Asylum (Asylum, #1)(38)

“What the . . .” Dan and Abby tried to see what was going on, but the crowd was just too dense to move more than a few feet.

Another police officer rushed in through the front door. Dan could see the flashing blue-and-red lights of the police cars parked outside. It looked like there were four or five of them.

“Move out of the way!” the officer thundered. “This is a crime scene! Move outside, now!” She and the tall policeman started herding the kids outside onto the lawn. The students shuffled slowly, bottlenecking at the front door. Dan and Abby moved along with the crowd, following the officer’s instructions.

“Police?” Abby whispered. The color had drained from her face.

“Let’s try to find out what happened.”

Outside, a third policeman was now talking to the crying girl. Everyone else stood in groups, conversing in hushed whispers. Dan finally spotted Yi and Jordan. Jordan didn’t look too good. He glared at Dan and Abby and then disappeared into the crowd.

“What’s going on?” asked Dan.

Yi looked at Dan with surprise. “Your roomie found a dead guy on the stairs. One of the hall monitors. Jake . . . George . . .”

“Joe?” Dan blurted out, and Abby covered her mouth.

“Yeah, that’s it. Joe. Your boy Felix was coming back from a late-night run and found him. It looked like he’d been dead for a while.”

A while couldn’t have been that long, surely. Dan had seen Joe in the halls just before he went into the basement. That was what, an hour ago? Maybe less? Dan needed to figure out how long he’d been down there.

Yi was saying, “At least, that was what it looked like when I saw him.”

“You saw him?” Abby said, horrified.

Yi nodded. “Just a glimpse, after Felix started screaming. Eyes open, wide open. Just . . . staring. It was so freaking creepy. Jordan saw him, too. Joe was standing, propped up in the stairwell with one hand on the railing, and another holding his cell phone. . . .”

Like a sculpture . . .

“Hey,” Yi said suddenly, startling them both. “Where were you guys anyway? How is it you didn’t know?”

“We weren’t doing anything,” Abby said too quickly. Then she glanced up at Dan.

“Yes,” he said, “that sounded as guilty as you think it did.”

“Crap. All right, fine. You’re right.” She looked at her feet. “We were making out, okay?”

Dan wasn’t going to argue with that exaggeration. He liked it quite a lot, in fact. It was a clever cover, too—this way no one would know they’d actually been exploring the old wing.

“In the old wing?” Yi asked.

Abby shrugged.

“You two are weird as hell,” Yi muttered. Then he said, “You know, I’m worried about Jordan. Seeing Joe definitely freaked him out—I mean, it’s freaked all of us out. But he wasn’t looking too good before. These days he hardly talks to me, and he’s always working on math that I’m pretty sure is not even for a class.”

“Do you think his nightmares are getting to him?” Abby asked.

“Yeah—he keeps waking up in the middle of the night. And I think there might be stuff with his parents, like they found out he was here or something. Anyway, I get the feeling it’s way worse than he’s letting on. I just hope he’s got a place to go back to, you know?” Yi paused. “Are you two keeping an eye on him?”

Abby and Dan exchanged a worried look. Since they’d all gone their separate ways, they had no idea that Jordan had gotten this bad. Dan felt guilty—he should have checked on Jordan, even though Jordan had withdrawn.

“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on him,” Dan said. We are now, anyway.

More policemen arrived. They began sectioning off the students, arranging them in smaller, more manageable groups. Probably for interviews.

Shit, why did he feel so guilty?

“Dan, buddy? You feeling okay? You just got a little green. . . .” Yi punched his arm lightly.

“Me? I’m fine.”

“What are you talking about?” Abby demanded, looking up at him. “Clearly, none of us are fine.”

Two cops, the tall one and the police officer who had moved everyone outside, reached where they were standing and herded their group over to a tree.

“Better come up with a believable story,” Yi said softly. “Before Mulder and Scully over there get a go at you. You don’t want them knowing you were in the forbidden zone.”

Yi turned to talk with another kid, but Dan could hardly move. What if Yi was right? Were they really going to be interrogated? Of course they’re going to question you, someone was murdered.

“We weren’t in the old wing,” Dan said, grabbing Abby’s arm. “We were in the second-floor lounge, the one by your room. We have to get our story straight or they might think we had something to do with . . . with . . .”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“But we weren’t anywhere near the second floor.” She looked at him strangely. “Why would we need a story?”

He took her by the forearm, tugging her away from the other students. “Just trust me, okay? Think about it—we were both out wandering late at night. Joe’s a big guy, so they probably won’t suspect you could overpower him, but the two of us—”