Butchers Hill

point to never answer his phone and to carry a clipboard with him as he roamed the halls, from coffee pot to men's room and back again. It was more important to look busy than be busy, as he had once explained to his niece.

'Favor time,' she told the machine. 'A big one.' Uncle Donald would understand she was going to ask him to do something that was, technically, illegal. He just wouldn't know it involved his own father. That was her new deal. Instead of charging Jackie a fee for her services, all Tess wanted was the guarantee of her silence. Once the girl was found, Jackie had to get out of her life forever.

Esskay's ears, more sensitive than hers, suddenly stood straight up. Tess heard it, too, a creaking sound from the bathroom. Nothing unusual there. The old building often sighed and moaned as it settled. But this sound was unlike any she had heard before. Quietly, she slid her gun out of her knapsack. Perhaps her burglar had come back. Just as quietly, she started to slide her gun back into her knapsack. What if the burglar were bigger than she, or better-armed? The gun might provoke him to shoot when he had no intention of doing so. People burgled because they disliked confrontation. Otherwise, they'd be robbers.

She took a dog biscuit out of the cookie jar on her desk and threw it down the hall, just past the bathroom door. Esskay took off, sounding suitably ferocious. She heard a muffled, involuntary cry, the sound of something falling in water, the whine of a window opening too quickly.

A brown topsider was floating in the toilet and a pair of khaki-clad legs was about to disappear through the window when Tess caught her intruder by his sodden ankles. He twisted and fought in her grip, but succeeded only in bumping his head, first on the window sash and then on the old-fashioned bathtub. The second hit gave Tess the opportunity she needed to grab his backpack, which she used to flip him over and straddle him.

'Am I bleeding?' Sal Hawkings asked.

Chapter 20

There was, in fact, quite a bit of blood on Sal Hawkings, which made Tess nervous. What if she had knocked out a tooth or two in the mouth of Maryland's best extemporaneous speaker? But the blood came from a gash on his forehead and although there was a lot of it, the wound was superficial. She gave him a wad of paper towels to stem the flow, but it was too late to save his white shirt and navy blazer.

'Shouldn't you wash it?' he asked worriedly. 'That bathroom floor was pretty dirty. I could get an infection.'

'What do I look like, the school nurse?'

'No, she's fat, wears bright red lipstick, and spends most of her time smoking on the loading dock behind the dining hall.'

Very charming. Or would be if Tess was amenable to being charmed just now. She folded up another wad of paper towels and passed it to Sal.

'I could take you to a hospital emergency room if you like. After I call the police, of course, and Penfield. You're AWOL, I assume?'

'Why would you drop the dime on me?' Must be hard, keeping up with the current slang while ensconced at Penfield. Tess wondered if Sal tried to impress his well-heeled classmates by playing the part of the savvy street kid. If so, he really ought to be a little more current. Drop the dime. She figured if she knew a term, it was long out of date.

'You broke into my office, second time in a week that's happened. Someone was in here over the weekend, too. Maybe it was you.'

'I didn't even know you existed until you came to my school Tuesday morning.'

'Chase Pearson knew who I was, though. I wonder-is it possible he started working on my little dossier before I called him? He pulled together quite a bit of information in a short time.'

'You'd have to ask him.'

'Perhaps I will. But for now, you're here and he's not.' Sal's knapsack was sitting on her desk, a much nicer, newer version of the one she carried. Its leather wasn't as scarred or stained. She pulled it into her lap and undid the shiny brass buckle.

'That's illegal search and seizure.'

'Only if you're a cop.' Tess pulled out a notebook, two pens, a small leather case that carried a set of screwdrivers, and an old, thick book bound in faded green cloth. The letters on the spine had almost been rubbed off over the years. The Kipling Compendium, the book Sal had been reading in the library.

'What are the screwdrivers for? Just burglary, or boosting cars, too?'

Sal scowled. 'I take wood shop. The screwdrivers were a gift from Mr. Pearson. Besides, I told you, I wasn't here this weekend. You can check with Penfield if you don't believe me.'

'You definitely were here this morning.' Tess gestured to his soggy topsider, dark with water, drying in a patch of sun on the windowsill. 'Quite a little Cinderella act.'

'I wasn't breaking in exactly.'

'No, you appeared to be breaking out. Which raises the question of how you got in to begin with. I didn't go to Penfield, but I think that follows logically. What goes out must have come in.'

Maryland's best extemporaneous speaker, middle school division, was briefly silent. Tess picked up the telephone and dialed 311. Busy, of course, so she faked getting a connection. 'Eastern District-I have a burglary I'd like to report on-'

Sal reached over and depressed the disconnect button. 'Mr. Pearson came to school the day before yesterday and told me they were going to take Luther Beale in.'

Going to take-Chase Pearson had good sources. He had known about Beale's arrest before it happened. Tess said nothing, just put the phone back in the receiver and waited, hoping Sal would keep talking if she didn't.

'I know Beale hired you to find all of us. You found me. You found Treasure. You couldn't find Destiny because Beale had already killed her.'

'That hasn't been established, Sal. Far from it.'

'Sure.' He gave her a superior look, as if she were hopelessly naive. It was strange to be on the receiving end of a look like that from a seventeen-year-old kid, but Sal almost carried it off.

'What do you want, Sal?'

Here came the charm again-the bright eyes, the eager smile. 'I was wondering if you know where Eldon is. Of all us who lived at the Nelsons', we were the closest. I mean, everybody was close, living in a three-bedroom house like that, but Eldon was my special buddy, you know. We were tight. I wrote him letters for a while, after they split us up, but he never wrote back. Eldon wasn't much for writing.'

Sal Hawkings looked so rueful that Tess almost felt sorry for him. After all, she knew what it was like to have a best friend who didn't write. Whitney was given to beautiful gifts and the occasional hour-long phone call out of the blue, but she wouldn't sit down and compose a letter with a gun pointed at her bright blond head. The written lines of communication between Bond Street and Tokyo had been decidedly one way.

'Eldon's trail is pretty cold,' she said. 'According to records, he's wanted on a bench warrant because he failed to show up for a hearing. That was about seven months ago. My guess is he left the state. He's probably taking great care not to be found.'

'Eldon's only seventeen, two months younger'n me. How'd he end up in the adult system?'

'I guess he was so precocious they skipped him ahead.'

Sal Hawkings wasn't amused. 'Hey, Eldon's good people. If he ran, it's probably because he didn't even do it, but doesn't know how to get anyone to believe him. He just doesn't know there's any other life, okay? He's just trying to get by.'

'You learned there was another life, though. Think about it, Sal. Five kids living in the Nelsons' house on Fayette Street. One was shot. One took drugs, one turned tricks, and now one is a felon on the run. You got out because Chase Pearson helped you, but Pearson wouldn't have helped you if you hadn't started winning all those public speaking awards. What made you different, Sal? What separated you from the others?'