The Ninth Step (20 page)

As he made his way down the deserted school hallway, the hairline fissure on one side of his glasses, and the crackled milk glass of the other, gave Edgar a deranged, unhinged appearance.

The first bell had rung ten minutes ago. Classes were well underway. Edgar had forgotten to call in absent. He would just explain to Cleage that the labor had come on suddenly, and in all the excitement, he’d forgotten to call the school. Cleage would understand. Once he had the note, he might even stop by Cleage’s office and apologize. That could be his excuse for being in the building.
I just wanted to tell you we had the baby. A healthy little girl. Yes, thank you. And also, I just wanted to personally stop by and apologize for not calling in. No, not all. I just wanted to tell you in person. In fact, I’m on my way right this minute to pick them up from the hospital. Just needed to run back home and get the child safety seat. You know, they won’t let you leave the hospital without one of those.
Yes, yes, yes. How very, very Edgar. Edgar also made a mental note to stop by Wal-Mart and purchase a new child restraint seat since there was no way he was going home to get the one they had already bought.

Edgar stopped at his classroom door, thinking of what he might mutter to whoever was the substitute teacher while he rummaged through his desk for the note. He glanced through the small wire-reinforced glass window set into the door, and his heart stopped. Principal Cleage was standing at his desk, which in itself was not so odd—it was only ten minutes into the day and Edgar had, after all, not alerted anyone to his absence. Cleage was likely covering until the substitute showed up. Yes, that would make sense. What made absolutely no sense, however,
what was in fact arrhythmia inducing, were the guests standing beside Cleage. Detective Poole and her partner, Detective Miller, were gathered around Cleage. Miller glanced at his watch and Cleage shrugged. It looked like he had been doing a lot of shrugging.

Edgar ducked out of the doorway.
What to do what to do what to do.
This, indeed, was mad fuckery. Just what in Christ’s name was going on? Police at his house? Detectives waiting for him in his classroom? The jig was up. He was caught. The heat had closed in. The devil doll stool pigeons had ratted him out.

Fuck it
, Edgar decided, and walked quite calmly to the far end of the hallway to the small red-and-white box mounted on the wall. Edgar pulled the lever and the thin glass rod broke in half. Before the glass bits hit the floor, the fire alarm was blatting schoolwide.

Doors up and down the hall flew open, and students gushed out like water under pressure. From his distant vantage point, Edgar saw the detectives emerge among the students, Cleage right behind them. Poole handed Cleage a business card, and Cleage nodded his willingness to help.

Cleage and the detectives moved with the crowd—away from Edgar. Once they had disappeared out the exit door, Edgar moved forward with the thinning crowd. At his classroom, Edgar darted inside the empty room and found the blackmail note in his desk.

Back in the hallway, Edgar crossed to the boys’ bathroom. He was going to rip the note into tiny pieces and flush it away. He didn’t want it in his possession one second longer than necessary.

The bathroom wasn’t empty. There were three stalls, a bank of sinks, and a row of urinals. Administration had taken the doors off the stalls some time ago to help curb the smoking problem. Jack Mendelson was standing just outside the first stall, and inside the privacy partition was everybody’s favorite skinny Goth boy, Martin Kosinski. Two more boys, minions of Mendelson, were in the second stall together. Edgar heard the hiss of cigarettes hitting toilet water as he passed by them and
ducked into the last stall. Edgar ignored them. Today was not the day to address this.

He did what he had come here to do, watching the bits of paper swirl away.

Head down, Edgar headed for the door. He heard Martin call his name, but, no, today was not the day. As the door slowly closed on its pneumatic hinges, Edgar heard Mendelson say, “Dude’s a fuckin’ coward,” and then chortle in that special obnoxious way.

Edgar made it halfway down the hall before he turned back. As it turned out, today actually was the day.

Edgar walked purposefully back into the bathroom to find Mendelson casually going through Martin’s wallet. He pointed at the two smokers.

“Didn’t you hear the fire drill? Get out!”

The boys filed out, but Edgar grabbed Mendelson’s arm to stop him from following.

“Do you want to make amends?”

“What? He was just showin’ me his wallet. Look. Calfskin.”

Edgar slapped the wallet out of Mendelson’s hamhock hands.

“Do you want to make amends?”

“Dude, I don’t know wha—”

Edgar slapped Mendelson. A hard crack, loud on the close tiled walls. The boy was stunned.

“Do you want to make amends?”

Jack Mendelson looked at Edgar and realized that something was very wrong with the world today. Mr. Woolrich had run amok. His glasses were cracked up like he’d been in a car wreck
or something. Maybe he had been. He looked crazy. And that question, repeated over and over. It reminded him of the movie he’d seen where this crazy Nazi bastard tortured this guy with a dental drill, and he just kept asking the guy, “Is it safe?”

Then Mr. Woolrich slapped him again. Hard.

“Do you want to make amends?”
Is it safe?

What was he supposed to say? What the fuck were amends?
Crack!

“Do you want to make amends?”
Is it safe?

Jack couldn’t think. He needed to say something, but what? And then, Jesus, the crazy fuck hit him again. And Jack Mendelson, 220 pounds of brawn, found out he was still a boy deep inside. Tears sprang from his eyes.

“Do you want to make amends?”

“Yes. Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Edgar reached past Mendelson and pulled Martin forward.

“Martin, Jack wants to make amends. You want to make amends, right?”

Mendelson nodded uncertainly.

“Let Martin hit you.”

“No fucking way. This is crazy.”

“Oh, it’s mad fuckery all right.”

Edgar took Mendelson by the shoulders.

“Let Martin hit you. Trust me. Trust me on this. Look, see this gun?”

Edgar pulled Cornell’s gun from his overcoat pocket. Both Martin and Mendelson recoiled. A firearm on school property was the single biggest sin that existed.

“This gun is yours,” Edgar said to Mendelson. “I mean that two ways. Symbolically, and literally, since I’m prepared to say that I removed it from your person.”

Edgar looked at Martin. The boy was cut into halves through his broken left prism.

“You’d back me up on that, wouldn’t you, Martin?”

Martin nodded.

“A gun equals permanent vacation from school. Not to mention jail time. And maybe a nice cameo on the six o’clock news.”

Edgar placed the gun in his palm and extended it to Jack.

“So, do you want this gun, or do you want to let Martin hit you?”

“He can hit me.”

“Wise choice.”

Edgar pocketed the weapon.

“I can see that your mind is very thorough. You are going to be so glad that this happened today. I’ll tell you why. See, the horrible things you do to people, they eat at you.”

Edgar paused and collected his thoughts.

“They eat at you, these horrible things you do. Especially later in life. They eat at you and you start to drink and take drugs to escape the memories. And then do you know what happens?”

Mendelson shook his head; no longer King Bully, but now just a scared kid.

“It’s mad fuckery, that’s what happens. You have to make amends to the people you’ve wronged. To stop the pain. Yours and theirs. So, I’m giving you this opportunity to make amends
right now. This way, you won’t kill someone’s wife when you’re out driving drunk one night.”

Edgar motioned at Martin:
Get ready.

“Martin, you have to do this. To save Jack. Promise me you will do this.”

A change had come over Martin. He looked self-assured as he nodded in agreement.

“Good. Make amends.”

Martin reared back, his fist poised like a cocked hammer. He hesitated only a moment, then realized that Mr. Woolrich was right. This needed to happen. He wanted it to happen.

The hammer came down and Jack’s lip split open like an overripe plum.

Martin stared at his fist in disbelief—
Did I really do that?

Jack’s split lip spouted blood. He looked at himself in the mirror, and he too was in disbelief that this was really happening.

Martin examined his fist for a second longer, accepted the fact that yes, he had done that to Jack’s lip. Then he slugged Jack three more times in rapid succession.
Bam-bam-bam.

Jack turned and ran from the bathroom, hands covering his bleeding face.

Martin held his fist out to Edgar, showing him the dethroned king’s blood smeared across his knuckles.

Edgar nodded, satisfied.

A calmness had settled over him.

Edgar had decided to let this thing play out however it was supposed to play out. He wouldn’t evade it. Call it an acceptance of fate, but he no longer felt the feverish fear of the heat closing in. The devil doll stool pigeons could talk all they wanted. It was what it was. It will be whatever it will be.
Que sera
fucking
sera.

The body was in the trunk, the gun was in his pocket, his wife was sitting next to him, and his daughter was asleep in the backseat. They were going home. All of them.

A mist from the heavy sky was falling over Mantissa Cove, and through the windshield, shadowy trickles of water crawled
over Edgar and Helen’s features. Edgar squinted at the road, his right eye blind, the left splitting the world in two.

The radio newscaster said a major nor’easter was likely to slam the area tonight, bringing with it the potential for storm surges, torrential rains, and hurricane force winds.

Edgar switched off the radio. Whatever tonight would bring, it was just a light mist on a gray day for now.

Not even enough to wash off the bloody thumbprint that adorned the trunk of Edgar’s car.

They rode in silence, the unspoken pact still in effect. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Helen turned around to check on her infant daughter in the backseat. Isabella slept, nestled in a rear-facing car seat.

Helen faced forward again. She stared straight ahead. At the oppressive gray day.

After a while, Helen turned to Edgar, opened her mouth, and her lips formed a question—but she stopped herself.

Edgar raised his eyebrows:
What?

Helen shook her head gently—in resignation of questions best left unasked.

Edgar drove, moving forward into a fate that looked dark indeed.

Detectives Poole and Miller stood next to their unmarked Crown Victoria in Edgar and Helen’s driveway. Trench coats with upturned collars kept them dry.

Detective Poole smoked a cigarette.

Edgar saw them as soon as he pulled onto his street. He glided his car to a stop just above theirs.

Fate. Devil doll stool pigeons.

Helen squeezed Edgar’s hand as he got out of the car. She turned around and unstrapped Isabella from the safety restraint. She held the baby to her bosom and pulled down the mirrored visor so she could watch Edgar and the detectives behind her.

Poole spoke first, no preamble.

“You’ve been missing. Two days.”

“Did you check the hospital? That’s where we’ve been. Had the baby.”

“Know that now. Spoke with the principal at your school. He said you didn’t call in. That it wasn’t like you to just not show up. Said most likely your wife had gone into labor.”

“He was right. In fact, I drove by the school to tell him in person, but they were having a fire drill. But yes, we had the baby. That’s where we’ve been.”

Poole looked over Edgar’s shoulder, at Helen and the baby in the car, almost as if to verify this for herself. If Poole had shifted her gaze down just a bit, she would have noticed the thumb-shaped stain adorning the trunk lid of Edgar’s otherwise spotless car.

But Edgar followed Poole’s gaze, and he did notice it. And his heart sank. The thumbprint was holding on just fine despite the swirling mist. The moisture had renewed the color of it. It looked like what it was. Blood.

“You don’t happen to know a man by the name of Cornell Smith, do you?”

Edgar looked puzzled.

“Can’t say that I do.”

“He’s missing, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

Edgar motioned to his car and said, “This is my daughter’s first day home. What does this have to do with me?” Then he mentally chastised himself for drawing attention back to his car and the damnable telltale thumbprint. Mad fuckery, indeed.

Poole dropped her cigarette on the concrete driveway and
stepped on it. She looked up into the sky at the dark low-hanging clouds. A gust of wind pushed her hair back. She reached out and unexpectedly removed Edgar’s cracked glasses from his face. She considered them, even held them out for her partner’s inspection, but she never commented on them.