Footsteps…

He’s coming. He’s coming here. .. Move it. Now!

Holding the files and clippings under her arm, Megan fled out the door. She ran down the corridors, getting lost once, pausing often to listen for footsteps. He seemed to be circling her.

Finally she found her way and raced into the room that adjoined hers, the “rat room.” She rubbed the grate along the edges of the hole in the wall to widen it. She started through and, whimpering, clawed her way forward. Five inches, six, a foot, two feet. Finally she grabbed the toilet in her room and wrenched herself through the hole. She replaced the grate on the far side of the wall and then slammed the metal plate into place in her bathroom.

She ran to the door and pressed her ear against it. The footsteps grew closer and closer. But Peter didn’t stop at her door. He kept moving. Maybe he didn’t know she was here.

Megan sat on the icy floor with her hands pressing furiously against the plate until they cramped.

Listen, C. M. starts to say. Maybe you can- Shut up, Megan thought furiously.

And for once Crazy Megan does what she’s told.

13

The eyes.

The eyes tell it all.

When Aaron Matthews was practicing psychotherapy he learned to read the eyes. They told him so much more than words. Words are tools and weapons and camouflage and shields.

But the eyes tell you the truth.

An hour ago, in Leesburg, he’d looked into the glassy, groggy eyes of a drugged Greta Hanson and knew she was a woman with no reserves of strength. And so he’d leaned close, become her son and spun a tale guaranteed to send her to the very angels that she was babbling on and on about. It’s quite a challenge to talk someone into killing herself and he’d thoroughly enjoyed playing the game.

He doubted she’d die from the dosage of Nembutal he’d given her and he doubted that she could find a vein anyway. Besides, it was important for her to remain alive-to blame her son for the Kevorkian number. Poor Doe Hanson now either in jail or on the run. In any case, he’d be no help as a witness to Tate Collier.

Now, as he strolled along the sidewalk near Jefferson High School, Aaron Matthews was looking at another set of eyes.

Robert Eckhard’s-the teacher who’d seen his car as he stalked Megan.

Studying the man’s eyes, Matthews was concluding that Eckhard might or might not have been a good English teacher but he didn’t doubt that he was one hell of a girls’ volleyball coach. The diminutive, tweedy man sat with a sports roster on his lap outside the sports field between the grade and high schools.

Wearing a baseball cap and thick-framed reading glasses he’d bought at Safeway-he remembered that Eckhard might have seen him near the school in the Mercedes-Matthews walked slowly past. He studied his subject carefully. The teacher was a middle-aged man, in Dockers and a loose tan shirt. Matthews took in all these observations and filed them away but it was the eyes that were most helpful; they told him everything he needed to know about Mr. Eckhard.

Continuing down the sidewalk, Matthews walked into a drugstore and made several purchases. He slipped into the rest room of the store and five minutes later returned to the school yard. He sat down on the bench next to Eckhard’s and rested the Washington Post in his lap. He gazed out at the young girls playing informal games of soccer or jump rope in the school yard.

Once, then twice, Eckhard glanced at him. The second time, Matthews happened to turn his way and saw the teacher looking at him with a hint of curiosity in his tell-all eyes.

Matthews’s face went still with uneasy alarm. He waited a judicious moment then stood quickly and walked past Eckhard. But as he did, the disposable camera fell from the folds of his newspaper. Matthews blinked then stepped forward suddenly to pick it up but his foot struck the yellow-and-black box. It went skidding along the sidewalk and stopped in front of Eckhard.

Matthews froze. The teacher, his eyes on Matthews’s, smiled again. He reached down and picked up the camera, looked at it. Turned it over.

“I-” Matthews began, horrified.

‘It’s okay,” Eckhard said.

“Okay?” Matthews’s voice faltered. He looked up and down the sidewalk, uneasy

“I mean, the camera’s okay,” Eckhard said, rattling it. “It doesn’t seem to be broken.”

Matthews began speaking breathlessly, over explaining-as his script required. “See, what it was, I was going to D.C. later today. I was going to the zoo. Take some pictures of the animals.”

“The zoo.” Eckhard examined the camera.

Matthews again looked up and down the sidewalk.

‘You like photography?” the teacher asked.

After a moment, Matthews said, “Yes, I do. A hobby” Smiled awkwardly, summoning a blush. “Everybody should have a hobby That’s what my father said.” He fell silent.

“It’s my hobby too.”

“Really?”

“Been doing it for about fifteen years,” Eckhard said.

“Me too. Little less, I guess.”

“You live around here?” the teacher asked.

“ Fairfax.”

“Long time?”

“A couple of years.”

Silence grew between them. Eckhard still held the camera. Matthews crossed his arms, rocked on his feet. Looking out over the school yard. Finally he asked, “You do your own developing and printing?”

“Of course,” Eckhard said.

Of course. The expected answer. Matthews’s eyes narrowed and he appeared to relax. “Harder with color,” he offered. “But they don’t make the throwaways in black and white.”

“I’m getting a digital camera,” Eckhard said. “I can just feed the pictures into my computer at home.”

“I’ve heard about those. They’re expensive, aren’t they?”

“They are… But you know hobbies. If they’re important to you you’re willing to spend the money.”

“That’s my philosophy,” Matthews admitted. He sat down next to Eckhard. They looked out on the playing field, at a cluster of girls, who were around ten or eleven years old. Eckhard looked through the eyepiece of the camera. “Lens isn’t telephoto.”

“No,” Matthews said. Then after a moment: “She’s cute. That brunette there.”

“Angela.”

“You know her?”

“I’m a teacher at the high school. I’m also a grade school counselor.” Matthews’s eyes flashed enviously. “Teacher? I work for an insurance company. Actuarial work. Boring. But summers I volunteer at Camp Henry. Maryland. Ages eight through fourteen. You know it?”

Eckhard shook his head. “I also coach girls’ sports.”

“That’s a good job too.” Matthews clicked his tongue.

“Sure is.” Eckhard looked out over the field. “I know most of these girls.”

“You do portraits?”

“Some.”

“You ever photograph her? That girl by the goal post?”

But Eckhard wouldn’t answer. “So, you take pictures just around the area here?”

Matthews said, “Here, California. Europe some. I was in Amsterdam a little while ago.”

“ Amsterdam. I was there a few years ago. Not as interesting as it used to be.”

“That’s what I found.”

“ Bangkok ’s nice, though,” Eckhard volunteered.

“I’m planning on going next year,” Matthews said in a whisper.

“Oh, you have to,” Eckhard encouraged, kneading the yellow box of the camera in his hands. “It’s quite a place.”

Matthews could practically see the synapses firing in Eckhard’s mind, wondering furiously if Matthews was a cop with the Child Welfare Unit of the Fairfax County Police or an FBI agent. Matthews had treated several pedophiles during his days as a practicing therapist. He recognized the classic characteristics in Eckhard. He was intelligent- an organized offender-and he’d know all about the laws of child molestation and pornography. He could probably just keep the testosterone under control to avoid actually molesting a child but photographing young girls was a compulsion that ruled his life.