By the time Luke left the headmaster’s office, the memorial service was over, and it was time for soccer practice. He had spent the past forty-five minutes listening to the police tell him that Oscar was a troublemaker while pushing him to agree. At the end nothing was accomplished. Luke rushed up to his room to change and was thankful that Oscar wasn’t there. The room was still a mess from the ID search. He had neglected to send out his laundry, so he had to fish his old practice uniform out of his dirty hamper. Gross.
He was about to leave his room when he paused at the threshold. He glanced over at Oscar’s side of the room. Making sure the door was firmly closed, he walked over to Oscar’s desk. It was the usual mess: stacks of notebooks with papers spilling out of them, a St. Benedict’s pencil holder overflowing with pens, Oscar’s laptop, a small case of paperclips, and a stapler. The usual stuff people would have on a desk.
Luke slid open the top drawer. There were photographs of Oscar and his friends from summer loosely strewn about. Girls and guys that Luke had heard about, some that he had met, looking like every teenager on Nantucket. Girls in bikinis and brightly colored dresses and guys in khaki shorts and Sperrys. Luke picked up one of the photos: Oscar, shirtless, wearing aviators, and swinging off the mast of a sailboat. It was impossible for that guy to take a bad picture. Luke shook his head, and put it back on the pile. Next to the pictures were glue sticks and a small pack of monogrammed stationery with Oscar’s initials. That was about it. Luke shut the dresser. Why was he snooping around Oscar’s drawers? Oscar didn’t have a “relationship” with Mrs. Heckler. Was he really actually taking the chief’s words seriously? And what was he hoping to find?
He started to leave when something caught his eye. On the bottom of Oscar’s small trash can, underneath some photocopied papers announcing the Autumn Harvest Fair, was a cherry-red Post-it Note. The adhesive had stuck to the white garbage bag. Luke bent down and pulled it out.
On the top of the Post-it was the St. Benedict’s logo, followed by JOANNA HECKLER, OFFICE OF ALUMNI AFFAIRS, stamped underneath. Then in bubbly handwriting, presumably Mrs. Heckler’s, it said The Taco Ranch. With a smiley face underneath. What did this mean? Why did Oscar have this? And more importantly, why had he thrown it away? Luke folded it up neatly and rummaged through his closet for a place to hide it. He retrieved one of his L.L.Bean boots and stuck it in the toe until he decided what to do with it. It was too weird. Was Oscar lying to him? Did he know Joanna Heckler a lot better than he had let on? And what was the Taco Ranch?
Luke took a deep breath. He wanted to give Oscar the benefit of the doubt. For the past few days all of the students had gone wild trying to dig up any info on Mrs. Heckler. Maybe someone got ahold of her notepad and was writing weird stuff and spreading it around. It had to be some gag. That was why Oscar threw it away.
Luke calmed himself down enough to make it to practice on time.
* * *
“Dude, what did you think of that service?” asked Gupta as they put on their cleats in the locker room.
“I didn’t go,” said Luke.
“Dude, you didn’t go? That is badass.”
Luke didn’t bother correcting him. “What did I miss?”
“Usual boring speeches. Nothing interesting. Although get this: Mr. Hamaguchi was bawling like a baby.”
“Mr. Hamaguchi?” asked Luke with surprise.
“Yeah, it was bizarre. Big, blubbery tears.”
Luke remembered Mr. Hamaguchi’s reaction at the pond. “Sounds like he’s taking it hard.”
“I’ll say.”
Luke had Mr. Hamaguchi for science, and he was the faculty adviser to STEAM, which basically met every few weeks and tried to keep St. B’s on its toes about finding ways to be greener. Mr. Hamaguchi’s role was limited; he showed up at meetings when they needed him to intervene with the faculty, but that was pretty rare. He was usually pretty subdued, so it was surprising to hear he was getting so upset over Joanna Heckler’s death.
“Maybe they had something going on?” added Gupta.
“Come on, no way.”
“Why not? You never know.”
Luke was about to protest but then he stopped. It’s true. You never know.
* * *
Luke reached the field with no time to spare. Coach Saunders told them they would do fifteen minutes of laps, and rather than groaning, Luke was actually grateful to have the time to run and clear his head. Nothing like the crisp October air to take his mind off everything.
The fields were a luscious green, glistening in the buttery afternoon sunshine. Pretty soon buckets of snow would cover them, but for now, it was the kind of bright New England day that made it into the St. Benedict’s brochure. The field hockey players were in their uniforms scrambling after the ball, the Big Red football team was doing drills—everyone looked alive and hearty. Luke started out running with the pack, but when everyone started talking about the murder, even slowing down to banter about it, Luke accelerated so that he could run alone and avoid any conversation. He was all talked out.
The chief had been relentless, pounding Luke and trying to convince him to turn on Oscar. He wanted Luke to disclose everything Oscar had ever said about Dean Heckler, any mention of his wife he may have made, and any streak of violence Oscar had exhibited. They continued to ask Luke if Oscar had left the room that night, or had ever snuck out, weaving it back in as if to trick him. Luke had been tempted to come clean, to tell them that yes, they had all snuck out that night. But it went against the plan, and he worried that would only implicate Oscar further. Plus there had been those missing minutes, when Oscar was outside the Dip, presumably waiting for Mrs. Heckler and her friend to take off so he could return. Of course, Luke could try and cover for him, but what if they questioned Kelsey and Pippa? Would someone say something and it would all unravel? Would Luke be revealed as a liar, and if so, what would happen to him? And most of all, what did Luke really think about Oscar now?
Luke wanted to believe that there was no way that Oscar could have done anything. Sure, Oscar had gotten into fistfights before. There was a bad one when they were at a party in New York City one weekend, but that was because some jerk had accused Oscar of hitting on his girlfriend and spat on him. Oscar was only defending himself. After that one incident, there had been no other violence. He hadn’t even tried to fight that taxi driver who’d pulled the knife on him. And as for Mrs. Heckler, Luke had never heard Oscar say anything in particular about her. In fact, her name had never even come up.
But now there was a warning signal buzzing in Luke’s mind that was forcing him to question Oscar. The missing minutes. The scarf. The weird yelping noise when Oscar was gone from the Dip. The fact that it was Oscar’s idea not to come forward—and how he had insisted on it, even pressuring Kelsey. The recently discovered red Post-it, and the fact the police seemed to suspect him of something. The tension was gnawing at Luke, and a debate raged inside his head. On one side was the belief that his best friend would never do anything like this, but on the other, all those unanswered questions.
The headmaster had told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to confide in Oscar about the pictures or the suspicions they had against him, but Luke didn’t think he could keep silent. Did they really expect him to act natural, like nothing happened, when he had to sleep three feet from the guy every night? It was absurd. Maybe they wanted him to crack and grill Oscar? Their room could be bugged.
Fifteen minutes was almost up, but Luke didn’t want to stop running. It felt so good to be outside in the open air, trying to forget about everything.
“Do you think I could do one loop in the woods?” Luke called out when he approached the coach’s bench. “I really could use the exercise. Want to get out of my head.”
The coach hesitated. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“There’s a security guard right there,” said Luke, motioning to a guard walking along the stone wall that ran the entire edge of campus. Coach Saunders eyed the guard before nodding.
“Okay, you’re off drills today so you can work on endurance. But tomorrow back to the schedule.”
“Thanks, Coach,” said Luke. He made his way up the hill to the Loop, the path that ran around the campus. He’d have to go through the woods, near the part where Mrs. Heckler had died, but he wasn’t scared. Actually, he wanted to be close to it, as if it would bring him some answers.
Inside the woods everything darkened immediately. The tall pine trees obscured the waning sunlight, and shadows flickered off surrounding rocks. All Luke could hear were his own footsteps pounding along, smashing the crackling leaves below. His breathing sounded loud and panicky in the quiet. Luke twisted his head from one side to the other, studying the clusters of century-old trees. Soon they would be completely stripped of their shaggy leaves and turn into tangled knots of twisted branches. Everything was dying now.
Luke was starting to feel winded; he hadn’t run this much in a long time. Maybe he’d been overly ambitious and should have stopped before with the others. He felt a slight cramp in his stomach, so he slowed his pace. There wasn’t much farther to go before getting back into the open, thank God, because Luke was starting to register that weird feeling again, like someone was pursuing him.
A strong sense of déjà vu descended on him, and he was instantly crushed by the vivid memory of the mad dash he’d made through the Virginia woods three years prior. His pulse quickened as thoughts of those harrowing days drifted back into his mind.
All of his senses were on fire, exploding with overstimulation. The warblers’ songs echoed off the large oak and weathered hickory trees that engulfed him. Their cooing calls to one another seemed more ominous than joyful. The woods were steaming from a recent rainfall, and Luke inhaled the strong odor with every heaving breath. His feet pounded over the muddy forest floor, splashed through puddles and over rust and copper-colored leaves, searching for an exit. Out of the corner of his eye, in the dark underbrush, he saw glimpses of woodchucks and groundhogs darting furtively out of his way, as scared of him as he was of his pursuers. The dazzling beauty of nature that his grandfather had introduced him to was now lost on him, and relegated to a dizzying and haunted backdrop for his worst nightmare.
By the grace of God, he had fled the cabin in the woods that his kidnappers had locked him in for two days. He’d taken off in the early hours of the morning when the moon was filmy and the sun just a promise, but not before he snuck into the kidnappers’ cabin, holding his breath, praying his abductors wouldn’t wake up, to grab some necessities for his escape into the dark woods. He had been well-trained by his grandfather and knew what he needed to survive. He had stolen the thick wool sweater that he’d found dangling on a hook by the entrance and the large, black-handled knife he had discovered in the top kitchen drawer. Luke had sifted through the cabinets, desperate to find any other portable provisions. A coil of rope, a plastic bag, and a box of baking soda. He had read about it in one of his grandfather’s military books. Baking soda can help reduce human scent.
And so, like Hansel and Gretel, Luke left his own version of a trail of bread crumbs as he moved through the woods. He would run for approximately half an hour before slowing for ten minutes and sprinkling baking soda to conceal his scent. He had no idea if it would work, but he hoped that the slobbering, sharp-toothed attack dog his captors kept tied to the front door would have a harder time finding him now. He preferred his running escape to slowing down. It was when he was still enough to hear his heartbeat that he felt the pounding sense of fear commingled with claustrophobia. He was angry. Why had he been torn away from his family? Was it all for money? But what made him the angriest was that they had made him view the woods, so poetic and magical for his entire life until that point, as something sinister and fearful.
He only realized he was hungry when he stumbled upon a patch of teaberries. He knew they were edible, and so he would plop down amid the spicebushes and other shrubs and eat the sticky berries until they stained his fingers a light pink. He’d take a second to watch the salamanders slither under the rocks and remain motionless enough to hear the rustle of skunks and other wildlife make their way through the thick brush. Fortunately, there were natural springs in the woods, and when he would come across one, he’d slurp water out of the palm of his hand, water that he’d scoop up fervently and drink until he couldn’t. Then he would continue on. There was never a second where he wasn’t aware that he was being hunted.
Suddenly, Luke snapped back to the present, back to the St. Benedict’s woods, and stopped dead in his tracks.
Someone was there.
“Come out,” Luke demanded in an even voice. He waited a beat before adding, “I know you’re there.”
Out of nowhere, a figure jumped down from a high tree branch, not three feet in front of him. Luke instinctively raised his fists, but dropped them at once.
“Mr. Tadeckis?”
“Very well done, Luke. Kudos,” said Mr. Tadeckis, dusting himself off. “You always were an excellent tracker.”
Mr. Tadeckis ran the Outdoor Survival Program. He was an awkwardly large man with creepy, Napoleon Dynamite glasses and an unusual haircut—shaven on the sides with a large flop of dull, brown hair on top. Everything about him was strange, from his camouflage outfits to the bulky knapsack that he always carried with him. He also had the annoying tendency to turn every question into a challenge.
“What are you doing out here, sir, if I may ask?” asked Luke, still winded from his run.
“The better question is, what are you doing here?”
“I’m doing laps for soccer,” Luke said.
Mr. Tadeckis looked in the distance. “Fair enough. I’m out here working on survival exercises. My unit is going up north in a few weeks, and we’re expecting some harsh conditions. You should join us, Luke. Why do you confine your survival courses to summer programs? Is my class not good enough for you?”
“I belong to the Outdoor Club,” Luke said defensively. “We go camping and hiking twice a month, at least.”
Mr. Tadeckis snorted. “Please. That club is for babies, and you know it. My classes teach you actual skills. Or do you think you’ve already learned everything you need to know?”
“It’s not only that,” said Luke quickly. “I have soccer and basketball and lacrosse. I don’t have a lot of time.”
Mr. Tadeckis frowned. “Those sports will come and go. I’d be surprised if you even pursue them in college. Survival skills are useful for life. But then, you know that.”
Mr. Tadeckis had been trying to get Luke to join his outdoor class since orientation week, when Luke had been the only one of his classmates to make it through the obstacle course. He’d had to climb rocks, take a zip line over the river, and hike through uncharted paths. Apparently, no first-year had ever succeeded at it before. Luke had considered taking Mr. Tadeckis’s class, but was promptly informed by the older students on his soccer team that Mr. Tadeckis and his outdoors class were regarded as an odd band of misfits and outcasts. “Dorks” was how the soccer captain referred to them. Luke ultimately declined Mr. Tadeckis’s invitation and had avoided him ever since.
But in retrospect, it did seem like a stupid reason not to take the class.
“I’ll think about it,” Luke said honestly.
“Think hard,” urged Mr. Tadeckis.
“I’m sure it’s been busy in the woods these days. Cops and security all over the place,” Luke said, attempting to change the subject. The guy freaked him out; he didn’t know what to say to him.
“Just between us, Luke, the cops are morons and the security guys are a joke. I’ve had about twenty of them walk underneath my perch today and not one noticed I was there. Hell, I could be the Southborough Strangler for all they know.”
Luke took a deep breath. He was starting to question the wisdom of continuing this conversation. “Well, I just hope they find the killer.”
“Oh, they won’t,” said Mr. Tadeckis, leaning down to examine something on the ground. Luke watched him pick up an orange leaf dappled with large black veins and scrutinize it.
“They’re on the wrong track.”
“The wrong track?” Luke asked weakly.
He twirled the leaf between his fingers. “Come on, Luke, don’t play dumb with me. You were there. You know it’s not the Southborough Strangler.”
Luke felt like someone had punched him in the stomach.
Adrenaline pumped through his body.
It took everything he had to keep himself in check. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said slowly.
Mr. Tadeckis laughed. Then he threw his leaf back onto the ground. “You kids are so naïve. But okay, Luke, play it that way.”
Luke was dumbstruck. If Mr. Tadeckis knew they were there, then… “Okay, hypothetically, let’s say there were kids out there that night. Not me, but other kids…”
“I’ll play along,” said Mr. Tadeckis abruptly.
“Well, why wouldn’t you tell on them?” asked Luke.
“What would be my incentive?”
“Well, you’re part of the faculty.”
“No, I’m not,” said Mr. Tadeckis briskly. “The administration makes that very clear. I am not part of the faculty, because I teach no academic courses. Or at least, I don’t teach what they consider to be academic courses. Unfortunately, my work is relegated to a different arena. Therefore, I am not given the title of faculty member. I am a staff member. I do not get to participate in assemblies, and I do not get to assign grades. They do stick me with dorm responsibilities, however, just to make me pay for my accommodation.”
Luke could tell that this was a sore subject for Mr. Tadeckis. He wanted to steer him off the topic before he got all riled up. “Okay, but still, why wouldn’t you tell on them?”
Mr. Tadeckis put his chin down.
“One: I don’t care if kids sneak out at night. In fact, I consider it a worthy initiative, as it exhibits both boldness and cunning. Both are useful survival skills. Two: I have little desire to reveal my coordinates at night. I enjoy moving freely in the dark, and quite frankly, you would be surprised at how many of my colleagues, as well as your fellow students, feel the same way. I catalog what comings and goings I witness for possible further usage. And three: I have very few personal vendettas. The ones I do have, I address in quite a different manner. Reporting intel to the headmaster would not be my preferred modus operandi.”
“So if you did see who was out there, does that mean you know who killed Mrs. Heckler?” asked Luke.
Mr. Tadeckis stared at Luke before a sly smile crept across his face. “We’ll get to that later.”
Luke felt chilled. His body temperature had dropped since he stopped running, and now cold sweat was clinging to his body. “Don’t you think you should tell the police if you know?”
“Don’t you think you should tell the police what you know?” countered Mr. Tadeckis.
Luke didn’t know what to say. “But I don’t know anything.”
“That’s probably true, Luke,” laughed Mr. Tadeckis. “There is a lot you don’t know. Take Pippa Eaton, for example. What do you really know about her? Yes, she’s a cute Brit and you would probably like to engage in coitus with her, but do you know why she’s here? Did you ask her why she left England? Why she was run out of England?”
“Run out? What are you implying?” asked Luke, his voice quavering. Pippa?
“Nobody but a hacker can find anything on her, because she’s not who she says she is. Look at the student directory. She’s a blank. What is she hiding?”
“There were other people out there,” Luke blurted. “What about the first Mrs. Heckler? Her husband ran off on her. Maybe she was blind with rage and wanted nothing more than to kill off her successor.”
“I’d consider her a worthy suspect,” concurred Mr. Tadeckis.
“And you,” said Luke, feigning laughter to lighten the statement. “You were out there, too.”
“Yes, I was,” said Mr. Tadeckis. He dropped his knapsack on the ground and slowly walked closer to Luke, so close that Luke could feel his breath on him. There was something menacing about the way he approached him. Mr. Tadeckis fumbled in his pocket, retrieving something. Luke was tall—a good five foot eleven—but Mr. Tadeckis had about four inches on him. Should he run? Where were the police? Didn’t the headmaster say they would be everywhere?
“I have something just for you,” said Mr. Tadeckis.
Then Luke saw it. His blood curdled. The metal caught the sun’s reflection and flashed in Luke’s eyes. It was a knife. Luke raised his fists and took a few steps backward to get his bearing, and all the while Mr. Tadeckis came at him forcefully. Luke felt his back press against a tree. There was nowhere else for him to go. He’d have to fight for his life. Mr. Tadeckis slowly opened the knife, lifted up his arm, and… Bam! Stabbed the knife into the tree behind him.
Luke exhaled.
“Relax, Luke. I’m giving it to you for your own protection.”
“You couldn’t have just handed it to me?”
“I could have, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.”
“You have a strange idea of what’s fun,” said Luke.
“Danger tends to follow people, Luke,” said Mr. Tadeckis in an abrupt tone. “Just because you had a dose of it before, doesn’t mean you’re vaccinated. I’ll bet, with your history and your character, you’ll find yourself in lots of challenging situations before your life is through.”
“Therefore I should arm myself?”
“Preparation is key,” said Mr. Tadeckis.
Luke turned and pulled the knife out of the tree. “You want me to stuff this in my shorts and bring it back to soccer practice with me?”
Mr. Tadeckis grabbed the knife from him and put it back in his pocket. “You’ll find it in your desk drawer when you get back to your room.”
“What if I don’t want it?” asked Luke.
Mr. Tadeckis scooped up his knapsack and started to walk away.
“Oh, you’ll want it, Luke,” he said over his shoulder.