I narrow my eyes at him.
“My God,” I say. “You really are a piece of work. You know that, don’t you? You’re disgusting.”
“God gave me a gift, Heather,” Mark insists, his face just inches from mine. “These looks, this personality… I’m supposed to use it to bring joy to others. I’m supposed to use it to do His work—”
“And since when,” I demand, “has killing been the Lord’s work?”
“Killing?” Mark blinks down at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Right,” I say, very sarcastically. I’m stalling, of course. Eventually Cooper’s going to have to figure out which door Mark dragged me through, and come busting through it. Until then, I just have to keep him talking. Because if he’s busy talking, he won’t be busy doing other things. Such as killing me.
“Like you didn’t shoot Owen through his office window yesterday morning,” I say, “to keep him from ratting you out to your supervisor and the board of trustees.”
Mark blinks some more.
“What? What are you—”
“Come on, Mark,” I say. “Everyone knows you did it. Jamie knows. I know. The cops know. You might as well give yourself up. You can plant guns on innocent people all you want, but the truth is, you’re going to get caught eventually. It’s just a matter of time.”
Mark does something extraordinary then.
He bursts out laughing. Then he lets go of me.
“Is that what this is about?” he asks, walking to the opposite end of the stairwell, dragging a hand through his thick dark hair. “You think… My God. You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I assure you,” I say, keeping an eye on the door. Any second now, I’m sure, Cooper is going to burst through it. I’d make a run for it, but I’m certain Halstead will stop me before I get even one step toward it. Stop me, then toss me over the railing and to my death. “I’m serious as a heart attack.”
“How could I have killed your boss?” Mark demands. “They already caught the guy who did it!”
“You shot him,” I say, “and planted the gun on Sebastian.”
“Oh, right,” Mark says, very sarcastically… I mean, for a preacher. “And what time was your boss shot again?”
“Between eight and eight-thirty yesterday morning,” I say.
“Right,” Mark says. “You mean while I was holding daily morning prayer service, which I do every day between seven-thirty and eight-thirty, in front of no fewer than twenty to thirty students? Would you like to explain how I snuck out in front of all of them, shot your boss, snuck back, and continued prayer service without any of them noticing I was gone?”
I swallow. No wonder Detective Canavan had been in no hurry to rush out and arrest the reverend. It hadn’t been because he already had a suspect in custody.
It had been because Reverend Mark had a rock-solid alibi.
“Oh,” I say.
Dang. And I’d really wanted him to turn out to be the killer, too.
“You know,” Mark says in an irritated voice, “I am getting so tired of people assuming that, just because there’ve been a few religious leaders who’ve turned out to be less than honest,all men of the cloth must be inherently dishonest. Apparently we’re all either child molesters, adulterers, or cold-blooded killers.”
“Well,” I say. “I’m sorry. But you did just admit that you hit on homely and overweight girls to improve their self-esteem. That’s totally skeevy, especially considering you’re in a position of power over them, and they’re probably too intimidated to tell you to cut it out if they don’t like it.”
Mark makes a bleating noise of protest. “It’s not skeevy!” he says. “It’s actually very—”
But he doesn’t get a chance to explain to me what it’s actually very. Because at that moment, the stairwell door explodes open, and a dark-haired blur bursts through it.
“Heather,” Cooper demands, seeing me with my back still up against the cinder block. His eyes are wide with emotion. I can’t exactly pinpoint which one. But something tells me it might actually be… fear. At the very least, it’s anxiety. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say, a little crankily. I still can’t believe I was wrong about Reverend Mark.
“I told you to stay where I could see you,” he snaps.
“Yeah,” I say. “Well, Reverend Hot Pants over here had other ideas.”
This is the wrong thing to say. Because the next thing I know, Cooper’s crossed the few feet that separates him from Mark Halstead in a single leap, seeming unaware of the look of panic that spreads across the reverend’s face as he does so. A second later, Cooper’s heaved himself, left shoulder first, into Halstead’s stomach.
Then the two of them go tumbling down the stairwell.
20
Monday’s guy is full of himself
Tuesday’s guy drinks only scotch, top shelf
Wednesday’s guy is a commitment phobe
Thursday’s guy will never phone
“Guys of the Week”
Written by Heather Wells
It takes the combined efforts of Tom, Steve, Gavin, myself, and Jamie (“Dressage,” she informs me, when I comment on her surprising amount of upper-body strength) to pull Cooper and the Reverend Mark apart. When we do, we discover we’re too late to have prevented any major damage. The paramedics later diagnose a broken nose and bruised ribs (Reverend Mark) and dislocated finger along with possible concussion (Cooper). It’s impossible to confirm Cooper’s concussion, however, because he refuses to go to the hospital.
“What are they going to do for a concussion?” he wants to know, after the EMT has shoved his pinky back into place. “Tell me not to take any codeine and have someone wake me up every two hours to make sure I don’t go into a coma? Sorry, I can do that at home.”
Mark is surprisingly good-natured about his nose, refusing to press charges even after he discovers his attacker is a Cartwright, of Cartwright Records.
“Maybe,” he says to me, as he’s being loaded into the ambulance (unlike Cooper, Reverend Mark is only too eager to be taken to St. Vincent’s, possibly so as to postpone uncomfortable questions he might be receiving from his superiors back at the student chapel), “this will solve my little problem, by making me less appealing to the ladies.”
“Yeah,” I say to him. “Good luck with that.”
I’m still keeping the PNG in place, even if he didn’t kill Dr. Veatch. And Jamie’s still putting through her formal complaint on him… it will be accompanied with my notes on his admissions to me, plus the fact that he was dismissed from his previous two positions for undisclosed reasons.
I mean, come on. He may not be a murderer.
But he’s still a letch.
“Well,” Sebastian says, as we all walk slowly back toward Fischer Hall after the excitement has died down. Slowly because we’re keeping pace with Cooper, who, though he denies it, appears to have suffered some contusions he didn’t mention to the paramedics that are impeding his progress somewhat. “That was… anticlimactic.”
“Yeah, well, everything would have been all right if you hadn’t shown up,” I can’t help snapping. I’m sort of hovering beside Cooper, ready to catch him if he falls over. He is not amused by this, and has already asked me to get out of his way twice. I told him I was just looking out for him, same as he was doing for me back at the sports center, but he pointed out that to his certain knowledge, no homicidal preachers are stalking him.
