The Math Teacher Is Dead

by Robert Manners

  “How many people have you had sex with?” Officer Kelly needed to know.

  “Two hundred or so. Maybe a hundred here in town and the rest were visitors or when I was out of town.”

  “And how many have you turned down?”

  “Maybe five who’ve asked, three or four more who just hinted.”

  “Jesus,” Officer Kelly shook his head, partly in admiration and partly in dismay for how many avenues of investigation that opened up, “How about exes? Who have you dated, or been at all serious with, besides Jeremy?”

  “Well, I dated three girls last year,” Danny thought about it, “And I had a sort of regular thing with Henry Ahern and Tommy Williams, who were on the list of people who didn’t come out that I gave you in November. And I spent a lot of time with Ash Phillips over Winter Break. But those were all just casual sex, not ‘dating’ per se.”

  “Henry and Tommy had alibis for Eric Bettancourt’s murder, they were both at the dance same as you, same as everyone on your list — except for the two Christian kids, who were at church that night. I never questioned any of them. I’ll have to have a look at Ash. He was the kid who was out in the woods with you when you found Janacek, too.”

  “Yes,” Danny said slowly, wondering if that was significant. But he’d spent so much time with Ash, gotten to know him so well, and he couldn’t imagine him hurting anybody.

  “In the meantime, I’m putting a guard on Jeremy. He’s in serious danger.”

  “And it’s because of me,” Danny said sadly.

  “No, it’s because of this crazy person who’s obsessed with you,” Officer Kelly leaned over and took Danny’s hand, “This is not your fault, OK?”

  “Maybe not my fault, but it is because of me,” Danny contradicted him, but smiling and clasping his hand to show he appreciated the effort, “I’ll do everything I can to help you find out who’s doing this.”

  “I can’t ask for more,” Officer Kelly smiled and stood up, “You go home and get some sleep, OK? I’ll talk to you again on Monday, hopefully I’ll have some more information by then.

  “Goodnight, Officer,” Danny stood and watched the man leave the lobby, then sat back down and had a good long cry.

  22

  The following morning, after a good night’s sleep in his Pine Street room and a huge breakfast served him in bed by Oscar, Danny went out to find Ash. The things Officer Kelly had said about him having an obsessed fan disturbed him, and Ash’s name coming up in that context had worried him more, so he wanted to talk to the boy and reassure himself that Ash couldn’t be responsible for these atrocities. Surely Ash had alibis for all of the dates in question.

  “Oh, hi, Danny!” Mrs. Phillips answered the door when he knocked, dressed in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, her usual Sunday attire.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Phillips. Is Ash at home?” Danny asked in his usual courtly manner that made the older woman smile indulgently at him.

  “No, he’s out at his studio,” she answered.

  “He has a studio?” Danny was taken aback.

  “You didn’t know? I would have thought he’d taken you up there already. I guess he thought it wasn’t good enough for you. It’s just a shack.”

  “I’m not sure if I should ask you where it is, if he didn’t tell me himself; but it’s important that I talk to him this morning, and I can’t get him on his cell.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you going to his studio,” Mrs. Phillips smiled, knowing how much her son loved this beautiful boy, “It’s up on the River Road, about a mile and a half from the gas station.”

  “The River Road,” Danny didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Yeah, you’ll see his car, if he’s up there,” she chattered blithely on, “It’s on the right hand side, between the road and the river.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Phillips,” Danny reached out and shook her hand, “Is there any message I can give him if I find him?”

  “No, I’m sure he’ll be along eventually.”

  Danny went back to his car and sat there for a moment, trying to decide if he should call Officer Kelly and tell him about this, or if he should go and talk to Ash first and find out what was going on. He didn’t want to have the police question his friend if he wasn’t involved, it would hurt Ash’s feelings to think that Danny didn’t trust him. And he just couldn’t believe Ash would have hurt Jeremy, or anyone else for that matter: he was such a gentle boy, so quiet and always calm.

  As Mrs. Phillips had promised, Danny saw Ash’s car off the side of the road behind a thin screen of saplings; it was an old gray Ford Fiesta with rust stains around the bottom, recognizable by its Colorado plates and the swirling black patterns Ash had painted around the outside in latex paints that he could peel off and repaint whenever the mood took him.

  Leaving his car behind Ash’s, Danny climbed down and followed the narrow foot track that snaked through the trees, and in less than a hundred yards came out into a clearing with a small cabin sitting in the middle; it looked like a wooden box with a pitched metal roof, about fifteen feet long and perhaps ten deep, with four windows and a metal chimney, sitting up on stilts with three feet of bare space underneath. He could hear the river in the background, and the rain was still dripping in the trees, the muddy ground showing tracks going back and forth around the front of the cabin.

  “Ash? Are you here?” Danny called as he stepped up on the little stoop, knocking on the thin wooden door, which opened at his touch, “Hello?”

  Danny stepped into the cabin, which was very dim but apparently completely lined with photographs, sketches, and paintings. Danny couldn’t see them very well, and wondered how Ash could work with so little light; but he found a half-dozen kerosene lamps scattered around the small single room, and lit the one next to the door with the book of paper matches that was lying beside it. In its light, he could see an iron bed up against the wall, a wood-burning stove on the right, some cupboards for food and water storage beside it, and a half-dozen easels and portable supply stands scattered around. Stepping further into the room, he raised the lamp to look at the pictures on the wall.

  All of the pictures were of Danny: some photographs and sketches for which he’d posed, but dozens more that he didn’t know had been taken. There were pictures of him running in the woods in his skimpy little shorts, and pictures of him riding Tenorino in those same woods; pictures of him at school, talking to people, rehearsing the play, kissing Jeremy in the halls; and even pictures taken with a telephoto lens through his bedroom window, apparently from up in a tree.

  Some of the drawings were of Danny alone, but many more were of Danny and Ash together, some sexual but most of them more along the lines of comic-book illustrations, showing them engaged in various fantasy adventures: cowboys shooting at rustlers, spacemen defending themselves against aliens, pirates swinging their cutlasses at white-wigged naval officers.

  And then there were the paintings, a score of them, mostly taken from the photographs but a few from the artist’s imagination. The most beautiful and disturbing one was of Danny on his morning run through the woods, with Mr. Janacek’s dead hand lying in the foreground. Below that painting were dozens of photographs from that morning, including distance and closeup shots of the dead body — apparently all that time Ash had his camera out, he’d been surreptitiously taking pictures.

  “Danny!” Ash said in surprise, stepping into the cabin.

  “Ash?” Danny turned to look at the boy, who was holding a huge green pistol in his hand. He raised the gun and aimed it at Danny, who didn’t even have time to react before he heard a soft shwup and felt a stinging sensation in his arm. Looking down at the source of the pain, he saw a large tranquilizer dart sticking out of his deltoid. He reached to pull it out, but his hand missed. He gaped incredulously at Ash, who stared back at him with his usual gentle calm; but within seconds, Danny’s vision fragmented into little dots that drifted apart from each other, and then dissipated altogether. He did
n’t even feel himself hit the floor.

  *****

  “Yes?” Mrs. Phillips answered the door in some irritation, having been torn away from the football game at an important moment.

  “Officer Kelly, Vandervere Police,” the policeman presented his wallet badge; he was technically off-duty and so wore civilian clothes instead of his uniform.

  “What can I do for you, Officer?”

  “I need to speak to Eugene Phillips,” Officer Kelly replied.

  “He’s not here,” the woman answered tersely.

  “Do you know where I can find him, ma’am?”

  “No.”

  “Can you think of anywhere he might be?” the officer insisted.

  “What’s this all about, Officer?” Mrs. Phillips crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door sill.

  “Are you his mother?” the officer asked, and when the woman nodded, he went on, “Your son is involved in an investigation, and I need to speak to him about two murders and two attempted murders. It’s extremely important.”

  “You think my son killed those people?” the woman eyed the officer suspiciously.

  “No, ma’am, but I think he may have information about the murders, and that puts him in great danger. The killer is targeting people close to Danny Vandervere. Danny’s boyfriend is in the hospital right now.”

  “I didn’t know Danny had a boyfriend,” Mrs. Phillips looked confused, “I mean, I thought he and Ash were together.”

  “Can you tell me where to look for your son, ma’am?” the officer felt a thrill of dread at those words but couldn’t say why.

  “He might be up at his studio,” Mrs. Phillips relented, worried about her son’s safety, “It’s up on River Road, on the right, a mile past the gas station. Danny just went up there looking for him about an hour ago, you’ll see their cars if they’re there.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll ask your son to call you when I see him.”

  “Thank you, Officer.”

  *****

  Danny came to very slowly, floating in a feeling of immense pleasure; he could feel someone sucking his cock, and strong hands roaming his skin. He groaned and arched his back lazily, mildly concerned by his grogginess and wondering vaguely where he was and with whom; but the sucking was more interesting, and he concentrated on that instead, letting the orgasm mount with delicious pressure.

  It was during his orgasm that Danny realized that he couldn’t move his arms, but he was so concentrated on the pleasure he didn’t think about it; afterward, as his breathing returned to normal and his head cleared a little, he pulled again at his arms and discovered that they were stretched full-length and his wrists were bound in some soft material; his ankles were bound together as well, his legs tightly immobilized. But it wasn’t painful or frightening, just peculiar.

  Opening his eyes, he was surprised to see a corrugated steel ceiling instead of plaster — oh, of course, Ash’s studio he thought, closing his eyes again and drifting a little bit — but then he felt cold metal pressed under his chin, something squarish, and his eyes flew open.

  Ash was sitting beside him on the narrow iron bed, leaning over him, his hair pushed back behind a dark purple bandanna, looking thoughtfully at whatever it was that was pressed under Danny’s chin.

  “Ash? What are you doing?” Danny whispered, his throat dry and weak.

  “I don’t want you to suffer,” Ash explained equably, “But I don’t want to make a mess, either.”

  “What?” Danny couldn’t make any sense of that statement. He and Ash were both naked, and the air in the room was cold.

  “If I shoot you here,” Ash said slowly, smiling at Danny, “it won’t hurt, but it will ruin your head.”

  Terror cleared the cobwebs out of Danny’s mind, and his entire body stiffened: the metal thing under his chin was a gun. Ash was going to kill him.

  “Why?” Danny cried out, struggling uselessly at his bonds.

  “So we can be together,” Ash said as if pointing out the obvious, then moved the gun down to Danny’s chest, “If I shoot you here, it won’t hurt much, but it might tear your chest muscles, it would ruin this beautiful line.”

  “What are you talking about? Why do you want to shoot me at all?”

  “I told you: so we can be together,” Ash repeated dreamily, “Oh, I know, I can shoot you under the arm. But if I miss your heart, it will hurt an awful lot. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “How can we be together if you shoot me?” Danny demanded.

  “I’ll shoot you, and then myself, and we can be together forever. Nobody in our way, nobody keeping us apart; we’ll always be young, just like we are right now.”

  “That’s not how it works, Ash,” Danny tried to remain calm, hoping to reason with the boy, though his heart was thumping like he’d just run five miles, and his skin broke out in a cold sweat that smelled acrid with fear; but if had to die, he did not want to die begging and jibbering, “If you kill us, we’ll just be dead. You can’t do that.”

  “No, we’ll be together in the afterlife. I know we will.”

  “No, Ash, we won’t.”

  “You’ll be beautiful forever.”

  “No, Ash, I won’t. I’ll be dead. All of this beauty, this wonderful body that I know you love, will die. It will turn into dead, cold meat and rot in the ground. You can’t do that to my beauty, you can’t take it out of the world and turn it into rotting meat.”

  “You don’t need your body,” Ash said after a long minute of reflection, “Your spirit is beautiful. You’ll always be beautiful, no matter what happens to your body.”

  “All I have is my beauty, Ash: my face and my body and my talent,” Danny looked away from the boy’s sad, calm eyes; arguing for his life, he began to wonder whether or not it was worth arguing about, “Without my physical beauty, I’m nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” the boy seemed stumped by Danny’s reluctance to die with him, “You’ll see, when we’re together in the next world.”

  “If you kill me, we will never be together,” Danny said bitterly.

  “Why not?” Ash felt his foundations crumbling fast, confusion picking away at the monument of his fantasy.

  “Because I love my life, Ash,” Danny said passionately, “I love my body, I love my friends, and my boyfriend, and my aunts. I want to go to college, and fall in love, and have a life. I’m only sixteen years old, I have so much left to do! If you take all that away from me, I will never forgive you, not in this world or the next.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” Ash assured him, stroking his armpit with the barrel of the gun.

  “Ash, you can’t do this,” Danny said forcefully, hoping a sharp tone would snap the boy out of his delusion.

  Ash sat back, shaking his head, unable to fathom why Danny was arguing with him. He got up and walked around the room, trying to understand Danny’s reluctance, looking at the pictures he’d made of their life together in the next world. It was such a beautiful life, full of adventure and love, and he couldn’t see why Danny didn’t want it.

  “Why don’t you believe in my vision?” Ash asked sadly, turning to look at Danny; the gun, a huge black automatic, hung loose in his left hand.

  “Because it’s not real, Ash,” Danny felt sorry for the boy, “It’s all in your head. Your imagination.”

  “It is real,” he insisted, moving back to the bed and sitting down on the edge, running his hand over Danny’s torso affectionately, “It’s just this world keeping us from it.”

  “Why did you kill Mr. Janacek?” Danny hoped to distract Ash from his intention by asking questions.

  “I thought he was using you,” Ash looked down, ashamed, “I made a horrible mistake. I’m so sorry about that.”

  “But how did you even know about us?” Danny had always been so careful about locking the door and making sure the curtains were closed.

  “I saw you through the window in the door, a little tear in the paper over the glass
.”

  “Why were you peeking through a little tear in the paper?” Danny wondered.

  “I’ve been watching you since the first day of school,” Ash smiled a little, embarrassed to admit it but also proud of his ingenuity in keeping track of Danny’s movements, “When I saw what he did to you, I started following him. I tracked him to that disgusting cruising park. He came up to me and offered me a blowjob. I let him kneel down, and I pulled off my belt and looped it around his neck, pulling it tight, straight up, until he passed out. And then I used his own belt to finish him off. And I pushed him down to the trail so you could see that you were free of him.”

  “You were there, all that time?” Danny was creeped out by the idea of being watched during that horribly vulnerable moment.

  “Yes,” Ash leaned down and kissed Danny, “I’ve devoted myself to you, Danny. My every waking moment has been devoted to seeing you and protecting you. I love you.”

  “Is that why you killed Eric? To protect me?”

  “You didn’t hear the things he was saying about you,” Ash’s face distorted with anger, “He was maligning you to anyone who would listen. He even maligned you to me; I pretended to listen, pretended to believe his lies. I went with him when he wanted to slash your tires at the Halloween Dance, and cut the paint on your car. But I cut him instead. I shut him up for you.”

  “But I didn’t want it, Ash,” Danny said sadly, hoping he could convince the boy to stop what he was doing without hurting his feelings, “Eric was just a dumb kid. He could have grown up into a better man. But you took away his chance.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ash frowned, “He was bad.”

  “Do you think you’re bad, Ash? You’ve done worse than spread rumors and tell lies. You killed two people.”

  “But they deserved it,” Ash pointed out.

  “So you punished them? By killing them?”

  “Yes,” Ash said earnestly.

  “And you want to kill me. To punish me?” Danny sprung a trap of logic.

  “No,” Ash cried, “To set you free, to set us free!”

  “But it’s the same thing, Ash,” Danny said patiently, “It’s the same act. It’s killing, it’s death, either way.”