Somebody Else's Music(8)

“To be specific,” Bob Haverton said, “they nailed it shut.”

“What?” Gregor said, bolt upright. “They nailed it shut?”

“That’s what I said.” For the first time, Haverton looked thoroughly disgusted. “I know adolescents can be evil, but this was a bunch of sociopaths, if you ask me. They gathered a bunch of snakes, granted small black snakes, perfectly harmless—”

“—except to somebody like Liz,” Jimmy said.

“Except to somebody like Liz,” Haverton agreed. “Anyway, they put them in there, and then one of them, Maris Coleman, called her over and asked her to look inside, I don’t remember what the pretext was—”

“He can ask Liz himself when he gets to Hollman,” Jimmy said.

“—and when she looked in the rest of them rushed up from out of the bushes where they’d been hiding and pushed her in. Then they slammed the door and nailed it shut. She says she was screaming the whole time, and I believe her. I’ve seen her around snakes.”

Gregor considered all this. “Most of them were hiding. How many of them is most of them?

“Six,” Jimmy said. “Maris Coleman, Belinda Hart, Emma Kenyon, Nancy Quayde, Chris Inglerod, and Peggy Smith.”

“We don’t actually know that all of them were there, or that all of them were involved,” Haverton said, “but that was the group of them and they were together later, when the body was found, along with a couple of other people who were not ordinarily part of their circle. Liz says she heard them laughing while they nailed up the door.”

“And Ms. Toliver was screaming all the time?” Gregor said. “Why didn’t somebody else hear her?”

“There may not have been anybody to hear her,” Haverton said. “The lifeguards go off at five. They left promptly. This might have been fifteen or twenty minutes later.”

“What about the other people in the park?” Gregor said. “Surely, there were other people in the park. This boy, the one who died, Michael Houseman—”

“He was sort of part of the same crowd,” Jimmy said. “He dated one of the girls, or something like that. I’m not exactly clear on that. And yes, later, there were a few other people in the park. When the body was found there were maybe fifteen people present, at the bank of a small river that runs through the place—”

“And those people should have been able to hear Elizabeth Toliver scream?” Gregor asked.

“Yes,” Jimmy said.

“And they didn’t investigate what was happening? They didn’t try to help her? Or did they? Did somebody go try to release her?”

“The cops released her when they came to look at the body,” Jimmy said. “They heard her screaming and they went to see what was up. It’s in the police reports.”

“So you’re saying that she stayed in this outhouse, screaming her head off, for—how long?”

“At least an hour,” Bob Haverton said.

“An hour. While screaming her head off within hearing range of two dozen people. And nobody went to help her. Nobody went to see what was wrong with her. Nobody paid any attention at all.”

“I told you it was like Lord of the Flies,” Haverton said.

“It’s more like Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Hasn’t it occurred to any of you, hasn’t it occurred to her, that this makes absolutely no sense? People don’t behave this way, not even in groups. Lord of the Flies had a hero. Put that many people into one place and at least one of them should go see what’s wrong and try to do something about it. Instead, they did what? Wandered around the park? Had a campfire? What?”

“Chris Inglerod and Peggy Smith said they went swimming,” Jimmy said. “Maris Coleman says—said—whatever.”

“She told the police that she went with Belinda Hart to the lake to sit by the water. She says now that she and Belinda took a walk by the river.”

“You’ve talked to her recently,” Gregor said.

“I talk to her every day,” Jimmy said. “Much as I’d prefer not to. She works for Liz.”

“Works for her?” Gregor blinked.

“She’s some kind of personal assistant,” Jimmy said. “Liz hired her when she got fired a few years ago. When Maris got fired, that is. For the third time. In two years. Don’t get me started. She’s going down to Hollman with Liz. You’ll meet her yourself, if you decide to do this for us.”

“That’s what we meant about there being something else to this than finding the person who murdered Michael Houseman,” Bob Haverton said. “We’re both—Jimmy and I are both—convinced that it’s Maris Coleman who’s been feeding those stories to the supermarket tabloids. In fact, we don’t see who else it could be. We just need you to prove it.”