“That’s dinner,” Cooper says, and gets up. “I’ll be right back.”
He goes downstairs to get the Indian food. I keep on looking out the window while I wait for him to get back. Below the penthouse, lights appear in windows on other floors of Fischer Hall as the residents got home from class or dinner or their workouts or rehearsals. I wonder if any of the tiny figures I can see in any of the windows is Amber, the little redhead from Idaho. Is she sitting in her room, waiting for a call from Chris? Does she know he’s hiding out in the Hamptons? Poor little Amber. I wonder what she did to get in trouble with Rachel this morning.
That’s when it hits me.
My lips part, but for a minute, no sound comes out from between them. Amber. I had forgotten all about Amber, and her meeting with Rachel this morning. What had Rachel needed to see Amber about? Amber herself hadn’t known why she’d been scheduled for a mandatory meeting with the dorm director. What had Amber done?
Amber hadn’t done anything. Anything except talk to Chris Allington.
That’s all Amber had done.
And Rachel knew it, because she’d seen me with the two of them in front of the building after the lip-synch contest.
Just like she’d seen Roberta and Chris at the dance. And Elizabeth and Chris—where? Where had she seen them together? At orientation, maybe? A movie night?
Except that it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d told Julio to get me because Gavin was elevator surfing again.
Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d snuck onto the penthouse roof and tried to push that planter onto my head.
Like it didn’t matter that when the second girl died, Rachel hadn’t been in the cafeteria, like she was supposed to have been. No, I’d met her coming from the ladies’ room… around the corner from the stairs she’d been hurrying down, after pushing Roberta Pace to her death.
And the reason the elevator key had been missing, and then reappeared in such a short space of time that day? Rachel had had it. Rachel, the one person in Fischer Hall no desk attendant would ask to sign out a key, or even question the presence of behind the desk. Because she’s the hall director.
And the girls who’d died—they hadn’t died because they had files in Rachel’s office.
They had files in Rachel’s office because she’d singled them out to die.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Cooper says, returning to my apartment holding a big plastic I ♥ NY bag. “They messed up and gave us chickenand shrimp dansak… ” His voice trails off. “Heather?” Cooper is peering at me strangely, his blue eyes concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Earlcrest,” I manage to grunt.
Cooper puts the bag on the kitchen table and stares down at me.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought you said. What about it?”
“Where is it?”
Cooper bends over to refer to his computer screen. “Uh, I don’t—oh, Indiana. Richmond, Indiana.”
I shake my head, so hard the towel slips from it, and my damp hair falls down over my shoulders. No. NO WAY.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “Oh my God.”
Cooper is staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. And you know what? I think I have. Lost my mind, I mean. Because how could I not have seen it before now, even though it had been staring me right in the face….
“Rachel worked there,” I manage to rasp. “Rachel worked at a dorm in Richmond, Indiana, before she moved here.”
Cooper, who’d been pulling white paper containers from the I ♥ NY bag, pauses. “What are you talking about?”
“Richmond, Indiana,” I repeat. My heart is thumping so hard that I can see the lapel of my terry-cloth robe leaping over my breast with every beat. “The last place Rachel worked was in Richmond, Indiana… ”
Comprehension dawns across Cooper’s face.
“Rachel worked at Earlcrest? You think… you think Rachel’s the one who killed those girls?” He shakes his head. “Why? You think she was that desperate to win a Pansy Award?”
“No.” No way is Rachel going around pushing people down the elevator shafts of Fischer Hall in order to get herself a Pansy, or even a promotion.
Because it isn’t a promotion Rachel is after.
It’s a man.
A heterosexual man, worth more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, if you count the trust fund he’s supposed to have.
Christopher Allington. Christopher Allington is that man.
“Heather,” Cooper says. “Heather? Look. I’m sorry. But there’s no way. Rachel Walcott is not a killer.”
I suck in my breath.
“How do you know?” I ask. “I mean, why not? Why not her, as opposed to someone else? Because she’s a woman? Because she’s pretty?”
“Because it’s crazy,” Cooper says. “Come on, it’s been a long day. Maybe you should get some rest.”
“I am not tired,” I say. “Think about it, Cooper. I mean,really think about it. Elizabeth and Roberta met with Rachel before they died—I bet the stuff in their files, the stuff about their moms calling, isn’t even true. I bet their mothers never called. And now Amber… ”
“There are seven hundred residents of Fischer Hall,” Cooper points out. “Are all the ones who had meetings with Rachel Walcott dead?”
“No, just the ones who also had relationships with Christopher Allington.”
Cooper shakes his head.
“Heather, try to look at this logically. How could Rachel Walcott have the physical strength to throw a full-grown, struggling young woman down an elevator shaft? Rachel can’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds herself. It’s just not possible, Heather.”
“I don’t know how she’s doing it, Cooper. But I do know that it’s a bit of a coincidence that both Rachel and Chris were at Earlcrest last year, and now they’re both here at New York College. I would bet cash money that Rachel followed Christopher Allington—and his parents—here.”
When he continues to look hesitant, I stand up, push back my chair, and say, “There’s only one way we’ll ever know for sure.”
26
What’d I do
To get you so mad?
What’d I say
That’s got you feeling so bad?
I never meant it
I swear it’s not true
The only guy I care about
Has always been you.
Oh, don’t go away mad.
Come on over, let me
Make you feel glad
“Apology Song”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Caputo/Valdez
From the album Summer
Cartwright Records
Not surprisingly, Cooper balks at the idea of driving all the way to the Hamptons at seven o’clock on a weeknight just to have a word with a man the police themselves won’t even haul in for questioning.
When I remind him that Chris is more likely to talk to either of us than the police, Cooper is still not convinced. He insists that after the injuries I’d sustained that morning, what I need is a good night’s sleep, not a six-hour drive to East Hampton and back.
When I remind him that it is our duty as good citizens to do whatever we can to see that this woman is put behind bars before she kills again, Cooper assures me that he’ll call Detective Canavan in the morning and tell him my theory.
“But by morning Amber might be dead!” I cry. I know she’s not dead yet, because I’ve just called her room and learned, from her roommate, that she is watching a movie in another resident’s room down the hall.
“If the residence hall director requests a meeting with her,” I’d said, semi-hysterically, to Amber’s roommate, “tell Amber she is NOT to go to it. Do you understand?”
“Um,” the roommate said. “Okay.”
“I mean it,” I’d cried, before Cooper could pry the phone from my hand. “Tell Amber that the assistant director of Fischer Hall says that if the residence hall director requests another meeting with her, she is not to go. Or even open her door to her. Do you understand me? Do you understand that you will be in very big trouble with the assistant director of Fischer Hall if you do not deliver this message?”