Funhouse (2 page)

Beneath the ski mask a satisfied smile edged its way around the lips. Then the figure in black turned and loped away.

Tess, shaking her head to clear her mind, looked up just then and the moving shadow caught her eye. It wasn’t much more than a blur in the darkness, but something about it struck her as strange. Then she realized what it was. Instead of rushing to The Boardwalk to help, the figure was moving
away
from the scene.

Maybe it was rushing off to call for help?

Then why wasn’t it rushing
toward
The Boardwalk, where the nearest phones were located?

And what had it been doing under The Devil’s Elbow in the first place?

Before Tess could think of any reasonable answers to those questions, someone called her name, jerking her back to the chaotic reality in front of her.

T
HEY ASKED FOR IT.
They did. They had it coming, all of them. They get no sympathy.

No one suspects. They think it was an accident.

Wrong!

It was
so
easy. Climbing up the inside of the roller coaster’s white wooden support system, climbing like a monkey in a palm tree. Then jamming the lead pipe up through the rails at exactly the right moment. That old Devil’s Elbow took off into space like it was propelled by jet fuel. Easy, it was so easy.

Dade, Sheree, Joey … three out of eight, all at the same time. Not bad. Three out of eight’s not bad.

Not bad.

Five more to go.

And no one suspects. Because they don’t know what I know. And I’m not about to tell. Not until the job is done. Then I’ll share my little discovery with all of them.

But right now, it’s time to plan the next step.

A
S
T
ESS RETURNED ABRUPTLY
to reality at the sound of her name, the wooden boardwalk vibrated with feet pounding toward the scene of the crash. The air was filled with screams and moans and shouts for help. Tess’s ears rang. Her eyes worked at focusing on the scene before her. Booths had been toppled, their wooden sides collapsing like accordions. There was brightly colored metal everywhere, bits and pieces and chunks of it. Some larger chunks partially hid their victims, revealing a skirt and legs or an arm clutching a purse or someone’s very curly red hair. A little boy cried out in pain, wanting his mommy.

Tess shuddered. A siren wailing in the distance told her someone had called for help. The person she’d seen beneath The Devil’s Elbow? Maybe.

The smells of popcorn and cotton candy and hot dogs were sickening.

Gina and Doss were running toward Tess. “Tess, are you okay?” Gina cried, her face bone-white. “You’re not hurt?”

Tess shook her head. But she continued to lean against the wall. She didn’t trust her legs to support her all by themselves.

“Were you standing right here when it happened?” Gina’s dark eyes, wide with horror, surveyed the disaster scene. “You could have been killed! You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m okay. But,” she added, pointing shakily to the injured, “they’re not. Shouldn’t we see if we can help?”

An ambulance shrieked to a halt just beyond the steps to The Boardwalk. Several paramedics in white jumped to the ground and began running, medical equipment in hand.

“They’re going to need more than one of those,” a deep voice commented in Tess’s ear.

It was Sam, in jogging shorts and a red sweatshirt, earphones draped around his neck. His dark hair curled damply across his forehead. “Looks like someone dropped a bomb. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Tess answered honestly. A second ambulance arrived, then a third, followed by a black-and-white police car. “The roller coaster just sailed off into the air.”

The policemen immediately began trying to disperse the crowd. But no one wanted to leave. People seemed frozen in morbid fascination, their eyes wide, mouths open in disbelief.

“Come on,” Tess urged, tugging at Sam’s hand. “Let’s see if there’s anything we can do to help.”

The scene that greeted her eyes when she and her friends had pushed through the crowd, made her stomach curl up in fright. Scattered among the bright chunks of broken metal were many of her friends, their bodies crumpled like used paper napkins. Some were unconscious. Some were not as lucky, and cried out in pain.

“There’s Sheree Buchanan,” Gina whispered, pointing. “There, lying beside the hot-dog stand. I ran into her earlier. She was wearing a purple shirt just like one I bought last week.”

Tess moaned low in her throat. Poor Sheree. She would never be the same.

“Dade Lewis is dead!” a girl standing behind Sam cried out. “He’s dead!”

A collective gasp of dismay rose up from the crowd.

Dade Lewis? Tess couldn’t believe that. Dade was obnoxious, but he was so healthy, so full of life. The girl must be mistaken.

A boy in jeans and a T-shirt ran past Tess, his hand over his mouth, his face sweatshirt-gray. Doss followed him, returning a moment later to say without emotion, “He just came across Joey Furman’s leg. Minus Joey. Shook the kid up real bad.”

Gina gasped as her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Tess leaned against Sam, all breath completely stolen from her. Joey Furman? He was on the track team, with Guy Joe, Sam, and Beak. Every time she’d seen Joey lately—on The Boardwalk, in town, or at school, he’d been running. And now he’d lost a leg to The Devil’s Elbow?

Doss Beecham was an insensitive clod, she thought, as Doss left to help on The Boardwalk. Talking so matter-of-factly about what had happened to Joey, as if the loss of his leg were no more important than a pimple on his chin! Didn’t Doss have any feelings?

She spotted Beak among the volunteers, bending and stooping, his lanky form lifting metal and tossing it aside, as he tried to stay out of the way of the paramedics. His thin face was flushed with exertion and distress.

“There’s Beak,” she told Gina, nodding toward their friend. She was relieved that he hadn’t been a passenger on The Devil’s Elbow when it crashed. It was his favorite ride.

Gina simply nodded when Tess mentioned Beak. She was still trying to take in the nightmare around her.

“I’m going with Beecham,” Sam told Tess, handing her his earphones. “You stay here with Giambone. And stay
out
of the way.”

Ordinarily, Tess’s temper would have flared at the command. But nothing tonight was ordinary. Besides, she figured, in this case Sam was probably right. She and Gina could be the most useful by helping to move the crowd back. The policemen weren’t having much luck getting onlookers out of the way.

Tess and Gina spent most of the next hour cajoling bystanders, gradually talking them into moving back from the accident scene, leaving the site open for emergency personnel and the cleanup crew.

When the last of the ambulances had departed, sirens wailing mournfully, and the crowd had wandered off, Tess and Gina collapsed to sitting positions, their backs against a cotton-candy booth left untouched by the disaster. Tess’s thin face and Gina’s round one were totally devoid of color, their eyes full of pain and shock. Doss and Sam joined them, their own faces and clothes dirty. Sam had a small cut on one hand. They sank down beside the girls and rested their heads against the booth.

Tess’s brother, Guy Joe, a tall, broad-shouldered boy with a square, handsome face and deep gray eyes, arrived, his denim cutoffs smeared with grease from his cleanup efforts. Trailing along behind him was Sam’s sister Candace, a pale, thin, blonde girl. Candace never wore jeans, and the pink dress she was wearing now was much too large for her, billowing around her like a tent. A heavy hand with an eyebrow pencil made her look far more ferocious than she really was. Tess couldn’t understand why Mrs. Oliver, who was tall, beautiful, and very elegant, never took the time to teach her own daughter about clothes and makeup. But tonight, that didn’t seem very important.

“Well, at least you weren’t on that thing when it went,” Guy Joe said to Tess, patting her shoulder awkwardly as he slid to a sitting position beside her. “When I saw the bulletin on television, I thought of you. I know this place is your favorite hangout.”

“Guy Joe,” Tess said stiffly, still uncomfortable around the brother who had “deserted” her by staying with their father after the separation, “you know I never go near the roller coaster. Haven’t since the first time I ever rode it.”

“According to the bulletin,” her brother argued, running his fingers through his unruly hair, “you didn’t have to be on the thing to get clobbered. For all I knew, you could have been creamed by one of the falling cars.”

Tess knew he was right. One elderly woman had been tossed into a food booth. Two little boys had been slashed by flying metal chunks, and at least half a dozen other people walking along The Boardwalk at the time of the accident had been sent to the Santa Luisa Medical Center.

“Thanks for worrying about me,” she said politely, “but I’m fine.”

A tall, big-boned, very pretty girl with thick, blonde shoulder-length hair ran up to them. Dressed in beige silk slacks over a red leotard, she carried her large frame gracefully, moving with quick, light steps across The Boardwalk. When she reached the group, she sank into a crouch beside Gina. Tess noticed that she was careful not to let her silk pants touch the wood, gently bunching them slightly at the knees.

“Isn’t this just awful?” the girl breathed, her blue eyes wide. “I can’t believe it! My daddy’s going to have a stroke! Something like this happening on his beloved boardwalk, it’s just terrible! Has anybody seen my little brother?”

The girl was Trudy Slaughter, a classmate of Tess and Gina’s, and the “daddy” she spoke of was chairman of the board of directors that ran The Boardwalk. Trudy was a popular, powerful force at Santa Luisa High, having held at least once, every available office. Tess hadn’t voted for her since the day she saw Trudy lose her temper in the school parking lot over an English grade lower than the one she’d been expecting. Seeing Trudy violently ripping at sheets of paper and slamming her books against the windshield of a car had not been a pretty sight. It had given Tess chills, and she knew she’d seen a side of Trudy that not many other people had witnessed.

“I saw Tommy,” Gina said, referring to the brother Trudy had asked about. “He’s fine. He’s with one of Beak’s kid sisters. They weren’t hurt, either.”

“I was at ballet class,” Trudy breathed, “when we all heard this horrible sound. Debbie Wooster thought it was an earthquake and ran screaming into the bathroom. But Madame Souska said it wasn’t, because the chandelier wasn’t shaking. She let us turn on the radio and that’s how we heard. We were excused from practice, can you believe that? She never excuses us for anything!” Trudy’s chest heaved in a heavy sigh. “I suppose that means we’ll have to make it up another time.”

“Poor thing,” Tess said sarcastically, too tired to ignore Trudy’s callousness. “And yes, we’re all fine, thanks for asking.”

Trudy blushed. “Well, I can
see
that! I heard about Dade, though. I can’t believe it. How did it happen, anyway?”

“No one knows,” Guy Joe said wearily. “Maybe a loose rail.”

“I saw someone,” Tess said quietly.

Everyone’s eyes focused on her. But she could tell that her words hadn’t registered. “Under The Devil’s Elbow,” she added, flushing because she hated being the center of attention, and already wishing she hadn’t said anything. “Right after the accident. Running away.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Trudy said anxiously. “Who
was
it?”

“You saw someone?” Sam asked quietly, leaning forward to peer into Tess’s face. “Running away?”

Tess nodded. “I think so. It was awfully dark and I couldn’t see very well. But there was something …” A lack of conviction forced her words to trail off weakly.

No one said anything for a moment. They think I imagined it, she thought resentfully. I never should have said anything.

Then Doss surprised her by asking calmly, “Who did it look like, Tess? Was it someone we know?” He seemed to be assuming that she hadn’t imagined the shadow.

Sending him a grateful glance, she admitted reluctantly, “No, not really. But I thought … well, I thought there was something familiar about the way it moved.”

“The way what moved?” Beak asked as he joined them. Sweat from his work with the cleanup crew streaked his thin, intense face. Swiping at it with the sleeve of his navy blue sweatshirt, he sank down beside Gina.

“Tess thinks she saw someone running away from The Devil’s Elbow,” Gina told him. Although she said
thinks,
Tess felt that Gina, too, believed her, and she sent her best friend a warm smile.

“Running
away?”
Beak asked, leaning back against the booth. “Why would someone be running
away?
Are you hinting that you think someone
did
something to The Devil’s Elbow? Deliberately caused the accident?”

That thought hadn’t even crossed Tess’s mind. Wide-eyed she stared at Beak. “No, I …”

Sam interrupted her. “Maybe you should talk to the police. Tell them what you saw.”

Tess looked doubtful. What could she possibly tell them? That she’d seen a shadow? Wouldn’t they laugh at her?

“Relax,” Doss said lazily. “Chalmers will look into it. That’s his job. If he finds even a hint of tampering, then Tess can go to him with what she saw.”

Sam laughed. “Chalmers? Our distinguished police chief? He couldn’t find his own nose without a mirror. Besides, the board got him elected in the first place, to make sure their precious Boardwalk was protected. If he does find anything, whether it was faulty equipment or actual tampering, he’s not going to announce it publicly. Either way, it’d be bad for business.”

“Oh, Sam,” Gina scolded, “you’re so cynical! The board wouldn’t hide something like that. And the police would never cover it up.”

Sam shrugged. “We’ll see.”

An uncomfortable silence followed. Then Tess asked, “Anyone know who called the paramedics?” Maybe it had been the shadow she’d seen. That would explain why it had been there and she could forget about it.