An Educated Death (26 page)

Lori Leonard stuck her head around the door. "Excuse me, Carol. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have a student over at the infirmary crying uncontrollably and she won't talk to anyone except you."

"I'm sorry," she said, "I have to go. I know this is important to you. Let me think about it and talk to Peter. Maybe we can talk again later." She struggled into her coat and hurried out.

Lori handed me a plate shrouded in plastic wrap. "You'd better hurry up and eat this if you don't want to keep Rocky waiting."

I had a visions of myself as a prisoner in a cell, being brought my meals so that I'd never have to leave it. The stuffy little office lent itself to that kind of imagining. I unwrapped my lunch, thinking it had come just in time. I didn't have time to stop for something and I was hungry enough to forage for wild nuts and berries. I took a huge bite and made a face. The sandwich had some strange flavor I couldn't identify. One of those nouvelle or nouveau combinations of tuna fish with something crunchy and slightly off-flavored. When I have time to cook, I'm as culinarily inventive as the next guy, but this particular combination didn't work for me. I wrapped up the rest of it and stuffed it in my briefcase. Maybe later, when I'd gone from hungry to ravenous, it would be more appealing.

I called the office to bring Suzanne, who hadn't been in earlier, up-to-date about the King School's problem and the necessity for a new copier. Then I gathered up all my papers—there was no lock yet and I wasn't leaving anything for Chip Barrett or like-minded nosy types to find—made sure I had the list I wanted to give Rocky, and drove into Sedgwick. It was only about three miles, but halfway there I ran into some road repairs that were being handled by the Keystone Kops. A bunch of warmly bundled men, surrounded by pale green trucks with the Sedgwick logo, were watching a cheerful yellow backhoe maul a portion of the street. The police officer detailed to direct traffic was also watching, with the avid interest of a small boy observing big equipment. Occasionally, one of the workmen would say something and he'd laugh. The result was that no traffic was moving in either direction.

Finally the car in front of me, impatient with the delay, sounded its horn and began to edge by. The useless cop abandoned his merry companions, stopped the car, and wasted more of my time checking the driver's license and registration. Finally I lost patience, got out of my car, and went up to him. "Excuse me, Officer," I said, "but I'm already ten minutes late for a meeting with Chief Miller. Any idea how much longer this delay is going to be, because I called him on my car phone a while ago and told him where I was and that I expected to be there momentarily." It was a lie. I hadn't called Rocky, but I hoped that if he thought his chief knew he was causing long delays, he might be motivated to get the traffic moving.

It worked. He tossed the license and registration at the man he'd stopped and ordered him to move along. I moved right along behind him down the gracious main street. Following Rocky's instructions, I turned left on Maple Street, passed the library, and beyond it I turned in and parked in front of a brick building labeled Sedgwick Police. The outside door let me into a small entry with yellowish cinder-block walls. On one side was a large window looking into what must have been a communications center. In the center of the larger window was a small opening that looked like the teller's window at an all-night gas station.

A man in uniform came to the window and asked if he could help me. "I'm here to see Chief Miller," I said. "My name is Thea Kozak."

He picked up a phone, spoke into it briefly, and came back to the window. "He'll be right out."

I paced the small room restlessly. Maybe it was too many hours of sitting or something, but I felt strangely agitated. It couldn't have been because I was anxious about meeting with the chief, because I wasn't. I was puzzling about that when a door opened and Rocky beckoned for me to follow him. "Would you like a tour of the station?" he said. "It's state-of-the-art. We're very proud of it."

"I'd like that," I said, which was true. It would be fun to have a VIP tour. We citizens rarely get to see the insides of police stations except under the most unpleasant circumstances. "But I can't today. I've got a full schedule this afternoon."

"My office is this way," he said, leading me down a hall. He sounded a little sulky, as if in rejecting his offer, I'd rejected him. Obviously the station meant a lot to him. Along the way, he couldn't resist giving me a minitour. "That area where you checked in is our communications center. State-of-the-art, one of the best in the state. On the right is the records room. That room there is the supervisor's, behind it is a locker room and along back there are the cells. Here," he grabbed my arm and steered me through a large room where several people seemed to be doing clerical duties. "Through there is the training room, and here's my office. I hear they're keeping you busy."

He went behind the desk and I sat down in a comfortable blue chair. Sitting. Just like I'd been doing all week. The only difference was that I was in the interview chair. I tried to remember what else I wanted to discuss, besides the list, but I couldn't seem to focus on the purpose of my visit. I felt the way I'd felt in high school just before a basketball game—the same keyed-up anxiety that meant I couldn't sit still. I got up and started walking around the room, looking at the things on his bookshelf and on his walls.

"What I wanted to see you about was to get a progress report, see how things are going," he said. "After the buildup Dorrie gave you, I half expected you to arrive with a killer tied onto your roof." Even on his best behavior, he still couldn't resist a little jibe or two.

"Something strange is going on out there, Chief," I said, "but I haven't figured out what it is yet. I don't think Laney Taggert's death was an accident."

"Is that right?" he said. "Maybe you should tell me why you think that and let me take it from here. Is that what you wanted to see me about?"

"I'm not quite at that point yet. I'm still collecting information." My hands seemed to belong to someone else. They kept picking things up and putting them down. I straightened a picture, twitched at the curtains. He was looking at me like I'd lost my mind, and I couldn't blame him. My body seemed compelled to keep moving. "There were a couple things, Chief. First, what was Laney Taggert wearing when they pulled her out of the pond?"

He nodded. "Mm-hmm. I can tell you that. I'll have to look it up. What else?"

"Was the duffle bag she was carrying ever found?"

His eyebrows went up at that. "I don't think it was," he said. "Next?"

"You've heard about the second set of footprints, right?" He nodded. I wanted to finish the question but suddenly I had this terrible pain in my stomach that felt like the beginnings of an intestinal flu. I willed it away and it went, but before I could relax, the pain was back and getting worse. Now that I was paying attention, I also noticed that the light seemed too bright. Rocky was staring at my eyes. "Why are you staring at me?" I bent forward, folded my hands over my stomach, and waited for the pain to pass.

"Your pupils are dilated. Are you all right?" he said, starting to get up.

"Just a little pain. It'll pass in a minute," I said, waving him away. I hate to be fussed over. It makes me claustrophobic. I tried to distract myself by continuing with my questions. "I was wondering if the first officer on the scene might have noticed those tracks as well. I was hoping I could talk to—" This time the pain was so sharp it brought tears to my eyes. I barely had time to get out the word "him" before another one hit. He came out from behind his desk, put an arm around me and steered me back to the chair. I tried to master my body so that I could go on talking but it felt as though an animal inside of me was trying to claw its way out.

"What's wrong?" he said, bending over me.

"Nothing serious," I gasped. "I keep... having these... strange pains...." Behind the pain, a wave of nausea was rising.

I tried to force it back down until I'd finished what I had to say. I managed, with many pauses, to get out a half-coherent account of being cornered and threatened by the guy named Chris. "I have a list of Curt Sawyer's people here. I was hoping..." The bile was rising in my throat. "...you could run a... check on them...."

I stopped, panting. I couldn't get on top of this. The pains just kept getting worse and worse and I was getting scared. I tried to bend over and get the list out of my briefcase, ended up out of the chair and on my knees on the floor. The pain was constant now, steady and terrible and I had to make an effort not to scream. I had the list halfway out when it became clear that I was going to be sick and there was no time for the niceties of the ladies' room. "Quick, your wastebasket!" I said in a strangled voice.

Luckily, Rocky was a man of action. He didn't quibble or try to convince me that I should wait. He grabbed the wastebasket, dumped the papers out and shoved it toward me. It arrived just in time. Afterward, I felt better just long enough to grab the list and hand it to him before the pains came back. This time they were so awful I didn't even try to pretend I wasn't in agony. I just curled up in a ball on the floor, tears running down my face, and waited to be sick again.

But this wasn't like any sickness I'd ever experienced. When I was sick again, I didn't feel any better and the cramps just kept getting worse. On top of that, I felt like a giant hand was squeezing my chest. I was wheezing like an ancient elevator. "Rocky. I can't breathe." I was lucky this had happened to me here instead of while I was sitting in my car waiting to get past the road work. At least here I was in the presence of someone familiar with emergencies. Maybe it was every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining thinking, but I was scared.

I heard him pick up the phone. "This is the chief," he said. "There's a woman in my office being violently ill and in respiratory distress. I need an ambulance and some EMTs." He knelt down beside me. "Do you know what's the matter with you?"

"Some weird flu?"

"I don't think so. Maybe food poisoning? What did you have for lunch?"

All I heard clearly was the word "poison." "That's it," I mumbled. "Poisoned. I've been poisoned. The funny-tasting sandwich. In my briefcase. Don't throw it away." An elephant was standing on my chest. A huge, stubborn elephant that wouldn't move aside and let me breathe. I had to throw up again and now I felt the first stirrings of the corollary to vomiting as the giant hand moved below my stomach and started squeezing. It's funny how modest one can be, even in the face of death. I might have been willing to throw up in Rocky's wastebasket, but I wasn't going to lift my skirt and sit on it.

I grabbed the chair and hauled myself to my feet. "Bathroom," I said. It took as much energy and effort to say that one word as to prepare and give a thirty-minute speech to the American Association of Independent Schools.

"Just relax," he said, patting my arm, "the ambulance will be here in a minute."

"Bathroom," I repeated, trying to convey a sense of urgency and decisiveness. If he didn't act soon, I would have to cast modesty aside. Letting go of the chair, I staggered toward the door.

"Here," he said, opening another door. His friendly demeanor had changed back to his more familiar irritation, but I didn't care. All I focused on was the fact that the man had his own private loo. He grabbed my arm and steered me toward it. I staggered in, shut the door, and all hell broke loose. When I had myself under control again, I leaned wearily against the wall, gasping for breath. The pains were unrelenting and I was dizzy from all the vomiting. I stared at myself in the mirror. I was a peculiar shade of ashen gray, my eyes were streaming, the pupils were huge. I heard a commotion that signaled the arrival of my saviors. On unsteady legs, I went to meet them.

As they strapped me onto the stretcher, I saw Rocky standing there, holding the sandwich, a strange look on his face. I tried to sit up, to push away the oxygen they were trying to give me, to tell him again that there might be something in it, but they were wheeling me out. I fought them, got the mask off and said, "Don't throw it away!"

"I won't," he said. I realized that he was putting it in an evidence bag. The animal in my stomach was trying to get out to attack the elephant on my chest and I was sure I had never felt more awful. This time I knew that I was going to die and at the same time afraid that I might not die and would have to live with this pain forever. I couldn't stand being strapped down and despite my failing breath I fought to make them release me.

The ambulance wasn't going fast enough. I tried to tell them to hurry but you need breath to speak and I didn't have any breath, not even with the oxygen. I'd been pulled underwater once as a child and held there while my lungs grew desperate for oxygen. I felt like that now. Surrounded by air and unable to breathe. The mask made me claustrophobic but even if I'd wanted to take it off, I couldn't. My arms and legs were twitching and restless rather than obedient. I kept seeing Rocky but I didn't know whether he was in my imagination or in the ambulance or whether we'd arrived at the hospital. Because I had no breath, I couldn't tell them I hated emergency rooms. I couldn't tell Rocky that no one must let Andre know about this. He mustn't know, mustn't be scared by seeing me in a hospital bed again. Hadn't he just been through enough? Hadn't I promised I'd stay out of dangerous situations? Ha. I was a walking magnet for catastrophe.

If I had retained any lingering doubts that what had happened to Laney was an accident, they were all dispelled now. Someone had killed Laney and now they were killing me to keep me from finding out why.

People were bending over me, doing things to me, trying to stick things down my throat. I tried to fight them off, while on its own, my body was writhing and jerking like Linda Blair in
The Exorcist.
If I got out of here alive, I'd never be able to hold my head up on the streets of Sedgwick again. I could hear Rocky's voice, talking to someone, and heard the word "poison" very clearly. "Poison" and "plant" and "sandwich." Two people held my arm and someone stuck a needle into me.