For my son-in-law Kenneth David Mahrer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
A Biography of Lois Duncan
FOR OVER TEN MINUTES now, Tracy Lloyd had been watching the boy with the curly hair watching her.
At first she had told herself that she was imagining it. He was not really looking at her, he was looking past her, gazing over her shoulder at someone seated at the table behind her. Or perhaps he was looking at Gina. That would not have been surprising. When Gina went braless under one of her collection of tight-fitting mesh tops, male eyes did usually turn in her direction.
But Gina was sitting with her back to the boy. Noteworthy as she might be when viewed straight on, there was nothing so remarkable about Gina’s back that a stranger would want to spend his entire lunch period inspecting her shoulder blades.
No, it wasn’t Gina who had attracted his attention.
Tracy lowered her eyes to her plate as though concentrating on her half eaten sandwich.
“The new guy,” she said, “you know, the one we were talking about earlier? The one who was standing by the water fountain when we were getting our books this morning. He’s sitting two tables over, and he keeps staring at us.”
“Mr. Gorgeous?” Gina enjoyed pegging people with private nicknames. “Don’t you wish he really were. Don’t I wish it! He looks like that guy who had a ‘face that launched a thousand ships.’ ”
“That wasn’t a guy,” said Tracy. “It was Helen of Troy. And I mean it. He really does seem to be looking us over.”
“And here I sit, facing the wrong way. Mr. Gorgeous has his eyes glued to this table, and I’m missing this incredible chance to chalk up Brownie points. Life can be so cruel!” Gina paused, considered a moment, and then said, “I’m going to drop my fork, okay? Then I’m going to bend down and get it and straighten up slowly. Very slowly. And then I’ll raise my eyes—also very slowly—and let our gazes meet. Sparks will fly, I guarantee it. Is he still looking over here?”
“Yes,” Tracy told her. “In fact, now he’s getting up from his seat. He’s picking up his plate.”
The boy was moving with obvious deliberation. There was no doubt at all about what he was planning to do.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Tracy said quietly to Gina, “but your Mr. Gorgeous is on his way over to sit with us.”
That was the one, Brad told himself. That was the girl. She looked just as right to him now as she had that morning. She had the look he was after—attractive, but not a bit flashy—a look that made him feel comfortable and at ease. She was dressed in a tailored blouse with a high collar, and her dark hair was pulled back from her face in a clean and simple style that contrasted sharply with the wild blond mane of the girl she was sitting with.
He had spotted her yesterday afternoon, just after the last bell had rung, but at that time the main thrust of his attention had been directed toward somebody else. The girl he had been considering then had been on the plump side, and the excess weight had made it hard to determine her age. As he had been preparing to go over and strike up a conversation, however, a boy had materialized out of nowhere, thrown an arm around the girl’s shoulders, and whisked her away.
That, of course, had been the end of that. The girl was out of the running. He needed a loner, not somebody equipped with a boyfriend.
A slender dark-haired girl had been standing three lockers down from the plump one, and with the loss of the one, Brad’s eyes had been drawn to the other. He had been struck by an immediate feeling of recognition, as though he already knew her from somewhere else. Although she looked nothing like the girl he had previously been considering, she might be equally good for the purpose he had in mind. She was tall and pretty, with an air of subtle aloofness that made her appear more mature than the average high school student. If the quality of her voice was in keeping with her appearance, she might easily be able to pass herself off as old enough to have her own apartment.
The girl had finished stuffing her books into her locker, shoved the door shut, and clicked the padlock into place. Then she had turned and made her way down the crowded hallway. At one point, a boy in a plaid shirt and cowboy boots had attempted to intercept her, but she had put him off with a polite nod and impersonal smile. At the end of the hallway she had exited the building, still alone and apparently intending to continue that way.
That had been the last that Brad had seen of her yesterday, but he had thought about her a lot and had even awakened once in the night with a picture in his mind of the girl and Mindy together. Drugged with sleep, he had not been sure if he was experiencing a dream or a vision, but he had been pleased to see that the girl’s hand had been resting protectively on Mindy’s shoulder.
This morning he had gotten to school early and had entered the building as soon as the janitor had unlocked the doors. Once inside, he had stationed himself by the watercooler across from the girl’s locker. Soon after the first bell rang, a busty girl with hair too blond to be natural had rushed up to the locker and started twirling the combination lock. Several minutes later the girl for whom he had been waiting had joined her there, and the two of them stood together, chatting casually, as they hauled books and gym clothes out of the locker and sorted through them.
The blonde was a nonstop talker. Her mouth was in constant motion, and she kept tossing her head, to cause the bleached hair to swirl around her shoulders, and glancing about her to see if she was being noticed.
At one point her eyes had zeroed in on Brad, and she had thrown him a cute, come-on smile.
He had stepped away from the fountain, hurriedly averting his eyes.
Sorry, blondie, he had told her silently. I bet you’re one hot little number, but you are definitely not what I’m shopping for.
When the second bell rang he had gone to the library and waited out the morning there, and then at noon he went to the cafeteria and bought himself lunch. It had been a wasted half hour, for the girl had not put in an appearance. In order to avoid having to socialize with the students seated around him, Brad read while he ate. He had no interest in striking up a conversation with anyone other than the girl, and he knew that the fewer people he talked to, the safer he would be.
When the cafeteria began to empty out, Brad scraped what was left on his plate into the garbage bin, placed his tray on the pile by the door to the kitchen, and drifted back out into the hall. He killed some time washing and rewashing his hands in the boys’ room, and then, when the bell rang to signal the start of B lunch, he reentered the cafeteria as part of a new stream of hungry students. He went through the line again and paid for the second tray of food, hoping that the woman at the cash register would not recognize him. To his relief, she showed no sign of it, plucking the money from his hand and dropping it into the drawer of the register without glancing at his face.
He chose a table by the wall where he could sit and have a full view of the room. The problem was that students were entering through two different doors, and it was difficult to keep watch on both simultaneously. He loaded his fork with spaghetti and took a token bite, trying to fake an appetite. It would be just his luck, he thought, for the girl to be scheduled for C lunch, which would mean that he would have to eat yet another time. Worse still, since Winfield High School had an open campus, it was possible that she might have gone off to eat at some fast-food restaurant, in which case she would never show up at the cafeteria.
B lunch was nearly over when he suddenly saw her sitting at a table only two away from his own. He could only imagine that he had been looking at the wrong door when she had made her entrance, for she had evidently already been through the line. She was seated on the far side of the table, facing in his direction, while her companion, the sexy blonde with whom she shared a locker, was seated opposite, with her back to him.
Brad laid down his fork and cemented his eyes on the dark-haired girl’s face. Once again, he was struck by how familiar she looked. Several moments passed without her appearing to notice that he was watching her. Then the force of his concentration seemed to penetrate her consciousness. Her own eyes lifted to meet his, held his gaze a moment, and then flickered nervously away. Her friend was jabbering, jabbering, jabbering, and she was pretending to be absorbed in the chatter, but he could tell by the self-conscious way she was nibbling at her sandwich that she was only half listening. She sneaked another quick glance in his direction and looked hurriedly away again.
Brad got to his feet, picked up his tray, and walked over to the table where the two girls sat. His girl—he was already identifying her in his mind as “his girl”—spoke hastily to alert her companion, who swiveled around in her seat to watch him approach.
“Hi,” Brad said. “I’m new at this school, but I’ve already gotten the word that this is the table where all the action takes place. Is it just a rumor, or did I get the right story?”
“Don’t we wish!” the blond girl said pertly. “Don’t we really wish! If there’s any action in Winfield, it’s a well-kept secret.”
“Then maybe we need to stir some up,” Brad told her, flashing the smile that his best friend, Jamie, had always jokingly referred to as “the golden grin that can charm birds out of the trees.”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Brad asked. “It’s hard to generate action when you’re holding a tray that’s dripping spaghetti sauce.”
“Be our guest,” the blonde said with a giggle. “We could use some company. I’m Gina Scarpelli, and this is Tracy Lloyd.”
“Nice to meet you both. I’m Brad Johnson.” Brad set his tray down on the table next to Gina’s and swung his legs over the bench so he could take his seat beside her, diagonally across from Tracy.
“I’ve got this talent for reading the vibes people throw off,” he said. “The ones coming off you girls are really strong. I’m getting the message—it’s sort of a tingling sensation when I do this trick—that you’re the type who might share a locker across from a watercooler.”
“Boy, what a talent! How ever do you do it?” Gina gave her head a provocative toss that sent her long hair swinging. “The vibes I get about you are that you like to hang around water fountains. I saw you there this morning looking us over.”
“You did, huh?” Brad said. “Well, it’s possible you might be right. When you start a new school, you do have to case things out. It’s been my experience that the VIP lockers are usually right across from drinking fountains. That’s like a universal law.”
“Well, it’s a law that doesn’t apply in our case,” said Tracy. “Gina and I are lowly juniors.” Her voice was low pitched and mature-sounding, exactly as he had hoped it would be.
“Where do you come from, Brad?” asked Gina.
“Albuquerque,” Brad told her. “My dad’s a geologist. He got offered a job here with an oil company. How about the two of you? I bet you’re not native Texans. Everybody here seems to come from someplace else.”
“Not me,” said Gina. “I’ve never lived anywhere but Winfield. Tracy’s a newcomer though. She’s from New York City.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Brad exclaimed with mock astonishment. “I always thought New York was a place people went to, not a place they came from. He directed the “golden grin” at Tracy. “What brought you here? Did your dad get a too-good-to-turn-down job offer, too?”
“My mother died last summer,” Tracy told him. “I moved here to live with my aunt and uncle.”
“I’m sorry,” Brad said. It was not an answer he had anticipated. “I guess I really put my foot in it that time.”
“There was no way you could have known.” Tracy picked up her sandwich, bit off a corner, and set it back down on her plate.
“It must be hard changing schools so close to the end of the school year,” said Gina in an obvious attempt to switch the conversation to a less awkward subject. “What’s your schedule, Brad? Maybe we have some of the same classes.”
“I don’t think so,” Brad said. “Most of my classes are—”
The final portion of his statement was drowned out by the sound of the bell signaling the end of B period lunch. There was an immediate rush of activity at adjoining tables as those students who had been engrossed in conversation or trying to beat the clock by bolting down second helpings were jolted to attention.
Tracy and Gina got quickly to their feet, and Brad followed suit, picking up his tray for his second trip to the garbage bin.
“Do you really think the food’s that awful?” Tracy asked him, nodding at his plate, which was still piled high with mounds of untouched spaghetti. “Next time, you ought to try a sandwich.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Gina. “I remember one time when there was a flub-up in the kitchen, and they mixed the tuna with mustard instead of mayo. That was pretty gross.” She turned back to Brad. “What class are you headed for now?”
“It’s … it’s …” He groped hastily for a subject that was required by high schools everywhere. “It’s English literature.”
“I have English next period too!” Gina exclaimed. “Do you need to stop at your locker, or shall we head straight over?”
“I may not be taking the same course as you,” Brad said. “Are you taking Shakespeare?” When Gina shook her head, it was all he could do to suppress a sigh of relief. “I was taking Shakespeare back in Albuquerque, so they put me in that class here too. It’s going to be tough though, because we’re not studying the same plays.”
“Well, so much for that.” Gina made no attempt to conceal her disappointment. “Being new in town and all, if you find yourself getting desperate for human companionship, I’m always good for some friendly conversation. We’re the only Scarpellis in the phone book.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” Brad said. He turned to Tracy. “How about you? Are you the only Lloyds in the phone book?”
“My uncle’s name isn’t Lloyd,” said Tracy.
The tone of her voice had changed in some subtle manner, and Brad experienced a chill of sudden apprehension. Had he made some stupid blunder that had given him away? He hurriedly reviewed their conversation but could come up with nothing that should have aroused suspicion. Except for her own disclosure that she had lost her mother, there had been nothing said by any one of them that had been anything other than casual and impersonal.
It was obvious, though, that she was not encouraging him to phone her. Was it possible that she already had a steady boyfriend? In the short time Brad had been observing her, there had been no such indication. On several occasions, in fact, he had seen her cold-shoulder boys who were obviously trying to strike up a conversation with her. Perhaps she was going with somebody who attended another high school or was away at college.
By now the cafeteria had almost emptied out. Both Tracy and Gina had already deposited their plates and trays in the appropriate receptacles and were headed for the door.
Struggling to hide his disappointment, Brad added his own tray to the pile by the entrance to the kitchen and followed the girls out of the cafeteria into the hall. The corridor was filled with students involved in an attempt to get from one class to another within a five-minute time span, and the reverberating clang of locker doors made normal conversation all but impossible.
With a parting nod and smile, Gina plunged into the river of moving bodies and was promptly swept off in one direction, while Tracy disappeared in another. A wave of students who were headed for C lunch almost bowled Brad over as he fought his way against the current to the center of the hallway.
I’ll have to find somebody else, that’s all, he told himself. There are plenty of girls at this school who can do the job for me.
But Tracy had seemed so right, so exactly what he needed. Time was racing by so quickly. It was Tuesday already. There were only five days left before spring break would be over back in Albuquerque, five days before his mother would report him missing. The prospect of starting over at this point, of finding another appropriate girl, of getting to know her well enough to talk her into helping him, seemed overwhelming.
Then, just as he was trying to psych himself up to plunge back into the search, miraculously there was Tracy, standing in front of him.
“It’s Stevenson,” she told him, raising her voice so that it would carry over the noise in the hallway. “My uncle and aunt are named Cory and Irene Stevenson.”
“They’re in the phone book?”
“Yes—it’s Stevenson, spelled with a V. ”
“I’ll call you tonight,” Brad said. “Will that be okay?” She hesitated and then nodded, and he was filled with a sudden rush of euphoria.
It was an omen! His plan was destined to work!
FROM THE FIRST DAY she had registered at Winfield High School, Tracy had taken the same route home every afternoon—two blocks east along Third Street, one block south on Rosemont, and a diagonal cut across Lamar Park to Cotton Road. Her aunt and uncle’s home, at which she still felt more like a visitor than a resident, was located on South Cotton, in a neighborhood of manicured lawns and neatly shaped shrubbery. It was populated primarily by middle-aged working couples, and on weekday afternoons there was an air of emptiness about it, like a movie set on a day when there was no filming.
Except for several weeks last September, when the mid-afternoon sun had been so intense that she had arrived home dizzy with heat and drenched with perspiration, Tracy had never minded the walk to and from school. Since there were few families with teenagers living on South Cotton, there was no one she felt obligated to walk with, and the solitary twenty minutes at either end of the school day had quickly become one of the few real pleasures in her current life. Her aunt, a real estate agent, worked irregular hours, and all too often, Tracy arrived home from school to find Aunt Rene already there waiting for her, eager to visit and “have a nice chat” about the events of the day. Because of this, Tracy usually tried to prolong her walk as much as possible.
Generally she used this time alone for emotional unwinding. Today, however, she had some heavy thinking to do. She had done something on impulse that had not only been stupid but possibly even dangerous, and she did not know why she had done it or what she ought to do next.
She should never have encouraged Brad Johnson to get in touch with her. It had been a crazy thing to do, and at the time she had sensed that. It was not even as if the invitation had come tumbling out in an accidental manner during the course of their lunchtime conversation. She had been even more brazen than Gina, whose line about being “the only Scarpellis in the phone book” was a standing joke at school. Gina, at least, had tried to sound philanthropic—“If you get desperate for human companionship” was the way she had put it. In Tracy’s case, there had been no such pretense. She had left the cafeteria and, once she was safely away, had deliberately turned back to hand herself over to a stranger who, even then, she had had good reason to believe was a fraud.
Why had she done such a thing? she asked herself. Was it because of his extreme good looks? Yes, if she were to be honest, she would have to admit that that had certainly been part of it. Although slight in build, the boy who called himself Brad Johnson had a face that was almost too handsome to be believed. The perfect features; the heavy-lashed eyes and the wide, sensitive mouth gave him a look of ethereal beauty that was very different from the burly cloddishness that she had come to associate with the “Winfield rednecks.”
When Gina had first pointed him out to her—“Mr. Gorgeous over there by the water fountain is checking us out!”—Tracy had glanced across with no more than idle curiosity and surprised herself with her immediate positive reaction. She had not had the slightest interest in dating since she had arrived in Winfield, but the sight of this particular boy had had a strange effect on her. He looked like the type of young man she was used to seeing at the theaters and museums and art galleries she had attended with her mother. When she had seen him again at noon in the cafeteria, it had been hard to pretend to be listening to Gina’s chatter. She had known even before he got up from his seat that he was going to come over to their table, and she had known, too, that she wanted him to do just that.
It was not until later that she had come to realize that he was not what he was pretending to be.
Now, shifting her load of books from one arm to the other, Tracy left the sidewalk and crossed Rosemont Street to the northwest corner of Lamar Park. Rows of trees flanked the park’s entrance, and almost as soon as she stepped onto the gravel pathway the afternoon sunlight was blocked by leafy branches, and shade settled onto her shoulders with weighted coolness.
The park was laid out as a rectangle and arbitrarily divided into sections, each of which was unofficially designated for a particular use. The northern end, screened off by a golden wall of forsythia, was a romantic haven for lovers. There, on spring and summer evenings, young people lay entwined in each other’s arms like pink and white islands dotting a grass green sea. The center of the park was wide and open and provided an unobstructed area for dog walking, ball playing, or frisbee tossing. The southeast corner, bordering on Cotton Road, was the playground area, and contained swings, slides, and a set of monkey bars. Benches were positioned at strategic points along the edges of the playground so mothers could sit and visit with each other while remaining alert, on call to swings.
The park was always liveliest in the early mornings. That was when the joggers were out, dressed in bright sweat suits, chugging clockwise around the park’s perimeter like center-ring ponies in a circus. The dog walkers were active then, too, clinging to leashes and carrying their pooper scoopers, enthusiastically greeting each other like members of some elite fraternity. When she cut through the park in the mornings on her way to school, Tracy often felt as though she were crashing a private party.
In the afternoons usually only the playground was occupied. Today, as she walked past the beds of pansies beside the fountain, she could see, framed in a gap between two bushes, several young women chatting together at the park’s south end, while a group of small children chased each other up and down the slides.
It was then that she suddenly realized that she was being watched.
There was no specific reason for the awareness, but it was as undeniable as the feeling she had experienced at lunchtime when she had felt Brad Johnson staring at her. On that occasion she had been disconcerted yet flattered; there was nothing sinister about being the object of someone’s attention in a school cafeteria. What she was feeling now, however, was something quite different, because the person who was watching her was keeping himself hidden.
She was alone in that section of the park—or, at least, she had assumed she was. Tracy glanced surreptitiously about her, hoping to find that she had been mistaken. Even a child, stretched out on the grass behind the fountain, would provide an innocent explanation for what she was feeling.
Λ hasty perusal confirmed the fact that no such person existed. To all appearances, she was alone, as she had thought she was. And yet she felt certain this was not true. Her skin was starting to prickle, and her scalp was getting a tingling sensation, as though an icy wind were blowing against the back of her neck.
The first thought that flashed into her mind was that she was being staked out for a mugging. With effort she fought the temptation to break into a run. If she ran it would alert her pursuer that she was aware of his existence, and the last thing she wanted to do was trigger an attack. She began to walk slightly faster to get away from the trees, the most likely shelter for someone who wanted to conceal himself. She did not permit herself to glance back over her shoulder but kept her ears tuned for the telltale sound of crackling bushes or a sudden burst of footsteps rushing up behind her.
A scream lay formed and ready at the back of her throat. If she released it, the mothers at the playground would be sure to hear her, but the bushes would block their view of what was happening. How they would react to a disembodied scream was hard to anticipate. For all she knew, their whole concern might be for their children. Instead of rushing to her assistance they might grab their youngsters and run the other way.
Never before had the northern end of the park seemed so vast and empty. She was by now well past the fountain, but the hedge of forsythia seemed to stretch on indefinitely, cutting her off from any human contact. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, as ragged and rasping as though she had just run a marathon, and the muscles in her legs were cramping with the effort it was taking her to hold them in check.
Walk, don’t run, she counseled herself. Steady and fast will get you there. You’ve made a lot of progress during the past few minutes. Anybody hiding back behind the trees will have a lot of distance to cover before he can get at you now.
If he was still back behind the trees. But what if he wasn’t? What if he had left his station there and was closing the distance between them, while the pounding of her heart drowned out his footsteps?
Pull yourself together, Tracy commanded. There isn’t any reason to panic. This is a little town in Texas, not New York City. It’s the middle of the afternoon, not two in the morning.
Besides, even if she was correct about the fact that someone was observing her, that did not necessarily mean he was out to molest her. No halfway intelligent mugger would risk a daylight attack on a schoolgirl who was obviously good for nothing but an armload of textbooks.
The hedge extended only several more yards before it ended at the edge of the softball field. If she did run now, she told herself, she would be certain to reach the clearing before anyone pursuing her could overtake her.
With that realization, Tracy found her legs taking over for her brain. Without having made a conscious decision to do so, she started to run. Sprinting to the end of the hedgerow, she hurled herself around the last of the bushes and burst out into the open section of the park.
The relief that swept over her drained all strength from her body and left her light-headed and gasping like a half drowned swimmer. The world around her shimmied as though distorted by heat waves, and her legs felt loose-jointed and rubbery.
Then, as moments passed and her heartrate gradually returned to normal, she deliberately turned and peered back at the empty expanse of grass that stretched innocently to the flower-encircled fountain. No one was there, of course. Nobody had been chasing her.
For a fleeting moment she contemplated the possibility that she might also have been wrong about being watched. Then, as if to lay that doubt to rest, she heard a car door slam and an engine start up beyond the trees and shrubbery that blocked her view of Rosemont. It was the first car engine she had been aware of since she had entered the park. Rosemont was a small residential street where there was little traffic, except in the early morning, when its residents left for work, and from five to six o’clock in the evening, when they returned home.
The rumble of the engine leapt to a roar, and a squeal of tires pierced the afternoon quiet like a shriek of pain. Too surprised to react, Tracy stood frozen for an instant too long. By the time she had thought to drop her books and run back along the path to the street, the throb of the motor had already been softened by distance.
He’s gone, she thought, disgusted with herself for not having moved quickly enough to have identified the driver. Even so, the sound of the car speeding away in such an unorthodox fashion was proof of sorts that she had not been the victim of paranoia.
What she had sensed had been real—as real as the danger her mother must have sensed in that final incredulous instant before she felt the knife.
BRAD CURSED HIMSELF ALL the way from the park to the motel. Following her had been an inexcusably risky thing to have done. It had also been pointless. There had been nothing to be gained by driving along at a snail’s pace a block and a half behind Tracy Lloyd as she walked from Winfield High School to her aunt and uncle’s home.
It was not as though he had needed to find out where the house was. When they had parted company after B lunch, he had immediately left the school building to locate a convenience store, where he had used their old-fashioned phone directory to look up the name Cory Stevenson and found the address listed as 1214 South Cotton Road. When he flipped to the city map in the back of the book he discovered that Cotton was a north-south street, located only about a quarter of a mile to the east of the school.