But when she paused for breath at the top of the stairs, there was no sound of shouts and cries, or even of following footsteps. She stepped out into the corridor. The English classrooms had been at the north end of the school, on the second floor. She went up to second at the first opportunity and started along the hall, looking for something, anything familiar.
The high school had apparently employed the same architects as Mercy General. It was a maze of locker-lined halls and connecting walkways, and they all looked exactly alike except for the posters on the walls. And even the posters had changed radically. No posters with cut-out hearts advertising the Valentine Dance or the Sophomore Class Bake Sale. They all announced rape hot lines or listed the warning signs of anorexia and suicide. “Do you know someone at risk?” several of them asked.
Most of the classroom doors were shut. She leaned into the ones that were open, but didn’t see anyone inside. The corridor made an abrupt ninety-degree turn, past a drunk-driving poster that proclaimed, “You can save a life!,” went up four steps, and zigzagged again. Joanna had no idea where she was, and there was no one she could ask directions of. The hallways were deserted.
That’s because they can’t get in, Joanna thought, trying the locked classroom doors, peering in through the squares of glass in the doors. The hallway ended in a stairwell with a pale blue banner that asked, “Need Help?” Joanna flipped a mental coin, went down, and found herself outside what must be the band room. There was a battered-looking upright piano inside, surrounded by a semicircle of chairs and music stands. A tuba stood propped against the wall.
“Excuse me,” Joanna said to the stout, balding man stacking sheet music on top of the piano. He wasn’t anyone she knew, but he was the right age to have been here when Mr. Briarley was, and he was cheerful-looking. “I’m looking for Mr. Briarley. He used to teach English here. I was wondering if you might know how I can get in touch with him, Mr.—”
“Crenshaw. Do you have a visitor’s pass?” he said, looking pointedly at the lapel of her cardigan.
“No,” Joanna said, and added hastily, “You see, I had Mr. Briarley for senior English. He was my favorite teacher, and I wanted to—”
“No one is allowed in the building without a visitor’s pass,” Mr. Crenshaw said, still looking sternly at her chest. “It’s school policy.”
“I only—” Joanna began, but he was already holding the door open.
“You have no business being here. You need to go back to the office and sign in. Go down this hall,” he said, pointing, “and turn right, down the stairs, and then right again.” He ushered her out the door. “I don’t want to have to call Security.” He watched her all the way to the end of the hall, his arms crossed over his chest, making sure she turned right.
He was right about one thing. She had no business being here. It was a wild goose chase. Mr. Briarley wasn’t here, and it was becoming obvious why he had left. She could imagine what his response to visitors’ passes and metal detectors would have been.
She turned right and went down the hall, but there weren’t any stairs, just a hallway that led off at right angles in both directions. Mr. Crenshaw had said right. She went right. It ended in an outside door marked “Emergency Exit Only. Alarm Will Sound.” She went back and took the left-hand fork, wondering what time they locked the front doors.
The place was a labyrinth, the kind you could get lost in forever. She began to long for another Mr. Crenshaw to order her back to the office. She would ask him to go with her to show her the way. But there was nobody in any of these classrooms. All the doors were locked up tight.
This hall was deadending, too. There was a glass-fronted room at the end of it. The assistant principal’s office? No, his office had been midway down a hall. The library, she thought, recognizing it even though it had a sign saying “Media Resource Center.” Banks of terminals stood where the study tables had been, and she couldn’t see any books at all, but it was still the same library. And that meant she was at the south end of the building, as far from the English classrooms as it was possible to be.
But at least it was something familiar, and the doors were open. She took off her cardigan and draped it over her arm with a sleeve showing, so the librarian might conclude her visitor’s badge was pinned to it, and went in.
The librarian was younger than Joanna, but at least her eyes didn’t dart immediately to Joanna’s chest. “We’re just closing up,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“I doubt it,” Joanna said, thinking, I should just ask for directions back to the office. And a map. “I’m looking for Mr. Briarley. He used to teach senior English here.”
“Oh, yeah, Mr. Briarley,” the librarian said. “My husband went to school here. He had him. He hated him.”
“Do you know where I could find him?”
“Gosh, no,” she said. “He wasn’t here when I came. I think I remember somebody saying that he’d died.”
Died. That had somehow never occurred to her, which was ridiculous, considering she spent her whole life dealing with death. “Are you sure?”
“Just a minute,” the librarian said, walking toward the stacks. “Myra? Didn’t you tell me Mr. Briarley had died? The English teacher?”
A gray-haired woman emerged from the stacks, a pile of books pressed against her chest. “Mr. Briarley? No. He retired.”
“Do you know how I could get in touch with him?” Joanna asked. “Is there anybody who might know his address?” but the old woman was already shaking her head.
“Everybody who would have known him’s gone, too. The district offered an early-retirement bonus three years ago, and everybody who had over twenty years took it.”
“And that was when Mr. Briarley retired? Three years ago?”
“No, longer than that. I don’t know when.”
“Well, thank you,” Joanna said. She reached in her bag for her card and handed it to the woman. “If you think of anybody who might know how I could find him, I can be reached at this number.”
“I doubt if there’s anybody,” Myra said, pocketing the card without even looking at it.
Joanna went over to the door. The young librarian was already locking up. She turned the key to let Joanna out. “Any luck?”
Joanna shook her head.
“He used to live over by DU. My husband pointed out his house to me one time.”
Joanna’s pager began to beep. Not now, she thought, digging in her bag for it. She scrambled to turn it off. “Your husband showed you where Mr. Briarley’s house was?”
She nodded, grinning. “He and a bunch of his friends had egged it the night before graduation.”
“Do you remember the address?” Joanna said eagerly.
“No. I don’t remember the name of the street either. It was next to the park with the observatory.”
“Do you remember what the house looked like?”
“Green,” the librarian said, squinting in thought. “Or white with green trim, I don’t remember. There was a weeping willow in the front yard. It was on the west side, I think.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said and went out the door. The librarian started to shut it behind her. “Oh, wait,” she said, putting her hand on the doorjamb. “One more quick question. Does an alarm go off if you open the outside doors?”
“No,” the librarian said, bewildered, and Joanna took off down the hall and went out the first door she came to. It was still snowing, and she was, of course, on the opposite side of the building from her car, but she didn’t care. She knew where Mr. Briarley lived. Over by DU. The park with the observatory. She didn’t know the name of the street either, but she knew the park, and the observatory could be seen from Evans.