The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (51 page)

The plan, as Will explains it, is “so simple it's brilliant.” They will gain entry through one of the skylights over the cafeteria, then lower themselves the twenty feet by sliding down the rope. They will decorate the walls with sophomoric graffiti and plant the magazines in Kenny's desk. Later, when Harvey is safely at home and Will is behind his bar, Stevie will place an anonymous call to the police, reporting suspicious activity and lights at the school. Will will make certain that his wife does not sleep through the report on the scanner. During the subsequent investigation by the police and Lacy's relentless photo-taking, somebody will be sure to spot the magazines. Within twenty-four hours everyone in town will know about Kenny's secret stash of magazines, the danger he poses to their children. Rumors will fly like scattershot on the first day of turkey season. No wonder Kenny has never married. No wonder he still lives with his mother. The school board will have no option but to hold an inquiry. Kenny will be run out of town on a rail—if he isn't drawn and quartered beforehand.

The plan might be a simple one, but Harvey's head is spinning. “How do we get back out of the school?”

“Same way we got in,” Will says.

Harvey shakes his head. “I know for a fact that Stevie can't climb twenty feet
up
a rope.”

“Speak for yourself, fat-ass.”

“Okay, me, too. I doubt like hell I can do it.”

“Then we'll find some other way out,” Will says. “We'll open a window. They open from the inside, you know. Every classroom's got them.”

“What about janitors?”

Stevie tells him, “Last summer when I helped them tar and gravel the roof, everybody went home by six, didn't show up again until six the next morning. The place is empty for twelve hours.”

“You sure we can get in through a skylight?”

“We replaced all the flashing for the roof job, had to take the skylights off to do it. All it takes is a Phillips screwdriver.”

“What about security cameras?”

“Only place not covered is the rear wall of the boys' locker room. Cause there aren't any windows there.”

“And how are we supposed to climb that wall?” Harvey asks.

Stevie flashes him a grin. “Can't you hear the ladder rattling in the bed?”

Harvey can think of nothing more to say. He wishes he could.

“Satisfied?” Will asks.

Harvey winds down the window and leans toward the rush of air. He says, “I'm not sure I remember the meaning of the word.”

 

Will is the first man down the rope, sliding into the coolness, the cafeteria a cavern. At the bottom he stands motionless, catching his breath. He can see reasonably well in the large room, one long wall lined with tall windows overlooking the practice field where, for three years as a boy, he ran wind sprints every August until he thought his lungs would explode.

The familiar smell is unmistakable, Meatloaf Thursday, and for a moment he hears the clamor of a hundred hungry kids all jabbering at once, the scrape of chairs, clack of plastic trays, clink of forks attacking plates.

“Hey!” Harvey whispers from above.

Will aims his flashlight at the heavens, flashes an all-clear.

Harvey comes down an inch at a time, grunting. He loses his grip while still five feet above the tile floor, drops with another grunt and the smack of his tennis shoes. The duffel bag thuds against the floor.

“For chrissakes,” Will says.

Harvey blows on his hands. “I forgot to put my gloves on. I got a rope burn.”

Stevie surprises both of them by coming down quickly, sliding in full control with one leg wrapped around the rope. Harvey asks him, “When did you get so agile?”

“You should see me on the climbing wall at the Y.”

“What the hell are you doing at the YMCA?”

“Tae bo classes every Tuesday night. Lots of tits and asses in spandex.”

“Any chance we can get on with this?” Will asks. He picks up the duffel bag and heads for the cafeteria exit. Out the wide doorway and into the hall, turn right past the trophy case, up the four steps, administrative offices on the left, faculty lounge, boys' and girls' restrooms on the right. The hallways are dark but navigable. His eyes have adjusted to the dimness; his memory is flooded with details.

The door to Kenny's office is locked. The glass panel in the door is opaque, rippled and thick. Will says, “We're going to have to pry the hinges off.”

But Harvey points to their brother at work four feet away, leaning close to the door that opens into the front office. Stevie has stuck a small suction cup to the clear glass and is now dragging a glass cutter around it in a slow circle.

“He's just one surprise after another,” Will whispers.

Stevie smiles but says nothing. Finally he pockets the glass cutter, taps his knuckle around the circle he has cut, wiggles the suction cup until the circle of glass snaps free. Then he inches a gloved hand through the circle, feels for the door lock on the other side, gives it a twist. He swings the door open wide and says to Harvey, “
Now
will you ask around for me over at Jimmy Dean?”

And Harvey says, “I guess maybe I will.”

Just inside the front office he sets the duffel bag on the floor, zips it open, reaches inside for the spray paint. He hands one can to Will, extends the other toward Stevie.

“Gimme the magazines,” Stevie says. “I'm the one drove to Ohio to buy them, I'm the one should get to plant them.”

Harvey considers this for a few moments, then thinks,
What the hell
, and places the stack of magazines in his brother's hands. “Not that it matters,” he says, “but why do you really want to go in there?”

Stevie grins. “That was Big-Ass Bole's desk before it was Kenny's, and I've been drinking water and saving up for this all day.” Harvey remembers Conrad Bole, too, the pear-shaped guidance counselor who told each of the brothers in turn to forget about college, don't even consider it. He had recommended the army for Harvey, a two-year business school for Will. And he had recommended that Stevie, then in his junior year and a gifted portrait artist, a boy who had covered his bedroom walls with pen-and-ink likenesses of movie stars and famous singers but was too shy to show his work to anyone outside the family, Conrad Bole had recommended that Stevie drop out of school and fill the school's new vacancy for a janitor.

“Have fun,” Harvey tells him. He and Will watch as Stevie crosses behind the front desk and makes his way toward the door in the rear of the room. There Stevie pauses, puts a hand on the doorknob, gives it a slow turn. The latch clicks. He swings the door open, turns back to his brothers, gives them a thumbs-up, and swaggers into Kenny's office.

“Piece of cake,” Will says.

With their cans of paint he and Harvey scrawl neon orange epithets in three-foot letters on the corridor walls. Will writes
Death To Teachers!
and
School Sucks!
Harvey writes
Fulton sucks dick!
Both men giggle as they wield the cans in looping flourishes. Will paints in an evenhanded script, Harvey in thick, angry letters.

Harvey has finished his first composition and is contemplating his second, trying to envision
Fulton is a pervert!
emblazoned across the tile floor, when he hears Stevie's hoarse whisper. “Hey, Harve! Harvey! You might want to come have a look at this!”

Harvey looks over his shoulder and sees Stevie leaning out the door to Kenny's office. Will asks, “What's wrong?”

And Stevie says, “You're not gonna believe this.”

Will is closest to Kenny's office and disappears inside. By the time Harvey crosses the threshold, Will is already coming toward him, hands outstretched to stop Harvey's progress, nearly shouting over his shoulder at Stevie, “Get that shit off there!”

But Stevie, standing behind Kenny's desk, unsure of what to do, looks from the glowing computer monitor to Harvey, and Harvey knows in an instant that he cannot let Will keep him out, and he shoves his brother hard, pushes past him, all but lunges toward the desk.

“I was just going through the drawers,” Stevie tells him, his words spilling out in a nervous torrent of self-acquittal, “when I came across one that was locked, and I figured if it was locked there must be something good in there, so I jimmied it open and I noticed this CD stuck clear in the back and I was just curious, you know? I swear I had no idea what was on it till I booted it up.”

Harvey grips the back of Kenny's leather chair. All the air has gone out of his lungs. He is aware of nothing Stevie tells him, aware of no natural sounds whatsoever. The air is dead but for a buzzing growing louder and louder in his ears, burrowing deeper, a drill inside his brain.

Tiled across the monitor are the photo files Stevie found on the CD, pictures he opened one by one and arranged neatly, working in a kind of stunned amazement until horror set in, four photos on top and four underneath, all of Harvey's wife, Jennilee, gorgeous but appalling.

It is Will's hand on Harvey's shoulder that starts the fulmination in Harvey's brain. Harvey jerks away and shoves the chair with such force that Kenny's heavy desk is jarred several inches across the thick carpet. The monitor wobbles on its pedestal but doesn't fall, so Harvey seizes it in both hands and rips it into the air, only to have the cable jerk it out of his hands again. It falls onto the edge of the desk, then capsizes to the floor, the glass and plastic housing shattering. The screen crackles and goes black.

Then Harvey seizes the desk itself and, driving hard, he shoves it across the floor, slides it crashing into a wall. Will grabs him by the arm, but again Harvey jerks away, lunges for the door, arms swinging blindly at everything in his way.

Will turns to Stevie now, who has retreated against a wall, eyes wide. “You get that CD,” Will tells him, “and everything we brought with us. And I mean
everything!
And then you get the hell out of here.”

Stevie nods in response, but Will doesn't see it, he is already in pursuit of his brother.

A shattering of glass—a trash can hurled into the trophy case. Trophies heaved one by one against the cement-block wall. This time Will does not merely take hold of his brother's arm or lay a hand upon his shoulder. This time Will runs at Harvey and tackles him around the waist, drives him well away from the broken glass and ringing metal, slams him against a wall.

“Listen to me!” Will shouts, his face two inches from his brother's. “We have to get out of here, you understand? First we get out, and
then
we kill the son of a bitch!”

Now Harvey faces him, eyes flooded with furious tears. “She told me she got rid of those.”

At this Will draws back an inch, puzzled, unsure of what he has heard. Harvey shoves him aside and turns down the hallway, strides furiously toward a door marked
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY
.

Will races after him, shouts “No! Come this way!” But Harvey continues on, and when he is close to the exit he kicks the lever bar running across the middle of it and the door pops open and the fire alarm shrieks. Will catches his brother on the run two steps outside the door, grips Harvey's arm just above the elbow, and pulls him along despite Harvey's wriggling to free himself.

But Will cannot let go, cannot surrender his brother to rage. “Run, damn it!” he shouts while the alarm shrieks and echoes down the empty hallways. “Goddammit, Harvey... Run!”

 

They cut across the practice field and through the yard behind an abandoned house. Stevie's pickup is parked on the unlighted street in front of this house, a street lined with small homes in disrepair. They lean against the tailgate, Harvey bent forward toward the bed of the truck, Will watching in the opposite direction. After a few moments Will says, “Listen,” and they hold their breaths. In the distance a soft clanking noise, as rhythmic as footsteps. “Go ahead and get in the truck,” Will says. “I'll be right back.” And he disappears into the darkness.

Will meets Stevie coming across the practice field, the extension ladder hung over one shoulder and clanking with each step. Will snatches the duffel bag from his brother's hand. “I got everything but the rope,” Stevie tells him.

“Forget the rope.”

“Harvey didn't have his gloves on when he came down it.”

“They can't get fingerprints off a freaking rope,” Will says. “I'm pretty sure they can't. How could they?”

On the other side of the field, the alarm whines inside the school. Will calculates that the police won't arrive for another three or four minutes. Only one deputy is on duty this late at night, either Ronnie Walters, all two hundred pounds of him and as lugubrious as a black bear in January, or his polar opposite, skinny Chris Landers, the one folks call Barney Fife because he is always patting his pockets, checking for his keys, a nervous talker always fiddling with his tie. In either case the deputy at this hour will be watching TV at the fire station, maybe playing euchre with a couple of volunteers who prefer to spend their nights away from home. Too far from the school to actually hear the siren, they won't be alerted to the break-in until called by the county dispatcher.

They're probably getting the call right now
, Will thinks as he and Stevie slide the extension ladder onto the truck bed. “We'll be fine,” Will says aloud, and Stevie answers as he heads for the driver's door, “We will if we get the hell out of here.”

Four minutes later, Stevie slows to make the turn into the alley beside Will's bar, but Will tells him, “Don't. Just pull over and let us out.”

Stevie pulls close to the curb, keeps his foot on the brake. Will slides out and holds the door wide for Harvey, who without a word heads into the alley. “You sure you got everything?” Will asks his younger brother, and Stevie tells him again, “Everything but the rope.”