For Your Own Good

by Samantha Downing

  Lucky for her, this is the twenty-first century. The geniuses in Silicon Valley have invented technology designed to invade privacy. Teddy doesn’t know there’s a camera hidden right by his mailbox. All she has to do is drive close by and download the data, and then she knows when he was home. Or when he wasn’t. Every few weeks, she swaps it out with another camera that has a fresh battery.

  The downside is the expense. She’s run up quite a credit card balance since returning to town. Ruining someone’s life isn’t cheap.

  She packs up her things, vowing to reread all the books her students are reading, and walks out of her classroom. Although school is out for the day, both students and teachers are still around. Some are in the halls, some in sports practice, and a small crowd is gathered near the front door. Mostly administrators, including Ms. Marsha. They’re all staring out at the parking lot.

  “What’s everyone looking at?” she says.

  The school secretary answers. “Zach Ward was arrested.”

  Fallon has no idea who that is. Outside, a young guy—a student—is put into a police car.

  Ms. Marsha is on her phone, hand covering her mouth, whispering so no one can hear her.

  “How terrible,” Fallon says, trying to sound as concerned as everyone else. “Do you know what for?”

  No one has an answer.

  “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the murders,” someone says.

  The school secretary shakes her head rather hard. “Zach? Oh, no. No way.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Ms. Marsha says, ending her call. “So let’s not start spreading rumors when we have no idea what’s happening.” She gives them all a stern look before walking away.

  Fallon gets out of there before any of the gossip starts. Reputations are built quickly at a school like Belmont, and the last thing she needs is to be known as a gossip.

  Shut up and smile.

  That’s what Belmont kids do to survive, and now that she’s back, she has to do the same thing. Her only job is to gather the data from her camera, study it, and plan her next move.

  The first move was months ago, before she’d even returned. Step one was to break up his marriage.

  That was almost too easy.

  * * *

  ZACH IS AT the police station, sitting by himself in an interrogation room. He’s been booked and fingerprinted, and now they don’t know what to do with him. They can’t take him to the same jail where Courtney is, and the holding cells are full. Too many reporters: A number of them were caught trespassing. There are a lot of people here.

  Which is just fine with Zach. He has never been so scared.

  Seventeen years of being told not to screw up.

  Seventeen years of having it drilled into his head.

  One error in judgment can change everything, Dad always says. The example he uses is drinking and driving. Bribing a jail guard probably applies as well.

  Zach has finally screwed up, and it’s a big mistake. Big enough to change everything. And the only thing he can do is wait for his mom to show up.

  When she does, he can hear her through the door.

  “How dare you speak to my son without my permission . . .”

  Her voice gets louder as she comes closer, and the door flies open. Mom stands there, and Zach can feel her rage, her worry, her confusion. A bundle of emotions entering the room all at once.

  Including disappointment.

  She rushes to him. “Are you okay?”

  He nods.

  She whips around to face Tate and Oliver. “Someone better start telling me what’s going on.”

  “Your son has been arrested for bribing a county employee,” Tate says.

  “That’s absurd.”

  Tate says nothing.

  “Mom,” Zach says.

  “Be quiet,” she says. Doesn’t even look at him. She takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders, transforming from a mother to a lawyer. “Let’s speak outside,” she says to the detectives.

  Zach finds himself alone again. No phone. No windows. Nothing to do but think about how stupid he is.

  The next few hours go by in a blur. He’s taken out of the room, and Mom once again tells him to stay quiet. He stands in front of a judge, who reads the charges and sets his bail. Zach barely listens. He’s already thinking of what comes next. What a school like Belmont will do with a student charged with felony bribery.

  It can’t be good.

  Things get even worse after the bail is paid and he walks out of the police station. Dad is right there, waiting for him.

  “What in the hell did you do?” he says.

  “Not here,” Mom says. “Wait until we get home.”

  Zach opts to ride with Mom, which seems like the lesser of two evils. She’s on the phone the whole time, either talking to someone at her office or calling around about criminal defense lawyers.

  The pit in Zach’s stomach grows bigger.

  Mom ends a call as they drive up to the house. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” she says.

  “I just—”

  “Not. One. Word.”

  He can’t talk, can’t explain, can’t tell his side of the story. Can’t even text Lucas because she took his phone. Sometimes, it sucks having a mom who’s a lawyer.

  Dad is yelling before he’s even out of the car, but Mom puts the kibosh on that.

  “Inside,” she says.

  Once in the house, Zach is sent to his room. No phone, no laptop, no tablet. No way to communicate with anyone. He can’t even talk to his parents. Not until his new lawyer arrives.

  Until then, he lies on his bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing everything has changed. One moment, one error in judgment, has altered the course of his life.

  Dad was right. Maybe he always has been. Maybe all his Ward-isms aren’t as stupid as Zach believed them to be.

  Zach hasn’t even graduated from high school, and he already wants a do-over.

  50

  AFTER SCHOOL, TEDDY sits in his classroom for a long time, waiting for everyone to clear out. He never did get to speak to the headmaster. The best he could do was file a formal incident report and send it to Ms. Marsha, who has yet to respond.

  Teddy works, or pretends to, but all he thinks about is his plaque.

  And Joe. And the dumpster.

  He always knew there was something he didn’t like about Joe. He’s been around too long. Knows too much, sees too much. Like the dumpster. He’s even worse than Ms. Marsha, and she knows just about everything.

  Teddy made the right choice setting Joe up. If Joe had never caught Teddy rooting through it, things might’ve turned out differently.

  Teddy wonders if his plaque is in the dumpster, if Joe had actually put it there. Part of him thinks it’s ridiculous to go outside and search through it. The other part of him knows that he has to. When he finally gets up and heads outside, a light snow has started to fall. It’s dusk, making everything look grey. Appropriate, given Teddy’s mood.

  He slips. Curses. Gets up off the ground, wiping snow and dirt from his slacks.

  When he lifts the top of the dumpster, the snow on top falls backward, landing near his feet. He stomps it off. Curses again.

  All of his cursing is directed at Joe.

  He moves a crate in front of the dumpster and climbs up. The stench is almost unbearable, just as it was last time, but Teddy searches through it anyway. A few times, he retches. A few times, he climbs down to rest a moment. It takes longer than he remembers from before. Darkness falls, leaving Teddy with just the security lights. His hands start to go numb, even with the gloves. Still, he goes through every inch of that dumpster.

  No plaque.

  * * *

  EZEKIEL T. FISHER is a huge man. Or at least he seems that way to Zach, who l
ooks up at him from the couch. His new lawyer reminds him of a football player wearing a suit.

  Zach still hasn’t said a word, but at least he’s allowed to hear what his own lawyer has to say.

  It’s dark outside, long after dinner, though Zach never ate anything. He stayed in his room until he was told to come downstairs, and now his stomach is rumbling. The last thing he ate was a protein bar several hours ago.

  “I spoke to the DA.” Ezekiel stands by the fireplace, a cup of coffee in one hand. He’s flanked by Mom and Dad, who aren’t sitting down, either. Zach is, and he feels like a small child looking up at all the adults. “A guard told them everything, even showed them calls on her phone that came from Zach,” Ezekiel says.

  Kay. She must have been caught. Otherwise, none of this makes sense. They’d had a good thing going. For a while, anyway.

  “But as we suspected,” Ezekiel continues, “this has nothing to do with the bribery.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Mom says.

  “But why—”

  Zach is cut off by Mom, who raises her hand to shut him up.

  “They want to know why Zach had to see Courtney so badly,” she says to Ezekiel. “Why he was willing to pay a guard to see her.”

  Ezekiel nods, his big head moving as slow as a snail. “Exactly. And it goes beyond that. To be honest, I can’t blame them. The timing is . . . suspicious, to say the least.”

  Mom nods. Dad looks as confused as Zach feels.

  “They want to make a deal,” Mom says.

  “They want to talk about a deal,” Ezekiel says. “It depends. Because it doesn’t look good.”

  Mom looks at the lawyer and shakes her head. “No. It does not.”

  “However,” Ezekiel says, “you can’t just arrest someone for murder just because it looks bad.”

  “Murder?” Zach says.

  “Oh Jesus,” Dad says. He looks from Ezekiel to Zach to his wife. “Are you telling me they think—”

  “Yes,” Mom says. “That’s exactly what they think.”

  Dad sits down in a chair, mouth open, staring off into space.

  “Zach,” Ezekiel says, finally turning to his client. “Do you understand what’s happening here?”

  Afraid to open his mouth, Zach shakes his head no.

  “You paid a guard to see Courtney,” Ezekiel says. He holds up his hand, just like his mom did. Must be a lawyer thing. “Please, don’t say anything.”

  Zach doesn’t.

  “You met with Courtney and had a private conversation. No recording, no tape, nothing at all,” Ezekiel says. “A couple of days later, Sonia Benjamin died from the same poison that killed Ingrid Ross. The specifics of that poison have never been released to the public.” He pauses, letting that sink in. It does. “Then you paid the guard again to speak to Courtney on the phone. Again, there’s no recording of that conversation.”

  Piece by piece, the picture comes together in Zach’s head, until he sees it the way the police do.

  They think the two of them met to come up with a plan to free Courtney. They think Courtney told him what poison to use, and then he killed Mrs. B.

  After all, he had access to her. Even to her food. She was eating a salad when they met at lunchtime in the Bugle office. They probably know that, too.

  The police think Courtney and Zach were in it together.

  It’s insane.

  It also makes complete sense.

  51

  FALLON REVIEWS THE footage from today. The camera is angled toward the driveway, so she can see when Teddy comes and goes. She can also see part of the sidewalk. Fallon knows what time the mailman shows up. She knows who walks their dog in the neighborhood and what time they pass by. She keeps a chart of everything. If she ever needs to get into Teddy’s house, she knows exactly when to go.

  Now she needs to put a camera in his classroom.

  One day of working at Belmont has taught her she won’t get a lot of chances. Before and after school, his classroom is locked. During school, there are plenty of people around. Lunchtime is her only option. She has to wait until the kids are in the dining hall and Teddy goes to the lounge.

  It won’t take long. All she needs is about thirty seconds.

  Fallon wraps up the camera in a scarf and places it inside her bag. The camera app is already on her phone, making it easy to download the data every day. Even several times a day. She considered but eliminated the idea of hooking the camera up to the school’s internal Wi-Fi and having the footage automatically go to the cloud. Too risky. Something a stupid criminal would do.

  She opens her computer and checks her inbox. Nothing except bill notices from her former college, an angry email from her former landlord, and a bunch of spam for payday loans.

  Next, she logs into the Belmont website. As a faculty member, she has access to areas that students can’t see. What she wants to see is student grades—Teddy’s students, in particular—but that’s not available to her. She can only see grades for her students.

  Disappointing. Fallon was hoping to track who he was downgrading, the same as he did to her.

  What she can see are class schedules. Since they both teach English, she doesn’t expect there to be any crossover. So she looks for students who had Teddy and Sonia as a teacher in the previous years. She makes a list on a spreadsheet.

  Most of the names don’t mean anything to her. She barely knows the names of her own students, much less Teddy’s. The one student she recognizes is in Teddy’s class this year and was in Sonia’s class last year.

  Zach Ward.

  And she’s heard of him only because he was arrested today.

  * * *

  TEDDY IS AT home, showered, and sitting in front of his computer when he learns about Zach’s arrest. He’d gone online to see what students were saying, in case any of them were talking about his plaque, and instead he found out about Zach. Very few details have been released. The police have just said that a “Belmont student was arrested for bribery.”

  Teddy laughs. He laughs so hard, he almost spills his water.

  Of course that little bastard tried to bribe someone. The only surprise is that he has to pay the price. Kids like him rarely do.

  * * *

  HOURS GO BY before Zach is allowed to speak. Finally, he is alone with Ezekiel. Late at night, his parents leave them alone in his mom’s office. Ezekiel sits, which brings him down to a more reasonable size.

  “I guess this has been quite a day for you,” he says.

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m going to ask you some questions, and it’s important you only answer what I ask. Do you understand?”

  Zach nods.

  “Good. Now, are there calls on your phone to a guard at the jail?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  Zach thinks about it. “Five or six.”

  “And the GPS in your car. Will it show you went to the jail?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once.”

  Ezekiel does not take notes. He pauses, clasps his hands together, and stares at Zach. “Do you have text messages to Courtney on your phone?”

  “Not since she was arrested.”

  “Is there anything about Courtney’s mother in the texts you did exchange with her?”

  Zach sifts through them in his mind, trying to remember. That was a while ago. “Probably,” he says.

  “Did she say anything bad about her mother?”

  All the time. “Yes.”

  “Did she say she wanted her mother dead?”

  “Yes.” Many of the text messages that were made public had originally been sent to Zach. “But it was just—”

  Ezekiel holds up his hand. “Are there any texts about her mother’s death?” />
  “From right after it happened,” Zach says. “I told her I was sorry her mom died.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “And what about your search history?” Ezekiel says. “Either on your phone or your computer. Did you read about the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you talk about it on social media?”

  “A little.”

  “Did you offer an opinion about whether or not Courtney was guilty?”

  “I said she wasn’t.”

  Ezekiel doesn’t look pleased, maybe because Zach hadn’t stuck to just answering the question.

  “Yes,” Zach says, trying to correct himself. “I offered an opinion.”

  “And what about the employees at the jail?” Ezekiel says. “Did you look up information about the guards?”

  The pit in Zach’s stomach, which never really went away, grows bigger again. “Yes.”

  “Personal information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever look up any information about your teachers? Specifically, Sonia Benjamin.”

  Again, Zach has to think. He almost says no, but then he remembers. He looked her up when she asked him to be the editor of the paper. All information is useful. That’s what his mom always said.

  “Yes,” he says.

  Ezekiel does not look surprised. He hasn’t looked surprised at any of Zach’s answers. “How long ago was that?” he says.

  “After Courtney was arrested.”

  “What about poison?” Ezekiel says. “Did you ever search for information about the symptoms or effects of various poisons?”

  The shock of that question hits like a physical blow. Of course Zach searched for information about poison, but only to try and figure out what had killed Courtney’s mom. Everyone was doing it.

  And, yes, it was after he saw Courtney in jail.

  “It was only because—”

  Ezekiel holds up his hand again. “I don’t need to know why.”