“NO,” CASSIDY SAID, “THE TransAm isn’t on campus. I checked the car registrations. Students, faculty, and staff. No TransAm.”
“That’s because,” the doctor said patiently, “that car belongs to Pat Benham. Did belong to him, I should say. He died, you know. Last year. The best American history teacher we ever had here, and the man grew the most beautiful roses in this county. Cancer took him. Left his wife with three small children.”
Brenham. Three small children. The monsters Talia had talked about Ann baby-sitting? Was there more than one Professor Brenham on campus?
“Administration probably removed the car from the computer after Pat died. That’s why you couldn’t find it when you checked. His wife doesn’t drive standard transmission, and she has a little compact car of her own, so she wouldn’t have updated the registration on the TransAm. Can’t bear to sell it, though; Pat was so crazy about that car. It just sits in their garage. Every once in a while, she gets some student to take it for a spin, just to keep it in working order so she can sell it when she’s ready.”
Cassidy was struggling, through her drug-induced fog, to comprehend what the doctor was telling her. There really was a TransAm on campus? Black, with tinted glass and a pair of hearts dangling from the driver’s door? There really was a car exactly like the one she’d seen?
Although comprehension was slow in coming, when it did come, it was stunning. She had never hallucinated the car. It really did exist, and she really had seen it!
She wasn’t too foggy to understand the full implications of that one, astounding realization. It didn’t end there. There was more, much more. She fought to sort it all out. If that car existed, then maybe her essay had existed, maybe the clock really had been an hour slow. Yes, that was possible. Probable, even. And the invitation really had had the wrong date on it when she opened it, she really had received the crisp new ten and twenties, the sticker really had been on the cellar door…
It went on and on.
“I’m not quite sure why you thought you had imagined the car,” Dr. Mandini said. “Why would you think that?”
And the answer to that question came to Cassidy as if it were hanging in neon lights from the ceiling: Because someone wanted me to think it. All of it. Everything. Someone wanted me to believe that I was losing my mind.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “It wasn’t just the car. It was a lot of things.” But it had been the incidents involving the car that had been the most frightening, the most devastating. Someone had been driving that car when it had terrified her. Someone who had access to it.
Who did she know who had access to the TransAm?
“Is there more than one Professor Benham on campus?” she asked, knowing that it was one of the most important questions she had ever asked anyone.
Dr. Mandini shook her head. “Nope. Just Leona. It’s hard for her, raising those three kids alone. Pat was a terrific father, and I know those kids must miss him terribly. Leona has baby-sitters to help, but it’s not the same at all.”
Yes, I know she has baby-sitters, Cassidy thought, feeling sick. One baby-sitter in particular. My friend. My roommate. My friend and roommate who has easy access to that black TransAm. And maybe I still wouldn’t suspect her, in spite of that, if it weren’t for one other little thing. No, not so little. My friend and roommate had to have known all along that such a car was sitting in Professor Brenham’s garage. But she never told me that even when I thought I was going insane because of a phantom car that looked exactly like it.
How could you baby-sit repeatedly for a family and not know they had a black TransAm sitting unused in their garage?
Yes, Cassidy thought, I know Leona Brenham has baby-sitters.
And one of them is Ann Ataska, my friend and roommate.
The medication was taking hold fully, turning Cassidy’s limbs to water, making her eyelids heavy. But she couldn’t sleep now. Not now, when she was so close to the truth.
The TransAm wasn’t the only thing Ann had access to. The clock, the wristwatch, the invitation, the essay, the fanny pack with the money in it. At some point, Ann had had access to all of those things. She could have stolen Cassidy’s letter to Misstery, destroyed it, and then written the phony letter of confirmation from the group. She hadn’t been at the car wash, working, so she could have been at the car wash driving the TransAm. She’d been at the party at Nightmare Hall, and could have put coffee in a Coke can and a sticker on the cellar door. Cassidy remembered now how Ann had made such a big deal of the stickers at the party.
Ann.
Ann had been doing these things to her, making her feel like she’d fallen through the looking glass, and pretending all along that she was concerned?
Why? Why would Ann do this?
The telephone rang in the outer office.
“Be right back,” Dr. Mandini said. “Don’t go anywhere,” she added, and laughed.
But I have to, Cassidy thought, struggling to sit up. I can’t stay here, in this bed, when I have things to do. Important things. I have to find my dear friend and roommate and find out why she’s making me crazy.
What was more important than finding out why someone was stealing your sanity? Your precious, valuable, absolutely essential mind?
When she slid off the table and tried to stand up, her legs folded underneath her as if they were made of paper. But she forced herself upright again, clinging to the edge of the bed. Grateful that she was still fully dressed, but wishing they’d left her boots on, she grabbed her purse from a chair beside the bed, let go of the table and struck out across the cold white tile in her bare feet, weaving unsteadily as she went.
The infirmary was so quiet, so deserted, except for the doctor, standing at the telephone with her back to Cassidy’s cubicle. There was no sign of the other doctor.
I’m not insane, I’m not insane, Cassidy singsonged jubilantly under her breath as she padded quietly, drunkenly, out of the room, down the hall, and out a side door. I’m as sane as anyone. It’s a miracle, a miracle!
No, it’s not, you silly twit, she reminded herself. You were never insane in the first place, so it’s not a miracle at all.
Well, it felt like one.
The sidewalk outside the infirmary was icy-cold on her bare feet. Won’t do to catch a cold now, she thought giddily, can’t get sick, have things to do. Big things. Unmasking a criminal. Ann was a criminal. A mind is a terrible thing to steal.
It seemed to her as she slowly, unsteadily, made her way toward the Quad, looming in the distance, that campus had never looked more beautiful. The old-fashioned globes on poles lining the walkways provided a warm, soft glow, and there were enough leaves left on the huge old trees to give her some shelter from a thin, chilly drizzle that had begun to fall.
She wrapped her arms around her chest for warmth and murmured softly, “Now that I know my brain isn’t rotting, I guess I love campus again. I guess I love just about everything again.” Then she added angrily, clutching at a park bench for support as she passed it, “Except Ann. I don’t love Ann. Not anymore.”
It seemed to her that there was something more she was supposed to figure out, but she couldn’t think what it was. Oh, yes…the why of it. Why would Ann, who had been her friend since day one on campus, do this terrible thing to her? Travis? Was it because of Travis?
But that was very confusing, because Travis had kissed off Cassidy Kirk for good, hadn’t he? So what was Ann worried about?
Idon’tknowIdon’tknowIdon’tknow, Cassidy thought as she stumbled over a fire hydrant and nearly fell to her knees.
“Watch where you’re going!” she told the hydrant, and was thinking how far away the Quad still seemed to be when a car pulled up a few feet from her and parked. A tall figure in white jumped out and began running toward her.
“There you are!” a voice called, and Cassidy halted, curious. Of course here I am, she thought, watching as the figure approached, where else would I be? “Dr. Mandini has been looking all over for you! What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing, young lady?”
Cassidy tried to focus her fuzzy vision. Someone tall, all dressed in white, was running up to her. White mask over the lower half of its face, a white surgical cap over its hair. A doctor, coming toward her.
Cassidy peered at the white jacket when it arrived at her side. A plastic tag pinned there read, “Dr. Robert Caswell, M.D.”
“You are Cassidy Kirk, are you not?” a deep voice said in annoyance.
Cassidy nodded. The tone of voice told her she should probably feel guilty, but she wasn’t sure why. Why was he mad at her?
“I want you to know, young lady,” the doctor said, “that I was about to stitch up a severely lacerated forearm when Dr. Mandini came running in and told me you’d taken off on us. You’ve been medicated, and you have no business roaming around campus. Now, come with me.”
“I’m not roaming,” Cassidy said indignantly. “I’m going back to my room. To find Ann. If you ask me, she’s the one you should be yelling at, not me. I haven’t done anything wrong, but she has.”
But he had already taken her elbow and was leading her back to his car. She didn’t have the strength to resist. Maybe, once they were in the car, she could talk him into just dropping her off at the Quad. She was awfully sleepy. Maybe she’d have to wait until tomorrow to do whatever it was she was supposed to be doing. Something about Ann…Ann Ataska, her dear friend and roommate…what was it?
“You young people!” the doctor said in an exasperated voice, “never a thought for anyone but yourselves. Upsetting the whole infirmary, taking me away from my patient, it’s disgraceful.”
“You’re not as nice as the other doctor,” Cassidy announced loudly. “I like her better.”
And then they were at the parked car and Cassidy looked over at it and there was something about it, something that chilled her blood, something really, really wrong…
Black, tinted windows, and there they were, the two dangling hearts on the door.
Couldn’t be, couldn’t, couldn’t. Because there was something in her cottony mind about the doctor who owned the TransAm being dead, dead for a whole year, and didn’t she already know that there wasn’t another car like it anywhere on campus? This car was supposed to be safely parked in a garage.
“This is not your car!” she said in a haughty voice, pulling away from the hand on her elbow, “and I’m not riding in a stolen car!”
Then it was too late, because the rough voice said, “Oh, yes, you are!” and grabbed her elbow more tightly and pushed her not into the front seat or the backseat, but around to the back of the car. A hand reached out and lifted the open trunk lid, another hand pushed hard on the small of Cassidy’s back, shoving her into the yawning space. She cried out, but she was already toppling forward, into the trunk. She landed, facedown, on rough, moldy-smelling carpet.
She cried out again as the lid slammed shut. And then she was alone in the closed trunk of the TransAm.