Page 64

“Does it help when you count?”

For the first time, Jalbert looks really rocked back on his heels.

“I looked that up this morning before I came to work,” Danny says. “It’s called arithmomania. Do you do that? Do you do it when you wake up in the night because you’re grinding your teeth?”

Also for the first time, Danny sees a vein pulsing in Jalbert’s right temple: ticka-ticka-ticka. “You killed her, smart boy. We both know it and you’re going down for it.”

He leaves. Danny stands where he is, crumpled newspaper in hand, trying to get himself under control. Each encounter with Jalbert is worse than the last. He wipes his eyes with the arm of his work shirt. Then he goes back to moving books. Last day, do it right.

35

At lunch he goes out to his truck for his phone. He owes Margie a call, needs to tell her that he’s lost his job and Kansas has lost its charm, at least for him. He’s thinking about Boulder. She’ll understand that, she likes Stevie. If she needs money, he supposes he can part with a little… but not too much. Until he gets a job, he’ll be living on what he’s got. Besides, she’s getting married, right?

He opens the passenger door, reminding himself he also needs to pay Edgar Ball, and gets his phone out of the glove compartment. He starts back to the school, head down, checking for text messages, then stops. He’s thinking about something Jesse said: He parked around back. Why would Jalbert do that, when the faculty parking lot is the one closest to the school? Danny can think of one reason.

He goes back to the Tundra. He gives the truck bed only a cursory glance. It’s empty except for his toolbox, which he keeps padlocked. The cab, on the other hand, is unlocked. He always leaves it unlocked, and Jalbert would have seen that. Danny might have even told him and his partner himself. He can’t remember.

He goes through the accumulated crap in the glove compartment—weird how it piles up—expecting to find nothing and nothing is what he finds. Jalbert wouldn’t have put anything in there. Not once he saw it was where Danny kept his phone. The center console strikes him as more likely, but there’s nothing there, either… although he does find a bag of M&M’s he meant to give Darla Jean the next time she showed him an A paper. DJ gets lots of As, she’s a smart little thing.

He looks in the side pockets. Nothing. He looks under the passenger seat and finds nothing. He looks under the driver’s seat and there it is, a glassine envelope containing white powder that can only be cocaine, heroin, or fentanyl. Kansas is hard on hard drugs, Danny knows; the kids get lectured on it at assemblies all the time. This is too small an amount to be considered “with intent to distribute,” but in Kansas even possession is a Class 5 felony which can get you two years in jail.

Does Jalbert want him in prison for two years—ninety days in county, more likely—on a drug charge? No, but he does want him in jail. Because then he can work him. And work him. And work him. The guards might work him, too. If Jalbert asked.

Behind the seat is a space where all sorts of crap accumulates, including a crumpled McDonald’s bag. Inside the bag is a hamburger wrapper and one of those cardboard sleeves that once contained a fast-food fried apple pie. It’s just the right size. Danny picks up the envelope of dope by the sides and slides it in, bending the sleeve so the envelope won’t rub, blurring any fingerprints that might be on it. Prints are unlikely but possible. He puts the cardboard sleeve back in the McDonald’s bag and puts the bag in his dinnerbucket. When he goes back to the school, Jesse is at the picnic table.

“Be with you in a bit,” Danny says, and goes inside. He puts the bag on a high shelf in the storage room, behind some cleaning supplies. Then he phones Edgar Ball.

“Are you still my lawyer?”

“I am until you need a pro,” Ball answers. “This is interesting.”

They talk for awhile. Edgar Ball promises to drop by the high school around two, and to meet Danny at the KBI station in Great Bend at six-fifteen that evening. Danny promises to give him a check for four hundred dollars.

“Better make it five, considering what you’re asking me to do,” Ball says.

Danny says okay. It’s fair, but it will take a big bite out of his nest egg. He calls Margie and says he may not be able to help out very much for awhile because he lost his job. She tells him she gets it.

“Have those cops talk to me,” she says. “I’ll tell em you’re a shouter, not a stabber. The idea of you killing anyone is flat crazy.”

Danny says she’s a peach. Margie—Margie-Margie-bo-bargie to Stevie—says you’re goddam right I am. He takes his sandwich and Thermos out to the picnic table and has a nice lunch with Jesse.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” Jesse says. “Weird but true. And I’m gonna miss working with you. You’re a good boss, Danny.”

“You’ll catch on somewhere,” Danny says. “I’d write you a reference, but you know… under the circumstances…”

“Yeah,” Jesse says, and laughs. “I feel you.”

Edgar Ball shows up at two-fifteen. Danny gives him the check and the McDonald’s bag. “Sure you want to do it this way?” Ball asks. “You’ll be going out on a limb.”

“I’m already out on a limb,” Danny says. “Getting further out all the time.”

36

They punch out at three-thirty, half an hour before their usual quitting time. Danny locks up the school for the last time, all seven doors. Jesse gives Danny a man-hug and Danny returns it along with a couple of slaps on the back. Danny tells Jesse to take care of himself and stay in touch. Jesse says for Danny to do the same.

Danny drives to Oak Grove, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, looking for cops. He sees none. When he gets home, he finds a note taped to his door. It’s short and to the point: Move Out. We Don’t Want You Here. He pulls it off the door, tosses it in the kitchen trash, takes a quick shower, and puts on fresh clothes. Then he calls Ella Davis.

“Danny Coughlin again, Inspector.”