by John Saul
Eric started to go into his own room, but Ed grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm up behind his back, and shoved him into the little room that would have been a guest room had anyone ever come to visit the Cavanaughs.
Eric’s heart sank, for when his father took him in here, it meant things were really going to be bad. “Strip!” his father commanded, already pulling his belt out of the loops in his pants.
Eric’s eyes widened. “No,” he whimpered. “Come on, Dad—I didn’t do anything—”
“You disobeyed me, and you got yourself kicked off the team,” Ed rasped. “I don’t call that nothing.” He reached out with his free hand, grasped Eric’s shirt, and ripped it off. Eric cringed, but knowing there was no escape, quickly removed his pants and underwear, then stretched out on the bed.
The belt whistled in the air before it lashed across Eric’s naked buttocks, but Eric knew better than to scream out with pain. When his father was like this, the sounds of his agony only seemed to make it worse. He clenched his teeth, his hands gripping the posts at the head of the bed.
Again the leather strap whistled in the air and struck.
With each lash, Eric’s rage increased.
“Well, it fits with what I’ve found,” Dr. Paul Samuels commented, after listening to everything Gene Templeton had to say. “As far as I can tell, he wasn’t attacked by any kind of weapon at all.”
Charlotte Ambler looked at the doctor in surprise. She’d followed the ambulance over from the school, then waited impatiently while Simms was being examined, anxious to know exactly what had transpired in the gymnasium. “No weapon?” she repeated, her voice taking on the acerbic quality she usually reserved for her students, forgetting that it had been twelve years since Paul Samuels had been one of them. “For heaven’s sake, Paul, I saw Harold myself!”
“And something happened to him,” Samuels agreed. “But it doesn’t look to me like he was attacked by anybody, at least not with a knife.”
“You want to expand on that?” Gene asked, glancing at the clock. It was now thirty minutes past dinner time. He sighed silently and turned his attention back to the doctor.
“A knife makes a clean cut,” Samuels explained. “If you slash someone with a knife, you’re going to stab them deep, or lay them open, but the edges of the cuts are going to be clean. And there won’t be any pattern, But that’s not the way it is with Harold Simms. It looks to me as though he was attacked by some kind of animal. At least at first.”
The memory of the hissing animal in the tree outside Cassie’s room came into Templeton’s mind. “Could it have been a cat?” he asked.
Samuels thought a moment, then nodded. “Could be. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”
“But Harold was very certain that he heard someone laughing,” Charlotte Ambler reminded them.
“Who simply doesn’t seem to have been there,” Templeton observed wearily. “I’m sorry, Charlotte, but whatever happened, I can’t see how Cassie could have had anything to do with it. And Simms could have been wrong.”
Charlotte turned impatiently to the doctor. “Is that true?”
Samuels shrugged noncommittally. “It’s possible. It’s even possible that he did most of the damage to himself.”
“Did it to himself?” Charlotte repeated indignantly. “What on earth are you saying?”
“Just that,” Samuels replied. “I think it’s pretty clear what happened, particularly after what the chief’s told us. Simms had just thrown Eric off the team, and then Cassie managed to humiliate him in front of the kids. And you yourself have already told me that Simms was—what? High-strung? Weren’t those the words you used?”
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “He had some problems, yes—”
“Well, if you ask me, he just snapped,” Samuels went on. “There’s no way of saying exactly what happened, and some of the marks were certainly inflicted by some kind of animal. But I don’t think there was anyone in that office with him. I think that something set him off and he just came apart in there. He literally started bouncing off the walls. I don’t doubt that he thought he was being attacked by Cassie. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he claimed he actually saw her. But I’d be just as willing to bet that it was an hallucination.”
“But the wounds …” Charlotte pressed.
“Except for the deepest scratches and bite marks, the wounds are all consistent with someone striking hard against concrete block walls. The bruises, the abrasions, everything. There isn’t much that couldn’t have been self-inflicted.”
Templeton regarded the doctor thoughtfully, his fingers absently rubbing at the stubble on his chin. “What you’re saying is that he just went nuts?”
Samuels’s brows arched. “ ‘Just went nuts’ isn’t precisely the terminology I would use, no. I’d be more inclined to label it a psychotic episode.”
“Is there a difference?” Templeton drawled, and Samuels, despite the circumstances, couldn’t quite suppress a chuckle.
“In some cases, not really,” he admitted. “But with Simms, it’s too early to tell. ‘Just went nuts,’ as you put it, always seems to me to imply a permanent condition. A psychotic episode can be quite a temporary thing.”
“How temporary?” Templeton asked.
“A few minutes. An hour. A day. Who knows?” Now he turned once more to Charlotte Ambler. “What can you tell me about Simms’s condition the last few days?”
Charlotte hesitated, then sighed. “Well, actually, I’ve been worried about Harold. He’s seemed to be wound up about a lot of things lately, and I know he’s been taking it out on some of his classes. It hasn’t been too serious, and so far no one has complained. But it has been there. I’d hoped he’d make it through the year and then get a good rest. But I’ve also had some reservations about renewing his contract. Frankly, I’m not sure he’s cut out to teach. He … well, I’ve always had the feeling that deep down, he just doesn’t like the students.”
“And if he came apart, he’d be likely to blame it on one of the kids?” Samuels suggested.
Charlotte’s lips tightened. “I’m afraid I find that a little hard to believe.” She paused and met the doctor’s eyes. “May I talk to him again? Is he conscious?”
Samuels nodded. All three of them stood up and left the doctor’s office, walking down the hall to the last of the six rooms which were all the False Harbor hospital required. Inside the room, strapped to a bed, they found Harold Simms.
Charlotte moved to the bedside and looked down at the math teacher’s face. The blood had been washed away, and now she could see that the lacerations were not as serious as they’d first appeared. His cheeks were scratched, and on Simms’s forehead a large round black and blue spot marked the point at which something had struck his forehead.
But what? The wall? Or even, perhaps, the underside of the desk beneath which the teacher had been found?
Simms’s eyes blinked open and for a moment he seemed to stare unseeingly at the ceiling. Then his gaze flickered around the room, finally focusing on Charlotte Ambler’s face. Then he began struggling against the restraints that held his arms, legs, and torso immobile, meanwhile mumbling broken fragments of words. Templeton listened closely, but nothing the man said made any sense. It was nothing more than a disconnected stream of syllables.
Simms’s voice rose to a scream and the words became garbled beyond recognition. He was thrashing on the bed now, straining against the heavy leather straps, his hands clenching into fists so tight that his knuckles turned white and the palms began to bleed where his fingernails pierced his own skin.
“Jesus Christ, Doc,” Gene Templeton whispered. “Can’t you do something?”
His words were unnecessary. Samuels had already picked up a syringe from a table that lay near the door, filled it, and was in the process of plunging it into Simms’s arm. After a few seconds the drug began to take hold, and slowly Simms began to relax.
“What are you going to do?” Charlotte Ambler fi
nally asked, her voice bleak.
“We’re moving him tomorrow,” Samuels replied. “He’ll be taken up to the state hospital near Eastbury.”
Templetoon shook his head sadly and turned away. “Hope they bring a straitjacket,” he muttered softly as he started out the door. “Looks to me like that guy’s going to need one.”
And yet, as he left the hospital he still couldn’t get Cassie’s words out of his mind.
“Sumi? Did you really do it? Did you do what I wanted you to?”
Chapter 14
“I don’t believe it!” Teri Bennett squealed excitedly. “You really saw it?”
Kevin Smythe nodded, glancing at his watch out of the corner of his eye to make sure there was time to tell the story once more. So far he’d had to repeat it twice, but each time new arrivals appeared on the front steps of the school, and they wanted to hear it too. Feigning boredom with the repetition, he began again. “I was just coming around the corner from Pine Street, and there was an ambulance right there in front of the entrance on Hartford. I almost just went on by, ’cause at first I didn’t think anything was happening. But then the doors opened and they brought him out. Man, it was weird—they had him all strapped down, and there was one of those bottles with a rubber hose on it, and everything! Then they stuck him in the back of the ambulance and the lights started flashing and they took off!”
“But where are they taking him?” Allayne Garvey demanded. “I mean, are they really going to lock him up?”
Kevin shrugged with exaggerated casualness. “Search me,” he said, and then his voice dropped to a level that implied he was about to divulge a secret. “But my dad said he went absolutely spacey after it happened—”
“After what happened?” Jeff Maynard asked, trotting up the stairs to join the group on the top step. “What’s going on?”
Kevin and the two girls stared at Jeff in disbelief. “You mean you didn’t hear?” Kevin asked. “Cassie Winslow hung around after school yesterday and tried to kill Mr. Simms.”
Jeff’s mouth dropped open. “Are you nuts?” he demanded. “She left right after Simms kicked Eric off the team. And—” He suddenly fell silent, staring at the street. The eyes of the others followed his gaze, and they, too, stopped talking.
Walking along the sidewalk, their heads close together, as if they were whispering to each other, were Eric Cavanaugh and Cassie Winslow. By the time they got to the foot of the steps, not a sound was to be heard from any of the thirty or so students gathered in front of the school, all of whom were now staring at the latest arrivals.
Cassie glanced up and knew immediately what had happened. But for Eric it seemed to take a moment.
“Hey!” he called to Jeff Maynard. “What’s going on?”
Jeff looked back at him uncertainly, then his eyes shifted to Kevin Smythe. It was Kevin who finally spoke.
“What are you doing with her?” he asked, the belligerence in his voice tempered by nervousness. To him Cassie Winslow suddenly looked dangerous.
Eric frowned. “What are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be with Cassie?” His gaze shifted to Teri and Allayne, but both of them were now looking somewhere else. And then he, too, understood. “Hey,” he said, “she didn’t do anything to Simms. I was with her, and we were out at the marsh at—” He stopped himself as he saw his friends exchange doubtful looks.
Lisa Chambers—who had been silent until now, trying to sort out the truth from all the strange things she’d heard last night and this morning—suddenly made up her mind. She glared down at Eric. “You were in Miranda’s house, weren’t you?” she accused. “What were you doing there? Helping Cassie figure out how to do it? Or did you help her do it yourself?”
Eric’s jaw tightened. “Do it?” he demanded. “Do what? You guys don’t think she did anything to Simms, do you? And even if she did, so what? Every one of you hated his guts! We all did!” No one said anything as Eric slowly searched the faces of the people who only yesterday had been his friends. Only Jeff Maynard seemed to be uncertain. “Jeff? You don’t think Cassie and I did anything, do you?”
Jeff felt like a trapped animal, caught between his best friend and practically everyone else he knew. “I—I don’t know,” he stammered. “I just got here. Teri says—”
“What does she know?” Cassie demanded, her eyes flashing with anger. “Were you there? Did you see what happened to Mr. Simms? Maybe she did it!”
Teri’s face turned scarlet with indignation. “Don’t you try to blame me, Cassie Winslow!” she shouted. “All I know is what my mother told me, and she says you did it and they ought to lock you up! So don’t try to blame it on me!” Bursting into tears, she wheeled around and rushed into the building, Allayne and Lisa hurrying after her.
Eric, now as angry as Cassie, started up the steps, his hands clenching into fists. But then he abruptly changed his mind, and took Cassie’s hand in his own. “Let’s just go,” he said, his voice so quiet no one but she could hear him. “It doesn’t matter what they thought about Simms. They just want to blame you.”
They were already a block away when the school P.A. system came to life and an announcement that the first class of the day would be replaced by an assembly was broadcast through the halls and out over the grounds.
Neither Eric nor Cassie heard it.
Charlotte Ambler stood behind the podium atop the choir platform hastily assembled fifteen minutes earlier, and looked out at the assembled students of Memorial High. Ordinarily they tumbled happily into the auditorium, laughing and chattering among themselves, looking forward to an assembly—any assembly—as a release from an hour of classes. But today it was different. They were still chattering, but their voices were subdued, and as they huddled together in small groups, they seemed to glance furtively around them, as if sensing that they were talking about something none of them had any information about and that they shouldn’t be talking about at all. Charlotte Ambler was about to give them the information they wanted, but she had a sinking feeling that it might already be too late, for nowhere in the sea of faces could she spot either Eric Cavanaugh or Cassie Winslow.
Rapping sharply on the podium with a gavel, she waited for the hubbub to die down, then cleared her throat.
“I’m sure most of you are aware of the unfortunate incident of yesterday afternoon,” she began, determined to choose her words as carefully as possible. If she couldn’t defuse the situation now—and quell the rumors that had already begun—there was a distinct possibility that the rest of the term would be a complete loss. If, indeed, it wasn’t too late already. “One of our teachers,” she went on, “Mr. Simms, has suffered a form of illness that is not at all uncommon in our day and age. Mr. Simms has been under a great deal of pressure—”
“And maybe a few knives?” someone yelled from the back of the room.
There was a gasp, followed by dead silence, and Charlotte Ambler slowly removed her glasses, letting them drop down to her breast. Abandoning the short speech she’d written a few minutes before, she stepped around the podium and moved forward to the edge of the platform. When she spoke again, her voice needed no amplification from the microphone.
“I shall not ask who said that,” she said, her words echoing coldly through the room, “because if I found out, that person would no longer be a part of this high school.” She paused for a split second, then went on. “What has happened is this: Mr. Simms suffered a sort of mental breakdown in the gymnasium yesterday afternoon, and it caused him to inflict a certain amount of harm upon himself. He is being taken to a hospital in Eastbury, where he will be treated for an indefinite period. For the remainder of this term his coaching duties will be handled by Mr. Johnson, and his classes by myself!” She paused, as if waiting for any of the students to dare make comment on her selection of substitutes for the absent teacher. When there was no response, she continued. “There may be certain scheduling changes, and you will be notified of those in due course. As for the rumors that ha
ve been circulating this morning, there is no evidence that Mr. Simms was attacked by anyone, or that there were any weapons involved. That is all. You may return to your homerooms.”
She stepped off the platform and immediately disappeared out the side door of the auditorium, unwilling to allow even a moment for any of the students to ask a question she might not be prepared to answer.
There was a moment of silence before the realization that the assembly was over sank in. Then, slowly, the students got to their feet and began drifting toward the doors. But everywhere there was a soft buzz of whispered conversation as the teenagers tried to decipher the truth of what had happened in the gymnasium the day before.
By the time the auditorium had emptied, a consensus had been reached, and though Charlotte Ambler wasn’t there to hear it, it would not have surprised her.
Lisa Chambers summed it up as she left the auditorium, the center of a group that only a few days before had always pivoted around Eric.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Lisa announced. “I could tell Cassie Winslow was weird the first time I saw her. If Mr. Simms said she tried to kill him, I believe it. And if you ask me, Eric better stay away from her before she does something to him too.”
“We can’t just ignore it, Keith,” Rosemary insisted. “If you keep trying to bury your head in the sand, things are just going to get worse and worse!”
“Bury my head?” Keith demanded. He glanced at the clock above the kitchen sink. It was nearly nine. He should have been down at the marina an hour ago, but Rosemary seemed determined to keep arguing with him until he admitted that there was something wrong with Cassie. “I’m not burying my head in any sand, and I’m getting a little tired of you saying I am. If Gene thought there were anything to Harold Simms’s story, don’t you think he’d have been back here by now?” His strong jaw set in an expression of grim determination. “What the hell do you want? Cassie and Eric say they were out at Miranda’s house, and Jennifer backs them up. Even if Eric and Cassie were lying—which I don’t believe—why would Jen lie?”