Page 82 of For Your Own Good

Mom nods. Dad looks as confused as Zach feels.

“They want to make a deal,” Mom says.

“They want totalkabout a deal,” Ezekiel says. “It depends. Because it doesn’t look good.”

Mom looks at the lawyer and shakes her head. “No. It does not.”

“However,” Ezekiel says, “you can’t just arrest someone for murder just because itlooksbad.”

“Murder?” Zach says.

“Oh Jesus,” Dad says. He looks from Ezekiel to Zach to his wife. “Are you telling me they think—”

“Yes,” Mom says. “That’s exactly what they think.”

Dad sits down in a chair, mouth open, staring off into space.

“Zach,” Ezekiel says, finally turning to his client. “Do you understand what’s happening here?”

Afraid to open his mouth, Zach shakes his head no.

“You paid a guard to see Courtney,” Ezekiel says. He holds up his hand, just like his mom did. Must be a lawyer thing. “Please, don’t say anything.”

Zach doesn’t.

“You met with Courtney and had a private conversation. No recording, no tape, nothing at all,” Ezekiel says. “A couple of days later, Sonia Benjamin died from the same poison that killed Ingrid Ross. The specifics ofthat poison have never been released to the public.” He pauses, letting that sink in. It does. “Then you paid the guard again to speak to Courtney on the phone. Again, there’s no recording of that conversation.”

Piece by piece, the picture comes together in Zach’s head, until he sees it the way the police do.

They think the two of them met to come up with a plan to free Courtney. They think Courtney told him what poison to use, and then he killed Mrs.B.

After all, he had access to her. Even to her food. She was eating a salad when they met at lunchtime in theBugleoffice. They probably know that, too.

The police think Courtney and Zach were in it together.

It’s insane.

It also makes complete sense.

51

FALLON REVIEWS THEfootage from today. The camera is angled toward the driveway, so she can see when Teddy comes and goes. She can also see part of the sidewalk. Fallon knows what time the mailman shows up. She knows who walks their dog in the neighborhood and what time they pass by. She keeps a chart of everything. If she ever needs to get into Teddy’s house, she knows exactly when to go.

Now she needs to put a camera in his classroom.

One day of working at Belmont has taught her she won’t get a lot of chances. Before and after school, his classroom is locked. During school, there are plenty of people around. Lunchtime is her only option. She has to wait until the kids are in the dining hall and Teddy goes to the lounge.

It won’t take long. All she needs is about thirty seconds.

Fallon wraps up the camera in a scarf and places it inside her bag. The camera app is already on her phone, making it easy to download the data every day. Even several times a day. She considered but eliminated theidea of hooking the camera up to the school’s internal Wi-Fi and having the footage automatically go to the cloud. Too risky. Something a stupid criminal would do.

She opens her computer and checks her inbox. Nothing except bill notices from her former college, an angry email from her former landlord, and a bunch of spam for payday loans.

Next, she logs into the Belmont website. As a faculty member, she has access to areas that students can’t see. What she wants to see is student grades—Teddy’s students, in particular—but that’s not available to her. She can only see grades for her students.

Disappointing. Fallon was hoping to track who he was downgrading, the same as he did to her.

What she can see are class schedules. Since they both teach English, she doesn’t expect there to be any crossover. So she looks for students who had Teddy and Sonia as a teacher in the previous years. She makes a list on a spreadsheet.