Safe House

by Jenny Carroll

  Only it can't be him, because he was with me when Heather was kidnapped. And according to the EMTs, those wounds she'd sustained were a good six hours old, which meant whoever had done it—and Heather still wasn't talking—had attacked her at around eight in the evening. And Mark had been with me at eight....

  But when Allan got to the part about inner voices, I sat up a little straighter.

  "Hey," I said. "Wait just a minute here...."

  "Yes?" Special Agent Johnson broke off and looked at me expectantly. "Something bothering you, Jessica?"

  "You've got to be kidding me," I said. "You can't seriously be trying to pin this thing on my brother."

  Jill looked thoughtful. "Why on earth would you think we were trying to do that, Jess?"

  My jaw dropped. "What do you think I am, stupid or something? He just said—"

  "I don't see what would make you jump to the conclusion," Special Agent Johnson said, "that we suspect Douglas, Jessica. Unless you know something we don't know."

  "Yes," Special Agent Smith said. "Did Douglas tell you where you could find Heather, Jessica? Is that how you knew to look in the house on the pit road?"

  "Oh!" I stood up so fast, my chair tipped over backwards. "That's it. That is so it. End of interview. I am out of here."

  "Why are you so angry, Jessica?" Special Agent Johnson, not moving from his chair, asked me. "Could it be perhaps because you think we might be right?"

  "In your dreams," I said. "You are not pinning this one on Douglas. No way. Ask Heather. Go ahead. She'll tell you it wasn't Douglas."

  "Heather Montrose did not see her attackers," Special Agent Johnson said lightly. "Something heavy was thrown over her head, she says, and then she was locked in a small enclosed space—presumably a car trunk—until some time after nightfall. When she was released, it was by several individuals in ski masks, from whom she attempted to escape—but who dissuaded her most emphatically. She can only say that their voices sounded vaguely familiar. She recalls very little, other than that."

  I swallowed. Poor Heather.

  Still, as a sister, I had a job to do.

  "It wasn't Douglas," I said vehemently. "He doesn't have any friends. And he certainly has never owned a ski mask."

  "Well, it shouldn't be hard to prove he had nothing to do with it," Special Agent Smith said. "I suppose he was in his room the whole time, as usual. Right, Jessica?"

  I stared at them. They knew. I don't know how, but they knew. They knew Douglas hadn't been in the house when Heather had disappeared.

  And they also knew I hadn't the slightest idea where he'd been, either.

  "If you guys," I said, feeling so mad it was a wonder smoke wasn't coming out of my nostrils, "even think about dragging Douglas into this, you can kiss good-bye any hope you might have of me ever coming to work for you."

  "What are you saying, Jessica?" Special Agent Johnson asked. "That you do, indeed, still have extrasensory perception?"

  "How did you know where to find Heather Montrose, Jessica?" Jill asked in a sharp voice.

  I went to the door. When I got to it, I turned around to face them.

  "You stay away from Douglas," I said. "I mean it. If you go near him—if you so much as look at him—I'll move to Cuba, and I'll tell Fidel Castro everything he ever wanted to know about your undercover operatives over there."

  Then I flung the door open and stalked out into the hallway.

  Well, they couldn't stop me. I wasn't under arrest, after all.

  I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't. I mean, I knew the United States government was eager to have me on its payroll, but to stoop to suggesting that if I did not come to their aid, they would frame my own brother for a crime he most certainly did not commit . . . well, that was low. George Washington, I knew, would have hung his head in shame if he'd heard about it.

  When I got to the waiting area, I was still so mad I almost went stalking right through it, right out the door and on down the street. I couldn't see properly, I was so mad.

  Or maybe it was because I'd just gone for so long without sleep. Whatever the reason, I stalked right past Rob and my parents, who were waiting for me—on different sides of the room—in front of the duty desk.

  "Jessica!"

  My mother's cry roused me from my fury. Well, that and the fact that she flung her arms around me.

  "Jess, are you all right?"

  Caught up in the stranglehold that served as my mother's excuse for a hug, I blinked a few times and observed Rob getting up slowly from the bench he'd been stretched out across.

  "What happened?" my mom wanted to know. "Why did they keep you in there for so long? They said something about you finding a girl—another cheerleader. What's this all about? And what on earth were you doing out so late?"

  Rob, across the room, smiled at the eye-roll I gave him behind my mother's back. Then he mouthed, "Call me."

  Then he—very tactfully, I thought—left.

  But not tactfully enough, since my dad went, "Who was that boy over there? The one who just left?"

  "No one, Dad," I said. "Just a guy. Let's go home, okay? I'm really tired."

  "What do you mean, just a guy? That wasn't even the same boy you were with earlier. How many boys are you seeing, anyway, Jessica? And what, exactly, were you doing out with him in the middle of the night?"

  "Dad," I said, taking him by the arm and trying to physically propel him and my mother from the station house. "I'll explain when we get to the car. Now just come on."

  "What about the rule?" my father demanded.

  "What rule?"

  "The rule that states you are not to see any boy socially whom your mother and I have not met."

  "That's not a rule," I said. "At least, nobody ever told me about it before."

  "Well, that's just because this is the first time anyone's asked you out," my dad said. "But you can bet there are going to be some rules now. Especially if these guys think it's all right for you to sneak out at night to meet with them—"

  "Joe," my mother whispered, looking around the empty waiting room nervously. "Not so loud."

  "I'll talk as loud as I want," my dad said. "I'm a taxpayer, aren't I? I paid for this building. Now I want to know, Toni. I want to know who this boy is our daughter is sneaking out of the house to meet...."

  "God," I said. "It's Rob Wilkins." I was more glad than I could say that Rob wasn't around to hear this. "Mrs. Wilkins's son. Okay? Now can we go?"

  "Mrs. Wilkins?" My dad looked perplexed. "You mean Mary, the new waitress at Mastriani's?"

  "Yes," I said. "Now let's—"

  "But he's much too old for you," my mother said. "He's graduated already. Hasn't he graduated already, Joe?"

  "I think so," my dad said. You could tell he was totally uninterested in the subject now that he knew he employed Rob's mother. "Works over at the import garage, right, on Pike's Creek Road?"

  "A garage?" my mother practically shrieked. "Oh, my God—"

  It was, I knew, going to be a long drive home.

  "This," my father said, "had better have been one of those ESP things, young lady, or you—"

  And an even longer day.

  C H A P T E R

  14

  I didn't get to school until fourth period.

  That's because my parents, after I'd explained about rescuing Heather, let me sleep in. Not that they were happy about it. Good God, no. They were still excessively displeased, particularly my mother, who did NOT want me hanging out anymore with a guy who had no intention, now or ever, of going to college.

  My dad, though … he was cool. He was just like, "Forget it, Toni. He's a nice kid."

  My mom was all, "How would you know? You've never even met him."

  "Yeah, but I know Mary," he said. "Now go get some sleep, Jessica."

  Except that I couldn't. Sleep, that is. In spite of the fact that I lay in my bed from five, when I finally crawled back into it, until about ten thirty. All I could think about was
Heather and that house. That awful, awful house.

  Oh, and what Special Agent Johnson had said, too. About Douglas, I mean.

  All Douglas's voices ever do is tell him to kill himself, not other people.

  So it didn't make sense, what Special Agent Johnson was suggesting. Not for a minute.

  Besides, Douglas didn't even drive. I mean, he had a license and a car and all.

  But since that day they'd called us—last Christmas, when Douglas had had the first of his episodes, up where he was going to college—and we went to get him, and Mike drove his car back, it had sat, cold and dead, under the carport. Even Mike—who'd have given just about anything for a car of his own, having stupidly asked for a computer for graduation instead of a car, with which he might have enticed Claire Lippman, his lady love, on a date to the quarries—wouldn't touch Douglas's car. It was Douglas's car. And Douglas would drive it again one day.

  Only he hadn't. I knew he hadn't because when I went outside, after Mom offered to give me a lift to school, I checked his tires. If he'd been driving around out by that pit house, there'd have been gravel in them.

  But there wasn't. Douglas's wheels were clean as a whistle.

  Not that I'd believed Special Agent Johnson. He'd just been saying that about Douglas to see if I maybe knew who the real killer was and just wasn't telling, for some bizarre reason. As if anybody who knew the identity of a murderer would go around keeping it a secret.

  I am so sure.

  I got to Orchestra in the middle of the strings' chair auditions. Ruth was playing as I walked in with my late pass in hand. She didn't notice me, she was so absorbed in what she was playing, which was a sonata we'd learned at music camp that summer. She would, I knew, get first chair. Ruth always gets first chair.

  When she was done, Mr. Vine said, "Excellent, Ruth," and called the next cellist. There were only three cellists in Symphonic Orchestra, so it wasn't like the competition was particularly rough. But we all had to sit there and listen while people auditioned for their chairs, and let me tell you, it was way boring. Especially when we got to the violins. There were about fifteen violinists, and they all played the same thing.

  "Hey," I whispered, as I pretended to be rooting around in my backpack for something.

  "Hey," Ruth whispered back. She was putting her cello away. "Where were you? What's going on? Everyone is saying you saved Heather Montrose from certain death."

  "Yeah," I said modestly. "I did."

  "Jeez," Ruth said. "Why am I always the last to know everything? So where was she?"

  "In this disgusting old house," I whispered back, "on the pit road. You know, that old road no one ever uses anymore, off Pike's Quarry."

  "What was she doing there?" Ruth wanted to know.

  "She wasn't exactly there by choice." I explained how Rob and I had found Heather.

  "Jeez," Ruth said again, when I was through. "Is she going to be all right?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Nobody will say. But—"

  "Excuse me. Would you two please keep it down? You are ruining this for the rest of us."

  We both looked over and saw Karen Sue Hankey shooting us an annoyed look.

  Only she was shooting it at us over a wide, white gauze bandage, which stretched across her nose and was stuck in place on either cheekbone with surgical tape.

  I burst out laughing. Well, you would have, too.

  "Laugh all you want, Jess," Karen Sue said. "We'll see who's laughing last in court."

  "Karen Sue," I choked, between chortles. "What have you got that thing on for? You look completely ridiculous."

  "I am suffering," Karen Sue said, primly, "from a contused proboscis. You can see the medical report."

  "Contused pro—" Ruth, who'd gotten a perfect score on the verbal section of her PSATs, went, "For God's sake. All that means is that your nose is bruised."

  "The chance of infection," Karen Sue said, "is dangerously high."

  That one killed me. I nearly convulsed, I was laughing so hard. Mr. Vine finally noticed and said, "Girls," in a warning voice.

  Karen Sue's eyes glittered dangerously over the edge of her bandage, but she didn't say anything more.

  Then.

  When the bell for lunch finally rang, Ruth and I booked out of there as fast as we could. Not, of course, because we were so eager to sample the lunch fare being offered in the caf, but because we wanted to talk about Heather.

  "So she said 'they,'" Ruth said as we bent over our tacos, the entree of the day. Well, I bent over my taco. Ruth had crumbled hers all up with a bunch of lettuce and poured fat-free dressing all over it, making a taco salad. And a mess, in my opinion. "You're sure about that? She said, 'They’re coming back'?"

  I nodded. I was starving, for some reason. I was on my third taco.

  "Definitely," I said, swilling down some Coke. "They."

  "Which makes it seem likely," Ruth said, "that more than one person was involved in Amber's attack, as well. I mean, if the two attacks are related. Which, face it, they must be."

  "Right," I said. "What I want to know is, who's been using that house as their party headquarters? Somebody's been letting loose there, and pretty regularly, from the looks of it."

  Ruth shuddered delicately. I had, of course, described the house on the pit road in all its lurid detail. . . including the condom wrappers.

  "While I suppose we should be grateful, at least, that they—whoever theyare—are practicing safe sex," Ruth said with a sigh, "it hardly seems like the kind of place one might refer to as a love shack."

  "No kidding," I said. "The question is who have they—whoever they are—been taking there? Girl-wise, I mean. Unless, you know, they're having sex with each other."

  Ruth shook her head. "Gay guys would have fixed the place up. You know, throw pillows and all of that. And they would have recycled their empties."

  "True," I said. "So what kind of girl would put up with those kind of conditions?"

  We looked around the caf. Ernest Pyle High was, I suppose, a pretty typical example of a mid-western American high school. There was one Hispanic student, a couple of Asian-Americans, and no African-Americans at all. Everyone else was white. The only difference between the white students, besides religion—Ruth and Skip, being Jewish, were in the minority—was how much their parents earned.

  And that, as usual, turned out to be the crux of the matter.

  "Grits," Ruth said simply, as her gaze fell upon a long table of girls whose perms were clearly of the at-home variety, and whose nails were press-on, not salon silk-wrapped. "It has to be."

  "No," I said.

  Ruth shook her head. "Jess, why not? It makes sense. I mean, the house is way out in the country, after all."

  "Yeah," I said. "But the beer bottles on the floor. They were imports."

  "So?"

  "So Rob and his friends"—I swallowed a mouthful of taco—"they only drink American beer. At least, that's what he said. He saw the bottles and went, Townies."'

  Ruth eyed me. "Has it ever occurred to you that the Jerk might be covering up for his bohunk friends?"

  "Rob," I said, putting my taco down, "is not a jerk. And his friends aren't bohunks. If you will recall, they saved me from becoming the U.S. Army's number one secret weapon last spring...."

  "I am not trying to be offensive," Ruth said. "Honest, Jess. But I think you might be too besotted with this guy to see the writing on the wall—"

  "The only writing I'm looking at," I said, "is the writing that says Rob didn't do it."

  "I am not suggesting that he did. I am merely saying that some of his peers might—"

  Suddenly an enormous backpack plonked down onto the bench beside mine. I looked up and had to restrain a groan.

  "Hi, girls," Skip said. "Mind if I join you?"

  "Actually," Ruth said, her upper lip curling. "We were just leaving."

  "Ruth," Skip said, "You're lying. I have never seen you leave a taco salad unfinished."

 
"There's a first time for everything," Ruth said.

  "Actually," Skip said, "what I have to say will only take a minute. I know how you girls value your precious dining moments together. There's a midnight screening of a Japanese anime film at the Downtown Cinema this weekend, and I wanted to know if you'd be interested in going."

  Ruth looked at her brother as if he'd lost his mind. "Me?" she said. "You want to know if I'd go to the movies with you?"

  "Well," Skip said, looking, for the first time since I'd known him—and that was a long, long time—embarrassed. "Not you, actually. I meant Jess."

  I choked on a piece of taco shell.

  "Hey," Skip said, banging me on the back a few times. "You all right?"

  "Yeah," I said, when I'd recovered. "Um. Listen. Can get I back to you on that? The movie thing, I mean? I've kind of got a lot going on right now...."

  "Sure," Skip said. "You know the number." He picked up his backpack and left.

  "Oh . . . my . . . God," Ruth said as soon as he was out of earshot. I told her to shut up.

  Only she didn't.

  "He loves you," Ruth said. "Skip is in love with you. I can't believe it."

  "Shut up, Ruth," I said, getting up and lifting my tray.

  "Jessica and Skip, sittin' in a tree." Ruth could not stop laughing.

  I walked over to the conveyor belt that carries our lunch trays into the kitchen and dumped it. As I was dumping it, I saw Tisha Murray and a few of the other cheerleaders and jocks—and Karen Sue, who followed the popular crowd wherever they went, thus making her deserving of Mark's nickname for her, the Wannabe—leaving the caf. They were going outside to lounge by the flagpole, which was where all the beautiful people in our school sat on nice days, working on their tans until the bell rang.

  "Skip's never been out on a date before," Ruth said, coming up behind me to dump her own tray. "I wonder if he'll know not to bring his backpack along."

  Ignoring Ruth, I followed Tisha and the others outside.

  It was another gorgeous day—the kind that made sitting inside a classroom really hard. Summer was over, but somebody had forgotten to tell the weatherman. The sun beat down on the long, outstretched legs of the cheerleaders in the grass beneath the flagpole, and on the backs of the jocks who stood above them. I could not see Mark anywhere, but Tisha was sitting on the grass with one hand shading her eyes, talking to Jeff Day.