The Suicide Club

by Gayle Wilson

  Five minutes, she decided. She could spare that much time to look for Walt. And then she’d leave, feeling as if she’d done the best she could with her own responsibilities.

  Twenty-One

  Lindsey decided the janitor must have started on one of the other floors this afternoon. The doors to the basement classrooms were all open, although the lights were off. Nor were there any noises that would indicate the cleaning crew was down here. The corridor seemed deserted, her footsteps echoing off the long expanse of tile and concrete.

  She’d always been glad she’d never been assigned to one of these rooms, which she found depressing. When the school population had outgrown the building, the board had discovered that the cheapest way to add instructional space was to convert areas used for other purposes.

  These windowless classrooms had been created from what had been the original basement. Pipes, ductwork, and beams had been covered where possible and left exposed when the cost to hide them had been prohibitive.

  Some of the teachers who worked down here bragged about the fact that they were so distant from the office—and from supervision. A few professed there were fewer distractions. Others, like Walt Harrison, were so single-minded they would have been able to teach in any conditions.

  She had already decided by the time she reached her destination that this was a wild-goose chase, but since she was this close there was no reason not to finish what she’d begun. Like all the others, the lights were off in Walt’s room.

  She stopped just outside the door, pitching her voice to carry inside. “Walt?”

  There was no answer. A glance at her watch revealed it was now 3:30 p.m. He had probably decided she wasn’t coming this late and had gone out the back.

  What the hell was she doing down here? If Walt wanted to talk, he knew where her room was. And in the meantime, Shannon was waiting for a friend bearing booze.

  Annoyed with herself, she quickened her pace toward the stairs, the click of her steps giving voice to her annoyance. She’d already reached out to grasp the metal railing when she realized there was another sound in the stillness of the deserted hall.

  An echo of her heels hitting the tile? She stopped, holding her breath as she listened.

  Not an echo. Whatever she’d heard was still there. Subtle and regular. Still unidentifiable.

  For the first time, she felt a touch of unease. She was completely isolated down here from the other parts of the building. As she tried to rationalize her anxiety, she remained conscious of the sound. Soft and steady, it underlay the silence around her, like the beat of her own heart.

  She lifted her hand from the rail and, careful not to make any noise, turned so that she was again facing the basement corridor. Its waxed tile gleamed under the overhead light.

  Straining, she attempted to pinpoint the source of what she was hearing. And realized there was no question.

  It was coming from the open doorway of the classroom closest to the stairs. She took the few steps that would bring her back to that door, pausing again to listen.

  From here, what she heard sounded like a squeak. The noise a wheel would make turning repeatedly past a place that needed oiling, the intervals between unvaried.

  She stepped forward, her right hand feeling for the switch inside the door. The resultant buzz of the fluorescents masked whatever she’d heard, but as the lights came up, they revealed the source of the sound. And despite her growing horror, she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

  A rope had been looped over one of the exposed metal beams in the ceiling. The body hanging from it swayed slightly in the draft flowing out of a vent in the exposed ductwork. An overturned student desk lay directly below the dangling feet.

  Since the face was turned away from her, she couldn’t make an identification. Her impression was that this was a male, but she couldn’t be sure. Not from here. With that realization, the paralysis of shock dissolved, allowing her to think again.

  Maybe he wasn’t dead. If she could get him down—

  She rushed forward, frantically pushing aside the overturned desk in order to get closer. By then her eyes had found the face, blackened and distorted from the effects of the rope, unrecognizable still, but definitely a boy’s.

  She righted the desk, climbing onto its seat to grasp his legs. If she could raise him and ease that terrible pressure…Or somehow get him down…

  She could do neither. Her stretching fingers couldn’t begin to loosen that cruel knot. Not even when she put one foot up on the flat part of the desk to allow her a longer reach.

  As she worked, struggling to do something that might change what was happening, she became aware of the sounds emanating from her own throat. They were guttural. Unintelligible. Like an animal caught in a trap.

  And then finally—irrevocably—she knew there was nothing she could do alone. If she were to have any chance to save this boy, she had to get help.

  She turned to climb down from her precarious perch only to have the desk literally tip over with her. She jumped, preventing herself from falling only by stumbling into another of the disordered desks.

  Her purse lay near the door, exactly where she’d dropped it when she’d identified the noise. She ran to grab it, scattering its contents onto the floor as she frantically searched for her phone. Panting, she flipped open the case and pressed in 9-1-1. It seemed an eternity until the dispatcher picked up.

  “Lowen County 9-1-1. What’s your emergency, please?”

  “I’m at the high school. Down in the basement. First room to the right of the stairs. A boy has hanged himself. I can’t get him down, and I don’t think there’s anyone else down here.”

  That’s what she should have done, she realized. Run upstairs for help. She knew there were people still up there.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  She swallowed to ease the dryness of her throat while she concentrated on the dispatcher’s question. “Lindsey Sloan. I’m a teacher. You have to get somebody here right away. They’ll have to cut him down. I tried to loosen the rope and—”

  “This is at Randolph-Lowen High School, ma’am?”

  “That’s right. In the basement.”

  “And this person is still alive?”

  Was he?

  Her eyes went back to the body, still gently moving in the flow of the air conditioner. The image of the blood-suffused face was in her mind’s eye, but she denied what it told her.

  “I don’t know. Please. Just get somebody over here.”

  “They’re already on their way, ma’am. Maybe you could get somebody upstairs to direct them to your location.”

  “I don’t think—Okay. Okay. I’ll do that.”

  There was no point trying to explain. Beth had been in the guidance office minutes ago. And Jay was still here, although the choral room was at the other end of the building. Surely there would be someone closer. Someone stronger.

  She needed to get upstairs and find someone. They could probably get the body down before the paramedics arrived.

  “Don’t hang up, ma’am,” the dispatcher cautioned. “You stay with me until they get there.”

  “Okay, but I have to go upstairs. There may be somebody there who can help.”

  With the open phone in her hand, Lindsey scrambled up and began to run. As she reached the stairs, she began to scream, and she kept screaming until finally somebody answered.

  Jace got to the school only a few minutes after the paramedics, but not in time to watch them cut the kid’s body down. He did what he could to secure the scene, but everybody’s focus was, as it should have been, on trying to save a life.

  As the EMTs worked over the boy, Jace turned his attention to the room. He’d seen enough dead people to understand that nobody could help this kid now. At least not medically.

  He hadn’t seen Lindsey, but he knew from the dispatcher that she’d placed the original call. He hoped that didn’t mean she’d discovered the body. He couldn’t imagine what that
would do to the fragile hold she’d managed to keep on her emotions.

  When the paramedic finally looked up at him and shook his head, Jace asked the question he’d been wondering about for the last five minutes. “Any ID?”

  “Haven’t had a chance to check.”

  Obediently the medic began searching for a billfold. He appeared to be not too many years out of high school himself. And currently green around the gills.

  “Here you go.” The EMT held a wallet out.

  Jace weighed the risks of contaminating any evidence against waiting for the techs to arrive, which might be as much as an hour. He decided that, as quickly as news traveled in this town, he needed a name for the deceased. Besides, from what he could tell, there was no reason to think this was anything other than what it appeared—the copycat event everyone had warned might happen.

  “Thanks.” Jace took the billfold, allowing it to fall open.

  The first thing he saw was the driver’s license, with its smiling picture. The second was the name. Tim Harrison. He knew then that his first instinct hadn’t been wrong.

  Maybe this wasn’t a crime scene. Maybe this kid had thrown that rope over the metal girder and put the noose around his own neck. Even if that was the way it had gone down, whatever had driven Harrison to that act was somehow connected to everything else that had happened in this town since that first fire.

  And maybe, just maybe, this was the thread that would help him unravel all the others.

  “What made you think this was from Harrison?”

  Jace looked up from the note Lindsey had handed him to find her eyes clinging to his. She looked shell-shocked. Even more traumatized than the night of the fire at the stadium.

  The urge to take her in his arms was so strong Jace deliberately broke the connection between them by looking down at the paper he held. Right now, Lindsey was a witness. And that meant their relationship was strictly professional.

  “Jay told me Walt was looking for me. When I saw that,” she nodded toward the note, “I assumed it was from him.”

  “And if you hadn’t run into Jay? Who would you have assumed this was from?”

  “Walt prints everything. I would still have thought it was from him. Maybe to clear the air between us, if nothing else.”

  “And when you got to his room, no one was there.”

  “I figured, as late as it was, he’d already left. I started back to the stairs and that’s when I heard the sound. I don’t know why I hadn’t been aware of it on the way to Walt’s room. Thinking about what he might want to say, I guess.”

  “What kind of relationship did they have?”

  “Tim and Walt? They were father and son, Jace. They were close. They loved one another.”

  “They ever fight?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure they did. Every parent and teenager fight. Ninety-nine percent of the time it doesn’t mean anything. A kid trying to assert his independence.”

  “Was Tim doing that?”

  “I didn’t know them that well. All I can tell you is that they seemed close. Walt was very concerned about Tim after Andrea’s death—” She stopped, her eyes locking on his.

  “Why would he be ‘very’ concerned?”

  “We were all concerned. About all the kids. Especially those in the program. It’s a relatively small group. Most of them have gone to school together all their lives.”

  Every word she’d said was careful. Deliberately chosen. As if she didn’t want to plant any ideas about Tim Harrison that Jace might take and run with.

  “Did he have a history of depression? Any kind of psychological problems? Anything that would make his father feel he was especially vulnerable after Andrea’s suicide?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. If he did have problems, I couldn’t tell from his attitude or his performance.”

  “Good kid?”

  “Absolutely. Sharp. Funny.” Her voice broke on the last, but then she outwardly controlled the emotion he could still read in her eyes. “This is going to devastate this community.”

  “You said Walt always printed. Did everybody know that?”

  “The faculty certainly did. His students, too, of course.”

  “What if it were printed and phrased to make you think it was from Harrison?”

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  “To get you down there.”

  “You think Tim wanted me to find him? But…he wasn’t in Walt’s room. Why send me there, if that’s what he wanted?”

  Jace hadn’t considered that Tim might have written the note, but it was a possibility. Something else Harrison might be able to clear up. And maybe it was better to let Lindsey think he’d been talking about the victim. Less frightening than the possibility he had been considering.

  “The room by the stairs is the only one where they couldn’t enclose the ducts without lowering the ceiling below standards. It’s the only one left with exposed beams. Maybe he figured that if he could get you down here…”

  “Why me?”

  “Maybe for the same reason Andrea came to you. He knew you’d care.”

  Jace couldn’t know if he was on track with either scenario until he’d talked to Harrison. After all, the history teacher might have written the note himself. Just as Lindsey thought originally.

  Since Walt’s car hadn’t been in the parking lot, he’d sent two patrolmen to his house to deliver the news. Normally that was something he’d feel an obligation to do himself, but judging from the teacher’s animosity when he’d questioned him about the conversation in the field house, Jace figured he’d be the last person from whom Harrison would want to hear this.

  “If Walt did just want to talk, then I guess your being the one to find the body is another coincidence.”

  “I know you think this is all connected, but what if it’s not? What if we just have two troubled kids—”

  “I’d say there were more than two, wouldn’t you? Unless you’re implying that Andrea and Tim set the church fires.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. I just don’t think there has to be a connection between these suicides and the church fires.”

  “And the attacks on you? Any connection to those? And the fact that these two ‘troubled’ kids are in your program, Lindsey? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “It tells me you’ve targeted them from the beginning. You had made up your mind on that the first time we talked.”

  They were back where they’d begun. While the suicides had made him more convinced of the connection, they’d made it harder for Lindsey to accept it. Because that meant she was right in the middle of it all. And, just as he’d thought about Harrison, who could blame her for wanting to deny that role?

  Twenty-Two

  Lindsey had known Shannon would take the news of Tim’s death hard, but she’d also known she should be the one to break it to her. She hadn’t wanted her friend to hear it from someone who would have even less real information than she did.

  “Oh, God. Oh, my God. Why?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  She tried to reach out and hug her friend, but Shannon backed away to lean against the kitchen counter. Arms crossed over her stomach, she hunched forward as if she were in pain.

  Lindsey withdrew, giving her the space she seemed to need right now. “Jace sent someone from the sheriff’s department to notify Walt. He was going over himself as soon as he finished at the school. Maybe…”

  Shannon looked up to ask, “He thinks Walt can tell them something that will explain why?”

  “Jace asked me if there had been a history of depression.”

  “LikeAndrea? Another one we let fall through the cracks?”

  Lindsey ignored the bitter comment. “Did Walt ever talk to you about Tim? Say that he was worried about him? Say anything that would lead you to think something like this was even a remote possibility?”

  Shannon shook her head. “We talked about colleges. He wanted me to help them find mo
ney for that. Scholarships. Financial aid. Anything. I promised to start that process in the spring. Walt thought Tim should be able to get a band scholarship. Maybe with a combination of that and something academic…I swear, Linds, he never mentioned being concerned about anything else.”

  “He was concerned enough that he waited to drive him home the day after Andrea died.”

  “I got the impression he just wanted to be with him. To talk. To let Tim talk. I think most parents felt the same way that day. They just wanted to know their own child was okay.”

  “So you didn’t take that as Walt being worried that Tim might…”

  “Hang himself?” Shannon’s laugh was mocking. “I think if he’d really been worried about the possibility of suicide, he wouldn’t have let him out of his sight. And he did. I don’t believe Walt expected this. Any more than the rest of us.”

  “If we didn’t, we sure gave lip service to it.”

  “That Tim might commit suicide?”

  “That there might be copycats. That’s why the county sent out the grief counselors. That’s why the two of us decided it would be a good idea for you to talk to my classes after the funeral.”

  Except Shannon hadn’t talked to them. Not after second period. And not to Tim’s class. Lindsey had done that herself, obviously as poorly as she’d dealt with Andrea that afternoon.

  “You think that’s what this is?” Shannon asked. “You think Tim thought this was a way to get attention? Did he strike you as being that needy? He had a father who loved him. And a lot of friends. Tim wasn’t Andrea. He wasn’t anything like her.”

  “I don’t pretend to know what he was thinking. I’m beginning to believe we don’t have any idea what any of them are thinking. All I know is that he’s dead. By his own hand. And that he’s the second one of my students who is.”

  “It could have been any of them. Any kid in the school.”

  “But it wasn’t. It was another of mine. Jace is convinced this is all connected. That it started with the church fires.”