Deviant (22 page)

“What is at the center?” Danny asked.

“Look! Open your eyes!” Olivia said.

“Our school!” Danny said.

Tom nodded. “Hmm, yes, I see that. You might have
something here. Maybe we should take this to your friend Bob. What do you think, Danny?”

“Maybe,” Danny said.

Tom pressed forward. “OK, now what about the chronology? Danny's expert witness told us to be aware of the chronology. Anyone working on that?”

Nobody was.

“Coop, what about you? Something in my bones tells me that things are coming to a head. That last incident with the tree, I think that represents a significant raising of the stakes. Danny and I will do some snooping on the ground. We'll try the Sheriff's Department, and if we finally get a day that isn't absolutely freezing, we can check out the scene of the crime. Or, rather, scenes of the crimes,” Tom said.

Danny nodded vaguely.

“OK, then. Food for thought. I know a lot of us have things to do, me especially,” Tom muttered, which meant that he was closing the meeting.

On the way out, Danny went to the bathroom.

He peed in the toilet and was dabbing water on his face when he noticed that the sliding door of the little mirrored cupboard above the sink was open. He slid it open a little more and discovered an amazing pharmacopoeia of pills that Tom's mother kept there. Ambien, Valium, uppers, downers, mellowers, antihistamines, potpourris, assorted herbs, St. John's wort, gingerroot, codeine—the poor woman must be going out of her mind worrying about her
husband. If things ever got really really stressful, this would be a good place to come and steal some meds …

“Bye,” Danny muttered and tried to catch Olivia's eye to see if she wanted him to walk her home, but she was looking elsewhere.

On his skateboard ride back to Cobalt, Danny thought about one thing Tom had said: “Things are coming to a head.” He too felt that things were moving faster now. The dismissal of the teachers, the cat hanging from the tree. Perhaps it was all linked.

The cold wind on Colorado Avenue blew the cobwebs from Danny's head and the molasses from his limbs. That room of Tom's … He'd felt like a sleepwalker in there, watching the shadow world unfold before his eyes. But out here on Sunflower, he was cold, alive, feeling every bump on the ground, every gradient on the blacktop.

After the big hill out of Manitou, Danny stopped at the gates of CJHCS. He looked at his watch. It was 5:15. He couldn't believe that they'd have to come back here in less than two hours. He felt drawn by the school and looked at it through the wire mesh fence for a moment. Mr. Lebkuchen's car was in the parking lot. An old beat-up tan Sierra four-door sedan.

Danny checked his watch again. It said 5:20. Time to move or he might as well just stay there.

He skated up Alameda, and on the level mesa that made up the upper part of the town of Cobalt, he found himself skating the map that Olivia had shown them.

The map of Cobalt with the cat killings on it.

The first house he came to was 16 Beechfield Road. A lady named Mrs. Craven. Beechfield was the oldest street in the town. Small ranch-style houses with gables and steep roofs and chain fences. Number 16 was no different from the others. Painted white, empty flowerpots, leaves in the yard. Single-story and, yes, it backed onto the woods. An eight-year-old Persian called Tigerfeet had been taken from here.

The second point of the pentagram was on Mott Street. Number 11. Mrs. Pigeon's tabby called Spartacus. Danny skated there, and that was also a single-story ranch-style house. A newer house with an ornamental fountain in the front yard. It didn't appear to have a backyard at all; the house just stopped and the forest began.

The last house on the pentagram so far was 9 Douglas Street, Sarah Kolpek's house.

He skated there.

A two-story wooden cabin-style home, kids' toys in a small yard, and that cat-hanging chestnut tree. Part of the clothesline the cat had apparently been hanged with was still there. Danny shivered. Why hadn't someone cut it down?

He stood there. He was starting to feel a little weirded out. Who hangs a cat from a tree? It was gruesome and cruel.

“What do you want?” a voice said. A girl was walking toward him. Older girl, college age, wearing a black sweater and furry boots. Her orange hair was tied up in a black bandanna. She looked pissed.

“What do you want?” she repeated.

“I don't know,” Danny said truthfully.

“Get lost,” the girl said.

“I was just looking,” Danny said.

The girl crossed her arms. “Taking pictures for your blog or for YouTube, I suppose. You kids are sick. If my dad sees you, he'll come out with the baseball bat. Now scram!”

“Other kids have been here?” Danny asked.

“Yeah, now beat it!”

“Wait a second, how many kids?”

“Three altogether. Now, listen to me, kid, you better—”

“Boys? Tall blond one, a kind of darker one, and a pale one with glasses?” Danny asked.

“Yeah.”

Hector, Charlie, and Todd.

“Are they with you?” the girl asked angrily.

“No. They're not with me. They were taking photographs?”

“Yes, they oughtta be ashamed of themselves. Same with you; you're all little creeps,” the girl said.

Danny shook his head, kicked up his skateboard, and held it vertically in the tips of his fingers. “I'm here because I was worried,” he said.

The girl's face softened. “Sarah's fine. She's doing better anyway. Better than yesterday.”

“I wasn't worried about her. What I mean is, I
am
worried about her; she goes to my school and I'm glad she's doing better, but the thing is … My name is Danny Lopez, by the way. She knows me a little bit … The thing is, I have
a cat and I'm worried that whoever did this is going to come for my cat next.”

The girl's eyes widened. “
Whoever
did it?”

“Yeah.”

“Sheriff Rossi says it was a freak accident,” she said, but he could tell in her eyes that she didn't believe that for a second.

“It wasn't an accident, was it?” she said. She bit her lip, unfolded her arms, and offered her hand. “I'm Claire, Sarah's sister.”

Danny shook her hand.

“You have a cat, too?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

“What's her name?”

“It's a he. Jeffrey.”

“Hmm.”

She looked at him for a second and then nodded to herself. “OK. Dad's home, so we'll have to go quietly. Follow me.”

She led him around the side of the house, past an old lawn mower and stacks of chopped wood for the stove.

She put her finger to her lips as she went past one window.

“Sarah's room,” she whispered.

Danny trod carefully.

When they got to the backyard, Claire led him to the fence at the rear of the house. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to where two of the fence slats had been broken at the top. “That's where they climbed over. I think they
tried the gate first. Normally the gate's unlocked, but I came back from CU for a few days to get my laundry done and I always lock the gate because of bears.”

Danny looked at the broken fence and nodded.

“Why ‘they'?”

“I don't know, I just have a feeling that this was more than a two-man operation,” Claire said. “At least one of them was a kid, to get through the dog flap, and they knew they couldn't get back over the fence with Coco. Then someone saw them or they panicked and they grabbed the clothesline and hung poor Coco from the tree.”

“Did you tell the sheriff this?”

“I told my mom and she told him. He didn't seem interested. Sheriff Rossi's a bit out of it. Have you ever met him? He's been sheriff of Cobalt County since the sixties or something. God knows what he'd be like in a real emergency, like a mass breakout from any one of the dozen penitentiaries in his jurisdiction.”

“Thanks for showing me this.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Danny promised to make sure his own backyard fence was in good working order.

As he was about to get on his board he said, “And tell Sarah that I'm really sorry and tell her that there are some of us who are trying to figure out a way to catch this guy.”

When he got home it was nearly 6:15.

He started to get changed out of his school uniform, but Juanita told him that he might as well just leave it on
because they were leaving for the school open house in half an hour.

He had oxtail soup for dinner and his mom gave him the bone, which was his favorite bit. After dinner he went outside to the cul-de-sac to goof around on his board.

He did a few simple verts and a 360.

“Look at you!” Tony said from across the street.

“Hey,” he said shyly.

“I texted you.”

“Did you? I didn't check. I actually thought you weren't speaking to me,” Danny said.

Tony laughed. “I wasn't speaking to you for a bit. I thought you were spying on me.”

“I wasn't.”

“Yeah, I know you weren't.”

Danny put his hands in the pockets of his school blazer.

“You didn't try and kill yourself because of me, did you?” Tony asked.

“Are you mental? That was … I got this … That was an accident,” Danny muttered.

“Well, I'm glad you're alive.”

“Me too. You didn't come to the meeting.”

Tony shrugged. “I might be getting too old for that stuff,” she said.

“I saw you with Hector.”

“So what? He's a friend from church. My dad likes him. We're all going to
The Lion King
together for church. Hey, you like
The Lion King
?”

Danny shook his head. “Not particularly.”

Tony smiled. “So what did you crazy kids in the Watchers talk about?”

“I don't know, I wasn't really listening to much of it, but the stuff about the cats seems spot-on. We're the nexus. It's all happening in Cobalt. Olivia drew a map. And I went over to Sarah's house and I met her sister.”

“What did
she
say?”

“She thinks someone came over the back fence. Your pal Hector was lurking around there too and she told him to buzz off. And I think I have a theory about what he's going to do next. I was thinking about it before I even talked to her.”

“What?”

“Well, I think the cat killer is using the woods to move around town.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, I think he's been prowling around the backs of the houses on our street. If your dad really did see someone—”

“What do you mean ‘if'? He saw someone, I just don't think it was you.”

“I saw someone too, but I don't know who. It could have been your father, actually, if he was lurking out there at the same time …”

“What are you talking about? Why would my dad be
lurking
around our own house?” Tony asked sharply.

“Well, you know he says he ‘hates cats.' He told me that.”

“You think my dad's the cat killer? Are you crazy? Are you trying to be funny? Bob said it was a kid.”

“Bob said it was
probably
a kid.”

Tony shook her head and glared at him. “You really know how to blow it, Lopez, don't you? You know what, I'll see you later,” she said, and marched back to her own house.

She did see him later. Thirty-five minutes later, in the science classroom of CJHCS.

Snow was falling outside.

Big downy flakes, drifting down out of the dark.

“To my students, welcome, welcome, welcome,” Mr. Lebkuchen said to the thirty kids of the joint ninth-grade class sitting there in their brushed wool blazers, crisp black pants or skirts, and washed white gloves.

“And to their parents, an even more emphatic welcome,” he said to the fifty or so parents jammed on the sides and around the back of the classrom. “I apologize for the lack of space. Once that monstrosity is removed, we will have more room in here,” Mr. Lebkuchen said, pointing to the massive Tesla coil still covered with gray tarp. “Of course,
this cramming is only a temporary arrangement until we find two new teachers to replace those we unfortunately lost.”

“Yeah, why did you lose them?” one of the parents asked.

“We will have a question-and-answer session later. I hope you will keep all your questions until then, but let me just say that unfortunately our two dismissees were not up to the high standards I expect from teachers under my employ. However, the hiring process has commenced and it will be terminated in the coming weeks with, I hope, two brilliant new teachers joining our school.”

Mr. Lebkuchen adjusted his glasses and continued.

“Now, what I'd like to show you all first is how a typical lesson operates in the Direct Instruction system, and then we will have some refreshments that our student Tom Sloane has prepared in the teachers' lounge. And that will be the opportunity for you to ask about any aspect of the school or your student's progress or the school's progress. Just no questions about the Oprah Network, please. We're still in talks with Oprah's producers and I don't know if an interview is going to come off or not,” Mr. Lebkuchen said with a little laugh.