The next moment, those thoughts were gone from her head. She saw Ronnie moving toward one of the rear corridors that led out of the cafeteria. The students weren’t supposed to be roaming around the school, so everything was off-limits except the cafeteria and the mall. To enforce that, a teacher/chaperone was posted at the entrance to each of those side corridors.
However, no adult was standing near this one, Phyllis noted. Something must have happened to distract whoever was supposed to be there.
Phyllis looked around. She couldn’t be sure because there were too many kids in here, but she didn’t see Chase anywhere in the cafeteria. He and his friends could have left already, she told herself.
But it was just as likely that they had snuck out the way Ronnie was attempting to. In fact, Ronnie might be on her way to meet Chase right now.
Phyllis glanced along the table. Frances and another teacher stood at the far end. They could handle anything that came up. She looked for Sam but didn’t see him. Another turn of her head showed her Ronnie again, disappearing into that corridor.
She was going to have to go after the girl, Phyllis realized. She had a legitimate reason to do so: Ronnie was breaking the rules by leaving the cafeteria that way.
Phyllis had just taken a step away from the table when a crash sounded behind her.
She turned around quickly and saw the punch bowl lying in pieces on the floor behind the table. A pool of red punch spread around the debris. In front of the table, a horrified-looking girl cried, “Oh, my God, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to bump the table. I just tripped! I didn’t know the punch bowl was so close to the edge.”
Frances hurried over to her and said, “That’s all right, dear, I saw the whole thing. I know it was an accident.” She glanced at Phyllis. “I think I saw Mr. McCracken going around the back way toward the band hall just a little while ago. Can you go see if you can find him, Phyllis?”
“All right,” Phyllis said. George McCracken was one of the custodians at the high school and normally worked at night like this. He would have what was needed to clean up the mess.
Of course, the hallway leading from the back of the cafeteria to the band hall was on the other side of the big room from the corridor where Ronnie had gone, so if Phyllis went to find him, she couldn’t check on the girl. But it wouldn’t take long, she told herself as she hurried out of the cafeteria to do as Frances had asked.
She didn’t see Mr. McCracken anywhere as she went toward the band hall. When she reached it, she pulled open one of the double doors and looked inside. The room was dark.
“Mr. McCracken?” Phyllis called. No answer.
She looked the other way along the hall that led all the way to the lobby just inside the school’s front entrance. The custodian wasn’t in sight.
Maybe he had gone in a different direction once he was back here. Part of the school was built on a hill, and a nearby set of stairs led down to a tiny, isolated corner where three classrooms were tucked away. Mr. McCracken could be down there in what some students had dubbed The Dungeon, cleaning those rooms.
She started toward those stairs. She had to go around a couple of corners to get there. The music coming from the cafeteria was already muffled by distance and the labyrinth of corridors, and as she turned those corridors the sound faded even more.
She heard a rapid, irregular patter of footsteps somewhere nearby and looked over her shoulder. She didn’t see anyone, but she realized just how gloomy it was, here in the far back reaches of the sprawling building. The lights in the halls were set up on motion detectors at night, so they came on whenever someone walked through them, but they went off when the movement was gone. So all the halls between Phyllis’s location and the cafeteria were dark.
Except for one ahead of her where the lights suddenly came on. She caught her breath and paused for a second, then continued on resolutely.
Ronnie came around the corner and stopped short at the sight of her.
“Mrs. Newsom,” she said. “What are you doing back here?”
“A better question is what are you doing?” Phyllis responded. “Students are supposed to stay in the cafeteria or mall.”
“I know.” A guilty look came over Ronnie’s face. “It’s just that . . . I saw Chase come back here, and I thought maybe I could talk to him one more time, and we could get things settled between us . . .”
“There’s nothing to settle. You’re a smart girl, Ronnie. You know he doesn’t want to be your boyfriend.”
“But if I could just get him to see how good we’d be together!”
Phyllis didn’t want to be cruel, but she said honestly, “I don’t believe that’s ever going to happen.”
“You can’t be sure of—”
From the corner of her eye, Phyllis saw a light flick on, illuminating the top of the staircase off to her left. The light wasn’t actually in the stairwell, but it came from the hallway below.
Someone was down there. Mr. McCracken . . . or Chase Hamilton?
And if it was Chase, what was he doing in The Dungeon?
“We’ll talk about this later,” Phyllis said. “I’m looking for Mr. McCracken, the custodian. The punch bowl got broken and there’s a mess he needs to clean up.”
“I’ll help you find him. Although I haven’t been able to find Chase.”
Phyllis started to tell Ronnie to go back to the cafeteria instead, but then she realized it was possible the girl might run into Chase along the way. Better to keep Ronnie with her, she decided.
“All right, come on.” They walked toward the stairs. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty hallways. Phyllis wondered briefly if it had been Ronnie she’d heard a few moments earlier. She didn’t think so. Those hurrying footsteps had sounded as if they came from a different hall.
The light downstairs went out before they reached the stairwell. Phyllis frowned. If Mr. McCracken was down there cleaning he should have been moving around enough to keep the light on. Unless he was inside one of the classrooms, then the light might have gone off, she reasoned.
Then it came on again.
Something about the way things were happening made a chill run down her back. She was at the top of the stairs now, so she stopped and called, “Mr. McCracken?”
A strange sound came from below. It might have been a human groan. Ronnie exclaimed, “What was that?”
The lights went off again.
“Ronnie,” Phyllis said, “I’m starting to get the feeling that something is wrong. Go back to the cafeteria and find your grandfather.”
“What are you going to do?” Ronnie gestured toward the stairs. “Go down there and see what it is we heard? It might be a . . . a monster!”
“You don’t believe in monsters.”
“Right now, I don’t disbelieve in them.”
Phyllis wasn’t sure she did, either.
The light in the downstairs hall came on.
“Ohhhhh, shoot,” Ronnie said in a half-whisper. “Let’s both get out of here.”
The pained noise sounded again. Phyllis said, “Someone down there is hurt and needs help. You stay right here. I’ll go down and have a look.”
Ronnie seemed to want to argue, but she didn’t. She nodded and said, “Okay. Just be careful.”
“I intend to,” Phyllis said. She started down the stairs. There was plenty of light for her to see where she was going.
When Phyllis reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped on the last step and leaned forward to peer around the corner.
About twenty feet away, a man lay face down on the tile floor. As Phyllis watched in horror, he groaned again and tried to heave himself up on hands and knees. He lifted his head just enough for Phyllis to recognize him as Ray Brooks—and recognize the lines of mortal agony etched into his face as well.
Then his strength deserted him and he toppled over onto his left side. He rolled onto his back. His arms flopped out loosely at his sides. The light from the fluorescent fixtures on the ce
iling shined down on the spreading patch of red on the front of his shirt. A trail of crimson ran down the hall where Brooks had crawled along and tried to get to his feet, only to fail.
The amount of blood and the limp way his arms had fallen told Phyllis that Ray Brooks was probably dead.
Chapter 19
This wasn’t the first time Phyllis had seen a body, but the sight was still enough to make her heart beat heavily. She put her left hand against the brick wall of the stairwell to steady herself.
“Mrs. Newsom!” Ronnie called from the top of the stairs, making Phyllis jump a little. “What is it?”
Without turning her head, Phyllis told the girl, “Go find your grandfather, right now.” She hoped Ronnie could hear the urgency in her voice.
Then a thought occurred to her, and she cried, “Wait! Come down here.”
She was remembering those footsteps she’d heard. Could that have been killer fleeing from the scene of the murder? If that was true, he could still be somewhere close by, waiting to see if his crime was going to be discovered. Ronnie might run right into him . . .
Ronnie edged down the steps, obviously nervous. “What’s down here?” she asked.
Phyllis had taken out her cell phone. She checked for service and saw that there was only one bar. The school had its own wi-fi network, though, and she was able to connect to it. She thumbed Sam’s number and lifted the phone to her ear, listening to it ring on the other end.
While she was doing that, she motioned for Ronnie to stop a couple of steps above her. Phyllis looked past the girl at the top of the stairs. Thoughts flooded her mind. She was just assuming that Ray Brooks had been murdered, she told herself. She hadn’t seen what happened.
But it seemed unlikely that anyone could injure themselves that badly, either accidentally or on purpose, without using a gun, and Phyllis hadn’t heard any shots back here.
So the assumption that there was a murderer on the loose was justified enough to warrant plenty of caution.
At the same time, since this part of the school was built against a hill, there was only one way in or out of The Dungeon: these stairs. If the killer came back, she and Ronnie would be trapped down here.
The smart thing would have been for both of them to get back to the cafeteria and seek help as quickly as they could. But to do that they would have to leave the body here, and Phyllis knew how important it could be to the investigation that the crime scene remain undisturbed.
All that went through her mind in the time it took for Sam’s phone to ring three times. He wasn’t answering, and Phyllis wondered if he could even hear it ringing over the sound of the music in the cafeteria . . .
“Phyllis? Where are you?”
The sound of his voice in her ear made her close her eyes for a second and heave a sigh of relief. Then she said, “Sam, do you know where The Dungeon is?”
“The what? Wait . . . That little downstairs hall at the back of the school where there are a couple of classrooms?”
“That’s right. Ray Brooks is back here, and he’s been hurt. There’s a good chance that he’s . . . dead.”
“Good Lord! Are you sure?” Then before she could answer, he went on, “No, never mind. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. But Sam . . . Ronnie is with me.”
She heard him catch his breath. Then he said, “Get out of there, both of you, right now.”
“We need to stay and keep an eye on the crime scene. Find Tom Shula and both of you get back here. Tell Frances or someone else to call 911.”
“I’m on my way. Phyllis, you stay on the line, just in case . . .”
His voice trailed off, but Phyllis knew what he meant.
Just in case the killer came back, so she could identify him.
“I’m here,” she said, but he didn’t respond. She could hear his breathing, though, and found herself hoping that the stress wasn’t going to cause him to have a heart attack.
Ronnie’s eyes had widened in shock when Phyllis said that about Ray Brooks being dead. She moved to the side, as if she intended to edge her way around Phyllis and take a look for herself. Phyllis put out her free arm to stop her.
Less than a minute passed before Phyllis heard shoe leather slapping the floors above them . . . but it was a long minute. Then Sam called, “Phyllis!”
“Down here!”
Sam appeared at the top of the stairs, still clutching his phone in his left hand. Tom Shula was right behind him. Both men looked upset.
Sam paused long enough to tell Shula, “Stay here and keep an eye out for the cops.” Then he clattered down the stairs, spread his arms, and gathered both Phyllis and Ronnie to him in a rough embrace. “The two of you are all right?”
“Yeah, we’re fine, Gramps,” Ronnie said as she tried to work her way free. “Nothing happened to us. We just . . .” She swallowed hard. “Well, it was Mrs. Newsom who . . . found the body.”
He let go of them and stepped down into the hallway. After peering along it for a couple of seconds, he jerked his head in a nod and said, “Yeah, that fella’s dead, all right. I can tell from here that he’s not breathin’.”
“Don’t get any closer to him, Sam,” Phyllis cautioned. “You don’t want to disturb any evidence. It’s bad enough we’ve walked on these steps, and I’m pretty sure I had my hand on the banister as I came down. I probably ruined any fingerprints that were on it.”
Sam shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Kids and teachers go up and down these stairs all the time. There’s bound to be such a mess of fingerprints on the banister, nobody could ever make any sense of ’em, even those super forensics folks on TV.”
No doubt he was right about that, Phyllis thought. Still, she would have been more careful if she had known that a crime had taken place down here.
“Can you tell what kind of wound that is on his chest from where you are?” she asked.
Sam leaned forward and craned his neck to study the corpse. After a moment, he shook his head and said, “Not for sure. I’d have to guess it’s some kind of knife wound, though. I don’t see any powder burns on his shirt.”
“I didn’t hear any gunshots, either,” Phyllis said.
“There’s somethin’ else,” Sam said, and Phyllis could hear the consternation in his voice. “Somethin’ around his mouth, but I can’t tell what it is. It looks sort of like . . . cookie crumbs.”
No, Phyllis thought. Not cookie crumbs. Not her . . . killer sugar cookies.
At least Carolyn wasn’t here to speculate over whether Brooks had been poisoned by the cookies Phyllis had made. Not that anybody would have taken such a theory seriously, considering all the blood Brooks had lost. Still, that was just the sort of thing Carolyn would have said in this situation.
Maybe Sam was mistaken, Phyllis thought. Maybe those weren’t cookie crumbs he saw. That was something the sheriff’s department homicide investigators would be able to determine once they examined the body. They would glean every bit of evidence they could find.
Ronnie was still trying to work her way around to where she could see the dead man, Phyllis noted. She said, “Why don’t you go back up there with Mr. Shula, dear?”
“You think I’m morbid just because I want to see him?” Ronnie asked.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’ve seen dead bodies before, you know. I’ve been to funerals.”
“We all have,” Phyllis said. “But that doesn’t mean you should be looking at this one.”
Ronnie sighed and said, “Oh, all right.” She started to turn away, but Phyllis stopped her as something else came to her.
“Wait a minute. You said you saw Chase leave the cafeteria and come back here to this part of the school?”
“Yeah, I—” Ronnie stopped abruptly and her eyes got big again. “Whoa! No way. You can’t believe that Chase had anything to do with this.”
“You know he and Brooks didn’t get along. They had plenty of reason to dislike each other.”
> “Brooks hated him. You know that. But Chase just wanted the guy to leave him alone. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“What about those bullies he beat up when he was defending you?” Phyllis asked.
“That was different. They were asking for it. They forced him into it.”
Sam said, “Same kind of thing could’ve happened here. They could’ve been arguin’, and Brooks tried to get rough. He’s bigger, burlier than Chase. If Chase had a knife, he might’ve had to use it to defend himself.”
And then run away when he realized what he had done, Phyllis thought. That would explain the rapid footsteps she had heard when she was looking for Ronnie. The gait had been erratic because the person was hurrying, maybe even stumbling a little in shock over what had happened.
From the top of the stairs, Tom Shula called, “Here come the cops.”
Ronnie looked intently at Phyllis and said, “Please don’t say anything to them about Chase. You know he didn’t do this. He couldn’t have.”
“I’ll have to answer their questions honestly,” Phyllis said. “But I didn’t see Chase back here. You’re the one who saw him coming in this direction.”
“You got to tell ’em the truth, honey,” Sam said to the girl. “You go to lyin’ when they question you, and you’ll be in trouble. I won’t stand for that.”
“You’re just trying to make it so they’ll blame him for killing Brooks,” Ronnie said. “You think that’ll solve all your problems with me!”
Phyllis said, “We all just want to get to the bottom of what happened here.”
Ronnie flung her hands out and said, “Well, then, solve the case! You’re the big fancy detective! Find out who murdered Brooks, and you’ll see it wasn’t Chase.”
The wheels of Phyllis’s brain were already turning over, had been ever since she had seen Brooks collapse and die. But she had nothing to work with except the obvious: a young man with a history of violence and a reason to hate the victim had been seen in the vicinity of the crime. It wasn’t eyewitness testimony, by any means, and it was much too early for any forensic evidence to come into play, but Phyllis knew the simplest explanation was also the most likely to be right.
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