The Private School Murders

by James Patterson

  I took my heirloom key ring out of my bag and led the cops into the apartment building, past a stunned Paulie. No one spoke in the elevator, and we remained silent until we were inside Matthew’s apartment.

  I took the detectives to the kitchen, opened the broom closet, and showed them my big find.

  Caputo stared, his jaw hanging open ever so slightly. He blinked a few times, then turned to me.

  “So what do you think this means?” he asked.

  I told him in one long unpunctuated sentence.

  His face registered surprise but, to my total elation, not doubt.

  “I owe you an apology, Tandy,” he said. “You’ve got something here. And now I’m calling the Sixth Precinct. They’re gonna reopen this crime scene, and you have to skedaddle. Pronto.”

  73

  I was shocked.

  Number one, Caputo had apologized to me. That was a first.

  Number two, he’d called me by my actual name.

  Number three, he’d told me to leave my brother’s apartment after I had just done his job for him.

  “I’m not leaving, Caputo. I’ll stand off to the side and I won’t say a word, but I think I’ve earned—”

  “You can’t stay here, Tandy. Not if you want this evidence to count for something,” Caputo said gruffly. “I’m going to downplay your presence here for your brother’s sake. Okay? And still, I’m making you no promises.”

  “Fine. If it’s for Matthew.” I took out my phone and snapped a few shots of the dumbwaiter for Philippe.

  “Keep me posted.”

  I reluctantly walked out onto the street, where I found Paulie in the wing chair, watching girls, smoking.

  “Can I get a drag?” I said, gesturing at his cigarette. I didn’t smoke, but it seemed like an appropriate moment to start.

  He handed it over.

  I puffed, then coughed. For the millionth time I wondered at the mystique of smoking tobacco. Tastes nasty and ruins your health. I just didn’t get it. I spat a flake of tobacco off my tongue and handed the cigarette back to Paulie.

  He said, “Everything okay, Tandy?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Never better.”

  “What the hell is going on up there?” he asked, glancing toward the third floor.

  “Only good things,” I told him. “At least, I hope.”

  He nodded, as if he understood my cryptic words. “Tell Matthew I said to hang tough. I’m rooting for him.”

  “Will do.”

  I had a MetroCard and about eight dollars in singles, so I joined the herd jogging down the steps to the Christopher Street subway platform and caught the 1 train. I found a seat near the conductor’s door and suddenly wondered if my silver franc was safe. Had I mistakenly handed it to Caputo? I dug around in my bag, kind of panicked until I touched the coin. Yes, it was there.

  As I was retracting my hand, I brushed the pill bottle I’d taken from Marla Henderson’s medicine cabinet.

  While the subway car rattled and rolled, I studied the small amber bottle. According to the label from Giuseppe’s Pharmacy, Marla was on her first month of the prescription antidepressant, with one refill left to go.

  I wondered if Adele Church had also been on anti-depressants and, if so, whether she’d gotten her prescription filled at Giuseppe’s. Granted, there wasn’t much chance I could ferret out this information, and if I could, what would it mean?

  Giuseppe’s Pharmacy was on my way home. I could stop there and still be home before curfew. And besides, after finding Mr. Borofsky last night and the evidence in the dumbwaiter today, I was kind of on a roll.

  Might as well see where it would take me. Right?

  74

  Giuseppe’s Pharmacy is on Sixty-Eighth and Columbus, only four short blocks and an avenue over from the Dakota, set back and nestled between two high-rise apartment buildings. It’s small and old-fashioned, way different from the big chain drugstores. I’d passed it many times, but I’d never been inside.

  I’ll admit I didn’t have a plan. You could almost call my stop at Giuseppe’s a distraction from thinking about the cops going through Matthew’s apartment and having to trust them with evidence that might be Matthew’s last lifeline.

  I got out of the subway at the Lincoln Center stop and walked quickly to Giuseppe’s. Out front, a gangly boy, about nineteen or so, was sweeping the sidewalk.

  He had bad skin, a straggly soul patch, and running shoes that he’d worn to death, but he had a nice smile and held the door for me.

  “We’re closing in about ten minutes,” he said. “Better hurry up.”

  I thanked him and walked through the center aisle of the store, past shampoos and skin-care products, and arrived at the back, where the pharmacist was working behind his high counter.

  He had white hair and a matching jacket with his name stitched in blue over the pocket: ALAN. The man looked up, pushed his glasses to the top of his head, and said, “I can’t fill a prescription for you tonight, you understand. You’ll have to pick it up tomorrow.”

  I held up the pill bottle in my hand, shook it, and said, “A friend of mine takes this. Paxil.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I’m pretty jittery, and Marla told me it really helps her focus. And I was wondering—”

  I paused as the scraggly helper guy came to the back of the store and said to the pharmacist, “I put the newspapers away and I’m done sweeping the walk, Alan. I can lock up when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks, Gary,” Alan said with a nod. “You were saying, young lady?”

  “Marla likes Paxil, and I have another friend Adele. I think she gets her Paxil here, too,” I said, fishing for a connection, just casting my line. “I was wondering if you know Marla and Adele,” I rambled on, following a hunch, “and if you can tell me if they, or really anyone, had any side effects from this. Before I ask my doctor for a prescription.”

  Alan narrowed his eyes and gave me a curious look. Granted, it was kind of a strange set of questions. “May I see that bottle?” he asked.

  I handed it over, and he snatched it, put it in his drawer, and slammed the drawer shut.

  “I’m sure you know it’s dangerous to take someone else’s prescription drugs, miss. Now off you go. We’re closing up.”

  Great. I was being booted out. Again.

  I didn’t say a word. Just spun on my little boot heels and strode out of Giuseppe’s. Outside, I took a deep breath and sighed. It’d been a long shot, anyway.

  I glanced at my watch and my eyes widened. How had it gotten so late? If I wasn’t home in a minute, I was going to be in serious trouble.

  75

  The traffic light was against me on Sixty-Ninth, so I crossed over to the park side of CPW and kept up my pace, stepping around a dog walker coming toward me with a yappy pack on twisted leashes.

  It was after I was clear of the dogs that I thought I felt someone behind me. I turned my head casually and saw a man maybe fifteen feet back and holding steady. This was a public sidewalk, of course, and a fellow traveler on the dark side of the street was not exactly weird. But still, I felt uncomfortable.

  There’s a low stone wall that runs between Central Park and the sidewalk. At Sixty-Ninth Street, there’s a break in the wall for a pedestrian walkway that leads straight into the park. I took this detour, hoping the guy would just keep walking straight.

  Guess what? He turned into the park, closing the distance between us. Was I paranoid, or was I in trouble?

  I walked up a little rise and veered to the left onto a path I’d walked many times before. But this was different. It was getting dark, and I was nervous.

  The walkway was descending now to where it intersects with a bridle path. Just beyond the path is a two-lane road that loops around the park. There was a steady stream of cars on the road, their headlights cutting through the deepening dusk.

  I kept walking, faster now, heading north toward home. I looked both ways and behind me. I didn’t see th
e man anymore, or anything else suspicious, but still, as I crossed the road, I grabbed at my shoulder bag, feeling for the outside pocket where I kept my phone.

  I whipped it out and, still walking, sent a text.

  Ahead of me was an outcropping of batholithic rock, overgrown in some places with grass, within view of a statue called The Falconer.

  Harry and I sometimes went there to sunbathe.

  I climbed this knoll because it was a pretty good lookout. If anyone was coming for me, I’d see them. I was surrounded by a stand of six trees ahead of me and six behind me. Through the trees, I could see the Dakota only a few short blocks away across the avenue. I could actually pick out the lights in our apartment.

  I took a few moments to catch my breath and was gathering myself to run home when I felt a stunning crack at the back of my head, followed by radiating pain.

  I grabbed air, then went down and rolled to the foot of the slope. I covered my head as I grappled with the inescapable fact that my attacker was right behind me.

  And then he was standing right over me.

  I peered through my fingers and saw his face. I was seeing double, but I recognized him. It was the guy from the pharmacy, the scraggly teen who had opened the door for me.

  Gary.

  He’d had a nice smile then, but now his smile was cruel and cold and his eyes totally black, as if his sockets were empty.

  I was terrified, but I refused to whimper or scream or beg. Cowering encourages tormenters and makes them even more aggressive. I couldn’t show fear.

  “I heard you asking Alan about those dead girls,” he said with a sneer. “Your parents should have taught you to not be so inquisitive.”

  He could have been right. After all, this wasn’t the first time I’d been harshly punished for being inquisitive. Especially by my parents.

  “You’re about to take your last breath,” Gary said. “Sound like a plan?”

  “Not a very good one. We can do better,” I told him, my heart pounding in my temples. “Help me up. If we put our heads together, I’m sure we can come up with something.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He leaned down, and for a brief, surreal moment, I actually thought he was going to reach out his hand and help me up. Then I saw the gun.

  76

  As my gaze fixed on the black eye of the gun barrel, time stretched so that each second broke into a hundred little fragments, each one amazingly sharp and clear.

  I saw Gary’s finger on the trigger and I knew that this was the man who had murdered at least four girls like me, in places not far from where I lay in leaf mold and lichen at the foot of an outcropping.

  I was sure he had followed them from the pharmacy, tracked them through the trees, and waited for an opportunity. I visualized each of the dead girls’ faces: Stacey, Lena, Adele, and Marla, and knew I was the next in line. That this was the last moment of my life.

  Still, I had questions: Why hadn’t Gary just shot me from behind?

  Why didn’t he pull the trigger now?

  Maybe he wanted to draw out the moment because he was having a good time. Maybe he got off on watching my terror.

  My fractured thoughts shot out to Harry and Matthew and Hugo and C.P. and Jacob. And I thought of James. I thought about my life ending, here and now, before I’d had a chance to really live, to find out who I was going to be.

  That was too unfair. I couldn’t die now.

  Something inside me snapped and instinct took over.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” I said. “I have a family who needs me. I swear I won’t tell anyone what I know.”

  “What you think you know,” Gary spat.

  “Exactly! I actually know nothing!” I rambled, my eyes wider. “Nothing about anything at all.”

  Gary tightened his grip on the gun, and my mind just went blank. I tried to scream, but my throat was rigid and gagged by fear.

  “Noooo,” I croaked.

  He laughed. “Well, if that’s all you have to say, time’s up—”

  And then my throat unlocked. I let loose a loud, shrill banshee shriek that could have been heard over the traffic on the road. Suddenly the gun and Gary’s looming face jerked violently back, as if I’d blown him away with the force of my scream.

  I sat up and saw that a second figure had joined us in the little copse of trees. A man had Gary on the ground and was sitting astride him, hitting him again and again with his fists. Gary screamed as I had done, and I saw him try to protect his face from the storm of blows.

  With a brilliant shock of relief, I recognized his attacker.

  It was Jacob.

  He had gotten my text.

  Come quick. I’m on the rock near the Falconer.

  And now Jacob was on his feet, kicking Gary again and again and again. In the fight between a nineteen-year-old loser and a highly trained military commando, the loser had no chance.

  Gary groaned and foamed and pleaded with Jacob to stop. And finally, Jacob did. He twisted the killer’s arm around, pulled it up high on his back, and sat on him hard.

  I stared through the gloom, utterly transfixed, until Jacob called out to me, “Tandy? Tandy, would you mind calling the police?”

  77

  The name of the boy who had just tried to kill me was Gary Semel. Because of the beating he’d taken from Jacob, he had broken ribs and a busted nose and probably internal injuries.

  I hoped Gary was in serious pain and suffering a lot.

  Caputo bent down to where I sat on the ground. “Christ, Tandy. Look at you.”

  “What’re you doing here?” I demanded, wincing as I turned my head. “Shouldn’t you be at—”

  “I left the other crime scene in the capable hands of the Sixth Precinct,” Caputo said. He put a calming hand on my shoulder. I stared at it, surprised that he was capable of being that gentle. “Not that I don’t enjoy having you wrap up my cases and making me look bad, but if you get injured or, God forbid, killed, I’ll never forgive myself,” he said. “That’s the truth, by the way. So take care of yourself, Tandy. Please.”

  Detectives Caputo and Hayes took possession of Gary’s gun and arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon. Then they cuffed him and stuffed him into the first of the two ambulances idling nearby, got in after him, and raced toward Roosevelt Hospital.

  “Can we go home now?” I asked Jacob, wincing as a fresh stab of pain slammed through my skull.

  “We have to get you to a hospital to be checked out,” Jacob replied.

  “You’ve been pistol-whipped, miss,” one of the EMTs told me. “That’s no joke. You don’t want to take chances with a blow to the head.”

  So I was placed on a gurney and loaded into the second ambulance. Jacob climbed up, took a seat on the bench beside me, and held my hand.

  I don’t love clichés, but there are times when the only way to say something is the way it’s been said hundreds of times before.

  “You saved my life, Jacob,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  There were tears in Jacob’s eyes. “Just doing my job,” he replied.

  “Your job? You’re supposed to be our babysitter, but you keep risking your life for us. It’s insane. Uncle Peter can’t be paying you enough.”

  He smiled, then bent over and kissed my forehead.

  “Who said I’m being paid?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Close your eyes, will you? Focus on your breathing. Try to calm yourself.”

  Believe it or not, I did as I was told. I chilled for the next two minutes, but my eyes snapped open as I was being jostled, unloaded, and then rolled through the ambulance bay and into the emergency room.

  Jacob kept his hand on the rail of my gurney as he gave the nurse my information. I was rolled into a curtained stall, where another nurse undressed me and helped me into a paper robe.

  I flashed on Fern Haven, of course. How could I not? Here I was, in a s
mall enclosure, all white, with overhead lights and a narrow bed. I yelled for Jacob, and he parted the curtain.

  “I’m here. I’m right here.”

  A young Dr. Magnifico asked me questions, and I admitted I had suffered double vision for a minute. I confessed to brief paralysis. I said my head still hurt. The doctor put his moving finger in front of my face and asked me to follow it with my eyes. I tried to do it.

  “Let’s not take any chances,” he said.

  Panic flared as I was strapped onto another gurney and wheeled down a corridor, then lifted onto a slab at the mouth of a high-tech machine. I was given a dye injection, and then a nurse came toward me with headphones. I jerked away as if she was holding a flamethrower. Or a snake.

  “You need to wear these so we can talk to you, Tandy, during the CT scan.”

  “No! I don’t want this!” I shouted, my head pounding. “I won’t do it!”

  The nurse looked at Jacob.

  “Just give us a minute,” he said to her. “Please.”

  78

  I couldn’t breathe. Sweat poured from my hairline down my temples and pooled in my ears. In my mind, I was back with Dr. Narmond in the CT scan room. I could hear those piercing buzzes that were zapping and burning my memories away.

  “Don’t let them,” I wheezed to Jacob.

  “This isn’t Fern Haven, Tandy. This is just a hospital. You do have a hard head. We all know that. But if that guy clocked you with enough force—”

  “It’s just a headache,” I pleaded. “Give me some Tylenol and let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m going to be right here.”

  Jacob wheeled over a stool and sat down next to me. When I turned my head, his eyes were on a level with mine.

  “I wanted to take care of you and your brothers,” he said, gripping my hand. “We’re the same flesh and blood, Tandy. You and your brothers and Peter and your father and I. We’re family.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He smiled and touched my forehead, his skin cool against my burning, panicked flesh.