“I don’t know,” Tim said. “Can anyone tell me what she looked like?”
“I think she was wearing boots,” Doreen said. “But I was at the back of the bus.”
“Yeah, she was,” Jamie agreed. “I remember because I thought it was kinda weird.”
“Boots?” Tim said. “In May?”
Doreen and Jamie nodded. Tim could see sincerity in their faces and wondered if the driver might have worn boots to make her foot heavier on the gas pedal. If that was the case, then it probably meant she had planned the entire thing. Was it meant to be a combined suicide-mass murder? Tim’s job now would be to find the body—or, judging from the remains of the bus, what was left of it. He thanked the group for their help, then went to find his partner Rick.
He made his way through the clusters of police, construction workers, and students until he found Rick at the edge of the pit, watching a tow truck haul the bus to the surface. Before he could tell him what the children had said, Rick started talking.
“Look at that thing,” he said. “Smashed like a beer can. You know, if the driver hadn’t been knocked from his seat like that, those two girls would have been killed? I have it figured that when his body wedged between their seats, he acted as a sort of anchor and kept them down on the floor. If they’d have been in that seat when the partition broke—”
Tim cut him off. “Rick, Dwight Percy wasn’t the driver. The kids say it was a woman.”
“How can that be?” Rick demanded. “There isn’t another adult on that bus.”
“We couldn’t have missed her?”
“Impossible,” Rick said. “Miss a full-grown woman in that little package of metal? No way Percy isn’t our driver. The kids are suffering from shock. Or else they’re lying.”
“I don’t think they’re lying,” Tim said.
“There’s no one else on that bus,” Rick insisted.
Later, back at the school, the children still swore the driver had been a woman. And out of fifty of them, not one remembered her face. Police Chief Bryan Davis asked each individually. They had to know something. And yet they had no answers.
Bryan was surprised to see Gina VanBuren, remembering her from another incident long ago. He asked about her father.
“He’s doing okay,” Gina said. “He doesn’t have casts on any more, and he’s learning how to walk again.”
“That’s great,” Bryan said. “You send him my best, okay?”
“Perhaps we should allow them to leave,” an elderly nun suggested. “They need their rest. You may return again tomorrow, when their minds are clear.”
“Good idea,” Bryan answered. “I’ll be back after lunch tomorrow.”
The children were relieved to hear they were going home. It had been two hours since the accident, and most were still frightened and upset. Originally Bryan had wanted to send them home right away but then decided it was best to get information while the incident was still fresh on their minds. Obviously that hadn’t worked. Now he stood in the doorway, watching the children file outside. Their parents had been called, and a number of cars were waiting. Beverly, Doreen, and Jamie, who had working mothers, joined Gina and Alicen.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Melanie said, putting her arms around her daughter. “I called several times wondering when I could take you home, but they made me wait here. I’ve been frantic!”
“The police had to ask some questions,” Gina said.
“Couldn’t it have waited?” Melanie asked as she started the car. “You should have all been sent home at once.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Gina insisted.
Melanie turned to Alicen. “How about you?”
“I—I’m fine,” Alicen said. She fixed her eyes on the road ahead.
Poor kid, Melanie thought She must be taking this worse than any of them.
“Hey, I have an idea,” she said aloud, in an effort to cheer everyone. “Why don’t you let me treat you all to lunch?”
“That’s a great idea,” Jamie said.
“Yeah, neat!” cried Beverly.
“Can we go to Nino’s pizza place, mom?” Gina asked.
“Sure.”
After they had driven for a few minutes, Alicen felt her head growing heavy. She heard a voice inside it, calling to her, commanding that she come home. She looked around, but no one else heard it.
Suddenly she brought one leg up under her body, clutched her stomach, and started to groan.
“Alicen, what’s wrong?” Melanie asked with concern.
“My stomach hurts,” Alicen wailed. “I want to go home!”
“Maybe you’re just hungry,” Doreen suggested.
“I want to go home!” Alicen insisted.
“Okay, honey,” Melanie cooed. “We’ll drop you off. It’s on the way, anyway.”
She reached behind Gina and touched Alicen’s cheek. It felt cool.
“Just lay back,” she said.
“I sure hope you’re okay, Alicen,” Jamie said.
Melanie turned the car around and headed toward the house. On the way, they passed the boarded-up gray mansion that had once belonged to the VanBuren’s only neighbor. Jamie leaned over the back of Melanie’s seat and asked, “Who lives in that spooky old place?”
“No one now,” Melanie said. “But it used to belong to a very old woman named Helen Jennings. She was eighty-four and died of a heart attack.”
“Geez,” Beverly said. “Eighty-four? That’s like a million years.”
Melanie laughed, and Jamie asked, “Is anything inside there?”
“No, it’s been empty for months,” Melanie said.
She sighed, remembering Helen Jennings, who had tried to help her family when they were in trouble, during the months leading to Gary’s accident. Helen had been a little eccentric, watching their house from her bedroom through a pair of binoculars. But Helen had paid a price for helping them. She had died not of a heart attack, but of a broken neck—murdered by the same intruder who had crippled Gary.
But Melanie didn’t want to think about that. She drove up to the front door of her house and let Alicen out. The girl left them without saying goodbye or thanks. Melanie watched her climb the porch steps with her head hung low, like a dog anticipating a beating.
“Everything scares her,” Gina said.
“Maybe she really is sick,” Doreen said.
“She’ll be all right,” Melanie said.
A little voice inside her added, I hope.
10
Alicen laid her white purse on a table in the foyer and walked down the long hallway. She passed several doors before finally opening the one that led to the library. For some reason she wanted to look at the picture of Scrooge in Gina’s book, the one that looked so much like Mr. Percy. She heaved it down from its shelf and lugged it to the sofa.
Scrooge was shaking his fist at someone. (Mr. Percy was wagging his finger at Alicen.) Scrooge was running scared from a ghost. (Mr. Percy was running scared from a . . .)
A what?
Alicen stared at the ink drawing and wondered what she was doing in here. She hadn’t felt right since the accident. It was a feeling of failure, as if she were supposed to have made something happen and hadn’t. She sighed and looked up at the carved angels that watched the room from atop the bookshelves.
She shivered. The room had suddenly grown cold, even though the sun was shining warmly through the windows. Alicen placed the book on the library table in front of her and stretched out on the sofa. She pressed a finger to one of the buttons in the upholstery and started to twist it. She could hear the squeak of metal on metal upstairs as Gary worked out in his therapy room. Outside in the yard, Lad barked at something. Birds sang, someone laughed—
Alicen sat up abruptly. It had sounded as if the laughter were right there in the room, and yet she was alone. She looked around. It was the same high-pitched laughter she had heard in her bedroom. Now she found its source. It was one of the angels that were carved in the shelves, its mo
uth opened wide, emitting short, cackling guffaws. Alicen looked up at it, mesmerized, watching its head loll back and forth as it screamed. She sat up straighter.
The other angels joined in the laughter. Alicen looked from one to the other, seeing angels no longer, but demons. Hideous demons with sharp teeth and bats’ wings and blood dripping from the vines that hung around their necks.
“Ohhh,” Alicen moaned, trying to stand.
Something pushed her back down on the couch.
“You defied me today,” a voice said angrily. “Gina is still alive!”
Something snapped inside Alicen’s head, and she was reminded of the pact she had made the night before. She bit her knuckles hard and stared up at the filmy mass before her. Though she could not see them, she could feel cold hands around her wrists.
“I tried, mother,” she whispered. “I made Gina sit up front, but—”
“Shut up!” the vision snapped. “The VanBuren brat is still alive. Do you want to see your mother again?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t think you do—”
“Yes, I do,” Alicen cried, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, mommy. Why don’t you show me your face?”
There was a long silence.
“You must make them go away from here,” the apparition said at last, ignoring Alicen’s plea. “They must all die.”
“Mommy, why must they all die?”
But the vision was gone. Alicen looked around the room. The angels were still. Her head felt very heavy, and, unable to stop herself, she let it flop back as she fell asleep.
“I’m telling you, I never saw the driver of that bus,” Hank Emmons insisted. It had been just a few hours since the accident, and he was sitting in Bryan Davis’s office.
“You must have seen it coming,” Bryan said. “You could hardly have missed a huge vehicle like that, heading right for the fence.”
“Hey, look,” Hank said, waving his hands, “I was busy. The union just ended a strike, and there’s lots of work to do, you know? I don’t waste my time running to investigate every car that comes speeding down that busy highway. Sure, I heard the thing. I think everyone from here to Montauk heard it. But I didn’t see the bus till it came crashing through the fence. Geez! Everything happened so fast after that.”
“What about your men?”
“What about them?” Hank asked. “Oh, I get it. No, they didn’t see any more than I did. My guys pay attention to their work, you know? They’d better, at least, for what I pay them.”
Bryan ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He was getting nowhere and wished the case had been left entirely to the Suffolk County police. He shouldn’t have volunteered to ask questions. Sure the kids were from his town, and he owed it to them, but where was all this getting him? Nowhere. He had no answers after hours of questioning, and doubted he’d get any more in the days to come.
“Listen,” Hank said then, “I want to find this driver as much as you do. I want to know who she is when I sue the bus company for damages. Say, why haven’t you called the depot? They’d have her name on a sign-out sheet, wouldn’t they?”
“One of my men is seeing to that,” Bryan said, a little resentful that this other man should tell him his business. “The office was closed for lunch, but we ought to be hearing from him shortly.”
The phone rang.
“That’s him,” Bryan said, lifting the receiver. “Belle Bay Police. Well, no ma’am, we’re working on it.” He shook his head at Hank. “I’m sorry about your boy. How is he? Gonna be okay? That’s good. Yes, ma’am. It is a shame, ma’am. We’ll let you know. . . . Yes, yes. Goodbye now, ma’am.”
He hung up. “Damn! That was the mother of the boy who broke his arm. I wish I had answers for her.”
“You’ve been getting a lot of calls,” Hank commented.
“People are angry,” Bryan answered. “They want to know who this driver is. I’ve got a lynch mob out there, Mr. Emmons.”
The phone rang again. Bryan shifted a little before answering it, bracing himself for another barrage of unanswerable questions. This time, it was the cop at the bus depot.
“What can you tell me, Mike?” Bryan asked. “Who’s the driver?”
“Nobody,” Mike said, his tone serious.
“What?!”
“I mean it,” Mike said. “There isn’t any name next to the bus number on the morning register. The supervisor says he saw her writing in the book, but there’s nothing on the page. Not even an indentation from an empty pen.”
“Damn,” Bryan whispered. “Mike, did the supervisor get a good look at her?”
“I asked,” Mike said. “He was too busy to notice her. All he remembered was her blond hair. And get this—she was wearing fur boots.”
“Must have been on drugs or something,” Bryan said, “dressing like that. Okay, Mike, that’s all. Why don’t you go to lunch now?”
“I’ll do that,” Mike said, hanging up.
Bryan put down his own phone and looked at Hank Emmons. The man was sitting across the desk with his chin in his hands, studying Bryan’s face. Now he sat a little straighter, ran his palms over the front of his shirt, and said, “You haven’t got the slightest idea what do do about all this, do you?”
“No,” Bryan admitted. He started to bounce a pencil on his desk.
“Say, I have to get back to work.”
Bryan looked up. “Huh? Oh, sure. Sure. I’m finished with you.”
With a wave of his hand, Hank indicated a piece of paper.
“You have my number if you need me again,” he said.
“I know,” Bryan answered.
He stood up and walked from the room with Hank. The two men parted company out in the hall, Hank heading for the front door and Bryan for the men’s room. When he returned to his office, he was surprised to see a girl sitting in a wooden chair near his desk. He looked over her long black hair and chubby face and remembered her from the school. He smiled at her.
“Alicen, right?” he asked.
“Right,” the girl said, not smiling.
“My memory’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Bryan said, sitting behind his desk. “So, what can I do for you?”
“I came to tell you what happened on the bus,” Alicen said. “I saw everything.”
“Yeah?” Bryan asked, a little skeptical. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Everything happened too fast, and I was scared,” Alicen cried, her expression becoming frantic for a moment. Then it quickly dissolved again into blankness. “Now I remember things. Just before the bus hit the fence, the driver opened the door and jumped out.”
“She did, huh?”
“You have to believe me!”
“Okay, okay,” Bryan said, waving a hand. “So what happened after she jumped out?”
“I saw her roll down a slope,” Alicen said. “I don’t remember anything else.”
Bryan picked up a pencil and started to bounce it again, his habit when thinking. This was possible, he thought. Anyone crazy enough to drive a bus at over eighty miles an hour might be crazy enough to jump from it. That would explain why Hank hadn’t seen her. But then again, none of the other children had witnessed this feat.
“I think I remember some of the kids saying Mr. Percy made you all lie down on the floor?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how could you have seen what the driver was doing?”
“I wasn’t on the floor,” Alicen said. “My friend Gina was too scared to move, and I was supposed to hold her—I mean, she was holding onto me, and I couldn’t move, either.”
“But Gina didn’t tell me she saw the driver jump,” Bryan said.
“She had her hands over her eyes,” Alicen said. “She was scared, but I wasn’t.”
“I’m just glad she wasn’t hurt,” Bryan said. “I like Gina.”
“You know her?”
“Yeah, from some work I did with her family last year,” Bryan said. “Nothing t
hat concerns you.”
“Were people really murdered in her house?”
Bryan’s eyes widened. “Who told you that?”
“People,” Alicen said, shrugging.
“Well, it’s not true,” Bryan insisted, his tone a little uneasy. “Listen, honey. I appreciate you coming here, and I’ll call the Suffolk police. They’ll take a look along the roadside.”
At that speed, he thought, they’ll be looking for a body.
Alicen nodded. To Bryan, her expression looked a little smug. He was suspicious of her, and yet her explanation was the only one he had to go on right now.
Half an hour later, Derek found his daughter sitting on the porch swing, tickling Lad’s fur with her bare toes. He sat down next to her, putting an arm along the edge of the seat back.
“I saw your purse in the hallway,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were home?”
“You were busy,” Alicen said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You wouldn’t have bothered me.”
“You always tell me to work out my problems for myself,” Alicen replied.
“But this is different. This is not one of your nightmares. It was a serious accident, and I’m concerned about you. I heard what happened to Mr. Percy. You must have been terribly frightened.”
“I wasn’t,” Alicen said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m glad he died,” Alicen said, staring at a ladybug that crept along the white railing. “I hate him.”
“Alicen,” Derek said gently, “you shouldn’t ever hate anyone.”
Alicen looked up at him, her brown eyes deep. “Don’t you hate anyone?”
“No one,” Derek said.
“Not even the man who killed my mother?”
Derek sighed deeply and put his arms around his daughter. Unaccustomed to such affection, she stiffened. Derek drew his arms away.
“Alicen, of course I hate what that man did,” he said, “and I’ll never get over losing your mother. But I can’t hate the man himself. He’ll have to live with his guilt, and that’s enough without my hatred, too.”
Alicen closed her eyes. “Sometimes I talk to mommy, and it feels like she’s really here.”
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