Everything You Want Me to Be(76)
Lund was gone.
Adrenaline shot through me, feeding my old bones with that familiar surge. The tension rolling off Jake told me he was in the same place. Everything became silent, deliberate. The preacher’s voice fell away.
“Make sure,” I muttered and we checked and rechecked the crowd, but there was no trace of him. We left the service and I sent a text to the crew.
Lund MIA. Exits and perimeter. ID and report only. Do not detain in public area.
Shel replied.
No one out the front door in the last ten minutes. I’ve got front and east exits in visual.
We swept the front hallway, restrooms, and staff offices, and then moved toward the classrooms. I motioned Jake to take the upstairs and I stayed on the main level, looking in every room. Lund’s classroom, where the principal had escorted me two days ago, was the last door on the right. As I got closer I could hear something—a loud, ragged breath. I unholstered my gun and crept along the wall, then ducked inside the room to see Lund standing at the window with his back to me. I couldn’t see his hands.
“Stay right where you are.”
The only sign he heard me was a tremor that ran through his whole body. Chicken shit.
“Peter Lund, you’re under arrest for obstruction of justice in the case of the murder of Henrietta Sue Hoffman.” I stepped cautiously forward, keeping the gun trained on his back. “Hands where I can see them.”
Slowly he raised his arms and turned around. His skin was sallow and sick. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Friday night.
“She wouldn’t let me end it. She kept pushing and pushing.” The next words were hardly more than a mumble, but they tore into the room like a gunshot.
“She’d still be alive if she would’ve just let me go.”
PETER / Thursday, April 17, 2008
THE SHERIFF wouldn’t stop pointing the gun at me. He ordered me to face the wall and put my hands behind my back, just as the younger officer came in and put me in handcuffs. I’d never been in handcuffs before. They were cold.
“Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?”
“I’m figuring the best way to get you back to the station without getting your head blown off by any of those fine folks out there.”
I hadn’t thought of that. For two days I’d imagined all the possible scenarios after the DNA test came back. They could have come for me at school or at home. I knew they wouldn’t let me drive in on my own, despite the obvious fact that I hadn’t skipped town or disappeared from my life. I went to school yesterday, went through the motions of teaching as the entire staff and half the students watched me like I was the worst kind of predator. I sat across from Mary at the dinner table last night while Elsa, oblivious, rambled on about family names and all the possible horrors we might inflict upon our unborn child. Marcy. Etheline. Albus. I stared at the plate and listened for gravel crunching in the driveway, waiting for the swing of headlights through the living room windows. I could even see Sheriff Goodman pulling me aside after the funeral and shoving me in the back of his squad car while news cameras ate up the moment in greedy clicks, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be shot by one of Hattie’s mourners. I don’t know why not. It made perfect sense. Winifred Erickson had killed her husband after she got tired of him and never served a day in prison. Of course they’d shoot me.
They decided to take me out the exit behind the cafeteria next to the dumpsters. A high fence gated off the area, trapping the stench of sour milk and mold. The deputy left to pull his cruiser around, leaving me alone with the sheriff. Even with the handcuffs, the smells, and the fury leaking out of the old man’s eyes, it was still better than sitting in that gymnasium staring at the box that held Hattie’s dead body. The details had spread like wildfire through the school on Monday morning: the stab through her heart, the slashes destroying her face, her body half-submerged in the lake. It was impossible to sit quietly in that room with her body, imagining her terror and her pain. I’d stumbled out of the gym before I broke down completely.
“I didn’t kill her.” As the words came out, I wondered why I hadn’t said them before.
He looked at me like I was the thing rotting in the dumpster. Then he read me my rights.
The deputy pulled up and they put me in the back of the squad car.
“Book him and let him sweat.” The sheriff slammed the door. “I’ll be along as soon as we get the procession back from the cemetery.”
The deputy nodded and pulled out of the alley slowly, like he’d been checking security around the building. Three media vans were parked on the street with cameramen and reporters milling in front of them.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, the reporters spotted me and suddenly cameras flashed and bodies swarmed closer to the car. I sat woodenly, indifferent to what any of this would mean for my life.
“Hmm, I guess the secret’s out. Smile pretty.” He eased out into the street.
“I didn’t kill Hattie.”
“Good one. Next you’re going to tell me you don’t fuck your underage students, either.”
She wasn’t underage—I bit back the impulse before I could say it. He laughed low and mean at my silence as we cruised the few blocks down Main Street.
“Not going to bother denying that one, are you? Now shut up and don’t give me any excuses.”