“I got some clear pictures,” Holt said as they walked around the track together. At least once a week, weather permitting, the baseball coach and the principal walked together around the school track at lunchtime.
“Did you recognize him?” she asked, without much hope.
Holt shook his head. “Sorry. But his car was a rental. He’s not a local.”
Anne assumed that this whole incident had something to do with her former life. She’d had trouble before with a relative of one of her former students. He’d surprised Anne as she was getting ready for work one day.
No one had ever happened across the body.
But that incident had confirmed what she already knew: It was possible to uncover her new identity if you were very determined and had connections within their community.
“You still in touch with David Angola?” she asked Holt. Angola, who’d come through the ranks with Anne, had been Holt’s instructor in the West Coast version of Anne’s Michigan training school. He’d sent Holt to keep an eye on Anne after Holt had gotten drummed out of his service for his own mistakes.
Holt nodded. “I’ll ask him if he knows the guy.”
Anne looked up at Holt, a boulder of a man, her hands in her sweater pockets to make her stance look calm. The spring buds had popped up on just about everything. A cool breeze blew her hair around her face. She propped her arms on top of the perimeter fence, and Holt stood beside her, as relaxed as she was. They scanned their kingdom together.
The cheerleaders, having switched from football to basketball, were working on a new routine by the practice-field bleachers. Anne spotted a familiar red head. “Madison Bead,” Anne said. “Her grade-point average is eighty-nine. She could bring it up.”
“She’s not ambitious,” Holt said, dismissing Madison and her grades. “Listen, do you want me to take care of this Wilson guy?”
“So much,” she said, with an intensity that almost surprised her. “I just can’t figure out his goal. He didn’t ask me for anything — sex, money, a confession. He’s clearly unbalanced. And he only called me Anne. Who could have sent him?”
They resumed their walk in silence.
“He seems to have only wanted to shake me up,” Anne said.
“He’s done a better job than I would have believed,” Holt said. “You’ve got to stand up to him better than this.”
Anne might have enjoyed being angry at Holt, but she understood the sense of what he was saying.
“You’re right,” Anne said. She noticed Holt’s shoulders relax. “I wonder if he’s actually staying in town?”
“I’ll ask a private eye I know from Raleigh to check all the motels. I’d do it myself, but until we know more about this asshole, I don’t want to be on his radar.” If they’d been alone, Anne would have kissed him, but the two were absolutely discreet in public. Anne had never thought of Holt as her lover. They had sex and they had a common goal.
At Anne’s conference with the school nurse that afternoon, she began to lay some groundwork for the future. After they’d talked about the Lanny Wells situation (Lanny had emotional problems and he had decided visiting the school nurse every day was a good way to deal with them), Anne said tentatively, “Lois, there’s something I wondered if you could advise me on. Offer me some insights.” The door between the offices was open because Anne wanted to be sure Christy overheard this.
“Of course,” Lois Krueger responded, astonished and flattered. Up until now, the nurse’s opinion of Anne had been neutral, which had been easy for Anne to read. But Lois sometimes felt that the teachers didn’t give her credit for her knowledge; Anne had seen that too.
“This man I’ve never seen before showed up here yesterday claiming to be my first husband,” Anne confided. Lois’s eyes widened. Amazingly, Christy had kept mum.
“That’s so strange,” Lois said slowly. “You hadn’t... you didn’t know him?”
“I’ve only been married once,” Anne said. “After Clark died, I felt that I would never marry again.” She looked down, her face sad. “But time has helped,” Anne admitted, looking back up with a brave smile. Lois nodded, since the whole school knew that Coach Halsey and Anne DeWitt were going out together.
“Now this man has shown up, making this weird claim, and his conversation is irrational,” Anne continued. “Could he be harmless? I hate to call the police on someone who’s so... disoriented.”
“You poor thing,” Lois said indignantly. “I’m so sorry. You really need to talk to a psychologist, not me, I’m just a school nurse.”
“To heck with just,” Anne said. “I’ve noticed how good you are with distraught students.”
Lois tried to hide her rush of pride. “Thanks,” she said. “But really, this man sounds as though he might need to be hospitalized. What a strange fixation! You’d never seen him before?”
“Never. Is that not weird? I have no idea where he came from or who he is. Maybe I’ll never hear from him again.”
“I hope that’s the case,” Lois said promptly, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I’m just glad I’ve got a good security system at home,” Anne said.
The nurse patted Anne’s shoulder. Anne suppressed her snarl. Instead, she looked brave and worried.
The rest of the day passed quietly.
That evening, Hoyt stopped by Anne’s house to tell her he’d heard from David Angola. No one from David’s staff had recognized the photograph Holt had taken. “But my P.I. tells me that Tom Wilson is staying at a Best Western close to the interstate. And he got into the room when Wilson went out for dinner. He took pictures of everything in the room.”
Hoyt and Anne pored over them. Holt had a second laptop and a second account under another name for just such transactions; he didn’t want them on his work laptop.
Just in case.
The sequence of pictures started with a shot of Wilson’s rental car. Then the private detective had moved into Wilson’s room and photographed an open suitcase, a cheap black rollerbag.
Wilson’s clothes were absolutely average: khakis, plaid shirts, boxers, loafers, all national brands and easily purchased at any shopping center in America. Nevertheless, Holt and Anne examined each picture with a magnifying glass, just to be sure.
The first interesting discovery was that Wilson had more cash than Anne would have expected. Of course, there was no way to tell how he’d come by it. He could have withdrawn it from his own ATM. But there was no transaction slip with it, so maybe the cash had been a payment.
The only other subject of the private eye’s camera was the inside of Wilson’s shaving kit. Disposable razors, shaving cream, comb, Tylenol, toothbrush, and toothpaste. But also, a prescription: pills in the usual golden-brown plastic cylinder. “Why didn’t he turn the pills over so we could read the label?” Hoyt muttered. When they looked at the next picture, they found the private eye had done just that.
The prescription was for Risperidone.
“That’s for treating schizophrenia.” Holt was grim. “If Wilson is sick enough to be taking it, he’s unpredictable. I assumed we were dealing with a person who could appreciate consequences. We’re not.”
They found out just how unpredictable Tom Wilson was the next day.
Anne was standing in the hall outside her office during the senior lunch period, which tended to be the noisiest. The bell rang, and the oldest kids swarmed out of their classrooms to go down the central hall that ran the length of the school, culminating in the cafeteria. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades had all eaten and returned to their classrooms. Getting the seniors to be reasonably quiet as they passed the crossing halls that housed each grade was nearly impossible, but Anne’s presence had an effect, especially since she could greet most of the kids by name.