Read Online Testament by David Morrell - Free Book Online Page A

right.”

20
     
    He left the car door open, running across the hot tar parking lot toward the entrance to the grade school. WOODSIDE, it said on top. Claire was hurrying behind him.
    “What is it? What’s happened?” he shouted to the woman waiting nervously outside for them. She was pale in the sun, young like the doctor had been. Too young. Sarah’s teacher. Short. Dull brown hair cut even with the bottom of her ears. Green dress stretched out. Five months pregnant, maybe more.
    “Tell me what it is,” he called, running up to her ahead of Claire.
    “I. She.”
    The building was new and clean and shiny, one long level of brick and glass. He swept past her, swinging open the bright front door. The place had the sharp sweet smell of floor polish.
    “Which way?” he demanded, voice echoing. “Where have you got her? For God’s sake tell me where she is.”
    “Down there,” she said and swallowed.
    To the right, and he was hurrying along the corridor, past open-door classrooms, past drinking fountains low on the wall for children, too impatient to knock as he wrenched open the door marked PRINCIPAL, and there was Sarah weeping, wrapped in a blanket on a corner chair, a nurse beside her, the principal rising off-balance behind his desk.
    “It was a mistake,” the man was saying. “You have to understand we had no way of knowing.”
    He barely glanced at the man: thick glasses on the desk, squinting eyes, open tie, rolled-up shirtsleeves. He rushed immediately over to Sarah, holding her. Claire was right behind him. Sarah continued weeping.
    “Sweetheart, tell us what it is. Are you all okay?”
    She shook her head yes, she shook her head no.
    Then he saw the blood on the floor.
    “Jesus.”
    “You’ve got to understand,” the principal was saying.
    “Jesus, you’re hurt, Sarah. You’re cut. Who cut you? Where?”
    He fumbled to open the blanket. The nurse tried to stop him, stronger than she looked.
    “You keep out of this.”
    “You’ve got to understand.” the principal was saying.
    “All right then, damn it. Tell me. Tell me what it is I have to understand.”
    Sarah wept louder.
    “I had her calmed down,” the nurse said. “Now you’ve made her afraid again.”
    “That’s a good idea,” the principal said and tried to smile. “I’m sure we’d all accomplish more if we all calmed down.”
    “I’ve made her afraid of what?”
    “The policeman,” Sarah said and wept.
    “What policeman?”
    “Sweetheart, try to tell us about it.”
    “Oh, Mommy, the policeman.”
    “We did our best,” the principal said. “You’ve got to understand that. I don’t know what’s been going on, but there’s been a policeman watching her for the last few weeks while she’s been back to school. Today there was a different one.”
    “No.”
    “He told me he needed to ask her some questions, that something new had happened and he needed to ask her about it. How was I to know what’s been going on? Nobody’s told me anything.”
    “We wanted her to lead some kind of life.”
    “What?”
    “It wasn’t right keeping her at home all the time. She was going crazy. We wanted her to meet new children, play, do something to keep her mind off things. If we had told you what was happening, you wouldn’t have let her come, or else word would have gotten around and everybody would have been staring at her. We figured the policeman was enough to protect her.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The policeman. Just tell me about the policeman. I was wrong.”
    “He came this morning and asked to have your daughter taken out of class so he could talk with her.” The sweat stain was spreading under the principal’s arms. “So I let him. You understand why I let him, don’t you? The next thing, one of the teachers heard her screaming in the basement. She was bleeding and screaming and—”
    “Where?”
    “In the basement.”
    “No. Where was she bleeding?” But he already knew and his throat