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“Sure.”
“And all the kids know that that’s the way to go out, if you don’t want to get caught?”
“That’s right.”
“So presumably anyone who went to school here also knows that’s the way to get in without being seen.”
Lambe wagged a finger at Matthew and made a clicking sound, as if you say, “You got me.”
“Right. Okay. Thank you for your time.” Matthew turned to go. He wanted out of there.
“I think he did it, for what it’s worth,” Lambe said.
“Excuse me?” Matthew was at the door. Sarah Jane was already outside. Matthew turned back.
“Simon Jordan. She—” Lambe jerked his thumb in the direction of Cally Gabriel’s office. “She thinks the sun shines out of his ass. He’s good at that. Charming women.”
“You don’t like Simon,” Matthew said.
Lambe leaned back in his chair. He let it swivel from side to side and scratched at his stomach.
“I do not. Let me tell you a story about Simon Jordan. In his last year he didn’t make the ski team, okay? Made it every other year, but not his last. We had a new kid. Can’t remember his name. Paulo something. Demon skier. He got a spot and Jordan didn’t. So Jordan’s all smiles and congratulations, right? First one to clap the new guy on the back. What a stand-up guy. What a sweetheart. Except three weeks into term we start getting reports of petty thefts. This and that. Someone’s phone, or lunch money, or a new sweater or expensive textbook. That kind of thing. And Jordan quietly tells his friends that he’s going to get to the bottom of it. He gets his dad’s security guy to give him some little trackers. This was before AirTags were a thing, okay? But they were like that. Little plastic things small enough to be discreetly slipped into personal possessions. And Jordan sticks these little trackers to a bunch of stuff. A pair of sneakers he left in the locker room. A math textbook. A wallet. And guess where they all turn up?”
“Paulo’s locker,” Sarah Jane said, from behind Matthew. This time she got the wagging finger.
“You got it. Exactly right. And of course Jordan was devastated. Could not have been more shocked that his good friend Paulo was the thief. It was all bullshit. That Paulo kid got kicked out of school. Jordan got his spot on the team back and came out of the whole thing smelling like roses.”
“So you think Simon set him up. How come you saw it when no one else did?” Matthew asked.
Lambe smiled. He took his time answering.
“Two reasons,” he said at last. “Firstly, because I was a cop, once upon a time, and I’ve seen some shit. Secondly, because Jordan never bothered to put on an act for me. I had nothing he wanted. I saw him play everyone around him, and he knew I saw him do it, and he didn’t give a shit. Because what could I do? I couldn’t touch the kid, and he knew it.”
Matthew and Sarah Jane left Lambe in his small office and made their way back toward the administration building.
“Do you believe him?” Sarah Jane asked.
“I think he believes what he’s saying. Whether it’s the truth or not, who the hell knows? It might be true. If Simon Jordan killed his girlfriend, he’s sure as hell capable of running a number on another kid to take his place on a team. I’m just not inclined to... Lambe’s been sitting on his ass here for how many years? He knows the security in this place is a joke. He knew Jordan got a kid kicked out of school, probably charged too, for theft. And what does he do? He does nothing. He sits on his ass and feels superior to everyone.” Matthew picked up his pace, then stopped abruptly. “See if you can talk to some of Grace’s friends. Find out if they know anything. I’m heading back to headquarters. I’ll get a location ping for Grace’s phone. Let’s start from there.”
It was all too goddamn sickeningly familiar. He wondered how Leanne and Andy were doing. Not well. Well wasn’t an option in circumstances like these.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Grace
I didn’t stay in school. I left Dad in the car and I pushed through the doors and then just kept walking, along the corridor and then downstairs to the gym. The gym was deserted because classes wouldn’t start for another fifteen minutes. I went to the girls’ bathroom and into the last cubicle on the right. I put the seat down on the toilet, stood on it, and opened the small window high on the wall. All the other windows in the bathroom stalls have a security bar, which means they can’t be opened very far, but years ago some kid with a screwdriver rigged this one so that the security bar can be taken off and put back on. I unclipped the bar and pushed the window wide open. I slid my bag out first and waited until I heard it drop onto the ground below. Then I climbed out the window and lowered myself down. The gym backs onto the edge of the school property. There’s a fence—with a convenient hole already cut in it—and beyond that, trees. I grabbed my bag, pushed through the hole, and then I was in the trees, where no one would be able to see me.
I felt bad that I had left the window open behind me, and that I hadn’t replaced the security bar. Usually, when kids use the gym route to ditch school, they have a buddy come in behind them to cover their tracks. I guess I could have texted a friend and asked them to close up after me, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anyone to know where I was, and I didn’t want to have to explain. Everyone wanted to talk to me right now, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone, because no one understood. They were all so weirdly fucking excited, even my friends. Like Nina going missing was just another scandal. Some really juicy gossip to distract us from the boredom of precalc.
The kids who weren’t my friends were so much worse.
I walked into the woods. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Waitsfield. Basically, we’ve got one main street with the stores and the creamery, and if you go there you’ll be spotted by about twenty different parents in under five minutes. Not an option. There’s no mall you can disappear into. Most kids who ditch end up spending the whole day sitting in a clearing in the woods, which is pretty boring, which is probably why cutting class isn’t such a big problem at our school. I wasn’t going to spend the whole day just hanging out in the woods. I had a plan. My friend Molly’s house was only a mile and a half from school. Her parents both work in Burlington, so they wouldn’t be home. We keep my horse, Charlie, at Molly’s house, because they have stables and we don’t. I was going to hike across to Molly’s and pick up Charlie and take him out for the whole day.
It was a nice day, actually. It wasn’t raining, and I guess it was cold, but I was wearing my jacket and I was walking, so I had no problem staying warm. I took out my phone and checked my messages, but there was nothing new. Everyone I knew would be in class by now. Or nearly everyone. I’d been messaging with Simon since the night before. I wasn’t going to reach out to him, but things just snowballed. I was in bed, on my phone, scrolling through Nina’s feed and looking at her photos and hoping that I’d suddenly see something new pop up from her. After I’d gone through all her stuff I went on to Simon’s profile and starting looking at his photos, which were mostly of Nina anyway. I guess I liked one of them, and then a few minutes later he liked one of the pictures on my feed, which was just a goofy one of me and Molly at a pool party last summer. I figured that “like” was his way of telling me that he wasn’t mad at me, so then I DM’d him. I was so embarrassed about what my mom had done. I’m not mad at her. I think she’s kind of going crazy right now and I get it, I really do get it, because since Nina went missing the whole world feels wrong. I don’t understand why she’s blaming Simon except that maybe she needs someone to blame. Whatever’s going on with her, she shouldn’t have hit him. She can’t seriously think he had anything to do with Nina disappearing. Simon is crazy about my sister. Everyone knows that.
Anyway, I messaged him and said that I was sorry and he messaged me back with a picture of his face and saying that he thought his modeling career was on hold. He already has a bruise—a bad one—around his left eye. He was smiling in the picture, but I felt so bad. I messaged him again. I can’t even remember what I said exactly. But then he messaged me and said that he was kidding by sending the picture and that he was way too fugly to ever be a model and was I okay and that Nina wouldn’t want me to worry. Honestly, that made me cry a bit. It’s like, I miss Nina so much and I’m so scared for her, and him saying that she wouldn’t want me to worry made me feel like she was close by. Anyway, we messaged for like an hour last night, and I honestly think Simon is the only one who understands how I feel right now.
I’ve been trying to stay off the internet. Mom only let me have my phone because I absolutely promised her that I wouldn’t look at any of the stuff about Nina online. I promised, but I didn’t mean it. It’s honestly completely unrealistic to expect me not to see that stuff. People send it to me anyway, links to videos and photos and posts. If I stuck to my promise and stayed off the internet, that wouldn’t protect me from anything. I’d just be putting myself in a position where I’d only see what other people think I should. You know what I mean? And don’t think for a second people only send me “nice” stuff either, if there even is nice stuff in a situation like this. You wouldn’t believe the fucked-up shit people have sent me. Things about my dad that made me want to puke. I can’t talk to Mom and Dad about that stuff, but I think they know about it. I don’t understand how they can expect me to sit in class while all this stuff is going on, while the kid who sent me some of those videos is sitting two seats away from me. It’s like they think it won’t hurt me if we just don’t talk about it.
