“Yeah.”
“Where?”
Carlotta looked excited. “You’ll see.”
A half mile out from school, we hit a traffic jam. This was something else that had never happened before—the road was usually empty at this hour—but when I saw the flashing lights up ahead, I immediately understood.
“The state police found him around two in the morning,” Carlotta said. “Mrs. Zapatero from the motel was coming back late from visiting her sister and saw them roping off the crime scene. She said the kid was laid out on one of the picnic tables, like a human sacrifice.”
As we got closer to the turnaround, Carlotta and I rolled our windows down and leaned out, hoping to catch a glimpse of the corpse. Señor Diaz yanked us back into the car and gave us each a swat on the head. “Show some respect!” he demanded, adding, to Carlotta: “You see why I don’t want you walking?”
Did you tell Señor Diaz about the janitor?
No. I know I should have, but I was pissed at him for hitting me. Besides, telling what I’d seen meant explaining how I’d happened to see it, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate the part about me looking to get stoned. I needed time to come up with a sanitized version of the story—one that would stand up to questioning.
Meanwhile, I decided to ask some questions of my own. When we finally got to school that morning, I quizzed the librarian about the janitor. She didn’t know much. His name was Whitmer, Marvin or maybe Martin, and like me he was new; she’d heard he’d worked at another school before this one, but she couldn’t say where.
“So you wouldn’t know whether this other school was also by the highway?”
“No, dear.”
I thanked her and sat down. Then Carlotta started interrogating me: “What are you so interested in the janitor for?”
“It’s nothing,” I told her.
“Like hell it’s nothing. Hey, I’m not stupid like Felipe.”
“OK, it’s not nothing. But I’m not ready to talk about it.” I didn’t think Carlotta would care about the dope—at least, not enough to give me shit for it—but she would care that I’d gone into the closed wing without her.
Of course, now she was mad at me anyway: “What do you mean you’re not ready to talk about it? Since when do we keep secrets?”
“Carlotta…It’s not a secret, exactly, it—”
“You asked about the highway,” she said. “You think the janitor had something to do with that kid who got killed?”
Good guess; maybe there was something to the Bobbsey Twins after all. “Yeah, I do.”
“But why would you think that? What happened? Did you see something?”
“I told you, I’m not ready to talk about it…Look, Carlotta, I promise I’ll tell you later, OK? But first…I need your help with something. I want to search the janitor’s van after school today, and I need you to be my lookout.”
Now, I came up with this purely as a way of stalling, but when I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t a bad plan. If I did find incriminating evidence in the van, I could turn the janitor in for that, and forget about the other thing.
Wouldn’t you still have to explain your decision to search the van?
Well, that was the beauty of it: if I found proof that the janitor was a serial killer, people would be so excited they’d accept pretty much any explanation. At that point I could just say I had a hunch, and even Carlotta would probably buy it.
So after final bell that day, instead of going back to the library, we went to the lobby and waited for the other students to leave. Not long after the last of them had cleared out, the janitor passed through, pushing a cartload of garbage bags towards the rear of the building.
“What do you think?” I asked Carlotta, once he was out of earshot.
“I think this might not be such a smart idea, Jane. What if he really is the death angel? If he catches you—”
“He won’t. You just stay here, and if you see him coming back, stick your head out the front door and yell something.”
“What should I yell?”
“Anything but my real name.”
The teachers had all taken off too by now, so aside from the librarian’s Volkswagen, the janitor’s van was the only vehicle left in the lot. It was a utility-style van, with no windows in the rear side panels; the windows in the back doors were small, and tinted so you couldn’t see in. Add a little soundproofing, I thought, and it’d be perfect for kidnappings.
Its doors were all locked, but like Nancy Drew I’d come prepared: during lunch period, I’d stolen a coat hanger from the closet in the teachers’ lounge. I slipped it in at the base of the driver’s-side window and fished around until the lock button came up.
The inside of the van smelled like cleaning products. I was struck right away by how tidy it was. I mean I guess it’s no surprise that a janitor would be a neat freak, but stilclass="underline" the dashboard was completely clear, with none of the crap that usually collects there, and there wasn’t a scrap of trash on the floor or under the seats. Even the ashtrays were empty. There was nothing in the glove compartment but the van’s registration papers.
The back of the van was a similar story. The floor was covered with a blanket that looked like it had just come out of a washing machine, and there was a gray metal toolbox stowed away neatly in one of the back corners. Other than that, I couldn’t see so much as a stray gum wrapper.
Did you look inside the toolbox?
Yeah. I almost let it be—it seemed obvious now that the janitor wasn’t the kind of guy to leave body parts lying around—but I decided I’d better be thorough.
The blanket crackled when I stepped on it. I crouched down and lifted up a corner; underneath it was a double layer of plastic sheeting. Then I lifted that up, and found a set of luggage straps, pre-positioned for easy bundling.
I smoothed the blanket back in place and turned to the toolbox. It was padlocked; my coat hanger was no help here, but I had a couple different-sized paper clips, too, and one of them did the trick. I slipped off the padlock and lifted the lid.
And? What was inside?
Tools. A pair of handcuffs, for starters; a fat roll of electrician’s tape; gloves. Also four sets of pliers, three ice picks, and a loop of piano wire.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: a hunting knife. It was a foot long, with a jagged-edged blade. Like the pliers and the ice picks it was shiny clean and smelled like it had been soaking in detergent, but when I took a closer look at it I saw that there was a hair stuck to the handle. A golden hair. I couldn’t tell whether the hair was from a person or a dog, but I was pretty sure the police would be able to.
“Got you,” I said, and that’s when I heard footsteps outside the van.
For a moment I hoped it might only be Carlotta, bored with sentry duty and come to help me search, but then I heard keys jangling and knew I was in trouble. Dumping the garbage must have been the janitor’s last chore for the day; instead of coming back through the building afterwards like I’d expected him to, he’d walked around the outside, bypassing my lookout.
As he fumbled with his keys, I packed the knife away in the toolbox and got ready to make a run for it. But when I reached for the back-door handle to let myself out, the handle wasn’t there.
The janitor opened the driver’s door. I froze. I was totally exposed; there was no way he wouldn’t see me.
Then Carlotta called out from the front steps of the schooclass="underline" “Guadalupe!”
The janitor paused with one foot in the van and looked to see who she was yelling at. That bought me an extra few seconds. I did the only thing I could: moved up into the blind spot directly behind the driver’s seat and made myself as small as possible.
The janitor slid behind the wheel. I crossed my fingers that he’d hang out for a while, maybe give Carlotta a chance to start lobbing oranges onto the van’s roof, but not today: quicker than you can say “Guadalupe!” we were on the road. The janitor drove north again, away from Siesta Corta.
I couldn’t see out, so I passed the time by staring at the toolbox. Although I’d closed the lid, I’d forgotten to latch it, and every time we hit a bump it threatened to fly open and dump its contents. Also, I’d left the padlock lying in plain view on the blanket; I kept waiting for the janitor to notice it in the rearview mirror and pull over to investigate.