Page 29 of Twelve
There was a time when Michael triednotto make his father angry, but it’s easier now that he does the reverse. Now Michael sees the punches coming.
“What am I hoping to accomplish? Boarding school.” Michael makes a show of examining his own knuckles as he answers the headmaster’s question. “I’m hoping to get kicked out of this fine establishment, at which point my father will have no choice but to send me to boarding school. Possibly a string of boarding schools. Very far away, very in favor of generous donors with troublesome offspring.”
“Youwantto be expelled?” The headmaster seems to find that preposterous—and also somewhat concerning.
“I need structure,” Michael declares, propping his feet up on the edge of the headmaster’s desk. “Discipline.”
I need to get away from my father.
“Feet, Mr. Townsend.”
Michael leaves his feet exactly where they are. He hears the secretary enter the room behind him. “Thatcher Townsend will be here shortly,” she announces.
Michael can feel the muscles in his shoulders and back start to tense. He won’t let them. “Wonderful man, my father,” he comments.
That gets a response from the headmaster: a subtle curl of his upper lip, too slight for 99 percent of the population to see. Michael recognizes the emotion for what it is.Distaste, not quite disgust.
The headmaster doesn’t think that Michael’s father is a wonderful man.He knows.
“You’re a school official.” Michael keeps his voice light and pleasant. “That makes you a mandatory reporter, doesn’t it?”
The headmaster stiffens. “You should wait outside.”
“I will be thrilled to wait outside,” Michael promises, “after I tell you a tale of great woe.” He pauses. “You might want to pull up my attendance records as corroboration.”
“Mr. Townsend—”
Michael meets his gaze. “It would be unfortunate for you to have to report one of your biggest donors for suspected child abuse.” Michael doesn’t enjoy thinking of himself asabused, so he doesn’t dwell on the word.
He relishes the moment.
“Almost as unfortunate,” he adds, “as if I were to report you fornotreporting one of your biggest donors.” Michael allows his feet to thump down on the floor and leans forward. “Or,” he says, his voice low, “you could expel me, and I could refrain from telling you anythingunfortunateat all.”
“Ididn’t push Kelley Peterson. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t evenknowher.”
The suspect’s hands were in the air. I took one step away from her, then another, easing down the staircase toward Michael and—
“True.”
I whipped my head toward Lia, who shrugged. “She’s telling the truth.
My heart skipped a beat, and I looked for a loophole in the psychologist’s statement.You didn’t push Kelley. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t even know her.
“Then why, pray tell,” Michael said, his gun still pointed toward her, “do you feel guilty?”
“I don’t—”
“Head tilted downward, forehead fighting furrows, gaze averted, mouth drooping—don’t even get me started on the direction your eyebrows are arching.” Michael lowered his weapon—most likely to put her at ease. “That combination puts you somewhere between shame and guilt, even if that lovely narrowing of your eyes and the way your muscles just tightened suggest you’re pissed, too.”
You didn’t push Kelley. You didn’t kill her. You feel guilty.I tried to make the situation compute, but it didn’t, because the UNSUB we were looking for might have mourned victims, might even have felt remorse at the way things had to be, but that wasn’t the dominant emotion in these kills. Neither was anger.
Exaltation. Release.
“You didn’t kill Kelley,” I said, trying a new tack. “Yousavedher. You didn’t push her; you set her free. And you feel guilty because you weren’t able to honor her passing, the way you did with the others.…”
“No,” the psychologist snapped. “I feel guilty because whenMackenzietold me that Kelley was pushed, I didn’t believe her. I feel guilty that I left my most vulnerable patient—on a ledge that’s getting slicker by the second—for this.”
You feel guilty,I thought reflexively,because if you’d kept your mouth shut when I was on the verge of talking Mackenzie down, she might not still be up there.
