“Alright, let's do that, then,” he said. “No use in waiting around.”
I went back inside to get money from the bank machine while he found a taxi, and we set off just as the last bit of moonlight was overtaken by the cloudy sky. He drifted off more than once as we drove, but I was as wide awake as ever without the medication to force me to sleep. I scratched at my skin as I thought of it again, no longer worried about the withdrawal but rather so about the thought of going without it. But I was fine now that I had found him, and I would be even more so when we figured out who had killed all of those girls – and yet, even thinking so did nothing to ease my worry.
“We'll have to wait until morning for the ferry,” he said when we reached the port. “There's a diner not too far from here – I used to hang out there all night when I'd come back from break. And yes, they do serve coffee.”
“Thank God,” I muttered, handing the money to the driver and stepping out of the car after him.
The dark water was pooling in my vision in the distance. As I watched it sway back and forth, as black and calm as the nothingness of death, my leg stiffened and I couldn't move to follow Jack down the road. He turned back after walking several feet ahead to look for me.
“You alright?”
“Fine,” I said quickly, hurrying to catch up to him. “I was just – thinking. How'd you manage to row from the island to here?”
“I told you it was possible,” he said with a smirk, but then shook his head. “Believe me – it wasn't easy. And Trask had done a number on my ribcage, so that definitely didn't help. About halfway there I just put the oars down and slept for a good five hours. It actually worked out better that way: by the time I reached the mainland, it was past midnight and no one was around. I bet they were scouring the place for me in the morning, right?”
I glanced at him.
“Right,” I said, though by then I had been airlifted to a hospital on the mainland, and had no idea what was happening on the island.
“Did you at least get to try the coffee in Nice?” Jack said as we reached the diner.
“On the train, I guess. It was good.”
“Nah, that doesn't count.”
“Well, we'll have to go back, then,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said, though all the enthusiasm for the place that he had once had was gone. “So long as I never have to set foot in a lavender field again.”
We waited out the time in a booth in the far corner. In the dark, the sound of the ocean in the distance was the only thing to remind us of where we were. I listened to it unwillingly, the vacant thoughts of my mother gone and replaced with those of what had happened to Beringer, and I couldn't stomach the burnt coffee that had been sitting on the stove for hours too long. I should have told Jack what I'd done back at the farm to give him time to reconsider being there with me, but as he lit a cigarette and looked lazily off to his side, the familiarity of the sight pulled me back into the previous year when I hadn't known about the diagnosis or the delusions, and I couldn't bring myself to do so.
When the sky had finally lightened, we set off for the ferry and crossed to the island in an unfamiliar silence. It was seemingly the same as ever, and something about it made the place all the more disquieting. It was both too big and too small all at once, suffocating us with what it was, and the knowledge of why we were there settled over us uncomfortably.
“So what do we do?”
Jack's voice cut through the air as we paused on the path that led up to the school. While we would have normally made our way back to the dorm room to hole ourselves up inside, we were hardly welcome there any longer. I shifted in my spot as I considered as much; we had discussed how to get to the island on the plane ride, but we had never gone over what we would do once we actually got there.
“I guess we … find someplace to stay.”
“Right.” Jack nodded. “Only, I don't think we'll be too welcome in the local inn. Or anywhere, for that matter.”
“So what do we do? Camp out in the woods?”
I glanced around at the barren place and imagined attempting to pitch a tent somewhere off the path, but even if it seemed remotely plausible, the idea of staying in the woods where Miss Mercier and the local girls had been murdered was none-too appealing.
“We could stay at Miss Mercier's,” Jack said.
“Don't you think someone's moved in there by now?”
“Yeah, because there's a surplus of people coming to the island,” Jack replied, rolling his eyes. “Besides, no one wants to live in a dead person's house.”
“Including me,” I muttered, but Jack had already set off in the direction of her old residence and hadn't heard me.
Just as he had assumed, the house was still empty, though now there was a sign on the front lawn advertising that it was for sale. We pushed through the front gate and circled the place once to ensure that it was as empty as it appeared before making our way inside. Her belongings had been cleared away, and only the peeling wallpaper and creaky staircase were reminders of the place that we had visited the year beforehand. I looked into the empty kitchen and pantry with a frown; it was still every bit as eerie as it had been last time.
“So this'll work,” Jack said.
“Not really – squatting is illegal.”
“So is traveling with a stolen passport, Nim. Which reminds me –” He took out the passport that he had taken from one of his coworkers and tossed it into the sink. “Goodbye, Victor Deniau, and thank you for your help.”
“He's going to know you took it,” I said.
“And do what? Report Jean Mercier to the authorities?”
I shrugged.
“Good point.”
“So where should we start?” he asked, going over to the counter and brushing away the layer of filth that had formed there with his sleeve. “We don't have our notes anymore, but we had narrowed it down pretty far.”
“Right. It's someone who's capable of catching girls and dragging them up to the cliffs, probably fairly intelligent, takes summers off, and who knows enough about science that they could do a dissection.”
“We were going to look at the science teachers, right?”
“Right, only ...”
“Only now we don't have access.”
He sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets, looking down at the still-dirty counter with a frown.
“Never thought I'd say this, but it's too bad it's not winter,” he said. “Then we could wear scarves and hats, and no one would notice us.”
“True.”
“We can still sneak in, of course – not like we haven't done that a dozen times – we just can't run into anyone we know.”
“Which is probably everyone, given what happened.”
“Yeah. Somehow I always imagined that being a fugitive would be way more fun.”
“You imagined being a fugitive?”
He shrugged.
“It crossed my mind a few times.” He looked over at me. “What? Are you surprised?”
“Only moderately.”
He pulled himself up to sit on the counter, and in doing so I realized that my leg was beginning to throb violently again. I looked around the sparse kitchen for somewhere to sit, but the table with chairs had long since been cleared away.
“How'd you hurt your leg again?” Jack asked.
“I … fell.”
“And broke your leg?”
I shifted.
“Yes.”
“Nim, I know you're a man of few words, but some elaboration would really be appreciated.”
“I ...” I found an empty trash bin that hadn't been removed and flipped it over to sit atop, thinking quickly for an excuse to give him that wouldn't be an all-out lie. “After you'd gone, I sort of … went up to the cliffs – you know, to see if I could see you rowing – and I … fell.”
“Off the cliffs?”
“It was icy.”
He stared at me.
“Nim
, you fell off the cliffs? And you're just telling me this now?”
“It wasn't so bad,” I said. “Only … Karl seems to think that I was trying to jump, so ...”
“Jesus,” Jack said, his face morphing into one of sympathy. “So that's why he pulled you out.”
“Yep.”
“And I thought picking flowers for the past few months has been bad. What'd he do? Triple up sessions with Beringer? Or did he just invite him to move in with you?”
“No – Beringer's … He sent me to another psychiatrist in Connecticut.”
“So that's what took you so long.”
“Yep.”
He nodded, seemingly convinced.
“Now it makes more sense. Was he holding your mail?”
“It was being sent to my father's, actually,” I said, relieved that he had asked nothing further about what had happened. “So I had to convince him to let me visit him in Holland, get the mail, then get to you.”
“And you hired a travel guide to do it,” Jack said with a grin.
“She was a prostitute, actually.”
Jack let out a shout of laughter.
“When this is over, we should write a book,” he said. “We'll call it, 'The Adventures of Nim and Jack: International Law-Breakers and Prostitution-Enablers.'”
“When do you think that'll be?”
“I don't know. However long it takes you to write it, I suppose.”
I paused.
“No, I meant … how long do you think it'll be until this is over?”
He stopped grinning and sighed.
“I don't know. We're close though – we've got to be close. We've got it all figured out, except ...”
“Who did it.”
“Yeah.”
“Should we get started, then?” I asked. “We could go down to the school, take a look around. It's probably early enough that there's not much activity there.”
He nodded and we stood to go, sliding off the counter and smearing his already dirty pants with filth. I looked down at the clothes that Ilona had gotten for me and scratched at the bright fabric covering my skin, still lingering on the thought that she should have come with us, but as the bracelet still circling around my wrist glared the word mine up at me, I let the idea go. She had undoubtedly seen enough horrors in her lifetime.
From the gates the school looked no different than it had the previous semester: the fields were still stretching off to one side, the brick buildings aligned in a square that connected to the high fence at the entrance, and the Center Garden as overgrown and ill-placed as ever. It was only when we entered through the tear in the chain-link fence and wandered over to the administrative building that we saw the first sign of change: the wall of staff members had been altered so that, at the top where Barker's picture had once been, the portrait of a woman was sitting there instead.
Jack frowned.
“So Barker never recovered, I take it,” he said. “And was replaced by Eleanor … Hambledom.”
“Nice name.”
“Nice face,” Jack countered, looking at the woman's severe glare. “She might just do the school good – God knows there were too few women here.”
He continued to look down the portraits until he found the one that had replaced Miss Mercier's.
“Well, they finally found someone,” he said, tapping the glass that covered the man's photo. “Good for them.”
“Yeah.” I shifted in my spot awkwardly as I tried to think of something to say, but before anything came it occurred to me that there was another portrait missing. “Where's Albertson?”
Jack scanned the wall.
“I don't know,” he said. “This one says 'Latin,' though – isn't there only one Latin teacher?”
My stomach fell.
“Yeah.”
“He was old, Nim. He probably retired; good for him.”
“I guess.”
“This is better, though,” Jack said. “The less teachers who recognize us, the better.”
We wandered down to the Science Building and cautiously crept inside. The labs were locked, but the classrooms had been left open. I warily eyed the door to Volkov's, trying not to think about how I had let Cabail Ibbot sit next to me for all that time, when a separate thought occurred to me: Ilona's accent hadn't been like the soprano's in Rusalka after all, it had been like Volkov's. She was Russian.
“Did you figure something out?” Jack said, noting the look on my face.
“What? No. Yes. No, I was just thinking about Volkov.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Do you think it could've been him?”
I pulled my lips to the side as I considered it. He certainly had a volatile enough temper, but I wasn't quite sure that it fit.
“I don't know … He's a physics teacher – he doesn't do dissections.”
“Right, but he probably studied them in college or whatever, being a science major and all.”
“Right, it's just I don't get the motive.”
“Haven't we been over this, Nim? There's no motive for killing a bunch of girls other than being disturbed, and that's not something you can always see with the naked eye.”
I pulled my sweater further around me again even though it wasn't cold inside the building.
“Right. Well, we won't cross him off,” I said, “but we should keep looking.”
“I don't know how much we'll find here,” Jack said as we continued down the hall. “He'd have to be an idiot to hide anything in his office what with students and custodians snooping around.”
“Where do we look, then? Their homes?”
Jack shrugged. I eyed him carefully.
“Jack, we can't break into teachers' homes.”
“Correction, we can break into teachers' homes, you just don't want to.”
“How're we even supposed to know where they live?”
“Easy, the town's small enough, and I bet there's a directory up in the Welcoming Building that has all their information, too.”
“And how do you propose we get ahold of that?” I asked. “It's not like I can beat Julian Wynne's face in again and get sent there.”
“No – and too bad, by the way – but we could sneak in. It wouldn't be so hard.”
“I guess.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked off down the hallway. For whatever reason, it had seemed that we had been so much closer to figuring out who the killer was seven months ago. Now, standing in the empty building in front of all of the classrooms and trying to pick apart the little that we knew about all of the teachers, it felt as though we were right back where we had started. And without meaning to, I realized that I didn't want to be there. I missed the certainty that I had had – however brief – when I had thought that it was Beringer, and the moments before all of this when our only concern was how to get out from beneath Karl's grip to escape from New England, and the time that I had spent with Ilona on the train, talking about nothing and pretending to be someone else. Everything was too different now and we were so out of place, and I just wanted to go somewhere that felt remarkably like we belonged. And I wanted to go home, I realized – I just didn't know where that was.
“We'll get it, Nim, don't worry. We've only been here an hour.”
“No, I know. I just ...”
“Want it to be over?” He nodded. “Me too.”
We scoured the building for another forty minutes but left upon hearing the first bell and returned to Miss Mercier's house to go over what we knew for what felt like the thousandth time. When classes had ended for the day and we were certain that the grounds would be largely empty, Jack snuck back to see if he could get into the Welcoming Building. As my leg rendered me incapable of doing more than limping along, I stayed behind and tried to clear out some of the grime that had covered the inside of the house. The water had been turned off along with the heat, though, and I was forced to brush aside the dust with the sleeve of my sweater. I gave up before even half
of the living room was done.
“How'd it go?” I asked when Jack returned.
He held up a piece of paper and moved into the room to sit next to me, leaning back against the wall so that we were sitting shoulder to shoulder.
“I got in through the window – Hambledom apparently likes a breeze in her office.” He handed me the paper and I squinted to read his handwriting. “I wrote down all of the teachers' addresses, even the non-science ones, just to be safe. Half of them live on 'School Road.' Seems appropriate enough.”
I frowned at the list.
“Albertson's on here,” I said. “So he is working here?”
Jack shook his head.
“No, I think the file was old. It had Miss Mercier's on there, too.”
“Right.”
“Don't worry so much about Albertson, Nim. He probably just retired.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
Jack shrugged.
“He might've died,” he said. “He was pretty old.”
“Sixty isn't old, Jack. My father's nearly sixty.”
“Thirty-five isn't old, either – neither is sixteen. I don't think death takes age into consideration.”
He glowered down at the list as the mention of Miss Mercier and the local girls' deaths hung unpleasantly in the air around us, but I averted my gaze. The list of addresses looked far too similar to the list of girls' names that we had poured over months beforehand, and the blue ink on the page looked like veins popping up from skin. With each one that we would cross out after searching the houses, I was certain that the ability for the blood to run through them would diminish, as well.
“We'll get this,” Jack said, speaking more to himself than to me. “We'll start tomorrow, and we'll get this.”
But even though we did so, the thought of actually finding who the killer was only decreased after we began. The first couple of days were spent looking around various teachers' houses while they were at the school. It was simple enough to break in – half of them didn't even keep the windows locked – and we moseyed around the houses picking through their things and largely coming up empty. Quite a few of them appeared to be married, and several had children; we cautiously crossed them off the list despite Jack's disapproval.
“Just because they've got kids doesn't mean they're not killers,” he protested as we opened the door to a room with sailboats and anchors decorating the trim of the walls.
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 27