The Private School Murders

by James Patterson

  At random intervals, probably deliberately random intervals, I was taken out to a little table near a window with a view of a forest glade. I was given a bib and bland white food that could be eaten with a plastic spoon.

  My “therapy sessions” with Dr. Narmond were conducted in a medical examination room. He sat on a wheeled stool and rolled around me as he questioned me and flashed lights in my eyes. I sat in a high-backed chair, and a helmet was brought down over my head. I’m fairly certain that the helmet was wired with supersensitive electrodes.

  I don’t believe that the point of the therapy was behavior modification. I think the point was information collection. My parents wanted to know everything I knew about James.

  Dr. Narmond asked intrusive personal questions that I was compelled by the drugs to answer. I was defenseless. When I was asked about James, I’m certain that somewhere outside the exam room a neuroimaging machine mapped my brain.

  And then there was “treatment.”

  I never knew when I would be awakened, or told to put down my spoon, or interrupted as I gazed out at the fern-floored forest. The element of surprise, keeping me in an anxious state of high alert, was part of the treatment.

  They kept me scared. And that made me compliant.

  “Ready, Tandy?” was the signal that got my blood pumping, my nerves sizzling. And then, ready or not, I was walked between two orderlies to a darkened room. I was placed on a slab. Headphones were clamped over my ears and restraints were tightened across my thighs and chest and forehead.

  “Ready, Tandoori? Good girl.”

  The slab slid into a short tunnel. A metallic sound bonged, and Dr. Narmond’s amplified voice boomed through headphones, vibrating the bones of my skull. There, in the dark tunnel, those parts of my brain that lit up when I had seditious thoughts were zapped.

  I heard tiny zzzt sounds as my thoughts about James, my memories of him, every second we’d spent together, were systematically deleted.

  Systematic destruction.

  I imagine Fern Haven was famous for that.

  CONFESSION

  It’s so hard for me to talk about the time I spent at Fern Haven, my friend. But being able to share my greatest fears with someone has helped me already, so I have another confession to make.

  While I was there, everything passed in a series of light and dark moments that didn’t belong to me. There was dreamless sleep like a white death. I never wanted to wake up, but it didn’t matter. I was always awakened by a shot of adrenaline in my hip.

  Then came my morning bowl of white food and a view of the ferny glade, followed by talk-talk-talk and static. Next there was being strapped to the slab and a short slide into the tunnel, where my fragile, precious memories of first love were erased. Then the showers. Well, the showers were two high-powered hoses held on me while I screamed. I never even saw the people who held them.

  Finally, another injection, and I was dropped into dreamless sleep.

  And that’s not even the worst part. Are you ready for the real confession? After days of this dehumanizing routine, I gave up. I gave in.

  Does that surprise you? It surprises and embarrasses me. But as soon as I submitted to Dr. Narmond and cooperated with the treatment, my days at Fern Haven got easier. Bruises healed. My mind calmed. And finally, I was released by Dr. Narmond, who pronounced me well.

  “You’re going to be much happier now, Tandoori. If you ever feel anxious, think of the cool green glade at Fern Haven.”

  Right.

  When I returned home, I was basically a zombie. And I had no memory of James or of why I’d really been sent to Fern Haven. I hadn’t a single clue as to what had happened to me. So my parents came up with a story.

  Malcolm and Maud sat me down and told me that I’d been stressed out, actually on the verge of a breakdown, but it had been forestalled, thank God, because they’d rescued me in time.

  Then Dr. Keyes was brought in to reinforce my treatment.

  “FOF, Tandy. Focus on the facts.”

  I went back to school and told the story I now believed. I’d been to a health spa for a couple of weeks. I’d needed the rest. I picked up right where I’d left off, before James, because I didn’t remember that James existed.

  I got As in school, and since I really had no friends, there weren’t too many people clamoring to ask me questions. My daily coaching sessions with Dr. Keyes were going well, at least according to my parents, and I continued to take my special concoction of “vitamins” every morning. Vitamins that I now know had been altered while I was away to help keep any residual memories tamped down—to help keep me under Dr. Keyes’s and Malcolm’s and Maud’s control.

  But now my parents were gone, and with them, their special drugs. And now I remembered all of it. Officially and completely. But there were still some things I didn’t know. Like when I was dragged off to Fern Haven, what the hell did they do to James?

  I stood up from Hugo’s bed and stared through the windows at the city lights flecking the cobalt sky. Hugo and Jacob were still immersed in the train game, and I could hear Harry practicing at the white-winged Pegasus grand piano down the hall. No one noticed when I went to my room and closed the door.

  I got the postcards out of my biometric-protected desk and took them to bed.

  I sat down and read:

  Dear Tandy, I swear I can’t take it anymore. Not knowing where you are, what you’re thinking. Wishing we’d never left that stupid pool house. That we’d finished what we’d started so I’d at least have that to hold on to. This quote is by William S. Burroughs.

  “If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.”

  That’s what we should have done.

  I love you. James

  I gathered the five cards and put them in an envelope, then placed it carefully under my pillow. I laid my head down and clutched the corner of the pillow near my cheek.

  I’m going to find you, James. We’ll be together again. I promise. Just don’t give up. Please, don’t give up.

  60

  There is truth in dreams, but especially in nightmares. That night I dreamed of the snakes Burroughs had written about. They were sleeping together, entwined as James and I had been on that bed in East Hampton. But as I watched, the snakes shook off their hibernation and rose up. They swelled larger and larger and unfurled their hoods, and just when I was about to scream, I felt the room around me moving, slithering, slipping.

  Snakes crawled through cracks, slid along baseboards, dripped from light fixtures. They were all around me. Everywhere. And they were closing in.

  I shot straight up and threw on the lamp beside my bed. My eyes searched the room, but I saw nothing moving, or dripping, or slithering, and felt nothing under the blankets. I jumped and tossed my bedding to the floor anyway.

  I stood in the corner of the room and watched for any sign of an animal of any kind, hand to my chest, gasping for air.

  At last I was satisfied that I was alone.

  So what was the truth in the nightmare?

  Was there a truth about James that I was hiding from myself? Was there anything snakelike about him, as my parents had suggested?

  As much as I resented the implication, I allowed the thought to have its way, let it circle my mind for a few charged minutes, but it didn’t ping on a truth.

  So I took my mind for another spin, let it roam around the list of things I was worrying about, trying to figure out what the snakes meant. The murdered private school girls; Matthew, who was penned in only a few city miles from my room. Then I thought about the obvious—the snakes loose in the Dakota. And suddenly it hit me.

  Snakes in the Dakota.

  The Dakota.

  I remembered the blueprint that had been set up on an easel at the shareholders’ meeting. Something I’d seen there now struck me as wrong. An anomaly.

  There was a flaw in the floor plan.

  61

  I dress
ed quickly and tiptoed through our dark apartment until I got to the kitchen. Inside the freezer, I dug around until I found the last unopened pint of Graeter’s chocolate-chocolate-chip ice cream, a family favorite. And I just happened to know someone who was highly vulnerable to full-fat ice cream of this type and at this hour.

  I grabbed the frosty pint in my sweaty hands, snatched a spoon from the drying rack, and ran downstairs.

  Virgil was sitting behind the front desk in the lobby talking with Oscar, the night porter. Virgil was big, with a glittering diamond in one ear. He had been our personal driver until bad times descended on the Angel family. Luckily, there’d been an opening for a night doorman at the Dakota, and Virgil had snagged the job.

  “I’ve got something to trade,” I said, sauntering over to him.

  His eyes sparkled when he saw me. “What’s that, Tandy?”

  I pulled the ice cream out from behind my back, and the sparkle grew. “A little tub of something delicious,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to play it cool. “And you’re trading it for what?”

  I leaned in and told him. He almost fell off his stool.

  “You trying to get me fired?” he asked.

  “Virgil. I’m Captain of Snake Patrol and Venomous Animal Security at the Dakota,” I said, lowering my chin. “I’m pretty sure I outrank you.”

  “You’re funny,” he said, laughing. “Oscar, can you take the desk for about ten minutes while Ms. Angel here puts my job at risk?”

  “I gotcher back, boss,” Oscar answered.

  Virgil slid off his stool. “Give me that ice cream.”

  I handed it over, and we went to the elevator together. Virgil pried the top off the tub and began to eat.

  “Oh. My. God. Totally worth it,” he said with a sigh.

  As the elevator lifted the two of us skyward, I thought through the layout of the apartments on the ninth floor.

  Some of them, like our apartment, are duplexes. Our front door is on the ninth floor. Malcolm and Maud’s suite can only be reached by our interior circular staircase, which goes up one flight.

  But other duplex apartments on the ninth floor have been split up over the decades and are no longer attached to the suites on the tenth floor. Those smaller tenth-floor apartments are directly under the roof, with steeply sloping ceilings and smaller windows.

  When our neighbor Mr. Borofsky moved out of 9F months ago, he split his duplex and sold the ninth-floor unit—but the tenth-floor suite was never sold.

  What I’d realized earlier was that the blueprint displayed for the Pest Control meeting in the common room showed 9F as a duplex. So it was possible that the upstairs suite had not been searched.

  When the elevator finally came to a stop on the tenth floor, Virgil and I walked to the vacant apartment known as 10F. Virgil knocked on the door. When no one answered, I held out my hand for the keys.

  “I’m not allowed to go in there without express permission from the tenant,” Virgil told me.

  “There is no tenant,” I reminded him. “At least, not one that we know of.”

  Virgil narrowed his eyes. He handed me his flashlight along with the keys. “Be careful, Tandy. And return the keys when you’re done here,” he said. “In, say, fifteen minutes?”

  “No problem,” I said.

  Wrong again.

  62

  Virgil walked off with his ice cream, and I waited for the elevator doors to slide closed behind him. Then I stood outside apartment 10F, thinking. I am out of control. Who sneaks out in the middle of the night to go investigating deserted apartments in a building known for murder and scandal?

  But if it was an empty apartment, it was harmless. Right?

  My hands shook as I tried to shove a key into the lock. I dropped the flashlight on my toe and cursed under my breath. When I bent to pick up the flashlight, I dropped the keys.

  Honestly, I was a hot mess. Fear, as has been previously established, sucks, especially for someone not used to feeling it.

  Finally, I fitted a key into the lock, wiggled it, and turned the knob, but the fireproof door wouldn’t budge. So I stuck the second key into the top lock and gave it a half turn. The bolt slid back, and this time when I turned the knob, the door opened.

  I held my breath and peeked around the door. Inside the room was another room, this one made of glass. It was like a large terrarium with sliding doors facing me.

  What the hell?

  I shone the flashlight beam on the door handle and slid the doors open.

  I was immediately hit with a tsunami of stink, a smell so overpowering and nauseating, it could only be rotten meat. Imagine if you were to dump a pile of garbage in the middle of the kitchen, then turn off the air-conditioning and leave the house for two weeks in the dead of summer.

  This was ten times worse than that.

  Bile rose up in the back of my throat and I swallowed it down, trying not to heave on my shoes. Still, my inquiring mind was running over the options.

  What had happened here? When Mr. Borofsky supposedly checked out of the Dakota, had he left food and garbage in the upstairs apartment?

  If so, he was disgusting.

  Gagging, I gripped the flashlight on a level with and perpendicular to my right ear, like it was a spear. Then I forced myself to enter the glass-lined inner room.

  I expected to see trash.

  Instead I saw a horror movie unfolding before my eyes. The room was crawling with reptiles and spiders. They slithered over and around one another, crawling and sliding and squirming in undulating piles. Terror glued my feet to the floor. If I moved, something could strike. If I moved, I could die.

  I stared along the flashlight beam at overturned aquariums and terrariums, shards of broken glass, glowing fluorescent lights that had crashed to the floor. In the center of it all was a heap that looked like a filthy sack of clothes. But on second glance I saw fingers blooming out of the sleeves of a shirt. And then a naked foot.

  “Oh my God,” I said aloud, my hand fluttering up to cover my mouth.

  I had just registered the fact that the pile of clothing was, in fact, a decomposing body when the body started to move. The scream that came out of my mouth filled the entire room. My mind went weightless, and I clung to consciousness as hard as I could, knowing that if I passed out in here, I was a goner. I inhaled to scream again and saw that the body wasn’t moving after all. It was the snakes writhing over the body, playing with my mind.

  Move, Tandy. You have to move.

  Slowly I backed out of the glass enclosure and felt for the front door with my left hand, holding the flashlight with my right. I was afraid to make any sudden movements. My shoes crunched as I went along, and I didn’t even want to know what I was stepping on. Finally, the edge of the door hit me in the middle of my back.

  I squirmed backward through the doorway and slammed the door behind me as hard as I could. I felt something crawling on my neck and slapped at it, but nothing was there. There was a skitter on my leg. Another slap. Nothing.

  Phantom spiders. I was sure I’d be feeling them for days. Shaking from head to toe, I made my way toward the elevator, trying as hard as I could not to heave, not to cry, not to scream.

  Focus, Tandy. Focus on the facts. That was what Dr. Keyes used to say.

  It had to be Mr. Borofsky in there. What if he hadn’t checked out of the Dakota? What if he’d paid the monthly maintenance bill in advance and moved upstairs to the sealed-off suite without telling the board? I could see him stowing away in the building with his venomous zoo, maybe sneaking out the service entrance occasionally to get food.

  Maybe he hadn’t meant to squat permanently but just needed a while to smuggle his collection out of the Dakota a few beasts at a time.

  God. Who kept a collection like that? Especially under the same roof with other people? Unsuspecting people. It was totally insane and definitely against code. Suddenly, I kind of couldn’t stand Mr. Borofsky
.

  But I suppose he’d paid for what he’d done. One of his pets had probably bitten or stung him, and then he’d fallen over, taking some of his tanks with him, and died all alone. And pretty unpleasantly. Then, over the course of time, creatures had found ways out of the apartment, through spaces and holes in the walls.

  I glanced at the apartment door, shivered, and jabbed the call button again, but the elevator was way downstairs and seemed to be sleeping there. Forget this. I didn’t want to stay in this hallway another minute. So for the first time in a long time, I took the stairs, racing downward on shivery legs, trying to call Jacob the whole way.

  63

  I was so happy to see the front door of our apartment open and Jacob coming toward me that I practically flung myself at him.

  “What, Tandy? What’s happened?” he asked, putting his arms around me.

  “Upstairs,” I said, gasping for breath. “Snakes. And spiders. And dead… dead…”

  Jacob held me at arm’s length now, his eyes wide.

  “Tandy, have you been bitten?” he demanded.

  I shook my head.

  “Where are the snakes?” he asked.

  “Upstairs, Jacob! Millions of them. In Mr. Borofsky’s apartment, 10F. At the other end of the hall. They’re all over the place and there are spiders and I don’t know what else.” I took a breath. “And I think Mr. Borofsky is dead on the floor.”

  I leaned forward to brace my hands over my knees and realized I was still holding Virgil’s keys and flashlight. I’d need to get them back to him at some point.

  “Come inside,” Jacob said, putting his hand on my back. “Let’s get help.”

  Six minutes later, an ambulance tore through the front gates, and while it left its engine running, waiting to receive the decaying corpse of Ernest Borofsky, a platoon of green-uniformed men and women piled out of their official SUVs and surged up the fire stairs to the tenth floor.