Johnny Gruesome (22 page)

He grabbed a long, flathead screwdriver from a counter and used it to pry the cabinet open. He discarded the screwdriver, snatched a roll of silver duct tape, and bolted up the stairs, praying Mr. Peterson would not walk through the door before he reached it. He ran out the door and down the corridor to the gym locker room. His sneakers slapped the floor as he ran between lockers to the elite team room.

Gary sat on a wooden bench, a basketball squeezed between his knees, his eyes trained on Eric, who skidded to a sudden stop. He held his switchblade, washed clean of Todd’s blood, and placed the blade’s tip against the basketball’s rubber nipple. Squeezing his knees tighter, he pulled the knife through the rubber. A blast of air hissed from the slice and the ball deflated. He rotated the ruptured ball, cutting it almost in half.

“What are you doing?” Eric said in an incredulous tone.

“Improvising.”

Back at his locker, Gary spun the combination lock and opened the door, using his back to block the locker’s contents from the students flocking to the scene of Todd’s murder. Positioning the bifurcated basketball beneath Todd’s head, he said, “Okay, stick it in.”

Eric stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Yeah, I always get funny when someone sticks a head in my locker. Stop screwing around and put it in!”

Eric shook his head. “No way.”

Giving Eric a hard look, Gary made an exaggerated sigh. “Then at least take this so I can do it.”

Eric took the ball and Gary’s place, which brought him face to face with Todd.

“I don’t have any gloves. Can I use yours?”

With his lips pressed together, Eric shook his head.

Grimacing, Gary set his bare hands on the head and pulled.

Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Eric said.

“It’s stuck!”

Gary pulled harder, his face turning red. The head came free with a sickening rip and he staggered back. Eric gagged at the sight of the bloody chunk of scalp remaining on the coat hook. Gary stuffed the head inside the waiting ball, then plucked the chunk from the hook and threw it in with the head. Bending over, he gathered up the bloody papers at the locker’s bottom.

“Hurry up,” Eric said.

Gary took the duct tape and wrapped it around the ball once, sealing it. Then he cut it with his knife and closed his locker. The ball now resembled a mutant football more than it did a basketball.

“Let’s go.” Gary ran down the corridor, hugging the ball tight to his stomach.

Eric stood still.

“Come on!”

As he followed Gary, Eric heard Mr. Milton’s panicked voice in the distance: “All of you—get to homeroom right now! Gym is canceled. Move it!”

Gary inserted the air pump needle into the basketball’s rubber nipple and switched the pump on. As the ball inflated, he wrapped more duct tape around it. When the ball looked ready to burst, he removed the needle and stopped the pump. He bounced the lopsided ball on the floor and it rebounded at the wrong angle.

“Good enough,” he said. “Think fast!” He feigned throwing the ball at Eric, who flinched with a look of disgust on his face.

They emerged through one of the building’s side exits. Beyond the wide field, blanketed in undisturbed snow, a semitruck barreled along Route 20 and disappeared behind a stretch of pine trees. Eric gazed through the baseball diamond’s backstop fence at the wooded area. Somewhere on the other side lay the turnoff for Willow Road.

They moved through deep snow. Few windows looked out over this portion of the schoolyard, and those that did were tinted.

“Whoever did this wanted to frame me,” Gary said. “That’s why they used my knife and my locker.”

“Who would want to do that?”

“I have no idea, man.”

“Maybe your locker was a random choice and they just found your knife.”

“No way. There was nothing random about this. They wanted to frame me or send me a message. Didn’t you ever see
The Godfather?”
Gary held Eric back with one hand. “You stay here.”

Eric looked down. Gary had stationed him at the concrete base of a metal grate. Snow had fallen between the metal bars and accumulated on the ground below. Gary descended the incline to the deep drainage ditch facing Route 20. Looking into the wide mouth of the drainpipe, he cocked his arm and threw the ball through the opening.

“Heads up!” he said.

Through the grate, Eric saw the ball roll beneath him in a lopsided fashion and vanish. Shuddering, he closed his eyes. A moment later, Gary stood beside him and the sound of an approaching siren rose on the wind.

“We just made it,” Gary said.

A
s Matt steered the Pathfinder into the high school parking lot, its siren wailing, Michael Milton’s frantic call lingered in his mind:

“There’s been a murder at the high school. A—a
headless body
is hanging upside down in the gymnasium!”

Matt did not recall a homicide in the village of Red Hill, population eight thousand, during his lifetime. Red Hill enjoyed a reputation as a friendly little town with low crime statistics and a high quality of life. Still, the Victorian village had too many bars for his taste, and between the rowdy college students and the depressed blue-collar workers he had issued his share of DWIs and had broken up dozens of brawls. Some of the wealthier families complained about vandalism around the college, and Matt had developed a thick skin for dealing with people who believed they owned the community and its services because they paid heavier taxes.

He pulled over to the curb before the main building and switched off the engine, silencing the siren. As he exited the Pathfinder, he saw Dan Heller and Ricky Donner pull up behind him in their squad car; a third car raced down the driveway. He strode across the ice to the glass front doors, vapor trailing from his mouth. Entering the lobby, he experienced an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu: it seemed so much smaller than it had when he was a student. Dan and Ricky entered behind him, and as the three policemen marched through the main corridor, officers Sean Hennessey and Peter Novak brought up the rear.

“Put your gloves on,” Matt said, and all five policemen exchanged their winter gloves for latex. Ahead, John Wrangler and Michael Milton stood waiting outside the gym. The corridor had been evacuated, and the two men stood like sentries. The wrestling coach had been Matt’s classmate years ago, and Matt noted the man’s pasty complexion.

“Good Lord,” Matt said as he stared inside the gym at the upside-down corpse. He’d never seen anything like this, and a moment later he heard uncomfortable shuffling behind him. “Has anyone touched that body?”

“No,” Michael said. “No one’s been inside at all.”

Matt could not take his eyes off the grisly sight. “Dan, start shooting. I want multiple shots from every angle, but stay out of that blood.”

“Right, Chief.” Removing his digital camera from its leather case, Dan entered the gym and photographed the crime scene.

“Ricky, get Doc Beelock on the horn. Tell him I need him here right now. If he argues, go out to the morgue and drag him here in handcuffs.”

Ricky nodded. “You got it, Matt.”

Michael Milton said, “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to catch whoever did this,” Matt said. Studying the gym floor, he stroked the ends of his mustache. “No footprints. The perp stabbed the victim in the chest, then strung him up, decapitated him, and cleaned up after himself.”

“The lights were off when I got here,” Wrangler said. “Except for the scoreboard.”

Matt glanced at the scoreboard, which displayed HOME: 00, VISITORS: 01.
Cute.
“Are these doors locked overnight?”

Wrangler nodded. “The custodian locks them after he mops up.”

“What time do extracurricular activities end?”

“By five,” Michael said. “The students and coaches are gone by six.”

“I need a list of your custodial workers and maintenance staff, anyone who might have been in the building between 6:00 p.m. yesterday and 8:00 a.m. today.”

“You’ll have it,” Michael said with authority.

“We have to turn this place inside out and upside down. I’m sorry for the disruption, but there’s no other way. We have to find that head.”

“I’m canceling classes and sending everyone home.”

“No, don’t do that. Right now, these kids are safer here with us than anywhere else. But you should isolate them. We don’t want one of them finding what we’re looking for.”

“There are nine hundred students in this school,” Michael said in a stern voice. “Most of them carry cell phones. Word will spread fast. Some of their parents will panic.”

“Let the parents take their kids home if they insist, but only after they inform one of us.”

Michael nodded. “We’ll have our attendance cards in half an hour. That will help determine this boy’s identity.”

Carol stood in the cafeteria doorway, her back to the hallway lockers. Three hundred students had been crammed in here, another three hundred had been sequestered in the auxiliary gym, and the remaining three hundred sat in the assembly hall, with the faculty divided among the locations. The decibel volume of chatter rose far above an acceptable level, but she saw no point in addressing it. By now, every student in the building knew that one of their own had been slain.