To Catch a Killer(79)

—VICTOR FLEMMING


I’m home alone.

An angry and aggressive Principal Roberts is storming around in my driveway. He looks like he’s been in a fight. He has Journey’s van and cell phone.

I can’t find Journey. Rachel’s unreachable. Victor is MIA.

I crouch lower behind the table.

Suddenly, Principal Roberts whirls and strides straight toward me. I cower, squeeze my eyes closed, and hope for the best.

The clatter of metal scraping against concrete is deafening.

I peek. He’s grabbed a chair from the other side of the table and turned it around to face the back of the house. He sits down with an agitated thump. His rapid foot tapping on the cement mirrors my terrified heartbeat.

Seriously, what the hell?

I quietly turn my phone off. He’s sitting close enough to me to hear it if it vibrates, and he might try calling again.

Through the gauzy glass tabletop I watch him inspect his hands. He finds more wounds oozing blood. He pulls a folded square of notebook paper from his pocket and uses it to dab at his wounds. After a few minutes and some frustrated grumbling, he pulls a plastic glove from his pocket and slips it onto his right hand. Then he lurches off the chair and heads for our back stairs, mounting them two at a time. At the top, he wrenches open the door without knocking. “Erin? Rachel?” he calls into the house.

When he doesn’t get an answer, he just barges in. Through the window I see him climbing the stairs. I’m shocked. Why is he going up to my room like that?

After a couple of moments, he comes down the stairs. When he exits he’s calm, almost happy. He’s carrying Chief Culson’s shoes. Something flutters from his pocket as he passes in front of me. He’s whistling as he climbs into Journey’s van, revs the engine a few times, and backs out of the driveway before pulling away.

Once he’s gone, I race toward the house, stopping only to pick up the green armband and the paper he dropped. I get inside but my hands are trembling so violently I can hardly secure the lock.

It’s nine-twenty. Victor should have been back fifteen minutes ago. At this point I figure I’m entitled to call him, and besides, I have new information.

That man was not the Principal Roberts I know. And why does he have Journey’s van and his cell phone? Why would he steal Chief Culson’s shoes? Why did he look so beat-up? I turn my phone back on and call Victor. I immediately hear a cell phone ringing nearby.

I open the hall closet. Victor’s briefcase is sitting on the floor, the top gaping open. His phone is inside ringing and lighting up. Great. I take it out. He’s had seven calls, only one of them mine. I drop the phone back into his case.

Next to Victor’s briefcase is a gym bag and, just visible inside, another pair of white basketball shoes that look to be about the right size.

I grab the shoes and turn them over.

Horizontal rays that cut through a circular tread. These are Victor’s shoes and they’re also Michael Jordan AJ1s.

Looking at the sole of the right shoe, there’s a smooth, kidney-shaped spot near the outer edge, toward the heel. It looks like gum or something sticky got on the sole. The sticky part is nearly worn off now, but the outline of where it was is clearly visible. There’s also a faint rust-colored residue along one edge of the shoe.

Shaky, I drop into my seat at the table. I’m instantly stung by a terrible realization. Oh my god. It was Victor! He did it! He killed Miss P. That’s why he acted so weird and took off suddenly, because I was going to know.

But wait … I wasn’t going to know. I don’t know how to read DNA stuff. And, Victor wasn’t even in Iron Rain until after—

These aren’t Victor’s shoes.

They belong to Principal Roberts. I remember now, he loaned them to Victor.

I lay the shoes and the things Principal Roberts dropped in the driveway out in front of me.

My face is feverish, but my bones have turned to ice. The fear that has been a constant companion my whole life fades. In its place molten anger rises.

Journey’s green armband, stretched out and soaked with blood, speaks volumes. I know it’s a long shot, but I’m hoping all of this blood belongs to Principal Roberts.

The square of notebook paper twists my insides, too. It’s damp, tattered, and spotted with blood. But I instinctively know what it is even before I open it.

It’s a handwritten note from Miss P.



I’m not surprised to see a strip torn out of the middle.

I dig around in my evidence box to find the Ziploc bag containing the scrap of paper I found lodged in Journey’s seat belt. It’s an exact match, which completes the words: “I even lifted your DNA from a coffee cup you left in my office—just to see if I could. And it worked. Pretty cool, huh?”

Coffee cup.

CC.

Miss P’s fatal move must have been testing Principal Roberts’s DNA just to prove that she could.

There’s only one thing left.

With cold precision I retrieve the bottle of luminol and a swab from Victor’s briefcase. I repeat the test that he just demonstrated for me by rubbing the swab on one of the rust-colored spots on Principal Roberts’s shoe, then squirting a few drops of luminol onto the tip of the swab.

The swab turns bright blue.

This evidence throws me back to two years old. Vulnerable and alone. I shrink in on myself. What if he comes back? What will I do?