The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

Small Kingdoms by Charlaine Harris

FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

ON THIS PARTICULAR spring Tuesday, Anne DeWitt was thrown off her regular schedule. Between brushing her teeth and putting on her foundation, she had to kill a man.

Most mornings Anne was as accurate as a precision watch. Between the moment she rolled out of bed and the moment she got into her car, attractively groomed and dressed, Anne used a total of forty-five minutes. Following a fifteen-minute drive, during which she reviewed the day to come, Anne walked in the front doors of Travis High School at ten minutes before eight o’clock. Her secretary had better, by God, be sitting behind her own desk when Anne’s heels clicked on the office floor.

But this Tuesday morning was not like most mornings, due to the short struggle and the longer effort of body disposal.

On the drive to work, she figured he’d scaled the roof while she was asleep, broken in a dormer window in the attic, and let down the attic steps while she was in the shower. (She’d noticed some specks on the carpet under the attic opening. Insulation?) Anne wasn’t pleased that she hadn’t foreseen this possibility, but she tried not to be too hard on herself either. A woman had to sleep. A shower made noise.

It was her fault, however, that she hadn’t included the attic windows in her security system. She’d rectify that immediately.

It was Anne’s good luck that she was looking in the mirror. If she hadn’t been, she might have missed the flicker of movement as he came through the bathroom door, might not have realized the man was there until the wire cinched around her neck.

It was the would-be killer’s bad luck that Anne was standing before the mirror naked, trimming a few errant hairs in her bangs, scissors in her hands. She pivoted instantly, her knees bent, and drove the sharp points upward into his throat, the two blades sinking in with a minimum of effort. Anne never bought inferior steel. Anne’s hand came away, leaving the scissor blades in the double wound to minimize the inevitable leakage.

As a bonus, the dying man landed on the cotton bathmat with its no-slip rubber backing, which soaked up the trickles of blood.

Anne squatted by the body as the man died and looked at him intently. She was mildly surprised to discover she knew him: Bert Sawyer, her neighbor of two months, who’d moved in two doors west. He’d come over to borrow her jumper cables a week before. Anne spared a moment to think about that as she got the extra shower-curtain liner, still in its packaging, from the bathroom linen closet.

She assumed “Bert” had had backers. They’d taken time to set this up, time and money. If Bert had been acting on his own, his preparation was even more impressive. This had been a carefully thought-out plan. None of the kids at Travis High School would have recognized their principal as she smiled at the failure of this plan, at her victory.

But it had been a victory by too narrow a margin. Anne’s smile faded as she called herself to task. She was alive only because Bert had made stupid choices.

Why hadn’t he attacked while she was asleep? Why had he waited until daylight, until she was clearly up and about? She stared down at the body, tempted to give it a kick. She was pretty damn irritated about losing the scissors.

A glance at her wall clock told her she was already running five minutes late, and there was a small spot of blood on her left shoulder. Dammit! She stepped back in the shower and washed herself off in case there were specks she hadn’t noticed, careful not to get her hair wet since she’d already styled it for the day. She didn’t want to spend the extra time to repeat the process.

As the water beat down, she thought hard about her next step. She was tempted to leave the body where it was until she came home from work, but there was always the chance that they (if there was a “they”) would call the police, concoct some story that might compel the police to check out the inside of her house. Heard screams… saw smoke… think someone’s broken in.. . any of those might make a conscientious cop insist on checking out the interior.

Anne puffed out her cheeks in exasperation as she completed her makeup. No, she had to do a certain amount of cleanup. Now she would be late, no doubt about it, and her record at this job had been as perfect as her record at her previous employment. Son of a bitch.

Her jaw set in a grim line, Anne pulled on rubber gloves and removed the plastic liner from its packaging. Anyone might use rubber gloves to clean, just as anyone might keep an extra shower-curtain liner. Right? Hindered by the small floor space, Anne (who was very lean and athletic) managed to roll the body and the bathmat onto the clear plastic sheet and began securing it from the feet up, using duct tape from a fresh roll.

She left the scissors in the man’s throat with a pang of true regret. She’d looked at many pairs of scissors before she’d selected those, and she’d used them exclusively to trim hair. That was why they’d maintained their great edge.

Well, she thought, it was worth it. She’d wiped off the handles, of course. She was sure any tiny snips of her hair that might have adhered to the blades would be too degraded by the time the body was found to be of any use to criminalists. In time she’d acquire some more scissors for the rare self-trim job. Before she covered the dead man’s face, she took another look.

Like Anne’s, Bert Sawyer’s hair was thick, though his was sable brown, several shades darker than hers. She wondered if Bert’s hair was dyed, like hers; probably. She had another sudden thought, and pushed aside the would-be killer’s hair in a couple of spots close to his ears. Huh. He’d had plastic surgery. She turned his face to the overhead light again, really concentrating on its contours, but there’d been so many faces in those ten years she’d run the school at her previous job.

And that had to be why he’d come here.

Anne deployed the duct tape until Bert Sawyer was encased and leak-proof. She cast a critical eye around the bathroom. There was no blood visible to the naked eye on the vanity or the mirror, but she ran a washrag over them nonetheless. All the while she puzzled over Bert Sawyer’s true identity. But she dismissed her concerns after a glance at her watch; twenty minutes late, and the body to dispose of!

She called her secretary. “Christy, I’m running late today,” she said. Anne’s policy was never to apologize for things she couldn’t have prevented.

“You are?” Christy, the doughy, fiftyish school secretary, couldn’t hide her astonishment. “You’re sick? Oh, I hope you haven’t had an accident?”

Anne said, “My car wouldn’t start. It’s running now, but I’m behind.”

“No problem,” said Christy reassuringly.

Anne tried not to snarl at the phone. Of course the disruption of her routine was no problem for Christy; but it certainly was to Anne. “I’ll be in as soon as I can. The Meachams aren’t due for another forty-five minutes.”

“Right,” Christy said. “Oh, and Coach Halsey is in here. I’ll tell him to come back.”

The baseball coach had never come to her office for a one-on-one before. Anne almost asked what Holt Halsey wanted, but it was hardly Christy’s job to find out, if the information hadn’t been volunteered. “Do that,” Anne said pleasantly and evenly.

She went into the bedroom to put on her underwear and went back to the bathroom to check her shoulder-length hair, stepping over the corpse on her way. Then Anne put on the outfit she’d laid out the night before: gray trouser suit, well cut, with a darker gray silk blouse. Garnet earrings and a necklace with a garnet pendant, small and tasteful. But then she put on sneakers, grabbing the black pumps she’d selected to go with the outfit.

Anne bounded down the stairs, passed through the gleaming kitchen with its block of sharp knives, and opened the door to the garage. After placing her high heels on the floorboard of the passenger-side front, Anne opened her trunk, spreading out another plastic sheet (just in case). There was a cheap yellow rain slicker, the kind you could buy in a hanging pouch from the rack of any dollar store, hanging on a hook by the back door. Anne pulled it on, carefully drawing the hood over her chestnut hair. She went back up the stairs to her bathroom to grab the ankles of the plastic-shrouded corpse. Tugging carefully, steadily, digging in her feet, Anne dragged the body down the stairs.

Bert Sawyer’s head bumped against each wooden step. Anne, who’d heard much worse noises, ignored the sound.

Getting Bert into the trunk was tricky, but nothing Anne hadn’t done before. When the body was completely inside, she pulled off the cheap slicker and stuffed it in with the body. She went into the house one final time to grab her purse and give her hair a once-over look in the mirror. Finally-finally!-she was on her way to work. She’d been thinking while she stuffed Bert in the trunk, and she’d thought of a good spot to dispose of him.

The winding roads and pleasantly rolling hills relaxed Anne, as always. The four-lane was moderately busy, but due to Anne’s unwilling delay, there were fewer cars than usual. When she got close to the spot she’d chosen, she drove in the slow lane until the road was clear. Then she whipped right and went down a gravel road just wide enough for her car. Luckily it hadn’t rained recently, or she would have had to make a different choice. But Bert would molder nicely out here. It would only get warmer and damper every week now that spring had arrived in North Carolina.

At the end of this service road was some sort of electrical relay tower, surrounded by a high gated fence liberally posted with warnings. The gate was heavily padlocked, which was fine with Anne, since she had no interest in gaining entrance. Her car was far enough into the woods to be invisible from the four-lane, and she maneuvered Bert’s body out of the trunk with the facility of experience. As a bonus, the gravel road was slightly raised for drainage, so she was able to roll the plastic bundle into the forest and then drag it through the pines until it could not be seen from the gravel track. After leaving the body behind a copse, Anne grabbed a fallen branch. On her way back to the car, she swept away the swath the passage of the corpse had cut through the winter leaves and pine needles. She was glad the temperature this morning was in the high fifties; she didn’t want to work up a sweat.

Good enough, Anne thought as she stood by her car brushing her jacket and her pants. She swung the car around on the apron before the fence, and when she returned to the four-lane she stayed back in the tree line until the road was clear.

It was less than 2 miles to Travis High School, where Anne had worked for four years-two as assistant principal, two as principal. After she’d parked in her designated parking space, she exchanged her sneakers for the high heels.

She looked up at the big wall clock as she entered the school lobby. She was now fifty minutes late. Damn Bert Sawyer, and whoever had recruited him. Anne shoved the anger aside. She would have to think seriously about Bert and his garrote later. No one had tried to kill her for three years.

For now her head should be in its proper place. This school was her kingdom; she was its ultimate ruler. She relaxed because she was within the walls of her domain.

She got her second surprise for the day when she opened the door to the outer office, Christy Strunk’s domain. Coach Holt Halsey was still waiting for her. This surprise wasn’t exactly either good or bad, but it was unprecedented. Her respect for the baseball coach, who’d come on board two years ago, was not only based on Halsey’s winning record but also on the fact that Halsey seemed to solve his own problems in a rational way.

Christy looked at her with some apology, and Anne understood that she’d tried to get the coach to return later, with no success. Anne said, “Good morning, Christy.”

A few brisk steps took her abreast of Halsey, who’d risen from his chair. It didn’t bother Anne at all to look up at him. She was not intimidated by large men. But she hesitated before using his first name, since she’d never done so. “Holt, how long do you need? I have less than ten minutes, if that’ll do the job.”

The coach nodded. “I only need a few minutes,” he said. She walked over to the inner door, the door to her office, with her name on it. She loved the sight of it, no matter how many times she passed it. That she’d been born neither Anne nor DeWitt made no difference to her pleasure.

“I’ll hold your calls, Mrs. DeWitt,” Christy said unnecessarily. That was SOP in this office.

“Come in,” Anne said. Christy had been in to turn on the light and deposit her messages, but everything was as Anne had left it the evening before. She checked automatically as she moved behind the desk to put her purse in its drawer. She’d carefully arranged the office to make it seem as though she’d led a complete life. There were two pictures of her parents, one of her sister, and one of her deceased husband.

None of these people existed. Of course she had had parents, but she’d never met them. She’d never been married. To the best of her knowledge, she didn’t have a sister. “Have a seat, Holt,” Anne said, pulling out her own chair and sitting. There was a handful of call slips lined up beside her mouse pad. It had taken her two weeks to break Christy of the habit of telling her about each call as she entered the office. She allowed the fearful idea that she might have to leave, that there might be another attempt-who had the would-be assassin alerted when he’d tracked her down? With grim determination, she shoved this conjecture back to the corner of her mind.

Coach Halsey was sitting, elbows on knees, in one of the lightly padded chairs positioned in front of Anne’s neat desk. Holt Halsey was a broad-shouldered man, a couple of inches over 6 feet, and he had a face that might have been chiseled out of granite. He wasn’t unattractive in a rough-hewn way, but he didn’t work that attraction, and he didn’t show a lot of emotion. Anne liked both qualities.

“Clay Meacham is a problem,” Holt Halsey said, without further ado.

“Odd you should bring him up. His parents are coming in right after I finish talking to you.”

The coach’s flinty face managed to convey his opinion of the Meachams in a precise, economical tightening of the lips.

Brandon and Elaine Meacham, the parents of Travis High’s star pitcher, were active in the Baseball Boosters Club, and they spent a lot of time volunteering at other school activities. Clay was their only child. They didn’t miss a single opportunity to support and promote the handsome junior.

If Clay had been as good a young man as he was talented, Anne would have thoroughly approved. Clay’s academic and athletic glory was the school’s (and therefore her) glory. But Clay was not a good young man, and his judgment was deeply flawed.

“What’s he done?” she asked.

“He was messing with Hazel Reid.”

Their eyes met while Anne absorbed the implications. She considered wasting time with things a normal woman would have said, like “How is she?” or “Should we call the police?” None of that was on the table: if it had been, Holt would have led with the worst news. Hazel Reid was mentally and emotionally handicapped. But she was also a physically mature sixteen. Anne said, “How far did it go?”

“He’d taken her shirt off,” the coach said.

“Where?”

“In the woods in back of the school. If she hadn’t been wearing bright pink, I wouldn’t have spotted them.”

“So, after school. But on school property.”

“Yeah.”

“Why wasn’t she on her bus?” Hazel was supposed to catch the vehicle derisively called “the short bus” to her home.

“Her mom was here for teacher conferences. She’d parked Hazel on the bench outside to wait. Clay saw her when he was walking to his car after practice. I guess he was in a bad mood. Or maybe a good one.”

“Does he know you know?” she asked.

“Not for sure. I called him on his cell phone, asked him if he’d seen Hazel in the parking lot, her mom was looking for her.”

Anne checked the list of phone calls she’d gotten that morning, and Mrs. Reid wasn’t on it. “Hazel didn’t tell,” Anne said.

“I don’t think she minded,” the coach said. “But she’s not mentally capable to consent or refuse.”

“Noted,” Anne said. She thought for a moment, and Coach Halsey let her.

Her previous job had been far tougher than this one, and when she’d left it so abruptly, she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t ever get so invested again. But here she was, thinking of Travis High and its reputation.

Did Anne care about each individual student? No. But this was her turf, and she would protect it. She would make it as perfect as she could. When she looked up at the rugged, impenetrable face of her baseball coach, she surprised a look almost of… sympathy. And for a second…

“Do I know you?” she asked, with no premeditation.

He smiled. It was like watching rock move. “It’s time for the Meachams to get here. I’ll hear from you later.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“You will,” she said, and stood up. They eyed each other for a moment. It was as though Holt Halsey was willing her to realize something. But then he turned to go, and she had to change gears to deal with Clay’s parents.

The Meachams weren’t anything special, in Anne’s expert estimation. Brandon, handsome like his son but not as mean, might look at other women but he never touched. His wife, Elaine, a former pageant queen, made a creditable effort to conceal the fact that she didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s child but her own. She would clap for another child’s achievement, she would tell the other moms how much she admired their progeny, but in truth she believed the sun shone out of Clay’s ass.

All in all, Anne couldn’t feel surprised that Clay had no sense of guilt in taking advantage of a handicapped girl. He was sure that everything he did was fine, simply because he, Clay, wanted to do it.

“Mrs. DeWitt,” Elaine Meacham said, flashing her broad white smile. “Thanks for making the time to see us today.”

“Of course. What do we need to talk about this morning?” Anne asked, trying to cut through the pleasantries. She gestured them to the chairs in front of her desk, took her own seat again.

“I saw you at the last game,” Brandon said, to make sure she knew he appreciated her. “I know the kids think it’s really cool that you go to all the sporting events.”

“Of course I do,” Anne said. This is my school, she thought. I’m going to go to everything I physically can. She adopted her fallback face: pleasant but not encouraging. Not only did she have to think about Coach Halsey’s tale; the pile of paperwork in the in-basket wasn’t going to take care of itself. She had two other meetings scheduled during the day too, one with a prospective temporary replacement for the enormously pregnant Spanish teacher and one with a vendor who wanted the school to switch to his software system in the chemistry lab. The vendor would ask her out for a drink after work: she would refuse him. She was going to have to be more forceful in her refusal this time.

Barely able to restrain some manifestation of her boredom and her itching desire to get to the work on her desk, Anne had to sit through a few more platitudes before Brandon got down to brass tacks.

“Principal DeWitt-Anne-we hope the school will help Clay achieve his goal,” Brandon said very seriously.

“Which goal is that?” Anne worked to keep her voice neutral. She was thinking of how much she’d like to kick Clay Meacham’s ass. The enormity of the boy’s offense was sinking into her psyche. She didn’t even want to imagine the headlines, the disgrace of the school, the navel-gazing that would inevitably follow the exposure of Clay’s little after-hours adventure with the hapless Hazel Reid. Anne found herself thinking wistfully of some of the more inventive punishments she’d employed at her previous job.

Instead of getting to the point, the Meachams began the litany of what Clay had meant to the school: class president, star athlete, honor roll, captain of the debate team. “And what goal would that be?” Anne prompted again, when she felt her impatience building to a dangerous level.

Cut off in midflow, Elaine looked comically surprised. “I’m sorry?” she said.

“I’m very well aware of Clay’s position at Travis,” Anne said evenly. “Can you tell me what you think Clay needs from this school?”

“Sure,” Brandon said. “Sure. I’m sorry, we got kind of carried away, like parents tend to do.” He smiled at Anne in what he surely felt was an ingratiating manner, though he couldn’t suppress the snap of irritation in his voice.

She tried not to let her shoulders heave in a sigh of exasperation, but maybe the lines of her face conveyed her strong desire to extract some specifics.

“It’s his senior film.” Elaine again bathed Anne in the radiance of her brilliant smile.

“Clay isn’t in the drama department’s film class,” Anne said. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“He needs a film to send to recruiters. Clay’s such an outstanding pitcher, we want to be sure he’s placed at the right college, with a good scholarship. So he needs a film to send out to athletic departments early next school year. We’ve got some examples.” Elaine extracted some DVD cases from her purse and set them on the edge of Anne’s desk.

“So you’ll hire someone to film Clay’s games?” Anne said, not reaching for the DVD cases.

“We were kind of hoping that we could use clips from the school’s game films,” Elaine explained. She kept the smile in place. “It seems like a shame to duplicate effort.”

She meant it was a shame for the Meachams to spend their own money. Anne had wondered how Meacham Motors was doing in this recession. She thought she’d just learned the answer.

It was true that the school lined up an employee or some astute volunteer parent to film every baseball game-and all the other sports events too, of course. This was invaluable as a teaching tool, the coaches assured her.

The politically correct response would be that of course Clay’s recruiting film could be composed of clips from the game recordings, and Coach Halsey would be happy to help with such an effort. But what if Clay’s recent misdeed came to light? Wouldn’t the school suffer, especially if it had offered this extra support to an athlete who’d proved to be a rotten, degraded egg? While Anne allowed herself a lot of moral leeway-she had no problem killing people who attacked her-she did deplore Clay’s self-indulgence and poor judgment in attempting to seduce a girl who would never be an adult mentally or emotionally.

“I’ll discuss it with Coach Halsey,” Anne said briskly. “Who would you expect to do the work involved in editing the film, excerpting Clay’s pitches? I’m assuming you’d also want the times he comes up to bat included in the recruiting film. I don’t know what would be involved, but I’m assuming you two do?”

“Well,” Brandon said, doing his best to look as if he weren’t being pushy, “I think we were hoping that since Clay is the best pitcher Travis High’s ever had, and him going to a good school to pitch would be a great feather for Coach Halsey’s cap…”

“So you think Coach Halsey should do this work.”

Elaine spread her hands. “Well, we were just hoping! Since he’s fairly new here, still making his name…”

Anne knew how many hours Halsey put in on his job, for slim money. “It’s baseball season now,” she said, as if they needed to be reminded. “I don’t know how much time the coach could devote to doing this for one player, no matter how gifted. Of course we all want to see Clay succeed, and we want him to play for the college of his choice. Has he told you where he’d like to go?” She put on a somewhat brighter smile and got up, signaling the end of the interview.

Somewhat bewildered, the Meachams rose too. “He was thinking of the University of Arkansas-they’re in the top five. Or Louisiana. Maybe UCLA, though we don’t want him that far from home.”

Three top baseball programs. The Meachams were aiming very high. Was Clay really that good? She would ask Coach Halsey.

Anne finally got the Meachams out of the office with promises to “get back with them” after talking to Coach Halsey. Then she returned the calls on Christy’s list. Then she dove into the paperwork. Before she knew it, the bell rang for first lunch, the sophomore seating.

Normally Anne would have brought a salad to eat at her desk, or even shared the students’ meal choices in the cafeteria, though that was strictly an exercise in morale boosting. But today she went home for lunch, as she was careful to do at least once a week, though never on the same day. Her house, tidy and spruce with its fresh paint and neat yard, had an interior air of slight dishevelment, like a bed made crookedly. Her breakfast cereal bowl still sat by the sink, unrinsed. Upstairs, the bathroom looked curiously incomplete since the bathmat was missing. Her makeup was not aligned on its tray. Her pajamas were still lying across the bench at the foot of her bed. But Anne left these little signals of disruption. She’d take care of them after more pressing matters.

She took her gun with her when she let down the attic stairs and ascended them.

She didn’t seriously believe there was another assailant in her attic. But then, she hadn’t expected the first one either. That failure was bitter to Anne, whose job in the past had been to teach others to be masters of close fighting. Quicker, smarter, faster, tougher, able to take more stress and dodge more punishment than other human beings. And many people who’d passed through Anne’s hands had become wonderful killers.

Standing in her own attic, seeing the evidence of last night’s intrusion, Anne was bitterly aware she had failed. She’d been lulled by her artificial life into an equally artificial sense of security. In her own home, her lack of readiness had come very close to getting her killed.

There were three dormer windows in the attic, which was painted and floored. Its walls were lined with everything that belonged in a storage space. There was a modest box of Christmas decorations underneath a wreath hung on a wall hook. There was a box of old pictures in aged frames, which any casual visitor would assume were ancestors of Anne’s.

Well, the long-dead faces belonged to someone’s ancestors, but not hers, as far as she knew. She was proud of a trunk of fake memorabilia that had belonged to her fake dead husband. There was an antique quilt inside, among the report cards and trophies, a quilt that must have been stitched by someone’s grandmother; it might as well have been “Brad’s.” There was an old rickety rocking chair by the trunk, just the kind of chair such a grandmother might have rocked in as she quilted. There was a crate packed with a very old set of china, and one full of the sort of scholarly books Anne DeWitt might have collected over the course of her academic progress: Jacobean poets, theories of education, the psychology of leadership. The attic was as carefully staged as the rest of the house.

Bert Sawyer had come in through the west dormer. The dormers faced the road, but in the wee hours of the morning there was not likely to be anyone up or about on this quiet residential cul-de-sac, one carved out of the woods. The house between Anne’s and Sawyer’s belonged to the Westhovens, and they had left for Florida the previous week. Maybe that was why Sawyer had chosen the previous night for his move on Anne.

The pane on the window had been cut out and removed, and cool spring air flooded the attic, carrying the pleasant scent of budding plants.

Obviously Bert had ascertained that the dormers weren’t hooked up to the alarm system. He must have made a preliminary trip to her roof on some previous night. She’d have to figure out how he’d scaled it, because she didn’t see a rope and there was no ladder leaning against the eaves, for God’s sake. She thought about all these things as she noted the tiny signs of his presence in her attic; the dust on the trunk had been smudged, probably by his butt as he sat on it to wait for the sound of her shower running. There was a small ring in the dust too. Anne decided he’d had a tiny flashlight, and he’d used it to check out the story her attic was supposed to tell. It must have been in his pocket when she dumped him.

The woman she’d formerly been would have learned how to replace her own glass, but Anne DeWitt would not do such a thing. She decided to tell the repairman that a bird must have flown into the window, and she’d found it broken. Of course, Anne DeWitt would have cleaned the mess up immediately. Anne found the pane of glass, leaning carefully against a wall. She put it on the floor and stomped on it. Then she fetched a broom and dustpan from the kitchen and swept up the fragments. She called the handyman who helped her out with things Anne DeWitt couldn’t do. He agreed to come the next afternoon at five.

Anne would wait a couple of days to call the alarm-system people.

After another, more thorough cleaning of the bathroom, Anne had only time to grab a granola bar to eat on the way back to school. Her stomach growled in protest, and she promised herself she’d have a good dinner.

On her way back to Travis High, she saw a pickup truck emerging from the gravel road to the electric tower, the spot where she’d dumped Bert Sawyer’s body. Every nerve in her body went on the alert as she passed the road and the truck pulled out behind her.

She recognized it. It was Holt Halsey’s.

He drove behind her all the way back to the school. She went to the administrative parking lot, and he went left to park by the gym complex.

There was nothing Anne could do about the coach that afternoon. He was a riddle, for sure, and one she’d better solve sooner rather than later. It was no coincidence that he’d gone down that obscure track; and she didn’t believe it was a coincidence that he’d emerged from it just when she was approaching.

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 a 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 dad 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 rewash and restyle 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 country 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.

After an hour, he was sorry for it all.

By the time Clay got home that night, he flinched whenever his parents asked him a question. He told them repeatedly he’d had a bad day and he only wanted to go to bed. When they demanded to know why his face was so reddened, he said a ball had hit him at practice. He went to his bedroom as though he were dragging a chain behind him, and Elaine and Brandon were too worried to remember to ask Clay if the coach had mentioned working on the recruiting film for him.

Clay only went to school because he was scared to be at home by himself after his parents had left for their jobs. At school he jumped when his friends slung their arms around him, punched him in the shoulder, and in general acted like kids on the cusp of becoming men. For the first time in his life, Clay knew what it was like to be weak. To be lesser.

When his best buddy strolled past Hazel Reid’s table in the lunchroom, his fist raised to pound on the table to make Hazel jump (a trick that never grew old with Clay’s friends), Clay caught that fist and said simply, “No. Not anymore.”

“Awww, man,” the friend said, but he’d heard the pronouncement of the most popular boy in school. Not anymore.

Clay turned to leave the lunchroom and saw Principal DeWitt standing, straight and lean as an arrow, about 2 yards away. He was seized by an almost uncontrollable impulse to rush to her and tell her what had happened to him. Everyone said DeWitt was a smart woman and a good principal. She would be able to figure out who’d kidnapped him.

Or maybe not. There were so many candidates.

There were a lot of sins Clay Meacham had never thought twice about committing, sins of which he was now painfully aware. His eyes had been opened last night, even though he’d been blindfolded.

Clay was only seventeen, and he wasn’t clear on how he was supposed to attain perfection, but the guidelines he’d been given last night had been pretty clear.

He saw the principal again that day, when she came to watch the team practice. That wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. While Clay was waiting to come up to bat, he saw Coach Halsey look at Mrs. DeWitt. It made Clay shiver. Clay’d been scared he’d pitch poorly that day, but now that he knew there’d be a price to pay if he failed, his focus was amazing.

After practice, Principal DeWitt drifted over to talk to Coach Halsey. After a second Coach beckoned Clay over. He trotted over to the two adults.

“I hear you need a recruitment film,” Coach Halsey said.

“My parents say I need one to send out next year, yessir,” Clay said.

“I’m willing to help you make it, but I won’t do all the work,” Coach said. “You’ll have to put in some hours helping me do other things, so I’ll have some free time.”

The old Clay would have been sullen about giving up anything to get something that was his due. The new Clay said, “Yessir. Just say when.” He turned and went into the locker room.

“I think he’s been turned around,” Anne said.

“At least for now.” Coach Halsey looked down at her. “Want to get dinner Saturday night?”

“I think so,” she said after a pause. “There are a few things we might want to talk about.”

“Oh?”

“Sarah Toth’s dad is hitting her.”

“Well,” Holt said. “We can’t have that. She won’t get the high test scores if she’s being beaten at home.”

“If she scores two points higher the next time she takes the SAT, it’ll be a state record.”

He smiled. No one else would have enjoyed that smile but Anne. “Then we’d better get cracking.”

They both laughed, just a little. “By the way,” Holt said. “What happened to the principal before you? You became assistant here the year before she killed herself, right?”

Anne nodded, her expression faintly regretful. “Mrs. Snyder was having sex in her office with a married teacher, Ted Cole. Christy overheard a conversation between them and came to me with it.”

“Then it would have been all over the school in short order.” He smiled. “Good job. Proactive.”

Anne smiled back before she glanced down at her watch. “I have to be at my house to let the handyman in,” she murmured. But she lingered for a moment. “Snyder almost didn’t hire me. She was not a fan, from the first interview until the last. But the school board liked me. And the minute I saw Travis High, I knew it was a place where I could make a difference. Now…” She looked up at him and away, almost shyly. “Now there’s no limit.”

“No limit,” he agreed, and they stood silent in the lowering sun, their long shadows streaking across the practice field.