Heartsick

CHAPTER 24

It was 3:30 and Susan found herself once again at Cleveland High School. She hadn’t attended school this regularly when she was enrolled. Her plan had been to ambush Justin at his car, but now that she stood in the parking lot, the orange Beemer was nowhere in sight. Great. She sure as hell couldn’t pretend to be his mom in person. Plus, she didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to run into any more of her old teachers. And she certainly didn’t want to get lectured by that janitor again.

So now what? She had a lot she wanted to ask JAY2, like what exactly he’d done to get himself a record and why she should care and, most important, why someone else would think she should care and who that someone might be.

And now she couldn’t find him.

The kids were all dressed like it was summer-T-shirts, shorts, miniskirts, sandals. The sun was bright and even the biggest puddles had dried up, but it was only fifty degrees. Most of the trees were bare. The kids streamed around Susan to their cars, clutching enormous book bags and backpacks.

Then she saw a kid who looked like Justin. Same surfer haircut, similar clothes, same age. He was walking toward a Ford Bronco, punching a text message into a phone. Remembering the tribe mentality of high school, she took a chance that kids who look alike are usually friends.

“Do you know where I can find Justin Johnson?” she asked, trying not to look weird or dangerous.

He frowned. “J.J.’s gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“They took him out of sixth period. His grandpa died or something. He was going right to the airport to fly down to Palm Springs.”

“When’s he going to be back?” Susan asked.

The kid shrugged. “I’m supposed to get his homework for a week. McCallum was pissed. Said he was faking. That his grandpa had already died freshman year. Threatened to put him back in detention.” He examined Susan and seemed to come to some affirming conclusion. “You looking for product?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “And I’ve lost J.J.’s number. Can you give it to me?”

Archie sat across the table from Dan McCallum. He had the arson squad’s report in front of him. McCallum was a small man with a lot of thick brown hair and a walruslike mustache that hadn’t been fashionable since before McCallum was born. His arms and legs seemed too short for his thick torso and his hands were small and square. He wore his button-down shirt tucked into his brown pants, which were held up with a wide leather belt. The belt buckle was a brass cougar head. They were sitting in the vault-cum-interview room at the bank task force offices. Claire Masland leaned against the two-foot-thick door, arms crossed. McCallum was grading papers. His fingers had writing calluses on them. You hardly ever saw that anymore, thought Archie.

“Can I interrupt a minute?” Archie asked.

McCallum didn’t look up. His eyebrows looked like second and third mustaches. “I’ve got a hundred and three physics tests to have graded by tomorrow. I’ve been a teacher for fifteen years. I get paid forty-two thousand dollars a year, not including benefits. That’s five less than I got paid last year. Want to know why?”

“Why, Dan?”

“Because the state cut the school budget by fifteen percent and they couldn’t find enough janitors and school nurses to fire.” McCallum laid his red pen carefully across his stack of tests and looked up at Archie. The eyebrows lifted. “Do you have kids, Detective?”

Archie flinched. “Two.”

“Send them to private school.”

“What happened to your boat, Dan?”

McCallum picked up the pen again and wrote a “B-” on one of the papers and circled it. “There was a marina fire. Three boats burned, including mine. But I assume you know that.”

“Actually, it seems that the fire started on your boat.” This got McCallum’s attention. “Burn patterns indicate that your boat was the origin. And that the fire was started with an accelerant. Gasoline, specifically.”

“Someone burned down my boat?”

“Someone burned down your boat, Dan.”

One enormous eyebrow started to twitch. McCallum tightened his hairy hand around his red pen. “Look,” he said, his voice rising an octave. “I told the detectives where I was when those girls disappeared. I had nothing to do with it. I’ll give you a DNA sample if you want. I don’t teach biology because I don’t like to dissect frogs. Whoever you’re looking for, it’s not me. I don’t know why someone would burn down my boat. But it has nothing to do with those girls.”

Archie stood and leaned over the table, resting on his fists, so that he towered over the teacher. “The thing is,” Archie said. “The fire started in the cabin, Dan. Which makes us think someone had a key. Because why break into a boat to start a fire? Why not just splash some gas on the deck and start the fire there?”

McCallum’s face darkened a shade and he glanced from Archie to Claire in mounting desperation. “I don’t know. But if that fire started in the cabin, then someone broke into the boat. I don’t know why. But they did.”

“When was the last time you were on the boat?” Archie asked.

“A week ago Monday. I took it out for the first time this season. Just down the Willamette a few miles.”

“Anything been disturbed?”

“No,” McCallum said. “It was all the way I left it. As far as I could tell.”

“Who knows you have a boat?” Archie asked.

“Well, I’ve had the boat for nine years. Multiply that times a hundred students a year. That’s nine hundred Cleveland grads alone. Look. I’m not the most popular teacher. I’m tough.” He held up a handful of student papers as if to prove the point. “I didn’t give out a single A in my advanced physics class last semester. Maybe one of the kids got his nose out of joint. Decided to punish me. I loved that boat. They all know that. If someone wanted to hurt me, they might go after it.”

Archie scrutinized McCallum, who seemed to be growing sweatier with each passing minute. Archie didn’t like him. But he’d learned long ago that not liking someone didn’t mean that the someone was lying. “Okay, Dan. You can leave. We’ll take the DNA sample. Claire will tell you where to go.”

McCallum stood and gathered up all of his students’ papers and stuffed them into a scratched soft leather briefcase. Claire opened the door. “Wait for me in the hall for a minute, will you, Dan?” she said. He nodded and shuffled out.

Claire turned to Archie. “We don’t have any DNA to compare his to,” she said.

“He doesn’t know that,” said Archie. “Take a swab and let’s make sure we’ve got a car on him from the time he leaves school at the end of the day until he’s home in bed.”

“It was a boat fire, Archie.”

“It’s all we’ve got.”

Susan sat in her car in the parking lot and dialed Justin Johnson’s cell phone number.

“Yo,” he answered.

She launched right into her rehearsed explanation. “Hi, J.J. My name’s Susan Ward. We met in the Cleveland parking lot. My car was booted, remember?”

There was a long pause. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said. And he hung up.

Susan sat looking at the cell phone in her hand.

What the hell was going on?