The deep green of carob trees and the woody green of the laurel trees made rough lines in between the streets and the red- and brown-roofed houses. Every once in a while there was a wanderer out on the sidewalk making his way, or her way, slowly.
I took the stairs at a slow pace. Not because I felt lazy and calm but because I was wary. Everybody was after me, it seemed. My principal, my supervisor, and two different kinds of cops. Bill Preston had the temper to break a man’s jaw in the name of what was decent and moral. Maybe he’d try to crush my skull down in the main office.
ACE AND BILL WERE SITTING at the far end of the long table. Bill wasn’t surprised to see me. Ace leapt up, he always did that to make me think that he was showing me deference.
“Mr. Rawlins.” Preston came to his feet too. “I have to show you something.” His voice and manner were brusque and unfriendly. He seemed angry and even a little off, a little crazy.
“I have to talk to you too, Mr. Rawlins,” Ace said.
“ ’Bout what, Ace?”
“It’s a private thing, uh, but I guess it’ll wait till you’re finished.”
“You do your classrooms yet?”
“I’ll get’em.”
“Okay then.”
When Ace let the fire door roll shut behind him I realized that I was completely alone with the Jawbreaker.
Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t afraid of Bill Preston. Actually I found myself hoping that he would start a fight with me. It would have given me no end of pleasure to inflict pain on someone who was trying to hurt me.
“I have to talk to you, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Go ahead. Talk.” I wandered over to a chair near a wall of hanging tools—where there was a large rubber mallet dangling in easy reach.
Preston pulled two envelopes from the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he sat down next to me, placing the envelopes on his lap.
“Newgate was talking this morning,” Preston said.
“Yeah?”
“He was saying to me and Mrs. Teale that you wouldn’t be on the job much longer.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He also said that Sanchez would be arresting you soon.”
“Arresting me for what?”
“He didn’t say, but what else could it be but those murders?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Preston. You know more about all of this than I do. Did you speak up?”
Preston stared straight at me. “No,” he said.
I waited him out.
“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “I didn’t tell you all of it. You see, Ida didn’t just come down to my office to tell me about Holland threatening her.”
“No?” I glanced at the envelopes on his lap.
“She gave me these two letters. One of them is from her saying that Holland was crazy and that she was afraid he would kill her. The other one is a letter that Holland wrote to her.”
The letters sat there on the vice principal’s knee. I looked at them while he stared at me.
“You read’em?” I asked finally.
He nodded. “The one from him is crazy.”
“Uh-huh. Well? What do you want me to do about that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about what you could do. It’s just that Idabell said that she’d call me soon. But she hasn’t called.”
“So? Take the letters and go to the police.” It seemed simple to me.
“I can’t. It would jeopardize my job and my marriage. I already told the police that I didn’t know anything.”
“Well,” I said, “you really don’t know anything. Holland’s dead. He might have had something to do with her not calling you but more probably she killed him.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment. Idabell couldn’t kill anybody.”
That was the second vote for Idabell’s inability to kill.
“So what do you want from me, Bill?”
“I can’t handle these letters. I’d just get in trouble, I know it.”
He was probably right.
“So,” he said, “why don’t I give them to you?”
“Why me?”
