Cold Springs(56)

“I'll start the car,” she decided. “Man, you got to lighten up.”

Chadwick reached into the dusty millers and retrieved the cigarette butt. He pinched it dead and tossed it into David's lap.

David looked a little worse for wear than when Chadwick saw him three weeks ago—like he'd been stuffed in an overhead compartment on an international flight. Still, he gave Chadwick the same reverent look, the sad eyes of an unrequited admirer. “Sir, did I do something to offend you?”

Chadwick mentally counted to five before answering. “David, did you have access to the Laurel Heights accounts?”

“No, sir. I just made alumni phone calls. I coordinated the auction—of course they'll cancel it now, but I coordinated the donations. I didn't have access to the money.”

Chadwick remembered David at the auction nine years ago—a gawky teenager with a raging case of zits, waving his red flag to mark the high bidders.

“You still live in the East Bay?”

“Yes, sir. I've got a place in Berkeley. My parents', really, but they make me pay rent.”

“Your name came up in '93, when the police were looking into Katherine's death,” Chadwick told him. “I suppose you know that.”

David's ears and neck turned bright red. “Like I told you—I wanted to write—”

“You introduced Katherine to Samuel Montrose. You took her there to buy drugs from him. After she broke up with you, you knew she was seeing him, getting hooked on heroin, talking about running away. And you said nothing.”

David rubbed his finger in the ashes on his shirttail.

“I took her there once,” he said, his voice tighter now. “That's all. I never went back. You can't make me feel guiltier than I already do.”

“Seen Samuel recently?”

That got his attention. Chadwick couldn't quite read the look in his eyes—apprehension? Fear?

“No,” he said. “Of course not. Not for years. If I had—”

“You would've told someone. You're awfully anxious to be helpful, David. You called Sergeant Damarodas and told him all about my daughter—gave him the connection between my family and the Montroses. You called the media about the embezzlement.”

“What? I didn't—”

“Must've called the papers yesterday afternoon,” Chadwick said, “before Norma even notified the board, just to make sure it made this morning's paper.”

David's face became darker, harder, as if invisible hands had decided to remold it. Chadwick had seen this often with kids he picked up for escort—a sudden chemical change for battle mode, the moment they realized Chadwick couldn't be convinced or conned into letting them go.

“You know what?” David said. “I should've left this place years ago, but I kept f**king coming back. This school failed Katherine. You failed her. When I talked about writing you a letter? That's what I wanted to put in it. I hope the banks foreclose on Laurel Heights. I hope they bulldoze this place to the f**king ground.”

And David Kraft, his old pupil—who'd blushed his way through the Declaration of Independence in eighth grade, who'd dated his daughter and had the adjective poor put in front of his name in high school more than any other descriptor—brushed the dead cigarette off his lap and headed upstairs, with all the determination of a fireman heading into a burning building.

13

A week after she'd talked to Chadwick, Mallory couldn't believe how much had changed. Once she'd allowed herself to go with the program, it had been like turning a boat downstream. Suddenly, she was racing.

Her team had finished the obstacle course. They'd built an entire new barracks for the next group of rookies—the first thing Mallory had ever constructed with her own hands. Then, yesterday, they'd graduated to the job of demolition. They'd been given sledgehammers and told to destroy the barracks they'd been sleeping in.

Like a snake shedding its skin, Leyland told them. Time to grow.

Mallory hated to admit it, but she loved knocking down the walls. She got in a few good smashes with the sledgehammer, and pretty soon she could loosen the cinder blocks enough to kick them down with her feet.

She didn't even mind sleeping in the open. The outdoors wasn't much colder than the barracks, and they'd earned new sleeping bags—good down ones, no more cheap cotton.

Tomorrow, they would start training for Survival Week. None of them knew what that meant, exactly, but the white levels talked about Survival Week like it was sacred. Their anticipation was contagious.

She still missed Race. She was scared for him, and angry with him, and worried that he might have lied to her. She was worried about her dad, too. But mostly, she was relieved she'd handed the problem over to Chadwick, the way Olsen had advised her to. Chadwick would take care of things. He'd make sure Race was safe. He'd check on her dad. Chadwick could even handle Pérez, if he had to, she was sure of that. The thought of Chadwick was like touching metal—it discharged the static energy for a while, let Mallory go about her day.

The nights were worse. She would wake up in the dark, the hills groaning, the raccoons fighting over scraps in the trash bin by the river, crying like mutant babies. She'd shiver in her sleeping bag, feeling every pebble under her shoulder blades, watching the black mesh of cypress branches cat's-cradle the moon, and she would feel absolutely certain somebody had been watching her while she slept.