and taking his hand. “In which case, you won’t mind me telling you that I’m driving down to Columbia tomorrow to see Quinn McKellen. He’s delivering a paper at a conference, and I think he might be able to help us figure some of this out.”

Tommy squeezed her hand, then leaned back in his chair. A distancing gesture, Dani thought, something suspects did as a kind of unconscious admission of guilt. A sign that tells trained interrogators they’re on the right track.

“He lives in the city now?”

“I don’t know where he lives,” Dani said. “I just sent him a text that I’d be coming and hoped we could have coffee, and he texted back suggesting we have lunch.”

“Why do you want to talk to him? I just mean, how do you think he can help us?”

“He understands brain chemistry better than anyone I know,” Dani said.

“Probably because his own brain is so gigantic,” Tommy said. He didn’t intend to sound defensive and hoped his comment would pass for humor, but Dani wasn’t laughing. To his relief, the waitress appeared then with their dinner.

“Are you going to tell him the whole story?” Tommy said after the waitress had left them alone.

“Oh no, no, no,” Dani said. “If you think I’m a skeptic, I’m nothing compared to Quinn. Sometimes I think that what makes him a brilliant scientist is the same thing that makes him a less-than-brilliant human being.”

“You can be both, you know,” Tommy said. “You can have questions and be a believer too.”

“I know. I just want Quinn to tell me what was going on in Amos Kasden’s skull.” Her phone chirped. She made a face that said,
It’s always something
and reached into her coat pocket.

Tommy couldn’t resist peeking at her phone, trying to read the text upside down. Dani had never said much about her relationship with Quinn McKellen, other than that he was a nice guy who was very smart but . . . what was the word she used? Hopeless. The fact that she said so little about him made Tommy wonder if there was still something between them she wasn’t telling him.

“This is interesting,” she said, showing Tommy the message.

WERE YOU INVESTIGATING THE MURDER MY FRIEND AMOS COMMITTED
?

“Who do you think it is?” Tommy said.

“Number’s blocked. What should I say?”

“Say yes. Ask him who he is. Or who she is. I didn’t think Amos had any friends.”

Tommy moved around to the other side of the table so that he could read the conversation. Dani typed quickly.

YES. WHO R U
?

NOBODY
.

DO YOU HAVE A NAME
?

NO
.

HOW DID U KNOW AMOS
?

I’M A STUDENT AT ST. ADRIAN
.

“Wow,” Tommy said. “This is good. Ask him what he knows about Amos.”

“If I push, he may bolt,” Dani said. “Trust me.”

“I trust you.”

DO U LIKE IT THERE
?

NO
.

Y NOT
?

STUFF
.

DID AMOS LIKE IT THERE
?

YES
.

HOW DID U KNOW HIM
?

STUDY GROUP
.

WHAT WERE U STUDYING
?

NO
.

NO WHAT
?

WE WEREN’T STUDYING ANYTHING. THEY WERE STUDYING US
.

WHO IS THEY
?

IT WAS A TEST
.

OF WHAT
?

4 PSYCH DEPT
.

WHAT WERE THEY TESTING
?

DRUGS
.

WHERE ARE U
?

STARBUCKS
.

STARBUCKS WHERE
?

Tommy was already handing the waitress a fistful of money as he pulled Dani’s chair out. He led her to the door as she kept an eye on her phone. They got in his car and he started it up, looking to her to tell him where to go.

RIDGEFIELD
.

“Main Street. Across from Stop & Shop,” Dani said as Tommy backed out quickly and then punched the gas.

WHAT KIND OF DRUGS
?

DON’T KNOW
.

WHAT WERE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO
?

MAKE U FEEL BETTER
.

DID THEY
?

DID THEY WHAT
?

MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER
?

DON’T KNOW. DIDN’T TAKE THEM
.

Y
?

I ALREADY FELT BETTER
.

THAT’S GOOD
.

I PRETENDED 2 TAKE THEM
.

“I think we may have a spy from the school,” Dani told Tommy.

“What do you mean? What’s he saying?”

“He was part of a test group. The psychology department was testing a drug on some students, but he refused to take it. He pretended to take it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Hang on.”

Y
?

BECAUSE I WOULD GET IN TROUBLE IF THEY KNEW I DIDN’T TAKE THEM. WHAT KIND OF TROUBLE
?

BIG
:(

Tommy sped up to beat a yellow light, and the car bounced hard as it went over a speed bump.

DID AMOS TAKE THE DRUG
?

YES
.

HOW MANY OF U
?

10
.

DID ANYBODY ELSE NOT TAKE THE DRUG
?

DOUBT IT
.

DID IT MAKE THEM FEEL BETTER
?

I GUESS
.

DID IT MAKE AMOS FEEL BETTER
?

APPARENTLY NOT
.

DO U KNOW Y HE KILLED JULIE
?

NO
.

DID HE TALK ABOUT IT
?

NOT WITH ME
.

WITH ANYBODY ELSE
?

DON’T THINK SO
.

CAN I BUY U A COFFEE
?

NO
.

PLEASE. I CAN HELP U
.

NO
.

OK
.

“He desperately wants to tell us something,” Dani told Tommy. “Why else would he contact me?”

“I thought your number wasn’t listed.”

“I gave it to Ghieri when we interviewed Amos,” Dani said. “Maybe Amos got it from Ghieri’s computer, and whoever this is got it from Amos.”

“Maybe Ghieri is actually the person texting you,” Tommy said.

“I don’t think so,” Dani said. “Don’t ask me why. This is real. This kid wants to blow the whistle.”

DID U SAVE THE PILLS
?

YES
.

DO U STILL HAVE THEM
? Then, “Oh, nuts!” Dani yelled as she slapped the dash of Tommy’s car.

“What! What!”

“No service. I hope he doesn’t think I cut him off.”

“This area is always a dead zone,” Tommy said, still speeding through downtown Ridgefield. “Your texts will go through as soon as we get closer to town. Hang on. Almost there. And don’t hit my car.”

At the bottom of the hill he turned right into the Starbucks lot and parked around the side, where customers wouldn’t see them.

“Wait outside and keep texting him,” Tommy said. “I’ll see if I can spot him. He might recognize you.”