Killing Spree (20 page)

The girl stopped biting her nails for a moment. “Nope, try one up,” she muttered.

“Thanks.” Gillian ran alongside the next bus, searching the faces of students seated on the other side of the windows. Still no sign of Ethan. The bus started to move. Gillian frantically pounded on the door, and the bus ground to a halt. The door opened with a whoosh. “Excuse me,” she said, out of breath. “Are you going to Capitol Hill?”

The driver, a chubby, black woman with dark copper-colored hair, frowned at her. “Yeah…”

“Can I see if my son is on this bus, please?”

The driver nodded tiredly. “SHUT UP BACK THERE!” she screamed.

Gillian climbed up the steps. The bus was warm and stuffy. A few students were still chattering, despite the driver’s command. Gillian scanned the faces of all the students. “Ethan?” she called. “Is Ethan Tanner here?”

A few kids laughed.

“SHUT UP, I SAID!” the driver yelled. Then she turned to Gillian. “You mean Ethan, the kid with the violin? Are you his mother?”

Gillian nodded. “Yes. Do you know him?”

“Hm-hmmm, he’s a doll. But I didn’t see him get on the bus.” She glanced up at the rear view mirror. “ANYONE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ETHAN TANNER?”

There was some mumbling—and snickering. One girl had an obnoxiously loud giggle. Biting her lip, Gillian looked out at all the young faces again and waited for an answer.

“Check the principal’s office,” someone said. “I think he’s in trouble.”

“Yeah, try the principal’s office,” somebody else piped up.

“Try the Girls’ Glee Club,” someone muttered. A bunch of them laughed.

“C’mon, can we get going already?” another kid yelled. They all started talking over each other again.

Gillian anxiously turned to the driver, who shrugged. “You might want to go ahead and try the principal’s office,” the woman said. “If he’s missing, that’s the place to report it.”

Gillian found the administration office on the first floor. A white-haired woman in a pale blue pantsuit was working the copy machine behind the long counter. “Pardon me,” Gillian said. She couldn’t control the panic-induced warble in her voice. “I came here to pick up my son, and he wasn’t on the bus, and they told me to try here.”

The woman adjusted her glasses and moseyed up to the counter. She still had some papers in her hand that she was about to copy. “What’s your son’s name?”

“Tanner, Ethan Tanner.” Gillian nervously tapped her fingers on the countertop.

“Oh, Mrs. Tanner, we tried several times to get ahold of you….”

“What?” A hand went over her heart. “What happened? Is Ethan okay?”

“I’m sure Principal Brickman would like to see you, Mrs. Tanner,” she said, moving to the half door at the end of the counter and opening it for her. “The police were in there, too. They just left.”

“Oh, no,” Gillian murmured. She remembered all those mornings years ago when Ethan was a little boy; she would send him off to school, worried that he might never come back—or that the police would call, asking her to come identify his body. And now it was happening.

Her knees felt weak as she followed the woman behind the counter to a long hallway. “Could you—tell me what happened?”

“Well, I’ve heard a bunch of different stories,” the woman sighed, waddling toward a door at the end of the hall. She didn’t seem very concerned or compassionate. “They’re still trying to get to the bottom of it.”

The woman opened the door. Gillian stared into an office, where eight people turned to stare back at her. They stopped talking, and the scene seemed to freeze for a moment. The principal and some woman in a dark blue suit—maybe the vice-principal or a teacher—stood behind a big mahogany desk. Two more women sat in front of the desk, both looking over their shoulders at Gillian. One of them Gillian didn’t recognize. The other was Stephanie Merchant, blond and perky with sun-wrinkled skin that was now pale. She wore jeans and a cowl-neck sweater. A leather coat was draped over her chair arm.

Their heads slightly bowed, two boys flanked each side of the principal’s desk—like four meek shepherds in a Nativity set.

“Hey, Mom,” said one of those boys.

“All of you, thanks very much for your cooperation,” Principal Brickman said soberly. A tall, thin man in his mid-fifties with receding gray hair, he wore a rumpled brown suit and stood by the open door to his office. With a joyless smile, he nodded to the people as they started to file out of his work space. He’d asked Gillian and Ethan to stay on for another minute.

For the last half hour, Gillian had held her tongue while the principal—and the bookish-looking woman in the blue suit, who turned out to be a lawyer for the Barringer family—questioned the boys about an assault on a sophomore, Tate Barringer. Apparently, Tate and a friend of his named Don Woodruff had—either
“teased,” “picked on,”
or
“kidded around with”
—Ethan after gym class both yesterday and this afternoon. It depended on the particular witness’s testimony as to exactly what had gone on. Ethan was the one who claimed Tate and Don had merely been
“kidding around.”
And during this afternoon’s
“encounter”
(the word the lawyer insisted on using), an older boy interrupted them and proceeded to beat the ever-living crap out of Tate and Don. The victims had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, where Tate was treated for a broken nose, two cracked ribs, and other minor injuries. Don was sent home with a prescription for painkillers and an ice pack for his scrotum. Principal Brickman and the lawyer were trying to determine the identity of this older boy, who had carried out the beatings. No one had ever seen him before.

Gillian also wanted to know who this young man was—so she could thank him for coming to Ethan’s rescue. None of the three boys being questioned—including Craig Merchant—had bothered to help Ethan. Gillian was so angry, she wanted to scream at the lawyer, the principal, the boys, and their mothers. So a couple of bullies had gotten a little more than they’d deserved. Too bad. But they’d been picking on her son, who had never harmed a soul. Didn’t anyone care about what Ethan had been going through?

She didn’t say a word, because she knew Ethan was already humiliated enough. Obviously, that was why—more than anyone—he’d tried to play down the fact that these boys had been harassing him. Gillian couldn’t help wishing Ethan had stood up for himself—even if it meant a black eye. At this point, the damage to his dignity had to be worse than the physical injury he might have endured.

The other two mothers hadn’t said much. The lawyer had recommended that the boys’ parents be present for the questioning. Throughout the session, Gillian had repeatedly looked at Stephanie Merchant, who had managed to avoid eye contact with her.

Gillian and Ethan stood near the door as the others filed out of Principal Brickman’s office. Both Craig and Mrs. Merchant walked by, neither one even glancing their way. “Hello, Craig,” Gillian said coolly. “How are you doing, Stephanie?”

“Hi,” Craig sheepishly muttered back. That was all she got from either one of them.

They were the last ones out of the office. Principal Brickman closed the door, then let out a sigh. “Mrs. Tanner, Ethan,” he said. “I’m very sorry this happened—and that you were being harassed by these boys. I didn’t want the lawyer here for this, but I need to ask you something, Ethan. There’s a rumor going around the school that you hired this young man to beat up Tate and Don for you. Is there any truth to that?”

“No, Dr. Brickman,” Ethan replied, shaking his head. “Like I told you, I never saw him before today. I have no idea who he is.”

“All right, thank you,” the principal nodded. “In the future, if anyone gives you trouble, I want you to come to me about it. All right?”

“Yessir.”

Gillian waited until they’d stepped out to the hallway before she turned to Ethan. “These boys, Tate and Don,” she whispered. “Were they part of that group who were teasing you in front of the house the other afternoon?”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Can’t we just drop it, Mom?”

“No, we can’t,” she said.

“Okay, yeah,” he muttered. “They were there. But I didn’t hire anyone to beat them up. I didn’t do
anything—anything at all
.”

“Okay,” Gillian whispered, patting his shoulder. “I borrowed Ruth’s car. Where’s your coat?”

She waited in the corridor while Ethan ran up to the second floor to retrieve his coat, violin, and books from his locker. The stairwell door was still swinging back and forth when Gillian saw Craig emerge from the boys’ lavatory.

He seemed to notice Gillian in the dim, otherwise empty hallway, and he quickly looked away. But he didn’t move.

Gillian stepped up to him. “How have you been, Craig?”

“Fine,” he said, glancing down at his feet—and then at the girls’ restroom door. Gillian realized he was probably waiting for his mother.

“So—what’s going on with you and Ethan?” she asked quietly. “Did you two have a falling-out or something?”

He shrugged evasively.

“Your mom told me yesterday that you weren’t attending Ethan’s birthday party next week. What’s that about?”

“I—I’m just busy, that’s all.”

“Craig, you’ve been Ethan’s best friend since the fourth grade. What’s going on? The way you and the other boys were talking in the principal’s office, I got the idea that those bullies were harassing Ethan, and you saw it. But you just walked right on by. How could you do that to your best friend?”

“He doesn’t have to answer that,” Stephanie Merchant said, pausing in the girls’ restroom doorway.

“Yes, he does,” Gillian shot back. She turned to Craig. “If Ethan ignored you when you were in trouble, I’d want your mother to be asking Ethan this same question. Why didn’t you help him, Craig?”

He sighed. “It’s for the same reason they were picking on him.”

“And why were they picking on him, Craig?” She knew the answer, but had to ask.

“Because they—they think he’s gay.”

“Is that what you think?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

He looked away and nodded.

“Are you satisfied?” Stephanie Merchant asked. She put her hand on Craig’s shoulder.

Gillian scowled at her. “No, I’m not satisfied, Stephanie. So—big deal! Why should it matter all of a sudden? What the hell difference does it make?”

“You can’t blame Craig if he isn’t comfortable around Ethan anymore,” Mrs. Merchant said.

“Why are you uncomfortable around him? Did he do something to make you feel that way, Craig? Tell me, and I’ll shut up.”

Wincing, Craig shook his head. “He didn’t
do
anything. I just—if I keep hanging around with him, people will think I’m gay, too.”

Gillian shook her head. “Lord, Craig, I thought you had more confidence than that. I thought you were better than that.”

“I’m not making any judgments about how certain people choose to live their lives,” Stephanie chimed in. “I just don’t want it in my house, and I think you ought to respect that.”

“By
‘it’
do you mean my son?” Gillian retorted. “And I don’t respect you very much at all right now, Stephanie. Ethan has been a good friend to your son. Craig, remember two years ago when you fell off your bike on Interlaken Drive and twisted your ankle? Ethan carried you home piggyback for a mile. And while you drove your son to the hospital, Stephanie, my son walked back to Interlaken Drive and carried Craig’s broken bike to your house. Remember?” She turned to glare at Craig. “So where were you when my son was in trouble yesterday—and today?” Gillian shook her head. “Shame on you,” she whispered. “Shame on you both.”

Down the hallway, the stairwell door opened, and Ethan stepped out. He had on his jacket, and carried his books and violin case. He headed toward the school’s main doors. Gillian noticed he didn’t wave or nod at Craig and Mrs. Merchant. Perhaps he already knew they’d written him off.

Gillian met up with him by the front entrance. He didn’t say anything, but obviously, he could see she was shaking and on the verge of tears. He held the door open for her. Outside, they walked down a few steps together, and then Ethan stopped at the bottom step.

Gillian turned up her coat collar and glanced up at the rain. Then she looked at him.

Ethan gave her a sad, crooked smile. “If we were in a TV commercial, this is when you’d take me to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.”

Gillian laughed, and mussed his hair. They walked toward Ruth’s car together. “I wish you would have told me these bullies were bothering you, honey.”

“Can we just forget about it, Mom? Please?”

“All right,” she murmured. They climbed into the front seat of Ruth’s Toyota. Gillian started up the engine; then she switched on the vent and the rear-window defogger. They sat idling for a minute. Rain tapped on the roof.

“Honey, do you know
why
they were picking on you?”