He’d found the body.
He hadn’t told anyone.
After an hour had passed, she knew he wasn’t going to.
The meeting with the salesman, her last of the day, was over by five o’clock. Christy was itching to leave, opening and closing drawers on her desk with annoying frequency, as Anne could see (and hear) through her open office door. When this salesman (she mentally called him The Jerk) visited, she always left her door open. She didn’t want to have to break his arm, which she had been sorely tempted to do more than once.
The second she stood up to conduct The Jerk out, Christy was out of the door like a shot. The Jerk took the opportunity to put his hand on her arm. “Please reconsider. I’d love to take you to dinner at the lake,” he said, smiling his most sincere smile.
Anne looked at him, thinking about pulling out his teeth one by one.
“Sorry,” said Holt’s deep voice from the doorway. “The principal and I have things to discuss this evening.”
The Jerk covered his chagrin well – after all, he was a salesman – and Holt and Anne regarded each other. There was so much texture and complexity to that look she could have worn it like a sweater. When The Jerk was gone, and the school was quiet and empty around them, Holt said, “Well, you had a busy morning. No wonder you were late.”
And Anne heard herself saying, “Who are you?”
This was a talk that had to be private, but Anne was not about to go to Holt’s house, and she didn’t want him in hers, not yet. They drove separately to a restaurant that was nearly empty at this time of day. They asked to be seated on the patio, which had just opened for the season. It was almost too cool to sit in the open air in the late afternoon, but Anne was willing to be a little chilly if it meant no one would be close to them.
After they’d ordered drinks and plate of nachos, he said, “Holt isn’t the name I was born with, but I expect to use it for some time. I know you’re Twyla Burnside. My little brother was in your tenth class.”
Anne considered all this while their drinks came. “So you know all about the event.”
“The one that got you fired? Yes.”
“Why are you here, at Travis?”
“I did the same training, but in a different location,” he said. “The guy in charge was as tough as you can imagine. He was coming up a couple of years before you got your job. David Angola.”
She nodded. David Angola had saved her ass at the secret hearing. “I lost one person in almost every class,” she said. “Until the tenth class, they always considered it the price of doing business. It was my job to make sure the grads were the best my school could produce. They had to pass the tests I set. Of course, the tests were rigorous. I would fail in my mandate if they weren’t as challenging as I could possibly devise… to ensure the grads were completely prepared for extreme duress and with extraordinary survival skills. Until my tenth year as an instructor, one loss a year was acceptable.” She shook her head. “And that year, the lost student was the one with connections.”
Holt smiled, very slightly. “You have a huge reputation, even now. David himself said he was a pussy, compared to you.”
She smiled, a wry twist of the lips. “That’s a huge compliment, coming from David. That woman’s brain aneurysm could have gone at any time. You can’t tell me it gave because of ‘undue rigor’ or ‘borderline cruelty.’ Her bad luck, and mine. Her mom had a lot of pull.”
Holt’s face held no judgment. “They give you the new identity when they fired you?”
“Complete with references.”
“Me too.”
She raised an interrogative eyebrow.
“Shot the wrong person,” he said. “But it was a righteous mistake.”
She absorbed that. “Okay,” she said. “And you’re here because?”
“David heard some people were coming after you. You got some enemies.”
“No one’s tried for three years.”
“Right before I got to Travis, huh?”
“Yeah. This guy was waiting in my car after I chaperoned the senior prom.”
“Garrote?”
“No, knife. The man this morning, he had a garrote.”
Their nachos came then, and they ate with some appetite.
“David actually sent you here?” she asked, when she’d eaten all she could.
“When they cut me loose with a coach persona, David gave me a call. He thought this might be a good place for me to land.”
“I’ve never felt like you were watching me. Are you that good?”
“I didn’t need to watch you too closely. You’re great with your cover. This morning, when you came in I could tell you’d broken your routine because something had happened, and I got a little whiff of blood from your hair.”
Anne was intensely angry at herself. She should have taken fifteen more minutes to re-wash and re-style her hair.
“So you figured out…”
“If I assumed someone had gone for you, I knew where I would have dumped him. I figured I might as well check.”
“You’re cool with this.”
“Sure,” he said, surprised. “I had a look at him. Chuck Wallis. He was the brother of… “
The name triggered a switch. “Jeremy Wallis. He died in the fifth class. So. Now what?”
“Now we figure out what to do about that little shit Clay.”
She smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was Twyla Burnside’s smile, not Anne DeWitt’s. She would have to rebury herself in her new character all over again, but it felt so good to let Twyla out. “I think we need to put the fear into him.”
“The fear of God?”
“The fear of us. Oh, by the way, let me tell you why the Meachams came to my office this morning. It’ll get you in the mood.”
The next afternoon Coach Halsey kept Clay after practice. The kid was tired, because the practice had been extra tough, but he didn’t complain. Clay knew that Coach Halsey hated whiners. After he finished the extra exercises the coach had outlined for him, he trudged out to his car. It was dark by now, and he called his mom to let her know he’d be late. He was thoughtful like that, no matter what people said.
At first, Clay didn’t know what was suddenly poking him in his head. Something hard and small. He felt the presence of someone behind him. “Hey, jerk,” he said angrily, beginning to turn. “What the hell?”
“What the hell indeed,” said a strange voice, a voice as metallic as the gun that tapped his cheek. “Keep a polite tongue in your mouth. If you want to keep your tongue.”
Since nothing awful had ever happened to Clay Meacham, he didn’t realize the genuine seriousness of this moment. “Listen, asshole, you don’t know who you’re messing with,” he growled.
He was instantly slapped by something that felt soft but weighty. It stung. He staggered. “You’re asking for it!” he yelled.
And then he couldn’t yell anymore, because he was seized by two strong arms and gagged and blindfolded by two deft hands. As Clay’s fear began to swell and explode in his brain, he was bundled into his own car, his keys were extracted from his pocket, and the two hooded figures drove him down county roads and dirt tracks, deep into the woods.
Once he was on his knees, the metallic voice said, “Clay. We need you to be the best you can be. If you’re going to represent all of us when you’re in college, you need to be bulletproof. If you’re going to be bulletproof, you have to stop molesting women who aren’t able to say yes or no. You have to stop being a taker. Because someday, someone will call you on it. And then you’ll let us down. I can’t tell you how much we don’t want that to happen. So, Clay, you need to tell us now, about what you’ve done before, things you’re not going to do in the future.” Though his first confession had to be coaxed out of him, Clay found himself telling the two invisible presences everything. Everything he’d ever done to people, people smaller and weaker and less handsome than himself. And he’d done a lot.