Page 105 of For Your Own Good

Teddy looks at the monitor, checking his position. He shifts a little to the left so his profile shows a bit more. The lighting is harsh, and a straight-on angle isn’t the most flattering. The three-day scruff is gone. He’s clean-shaven and wearing a tie.

He looks down at his hands. At least his cuticles are healed, now that he has stopped picking at them.

Allison will probably see this. Maybe she’ll think he looks good.

“I’m going to start with what happened to you on Monday,” Lissa says. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.”

If only the students knew how much he does for them.

FALLON IS ATa coffee shop when she sees the live interview with Teddy. She couldn’t stand to be in her apartment for one more second.

She also can’t stand watching Teddy. Every word he’s saying is a lie. Every. Single. One.

And she has the video to prove it.

When she’d first watched the video from the camera in Teddy’s classroom, she wasn’t sure what was going on. Everything happened after school was out. At six o’clock on Friday, the camera was triggered by Joe, who mopped the floors and emptied the trash. By six thirty, he was gone and the video went dark.

It came on again at one o’clock Saturday morning.

Teddy walked into the room, only he didn’t enter through the door, on the left. He came from the right. At first, it was hard to tell who it was. He was wearing a winter coat, a hat, and gloves. His face wasn’t visible until he passed directly in front of the desk. He didn’t stop, though. Didn’t sit down or pause to get anything. He walked straight through the room and out the door. That was it.

Until fourteen minutes later.

Teddy walked back into his classroom through the door on the left. Again, he passed by his desk, didn’t stop, and then disappeared on the right side of the room. The recording ended there.

She had to watch it twice until she realized he had climbed in through the window and then back out. On that side of the room, it was the only option.

The goddamnwindow.

That was how he did it. If he had come through the front door, he would have had to scan his security card.

Next, she checked the video from his mailbox. It shows him leaving his house about fifteen minutes before he climbed through the window. He returns not long after leaving Belmont.

Fallon hasn’t slept. She has only consumed a muffin and a cup of plain coffee—because it’s the cheapest kind—so maybe her mind isn’t working right. But it certainly looks like Teddy could’ve been behind the poisonings.

Part of her thinks it’s ridiculous. He’s an arrogant asshole, but not a psycho killer.

The other part of her wonders why she didn’t think of this earlier.

She looks up at the TV screen mounted above her head. Teddy is still speaking. It’s about eight o’clock in the morning, the before-work crowd has arrived, and everyone is watching.

“Our headmaster was an honorable, hardworking man who only wanted what was best for the students. His death is a huge loss for staff, the students, and for Belmont.”

Everything he says sounds like it was written by a PR team.

Still doesn’t make him a killer.

“I can’t say I was scared when I passed out, because I really didn’t know what was happening. It was only after, when I was in the hospital, that I realized I may have been poisoned. As far as I know, the police still haven’t confirmed that, but it certainly looks like that’s what happened to me. To all of us.”

Now that the caffeine has hit her system, Fallon’s brain starts to work a little better. She thinks it through using deductive reasoning, working backward from the result to see how it was accomplished.

Just like she’d learned at Belmont.

How do you poison people—even kill a few—and get away with it?

Use something that kills quickly. Do it in a place where you’re expected to be anyway, so being there doesn’t look odd. Don’t kill too many people at once; that would bring too much attention.