Private Killer Read online

  “What are they doing up so early?” I asked Frank. “I thought they practiced after classes?”

  “There’s that big game coming up, remember? It’s a grudge match with another private school, their longtime rivals. Apparently, this year is their big chance to win back the championship.”

  We stopped and watched them practice. After a minute, something occurred to me. “Hey—do you see Destiny down there?”

  “No . . . where is she?”

  The practice was breaking up now, and there was no sign of Destiny anywhere.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said.

  “Me too. Let’s go check in with Dr. Darity.”

  I called Killer back and put him on his leash. We set off at a quick walk across campus. By the time we found our way to Dr. Darity’s office, everyone was up and talking about the events of last night.

  “Hey Dr. D.,” said Frank as we walked into his office.

  “Hi Frank. Joe. I’ve been so caught up in trying to get the details settled for the Benevolence Weekend next Saturday, I haven’t had a chance to find out anything more about that hut in the woods yet. Or the Brothers of Erebus.”

  The Brothers of Erebus was some sort of secret society within the Gamma Theta Theta fraternity, and they had been the group that Ellery had really been trying to get out of. We still didn’t really know who they were or what they did. They put the “secret” in secret society. Dr. Darity looked like he hadn’t slept in a year. There were big black bags under his eyes, and his clothes were all wrinkled.

  “Have you seen Destiny this morning? She wasn’t at soccer practice,” I said.

  “No,” said Dr. Darity. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but . . . she has a habit of disappearing. I’ve tried everything to get her to tell me when she leaves. I’ve bought cell phones, calling cards. But I think she enjoys making me worry. She’s been gone since yesterday afternoon.”

  Frank and I exchanged a look. This was definitely not good.

  “I’m sure she’s all right though,” said Dr. Darity.

  The way he said it, he didn’t sound sure at all.

  I tried to reassure him.

  “She’s probably fine. Still, we should find her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  Dr. Darity opened his mouth, but Frank’s phone rang before he could say anything.

  “Yes?” said Frank as he answered the phone. His face turned pale. “Right. Yes, we’re with him now. Okay.”

  “Dr. Darity?” Frank said. “That was ATAC. They’ve identified the blood—it’s Destiny’s.”

  FRANK

  2

  Bad Blood

  That’s not possible!” Dr. Darity bellowed. “It has to be some sort of mistake.”

  He surged out of his seat, ready to run out the office door and find Destiny—if the trash basket hadn’t gotten in his way. Joe caught Dr. Darity before he slammed into the wall, and slowly lowered him to the ground.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Panicking isn’t going to help Destiny. Have you tried calling her?” From the amount of blood we’d seen in those buckets, I wasn’t sure anything could help Destiny at this point, but we needed Dr. Darity to be able to cooperate with us, which meant giving him hope.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Destiny’s number. His hands, I noticed, were oddly still for someone who just found out his daughter was missing a couple of buckets of blood.

  “Yo!” Destiny’s voice echoed loudly from the receiver.

  “Destiny!” Dr. Darity yelled. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was still alive.

  “You’ve reached Destiny’s cell. Leave me a message. I’ll call you back—if I feel like it. LATERS!”

  Well, I thought, there goes that hope.

  Dr. Darity spoke evenly into the phone. “Destiny, you have to call me. Do you hear me? Call me the second you get this message!”

  Joe and I exchanged a look. Not that I knew what it was like to be a father. But if I’d just found buckets of my own daughter’s blood, I’d be a mess. Darity almost seemed . . . more angry than upset for his daughter’s well-being.

  “Dr. Darity? Do you have anything of Destiny’s here in the office? Killer’s been police trained; I’m sure with something of hers to smell, he could find her—”

  I cut Joe off before he could say the word “body.”

  “Killer could find Destiny,” I said, giving Joe a dirty look. He mouthed the word sorry.

  “Her scarf is over there.” Dr. Darity pointed to the back of the office door. Joe brought Killer over.

  “Does Destiny have any enemies, Dr. Darity? Anyone who might want to hurt her?”

  “I—I—Well, Destiny is a misunderstood girl. You have to understand. Her mother died and—”

  “Dr. Darity, please. We don’t have a lot of time. Just tell me. Had she made anyone angry?”

  Dr. Darity sighed and rubbed his eyes. Finally, after a minute, he spoke.

  “Who hasn’t she made angry? She’s been kicked out of every school she’s ever attended. She’s smart, but she picks fights and doesn’t try hard at anything—except for soccer. At her last school, the Hallie Blair School, Destiny had a long-standing rivalry with this girl Lydia. I’m sad to say that she did some pretty mean things. It sounds like both of the girls did. But in the end, Destiny shaved the poor girl’s head because she thought it was her fault they’d lost a game. That was the last straw, and the Blair School expelled her after that.”

  The Blair School? Where had I heard that name before? I didn’t have time to think about it right now, but I filed it away in my brain for later.

  “What about here? Is there anyone at Firth who might have a grudge against her?”

  “She’s had a hard time here. A lot of the school didn’t want her here—the old boys network, you know?—but the trustees were happy with the job I’d done since I started at Firth, and, with some serious coaxing, they made an exception. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, and she only has one year of high school left to finish. I thought people would get over it, but ever since she joined the soccer team, it’s been a thousand times worse. Her tires have been slashed. Prank calls. Someone toilet papered our house. Every week something new happens.”

  “Dr. Darity, all due respect but . . . this sounds pretty serious,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this earlier?”

  Dr. Darity shrugged, looking baffled and defeated. “Honestly, I didn’t see any connection. Before now, it didn’t seem to have been related in any way to everything else. But now with this prank . . .”

  Prank?! I thought. That amount of blood added up to one of two possible conclusions: either Destiny was dead or dying. Prank isn’t the word I would have used to describe what basically amounted to murder. Something was not right here, and Joe and I both knew it.

  Joe tossed me a nod and held Destiny’s scarf out for Killer to sniff. “Well, let’s see where it takes us.”

  “Come on boy,” Joe said to Killer, leading him out the door. “Find Destiny.”

  Killer whined and snuffled, digging his nose deep in the scarf. Outside, he perked his head up. He started pulling on the leash.

  “Come on.” I pulled Dr. Darity to his feet. The fact that Killer had found a trail seemed to bring him back to himself. With Killer leading the way, we ran from the administration building back toward the main quad of the school.

  All around, students were enjoying their afternoon. We barged through a group of guys grilling burgers and interrupted a Frisbee game. Killer patrolled back and forth across the grass, looking for the freshest, most recent scent. Finally he found something. His ears perked up and he bounded forward, pulling Joe behind him. Dr. Darity and I ran to keep up.

  Finally Killer came to a stop—right outside of Darity’s house.

  “Come on Killer, come on!” Joe tried to coax Killer away from the house and back on Destiny’s trail, but Killed wouldn’t move.

  “Could he have lost her scent?”
asked Dr. Darity.

  I looked over at the Darity house. At first glance, the blue house looked cozy and quiet. But then I realized there was something strange.

  “Dr. Darity? Do you usually leave the windows open in the middle of fall?”

  “What?”

  I pointed at the second floor of the house, where a pair of pink curtains were flapping out of an open window.

  “That’s Destiny’s room!”

  Dr. Darity pulled a set of keys from his pocket and raced to the front door of the house. He threw the door open and Killer ran in, leaping up the stairs. Toward the room with the open window.

  When we got to the top of the stairs, the door was closed. Dr. Darity flung it open.

  “No!” he yelled, stopped by the scene in front of him.

  Her eyes closed, Destiny’s body lay sprawled on the floor!

  JOE

  3

  The Living Dead

  Destiny!” Dr. Darity’s voice choked out as he looked at the body of his daughter lying on the ground. I placed a hand on Dr. Darity’s arm, unsure what to say.

  Suddenly Destiny’s eyes flew open.

  “Dad?” she said.

  She pulled the headphones from her ears, and I caught a brief blast of some wailing guitars. Then she noticed Frank and me.

  “Oh my God! What are you doing in my room?” She stared at me for a while.

  I’d always thought that zombies could only say things like “BRAAAINS” or “HUUMANS!” Destiny, however, seemed to have kept a firm grasp on English. Also, she didn’t really seem to be injured. Mostly, she just looked . . . angry. And boy did she look cute when she was angry!

  “I know we’re living in like, a police state and all, but can’t I get any privacy?” She shoved a bunch of stuff under her bed, which already looked like it had about twenty closets worth of stuff pushed under it, and stomped around the room.

  “Destiny! You’re all right!” Dr. Darity looked like he might break out in tears at any moment. He grabbed her in a big hug.

  “Uh . . . yeah? So are you?” said Destiny, as she struggled to breathe in her father’s tight grasp. She “noticed Killer for the first time.

  “Oh great,” she said. “You brought the mutt, too. Try not to let it drool on any of my things, okay?”

  Suddenly her father pushed her out to arm’s length and held her there by her shoulders. “Where have you been? I have been worried sick about you all weekend! You have no idea what’s been going on here.”

  “Daaad,” said Destiny. “I just went to Boston for the night. I was stressed out, you know? I just needed to get away for the weekend. Plus, some twerp GTT pledge tried to sneak in and steal my bathing suit for like, the third time this month. And there was this awesome Pixies cover band playing at the Rat Trap, so . . .”

  “How many times have I told you that this sort of behavior is unacceptable, Destiny?” Dr. Darity had gone from “glad Destiny was alive” to “wanting to strangle her” in about two and a half seconds.

  “I was going to call you, but I lost my cell phone and my keys at the concert. That’s why I had to use the window to break in. I just got home like an hour ago.” Destiny pointed to the open window.

  Dr. Darity let out a big sigh. All of the anger seemed to flow out of him. He flopped down on Destiny’s bed.

  “Ow!” he said. “Destiny, you really need to clean up around here. There’s so much stuff under your bed I can hardly sit on it!”

  “Yeah, I know.” Destiny blushed for a second. “I’m totally going to do that today. So . . . if you guys want to leave, I could, like, get to that?” She gave Frank and me a pointed look.

  “You’ll have lots of time to do that—since you’re going to be grounded for the next two weeks. But right now, the boys and I have something we need to talk to you about.”

  “Right,” I said. “Like how you’re up and walking around when a couple of gallons of your blood are well across campus.” I explained what happened last night. When I got to the part about the blood, she shot up.

  “What? My supply! If they use this as an excuse to keep me out of the big game against the Blair School next weekend, I swear I’ll kill someone.”

  Frank stopped short. “You keep a supply of your own blood on hand?”

  Why would anyone need to do that? I thought.

  But her father was nodding. “Destiny has a very rare blood type, inherited from her mother, as well as a mild case of hemophilia, inherited from me. She frequently needs transfusions, and with a rare blood type we needed to be sure her blood was stored on campus. I had a feeling it had something to do with the supply, but until we were sure . . .” His eyes welled up. “I just wanted to be sure she was okay.”

  Destiny rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks, Dad. Just tell them I’m a medical freak, why don’t you?”

  “Hemophilia?” I asked. “That’s when you don’t have the stuff that makes your blood clot, right?”

  “Yep,” said Destiny. “I’m a bleeder. Want to see?” Destiny held out her arm and Frank backed up a step.

  “Destiny, that isn’t funny!” Dr. Darity was definitely irritated. “Thankfully she doesn’t have as serious a case as some. But still, she needs to be careful.” This was said with a pointed look in her direction.

  Destiny looked around the room at all of our faces. Then she laughed.

  “You thought I was dead, didn’t you? That is so cute.” She reached out and ruffled my hair. “Cute” wasn’t quite the “hot” I was hoping for, but I’d take it. For once, the cute girl was going after me, not Frank! It was a miracle.

  I smelled something strange on her arm—smoke?

  Her father smelled it too.

  “When did you say you got home?” Dr. Darity sounded angry again.

  “An hour ago . . .”

  “Right. So you weren’t at the bonfire last night? The one in town that a bunch of students snuck out to?”

  “Well . . . maybe I got back a little earlier from the concert than I thought, and I dropped by briefly. For like, ten seconds.”

  “Did I say you were grounded for two weeks? I meant four.”

  “Dad! That’s so not fair!”

  “Do you want to go for five?”

  While the Daritys fought about curfews and punishments, Frank and I quickly slipped out of the room. We pulled Killer out with us. At least that was one mystery solved—and for once, solved without a corpse at the end.

  Killer pulled us over to a bush that he wanted to, uh . . . investigate. Away from the house, Frank and I finally had a chance to talk.

  “It seems like Destiny is off the hook for this one,” I said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Frank. “It seems like this was as much a prank on her as it was on Lee.”

  “So who has it out for both of them?”

  We thought for a second. Then it came to me. “Patton! He’s had it out for Lee because he thought Lee was stealing his place at GTT, and he was angry at Dr. Darity for threatening to close down the frats. He could have done the stuff with the blood before Ellery’s acid-trap got him.”

  Frank considered for a minute. “It’s possible,” he said. “But if so, we won’t know until he’s out of the hospital in a few days. Still, we should keep him on our list of suspects.”

  “If it was Patton, with him in the hospital and Ellery in a mental institution, things should be pretty quiet around here from now on.”

  Frank nodded. “Doesn’t seem too likely, does it?” he said.

  “Did you notice how weird Dr. Darity was about withholding information about Destiny?” I asked Frank.

  “Like that there might be a reason for buckets of her blood to be laying around the school?” he asked. “Yeah, I noticed. But what motive would he have for the rest of it?”

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Suspect: Patton “Peachy” Gage

  Hometown: Miami, Florida

  Physical Description: 5’9”, 155 pounds, pale skin, red hair, freckles

&nb
sp; Occupation: Junior at Firth; GTT pledge

  Suspected Of: Trashing the Firth soccer team’s locker room, threatening Lee Jenkins, and harassing Destiny Darity.

  Possible Motives: Trying to get Lee to drop out so he would become the number one GTT pledge; revenge on Dr. Darity for threatening to close down the frats.

  He was right. Something gave me the feeling that our real culprit was still out there. Who had changed Lee’s grades and nearly gotten him kicked off the team? Not Ellery. And Destiny’s father had said this wasn’t the first time she’d been harassed. Still, until we had something more to go on, there was nothing we could do.

  “Let’s finish up Killer’s walk,” said Frank. “I’ve got to get back to studying. The classes here are hard!”

  The way he said hard, it sounded more like he meant “fun.” That was Frank for you.

  We walked out past the Darity house, back the way we had come. Soccer practice was over now, so the path to that athletics department was empty.

  “Seems like all the action involves the soccer team,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Frank agreed. “It’s probably too late to join, but I wonder if there’s some way I can help out.”

  “Water boy?”

  Frank shot me a dirty look. “Very funny,” he said.

  I noticed that Killer was lagging behind us. That’s odd, I thought. Usually Killer was pulling me along. That dog couldn’t get enough exercise—I guess the life of a school mascot was a lot less interesting than that of a police dog. At least usually . . . recently they had been pretty similar.

  “What’s up with Killer?” asked Frank.

  Killer was pulling back against the leash, sitting down on his haunches. His nose was in the air and he was sniffing loudly. He was also making a low growling noise and, finally, he began tugging at the leash.

  When, I wondered, have I seen this before?

  Then I smelled it. “Smoke!” I yelled.