Abandon - Meg Cabot [92]
“But what happened?” I cried. I could feel hysteria beginning to sweep over me. “He was fine when I last saw him. He was fine when he dropped me off at home.”
“Who was fine?” Tim glanced at the police chief, who seemed as confused as Tim did. “Who are you talking about, Pierce?”
“Mr. Smith,” I said. Some of the panic began to ebb as I saw, from their expressions, that they didn’t know what I was talking about. “The cemetery sexton. Why? Wait. Who are you talking about?”
“Jade,” Tim said gently. “We’re looking for any witnesses who might have been in or around the cemetery last night. She never made it home from her shift. This morning she was found inside the cemetery, dead.”
Through me the way is to the city of woe;
Through me the way is to eternal pain;
Through me the way among the people lost.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto III
They made the announcement during lunch.
Not that Jade was dead. Why would they do that? Isla Huesos High School didn’t want to “glamorize” a death any more than the Westport Academy for Girls had.
No, the announcement was that the hurricane watch had been upgraded to a warning by the National Hurricane Center. All after-school events were canceled, as were classes the next day. We were being dismissed at two o’clock instead of three fifteen.
“Why don’t they just let us go now?” Kayla complained over her chef’s salad. “I mean, what good is one hour more of class going to do, with everyone freaking out because a gigantic hurricane is coming? It’s not like we’re going to learn anything after this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And it would give us less time to memorialize her death. Just cancel school now so we can’t even talk about her.”
“What?” Kayla asked.
“Nothing,” I said, lowering my burrito. Who could eat at a time like this, anyway?
“Remember the time she didn’t kill her teacher?” Alex explained to Kayla. “It was over something like this thing with Jade.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “Jade didn’t hit herself over the head with a blunt instrument.”
Tim had told me that as near as the police could figure out, since Jade’s body hadn’t been found for so long and no witnesses had come forward yet, she’d been the victim of what looked like a random mugging. As soon as the EMTs got to her — she was discovered behind a crypt by Richard Smith when he’d gone to the cemetery for work that morning — they had her airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami.
But even they hadn’t been able to save her. The damage to her skull — though she’d had her bicycle helmet on — was too extensive.
“I’m sorry, Pierce,” Tim had said to me, patting me on the back as I broke down in the conference room and cried. “I’m so sorry.”
Not as sorry as I was.
Nothing bad will happen to her. John will see to that.
That’s what Richard Smith had said to me in the car after Jade rode away into that rain.
But something bad had happened to her. The worst thing that could possibly happen to someone.
Because John hadn’t been in the cemetery to take care of her.
He’d been with me.
That’s what I’d said to him — Mr. Smith — when I stumbled out of the New Pathways office after they let me go. I’d called him in his office immediately from a pay phone.
“It’s all my fault,” I said, sobbing.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” he replied. “Unless you were the one who struck her from behind with the pipe or shovel or whatever it was that was used to kill her, and then took her wallet — and her bicycle. And her police radio. That’s missing as well, which I find odd. You can hardly pawn a police radio —”
“You know what I mean. John was with me when she died,” I hissed into the phone. The bell had rung by then, and people were filing by, throwing odd looks at me because not only was I on what had to be the last remaining pay phone on Isla Huesos, but I was crying.
“It wasn’t John’s fault, either, Miss Oliviera,” he said with maddening calm. “Although he feels as badly as you do. Who do you think woke me and led me to her?