“The boy will be fine. Logan is strong. As for me, as long as I have my six-burner stove in the new house, I’ll be happy. Take this,” Helen said, and put her hand inside the pocket of her apron. She came out with a piece of sturdy red string from one of her many sewing projects, which was tied in a slipknot, and handed it to Julia.
“Thanks, but what is this?” Julia asked.
“A Polish tradition. When I was a little girl, before my parents got my brother and me out of the country to protect us from the Nazis, my grandma, my babcia, warned me about the evil eye. The day I said good-bye to her, she attached a piece of red string like this one with a slipknot on my suitcase to protect me. I know you think I’m a superstitious old woman, but I believe it saved us. My brother and I made the journey safely. My grandma and my parents didn’t make it out. My grandma sent all the luck with me and my brother.”
“That’s a beautiful thought. I don’t believe in the evil eye or superstitions, but if it’s important to you, I’ll take it,” Julia said, and tied the piece of string around the loop to her purse. “Do you want me to avoid walking under ladders and black cats, too?”
“You joke around all you want, but I believe in these things. I woke up this morning with a bad feeling about you. I see a dark cloud over your head, my Julia Gooden. Be careful out there.”
“Always,” Julia said, and headed out to April Young’s school, her starting point to unearth some answers about what happened to the slain teacher.
CHAPTER 3
Two weeks earlier
April Young felt a searing burn in her lungs, but made herself keep running even though she was pretty sure she was going to puke a couple of times already during her thirty-minute jog.
April panted heavily and decided to give herself a break. She slowed her pace to what was slightly more than a fast walk, even though she wanted to get out of the creepy section of the RiverWalk Trail as fast as possible.
She had made the unwise decision that morning to explore the Dequindre Cut half-mile path, parts of which took her past vacant warehouses, confined dark spaces, and graffiti-strewn concrete walls, including one classy message that read, Bite me, above a spray-painted picture of an engorged male organ.
Not a great place to be running alone at six-thirty in the morning, she now realized. But April had taken the recommendation about the Dequindre Cut from the good-looking guy she had met last weekend while she was jogging along the much more scenic and populated Gabriel Richard Park section of the trail.
April knew one thing for sure: She hated running. She’d been at it for three months, starting out with her friend Gwen, the principal at her school. But running didn’t get any easier for her, no matter how many times she did it. And some days, she barely clocked in over a mile.
But she kept at it. April had never given up on anything in her life. And she wasn’t going to let a two-mile run break her.
After her husband Jack’s death in Afghanistan, April knew she had to do something, anything, to make sure she kept moving. The daily runs, as painful as they were, made her feel like she was pushing forward. Otherwise, she was afraid she would atrophy to the point that she would give up and stay in bed, hugging Jack’s Marine T-shirt, the one that had been returned to her, along with his other belongings from his final tour.
April pushed ahead on the empty path and admitted to herself that although she’d never likely sign up for a marathon, the fact that she was out here at the crack of dawn was an accomplishment. And it had helped get her A game back. April needed to be her best for her son, Kyle, and for her first-grade students, who relied on her to show up every day with her usual greeting, “Good morning, my sweethearts.”
April’s thoughts turned to a little boy she was tutoring, Pedro, who had yesterday offered her one of his gloriously sweet, shy smiles while the two of them listened to Rosetta Stone tapes in April’s attempt to help her struggling student learn English.
“Buenos días, Señora Young,” Pedro said as he stood outside April’s classroom, waiting for them to start their lesson. He handed her a picture of a flower he had drawn and a bollo, a sweet roll his mother had made fresh for her that morning.
April spotted a concrete enclosed part of the trail in the distance, where a section of the path cut underneath a bridge. She flashed to a horror novel she had read recently, the genre not really her style. She was more of a romance, chick-lit fan, but the book was in Jack’s trunk of items that came home without him. So she read it to feel close to him again.
April looked up to the top of the bridge that ran above the tunnel section of the trail and saw a car pass by, likely an early-morning commuter, she figured, and felt a hollow reassurance that there were other signs of life around her.
If she could just book it as fast as she could through the tunnel, she figured she’d be okay. April told her students they just had to jump when they felt scared. She guaranteed them the water wouldn’t be as cold as they thought.
Time to walk the talk.
“Stop being such a friggin’ pansy,” April said. She picked up her pace and tried to take her mind off the pain in her calves by thinking about the cute guy she had met on the trail last weekend.
She hadn’t been with anyone since Jack’s death a year ago, and never once considered it. Until now. She felt guilty about betraying her husband’s memory, but there was something about the fellow jogger she met—his easy, friendly appeal—and it definitely didn’t hurt that he was pretty great to look at. April put the guy somewhere in his forties, older than she was, but she didn’t care. He was tall, with a tightly muscled, strong build, sandy-blond hair, and green eyes. But what really grabbed her was his intensity. When he looked at her, he made her feel like she was special.
April started humming the Rihanna song “Only Girl (In the World)” and her dormant fantasies that she had shelved since Jack’s death came to life. She pictured the fellow jogger’s lips and found herself smiling when she thought how it would feel to run her tongue over them while he was on top of her.
April steeled her nerves as she approached the tunnel, but then stopped short when she saw a figure inside, running in her direction.
April had a rule that she would never get into an elevator alone with a stranger, and it held true now. There was no way she was going to be trapped inside the dark tunnel with God knows what kind of freak of nature that could be in there.
April backed up from the mouth of the tunnel and calculated she’d be able to run up the embankment if the person shuttling fast toward her was a mugger. But she felt a welcome surge of relief, coupled by a nervous excitement in her stomach, when the person emerged and gave her a wide, surprised smile.
God, she couldn’t believe her crazy luck.
April wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow and ran a hand over her shoulder-length, light brown hair that she realized likely looked a hot mess.
“Twice in one week,” April said to the man she had met the weekend before.
“This is my lucky day,” he said. “Okay, full disclosure here. You mentioned you usually ran at this time, so I got up early in case I might bump into you.”
“Really?” April asked, and then felt ridiculous for sounding like a high-school girl with an obvious crush she wasn’t sure she should reveal yet.
“Absolutely. I really enjoyed talking to you and kicked myself for not asking for your number. I see you took my suggestion about the Dequindre Cut. It’s a little more urban. But I like a little Detroit grit sometimes.”
“Me too, but I’ve got to say, a couple spots along this route are a little . . . how should I say it?”
“Like you’re running through the ’hood?” he asked. He smiled and his greens eyes stayed on April. She turned away so he wouldn’t see her blush over the attention.
“I couldn’t have put it better. I caught some interesting graffiti along the way.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about a couple of those tags. Definitely not for the eyes of a clas
sy lady like yourself.”
“You’re sweet. I’m glad we ran into each other again, too. I remember what you said about your son.”
“Ben.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine losing a child.”
“It’s okay. I don’t want you to feel bad about it, Julia.”
“Julia? No. My name is April.”
The man smacked an open palm against his forehead. “Oh, God, I’m an idiot.”
“Please don’t worry about it,” April said. “It’s okay. Most people I know are bad at names. As a teacher, I have to make it a point to remember all my students’ names on the first day of class. Otherwise the kids will eat you alive.”
“I bet you’re the best teacher at Collington.”
April smiled, but wracked her brain to try and remember whether she had told the man where she worked. April was sure she had mentioned she taught first grade. But had she mentioned Collington?
“I’m so sorry. It’s a stupid habit I haven’t broken yet.”
“Julia is your wife’s name,” April said.
“Yes. She and my son, Ben, they died in a car crash about a year ago. I wanted to make a good impression if I saw you again, but I’m thinking I just blew it.”
April reached out and gave the man a friendly pat on his hand.
“It’s okay. I’ve done that before,” April said, and remembered the times she accidentally called a male teacher her husband Jack’s name. “I’m sorry to hear about your wife and son. Do you have any other kids?”
“No. They were all I had. It’s been tough, but I’m starting to rebuild things. Listen to me going on about my problems. It must be hard bringing up two boys all by yourself.”
“It has its challenges, but I only have one son.”
The man looked up to the embankment and an older-model Buick that was parked on the side of the road on the far end of the bridge.
“Someone’s got car trouble,” he said. “I should probably help. I always try to be a Good Samaritan when I can. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” April said, and wondered if he was going to see if she wanted to grab a coffee.
“I hope I’m not being too forward, but did your husband die from a roadside bomb? You should be really proud of him, a Marine dying in the line of duty.”
“I’m sorry?”
April felt a knot tie itself tightly in the middle of her chest as she looked back at the handsome man standing in front of her. She couldn’t remember everything they had shared when they ran into each other before, but she was positive she hadn’t mentioned Jack was a Marine, let alone the fact that he had died while serving his country. And she was certain she had only given him her first name, so there was no way he could’ve found Jack’s obituary if he tried to research her on the Internet.
“How do you know about that?” April said as a raw edge of defensiveness rose in her voice.
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have brought that up. My mistake. You wear a size two, right?” he said, and inched in closer. He did a quick inspection of her face and then frowned. “You have freckles. I didn’t notice them before. There’s always a work-around, though. A little foundation should fix you up just fine. Just as long as you fit the dress. I’ll make you look like her, no problem.”
“I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m leaving.”
April took a hasty step back and reached into her waist pack as her hand searched for her phone. Her eyes darted up the embankment and she wondered if she could outrun the man who was now only a few feet away from her. She snatched out her phone, and with a shaking hand, she began to punch in 911, but the man grabbed her wrist and squeezed until she felt something crack and her phone fell to the concrete.
“What the hell is this?” April cried. “You’re hurting me! Let go!”
The man extracted a camouflage green-handled, black-bladed knife from underneath his T-shirt and pressed the blade against her stomach.
“Time to fix you up,” he said.
CHAPTER 4
Collington Elementary School in Hamtramck, fifteen minutes north of Detroit, was a tall, distressed redbrick building, with an American flag waving out front and a bright yellow sign next to the main door that read: DETROIT SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE.
A bus pulled away from the curb, and Julia felt a pang of guilt that Helen had to drive Logan to school instead of her, a mother-son ritual Julia had enjoyed during her brief sabbatical.
Julia exited her SUV when the first bell rang and walked against the tide of parents that were flooding out of the gates to the parking lot.
Inside the school office, Julia worked to get the attention of an attractive, fifty-something woman with short brown hair, round glasses, and a flowered sweater set, who was on a call, repeating over and over, “Well, that’s school policy.”
The assistant, whose nametag read Janet, hung up and addressed Julia with an all-business “Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m looking for your principal, Gwen Holiday,” Julia answered, pulling the name out of her memory, since she looked it up on her phone before she went into the school. “My name is Julia Gooden. I’m a reporter. I’m working on a follow-up story about one of your teachers, April Young. I’m sorry about what happened to her.”
The assistant, Janet, dropped her head back in the direction of her computer, dismissing Julia. “Principal Holiday has appointments all day. We’ve already talked to the press.”
“I realize that, and I know the principal must be very busy, but this is important.”
“Everything is important,” Janet said. She sighed heavily and made her way to a closed principal’s door. Julia waited for a sum total of thirty seconds when Janet came back with her answer.
“Like I said, the principal is tied up all morning, and we won’t be making any further comments to the press.”
The office assistant returned to her desk without looking at Julia and began to tap her pink acrylic fingernails against her computer’s keyboard. Julia tried to come up with a Plan B when the side door to the interior of the school opened and a little boy came in with a freshly bloodied knee.
“Hold on, Aiden,” the assistant said.
Julia made a move to the door leading to the parking lot as the office assistant escorted the child inside the adjoining nurse’s office, giving Julia the opening she needed. Julia reversed course, made a beeline to the principal’s door, and went inside, not bothering to knock.
The principal, Gwen Holiday, was sitting at her desk, signing paperwork. She stood up when Julia barged inside. The principal was thin, with a blond bob, and wore a tan-colored pantsuit, with a gold-and-green elephant brooch pinned to her lapel.
“Can I help you?” the principal asked in a polite but defensive tone.
“I’m sorry to come in like this. I didn’t think you’d talk to me otherwise. I’m Julia Gooden, the reporter your assistant told you about.”
“You need to leave. I’ve already talked to the media. This is a tragedy for our school.”
“I have no doubt. I’m very sorry about what happened to Ms. Young. I have a son in third grade, and I can’t imagine if something happened to one of his teachers. If you’ll give me a minute to explain, and if you still want me to leave, then I promise, I’ll go.”
The principal sized up Julia and sat back down in her chair. “Go ahead.”
“I realize this is a terrible tragedy ... ,” Julia said.
“April was my friend.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. I want to find out who killed April. I’ve followed the coverage about her, and I don’t think the stories have shown what kind of person April was, and how much she meant to her family and the people at this school. April was a single mom?”
“That’s right. She has a son, Kyle, who goes to school here. Kyle’s grandmother told him April died in a car accident, because she couldn’t tell him the truth.”
“Can you tell me more about April? I want to be sure my stories m
emorialize her the right way.”
Gwen gestured with her head for Julia to sit down in the chair on the other side of her desk and Julia complied, realizing she was in. At least for a few minutes, and that’s all she needed.
“April showed up here every morning an hour early to help her kids who were falling behind. A good percentage of our students are below the poverty level and they’re not getting help with their studies at home. April was there for them.”
“She was divorced, taking care of her son by herself?” Julia asked, guiding the conversation where it needed to go, since she knew husbands, boyfriends, and exes were generally the first people the cops would look at in a case like this.
“No, her husband died overseas. He was a Marine.”
“I’m sorry. I imagine her death is going to be even harder for her son then. Did April have a boyfriend or anyone else she was seeing? Or maybe an issue with a parent at school?”
“No. April’s husband died last year. She couldn’t bring herself to date anyone since. As far as parents, I can’t say this about many of my other teachers, but all the parents loved April. She was that kind of person.”
“April was a runner. Did she always run on the RiverWalk Trail?”
Gwen ran a nervous hand across her desk. “Yes, and I feel terrible about it. I was the one who convinced her to start running with me last year. After her husband died, I figured it would be a good outlet. The Detroit RiverWalk was always her route when she started running alone. She only ran about a mile or two every morning, but she did it six days a week, usually at the crack of dawn before she had to go to work. She lived with her parents after her husband died, so they were home with Kyle when she ran. I always told her not to run by herself, especially so early in the morning when there weren’t as many people around. She never listened.”
“When you ran with April, did you ever see anyone who made you think twice? Maybe another jogger or someone who was hanging around who approached April?”
“April got plenty of looks from guys. She was pretty and fit. She definitely got second looks when we ran together, but nothing untoward. I’m divorced. I know creeps when I see them.”
You Fit the Pattern Page 3
