“Heather.” Pete follows me out into the lobby, gazing after me in concern. “What’s going on?”
I ignore them both. I get in the elevator and stab the button for the twelfth floor. As the doors close, I see Magda tottering toward me, trying to stop me from going alone.
But it’s just as well she doesn’t come with me. She isn’t going to like what I’m about to do.I don’t like what I’m about to do.
But someone has to do it.
When the doors open on the twelfth floor, I get off the elevator and stalk toward Room 1218. The hallway —which the RA has decorated in a Tigger the Tiger motif, being a Pooh fan… only an ironic Tigger, since she’s given him dreadlocks—is silent. It’s just past nine in the morning, and the kids who aren’t in class are asleep.
But one of them I fully intend to wake up.
“Director’s Office,” I yell, thumping on the door once with my fist. We are not allowed to enter any room unannounced.
But that doesn’t mean we have to wait for the resident to answer the door. And I don’t. I insert my master key into the lock and turn the knob.
Kimberly, as I hoped, is curled up in her bed. Her roommate’s matching twin—they’ve even got the same bedspreads, in New York College gold and white—is empty. Kimberly is sitting up, looking groggy.
“Wh-what’s going on?” she asks sleepily. “Omigod. What are you doing in here?”
“Get out of bed,” I say to her.
“What? Why?” Even when just waking from a dead sleep, Kimberly Watkins looks pretty. Her face—unlike my own, when I’m just waking up—isn’t smeared with various anti-zit-and-wrinkle creams, and her hair, instead of standing comically on end, falls into perfectly straight planes along either side of her face.
“Is there a fire?” Kimberly wants to know.
“There’s no fire,” I say. “Come on.”
Kimberly has clambered from her bed and is standing there in an oversized New York College T-shirt and a pair of boxers. On her feet are a pair of baggy gray socks.
“Wait,” she says, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear. “Where are we going? I have to get dressed. I have to brush my—”
But I’ve already got her by the arm and am dragging her out the door. She tries to resist, but let’s face it: I’m a lot bigger than she is. Plus, I’m fully awake, and she isn’t.
“W-where are you taking me?” Kim stammers, as she trots to keep up with me as I haul her toward the elevator. Her alternative is to let me drag her, which she apparently realizes I am totally willing to do.
“I’ve got something to show you,” I tell her in reply.
Kimberly blinks nervously. “I–I don’t want to see it.”
For a minute, I consider throwing her up against the nearest wall as if she were a handball. Instead, I say, “Well, you’re going to see it. You’re going to see it, and then you and I are going to have a talk. Understand?”
The elevator cab is still waiting at the twelfth floor. I pull her into the car and jab the button for the lobby.
“You’re crazy,” Kimberly says, in a shaky voice, as we glide down. She’s starting to wake up now. “Do you know that? You’re going to get fired for this.”
“Oh, yeah?” I laugh. That’s the best one I’ve heard all day.
“I mean it. You can’t treat me like this. President Allington’s gonna be mad at you when he finds out.”
“President Allington,” I say, as we reach the lobby and the elevator doors open, “can kiss my ass.”
I drag her past the door to my office, and down the hall toward the front desk, where the student worker actually looks up from the copy of Cosmo she’s snagged from somebody’s mailbox to stare at me in shock. Pete, who is waving firemen into the building—why, no matter what we call 911 for, from a resident freaking out on meth to human bones in a garbage disposal, does the New York City Fire Department always manage to show up first? — pauses in his coordination efforts to stare at me.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, as I drag Kimberly past him.
“Don’t just stand there,” Kimberly shouts at him. “Stop her! Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s holding me against my will!She’s hurting my arm!”
Pete’s walkie-talkie crackles. He lifts it to his lips and says, “No, it’s all clear here in the lobby.”
“Stupid rent-a-cop!” Kimberly sneers at him, as I thrust her through the cafeteria doors.
Magda, who is standing at the entrance next to her boss, Gerald, and several firemen, looks startled. Her hand is open to show the firemen her discovery. Cheryl, I see, is still sitting nearby, a very white-faced—but solemn—Jeff Turner at her side. I grab Kimberly by the back of her neck and shove her face toward Magda’s open palm.
“See that?” I demand. “Do you know what that is?”
Kimberly is squirming to escape my grasp. “No,” she says sullenly. “What are you talking about? You better let me go.”
“Show her,” I say to Magda, and Magda very nicely holds the belly button ring right up to Kimberly’s face.
“Recognize it?” I ask her.
Kimberly’s eyes are as wide as quarters. Her gaze is riveted on the object Magda is holding.
“Yeah,” she says faintly. “I recognize it.”
“What is it?” I ask, letting go of her neck. I don’t need to hold on to her anymore to make her look. The truth is, she can’t look away.
“It’s a navel ring.”
“Whose navel ring is it?”
“Lindsay’s.”
“That’s right,” I say. “It’s Lindsay’s. Do you know where we found it?”
“No.” Kimberly is starting to sound congested. I wonder if she’s starting to cry or merely coming down with something.
“In the garbage disposal,” I say. “They tried to grind your friend’s body up, Kimberly.Like she was garbage.”
“No,” Kimberly says. Her voice is growing even fainter. Which is unusual, for a cheerleader.
“And you know what the person who killed Lindsay did to Manuel Juarez at the game the other night,” I say. “Just because they were afraid Lindsay might have said something to him about them. What do you think about that, huh, Kimberly?”
Kimberly, her voice still faint, her face now swollen with tears, mumbles, “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Don’t mess with me, Kimberly,” I say. “First you tried to tell me Lindsay’s roommate might have killed her out of jealousy. Then you tried to make me think Coach Andrews and Lindsay were romantically involved, when you know perfectly well Coach Andrews is same-sex oriented—”
I hear, from behind me, a little gasp. I know it’s come from Cheryl Haebig.
“Face it, Kimberly,” I say, not turning around. “You know who killed Lindsay.”
Kimberly is shaking her head, hard enough that her hair has fallen into her eyes. “No, I—”
“Do you want to see it, Kimberly?” I demand. “The disposal they tried to stick Lindsay down? It’s all clogged up. With her blood and bones. But I’ll show it to you, if you want.”
Kimberly lets out a little moan. The firemen are staring down at me like I’m some kind of sick freak. I guess they’re right. Iam a sick freak. I don’t feel bad at all about what I’m doing to Kimberly. Not even a tiny bit.
“You want to know what they did to Lindsay, Kim? Do you want to know?” She shakes her head some more, but I go on anyway. “First, someone strangled her—so hard and for so long, the capillaries around her eyes burst. She was probably gasping for air, but whoever had hold of her didn’t care, and didn’t let go. So she died. But that wasn’t enough. Because then they chopped her up. Chopped her up and put the different parts of her body down the disposal… .”
“No.” Kimberly is sobbing now. “No, that isn’t true!”
“It is so true. You know it’s true. And you know what else, Kimberly? You’re next. They’re coming after you next.”
The tear-filled eyes widen. “No! You’re just saying that to scare me!”
